Chapter 297: Xiao Yang Saw, and Was Satisfied

Gu Sheng groggily awoke to find himself still in the side room, but the Emperor and his party were gone.

His face felt strange. He raised a hand to touch it and found it covered in a green, sticky liquid. He could also feel that his face was swollen and puffy.

Having spent so many years in the Southern Domain, he didn’t need a mirror to know what had happened to his face.

But there were no mountain hornets here.

The Emperor must have had them caught just to sting him, and had even thoughtfully applied some medicine afterward.

Gu Sheng took two deep breaths and let out a long sigh.

He couldn’t wrap his head around it. How could someone like that become the Emperor? And how could they lead a nation to such prosperity?

The moment he’d discovered the Emperor’s presence, countless possibilities had run through Gu Sheng’s mind.

‘Is the Emperor here to investigate me? To secretly check if I’m plotting a rebellion, or to find some pretext to get rid of me for good?’

His thoughts had been far too conventional. So when that group of people appeared before him, their faces swollen, his shock was beyond description.

The scene was so absurd he could never have imagined it in a million years. No matter how many books he read, he would never find the words to describe the feeling.

‘Was that the Emperor? How could the Emperor possibly end up like that?’

But now he was certain. The Emperor had just been out for a stroll and gotten stung by mountain hornets.

He had accidentally stumbled upon the scene, and she had been so mortified she’d wanted to kill him to silence him. But in the end, all she did was catch some bees and have him stung as well.

‘Heh… so childish.’

No other emperor would do something like this. But the current Emperor had always been known as the Demon Child. The whole affair was absurd, but on second thought, it seemed perfectly in character.

Gu Sheng thought of the other members of the Imperial Family—the two brothers from the Prince Jing Mansion, Xiao Cheng and Xiao Lan, as well as Xiao Qing from Longchuan.

It was often said that the Emperor, having no full-blooded brothers, treated her cousins and kinsmen well only to win them over and consolidate her power.

Undeniably, the Emperor was tyrannical. She had killed no fewer people than any emperor before her—in fact, she had likely surpassed them.

Yet she had never killed a single one of her kinsmen. She had even allowed the declining Xiao Family clan to gradually flourish once more.

Setting aside her merits and faults and looking only at the results, she had already surpassed every male emperor in history.

And…

‘To be able to fool around and get into trouble with the Emperor… How enviable.’

The only imperial relative the Emperor had ever killed was her own father, who had returned from the dead.

If the Emperor courted her kinsmen to secure her throne, then had she spared him—the son of a traitor—all this time partly because the blood of the Xiao Family also flowed in his veins, making him her cousin?

King Longchuan, Xiao Kun, had once been a rebel, but he was now enfeoffed with an entire kingdom. Then there was Xiao Qing, the son of a rebel, who had followed her for years and become a trusted confidant.

The Emperor had long since proven her charisma and magnanimity through her actions.

“My… My Lord… what happened to your face?”

His attendant’s shocked expression reminded him that his own face was still swollen.

A red, swollen face covered in ointment—he didn’t need a mirror to know how comical he must look.

But the thought that the Emperor and her entire party looked just the same made him feel a strange sense of honor, even a secret delight.

It was as if he had received a form of acceptance—acceptance from the Xiao Royal Family.

“It’s nothing. I was just stung by a mountain hornet.”

In the Southern Domain, getting stung or bitten by venomous insects was a common affair.

The attendant readily accepted this explanation, producing a letter. “A letter for you, My Lord. It just arrived.”

Gu Sheng assumed it was official business, but as he opened it, his expression turned cold.

*The Emperor has appeared in the Southern Domain. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Send reinforcements at once…*

The Emperor was young, female, and notoriously cruel, having seized power through slaughter—a tyrant in every sense of the word.

But she was neither indecisive nor mindlessly brutal.

She was smarter than anyone; every seemingly careless step was a calculated move.

Gu Sheng had always known the Emperor didn’t trust him, much less feel any familial affection for him.

She was using him as bait.

As Xiao Sheng’s son, he was a natural enemy.

It didn’t matter how much ambition he himself had for the throne. What mattered was that countless people would try to force his hand with the “duty to avenge his father,” compelling him down that path.

The allure of the throne had never faded, and there was an endless stream of would-be rebels.

He was a pawn—the Emperor’s pawn, and a pawn for those other conspirators as well.

‘How pathetic I am,’ he thought. Even now, his only ambition was that, as a pawn, he at least had the right to choose which hand moved him.

Countless others had already tried making an enemy of the Emperor. Their ends were remarkably consistent.

And countless others had tried serving the Emperor. Their rewards came in all shapes and sizes.

‘Avenge my rebellious father? Risk my life and everything I have to plot a rebellion that has zero chance of success?’

‘Do they all take me for a fool?’

“Find out which direction that party of riders went after they left.”

Once Gu Sheng received the report, he immediately led his men in pursuit. But he was too late. A group of men in black were already locked in combat with the Emperor’s guards.

Gu Sheng hesitated for only a second. “Quickly, help them!”

If the Emperor died here, it wouldn’t just be him; everyone in the Southern Domain would be buried alongside her.

Those assassins were highly skilled martial artists, but the Emperor had Li Wei by her side, not to mention the guards Li Wei had brutally trained.

The assassins’ failure was inevitable, and it was a miserable one at that.

Looking at the bodies strewn across the ground, Gu Sheng finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“This humble subject was slow to come to your aid. I beg Your Majesty’s forgiveness!”

Xiao Yang, inside the carriage: “…”

‘This is ridiculous.’

She didn’t want anyone to see her face like this, which was why she hadn’t even stepped out of the carriage during the assassination attempt. But this idiot just had to come rushing over.

An idea occurred to Xiao Yang. She lifted a corner of the curtain. “Raise your head.”

Gu Sheng obediently looked up, revealing his completely distorted face.

Seeing it made Xiao Yang feel much better.

“You arrived so quickly. Don’t tell me you arranged this?”

Gu Sheng would never dare admit to such a thing. “Your Majesty, I implore you to see the truth! This humble subject has never harbored any treacherous intentions.”

He presented the letter. Once he was closer to the carriage and surrounded only by the Emperor’s trusted guards, he began to explain the predicament he had been in for years.

“My father committed treason and deserved his fate. Even putting that aside, it’s simply a case of ‘to the victor go the spoils.’ There’s no one to blame. It’s not that this humble subject is unfilial, but to insist on framing this as a quest to avenge my father is simply absurd.”

“They are the ones who are ambitious and greedy, yet they insist on using me as their figurehead. This subject has never been swayed by them. I beg Your Majesty to see the truth.”

Xiao Yang’s knuckles tapped against the carriage window. “Gu Sheng, the fact that you’re still standing before me today is, frankly, quite surprising.”

Xiao Yang had saddled Gu Sheng with blame time and time again. Yet despite being watched by so many people for so many years, Gu Sheng had never slipped up. Instead, he had become an extremely popular local official in the Southern Domain.

For that alone, Xiao Yang had to give him some credit.

The curtain lifted slightly, revealing a pair of bright, mischievous eyes. “Are you loyal to me?”

Gu Sheng answered without a moment’s hesitation. “This subject pledges his loyalty to Your Majesty. I will never be disloyal and would face death ten thousand times for you.”

Xiao Yang: “Then prove it to me.”