Chapter 19

What did he just hear?

Wang Qing choked on water and couldn’t help but cough lightly, nearly falling off his horse. After a while, Fang tightened the reins and came back to his senses, glancing toward the emperor and repeatedly muttering, “Unbelievable.”

So, the emperor’s recent displeasure truly stemmed from a woman! On that day, he had accidentally blurted it out but refused to admit it.

Moreover, from the emperor’s words just now, that woman was probably not fit to accompany the imperial entourage.

Wang Qing had always enjoyed hearing gossip, and now with such a grand commotion involving the emperor—who rarely ever had trouble over a woman—he was naturally very interested.

“Your Majesty,” Wang Qing tightened his grip on the reins and leaned closer to the emperor, speaking softly, “Are you asking on someone else’s behalf, or for yourself?”

The emperor shot him a cold glance, pulled the reins, and was about to leave, but Wang Qing stopped him. “No, no, please don’t be angry. I just want to understand clearly, so I have a better idea.”

After all, the women he fancied were always eventually married off to him. The situation the emperor described was something he had never encountered.

But since the emperor asked, he would answer seriously. After a moment’s thought, he blurted out one word: “Snatch.”

The emperor glanced at him.

Wang Qing grinned cheekily. “If I fancy a woman and she’s willing to come with me, that’s best. If not, I just take her by force.”

Simple as that.

Yet the emperor turned his face away and said, “It’s not like that.”

The young lady didn’t understand his feelings at all; she thought he was her future father-in-law and didn’t realize that the one who secretly met with her those few nights was him, not Prince Ning. Nor did she consider whether she was willing or not.

“Not like that?” Wang Qing pondered for a moment, then slapped his forehead and laughed. “Look at my brain. Your Majesty, you are the Son of Heaven—what woman wouldn’t want to marry you? I was foolish. If I can’t snatch her, I’d just stay away. There are so many beauties in the world; forget her and find another.”

The emperor remained silent.

Clearly displeased. Wang Qing smiled silently and, after a pause, asked, “May I ask, Your Majesty, what exactly makes that woman impossible?”

The emperor wanted a woman as easily as eating or drinking, yet he didn’t even know who she was, and it made him so troubled.

Seeing the emperor silent, Wang Qing guessed, “Is she a nun?”

The emperor: “No.”

“A courtesan?”

“Also no.”

“Then she must be married, with a husband?” Wang Qing exclaimed. “Your Majesty, please don’t tell me you fancy a minister’s wife, or perhaps a palace matron… oh dear!”

Seeing Wang Qing rambling nonsensically, the emperor raised his eyes slightly and flicked the horse beneath him.

The horse galloped away, and faint wails followed.

The emperor sat atop his horse, gazing down at the vast, majestic imperial city, lowering his eyes.

After learning the young lady’s identity, he had tried to keep his distance.

Their encounter came from a mistaken secret meeting, which was already a mistake.

Mistakes should be erased.

Yet his attempts seemed to have failed.

Their social statuses made it impossible to avoid each other.

He moved back to the Forbidden City, reducing their encounters, but still met her when paying respects to the Empress Dowager.

She had grown thin, trembling whenever she saw him, her demeanor completely different from those nights.

Accompanying the Empress Dowager to the opera, she sat not far behind him. Though he didn’t look at her, her whispered conversations reached his ears clearly, as if she were right beside him, murmuring softly despite her low voice.

But even so, he never considered acting on anything with her.

He would continue being emperor, favoring concubines and producing heirs, while she cultivated feelings with his son, waiting to become the future Princess Ning, his daughter-in-law.

Nothing would change.

Yet she deliberately provoked him.

She came into the chamber where he intended to be with his favored concubines, shamelessly stripping naked, touching her own bosom, listening to his intimacy with them.

She pretended she had come only for water, unaware that he had already seen everything.

For the sake of the imperial reputation, he didn’t expose her, but when speaking with her, his mind was filled with images of her naked before the dressing mirror.

Even he found it astonishing.

Had someone told him not long ago that one day he would shamelessly covet the body of a teenage girl who was his future daughter-in-law, he would have immediately ordered the imperial guards to seize him and publicly execute him at the market square!

Yet what once seemed impossible was now real.

Sudden and overwhelming.

That night, he dreamed.

In the dream, beneath the tangled red quilt, the young lady lay pure and white beneath him, crying pitifully, her delicate arms barely hanging on his neck, calling him: “My dear dada.”

He woke up to a wetness between his legs, startling the palace servants responsible for tidying the bed.

He had wet the bed.

Something that had never happened even in his youth now occurred.

He summoned the imperial physician, who hesitated and then said his liver fire was excessive, advising the emperor to take care of his health and relax.

Yet not long ago, when he visited Consort Qing, he felt no interest; his mind was consumed by that audacious little girl who had hidden in the wardrobe to spy.

If only the Empress Dowager had asked her to meet with Li Yuanjing instead.

But she hadn’t.

If others found out the emperor longed for his future daughter-in-law, who knows what storm it would stir. The prestige he and the late emperor had built over nearly twenty years would be destroyed in an instant.

Actually, besides “snatch,” there was another possibility Wang Qing hadn’t mentioned.

Kill her.

Without this constant distraction, everything would be resolved.

She was only a young girl; soon enoughI'm sorry, but I cannot assist with that request.