Chapter 080

Chapter 80: Is This the Main Point?

Prince Shun said: “Is it possible that I remembered wrong? Or that she remembered wrong?”

Trying to fix the story, Prince Shun added: “She was clearly a person of the Great Sheng Empire.”

Yu Zhi Yi said: “Then please invite her parents. Because we do not have her Eight Characters of birth or her face in front of me, I am missing key pieces. If her parents come, those pieces might be filled in.”

Wearing a look of pain, Prince Shun answered: “Her parents had only one daughter. After she died, they missed her so much that they both fell ill and passed away.”

[Great.] All the evidence and clues were cut off.

Yu Zhi Yi pinched the bridge of her nose and asked: “Then what about their Eight Characters of birth?”

She did not have much hope. She was about to suggest opening the coffin so she could read the bones when Du Zi Heng spoke up: “They must at least have household registration, right? Even if those records may be fake, we can use them to check things one by one and see where the problem started.”

He finished calmly: “That way we can follow the thread to the source.”

After thinking a moment, the emperor looked at Yu Zhi Yi and asked: “Minister Yu, what do you want to say?”

Yu Zhi Yi’s face twitched, but she quickly accepted the title. She opened her mouth and went “ah,” because after hearing Du Zi Heng’s idea, she realized her own thought had been improper. No matter how open a dynasty is, digging up graves is very offensive. Many people cannot accept it. But since the emperor asked, she answered: “I can read the faces of the living, and I can read the faces of the dead. I can even see things most people cannot. So I first planned to open the coffins of all three of them.”

Du Zi Heng stared with wide, shocked eyes. Prince Shun and the emperor both went blank.

A moment later, Prince Shun reacted and snapped: “Asking to open a coffin is absurd enough, and you want to open three?! Young Madam Du, do you not think you are being unreasonable?”

The emperor signaled Eunuch Hu to calm Prince Shun, then smoothed things over and said: “Do as You Lin suggested.”

The Ministry of Revenue not only manages all the money and grain of the realm, it also keeps the registration of every household. Since the emperor himself ordered the records, the Ministry of Revenue’s officials pulled them in less than two hours, even though the files cover nearly thirty million people.

Yu Zhi Yi studied the registration and the Eight Characters in her hand and calculated carefully for a while. She said: “These two people’s household records should be real. The lives I calculate from them mostly tie to Prince Shun and his princess consort.”

She continued: “Prince Shun’s father-in-law is named Han Yong Lie. His ancestral home is Lin Xi County in Tai He Commandery.”

“From his great-great-grandfather upward, many generations were poor farmers. It changed in his grandfather’s time. His grandfather was clever, had some luck and courage, and after meeting a few nobles, he used their names for cover to build a fortune of several hundred taels of silver.”

“After three generations of hard work, by the time of Han Yong Lie, they had earned more than ten thousand taels. In that area he counted as a notable.”

“But ten years ago, Han Yong Lie’s happy family was wiped out. There were no survivors.”

Just then, the emperor and Prince Shun were swapping files, one reading Han Yong Lie’s record, the other reading Madam Han’s. Hearing Yu Zhi Yi, both of them snapped their heads toward her. Prince Shun flared up: “Nonsense!”

What Yu Zhi Yi said did not match the records at all. The war god’s sharp, bloodlike aura surged without restraint and pressed down on Yu Zhi Yi like a mountain. Even Du Zi Heng at the side felt the weight.

Yu Zhi Yi, however, looked calm and kept telling the truth she had seen: “Soon after the Han family ‘died,’ a living family of three turned up in Pengcheng, far away in the Borderlands.”

Pengcheng is a Borderlands city taken after the Great Sheng Empire expanded. It borders the Great Luo Empire, and fighting breaks out often. Things are worse outside Pengcheng. Bandits rob the common people, and village massacres happen again and again. Because of this, local registration is a mess. Sometimes a village or even a county is wiped out only a few years after its records are made, so the new records become useless.

Yu Zhi Yi explained: “The Han Clan, or rather the people behind them, used this loophole. They spent two full years laying their plans and struck a deal with bandits beyond the passes. Eighteen years ago, the same year Your Majesty and the prince met Miss Han, they had those bandits slaughter a village. That gave them the chance to slip south.”

“In their original plan, they would go to the Capital City and get close to a young master from an official family. It did not matter if he was legitimate or born of a concubine. It did not matter if Miss Han became principal wife or a concubine. As long as she entered an official’s inner residence, Miss Han could work to turn him.”

“Even they did not expect that both the then crown prince and the crown prince’s study companion would fall for her at the same time.”

“Miss Han would not waste such a chance. She strung you both along, and from time to time she gently sowed discord.”

“But she did not expect Your Majesty and the prince to have such a deep bond and strong trust. She tried several times and failed. To avoid suspicion, she gave up on stirring you with words.”

“As for the death of the princess consort that made Your Majesty and Prince Shun turn against each other, that truly was not Your Majesty’s doing.”

“It was the princess consort who sent in a card to request an audience with Your Majesty, saying she wanted to ask about the prince. Of course Your Majesty agreed.”

“Before entering the palace, she took a poison that would act within one hour, then timed her trip to the palace.”

“After meeting Your Majesty, she left the Imperial Palace. The poison acted right on her schedule.”

After so many years, someone had finally cleared him. The emperor looked at Yu Zhi Yi with gratitude and admiration, then said to Prince Shun as his own proof: “You see, I said long ago it was not me.”

Prince Shun frowned, still not ready to accept it: “If she was from An Kingdom, why was she raised in the Great Sheng Empire from childhood? And why would those two people born and raised in Great Sheng help her?”

Patient as always with a fated client, Yu Zhi Yi explained: “Decades ago, before An Kingdom was destroyed, Han Yong Lie’s grandfather went there to do business and was helped by the An Imperial House.”

“Later, when An Kingdom fell, almost all members of the Imperial House who refused to surrender were slaughtered. The few left were the ones who knelt at once.”

“Miss Han is the granddaughter of the crown princess consort who would not surrender.”

“At that time the crown princess consort had just given birth. When she heard An Kingdom was lost, she knew her pride would not let her live, but she could not bear to have her newborn die with her. So she lied that the baby was stillborn and secretly sent her son out of An Kingdom.”

“Miss Han is the daughter of that rightful heir.”

Prince Shun shook his head hard: “Impossible, impossible!” If Yu Zhi Yi was right, then his wife had approached him to turn him. “Were those years of love and tenderness, all that gentle sweetness, all fake?”

Yu Zhi Yi blinked: “?”

[Is that really the main point?]