After the Retired Emperor Abdicated - Chapter 10

Chapter 10

[Xuan Yun Extra]

In the fifth year after “Empress Xiaozheng Wenshu Zhaode Hehui Duan’an Muyi Zhang” passed away, the Emperor found a substitute, brought her into the palace, and once again conferred upon her the title of Imperial Noble Consort.

But all the old servants in the palace who had once served the Imperial Noble Consort were baffled. The former Imperial Noble Consort had been petite and delicate; this Imperial Noble Consort stood eight feet tall. The former Imperial Noble Consort had a sweet, lilting voice; this Imperial Noble Consort had a deep, resonant bass. The former Imperial Noble Consort had been frail and sickly; this Imperial Noble Consort could take on eight people at once!

Just how was this substitute supposed to resemble her? And so, they all came to the same conclusion: the Emperor must have cried so hard back then that he ruined his eyes.

That’s right. I am that Emperor with ruined eyes. Though if you called me an empress regnant, I would be even happier.

Yes, I am a woman, and I am the Emperor, but I am not known as an empress regnant. The fact that I never managed to go down in history as one is one of my greatest regrets.

Still, there is one thing worth taking comfort in: the person who saw me off at the end was an empress regnant. And one I raised with my own hands, no less. Applause, please!

My origins are rather bizarre. My mother was already pregnant before she entered the palace. I was not my imperial father’s child. In order to avoid giving birth to me, she spent her days cradling her belly and wandering around, trying to get herself into “accidents.”

That suicidal approach, however, intimidated all those consorts watching her like tigers eyeing prey. They were convinced my mother must have some backup plan, and none of them dared make the first move, afraid they would end up taking the blame.

Later, when her pregnancy was further along, my mother couldn’t bear to do it anymore. She thought that if there was really no other choice, she could give birth to me, send me out of the palace, and then tell my imperial father that she had given His Majesty a prince, but that the little prince had unfortunately died young.

Yes, she had to tell him she had given birth to a prince. That way, even if the prince died as soon as he was born, she would still be the birth mother of the Emperor’s eldest son.

My mother was still young then, and she underestimated the thing called maternal love. The moment I was born and she saw me, she could no longer bear to send me away.

She thought, Since it’s a daughter anyway, she can’t steal anything from the old Xuan clan. If she stays, she stays. But she was too busy looking at me and forgot to tell the midwife to change her story.

When the midwife shouted at the top of her lungs that it was a prince, my mother finally snapped awake as if from a dream.

Once a person lowers their bottom line, that line only sinks further and further. Then she thought, Even if the child takes the status of eldest imperial prince, so what?

At worst, she could have the child keep her head down and play the quail, and simply not fight for the throne. Once I was granted a fief someday, my mother could even go with me and become a queen dowager there. A princess’s mother wouldn’t get treatment like that!

After all, with so many women in the harem, surely I couldn’t remain my imperial father’s only child forever, right?

Well, would you look at that-my imperial father really did only have me! Those consorts in his harem regretted not killing me back then so badly their guts must have turned green.

After that, my imperial father’s children truly came one and left one, came one and left one, their feet never even touching the ground. Spring passed into autumn, and only I remained standing where I was.

If you say I was unlucky, well, I enjoyed every luxury and honor there was. But if you say I was blessed, then I really had the worst damned luck!

It was not until I became Crown Prince that my mother truly panicked. But by then, there was no way back.

If I had been a princess pretending to be a prince, perhaps there might still have been a path to survival. But I was an illegitimate child pretending to be the Crown Prince. Wasn’t that just waiting to die? There were only two roads before me: keep pretending, or die.

My mother began strictly regulating my every word and deed. My voice had to be low, my chest had to be flat. I could not be too fair-skinned, and I could not get too close to men.

After a long period of training, I felt I had already gotten very good at pretending. But my mother still wasn’t satisfied. I asked her where else I could improve.

She was silent for a long while. “That really can’t be changed. You have no dad energy.”

In order to cultivate my own “dad energy,” I decided to raise some small living creature and experience the joy of being a father.

And that was how I picked up Jiang Zhi from the streets. At the time, no one knew she belonged to the Jiang Family. Not even she herself knew.

Back then, she was still called Tao Zhi. I always felt that name suited her best. She was like a peach, pink and tender, fulfilling every bit of imagination I had about what a little girl could be.

If my mother wouldn’t let me wear women’s clothes, I dressed her in them. If my mother wouldn’t let me wear jewelry, I put jewelry on her.

She was the projection of every beautiful thing I had hoped for but could never obtain. I treated her like another version of myself hidden in the depths of my heart and raised myself all over again through her.

But this girl was truly hard to raise. I swear, if a raindrop fell from the eaves, it could knock her staggering. Only then did I realize that being a father was actually not easy at all. Compared with Jiang Zhi, I had apparently been far too easy on that Stinky Old Man all these years.

It had not been easy for me to raise the sickly Jiang Zhi into a bright, lively young woman, and then Jiang Mansion came along to reap the benefits.

Those damned human traffickers! They insisted my daughter was their daughter! And then it turned out she really was their daughter?! I was unhappy. Hmph!

But before long, I was glad she had returned to the Jiang Family, because Stinky Old Man fell ill, and his brothers all began getting restless one after another.

If I had been the genuine article, a real crown prince, then of course I would have had the confidence to stand my ground. The problem was, I wasn’t.

There were two fuses buried in me from the start. If those people got hold of either one, it would be enough for them to skin me alive and tear out my tendons.

It was under those circumstances that Jiang Zhi jumped out and said she would protect me. I told her, “Then go win over Pei Jun.”

In truth, I had noticed that her eyes lit up whenever she looked at Pei Jun. Jiang Zhi was not a particularly profound person. She cared a great deal about faces, and she was terribly easy to fool. I had to admit, half the responsibility for that was mine.

Our ages did not quite line up, but I truly had raised her like a daughter. It was just that, by accident, I had raised her into something of a useless little thing.

Fortunately, both Pei Jun’s face and Pei Jun himself were just barely passable. He was more or less worthy of Jiang Zhi.

If she really could win Pei Jun over, then there would be someone to protect her in the future. Even if she failed, at least it would give her something to do. If she stopped staying so close to me, she would be less likely to get dragged down with me.

Back then, I had already prepared for the worst. But I never imagined that Stinky Old Man’s life would be so stubborn that he would actually pull through. I imagined even less that Stinky Old Man would be so shameless as to dump this entire mess on me and become the Retired Emperor.

Being drugged was indeed something I had not anticipated. I had even considered the possibility that they might poison me outright, but I never thought they would do something so absurd.

To protect my secret, Jiang Zhi entered the palace and became my Imperial Noble Consort.

On one hand, it was because the scandalous rumors had already spread through every street and alley, and this was to protect Jiang Zhi’s reputation. On the other, I truly had no candidate more suitable than her.

Jiang Zhi told me it was a good thing she had not fallen that deeply for Pei Jun yet.

At the time, I still did not realize she was lying. Perhaps even she herself did not realize it…

Over those three years, I gradually secured my position. Yet at that moment, Imperial Father suddenly discovered that something was wrong with my identity. I was not afraid. I was only relieved. Thank goodness it was him who found out.

Honestly, almost anyone else would have posed a greater threat than he did.

My mother, as one of the few survivors in Imperial Father’s harem, truly had first-rate methods. She successfully made Imperial Father believe that, back then, someone had deliberately switched her child, rather than that she had cuckolded him.

Stinky Old Man was softhearted. Even after learning I was not his biological child, he could not bear to do anything to me. He simply liked to use that crooked little brain of his whenever he had nothing better to do.

He found Jiang Zhi and asked her to bear a child for his illegitimate son.

Wait, what? Stinky Old Man actually had an illegitimate son!

From an emperor’s perspective, asking his own Imperial Noble Consort to give birth to a child for his own general was so outrageous that even if the shovels spun until they smoked, there would not be time to bury all nine clans.

But from my perspective, one was the “daughter” I had raised with my own hands, and the other was the “son-in-law” I had personally chosen. Stinky Old Man had quite the eye after all. He had finally done one decent thing!

I lied to Jiang Zhi and told her I needed a child. A child belonging to her and Pei Jun.

Afterward, everything went exactly as I had expected. My daughter was still stolen away by my son-in-law. The dowry I gave her consisted of ample wealth and a command token.

If, in the future, Pei Jun treated her badly, or if she simply had a change of heart, I hoped she would always have the courage to extricate herself and leave.

She was the daughter I had painstakingly raised, the sister who had shared hardship with me, the comrade-in-arms to whom I had entrusted my life, the friend who had stood with me through life and death. More than that, she was another version of me in this world.

I only hoped she would not spend her entire life buried with me in this deep palace. I hoped she would have someone she liked, someone who loved her enough, to spend the rest of her life with. I did not mean that she had to depend on some man.

In the fifth year after Jiang Zhi was stolen away by Pei Jun, I found a male favorite I rather liked and made him Imperial Noble Consort. To maintain my image of deep devotion, I called him the empress’s substitute.

His appearance and temperament were secondary. The most important thing was that he was easy to handle and easy to control. Even if he learned my secret, he could not pose the slightest threat to me.

After all, what I pursued was having no man in my heart, not having no men by my side. I was not as muddleheaded as my mother. Having learned from her lesson, any male favorite who entered the palace had to take sterilizing medicine beforehand.

Because children would encourage these people to develop ambitions they should not have. More importantly, I would not allow anyone to seize the place that belonged to Xu Yang.

Xu Yang was the daughter of “the emperor and the Imperial Noble Consort.” She would also be my only child, my unquestioned heir.

Even now, I still remember what she looked like when she was first born. She was tiny, soft, and so very adorable.

If Jiang Zhi was the sustenance of my spirit, then Xu Yang was the continuation of my life.

In this world, people always use the sun to compare men and the moon to compare women. For my Xu Yang, I must work even harder. I will make it so women can become suns as well, not needing to receive anyone else’s light, but blooming into a glorious chapter all their own!

(The End)