Volume One: The Infant Dragon Opens Its Eyes Chapter 130: The Princess Consort of Qingdu (Part Two)

"Who goes there? Don't you know this is the Princess's Mansion?" The servants of the Jiao family were just as arrogant as Jiao Jing himself.

Yet all they saw was a troop wearing embroidered uniforms and wielding spring-water sabers bursting through the gates.

Wang Zhen wore a brocade robe, with Ma Shun standing respectfully right behind him, holding an umbrella over his head. Wang Zhen cast a sidelong glance at the servant and said, "How dare he speak to me in such a manner? Give him a quick death."

One of the Embroidered Uniform Guards darted forward. With a single flash of a cold blade, blood spurted from the servant's neck, mingling with the falling rain.

"The Embroidered Uniform Guards..." Someone muttered in terror, and the once-belligerent servants of the Jiao family were instantly reduced to stray dogs.

Wang Zhen stepped through the bloody puddles in his tall boots and said casually, "Go, bring Jiao Jing back to me."

Wang Zhen walked straight into the main hall of the Jiao estate and seated himself to one side.

Moments later, Jiao Jing was hauled in under the heavy guard of Ma Shun.

Jiao Jing was dressed only in white undergarments, as if he had been dragged straight out of bed. There was still a scent of intimacy about him, making it clear what Jiao Jing had been up to just moments before.

Sticking his neck out defiantly, Jiao Jing demanded, "Who on earth do you think you are? I am the son-in-law of Emperor Renzong, the brother-in-law of Emperor Xuanzong, and the uncle of the reigning Emperor. How dare you treat me like this? Aren't you afraid I will report this to His Majesty and have your entire clan executed to the ninth degree?"

Wang Zhen let out a cold laugh. "Clearly, his eyes are of no use since he fails to recognize the Embroidered Uniform Guards and their sabers. What is the point of keeping them? Someone, clear his vision."

Immediately, an Embroidered Uniform Guard stepped forward holding a basin of water. The liquid inside was ominously reddish, steeped in unknown ingredients. Two guards pinned back Jiao Jing's eyelids and dashed the entire basin straight into his eyes.

"Aah—!" Jiao Jing shrieked in agony.

As the guards let go, Jiao Jing collapsed onto the floor, curling up tight like a boiled prawn and clutching his eyes with both hands.

He felt a searing, fiery pain in his eyes, as if someone had pressed glowing red-hot irons directly against his pupils.

It took a long while for the excruciating pain to subside even slightly.

Gasping for breath, Jiao Jing stammered, "I am His Majesty's uncle by marriage! What crime have I committed to warrant such treatment?"

Wang Zhen sneered. "Didn't you just drive the men of the Shuntian Prefecture out of here by force?"

A trace of bewilderment colored Jiao Jing's tone as he replied, "Just for that? That was merely a personal grievance between myself and Shuntian Prefecture. What does that have to do with the Imperial Court?"

Hearing this, Wang Zhen burst into hearty laughter. "How utterly amusing. To this very day, you still have no idea whose toes you have stepped on. Since that is the case, go down to hell as a clueless ghost."

Wang Zhen immediately ordered, "Take him to the imperial prison and treat him well. Remember not to damage his skin."

Ma Shun bowed. "Rest assured, Your Honor. With the ancestral craftsmanship of the Embroidered Uniform Guards, we shall keep him plump and well-fed, ensuring he begs neither for life nor for death."

Terror gripped Jiao Jing, and he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Quickly, fetch the Princess! Beg the Princess to save me!"

Wang Zhen knew full well that Jiao Jing was not shouting for their benefit, but rather leaving a message for the Jiao family. Wang Zhen thought to himself, *Jiao Jing is somewhat clever after all, knowing that having the Princess plead for him in the palace is the best course of action.*

*Unfortunately for him, while mistakes might be forgiven once or twice, there is never a third or fourth time—and sometimes even a second chance is out of the question.*

Wang Zhen let him scream to his heart's content.

He had Jiao Jing dragged off to the imperial prison while dispatching a message to Shuntian Prefecture. Soon, men from the prefecture arrived. Following the path of the old drainage channels, they drove straight through the middle of the Jiao estate, carving the courtyard completely in two.

Naturally, the members of the Jiao family rushed in a panic to find Princess Qingdu.

Inside the princess's residence, Princess Qingdu coughed twice, her complexion looking rather grim.

Though just past thirty, the Grand Princess Qingdu wore a deeply desolate expression as she said, "My Lord Husband does not understand. His Majesty has just inspected the city, and every noble in the capital knows how much importance he places on this matter. Yet your husband simply had to go out of his way to show off."

"Your Highness, no matter what, you and the驸马 are husband and wife. For the sake of your marital bond, you simply must save him!"

The elderly steward of the Jiao estate knelt on the floor, kowtowing repeatedly.

Grand Princess Qingdu sighed. "Very well, I shall enter the palace."

She tidied herself up, changed into her formal court attire, and set off to pay her respects to the Dowager Empress.

To be frank, Grand Princess Qingdu had no great desire to see her stepmother.

It was not that the Dowager Empress treated her poorly. The Dowager Empress was renowned for her absolute fairness and handled affairs of state with consummate skill, let alone domestic household matters.

However, the Dowager Empress governed every aspect of her life strictly by ritual and propriety. To a concubine-born daughter like Grand Princess Qingdu, she would not withhold a single thing that was rightfully owed, but she would never grant an extra fraction of favor beyond what was proper.

Moreover, the Dowager Empress was extraordinarily sharp; nothing could ever escape her discerning eyes.

Princess Qingdu held a mixture of deep respect and lingering fear toward her.

Thus, upon meeting the Dowager Empress, Princess Qingdu dared not waste words. Within a few sentences, she laid out Jiao Jing's predicament and pleaded, "Your Majesty, I know not what grave offense my husband has committed, but I beg Your Majesty to spare him for my sake and deal with him leniently."

Qingdu knew that playing clever tricks before the Dowager Empress was utterly useless. Total sincerity was the only viable path.

Yet, this time, her plea was met with a heavy, ominous silence from the Dowager Empress.

In truth, the Dowager Empress had learned of Emperor Zhu Qizhen throwing Jiao Jing into the imperial prison even earlier than Qingdu had.

Yet the Dowager Empress had remained entirely silent, pondering the emperor's true motives.

First, she understood that with the capital flooded, managing the disaster required seamless cooperation between the court and the capital's nobility. However, Yu Qian's reputation alone was not yet enough to cow the vast network of influential nobles in the capital.

If this critical task was to proceed smoothly, the emperor needed to make an example of someone—to slaughter a chicken to frighten the monkeys, as the saying went, so that all the nobles in the city would fall in line.

And Jiao Jing had simply thrown himself directly into the path of the blade.

Had this been the only offense, the Dowager Empress might have intervened to save him. But she was far from senile, and she had not forgotten the incident regarding the Xuanwu Gate tax barrier in the second year of the Zhengtong era.

It was entirely possible that the Emperor had harbored a grudge ever since, and was now settling old scores alongside the new ones.

Should that be the case, the Dowager Empress had no desire to stick her neck out.

She had been displeased by the incident back then as well, but had prioritized the greater picture at the time. Now that Jiao Jing continued in his incorrigible ways, he was simply sealing his own doom.

Furthermore, the Dowager Empress harbored secret worries: could this whole affair be a deliberate test set by the Emperor?

While she had already declared that she was stepping back from state affairs, the exact boundary of where her non-interference ended was a delicate and ambiguous gray area.

After turning the matter over in her mind, the Dowager Empress spoke: "Yuantong, there is something you do not know. Do you remember the incident in the second year of the Zhengtong era? Do you know who was relentlessly determined to have Jiao Jing executed?"

Princess Qingdu's given name was Zhu Yuantong.

A sinking feeling gripped Princess Qingdu's heart the moment she heard this. "Was it not Yu Qian?" she asked cautiously.

The Dowager Empress replied, "Yu Qian certainly shared that intent, but the primary driving force was the Emperor himself."

Greatly shocked, Grand Princess Qingdu gasped, "His Majesty?"

"The Emperor conducted a private tour in disguise and discovered that your husband had set up an illegal tax barrier outside Xuanwu Gate for his own personal profit, while casting the blame upon the Imperial Court," the Dowager Empress stated.

"That is why he holds such deep resentment against him."

The Dowager Empress continued, "Back then, I spared him for your sake and protected him once. Yet time and again, he continues to fling himself into the mouth of danger. My hands are tied; I can no longer speak for him."

Her eyes wide and vacant, Grand Princess Qingdu slumped heavily onto the floor, utterly paralyzed in shock.

Had she known the hidden truth behind these events, she would certainly have forced Jiao Jing to tuck his tail between his legs and behave.

Yet while that past incident was no longer a secret to certain individuals...

Those "certain individuals" were exclusively members of the innermost core of power in the Great Ming Empire—a circle to which Grand Princess Qingdu did not belong.

*No wonder,* Princess Qingdu thought, a wave of panic crashing over her as her face drained of color.

Before entering the palace, she had not been overly worried, even hoping that a brief stint of hardship would teach Jiao Jing to mend his ways. She had never truly feared for his safety.

Others might tremble at the mention of the Embroidered Uniform Guards, but Princess Qingdu did not. No matter how formidable the guards were, they were ultimately nothing more than the hunting dogs of the imperial family, whereas she possessed genuine imperial blood.

Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that the Emperor himself was pulling the strings behind the scenes.

With matters having reached this juncture, Jiao Jing's life was truly hanging by a thread.

Although the affection between Qingdu and Jiao Jing was far from deep, she had absolutely no desire to see him killed, for a very simple reason:

Princesses of the Great Ming dynasty were virtually never permitted to remarry.

No matter how wretched Jiao Jing was, Qingdu had no wish to become a widow. Desperate, she lowered her head and kowtowed once more to the Dowager Empress, pleading, "I beg Your Majesty to show mercy!"