The years I was in the human world

"Father, I don't want to go to marry..." The Seventh Princess, who had a high fever, tugged at the emperor's sleeve and begged with tears in her eyes. Her bright eyes were washed by tears. The Seventh Princess looked at him, and her dependent look greatly pleased the emperor.

Not to mention that the emperor had no intention of asking the Seventh Princess to marry. Even if he had this plan, seeing those tearful eyes looking at him with such hesitation, he couldn't bear to do it.

Therefore, the princess could not marry, but the emperor did not want to go to war. In a state of panic, he asked Xiao Ling for help: "Does the Imperial Master have any solution?"

"I'll do my best." Xiao Ling nodded in agreement, and went to visit Envoy Wuxiang that day. It was unknown what the two of them conspired, but Envoy Wuxiang immediately sent a letter back, apparently asking King Wuxiang for his opinion on whether to replace the princess to be married off as a hostage.

King Wuxiang initially insisted that he only wanted the princess, and his original words said that a hostage was useless, so Xiao Ling wrote a letter personally, and no one knew what he wrote in it. When King Wuxiang's letter came again, he had already agreed to the condition of exchanging the princess for a hostage.

Changing the princess to be married off as a hostage was not very respectable, but everyone was naturally happy that the emperor didn't have to sacrifice his beloved daughter. But which prince should be sent as a hostage?

The emperor never issued an edict. He seemed to be hesitant, or waiting for someone to come and ask for an edict to share his worries, so that he wouldn't have to issue an edict and ruin the relationship between father and son.

"The princess to be married off was changed to a hostage. I thought he would directly order you to go." Lu Zhouxue couldn't help but sneer when he heard the news. "Now he is hesitant. It seems that he still has some sincerity towards you."

"He's just waiting for me to ask for permission." Chu Zhaoli gently fiddled with the abacus in his hand. This was a little gadget that Lu Zhouxue brought him when she left the palace yesterday.

"He is a deposed crown prince, a perfect candidate for a hostage. He abandoned me only because of the Yunnan snake poison incident. Now he has ordered me to be a hostage, which is really absurd."

"So we're just going to wait like this?" Lu Zhouxue asked.

"Well, I'll wait. What if my father is kind enough to not ask me to leave my country?" Chu Zhaoli put all the beads on the abacus back into place, and spoke with a secret hope that only he knew. "The north is too cold. I will die there."

Another half month passed, early winter gradually passed, and the weather became colder. The emperor did not wait for Chu Zhaoli to take the initiative to ask for an order to share his worries. The envoy Wu Xiang had urged him many times, so he had no choice but to issue the order. However, he could not help but resent Chu Zhaoli for being ignorant and for making him lose face.

It happened that someone reported that the deposed crown prince had been committing adultery in the palace and had an affair with eunuchs. The person who impeached him was Du's people, but the emperor didn't care. He just wanted an excuse to demote Chu Zhaoli as a hostage, so the old account of the white deer was also brought up again.

"The deposed Crown Prince Zhaoli is mediocre in talent and bad in conduct. He wants to usurp the throne. He should be demoted to a commoner and exiled to Lingnan. However, considering the kindness of the late Queen, I will not deprive him of his title. Instead, I will order him to be sent to the north as a hostage to atone for his crimes. I decree this."

After Chen Ping finished reading the decree, he looked at Chu Zhaoli with a complicated expression. Seeing that the latter was kneeling on the ground without any reaction, he reminded him, "Your Highness, please accept the decree quickly."

"You can always find a pretext to accuse someone of something. Do you think I should be thanked?" Chu Zhaoli raised his head, his eyes red, but he was still smiling, his tone sarcastic, "I want to usurp the throne? What a joke. Chu Zhaoyun's ambition is written all over his face. Why would my father care? Why would the officials care?"

"Evil son! Evil son! Is he dissatisfied with me?!" After listening to Chen Ping's retelling, the emperor was so angry that he trembled. It was hard to say that he was not angry because of shame, but as a monarch, he would never admit his mistakes. This has always been the custom. "Let that evil son come to see me."

"Father, please tell me, what's wrong with me that makes you hate me so much?" Chu Zhaoli asked this question when he met the emperor for the first time, with obvious confusion reflected in his black and white eyes.

The emperor just looked at him coldly, and after a while he said, "You are mediocre, stupid, cowardly and incompetent."

Just eight words tell the whole story of Chu Zhaoli.

"Father, ask yourself, am I stupid and incompetent, or have you never allowed me to fight?" Chu Zhaoli smiled sadly and stopped calling himself a "son and subject". "Anyone who gets close to a court official has ulterior motives. Why are you so suspicious of me?"

The emperor frowned and was about to scold them, but was interrupted by Chu Zhaoli. He had endured it for too long and now he suddenly didn't want to endure it anymore: "When it comes to rebellion, Chu Zhaoyun and Chu Zhaojin, which one is not more unscrupulous than me? To them, you are a kind father, but to me, you wish you could beat me to death."

"You are the crown prince, how can you compare with them?" The emperor felt that he had really spoiled Chu Zhaoli recently, and he dared to speak to him like that.

"There is no charcoal fire in winter, no cool clothes in summer, and the palace maids can bully the prince? A playboy like Guangping Marquis can tease me at will. I'm afraid my father can't imagine it." Chu Zhaoli pulled the corner of his mouth sarcastically.

"Father, I was almost killed by a Yunnan snake last month, but you chose to keep quiet. Now the Wuxiang people want a hostage, but you let me go." Chu Zhaoli poked his heart, "Father, what do you think of me?"

The emperor was hit on the sore spot, and he suddenly became less confident. He softened his attitude and asked, "What do you want?"

Chu Zhaoli came over and said all these things, he was just asking for some things, such as title, fief, gold, silver and jewelry, just give them to him. Although he was a hostage, the emperor felt that he was not so stingy as not to give him these things.

"Father, I just want to live." Chu Zhaoli saw through the emperor's thoughts at a glance. He shook his head in disappointment and left Chengming Hall without waiting for the emperor's permission.

He is not afraid of the emperor's punishment, but he has the ability to kill him.

After Chu Zhaoli left, the emperor sat on the dragon throne in Chengming Hall, his heart agitated and unable to calm down for a long time. He kept thinking about Chu Zhaoli's words "Your son just wants to live". He was wondering, when did he not let Chu Zhaoli live?

Even when Bai Lu was furious, he didn't do anything to Chu Zhaoli. Why did he say that? It was simply treasonous!

Chu Zhaoli's disappointed and painful look kept lingering in the emperor's mind. As soon as he closed his eyes, he couldn't help but wonder, had he forced Chu Zhaoli to die at some point?

In his irritation, the emperor could not help but go find Concubine Xie Shu and told her what happened today. The latter was stunned, and then sighed and said: "Your Majesty, you want Li'er to die."

"What do you mean?" The emperor pinched his eyebrows, a little impatient. He didn't understand why Concubine Xie said so.

"Li'er's health has been poor for a long time. The poison of the Yunnan snake has damaged his foundation. He doesn't have many years left to live. Your Majesty, don't you know this at all?" asked Concubine Xie.

The emperor was stunned and speechless. He didn't know that Chu Zhaoli had always been so thin that he seemed like he would fall down with a gust of wind. After seeing it so many times, he got used to it and then forgot that a long-term thin body was never normal.

"What about the proton..." the emperor asked without giving up.

"Not to mention how bitterly cold the north is, the long journey alone would be enough to kill him." Concubine Xie sighed, "Yu'er is your child, but is Li'er not? A hostage is no more respectable than a princess marrying a foreign prince."

The emperor hesitated again, but before he could figure out the reason, war news suddenly came from the border. The prince of Wuxiang led his army to raid Yanmen County, shouting that the emperor of Central Plains should kneel down and submit to him.

Since the war had begun, there was no need to maintain the dignity of the two countries. The unruly Wuxiang envoy was beheaded in public, and then his head was put in a wooden box and returned to the Wuxiang people in the same way.

The war was about to break out, so Xie Yang and his cousin Xie Xian packed up and went to the border. When they set out, the snow piled up half a foot and the bone-biting wind blew so hard and fiercely that it seemed to scrape away all the flesh and blood.

"Mianmian, the war has begun." Chu Zhaoli huddled by the fire, staring at the snow on the eaves in a trance. He looked a little sad. "Last year when I sent her off, she was still as fresh as a red flower on the cliff, but now she has become a ghost in a foreign land with her head and body separated."

"You're sad." Lu Zhouxue wiped the non-existent tears from Chu Zhaoli's eyes, with a look of pity, "Because of Xie Fu?"

"Not only that, I am probably really a coward. Xie Fu dared to marry, but I didn't dare to be a hostage." Chu Zhaoli lowered his eyes, hiding his disappointment. "I have wanted to leave the capital all my life, but I am afraid of dying in a foreign land."

It was difficult for Chu Zhaoli to explain to Lu Zhouxue the uneasiness that arose in his heart. It was a very powerless feeling - from the news of Xie Fu's death, he seemed to have glimpsed the unchangeability of his predetermined fate.

The war lasted from the dead of winter to the midsummer of the following year. The head of Prince Wuxiang was chopped off and sent back to Yiyang. They won, but it was a pyrrhic victory.

The vanguard was unstoppable, but the support was weak. The attacking army had no choice but to retreat to Yanmen County, where they fought with the Wuxiang people for seven days on the city wall with simple facilities, and finally managed to hold on.

Xie Xian died on the battlefield, his body mixed in the blood-stained yellow sand and the sea of ​​corpses, making it impossible to identify; Xie Yang was better off than his cousin, but he was also carried back to Yiyang, with a scar on his back that ran through his entire body, with flesh and blood turned inside out and the bones visible.

Both her children died, and Mrs. Xie held the coffin and cried bitterly. She fell ill a few days later. Xie Ling, who was in the prime of his life, had his hair turned white overnight, as if he had aged several decades.

But the sorrow of dying on the battlefield seemed to be left only to the Xie family. There was a sound of celebration throughout the court and the country. Chu Zhaoyun even wore bright clothes for a rare time and praised the great achievements of the emperor in the court with eloquent words.

All the civil officials from the noble families were grateful to God and the emperor for his great grace, which had given them a prosperous court with a stable frontier. As for the Xie family, who died on the battlefield in the so-called "prosperous age", no one mentioned them.

Or perhaps it was intentional not to mention that when Xie was in charge of the military, both the emperor and Du were afraid that his achievements would overshadow their own. Now that two of Xie's sons were gone, the emperor was actually secretly relieved.

As for why the support was weak, there is no need to say more. It was nothing more than the fear that Xie would go further and threaten the imperial power and Du's reputation. This was undoubtedly a deliberate abandonment that was tacitly approved by the emperor and Prime Minister Du.

Xie Yang, who fought to the very end, had no idea until his death that the country he defended had abandoned him first; and Xie Xian, whose body was never found, had no way of knowing that his life was also a bargaining chip in the game of power.