The maid's road to success

Gong Qisu paced anxiously in the palace. Ever since he saw the news that day, he could not help but think about this matter. In his mind, he would always see the scene of Duke Cheng'en leading the soldiers to pull him down from the high platform. He had also persuaded himself that Duke Cheng'en was his own grandfather and would not do such a thing. He was already a Duke who was second only to the emperor and held military power. He was the largest aristocratic family in Chen State. What else was there to be dissatisfied with?

But there was always a voice in his heart telling him that he was indeed not a person who would be satisfied. At the beginning, his father had only been addicted to women for many years and had damaged the foundation of his body, but it did not affect his life. As long as he was treated well, he would have no problem living for a few more years. It was Duke Cheng'en and his mother who suggested that if his father continued to live, the throne would probably go to one of the Sixth Prince and the Fourth Prince, and would not fall on his head. So they decisively poisoned his father's body and framed the Huaiyuan Marquis' Mansion.

He quickly led the soldiers to take over the garrison in the palace, transferred nearby troops to guard the capital inside and outside, and combined with the officials under his command to send himself to the supreme position. Now think about it, if there were not the Fourth Prince and the Sixth Prince eyeing him covetously, I am afraid he would have changed the surname of the world at that time.

Gong Qisu saw the window was opened and a secret guard jumped in from outside. His figure was hard to notice in the dark night. The secret guard knelt on the ground and took out an object wrapped in cotton cloth from his arms.

"I've been to the place you mentioned and I don't see any private soldiers. It's just a barren mountain."

Gong Qisu was relieved when he heard this, but when he opened the white cotton cloth, his face turned dark.

"But I searched the mountain carefully and found this in a crack in a rock. It was the spear head of the spear specially made by the emperor four years ago. It should have been transported to the Southern Region. It is not something that can appear near Linjing. I searched carefully in that direction and finally saw a cave. There are indeed signs that someone has lived in it. The location of the cave is very difficult to find. There is almost no road to reach it. The space is very large. It can be seen that many people lived there before, but they have moved away, leaving only an empty cave. However, some discarded things nearby can be seen as the same things that were sent to the Southern Region. I picked up a few and brought them back. Some clothes and other items were too big, so I didn't take them."

The more Gong Qisu listened, the more uncomfortable he felt. Looking at the bits and pieces of things in the cotton cloth, his chest heaved violently. It was actually true. His grandfather really had the intention of treason.

Duke Cheng'en has been holding the military power for many years and refused to give it back, claiming that he was helping me share the burden so that I could feel more comfortable. I didn't expect that he actually had a wolfish ambition. Did the Queen Mother know about this? I'm afraid she knew about it. Otherwise, she wouldn't have quarreled with Duke Cheng'en when they met later, and insisted that I adopt a son of the royal family. Could it be that the Queen Mother didn't agree with my grandfather's plan, or was still thinking about me being her son?

Soon Gong Qisu's last hope for his mother was shattered. The person he sent to monitor returned at night three days later and brought a prescription.

"I have been lying on the roof for two days. I heard the Queen Mother and a eunuch beside her say that they want to increase the dosage of the medicine in your diet. She is a little worried that you have not been in the harem for a while."

Gong Qisu didn't understand why his mother, who always advised him to stay away from women and pay more attention to government affairs, was so upset because he didn't go to the harem? It was very contradictory!

"You added these things to your medicinal food to help with your sexual desire. Over time, they will drain your body. Moreover, I am sure that the eunuch is not a real eunuch. He is probably a healthy man. Although I don't know who he is, I saw with my own eyes that the Queen Mother and the man were making love."

Gong Qisu stood up angrily and smashed the teacup on the table. He clenched his teeth tightly. Something was surging in his chest, and he suppressed it tightly to prevent the fishy and sweet taste in his throat from rushing up.

"Let Long San monitor and investigate thoroughly for me. Not only the Queen Mother, the Grand Queen Mother, but also the Duke of Cheng'en, the Grand Princess, and the Fourth Prince, send people to investigate. I want to know how many people want to murder me."

Although Gong Qisu, like his father, attached great importance to women and was even more absurd, he was very clear that there was no one he could completely trust. His mother was his father's empress, but she still participated in poisoning his father. He and his fourth and sixth brothers were all his father's sons, but for the sake of the throne, they never expected his father to live long.

So after coming to power, the first thing Gong Qisu did was to secretly train his own team of secret guards. They were well-trained, highly skilled in martial arts, and best at hiding in the dark. They had previously been used to protect his own safety, but he did not expect that now they would be used to guard against his relatives.

In just ten days, Gong Qisu understood why the Queen Mother was unwilling to let Duke Cheng'en usurp the throne. It was not because she cared about her own life, but because she wanted her other son to ascend the throne openly and without being criticized by the world.

Yes, his mother had a child with another man. The man was a member of the royal family who was not favored. He was very good-looking and only in his twenties. They should have gotten together not long after he ascended the throne. When they had a child, the man said to the outside world that the child was born by his concubine. When he reported it back, he did not expect that it was actually the child born by the queen mother and him. No wonder the queen mother insisted on living in the royal temple for half a year, saying that she was praying for herself and the world. It was all bullshit. She was hiding outside to give birth to a child.

No wonder he allowed me to bring Zhou Ruoyuan into the palace and sent me two extremely beautiful palace maids. It was obvious that this was to make me indulge in women and ignore the situation on her side. But I didn't expect that even Lord Cheng'en didn't know about this. This child was different from me in that he was very healthy, and he didn't want to have the same difficulty as me in having children.

But who was responsible for all this? It was because when my mother was young, she had been fighting with the concubines and had attacked too many princes and concubines, and that's why she was retaliated against by others. My fourth and sixth brothers were drugged by someone sent by my mother, and I was also injured by someone using the same drug. My mother knew about it, after all, that person's real purpose was to take revenge on her.

But after she helped me ascend the throne, she became dissatisfied with my lack of offspring, as most of the children I gave birth to were weak. She even gave birth to a child with another man, and wanted me to acknowledge the child and take over her position legitimately.

"Long San, I want you to do something. You have to take care of that child yourself and don't let anyone know."

Since the queen mother values ​​this child so much, don't blame him for being cruel. If the queen mother told her the truth, she could choose a son of the royal family to ensure that the queen mother would be honored in the future. But she didn't care about her at all. She put drugs in the medicated food, let him drain himself from women and die unknowingly, and then supported her and another man's bastard to sit on the throne and continue to control the government. What about herself? He has been very filial to the queen mother for so many years. All the best tributes were definitely sent to the queen mother.

The only time he had argued with her was during the last election, when he insisted on choosing a concubine from among all the young girls in the world. Now thinking about it, it was just his mother's provocation, deliberately letting him fill the harem with bad reputation and spend more energy immersing in the harem so as to ignore the situation on her side.

Watching Long San's leaving back, Gong Qisu looked at the various secret letters that had been presented to the table recently. Duke Cheng'en had indeed stockpiled weapons in private, but the exact location of his private soldiers was unknown. One could only guess based on the annual expenditure that there were nearly 10,000 soldiers.

The Grand Princess has been planning to bribe more officials. After all, she is a woman. Duke Cheng'en has been planning to usurp the throne for so many years, and she is still planning how to win over the hearts of the people and how to place spies in the palace. However, she is also a big threat. Even her own imperial guards include the Grand Princess and the Fourth Prince's men.

The Sixth Prince has been demoted to a fiefdom, and there are people in Kyoto who are passing on information to him. It is very likely that the Empress Dowager is behind this. The Fourth Prince has been very active recently, and has slowly placed many people in the Beijing Guards. I didn't expect that after I succeeded to the throne, I would be so foolish. Not only did I not weaken the power of the Fourth Prince and the Sixth Prince, but I also let them grow bigger and bigger. I thought that Duke Cheng'en, who had always been able to protect my throne, had long wanted to get a piece of the pie, and my mother also had her own plans.

But Lord Cheng'en cannot move yet. If his true identity is revealed, the Fourth Prince and the Sixth Prince will naturally help to trample Lord Cheng'en into hell so that he will never be able to turn over. But they will turn around and point their blades at him. So Lord Cheng'en cannot die yet, and the Queen Mother cannot be exposed either. Once that child dies, the Queen Mother will only have herself as his child. Even if she has doubts, she will not really do anything. Instead, she will temporarily protect herself.

After the Sixth Prince left, the Fourth Prince eroded some of the Sixth Prince's power. He could not continue to expand it, so he had to make careful plans. Gong Qisu sat on the dragon chair, stroking the exquisite dragon pattern on it, and did not sleep all night.

When he went to court the next day, he had an idea. If the Sixth Prince was to be recalled to Kyoto to continue to compete with the Fourth Prince, he could support him appropriately so that he and the Fourth Prince could continue to fight to the death. Besides, the two princes were in Kyoto, so Duke Cheng En did not dare to move too much, fearing that the situation of the three princes fighting would resume, which would be beneficial to him.

But before the prosecution could start, someone brought up a memorial. It was an imperial censor, who knelt on the ground holding the memorial and listed a series of evidence of Cheng En Gong's crimes, including harming his colleagues, murdering the people, accepting bribes, and taking human lives.

Gong Qisu felt relieved after hearing this. He had never thought that the Sixth Prince had this ability. He could find so much evidence of Duke Cheng'en's crimes even though he was far away in his fiefdom. Did he find a reason to return to Kyoto? To frame the prince? To uphold justice and get rid of the treacherous ministers around the emperor?

Duke Cheng'en's face turned pale as he watched the censor restrain himself from going up to kill him. He never expected that the account book he had been looking for for so long would be taken by the Sixth Prince's men first? But he was puzzled as the account book also recorded many heinous crimes, why was it not written there? Could it be that the Sixth Prince was afraid that he would really get angry and kill him?

No, if the evidence is exposed, even if I don't die, I will lose half my life and become a toothless tiger. If the Sixth Prince really has such evidence, wouldn't it be a good opportunity to bring me down? By then, the Fourth Prince will not just stand by and watch, and what's good for me?

The only possibility is that the account book is incomplete, and the Sixth Prince does not know the rest of the entries, so except for the proof of his buying and selling of official positions, the rest are secrets that are not really secrets. Then who has the rest?

Duke Cheng'en did not notice that the emperor had ordered the Sixth Prince to come to Beijing to personally investigate the evidence. He felt as if he had guessed something.

Someone had obtained the account book from the beginning, and the other party only handed over part of the embezzled account to the Sixth Prince so that the Sixth Prince could take the opportunity to fight with him? Duke Cheng En's first reaction was that the other party might be the Sixth Prince's man, but later he overturned this idea. If it was the Sixth Prince's man, how could he omit such an important thing? Could it be that the person did not completely obey the Sixth Prince?

It is even possible that the other party just wants to take the opportunity to let the Sixth Prince come back and fight with himself, the Fourth Prince and the others again, so that they can benefit from it. However, looking at the people in Kyoto, apart from the Sixth Prince, the Fourth Prince, the Grand Princess and the Grand Empress Dowager, who else can maintain such a balanced struggle?

"Retreat."

The eunuch's spy's voice woke up Lord Cheng'en who was thinking.

Yes, he overlooked one person, the man who was obviously happy, Gong Qisu. He was the one who needed to balance the three forces the most. He always thought that he was just a fool who was obsessed with women and incompetent. Unexpectedly, he was actually pretending to be a pig and eating the tiger. He got the account book quietly and could still hold back and plan so many steps. Isn't he afraid that he will really rebel, or does he have other cards in his hand and is not afraid of himself at all?

An Zizhong stood in the corner and watched the scene in front of him. The Sixth Prince was cheering and congratulating, the Fourth Prince was looking on with a sullen face, Duke Cheng'en was looking anxious, and Gong Qisu left leisurely. Who could have thought that such an ordinary young man could have caused all this.

Eunuch Cheng had been immersed in the harem for many years. He had noticed it as early as the first time the emperor sent out a large number of secret guards to monitor the harem. He privately ordered all the spies to restrain themselves and not to act rashly, and sent someone to deliver a message carefully.

An Zizhong has already instructed everyone to behave themselves today and not to act rashly. The emperor's secret guards are no match for the imperial guards and soldiers of the Ministry of Justice.

Zi Gu had already listed in detail the evil deeds that the Empress Dowager had done over the years. An Zizhong found it interesting and sent it to An Wenniang as if it were a legendary picture book.

"The Grand Princess is not the Grand Empress Dowager's biological daughter. No wonder the two of them are not close. The Grand Princess also allowed an ordinary poor boy to marry. The Fourth Prince's concubine is actually the Grand Empress Dowager's spy. How could she not be discovered for so long?"

An Wenniang exclaimed as she read, she had never expected there would be so many bizarre and horrifying stories. She was afraid that once the Sixth Prince returned to Kyoto and gained a foothold, this booklet would be sent to the Grand Princess, and a new battle would begin.