After the replacement marriage, I was forced to fight at home

"Yes, look at how smart the prince is. Just one concubine, Hui, helped him achieve so many goals. You also really helped. In order to show your loyalty, you also begged for Xie Fen to marry Zhou Ming. Ha, now you have given them the idea that they may become the prince and the prince's wife."

"I do not have."

"Oh? Do you dare to say in all conscience that you have never had such thoughts? If you haven't, why did you ask me to speak quickly just now? You want to meet Zhou Ming, aren't you planning how to make him legitimate next?"

Zhou Yu spoke every word without even using any honorifics.

Zhou Yiheng watched Zhou Yu slowly walking towards him, listening to his questions, unable to refute a single word, because he really thought so.

Today, Xie Qingzhong told him that the prince meant that the battle with Prince Rui was about to begin, and in order to avoid a life-and-death struggle between father and son, it would be better to let Zhou Ming take the position of the prince now. Then, create an accident for Zhou Yu so that he could not stay around Prince Rui and could be the second young master of the Prince's Mansion safely.

He actually thought this was a good idea and nodded. He planned to come back in the evening to discuss with Zhou Ming about creating an accident for Zhou Yu that would not hurt him but would also prevent him from getting that position.

"You know what would happen to me if you listened to the prince and made Zhou Ming the heir?" Zhou Yu said coldly without waiting for Zhou Yiheng to reply, "Maybe I would die on the street, maybe I would end up in a stinking ditch, or even fabricate a more nasty crime and be taken directly to the market. You hate me that much, don't you?"

Zhou Yiheng shook his head, "No, no, how could that be possible? Even if you weren't the crown prince, that kind of situation wouldn't have happened."

"Oh, do you think that if you really put Zhou Ming in that position, the prince will let you do whatever you want with the rest? Haha, I really don't know how you have been able to sit firmly on the throne of the county prince for so many years. The woman you loved all your life plotted against you for another man, and your family was almost destroyed. And more than ten years after that woman died, you still stirred up the chaos in the Shen County Prince's Mansion."

Zhou Yiheng stood up and was about to walk out.

"What's Father doing?"

"I'm going to find the prince. I want to ask him."

"Do you think that the hundreds of people in our Prince's Mansion have lived too long?"

This sentence made Zhou Yiheng sit back down and gently cover his eyes. "What should I do? Things have come to this point. What should have happened has happened. I can't ask them for an explanation. What do you want me to do?"

Zhou Yu rolled his eyes. Was it because his grandfather had laid a good foundation that the Prince Shen's Mansion had been able to remain stable for so many years under his leadership? Or was it because Zhou Yiheng was just lucky?

"Do you still want to ruin my position as the crown prince?"

Zhou Yiheng looked up, "No, no. No, I don't want to."

Zhou Yu nodded. "So, you believed everything you heard just now, right? You didn't doubt that I hired someone to deceive you."

Zhou Yiheng seemed to have lost all his strength in an instant. "I believe that it was all my fault for not knowing the right people, whether it was Qin'er or Hu. I'm sorry to your mother. I've hurt her."

Looking at Zhou Yiheng with his head down, Zhou Yu actually wanted to laugh. He didn't know how long his regret and guilt would last.

"Okay, now you have two choices. If you can pretend that nothing happened in front of Xie Qingzhong or even the Crown Prince, you can continue to interact with them, but you must tell me everything they asked you to do, and I will tell you how to deal with it, and you will deal with it accordingly. If you can't face them normally, then you can pretend to be sick, rest at home, and wait until the turmoil is over."

Zhou Yiheng raised his head and smiled bitterly, "Knowing so much, how can I still remain calm? The prince is playing chess step by step. Now I know why he asked me to marry Xie Qingzhong's daughter to Zhou Ming. It turns out that he had this plan at that time. He was eyeing the position of the prince of Shen County and even the prince in the future."

Zhou Yu hummed and said, "It's okay, not so stupid as to be hopeless."

"That's it. I'll prescribe you a medicine. After drinking it for a few days, you'll feel like you're seriously ill."

Seeing Zhou Yiheng's surprised and somewhat worried expression, Zhou Yu laughed at himself, "Don't worry, even though you killed my mother, I can't bear the infamy of killing my father. The medicine has no harm to the body, I was just trying to prevent the prince and Xie Qingzhong from believing it and come to see if you have revealed your true colors."

Zhou Yiheng thought about it for a moment and nodded.

"Also, you are not allowed to interfere with any arrangements regarding Hu and Zhou Ming."

"What are you going to do to your elder brother? He has no idea at all." Zhou Yiheng said anxiously.

"Don't worry, he will be fine. But Xie Fen won't get what she wants."

Zhou Yiheng nodded when he mentioned Xie Fen. "I won't ask you any more about how to deal with Hu. She has done so many things that have let your mother and me down. I was afraid that the Prince's Mansion would lose face and that Brother Zheng and Sister Ning would be implicated by her, so I didn't let you do anything. Now that Brother Zheng is gone and Sister Ning is in that situation, forget it. You can let Meng do it. Just don't make it too ugly."

Zhou Yu patted his clothes and said, "Okay, I'll take care of what you said. It's not that I don't believe you, but now is a critical moment. Don't change your mind after you wake up, or you'll lose your head."

"Then what do you want?"

"First, I will assign my people to guard this yard, and wait until the prince completely believes that you are sick. Second..." Zhou Yu stretched out his hand.

Zhou Yiheng was puzzled at first, then he looked up at Zhou Yu's teasing smile, and became angry and said, "I will do what I promised you. I am not a fool. Would I really let the Prince Shen's Mansion be in dire straits for a woman?"

After saying that, he walked towards Duobao Pavilion and said, "Only you can guarantee that Prince Rui will be the final winner."

"You dare, God has chosen you to be virtuous. With the prince's sinister behavior, I don't think the ancestors of the Song family would agree to him sitting in that position."

"Be careful with your words. You can't make fun of the royal name like this." Zhou Yiheng took down a rosewood box from the Duobao Pavilion, found the key to open it, and took out two waist badges, a pair of cards and some small things from it.

"I will tell them tomorrow that you will be in charge of the affairs of the mansion during this period."

Zhou Yu breathed a sigh of relief. He was really worried that it would take some time to get Zhou Yiheng to hand over these things. Fortunately, Zhou Yiheng was not that stupid.

Zhou Yiheng was looking through the things in the box, and suddenly thought of something. He took out a few letters from the bottom and handed them to Zhou Yu, "Take a look at this. These are the letters that the prince wrote to me personally over the years. I don't know if they can be used."

Zhou Yu's lips curled up slightly. "The prince has already made this move for you. Will he let you know his secret? These things are nothing more than comforting you. To put it bluntly, in his eyes, our Shenjunwang Mansion is just a bunch of fools for him to dispatch at any time."

Zhou Yiheng's hand froze as he handed the letter, his face flushed with embarrassment, "Take a closer look, what if there is something I can use? And I think it's a good thing that you let me pretend to be sick. If, I mean, if Prince Rui can't beat the Crown Prince, and I don't confront the Crown Prince head-on, maybe I still have a way out."

Zhou Yu took the letter and said, "Yes, if the prince really wins, you can just tie me up and send me to him."

Zhou Yiheng frowned, "That's not what I meant, I just..."

"No need to say more, I get it." Zhou Yu waved his hand and walked out with the letter. "In that case, why don't we perform a play tomorrow? The best excuse is that you got sick because of me. I'll let the word out and hear your conversation with Zhou Ming and that you lost your temper. This will make the prince and Xie Qingzhong more convinced."

Zhou Yiheng nodded and watched Zhou Yu leave. "Well, didn't four people just come in? What happened to those two?"

Zhou Yu slapped his head and said, "Oh, by the way, those two are about my grandmother."

After Zhou Yiheng finished listening to what the middle-aged woman who came in said, he turned around to look at the little girl. He couldn't believe it at all. This little girl was actually the daughter of his half-sister.

Zhou Yu sent the woman away and waved to the little girl. The little girl was wearing a padded jacket with a new folding seal. She was not tall, with sparse yellow hair, a small face the size of a palm, and a pair of big eyes full of timidity and fear.

Seeing Zhou Yu waving at her, the little girl clasped her hands together, pinched the joints of her right hand with her left hand, and then switched to the other hand, but she was afraid to step forward.

Zhou Yu sighed, "This is your sister, the only descendant of my aunt. She died of complications during childbirth, so she only has one daughter in her husband's family. Because my grandmother was still alive at that time, she often helped them secretly, so her husband's family treated her daughter well. Later, she got married, but unfortunately, she also had complications during childbirth, and that's the girl. This girl didn't have the same luck as her mother. After her father married a stepmother, he either beat or scolded her, and last year he even sold her to a brothel."

Zhou Yu pulled the little girl to him and said, "After all, you have my grandmother's blood in your body. It's not good for others to abuse you like this. If you allow me, I will take you to the backyard. As for what status I will give you, it's up to you."

Zhou Yiheng just came back to his senses from his shock. He suddenly burst into laughter, which scared the little girl so much that she shrank back and leaned into Zhou Yu's arms.

Zhou Yiheng laughed so hard that tears came out. In his nearly fifty years of life, he had actually failed like this and been fooled around by so many women.

My mother hid such a big thing from me, and I didn't know anything about it for so many years. Qin'er hid such a big thing from me, and I was like a fool for her for so many years, and even forced my first wife to death. Hu Shi hid so many things from me, and she was two-faced for so many years, harming my own flesh and blood, but I thought she was a good person.

Oh, how much of a failure Zhou Yiheng was. The only woman who had never cheated on him was tortured by him and left him early. And he was indifferent to the children she gave birth to, especially Zhou Yu, who he abused for so many years.

Zhou Yu held the little girl's hand, looked at Zhou Yiheng's appearance, and suddenly his eyes were wet. Why do people do things that make them regret? Why do they believe others' words and then beat their chests and stamp their feet and say I was wrong? But what's the use? The person who wants to hear this sentence the most is no longer here.

After a long time, Zhou Yiheng finally recovered. He turned around and raised his head, his voice with a strong nasal tone, "Record her under Brother Zheng's name, and say that I dreamed that Brother Zheng said he had no successor, so I went to the charity hall to pick her up. For everything else, let Meng arrange it. As for what we just discussed, just do it according to your ideas. Tomorrow, you will make me sick. After lying down for a few days to make them believe it, I will go to the cemetery to accompany your grandparents and mother for a while. If everything in Beijing is settled, I will come back. If there is still no plan, we will discuss it then."

Zhou Yu stood up and said, "The show needs to be performed to its full potential, and my father will have to go to my eldest brother's place."

"I know. Let's go back."

Zhou Yu took the little girl's hand and walked out. When they were almost at the door, Zhou Yiheng called him, "Ayu, I'm sorry. I want to say sorry to you. For so many years, I have made you suffer so much."

Zhou Yu suddenly felt a lump in his throat. He didn't say anything, but walked quickly towards the gate.