The queen is sober in the world, and she is winning every step of the palace fight.

Chapter 242: Concubine, no excuse

"Your Majesty, I am first a citizen of Daliang, a subject of Your Majesty's, and only then, your handmaiden! Your Majesty's kindness, if it is to keep me silent when you betray Your Majesty, and to let you down together with Your Majesty, then I am truly ungrateful!"

Bai Yuan retorted excitedly.

Then he knelt down, turned around, and kowtowed to the queen.

His expression was very determined, as if he had risked his life.

"Your Majesty, I didn't have the chance to expose you before. To save my own life, I had no choice but to obey your orders and do the wrong thing. If Your Majesty doesn't forgive me today, I deserve it and have no reason to complain! However, I will definitely not do anything wrong in my next life. Please stop in time and don't harm this person or that person anymore! You harm whoever is favored in the palace. You are also a woman. Don't you have nightmares? You harmed Lady Ying's fetus. Aren't you afraid of retribution if you get pregnant in the future?"

The fierce questioning made the queen's face turn pale little by little.

The queen looked at Bai Yuan and then at Concubine Xian.

He looked at Bai Yuan again, and then at Concubine Xian.

Suddenly, he smiled sadly.

He sighed and said, "It's ridiculous that I didn't see the people around me clearly. Bai Yuan, you are wasting such a good name I gave you. You are far worse than Bai Lu. Xian Fei, you are really capable of making my maids switch sides."

The virtuous concubine retorted, "You are the one who committed the evil, and the people around you can't stand it anymore. What does it have to do with me? Are you allowed to do evil, and not others who have a conscience and expose you? Besides, it's not just Bai Yuan!"

Later, more witnesses came to the court.

A pharmacist at the Imperial Pharmacy claimed that the Empress had been secretly obtaining medication from the pharmacy for years, but this had not been recorded. The list of medicines presented was filled with highly cold herbs like Five Elements Herb, Motherwort, Bezoar, and Safflower, which either chilled women to the point of impotence or caused premature bleeding and miscarriage in pregnant women.

A gardener at the greenhouse said that the empress would sometimes send fertilizer to be added to the soil of designated flowers and trees, which would indeed make some flowers bloom more beautifully. However, not long ago, an imperial physician was on duty and passed by the greenhouse. He happened to see the greenhouse carrying out uncultivated flowers and trees and discarding them. Suddenly, he smelled something wrong with the soil.

After inspection, they discovered that the fertilizer in the soil contained a very cold medicine. The people in the greenhouse were unaware of the situation and thought it was a coincidence. It was not until the virtuous concubine investigated the case and asked the greenhouse staff that someone remembered this.

Upon investigation, they discovered that all the flowers and trees that had recently been treated with the Empress's fertilizer had traces of the drug in their soil. These flowers and trees had been kept in the palaces of several concubines for some time. They were all concubines who had slept with them for the past two or three months!

The gardener came to the palace with several bags of soil that had been fertilized with "flower fertilizer." These bags were evidence he had secretly taken from several minor palaces under the pretext of changing the soil and caring for the flowers and trees.

"How could this happen? Could it be that the Queen... is preventing us from getting pregnant?"

"We only checked the recent ones. What about those who frequently slept with the Queen in the past? Did they also receive flowers from the Queen?"

"It's been so long, it's hard to tell if there's medicine in the soil."

The concubines who were listening could not help but whisper to each other, and everyone was shocked.

The emperor has few offspring.

Could it be related to the Queen?

Concubine Shun suddenly remembered something: "Didn't Concubine Ying's room have two new pots of 'Yijianhong' hibiscus last month? I think they look really beautiful..."

The virtuous concubine said, "You guessed it right. There's something fishy in that pot! I've already ordered someone to check those two pots of flowers, and they did find something added to the soil. The Empress had the flower room keep them shortly after Concubine Ying was first promoted. The flower room, as instructed, kept them until they were about to bloom and sent them to Concubine Ying. Coincidentally, that's when Concubine Ying got pregnant. With the flowers and the medicine, nothing Concubine Ying eats or smells is good, so how could she not get pregnant?"

There were bursts of exclamations.

A series of shocked and angry glances were cast at the queen.

There were not many concubines present, only about ten or so. Except for Fei Wan, none of them had been favored recently. They were all lonely people in the deep palace.

But no one would think that their infertility was due to lack of favor. For a while, they would only attribute their infertility to the queen!

Since they were not favored, who wouldn't hope to have a child? But the queen did these things behind their backs, depriving them of the possibility of getting pregnant early!

With such a queen, who in the palace can live a good life?

Even the favored Consort Sakura was almost tricked!

Concubine Kang suddenly cried out "Aiya", attracting everyone's attention.

But she looked at Feiwan.

"Do you have any flowers and trees sent by the flower room in your palace? Consort Ying is pregnant, but you are still not making any progress..."

This sentence made everyone look at Fei Wan's flat belly.

In terms of favor, Empress Zhao is much better than Consort Ying, but she has never been pregnant, so...

Fei Wan looked at Concubine Kang.

I don't know whether to say she has brains or not.

If she had any brains, she would speak up at a time like this. If she had no brains, she would have been so lucky to point this out.

Fei Wan didn't want to attract attention at this moment, so she lowered her head and explained with a slightly red face:

"The greenhouse sends a lot of flowers and trees to Chunxi Palace. But I'm weak and I've been taking medicine all the time. Even if there's something wrong with the flowers and trees, it might not be caused by them."

Concubine Kang nodded: "That's true."

Shun Fei suddenly let out a long sigh, tears streaming down her face, "So that's how it is! It turns out that before Ying Mei had her period that night, the drugs had already harmed her health and she was showing signs of miscarriage. No wonder she looked so pale and listless those few days... If Xian Fei hadn't found out, I would have thought it was all because of something that went wrong at my banquet that night. It seems that the drug that the kitchen thief put in the food that night, although powerful, was just the trigger. It was the severe cold poison that had accumulated in Ying Mei's body that was triggered!"

The Queen looked sternly at Concubine Shun and Concubine Kang.

"The virtuous concubine is framing me. Stop making groundless assumptions!"

Concubine Kang recoiled in fear at the Queen's glare. But Concubine Shun, as the person responsible for Zhishu's bleeding, had to disclaim her responsibility, even if she was usually kind.

How could he not stare at the queen and bite her?

She lowered her head and timidly retorted, "Your Majesty, the Virtuous Concubine has both witnesses and evidence. You say she framed me, but where is your evidence? I really hope that what the Virtuous Concubine said is all false. Otherwise, living in this palace is really unsettling."

"You are all taking advantage of others' misfortunes and following the trend to frame the Empress!"

Zheng Zhuyi glared at them.

The emperor sat high on the dragon throne, his face extremely cold.

He raised his hand to silence everyone and only looked at the Queen.

"I hope you can prove your innocence."

The emperor's threatening voice quickly calmed the queen's expression.

But in that calmness, there was a sense of liberation and relief.

She suddenly smiled.

Turning around, she faced away from the emperor, her eyes looking through the open palace door at the distant blue autumn sky.

"These past few years in the palace."

"It seems like a lot of things have happened."

"But it's as if nothing happened."