Quick Transmigration: Why did you provoke him? He's love-struck!

Liu Su captured Jiang Yu and General Chen alive. When he led his men into the Hall of Mental Cultivation, he saw Crown Princess Xiao Lingyi and Consort Gui standing to the side, both of them looking terrified.

The second prince, Xiahou Chuan, was beheaded, but his body remained nailed to a pillar in the hall.

Xiahou Che stood in front of the dragon bed, staring blankly at the person on the couch.

Liu Su's heart skipped a beat, and he quickly stepped forward: "Che'er, His Majesty..."

Xiahou Che stiffly turned his head to look at him, his eyes red-rimmed.

Liu Su's breathing trembled. He hurried to the dragon bed and looked at his hands, which were hanging on the edge of the bed and had long since gone cold, with a jade thumb ring still on his thumb.

"Your Majesty!!!" Liu Su cried out in anguish, kneeling down. "I have arrived too late to save you; I deserve to die!!!"

Xiahou Che lowered his eyes, concealing the mockery in them, and knelt down as well.

-

Just after the hour of Chou (1-3 AM), a deep, resonant bell rang out from the palace.

One, two, three...

Three tolls signal the end of days!

The ministers, startled awake from their sleep, felt a jolt in their hearts. They scrambled out of bed, changed into their court robes, and hurried to the palace.

Within an hour, a group of ministers crowded outside the Fengtian Hall, looking at the palace servants who were unusually busy moving back and forth at this time, and they looked at each other in bewilderment.

The doors of Fengtian Hall were tightly closed, but the interior was brightly lit by candles. Liu Su, dressed in silver armor, stood in the hall, looking at the dragon throne above him with a deep gaze.

Power is a good thing; throughout history, countless people have fought tooth and nail for it.

Recalling how his men had found the body of Consort Xian and the heads of the Third and Fifth Princes behind the Hall of Mental Cultivation, he closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

A soldier under his command came in to report: "General, Prime Minister Zhou and several Grand Secretaries have arrived."

"Invite them in."

The prime minister and several cabinet ministers were all important officials in the court. When Liu Su told them what had happened in the palace that night, they were first stunned, and then burst into tears.

Looking at their heartbroken crying, Liu Su couldn't help but feel disgusted.

If a prince wants to seize the throne, he will inevitably have to win over important officials in the court. He doesn't believe that these people are unaware of what happened tonight.

But officialdom is a complex place of interpersonal relationships, so Liu Su patiently waited for them to finish crying before discussing how to handle the follow-up matters.

Liu Su had considered that this matter involved the interests of all parties and would be very troublesome, but when he saw the Grand Secretaries arguing heatedly and fiercely about "a country cannot be without a ruler for a day" and "a new emperor should be established as soon as possible to stabilize the court," he suddenly felt a huge headache coming on.

The group argued for a long time without reaching a conclusion. As the time for court was approaching, the court officials waiting outside the Fengtian Hall became restless. Prime Minister Zhou suggested that the matter be discussed again in court.

So the group entered the Fengtian Hall in a large throng and began a new round of arguing.

The Fengtian Hall had been embroiled in arguments for most of the day, yet no agreement had been reached on who should be the new emperor. Meanwhile, bad news kept pouring in from the various palaces.

"The Sixth Prince died of poisoning last night."

"The seventh prince drowned in the fishpond in the back garden."

"The Ninth Prince died suddenly, and the cause of death is unknown."

Even several princes and their heirs in the capital died suddenly overnight for various bizarre reasons.

The Fengtian Hall became so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.

After a long while, someone sighed and said, "The Second Prince is truly ruthless in his pursuit of the throne."

Another person said, "What should we do now? All the princes who could succeed to the throne are gone. Are we going to adopt a child with royal blood to inherit the throne?"

Upon hearing these words, Liu Su's brow twitched violently, and an ominous premonition rose in his heart.

Just then, someone said, "Isn't the eleventh prince still alive?"

As soon as he said this, everyone's eyes turned to Liu Su, and the look became meaningful.

Liu Su immediately felt extremely uneasy.

He knew what these people were thinking. Overnight, almost all the royal family members, including His Majesty and many princes and nobles, were killed, leaving only the eleventh prince.

This eleventh prince grew up under his care, and yet, at this crucial juncture, he brought him back to the capital.

This looks exactly like he's helping Xiahou Che to seize the throne in a premeditated scheme.

Liu Su forced a calm expression, made an excuse to leave Fengtian Hall, and called out to a passing eunuch: "Where is the Eleventh Prince?"

"In Qianyang Palace."

Qianyang Hall was where Emperor Jin's body lay in state. His remains had been moved here. When Liu Su entered, Xiahou Che had changed into mourning clothes and was kneeling before the coffin, burning paper money.

From Liu Su's perspective, his back looked tall and upright.

Liu Su seemed to only just notice that the child had been raised under his care for almost six years and had grown up so much without him realizing it.

He recalled Xiahou Che, who had chased after him calling him "Master" repeatedly when he first arrived at the military camp six years ago. He couldn't reconcile the image of that thin, timid child with the man before him.

He didn't want to doubt Xiahou Che, but recalling all the things that had happened in the past few days, those "coincidental" clues, he could no longer pretend to be deaf and dumb.

Liu Su took a deep breath, walked over and knelt down next to Xiahou Che, picked up the paper money piled up beside him, and put it into the copper basin one by one.

"Che'er." Liu Su suppressed the unease and restlessness in his heart and pretended to be calm. "Just now, news came from the palace that your brothers, including the princes and heirs outside the palace, all died violently overnight."

Xiahou Che mechanically repeated the action of putting paper money into the copper basin, and said expressionlessly, "Oh? Is that so?"

The flames licked at the paper money, burning it out in the blink of an eye. Liu Su pressed down on Xiahou Che's hand, stopping him from throwing more paper money into the copper basin, and stared straight at him: "Che'er, does this have anything to do with you?"

Xiahou Che's eyes reflected the flickering firelight in the copper basin. After a long while, he turned to look at Liu Su, revealing a smile that was completely unfamiliar to him: "What do you think?"

Liu Su's hand trembled, and the paper money scattered all over the ground.

He stared at Xiahou Che in disbelief, his face filled with shock: "You...it really is you..."

"Shh!" Xiahou Che made a shushing gesture. "Keep your voice down—Master, you broke through the city gate with me under the noses of so many people and rushed into the Hall of Mental Cultivation to save the Emperor. If I am confirmed to have assassinated my brother and the other royal uncles, then you will also be held responsible. There are more than two hundred people in the Liu family. You don't want them to be buried with me, do you?"

Liu Su's chest heaved rapidly, and his eyes slowly turned bloodshot: "You schemed against me! Xiahou Che, how dare you scheme against me!"

Xiahou Che stood up, waved his hand, and Yang Pei immediately drove all the palace servants out of Qianyang Palace and closed the palace door.

Only the master and disciple remained in the vast Qianyang Palace, along with the corpse of Emperor Jin placed in a coffin.

“How can this be called scheming?” Xiahou Che laughed. “If Master is willing to help me ascend the throne, I will certainly not treat you unfairly. In the future, you will be a first-class duke of the Great Jin Dynasty, which is an immense fortune that can benefit future generations.”