Baby, don't be afraid, I'll accompany you to the heavens and the seas!

Lin Qinrou's gaze lingered, and she looked absently at Qing Tingyu, who was intently studying military texts on the next couch.

"Yu'er, you've been studying in your mother's palace for quite a while now. Don't you have anything you'd like to chat with your mother about?"

The dignified empress softened her tone and intended to place her delicate hands over Qing Tingyu's head.

Qing Tingyu's expression remained calm as he dodged his mother's comforting hand: "It's nothing! I'm doing very well!!!"

Hearing her child's indifferent tone, which was as usual and even more so, Lin Qinrou could not hide her sadness and tearfully tugged at her handkerchief.

"Yu'er, are you still holding a grudge against your mother?!"

"Mother, you flatter me. How could I dare?!" Qing Tingyu slumped the obscure ancient military treatise onto the heavy wooden table inlaid with deerskin, his face cold and horrified.

Seeing the Empress and the Crown Prince locked in a tense atmosphere again, Lin Qinrou's trusted guard, Cong Shang, immediately spoke up: "Crown Prince, the eldest son of the Qian clan is already on his way back to the capital!!"

With a polite smile, Qing Tingyu coldly replied, "The Qian clan's patriarch has been said to have a method for ascending to immortality for generations. I wonder if this is true or not?!"

Hearing that the Crown Prince was interested in this, Lin Qinrou changed the subject: "Yu'er, this is a folk myth, how could you believe it so easily?!"

"These lowly people from the barbaric lands dare to dream of ascending to immortality?! That's utterly delusional!!"

"What Mother says is absolutely right. Those barbarian lowlies are truly delusional!"

After chatting for a while, Qing Tingyu bid farewell to his mother and left Qinrou Palace with a group of close guards, his demeanor gloomy.

The Eastern Palace was gloomy and dark, and the imperial steps were chilling and sinister.

Qing Tingyu and his guards ascended the steps with an imposing aura: "How about it?" The Crown Prince, who was not yet twenty, slowed his pace and climbed the high platform of the imperial staircase.

"Your Highness, General Lin and his entourage will depart at 9:00 AM tomorrow!" The guard, Zhuangba, knelt down to report.

“Hmm!!” the Crown Prince replied simply.

After Zhuangba stood up, he paused again, as if he had something to say.

"What is it?!" The prince, dressed in black robes with a python collar, lowered his chin slightly, asking as if he had a question.

"Your Highness, please do not grieve too much!"

"The Empress's choice when she was young was only out of necessity!!"

"You should not let sadness bind you!" Zhuangba looked at Qing Tingyu with eyes full of pity and concern.

"How dare you!! When did the Crown Prince's affairs become your business to talk about?!" Mei Zifeng, a guard of the Eastern Palace, kicked down Zhuangba, a foreigner brought by the Crown Prince from the north, and ordered the guards to drag him to the dungeon for punishment.

Qing Tingyu flicked her sleeves and left the high platform of the Eastern Palace, letting the Eastern Palace guards take her away.

The Crown Prince's Eastern Palace Master Bedroom!

Thin layers of gauze were pressed together, and strings of beautiful jade beads were inlaid in the layers of dark curtains.

The calming incense lit by the palace maids piled up above the Crown Prince's bed, but it couldn't allow Qing Tingyu to sleep peacefully for even a moment.

"Mother! Mother! Don't leave Yu'er behind! Mother!!!"

Qing Tingyu struggled, his body soaked with cold sweat that drenched his undergarment!

The boy's deathly pale lips murmured incoherently, and his anxious, furrowed brow made him seem like a child at that moment.

In the second year of the Qingting calendar, a great drought struck the land!

The people were suffering terribly, and in order to quell their anger, the late emperor invited the God of Destiny to divine the celestial phenomena.

The Star Lord of Destiny addressed the court, saying, "A strange phenomenon has appeared in the heavens. A star in the northern desert is auspicious for killing and conquest. We must send the eldest son of the royal mother to the northern desert to practice the arts of Yin and Yang and guard the high tower there for six years to avert disaster and dispel misfortune!"

So the old emperor gritted his teeth and stomped his foot!

Under the guise of saving the world and not suffering for himself, he sent Lin Qinrou and the young Qing Tingyu to the high tower in the northern desert.

Lin Qinrou, who had been pampered since childhood, secretly switched herself with her trusted concubine on the way to the northern desert.

Because Qing Tingyu was the eldest son of the legitimate wife and was guarded by the old emperor's personal guards, it was difficult to switch him out.

As a child, Qing Tingyu waited day and night on the high tower for his mother to come and see him!

However, Lin Qinrou, far away in the capital, gave birth to another son, named Qingtingyi. In her great joy and peace, Lin Qinrou had long forgotten her eldest son who was far away in the northern desert.

Lin Qinrou was very happy to hold Qingtingyi, who could laugh and cry and called her "Mom" every day.

She even felt a bit disgusted by Qing Tingyu, because Qing Tingyu had a cold personality and was a strange child who never cried or made a fuss since birth. He had never called her "Mother Consort" since birth.

Because of him, her husband also despised her and actually married a courtesan from the streets to humiliate her.

This turned her, a dignified princess of the capital, into the biggest joke that noble families would talk about and ridicule during their leisure time.

Now that Qing Tingyi is as normal as a human being, Lin Qinrou even whispered in Qing Tingmo's ear, wanting to depose him from his position as crown prince and let Yi'er take his place.

“My lord, Yi’er clearly has a gentle and compassionate heart; while Yu’er is like a freak, making me feel humiliated!”

"My husband! Please say yes to Rou'er!!"

Lin Qinrou spoke coquettishly to Qing Tingmo, who was enveloped in the soft fragrance of her body, her eyes full of spring affection.

"Rou'er, Yu'er is still alive, don't say anything rash! You'll hurt Yu'er's feelings, listen to me!!!"

So, in the end, Lin Qinrou actually took those words to heart!

The assassins, whom the Lin family had trained for many years, were sent to the northern desert to force the young Qing Tingyu to his death at the foot of the cold, steep cliffs of the northern desert, his fate unknown.

Qianqianluo was having the same nightmare as Qingtingyu. She dreamed that the young crown prince was covered in blood and was forced to the edge of a cliff by a group of bloodthirsty people. He was shot to death by a cold arrow and fell off the cliff.

"Qing, Qing Tingyu!!!" Whenever Qianqianluo dreams of this place, she always rushes over and tries to grab his hand.

But it was all just a dream. Qianqianluo couldn't hold the boy's hand, but she remembered the boy's sad and sorrowful expression as he fell off the cliff for a long time.

"Mother, save me!!" Qing Tingyu cried out as she stared at the blurry white light on the cliff.

Afterwards, Qianqianluo did indeed act on a whim, following the guidance in her dream, bidding farewell to her clansmen, and traveling day and night without eating or drinking for several days and nights before finally arriving at the cliff where Qingtingyu of the northern desert had fallen.

The official residence in Yunmeng City, Southern Xinjiang.

Awakened by a nightmare, Qianqianlu lit an oil lamp, rubbed her aching head, and sat curled up on the bed, panting heavily.

"I'm speechless. Why did I ever have a brain fart and go save that brat Qing Tingyu back then?!"

"Oh dear~ Everyone says this is just the script of this world, and I'm just a passerby. I'm impressed with myself!!"

"I'm still too gentle, kind, and cultured!"

"Tsk tsk tsk tsk~"

"Look at this face that's so handsome it's out of this world, hehehe!! I deserve to be this beautiful!!"

Qianqianluo held the bronze mirror, admiring her stunning beauty with great arrogance. After successfully convincing herself and engaging in a series of psychological manipulations, she turned off the oil lamp and went to sleep.

The night was deep in the Eastern Palace, and the third watch had already sounded.

Awakened from a nightmare, Qing Tingyu, dressed loosely in a black robe, walked barefoot into the secret room.

The room was filled with countless blurry portraits of women!

That's right, it's following the plot of a melodramatic soap opera where the white moonlight descends!

The scene that should have been the female lead, Mo Fanfan, saving the male lead was instead interrupted by Qianqian Luo, who risked her life to save Qing Tingyu before the female lead could.

In order not to affect the plot development of this world, the enthusiastic citizen Qianqian, along with the crowd, pushed the male protagonist, who was recovering from his injuries and about to wake up, in front of Mo Fanfan's carriage, which was accompanying his brother to sightsee in the northern desert.

Even General Mike Arthur, a five-star general currently residing in the United States, commented on this:

"I wouldn't dare to casually save any male protagonist in a novel!"

"In front of the enthusiastic citizens, I even acted like a green recruit!"