After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

At that time, Ping Le was still an infant in swaddling clothes, and it was Ping Le's birth mother who harmed him. He never mentioned this to anyone, but because of it, he became even more disgusted with that cold palace.

Being the crown prince was his destiny; residing in the Eastern Palace and being wary of everyone was his choice.

Lu Zhiyuan, unaware of his thoughts, saw that he wouldn't take it, and put one of the pills into her mouth right in front of him. She ate it with relish, like chewing a candy. He had never seen such an adorable way of eating, especially a pill that smelled somewhat bitter. For the first time in his life, he felt an urge to eat a pill.

As the crown prince, the first lesson he learned was to control his appetite. Little did he expect that Lu Zhiyuan would ruin his ability by chewing a pill.

Before a self-deprecating smile could even spread across her lips, A-Yuan leaned close to him and opened her mouth for him to see.

A rich aroma of herbs wafted over.

"It's not poisonous, it's very sweet, and it's good for your health." She pried open his mouth and put the remaining pill inside. "A prince like you shouldn't avoid seeking medical help."

As if possessed, he chewed it twice and almost spat it out.

She smiled, covered his mouth with her hand, and her eyes gleamed with the light of a triumphant prank.

The light was so bright that it made him temporarily forget the taste of the pill.

Much later, he learned that those were antidote pills, which could protect against all poisons in the world.

A-Yuan wasn't lying to him; in her eyes, the pill was sweet. Because before that, she had taken many medicines that were far more bitter.

He was a thoughtful man and had pondered why Ah Yuan had given him the antidote. His answer was that he was her future husband, and it was normal for a wife to give her husband medicine, after all, she had even given it to the maids who cared for her and the guards who protected her.

She treated him like family, which made him feel happy.

It wasn't until her uncle mentioned it that she realized she had given him the pills to save his life; she knew he was poisoned the moment she saw him.

At the Dragon Boat Festival banquet, he left early due to feeling unwell. He didn't connect his illness with poisoning when he left. He was always cautious and wary of the schemes employed by the palace, abstaining from all alcoholic beverages. He would also test other foods for poison with silver chopsticks and eat very little of them.

Physician Jiang knew what he was thinking and helped him resolve his doubts.

"The poison was put in the wine cup. It was Consort Zhu who bribed a palace maid at the banquet. The maid was from the same hometown as Consort Zhu and her family depended on Consort Zhu for their livelihood. Not long after the banquet, Consort Zhu was ordered to commit suicide by the Empress and buried on Wangyue Mountain opposite the imperial mausoleum."

"My mother never mentioned this to me. How did she know?"

Imperial Physician Jiang sighed and said in the manner of an elder, "The Crown Prince should not doubt the Empress. You are her only son and her only hope. In the eyes of outsiders, she is the high and mighty Empress, but in her own eyes, she is your mother."

It was rare for Physician Jiang to speak to the Crown Prince in such a casual manner.

“At every palace banquet, Her Majesty would keep an eye on the Crown Prince. When the Crown Prince left his seat midway through the banquet and was helped by his attendants, how could Her Majesty not be suspicious? She ordered an investigation and found out that it was Consort Zhu who was behind it.”

"Why did this Consort Zhu harm me? As a consort, she has no children. Since she has no children, she is not involved in the struggle for the throne. Was she instigated by someone?"

"Consort Zhu was among the last batch of imperial concubines selected during the late emperor's lifetime. She was chosen to bring good fortune to the late emperor, following the common practice. There were eighteen in total, ranging in age from sixteen to eighteen. Consort Zhu was the youngest and the most cunning among them. After entering the palace, she repeatedly disguised herself as a palace maid in an attempt to get close to the late emperor. For various reasons, she failed and was instead reprimanded by the then empress, who was also the empress dowager."

"When the late Emperor passed away, he left an edict that all concubines who had never been favored by the Emperor could be released from the palace according to their wishes. If your father wished, they could also join his harem. Those who truly did not wish to leave the palace could live out their days in comfort as Dowager Consorts. Without exception, all the young women who entered the palace with Dowager Consort Zhu chose to leave, except for Dowager Consort Zhu, who wanted to enter your father's harem. However, she had no noble birth, no beauty, and no education, and was a concubine sent to bring good fortune to your father. Your father found it absurd and did not grant her request. Dowager Consort Zhu resented your mother because of this, believing that Dowager Consort Zhu had interfered."

"Absurd! How could my grandfather's concubine be brought into my father's harem? My grandfather was seriously ill and did not think things through properly. Fortunately, my father is not confused." The Crown Prince said, "Although my mother is in charge of the harem..."

However, this matter truly had nothing to do with the Empress Dowager, so it was completely unreasonable for her to hold a grudge against her because of it.

"That was just the trigger; what truly prompted her to plot against the Crown Prince was something else entirely." Imperial Physician Jiang removed the needles one by one.

"She had an affair with a palace guard and secretly gave birth to a child, attempting to use the child to obscure the royal bloodline. When your mother discovered this, to protect herself, she betrayed the guard, strangled the child, and lied that she had been coerced. Fearing being expelled from the palace, she banged her head against a wall in front of your mother, and after recovering, she pretended to be mentally impaired. Your mother was kind-hearted and kept her in the palace, allowing her to continue enjoying the status of a Dowager Consort. If she hadn't instigated a palace maid to poison you, your mother would never have known that her years of mental incapacity were all an act."

"The palace is truly no place for a human being." The crown prince took the silver needles handed to him and put them together.

"A perfectly healthy person, who entered the palace as an innocent and carefree young girl, left the palace as a ragged corpse, and all that was left of her past was a filthy body."

Imperial Physician Jiang sighed softly, but did not respond to the Crown Prince's words.

The palace, deep and secluded, held countless stories of helplessness and inevitability. Even his own sister had her reasons for entering the palace as empress. Once inside, life and death, good and evil, often hung in the balance. If his sister had been born into a commoner family, if she hadn't had the protection of the Jiang family, she would likely have long since become a skeleton in that deep palace.

He never thought the palace was a good place. His decision not to marry stemmed from both his love for Chaoyun and his unwillingness to settle, as well as reasons related to the Jiang family itself. He didn't want him and his children to become pawns in the Jiang family's continued pursuit of power and wealth.

The Jiang family, living in their privileged positions, only see the present and forget the past. Seeing his unmarried status, they assumed he was self-degrading, useless, and hoping to secure a position with a concubine. Little did they know that his sister was Empress and his nephew was Crown Prince precisely because of his unmarried and childless status, and that the entire Jiang family, from him down, was utterly incompetent.

Which person in power would willingly allow their maternal relatives to become powerful, or for the maternal family of the empress or imperial concubine to supersede imperial authority?

The Empress chose Lu Zhiyuan because she knew the Jiang family was unreliable and wanted to provide protection for the Crown Prince.

"Uncle said there are twelve kinds of poison pills, but is one of them the one that can save A-Yuan's life?"

Physician Jiang shook his head.

Although the Hundred Poison Pill is a good medicine, it is not a miracle drug. Its detoxification principle is to first inhibit the poison, then counteract the poison, and then use the poison to neutralize the poison, using its toxicity to build a barrier in the body of the user.

It isolates the toxicity of common poisons, preventing the user from being harmed by those toxins.

There are twelve types of the Hundred Poison Pill, each extracted from a hundred kinds of poisonous insects and herbs. The order and dosage of the poisonous insects and herbs used in the medicine are different, and their effects and results are also different.

Of these twelve pills, there was one that Lu Zhiyuan treasured especially. There was only one, extremely rare. This medicine was highly poisonous; it could save a life in a critical moment, but it could also render a person beyond cure.

"Has Your Highness heard of a final burst of energy before death?" Seeing the prince nod, he continued, "This medicine works exactly like a final burst of energy before death; even a god descending to earth would be helpless. If there were even the slightest hope, Yuan'er wouldn't have taken this medicine herself."

The prince's eyes flickered: "Uncle, I don't want to lose her, I want to..."

He wanted to accompany her to the underworld, to be a ghost couple with her on the Bridge of Helplessness, together for a hundred years, never to see the light of day. But he was the crown prince, burdened with the fate of the nation and its people; he could not, and dared not, utter such irresponsible words.

In this life, he can only betray his Ah Yuan!