coobybook Chapter 238 Chessboard
Chapter 238 Chessboard
The commotion in the capital first affected the two parties involved.
The Wei clan didn't react much. They had already prepared an escape route and made all the necessary arrangements.
Furthermore, their biggest bargaining chip—Wei Lu and her son—had returned. They had no choice but to devote themselves entirely to supporting the mother and son.
But the Wang family was different. From the moment they embarked on this path, they had no intention of looking back.
Aside from the Empress's father, brothers, and uncles, all the other collateral branches were illegally amassing wealth through connections. Of course, every family has its share of misfits. Those people are either extremely eccentric or overly upright.
Nowadays, apart from the Empress's two or three aunts and three or five uncles, everyone else in the Wang family has illegally amassed a considerable amount of wealth and land under the guise of being related to the Empress.
Even worse, some openly engaged in robbery and plunder. What they openly stole, besides other people's ancestral property, were also beautiful women of all kinds.
Those acts were already heinous enough. But insiders revealed that within the Wang family, there were individuals with a penchant for child abuse. All the missing children in the vicinity were found in that person's residence. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these children had already been tortured to death.
The moment this information was revealed, it sent shockwaves throughout Qisong. As if it had been pre-arranged, news of the Wang family's misdeeds spread rapidly throughout Qisong at the same time.
Emperor Taizu once established a law that anyone involved in the trafficking of children, regardless of their status or background, would be subjected to the punishment of slow slicing, their body exposed for seven days, and then their bones ground to dust and scattered. Anyone who defiled children would be castrated, made into human food, and thrown into private kilns to be tortured to death. In the end, they too would be ground to dust and scattered.
It is evident how much the founding emperor abhorred this phenomenon. Innocent children, at such a young and innocent age, suffered such harm, and had no other way out but death.
Unlike my previous life, this place has advanced medical institutions that can not only heal the children's physical injuries but also help them overcome their dark psychological trauma.
This time, the Wang family has been thrust into the eye of the storm.
Because it was a nationwide outbreak, the emperor had to personally intervene and declare that he would thoroughly investigate the matter. If the allegations were true, he would show no leniency or tolerance towards the perpetrators.
Although the public's anger was temporarily suppressed, they were merely observing and waiting for the emperor to give them a satisfactory answer.
If, in the end, the emperor simply lets the Wang family hand over a few scapegoats and quells the matter as before, then the people will surely cry out for a change of emperor.
This was another measure taken by Emperor Taizu to protect the rights of the people and suppress the unreasonable tyranny of the emperor.
If the people feel that this emperor is incompetent and foolish, they can call on the court to replace him.
If one-third of the people of Qi and Song wish to replace the emperor, then the court must respect the will of the people and remove the current emperor from office.
If the court and the army collude with the emperor, then the people may rebel!
The current emperor is genuinely afraid of a rebellion by the incited populace. After all, there are quite a few geniuses among them, like the founding emperor.
However, the current situation is exactly what the emperor wants and needs. He wants to see how Lady Wang will quell the public anger this time.
Back when the emperor was still a young man, he once encountered the current empress's elder brother on the street. At the time, the emperor, who was still fascinated by heroic legends, thought it would be excellent to befriend such a family that was just beginning to establish itself in the army.
The empress's brother not only satisfied the emperor's desire to understand and yearn for military life, but also told him many true stories from the battlefield.
At that time, the emperor believed he had concealed his identity as the crown prince well. Little did he know that he was so foolish as to step into the Wang family's trap step by step.
One day, the emperor woke up after drinking with the empress's brother and found a young girl on his bed, who had been abused and was on the verge of death.
Meanwhile, his subordinates, who had come looking for him, were already outside the door.
If the emperor hadn't realized he'd been tricked at that moment, he would truly be beyond redemption.
If his subordinates were to enter and see the emperor lying naked, with bloodstains in some places, along with the little girl whose vital signs were fading, then even if he had a hundred mouths, he would not be able to explain himself to the emperor at that time.
Once a member of the royal family is involved in the abuse of young children, the consequence is that he or she is imprisoned for life.
At that critical moment, the current empress appeared. She bit her lip, stripped off all her clothes, covered the little girl with them, and then lay down beside the emperor.
In this way, the emperor successfully avoided the disaster of abusing young children.
However, the emperor was still furious. He felt that the emperor was too trusting and had an affair with a respectable woman, violating the taboo of being amorous, which was forbidden for an emperor.
Therefore, the emperor at the time decisively arranged a marriage for the emperor. The emperor had met the betrothed several times, always observing her from afar with his younger brother.
The girl was named Wei Lu, and she was exceptionally beautiful. Most importantly, she possessed an extraordinary demeanor and was always poised and generous in her interactions with others. She was never intimidated, no matter who she was facing.
The emperor thought to himself that the woman had the air of an empress.
However, the emperor had not forgotten that the woman was the object of affection for his younger brother, Prince Jing.
To test whether the woman also had feelings for his younger brother, the emperor orchestrated a scene where his brother would play the hero and rescue her.
Fortunately, the woman seemed to prefer the empress's throne and remained unmoved by her younger brother's various explicit and implicit advances.
And so, the emperor gladly accepted the marriage arranged by the then-sage, became engaged to Wei Lu, and chose a date to get married.
The emperor thought everything was settled. But three months before the wedding, the Wang family finally couldn't hold back and started causing trouble.
At the time, rumors circulated that in a certain month of a certain year, a prince had an affair with a young lady in a certain place without any formal arrangement. However, those were merely absurd things the prince had to do to cover up another matter.
The emperor initially paid no attention to the rumors. He had met with Wei Lu several times in private and was extremely satisfied with her. He admired Wei Lu's independent thinking and resilient personality.
It can be said that the emperor developed feelings of love for Wei Lu. He felt that he and Wei Lu were a match made in heaven.
Until one day, the emperor was passively drawn into the schemes of the Wang family after his brother, whom he had once called brother, handed him a letter.
To appease the Wang clan, the emperor was forced to have a secret rendezvous with the current empress, resulting in her pregnancy. He also devised a plan to postpone the wedding for several months.
But the Wang family's ambition was so great that they dared to covet the Empress's position. The Emperor was so angry he laughed on the spot.
Because the emperor at the time had not thought things through fully, he readily accepted the threat from the Wang clan.
He thought that the position was too conspicuous, so it would be very good to leave it to Wang Shi to shield Wei Lu from disaster.
He just didn't expect that the chessboard he laid out was too big, so big that he overlooked the safety of Wei Lu and her child, and in the end, it would harm them.
This was the emperor's lifelong pain, and he wanted to repay all that regret and pain to the Wang family.
More than twenty years have passed, and the emperor's game of chess has reached its end.
However, he planned to leave the decision of how to play this decisive move to Wei Lu and her son.