Chapter 100: Emperor, I Advise You to Be Kind

Su Jingluo had no intention of interfering when she saw the emperor in his half-maddened state. Yet when she turned away, the cries and rage from beyond the hall clawed at her heart. A surgeon could not bear such a scene.

“Your Majesty,” Su Jingluo asked, turning back toward him, “may I ask what is happening outside?”

“These incompetents! They could not guard the Crown Prince and the Princess, and now they have all disappeared within the palace. It drives me to fury—if I strike them all dead, it will not ease my anger,” the emperor snapped. He was tormented: his mother lay ill, and now his children were missing, nowhere to be found.

Su Jingluo flinched inwardly. So this was Xiao Jingxuan’s doing. If I had imagined His Majesty had me abducted, then Xiao Jingxuan had simply taken his children.

She felt a real ache for the maids and eunuchs outside. They looked no more than fifteen or sixteen—children, really. Yet she could not even suggest it aloud: if His Majesty wished, he might inspect her house.

“Your Majesty, the Crown Prince and the Princess are not little children. They have their own legs and feet; how can you blame the attendants for them wandering? They are not one- or two-year-olds. I can see they have been beaten badly. Let it go.”

At bottom, she had only her own household to blame for ruining these people, and she still begged for mercy. The palace maids and eunuchs looked so young, and it was always the lowest ranks who suffered when royal children went missing.

“You speak truly. Yet Princess Xiahe is only a little over a year old. Even these dogs did not keep her safe, and now she too has vanished.” Without that, His Majesty seemed less furious. But if it were older children being mischievous, it might be forgiven. How could a one- or two-year-old be so wayward?

Was Xiao Jingxuan truly that cruel? Kidnapping a child barely a year old? Su Jingluo felt cold sweat break out across her brow.

“Your Majesty, the Empress Dowager is critically ill. At such a time, when ominous qi already weighs heavy in the palace, to spill more blood would only worsen her condition. Moreover, no two bodies bear hardship equally; if one of them cannot endure it, adding more malevolence to the air will only damage the illness further. Let this matter be investigated slowly. Healing the Empress Dowager and finding the Crown Prince and Princess must take precedence.”

Su Jingluo had no proper comfort to offer. She could only babble in half-mystic terms, hoping to sidetrack the emperor.

The emperor knew she was improvising. He knew her medicine was brilliant and had never heard of her studying occult arts or geomancy, yet what she said held a kind of sense. He waved his hand, and eunuchs rushed out like men facing an enemy to proclaim the order.

Su Jingluo hurriedly praised His Majesty’s magnanimity and kindness, if only to avoid pressing further.

“Jingluo, go attend the Empress Dowager at once.” There was no time, he thought, to listen to her wild talk while the children were missing.

She no longer wished to waste breath on empty explanations. Grabbing her medicine chest, Su Jingluo hurried from the hall. At last the ordeal of the eunuchs and maids was ending. Someone had already explained everything. Many of the beaten attendants, their voices faint, looked toward her, and one by one murmured their thanks to the Princess Consort.

She called the eunuch who followed her, brought out several packets of golden wound medicine from her box, and laid them before the battered maids and eunuchs, then left without lingering. Her heart was full of guilt, and yet she could not find the words to say, I am sorry I caused you this pain.

The injured attendants, dragging their weakened bodies, knelt and thanked the Princess Consort as she departed.

Gathering herself, Su Jingluo entered the Empress Dowager’s apartments. The inner chambers were already in chaos. The Empress Dowager writhed with headache, turning and turning in misery; eunuchs and maids rushed about in frantic confusion, all motion and no sense. Court physicians knelt in clusters by the gate.