The Six Sons' Tragic Fates

Shen Anxin found it utterly inconceivable that the Great Qi imperial prince dream team she had just been teasing in her thoughts had all died before Emperor Hongyao.

After all, whether a dynasty flourished or declined, it was rare for a whole string of imperial princes to die one after another.

Shen Anxin stole a glance in the princes' direction, but from her position, all she could see was Xiao Yanchen slowly closing his eyes. The others were hidden from view.

Shen Anxin: How did they all die?

Chacha: Five years later, the second and third princes died one after another on the frontier battlefield. The crown prince rushed to their rescue, only to be ambushed and return with grave injuries. From then on, his health was too frail for him to bear the duties of crown prince.

The second prince, Xiao Yanfeng, and the third prince, Xiao Yance, both swayed, their shoulders knocking together.

They looked at each other and saw each other's pupils trembling.

Neither feared having his corpse wrapped in horsehide. Xiao Yanfeng had always aspired to go to war, and Xiao Yance enjoyed charging into battle as well.

Sooner or later, they would head to the frontier to fight for Great Qi, for their imperial father and their eldest brother. If they died on the battlefield one day, that would be their fate.

But how could they drag their eldest brother, the crown prince, down with them?!

Chacha: After that, to ensure the realm had an heir, the crown prince devoted all his efforts to grooming the fourth prince, hoping he would succeed him as crown prince.

The fourth prince was diligent and hardworking too. But three years later, he traveled on the emperor's behalf to oversee disaster relief, and someone took advantage of an epidemic outbreak to kill him.

The fourth prince, Xiao Yanshu, the youth who had shyly shown his little dimples not long ago, stared blankly, his lips trembling.

He had once thought about what he would do in the future. He read widely and enjoyed spending time with the common people, so he wanted to help oversee local affairs when he grew up and ease his eldest brother's burden.

But his second and third brothers had both died, and when his eldest brother, the crown prince, placed his hopes in him, he had lost his life through such carelessness. How disappointed and heartbroken his eldest brother must have been.

Chacha: The sixth prince died at the same time as the fourth prince.

The sixth prince, Xiao Yanyu, stared blankly. The string of revelations was already more than someone his age could bear. Hearing of his own death now, he felt nothing but numbness.

But the other princes found it harder to bear than hearing about their own deaths.

After all, before the seventh prince was born, the sixth prince had been the youngest and most pampered of their brothers.

They had thought this younger brother would meet with trouble later, but he had died at the same time as the fourth prince. What on earth had happened?

Chacha: When the crown prince was gravely injured, the imperial physicians couldn't cure him, so they suggested inviting a physician from the Divine Physician Valley to treat him in Great Qi.

The Divine Physician Valley had a rule against making house calls, and neither threats nor inducements could change that.

By then, relations between Southern Xia and Great Qi had grown extremely tense. The crown prince was in poor health, so naturally he couldn't go to the Divine Physician Valley in enemy territory.

As a result, the sixth prince secretly left, slipped into Southern Xia, and became a disciple of the Divine Physician Valley, hoping to complete his studies and return one day to treat the crown prince.

But before he completed his training, he heard that something had happened to the fourth prince. The sixth prince left the valley early and was ambushed by assassins as he hurried to the epidemic-stricken area.

At that, Xiao Yanyu's tears came pouring out.

So after all his hard work, he had saved neither his fourth brother nor his eldest brother, the crown prince. He was so useless, boo-hoo-hoo.

His other brothers could hardly breathe as they listened. Little Six had gone that far, only to fall one step short!

Beside him, the fifth prince forgot everything else and pulled Xiao Yanyu into his arms, his pointed canine teeth pressed hard against his lips.

He was the only one left.

Chacha: After the fourth and sixth princes died, the crown prince realized that outside forces had joined hands to systematically eliminate Great Qi's heirs, so he immediately strengthened the fifth prince's protection.

As far as Great Qi's foreign enemies were concerned, as long as it had no capable heir, it would collapse completely after Emperor Hongyao died.

But the fifth prince was too well protected, and the foreign enemies had no way to strike.

The fifth prince also knew that the entire burden rested on his shoulders. He had to do well.

Yet a year later, the fifth prince offended Great Qi's vested interests over tax reform and was poisoned by the person who shared his bed.

After the fifth prince died, the crown prince, having endured the grief of losing so many younger brothers, could finally hold on no longer. He died after two years confined to his sickbed.

The fifth prince, Xiao Yanjue, bit through his lip with his canine teeth, and blood seeped out.

He had died such a humiliating death. If he had been more careful, if he had managed to hold on, perhaps his eldest brother, the crown prince, would not have died so early, and perhaps Great Qi could still have been saved.

The person who shared his bed, Great Qi's vested interests?

Unable to contain his emotions, the fifth prince swept a piercing gaze over the officials filling the hall.

By this point, every one of the ministers wished he could faint.

If the deaths of the earlier princes had all been caused by foreign enemies, then the fifth prince's death was entirely the fault of people within Great Qi.

By their reckoning, that would happen nine years from now. Had the heads of the various interest groups truly given up on Great Qi by then, no longer holding the emperor above them in awe?

Otherwise, how could they dare do something that would destroy their nation and wipe out their people?

For their own selfish interests, they had snuffed out Great Qi's last hope. As far as the ministers were concerned, those people deserved to be nailed to a pillar of shame and remembered with infamy for ten thousand years.

They had shown no regard for their duty to family and country. They were simply mad!

Though Shen Anxin still felt little sense of belonging to Great Qi, she couldn't help shaking her head when she heard this.

Shen Anxin: As expected, a knife in the back from someone close hurts the most. They really did have it miserable, every one of them...

Maybe it was precisely because they were all outstanding princes that their enemies feared them so much, going to such lengths and sparing no expense to kill them.

If even one of them had been a good-for-nothing who knew only how to enjoy himself, or had remained sickly like the crown prince in his later years, he would have been the safest of them all.

Wait! Was the seventh prince so unimpressive that he managed to survive and succeed to the throne?

Chacha: You could put it that way. For the seventh prince, the throne more or less fell into his lap. He was only nine when the fifth prince died.

The crown prince was already bedridden and couldn't personally guide him, while Emperor Hongyao was too busy trying to put the battered and broken Great Qi back together to pay him any attention.

So his education was entrusted entirely to highly respected ministers and trusted aides at his side.

But compared with his elder brothers, his aptitude was far too mediocre, and the people responsible for his education were in a great hurry.

After the crown prince died, in particular, they went completely mad. They wanted to swiftly raise a crown prince who could put the court officials and common people at ease, practically pulling up the seedlings to make them grow.

Shen Anxin: I get it. They pushed him so hard in his studies that he developed a mental illness, and that was why he later became a mad tyrant.

Chacha: Bingo! That's right!

Everyone: What... what does that mean?

Chacha: They were desperate to make the seventh prince into a second crown prince. Their teaching was overly harsh, and they constantly drummed their lessons into him.

They compared him to the princes who came before him, and the unconscious disappointment and regret in their words gradually warped the seventh prince's soul.

While Emperor Hongyao was alive, although he did poorly, he still put on a show of being well-behaved and dependable.

As far as Emperor Hongyao was concerned, as long as he was willing to listen to advice, he could keep Great Qi standing with the help of ministers entrusted to guide him.

But once Emperor Hongyao died, the seventh prince stopped holding himself back the moment he took the throne and gave full vent to everything.

He diverted military pay to build himself pools of wine and forests of meat, spent disaster-relief silver on extravagant debauchery, killed every loyal minister and general who opposed him at court, and blindly meddled in all affairs of state.

He was a tyrant and a muddleheaded ruler rolled into one.

When Western Rong, Northern Di, and Southern Xia saw that someone like him had taken power in Great Qi, they immediately joined forces and sent out their armies, tearing the whole of Great Qi apart. And by then, most of Great Qi's people had no will to resist at all.

They simply watched as Great Qi, so hard-won and newly unified, fell apart once more and returned to an age of chaos.

That was the end of Great Qi.

Shen Anxin had no time to sigh inwardly before she suddenly heard a bang from the head of the hall.

Emperor Hongyao had risen to his feet at some point, but before he could steady himself, he spat out a mouthful of blood and fell back onto the dragon throne.

In an instant, cries of alarm and wailing filled the hall, as though heaven and earth were collapsing.