"No."
The Empress shook her head calmly.
"Though I regard Duke Cao, Jiang Chengxi, as a trusted confidant,"
"he does not have the authority to enter the palace without reporting first."
"From the palace gates to the Imperial Study, there are countless guards along the way. It would have been impossible for him to come here without a sound and steal the necklace."
In response to the Empress's words,
Zeng Anmin merely nodded calmly.
He looked up at the Empress and said something startling.
"What if the one who stole the necklace was not Duke Cao, but someone else?"
"Who?" The Empress's brows knitted tightly.
When she asked that, she had not expected Zeng Anmin to actually name the thief precisely.
"Gu Yuqing."
A chubby little brat surfaced in Zeng Anmin's mind.
His face carried an exceptionally strange, unfathomable darkness.
"Who??"
Upon hearing this, Gu Xiangnan's expression froze slightly. Then she looked at Zeng Anmin, half laughing and half crying.
"You've gone mad..."
But halfway through, the words caught in her throat.
Because she met Zeng Anmin's incomparably grave gaze.
"What do you mean? Though Gu Yuqing bears the title of Northern King, he is only a mischievous child. How could he dare..."
Listening to the Empress's thoroughly unconcerned tone,
Zeng Anmin sighed inwardly.
She could not really be blamed for saying that.
After all, that child had grown up beside the Empress since he was young.
Yet it was precisely because of that that the Empress had the illusion that she knew him like the back of her hand.
"You once said that after your death, you wished to pass the throne to Gu Yuqing. That proves that, in your heart, he is the most suitable candidate for the next emperor."
"Just because you think so, does that mean