"Huh? Imperial Grandmother, if Grandaunt had an imperial decree granting her marriage, why did she still enter a marriage alliance?"
After looking around, Chu Lange was drawn to the imperial decree bearing the great jade seal, and it instantly captured her attention.
"Perhaps... that was simply fate."
Wu Qingyuan's fingers traced the final lines, word by word-appointing Li Zi'an as the Elder Princess's consort.
"Later, the late emperor happened to learn that child's identity. How could the son of a disgraced official be worthy of our Yu Kingdom's nation-guarding Elder Princess?
So the late emperor bestowed another marriage on him. Zhaohua held her head high and did not insist any further.
But who could have known that, through countless days and nights afterward, the late emperor and I would regret that choice every single day?"
"In those years, the five kingdoms stood like the legs of a tripod, keeping one another in check.
Later, the ruler of the Yue Kingdom proved muddleheaded and tyrannical. As the Yue Kingdom grew ever weaker, greed began to stir in the other kingdoms.
Who could have foreseen that, when the four kingdoms sent their armies to swallow Yue, Jing and Sheng would secretly collude with Yue, trapping our Yu Kingdom's hundred thousand troops between attacks from the front and rear at Yue's border? At that moment, the Liang Kingdom chose to protect itself and stay out of the conflict."
"To resist the enemy armies, we sent out almost every soldier we had. Every day, a million corpses lay along the frontier, and blood flowed in rivers. The Imperial Treasury and our granaries rapidly approached exhaustion.
At that moment, Jialan suddenly sent envoys to ask for Zhaohua's hand. At first, the late emperor firmly refused.
But... do you know how Jialan, a mere speck of