"Have you heard of Consort Su of Southern Yue?"
Xia Siheng narrowed his eyes slightly, searching his memory for anything connected to that name.
"The woman the King of Southern Yue seized more than twenty years ago, after murdering her husband and slaughtering his entire family?"
Only a few months after Consort Su entered the palace, word spread that she had died of illness.
The emperor nodded. "Consort Su didn't actually die. She secretly tried to poison the King of Southern Yue, failed, and fled to the Great Xia border. As it happened, Old Madam Xie and Xie Jian were making inquiries along the Southern Yue border, trying to establish a supply channel for that substance."
"When they saw government soldiers pursuing a woman, they thought her beautiful and rescued her."
"Consort Su followed Xie Jian back to Great Xia and became his second wife. When she fled, she was already carrying the King of Southern Yue's child."
"The Xie family's Second Master was supposedly born two months premature. No one suspected a thing."
The emperor told him everything he knew.
"Imperial Elder Brother, how do you know Xie Jinqian wasn't lying?"
Xia Siheng had never met him, but his instincts told him that little truth would ever come out of that man's mouth.
"When I met the King of Southern Yue back then, I learned that all direct descendants of the Southern Yue Imperial House bear a Wolf Totem on their bodies. Xie Jinqian has one. He wants me to help him. If he can claim Southern Yue's throne, Southern Yue will eradicate that substance completely and bow to Great Xia as its subject!"
As the emperor spoke of this, he found the matter rather intriguing.
Since ancient times, what ruler had not wished to unite the world and