Silence blanketed the study and its surroundings.
Caught utterly off guard by this juicy revelation, the ministers breathed shallowly, their pupils contracting. Their bewildered faces turned helplessly this way and that, searching their colleagues for some confirmation that they were dreaming.
They found none.
-Because the little one's voice rang out again immediately.
[Chengcheng won't give Brother Zhili back to Prince Xin! Chengcheng found him first!]
So he belonged to her!
Rather than bringing them back to their senses, this little hooligan's declaration sent another volley of arrows whizzing into their fragile nerves!
...Prince Xin actually had a son?!
No, that wasn't right.
They had already made inquiries from several sources that afternoon about the boy the little one had brought back. He was supposed to be an unfavored imperial prince of the King of Beiming. How had he become Prince Xin's son?
What happened to the ordinary little pitiful boy they had been promised?!
Outside the door, Guan Zhili stood in the courtyard with a blank expression.
That familiar, peculiar inner voice belonging to the little one reached his ears clearly from inside the study. Yet to him, it sounded as though it had come from beyond the heavens-ethereal, unreal, absurd.
From yearning wholeheartedly for the love of his "Imperial Father" and "Imperial Consort" to calmly accepting that they did not like him, he had spent years walking that arduous road. And now he was being told that he was not their child at all, and...
And his birth father, despite all the turmoil in Beiming, still wanted to go there in person to search for him?!
Moisture clouded his eyes, veiling everything before him in a thin mist. He could no longer make out his surroundings clearly, but he still noticed the two guards stationed at the door