After that night, the skies over Chang'an City changed.
The bloodstains beneath Black Tortoise Gate had yet to fade completely.
Edicts were already pouring from Taiji Palace like flowing water, spreading throughout the court and the realm.
Crown Prince Li Longji was stripped of his title for "treason against the throne and unauthorized mobilization of the Imperial Guards" and confined to a separate courtyard of the Palace Attendants Department, forbidden to leave without an imperial decree. The followers who had rallied to him that night, from officers of the Feathered Forest Guard to officials of the Eastern Palace, were imprisoned or exiled. Within a few short days, they had been purged entirely.
At the other end of this earthshaking upheaval, however, the prestige of Li Lingyue, Princess Taiping Who Guards the Nation, blazed like the sun at its zenith.
In fairness, quite a few of the civil and military officials had initially harbored doubts about this princess presiding over the court.
After all, since ancient times, a hen crowing at dawn had never been considered a blessing for the state.
If the turmoil of Wu Zhou came again, Great Tang would be in peril.
Yet once they truly witnessed how the princess dealt with the aftermath of the Crown Prince's faction, those doubts melted away day by day.
She was decisive in bloodshed, yet clear in rewards and punishments; she settled accounts with the rebels, yet never implicated the innocent; in barely half a month, she untangled the court affairs thrown into utter chaos that night and restored everything to order.
What was more-
Behind her stood the unfathomable Mr. Lu.
Every veteran minister with a discerning eye could see it clearly: whenever the princess faced a major decision she could not resolve, she would dismiss her attendants and confer