"Your Majesty! He's merely a concubine's son! What right did he have to beat a son of your principal wife, and even scheme to have Jiran... have Jiran... sob, sob... You must seek justice for me and Jiran!"
Inside the Imperial Palace.
Flowers and greenery surrounded them, along with elegant, classical carvings.
Xu Zhen sat in a reclining chair, a fishing rod in his hand, resting with his eyes closed.
The Empress knelt below the wooden steps a short distance away, looking utterly forlorn. Xu Jiran knelt beside her, though perhaps because he had been impaled, his kneeling posture was rather bizarre.
Just a few days earlier.
Word of what Xu Jiran had done had spread throughout Mingdu. Xu Cheng had shown him no mercy whatsoever, circulating the short video of him with a certain burly man everywhere.
"Ah, can't you let me enjoy my twilight years in peace?"
Xu Zhen sighed softly.
He glanced at the weeping Empress, then at Xu Jiran beside her, who was grimacing and constantly adjusting his position.
His assessment of this fourth son was that he was conceited and arrogant. Had Crown Prince Xu Tianran's legs not been crippled, he would never even have had a chance to contend for the Imperial Throne. His subsequent struggle against Xu Cheng had only exposed flaws at every turn.
He was an imperial prince, yet he possessed none of the shrewdness or methods expected of one.
How had the Sun Moon Empire developed over its tens of thousands of years of history, turning the tide against all odds to become the continent's foremost military power despite its people's generally poor cultivation aptitude?
Because few of its emperors throughout history had been incompetent.
Even the worst had merely been mediocre. One could call them inactive, but certainly not