Wu Junji groggily came to, his bottom in excruciating pain. He opened his mouth and let out a feeble cry.
Someone wrapped him up with trembling hands.
"Your Highness the Crown Prince, it's a little prince."
Wu Junji struggled to open one eye, trying to make out his surroundings. An unfamiliar face came into view.
Why was the angle wrong?
Wu Junji jolted. He had become a baby!
"Bring him here. Let me see..."
Wu Junji's heart trembled. That voice unmistakably belonged to his imperial father from his previous life!
Where was his mother?
Thinking of the mother he had never met in his previous life, Wu Junji wailed. This body was premature, and the sounds it made were faint and weak.
Someone opened his swaddling clothes and spread his legs, exposing his sex so their master could see clearly.
"Hahahahaha..."
Laughter rang out, the laughter of someone whose wish had been fulfilled, yet its tone was so sinister it sent shivers through those who heard it.
"I didn't give birth to him for nothing!"
Taking advantage of the midwife's posture as she knelt to beg for mercy, Wu Junji strained to turn his head to one side, hoping to see his mother.
But she wasn't there...
He saw an imperial physician using a needle to stitch up Emperor Zhou's deflated, wrinkled belly.
Wu Junji's head exploded with a buzz!
Even two lifetimes of experience could not help him immediately comprehend the scene before him.
After a long, long time, Wu Junji began numbly chewing his fist, his cerebral cortex tingling from the shock of this secret.
The current Crown Prince, the future Emperor Zhou, was a man of extraordinary birth, as precious as gold and jade. (There is no inappropriate wording here; please be fair.)
He had actually given birth to a child this way? (There is no inappropriate wording here; please be fair.)
Hahahahaha!
No wonder he had ended up among the common folk.
No wonder Emperor Zhou never mentioned his mother.
No wonder Emperor Zhou always looked at him with such complicated eyes.
No wonder Emperor Zhou had wanted to kill him so many times.
His very existence was Emperor Zhou's stain and disgrace.
Wu Junji's heart turned to cold ashes.
In his previous life, he had fought Emperor Zhou for power his entire life and successfully seen that old bastard to his grave.
In the mourning hall, unable to contain his joy, he had buried his face and laughed wildly. Unfortunately, his broken body could not withstand such intense emotion, and he had accidentally laughed himself to death.
Why let him be reborn? So he could spend another sixteen years as a beggar before returning to court to become a pawn for balancing all sides?
Just strangle me...
Just strangle me and be done with it, Wu Junji thought.
Just as he was thinking this, he was passed into a new embrace.
Sweet-smelling Sandalwood Incense rushed over him, utterly overpowering.
Wu Bing's eyes were dark and somber. Because of the drugs he had taken, his appearance carried an almost imperceptible feminine softness, but as time passed and the drugs left his system entirely, he would be no different from an ordinary man.
As Wu Junji was born, a slaughter unfolded in this Temporary Palace.
Several people dressed in plain, utterly inconspicuous clothing swiftly and methodically disposed of the midwives in the room.
Only Wu Bing's personal eunuch and the imperial physician stitching his wound remained. (There is no inappropriate wording here; please be fair.)
Several lives were snuffed out in an instant, and the bodies were dragged away.
Wu Bing did not even lift his eyelids.
Time passed, breath by breath, second by second. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something, until half an hour later, hurried footsteps rang out.
"Your Highness! His Majesty has sent word. At precisely noon, Consort Dong gave birth to a little imperial grandson. The little imperial grandson is healthy and well."
The smile on Wu Bing's face widened.
His hand closed around the infant's neck.
His imperial father had only one son, him, but he had been born malformed, with both male and female anatomy. Even the finest physicians in the world dared not say for certain whether he could have offspring.
His imperial father would rather pass the throne to his elder brother's line than give it to a son who would leave no heirs.
Through a strange twist of fate, he had conceived this little son in his arms. At the same time, Consort Dong had also announced her pregnancy.
His imperial mother had said that both children must be born, because no one could guarantee that his condition would not appear in his child.
With two, there would still be a choice. With only one, there truly might be no hope.
Heaven had eyes. Both were normal!
Compared with the one Consort Dong had borne, the little thing in his arms was of unknown parentage and the shame of his life. Killing him would also spare him suffering in this world.
Wu Junji's face turned bluish-purple from suffocation. His instinct to survive made him open his mouth, crying and struggling.
Within a few breaths, he lost consciousness.
Wu Bing's fingers around the infant's neck suddenly loosened.
Born prematurely at eight months, the baby weighed only four jin, a soft little bundle with skin as red as a monkey's bottom and a pinprick-sized mole beneath the outer corner of his right eye.
He was too ugly to tell whom he resembled.
Originally, Wu Bing had not even wanted to look at him, but before his abdomen was cut open, he had suffered nightmares for a month. (Detailed deletions cannot be made in this chapter; there is no inappropriate wording here; please be fair.)
In his dreams, a skeletal man knelt before a coffin, his mournful cries like those of a lone goose separated from its flock, and took his own life to accompany the dead in burial.
He heard people address that man as-the Crown Prince.
Every time he woke from the dream, his heart brimmed with guilt and a jumble of conflicting feelings.
Imperceptibly, this had layered a few strands of indescribable feeling onto his feelings toward the little thing in his arms. (There is no inappropriate wording here.)
After much inner struggle, Wu Bing handed the infant in his arms to his trusted eunuch, Qian Deli. (There is no inappropriate wording here.)
"Take him to my imperial mother. We'll discuss it when I wake."
Eunuch Deli carefully took him.
"This servant obeys."
Who knew how much anesthetic powder had been used for the pain of cutting open his abdomen? Wu Bing was drenched in cold sweat from the pain. (There is no inappropriate wording here.)
But even his body, hardened by fierce fighting on the battlefield, could hold out no longer, and he fell into a deep sleep.
When she heard that both children were normal, the empress's rigid back finally relaxed.
She said "Good" three times in succession.
Devoutly moving her prayer beads, she murmured, "Heaven has not cut off the path for me and my son."
The empress opened the swaddling clothes and froze.
Wu Bing could not tell, but she knew all too well.
This child looked exactly as Wu Bing had when he was born.
Her original intention to send him away wavered.
The empress said, "Take him away and raise him well."
In his previous life, upon learning that Consort Dong had borne a son, Wu Bing had ordered Wu Junji thrown out of the Temporary Palace without even looking at him. A human trafficker had picked him up, tethered him in a cowshed, and raised him there.
Only when Wu Junji was four had he found a chance to escape.
-New readers, darlings, you can check the author's notes later on for content warnings.
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