Chapter 5

Chapter 5

In the fifth year, the Northern Frontier was in dire straits.

The Northern Desert Tribes swept south, capturing three cities in quick succession. The imperial court was a mess of arguments between the war and peace factions. Unwilling to place the entire burden of the war on the Song Family, I insisted on leading the campaign personally. The night before we set out, Song Yunshu fastened my bracers in front of the Ancestral Temple.

Her fingertips brushed against the back of my hand; they were as cold as ever.

I told her, “While I am away from the capital, I leave the Imperial Harem to you. The Empress Dowager is elderly and Zhiwei is frail; look after them.”

She lowered her head and complied.

As I mounted my horse, I suddenly heard her speak from the bottom of the steps. “Rest assured, Your Majesty. This consort will guard the capital well, and I will protect those Your Majesty wishes to shield.”

I looked back at her.

The wind was strong that day, making her cloak snap and rustle. Standing upon the white jade steps, she looked like a spear held perfectly straight.

The war was fiercer than I had anticipated.

I fought in the Northern Frontier for several months, with military reports flying back and forth like snowflakes. During that time, an upheaval occurred within the capital. While I was away, a faction of the imperial clan conspired with a vice commander of the Imperial Guard, attempting a coup on the night of the Lantern Festival. It was Song Yunshu who used the Phoenix Seal to seal the palace gates and mobilized the Capital Garrison, working through the night with General Song Lie to suppress the rebellion.

Later, I saw the memorial she sent. There were only a few short lines on the paper:

“The rebels have been pacified; the palace gates were never breached. The Empress Dowager is safe, the Noble Consort is safe, and the Ancestral Temple is secure. Your Majesty may focus on the war without worry.”

The handwriting was as steady as if it hadn’t been stained by a single drop of blood.

But what I heard from the generals was a different story.

They said that on that night, the firelight turned half the sky red. The Empress, clad in armor, stood atop the Xuanwu Gate and personally shot the first rebel who climbed the wall. They said Changle Palace was nearly lost, and it was the Empress who led a charge to rescue Noble Consort Liu from the chaotic troops. They also said she stood on the city tower for an entire night, and when she took off her armor the next day, her inner robes were soaked through with blood-no one knew if it was from others or herself.

Holding those reports, I couldn’t quite describe the feeling in my heart.

Song Yunshu always seemed capable of carrying more than I imagined.

Yet, at that time, I still categorized this shock as mere admiration.

I didn’t even realize that as I opened her reports time and time again on the battlefield, seeing those familiar lines of text, I had already begun to depend on her.

What truly destroyed us was suspicion.

Before I led the army back to the capital from the Northern Frontier, we captured a spy who was colluding with the enemy. The name he confessed wasn’t shocking, but the secret letter found on him was. It bore the private seal of the Song Family, and its contents were but a single sentence:

“The Emperor is away; the capital is ours for the taking.”

I stared at that letter and didn’t sleep all night.

Immediately after, several secret reports arrived from the capital in succession. Some said the Empress had used the pretext of suppressing the rebellion to replace the Capital Garrison commanders with old subordinates of the Song Family. Some said she had placed the Noble Consort under house arrest for several days while the palace gates were sealed. Others said General Song Lie had met privately with old officials of the imperial clan outside the city, holding the tiger tally that could mobilize reinforcements from the Northern Frontier.

Those reports were a mix of truth and lies, yet they all struck at the most critical points.

I didn’t want to believe them, but the closer I got to the capital, the deeper that thorn stabbed into my heart.

Ultimately, it wasn’t that I didn’t suspect the reports were fake.

I was simply more afraid of something else.

If they were true, then I, the Emperor, had become a joke-someone hoisted up by the Song Family only to be manipulated by them. If they were false, I had to admit that the Empress I had neglected for five years looked more like the master of these lands than I did.

And so, I chose the easiest path.

I would believe she was guilty first, and then judge whether she had been wronged.

The day I returned to the palace, the snow had not yet fully melted.

When Liu Zhiwei saw me, she wept. She didn’t cry loudly; she only spoke of how dangerous the rebellion had been that night, and how Song Yunshu had sent people to lock her in a side hall, forbidding her from taking a single step outside.

“This consort knows the Empress did it to keep me safe,” she said softly, wiping her tears. “But during those days, everyone in the palace was saying the Central Palace was taking the opportunity to settle scores. This consort was truly… truly afraid.”

The more she spoke for Song Yunshu like that, the more the fire in my heart became uncontrollable.

I went to Qiwu Palace that night.

Song Yunshu had just returned from the Ancestral Temple, still carrying the chill of the wind and snow. She had grown much thinner; her face was even paler than before I left, almost transparent, with faint shadows under her eyes as if she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a long time.

I threw the secret letter at her feet and asked, “Do you recognize this?”

She looked down at it, her expression not changing in the slightest. “I do. It is the Song Family seal.”

“Then you still dare to claim you are innocent?”

She was silent for a moment before saying, “If this consort says this is a forgery, would Your Majesty believe me?”

I sneered. “First, tell me: on the night the rebellion was suppressed, why did you mobilize the Capital Garrison without authorization?”

“Because there were moles within the Imperial Guard.”

“Why did you seal Changle Palace?”

“Because the rebels targeted Changle Palace first.”

“Why did you replace the commanders?”

“Because the original ones had already conspired with the traitors.”

With every answer she gave, I felt she was too calm-so calm it felt as if she had been prepared. My anger was ignited bit by bit, finally culminating in the most hurtful sentence: “Song Yunshu, does your Song Family think that without you, I cannot hold this empire?”

In that instant, she finally looked up at me.

For the first time, there was a crack in those eyes.

But that crack wasn’t from grievance; it was from a deep, biting cold.

She said softly, “If this consort truly wished to rebel, Your Majesty might not have been able to return today.”

I was completely enraged by those words.

That night, I stripped her of the Phoenix Seal and cast her into the Cold Palace on charges of “interfering in state affairs, usurping power, and conspiring with external relatives.”

As she was being escorted out of Qiwu Palace, she happened to run into the Imperial Guards going to seize the Song estate. Her youngest brother, Song Heng, who was only sixteen, rushed out of the mourning hall dressed in funeral white, shouting that he wanted to see me. He was pinned into the snow on the spot, and one of his legs was broken. General Song Lie was stripped of his military power and was ambushed on his way back to the capital, dying under a hail of arrows. Song Qi led the remnants of the troops to escort the coffin back, but upon reaching Yanhui Ridge, they fell into an ambush by the Pei Faction; they couldn’t even recover his full remains.

Of the two young generals of the Song Family, one was dead and the other crippled. The entire clan lost its former glory from that moment on.

Song Yunshu did not beg me when she received the decree.

She only looked back at me once before leaving Qiwu Palace.

“Your Majesty has finally found a reason to hate this consort.”

She left after saying that, the hem of her robe brushing over the threshold. She did not look back even once.

At that time, I thought I was eliminating a threat.

Only later did I realize that on that night, I hadn’t pushed away an ambitious Empress, but the last person in this world who had truly guarded the empire for me.