Three Years After Falling Off the Cliff

"Your Highness, it's still early, would you please come into my humble abode and have a cup of hot tea?" Fu Yi invited Sui Tingheng into the mansion.

"Thank you Miss Yun for your kindness. You should have a good rest." Sui Tingheng shook his head slightly and put the medicine bottle in Fu Yi's hand: "I still have to go back to the palace to see my father. I won't disturb you and Madam Liu."

"Your Highness..." Fu Yi looked at Sui Tingheng's departing back. In just a short while they were separated, who had provoked this gentle and polite prince to become emotionally unstable?

The carriage went straight into the palace, and after entering the East Phoenix Gate, the eunuchs brought in a sedan chair. Sui Tingheng got off the carriage, but instead of sitting in the sedan chair, he strode towards the direction of the imperial study, his robe fluttering in the wind.

"Your Highness!" Mo Wen was stunned for a moment, then hurriedly trotted to catch up. The powerful eunuchs carrying the sedan chair followed behind with uneasiness, as they had never seen the gentle and polite His Highness so angry.

"No need to follow me." Sui Tingheng turned around and glanced at the powerful eunuch and the guards: "Back off!"

"Yes." The guards and eunuchs looked panicked and quickly retreated to the side.

Sui Tingheng's pace became faster and faster. Countless palace maids and eunuchs bowed down to greet him under the red palace wall, but he stepped onto the jade steps leading to the imperial palace without looking back.

"Your Highness, I will convey this message to His Majesty on your behalf..."
The eunuch guarding outside the palace had not yet finished speaking when he saw the prince, who had always behaved himself, walk past him and quickly enter the inner hall.

"Your Highness!" The eunuch knelt down in fear: "Absolutely not, Your Highness!"

The emperor, who was criticizing the memorials at his desk, was so shocked when he saw his son force his way into the palace that his eyes widened: "Heng'er, what are you doing..."
Seeing the guards and eunuchs chasing in, he was afraid that they would hurt his son, so he quickly waved his hand and asked them to retreat.

"What happened? Did you get wronged outside?" The emperor threw the pen aside, walked to Sui Tingheng and looked at him carefully, lowering his voice and asking, "Who offended you? Dad will help you get revenge."
God damn it, you can tell at a glance that his child has suffered a great injustice.

Sui Tingheng looked at the emperor, took a step back and knelt down to pay his respects.

"Heng'er?!" The emperor was shocked. "Did you get into trouble outside?"

"Father, I want to become the crown prince." Sui Ting bowed deeply to the emperor and said, "Please grant my wish, Father."

"You want to be the crown prince? Good, good, good." The emperor was not angry but happy, and pulled Sui Tingheng up from the ground: "You want to be the crown prince, good, when your father first ascended the throne, he wanted to appoint you as the crown prince, but you were worried that the civil officials would make things difficult for your father, so you insisted on following the broken rule of not changing your father's system for three years."

The emperor pressed Sui Tingheng down on the chair and put the teacup in his hand. "It's a good thing that you can figure it out. Tomorrow I will have a quarrel with the civil officials and try to make you the crown prince the day after tomorrow."

"Thank you, father." Sui Tingheng looked at the emperor and said, "I am sorry that I am an unfilial son and have caused you trouble."

"What's so difficult about that? You are my only child. If you are not the crown prince, who else can be the crown prince?" The emperor patted his shoulder and asked, "Did you encounter any unhappy things when you left the palace today?"

Sui Tingheng lowered his eyes and shook his head.

Seeing that he was unwilling to speak, the emperor rubbed his hands and wanted to ask more questions but resisted: "Did someone with no eyes provoke you?"
No one should dare to offend now...

"Have."

"Huh? Really?!"

"Father," Sui Tingheng said, "I want to enter the court as soon as possible to help you purge the old forces of Concubine Zeng and Prince Ning."

"So it was that bastard Sui Ruijing who made you angry!" The emperor cursed in a low voice, "I knew he was no good!"

"How did he offend you?" For the past two years, Sui Ruijing has been keeping silent and pretending to be an honest man in public. Now he finally can't bear it anymore?
Sui Tingheng stuffed the teacup back into the emperor's hands and said, "Today, I went to the Cuju field, and Prince Ning looked at me with arrogance."

emperor:"……"
We have been father and son for many years. How can you have the heart to use such an excuse to treat me perfunctorily?
Yun family.
When Fu Yi came out of the medicinal bath, Doctor Liu was already waiting for her outside with a medicine box and a long silver needle in his hand.

"Doctor Liu." Fu Yi took a storybook from the bookshelf and stood obediently in front of Doctor Liu.

"I heard that you went to play Cuju today?" Doctor Liu was a woman in her early forties. Her family had been practicing medicine for generations. She had received favors from the Yun family in Chongzhou. In order to treat Fu Yi's leg, she followed the Yun family back to the capital and opened a clinic in the capital.

She glanced at the obedient Fu Yi and smiled kindly: "Go sit on the couch, I will give you acupuncture."

Fu Yi didn't dare to say a word. She hugged the book tightly and sat on the soft couch.

"Your legs have recovered well. It's okay to run occasionally." Doctor Liu skillfully inserted the needle into Fu Yi's leg. "As long as you don't get cold, the pain will become less and less frequent in the future."
Xia Yu stuffed a soft pillow around her waist and said, "Miss, I put the ointment that the prince gave you on the shelf for you."

"What medicine?" Doctor Liu asked Xia Yu to get the ointment. She opened the bottle and smelled it, with a strange look on her face.

Xia Yu: "Doctor Liu, is there something wrong with this ointment?"

"No, it's a valuable medicine." Doctor Liu returned the medicine to Xia Yu: "It will be good for your young lady's old injury."
The royal family is willing to give out this kind of emergency and life-saving secret medicine, which shows that they treat their loyal ministers well.

"That's good." Hearing that the medicine was useful for the young lady, Xia Yu immediately smiled.

Soon Fu Yi's legs were densely pierced with silver needles. Doctor Liu stood up and said, "I'll go talk to your mother and come back to remove the needles in half an hour."
Facing Doctor Liu with the silver needle in his hand, Fu Yi was particularly easy to talk to. She believed whatever Doctor Liu said and waited until Doctor Liu left the room before she dared to open the book in her arms.

It's okay to look at it, but the more she looked at it, the angrier she got. She threw the book aside and said, "Xia Yu, give me another one. Take one from the ones the prince gave me." "Miss, the new book is not good?"

"I don't know who wrote this kind of cowardly book. The way to get revenge on a man is to use all means to make him fall in love with her, and then she runs away and dies. Oh, using her own death to punish the bastard, the reason is that he will lose his love forever and suffer from loneliness. Bah, bah, bah, what kind of revenge is this!"

Fu Yi couldn't stand this kind of cowardice: "It would be better to let him lose his hands and feet forever and suffer the pain of decapitation. That would be more satisfying."

"This book is good. In this book, a female hero falls off a cliff, picks up a martial arts secret book, and dominates the entire martial arts world." Fu Yi opened the book that Xia Yu had just brought, flipped through the introduction, and began to read it with satisfaction.

After flipping through a few pages, Fu Yi discovered that the book had been flipped through, especially the part where the heroine fell off the cliff, picked up the secret book, mastered her magical powers, and left the cliff. The traces of flipping through were very obvious.

Has anyone read this book?
Maybe some literate palace maid or eunuch had secretly read it, but Fu Yi didn't take it seriously and continued reading with great interest.

Early in the morning, just as the sky was getting light, the court officials walked into the hall, feeling sleepy. The first person they saw was Sui Tingheng standing in the first seat.

They blinked in disbelief. They were not mistaken. It was indeed His Royal Highness the Prince.

His Royal Highness the Prince was not managing the affairs of the court, and he was not supposed to attend the court. Everyone couldn't understand why he was here, but no one wanted to be the first to stand out, so a strange balance was maintained in the hall.

However, this balance was soon broken by the emperor.

"My dear ministers, I dreamed of the late emperor last night." The emperor sighed, "In the dream, the late emperor talked to me a lot. I couldn't make up my mind, so I wanted to talk to you."

courtier:"……"
Come on, the late emperor didn’t even like to look at you when he was alive, so how could he appear in your dreams after he’s dead?
A general stood up and said, "I wonder what warning the late emperor gave me in his dream?"

"The late emperor scolded me in my dream for half the night last night."

The civil officials became excited. If they were cursing Your Majesty, then it was really possible that the late emperor had sent him a message in his dream.

"The late emperor scolded me for being too obsessed with old rituals and forgetting to put my ancestral heritage first." The emperor's eyes swept over everyone's faces: "He scolded me for having ascended the throne for two years and having only one son, so why didn't I appoint a crown prince?"

"My dears, is the late emperor trying to urge me to appoint a crown prince soon?" The emperor sighed, "I want to follow the late emperor's last wish, but Tingheng insists on following the rules. Please advise him on my behalf, don't let the late emperor's spirit in heaven rest in peace."

Courtier: Huh? We haven't even discussed whether to appoint a crown prince in advance. Why are we skipping this step and directly persuading His Highness to agree to become the crown prince?
Seeing that the courtiers did not respond, the emperor took out a handkerchief from his sleeve and covered his face with it and cried: "I really don't know what to do."
Son, wait for your father to cry out for the position of crown prince for you!

When the ministers saw that the emperor was crying again, they hurried to persuade him and beg him. In the end, no one knew what was going on. It was only after the prince knelt on the ground and apologized to the emperor and agreed to be the crown prince that the emperor stopped crying.

After the court was dismissed, everyone shook their heads, which were dizzy from the emperor's crying, and looked at each other.

"Lord Yun." A minister who was friendly with Yun Wanggui walked up to him and asked, "What does the emperor mean?"

"Perhaps the emperor is filial to the late emperor and does not want to go against his wishes." Yun Wanggui bowed his hands and said, "The emperor governs the world with filial piety. How can we, the ministers, make things difficult for your majesty?"

Before the court officials even left the palace, the imperial edict to appoint the crown prince had already been announced directly to the palace and the people inside and outside, leaving them no chance to object.
courtier:"……"
It can be seen that Your Majesty is very eager to be filial to the late emperor.

Half an hour later, the palace issued another imperial decree. To congratulate the crown prince, an additional imperial examination would be held next year.
The Ministry of Rites suddenly had a lot of work to do: …

The students were overjoyed: Sooner or later, the crown prince will be appointed, so what difference does it make if it’s earlier? Although the three-year mourning period has not yet ended, the late emperor came to him in a dream, and your majesty is just listening to the late emperor. What’s more, your majesty has also opened an imperial examination, so what can he do wrong?

"Your Majesty has appointed a crown prince?" Fu Yi heard the news and laughed after a while: "This is really a happy event."
Your Majesty has been on the throne for two years, and now the position of Crown Prince has been decided. Prince Ning's hope of seizing the throne is very slim.
Seeing that Prince Ning was becoming increasingly unhappy, her mood became better. This was the best gift for her eighteenth birthday.

The day after the imperial edict to appoint the crown prince was issued.
"Your Highness." Mo Wen walked to Sui Tingheng and saw that the people from the Weaving Bureau were measuring the size of His Highness's clothes. They did not mention anything about the Yun family.
The enthronement ceremony was scheduled for half a month later, and everyone was busy. The fact that His Highness remembered Miss Yun's birthday showed how much he valued the Yun family.

"Does Miss Yun like the gift I asked you to deliver?" Sui Tingheng waved away the people from the Weaving Bureau and continued to ask Mo Wen: "And how about her legs?"

"Miss Yun likes the things you gave her very much. She also said... Your Highness has given her the best gift." Mo Wen did not dare to guess the prince's thoughts: "I saw that Miss was walking normally, so I think there is no problem."

"The best gift..." Sui Tingheng looked at the purse embroidered with a Chinese jujube pattern hanging on the wall. The most important event that happened in the past two days was that he was officially named the crown prince.

Inside Prince Ning's mansion, Prince Ning looked at the messy chessboard and swept all the chess pieces aside.

"So what if I appoint a crown prince?" He picked up a chess piece and threw it into the teacup. "Sui Tingheng is the emperor's only son. If he dies, will my loving and family-loving brother take another concubine and have another child, or will he let the throne fall to someone else a hundred years later?"

"Your Majesty, the Crown Prince is heavily guarded..."

"This king cannot bear to see him alive."
Prince Ning thought of the sleeves folded together under the peach tree again: "Sui Tingheng must die."

(End of this chapter)