Chapter 366 — Confidence

She herself had been reborn, and so she knew the Prince of Liao would in the end ascend the throne. That was why she feared him. But now the Crown Prince had committed no fault, and the Emperor had no mind to change heirs; and in her memory of her former life, the Crown Prince, right up to the shooting, had done nothing wrong, and the Emperor had shown no intent to replace him. The Crown Prince's accession was the common understanding of the realm. Wang Ge was an inner-court eunuch. Even if the Prince of Liao continued to grow as he was and became King of Liaodong, it would profit Wang Ge nothing; still less would the Prince speak up for him should he run afoul of the law. On what grounds would he dare stake everything on the Prince of Liao?

She thought of the Prince of Liao's birth mother, the Empress Yi Wan.

No wonder—was the Empress Yi what he relied on?

No, that didn't fit either!

A eunuch like Wang Ge. There were a dime a dozen of them in the inner palace. If he were not Wang Yuan's adopted son, Song Yan likely would not have given him a second glance, let alone Empress Yi.

Where on earth did his confidence come from?

Dou Yan took a sip of tea in some irritation, and all at once something stirred in her mind.

"Yantang, something has just come back to me." She said hurriedly to Song Yan, "I seem to recall hearing someone say that Wang Ge and Cui Junyi were sworn enemies. Do you think this might have something to do with feuds among the eunuchs?"

Song Yan's eyes lit up at the words. "Why didn't I think of investigating from that angle?" He leaned toward Dou Yan. "Tell me, what are you thinking?"

"Thinking?" Dou Yan twisted the ruby ring on her finger awkwardly and looked at Song Yan with an apologetic air. "My head is a mess right now; I have no plan at all. It was just a passing thought, and I don't even know whether it holds up."

In her previous life she had been an unremarkable marchioness, forever trailing behind the wives of great and illustrious houses whenever she entered the palace. Once she had fallen a few steps behind and happened to overhear two inner attendants grumbling in low voices. She had not caught the particulars, only one sentence: "Cui Junyi dragged Wang Ge down with him in death; when I die, I mean to drag him down with me too." At the time she had not known who Wang Ge was, but Cui Junyi she remembered. It was all old palace gossip, and she had forgotten it as soon as she heard it. Now it suddenly surfaced, and she told it to Song Yan. But no sooner had the words left her mouth than she realized how absurd they sounded.

Never mind that Cui Junyi was the Crown Prince's man; Wang Ge coveted the Kuang family fortune, so he could only have been tied to Prince Liao. How had this come round to a quarrel among eunuchs?

Dou Yan felt a little ill at ease.

Song Yan was a sensitive man; how could he fail to see Dou Yan's embarrassment?

He put an arm around her and laughed. "It's fine! Don't the storybooks all say that truth is stranger than fiction? Sometimes when we run up against something we cannot puzzle out, we have to let our thoughts roam freely, and who knows, we may just find a way through. What you have told me, I will have people look into carefully. We might really turn something up."

Dou Yan smiled sheepishly.

The Kuang family affair seemed to grow more tangled by the day, and the usable clues were so few...

Just thinking about it made her head swell.

Forget it. Leave it to Song Yan to worry over!

She put the matter out of her mind and comfortably drank her bird's nest porridge.

Song Yan, meanwhile, went off to attend to it.

By the time Dou Yan finished the bowl of porridge, she looked up and saw the large bolster pillow across from her, still dented from where Song Yan had leaned against it, and she fell into a daze.

Ever since she married Song Yan, she had grown used to handing her troubles to him, and rarely used her own head the way she once had.

But Song Yan knew nothing of what was to come!

She, on the other hand, knew exactly how history would unfold.

How could she let Song Yan grope about like a blind man while she sat back and reaped the rewards?

Could it be that once a woman comes to depend on someone, she can no longer be bothered to think?

Dou Yan shuddered.

No. She could not go on like this.

She had to help Song Yan uncover the truth of those years; she had to help him avert the tragedy of her past life. She ought to be striving alongside Song Yan, so how could she simply nestle under his wing?

He was, in both her lives, the person who had treated her best!

Dou Yan drew a deep breath, straightened her back, and called out loudly, "Ganlu, bring me the four treasures of the study!"

Ganlu answered and went off, quickly returning with brush, ink, paper, and inkstone.

To all the sisters reading: there is a holiday tomorrow, so the bonus chapter will be around three in the afternoon, and the regular update around eleven at night.

o(n_n)o~