Consort Ji brought the breakthrough first, returning to Ganquan Palace before dawn. Noble Lady Yu—Yi Yan—had been tipped off by her own network, and had preemptively sent a terrified eunuch to intercept Consort Ji. The actual Imperial Guard who had been sleeping with Qian Ruixin had panicked. Before attempting to flee the capital, he had broken into Noble Lady Yu's pavilion to retrieve a highly compromising letter Qian Ruixin had written to him.
He didn't make it out. Consort Ji's people had intercepted him. They recovered the letter, the contents of which provided an airtight, completely unredacted timeline of the affair. And the man himself—a junior lieutenant in my brother's own unit—was currently bound, gagged, and locked in a terrifyingly unofficial holding room beneath Jinghe Palace.
The crushing weight lifted off my chest. My brother was going to survive this. The Zhen family was safe.
I barely had time to process the relief before the second shockwave hit.
Gong Pingru slammed open the doors of my pavilion, her normally flawless composure completely eradicated. Her hair was loose, her face the color of wet ash. "Bao Niang—get up. We are going to the Court of Judicial Review right now. Someone breached the holding cells."
I froze, the teacup halting halfway to my mouth.
"They bypassed the guards," Pingru gasped out. "They took iron rods to his legs—"
An explosive, deafening crack went off inside my skull, instantly whiting out my vision. The teacup hit the marble floor, shattering into porcelain dust. The roaring in my ears drowned out whatever else Pingru was screaming.
His legs. Smashed with iron rods.
My brother was a cavalry commander. Legs were his life. They hadn't tried to kill him; they had executed a surgical strike to sever his military future.
"Who." The word tore out of my throat, raw and flat. I lunged for the door, already deciding how I would kill whoever gave the order. "I will peel the skin off them while they are still breathing."
Consort Ji grabbed my shoulders with both hands, stopping my momentum with brutal force. "Bao Niang, stop! The imperial physician just left. You cannot let your blood run hot!"
I fought her grip. "Let me go!"
"You are two months pregnant!" Ji screamed directly into my face.
That stopped me dead. The roaring in my ears cut out instantly.
A child. After five years of bitter, empty waiting, the child I would have burned the world down to conceive had finally arrived—precisely at the exact moment the Zhen family's spine was being systematically snapped.
* * *
The stench in the Judicial Review infirmary was a choking mixture of rot, strong medicinal alcohol, and copper-scented blood. My brother, Zhen Anyu, lay strapped to a low wooden cot. All the vital color had been drained from his skin, leaving him looking like a wax effigy of himself.
An elderly physician was working frantically on the shattered bones below his knees, his hands slick with my brother's blood.
When I called his name, Anyu opened his eyes. He didn't look at me with fury, or agony, or even the desperate relief of seeing family. He just looked at me. It was a completely flat, hollowed-out, untethered gaze. That absolute, dead emptiness terrified me infinitely more than if he had been screaming.
"Anyu," I choked out, grabbing his freezing hand. "Tell me exactly who did this. Give me a face. I will see their entire bloodline exterminated."
He slowly turned his head away, staring at the damp stone wall.
"Answer me!" I demanded, my voice cracking, the panic rising. "And tell me the truth about Qian Ruixin's lover—we have him—Consort Ji caught him. You don't have to die for this!"
He turned back, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an exhausting clarity. "Bao Niang. Are you actually this blind?"
I stared at him, uncomprehending. "What?"
"Why do you think I confessed?" His voice was a rasping scrape against the silence of the cell. "Do you think I'm some naive idiot playing the tragic hero for a subordinate? Do you have any idea the political terror Father is experiencing in the Northwest? Why do you think I just went along with the execution warrant?"
"I don't understand—"
"Because it was the only way to satisfy the throne!" he practically spat, and the violence of the exertion made him cough blood.
I flinched back as if he had struck me.
Tears began to leak from the corners of his eyes, cutting clean tracks through the grime and blood on his face. This proud, unstoppable cavalry general was crying.
"What right do you have to threaten revenge?" he asked, his voice shattering. "Bao Niang—the Zhen family survived three emperors by staying completely clear of capital politics! Father and I anchored the Northwest specifically to avoid the imperial mill. But you—you decided, in your arrogant, stubborn delusion, that you had to marry a man sitting on the Dragon Throne."
Every word was a nail driven directly into my sternum.
"If you hadn't insisted," he wept, his hands convulsing uselessly against the restraints, "Grandfather could have retired peacefully in Huizhou. Father and I wouldn't have spent the last five years living in absolute terror, waiting for the Emperor to decide we were too powerful to live. Father wouldn't have had to sacrifice me to the capital as a political hostage!"
The truth of it was absolute, and it was lethal.
I raised my arm to strike him and slammed my own face instead. The crack echoed in the cell. My ear rang high and sharp. It wasn't enough. No pain I gave myself could balance what I had done to my family or rebuild my brother's shattered bones.
I raised my hand to strike myself again. Consort Ji caught my wrist mid-air.
I looked at my brother. My vision was entirely blurred. I stepped back from the cot, knelt on the filthy, bloodstained floor of the prison, and performed a slow, full prostration, pressing my forehead against the cold stone.
"Bao Niang was wrong," I whispered to the floor. "For all of it. I'm sorry."
* * *
When they dragged me back to Ganquan Palace, I ordered the heavy wooden doors barred from the inside.
I refused all audiences. Mother came and stood outside the pavilion, weeping. Grandfather stood in the courtyard for two hours before his knees gave out. Consort Ji and Gong Pingru slammed their fists against the wood every afternoon. I sat on the floor of my inner chamber in total darkness, refusing food, refusing water, refusing to speak, until the agonizing cramps in my stomach finally dragged me into unconsciousness.
When I woke, the pungent smell of burning moxa filled the room. Consort Ji was slumped over the edge of my bed, deeply asleep, her hand wrapped tightly around my wrist.
"Water," I rasped. My throat felt like sandpaper.
She snapped awake instantly. She poured water down my throat, checked my pulse, and then looked at me, her expression grim but settled.
The crisis regarding my brother had been abruptly 'resolved.'
The assailant who had shattered his legs—a minor official with no legal access to the Judicial Review who had mysteriously obtained heavily restricted jailer clearance—had been found dead in an alleyway before dawn. Throat slit. The trail of accountability was systematically, professionally severed.
I stared at the silk canopy above me for a long time. Then I blindly reached out and grabbed Consort Ji's hand. "You are the sharpest political mind in this palace, Ji. Don't lie to me."
She froze.
"You know exactly who authorized the strike on my brother," I said, my voice dead. "Who else could command a maiming inside the highly secure Court of Judicial Review? Who else would dare? He was terrified my brother would inherit the command of the Northwestern Army. So he permanently crippled the heir."
Consort Ji looked away, her jaw tight.
"You have a royal heir growing inside you, Bao Niang," she said very quietly, refusing to confirm or deny the accusation. "You must force yourself to remain calm."
Hope you enjoyed today's chapter!
Can't wait to see who Bao Niang blames, and what answer she forces out of the Emperor? You don't have to wait for tomorrow. The full, completed translation is already waiting in my VIP Library.
📚 Unlock the complete book here:
patreon[.]com/SleeplessTranslations
(Remove the brackets to visit!)