The Legend of the Concubine in the Harem

Xie Yi said goodbye to Xie's mother and turned around and went to where Wang Cheng was.

Wang Cheng was originally one of the emperor's secret agents, but later he retired. At Xie Yuzhen's suggestion and request, the emperor sent Wang Cheng to Yongjia Marquis's Mansion to help this family of "orphans and widows". At that time, Xie Yuzhen coveted the ability of the emperor's secret agents, so he asked Xie Yi to get closer to Wang Cheng so that he could completely win him over and steal him as his apprentice...

At that time, Xie Yuzhen had not imagined that she would share the power in the hands of the emperor so quickly, and that the emperor was actually willing to share the power he had hidden in the dark with her... However, even so, Xie Yuzhen never gave up the plan to create a group of secret agents that belonged only to him and to the Yongjia Marquisate.

While the emperor was being very honest with Xie Yuzhen, she was not willing to fully trust this honesty; conversely, she had to appear to be honest enough with the emperor while concealing her own lack of honesty.

This was not difficult for her.

Wang Cheng, who was chosen to learn from, had a vague sense of this, but he had already been completely tied to the Yongjia Marquisate. Moreover, compared to the moody and difficult-to-serve emperor, he felt more at ease serving the empress, who had a strong personality but was generous to her own people... Especially during the more than ten years in the Yongjia Marquisate, no one in the mansion treated him as a eunuch and slave, respecting him on the surface but slandering him behind his back. Instead, they really regarded him as an ordinary steward of the marquisate.

This ordinary treatment made Wang Cheng, who had been physically disabled since childhood and had to hide in the shadows for a long time and face all kinds of conspiracies and bloodshed, feel very at ease.

The one who did this best was the young Marquis Yongjia.

To be disrespectful, sometimes Wang Cheng felt that Marquis Yongjia was like a younger member of his own family, close but not intimate. Although he understood that there might be calculations behind his actions, but... so what?

Anyway, he is old and it is not easy for him to live a normal life for a few years. Why do we have to dig into the matter and get to the bottom of it?

"Uncle Wang." Xie Yi walked in hurriedly, "Can I borrow the firewood room in your yard?"

The gray-haired Wang Cheng replied cheerfully, "You want to eat firewood chicken? Please help yourself, my Lord."

This answer was a bit inconsistent, as if Wang Cheng was hard of hearing due to his age, but Xie Yi understood what he meant, so he bowed and smiled and said, "Yes, I'll give you a share when it's done."

The whereabouts of the actress who escaped from Heyi Tower had long been under the control of the Yongjia Marquis' Mansion. Xie Yi and others had been keeping an eye on her until she disguised herself twice, made a long detour around the city and entered a house at the end of a small alley in the west of the city, and then they started to arrest her.

To outsiders, the Yongjia Marquis, whose appearance and manners seem otherworldly like a banished immortal, is actually very good at such secret matters, even too sophisticated, and his methods can be described as vicious.

He knew that if he wanted to get something practical and effective out of this matter, he had to act before everyone else and not give anyone involved a chance to get ahead - those two actors were cultists, and to be able to come to the capital, they must have the support of someone in power. The female actor left immediately after noticing something unusual, and if the search and capture was slow, she would be sent away by her accomplices or simply killed; and Princess Rong Le, who was also a half-victim, had been operating in the capital for many years. If she was determined to find out the whereabouts of a person, it would not be too difficult. At most, it would take time to figure out the whereabouts of the person.

Xie Yi didn't bother to argue with anyone. He ordered the spies to track down the actress. After confirming her final destination, he ignored everything else and arrested the actress and the person who was meeting her in the house. He didn't care about the identity of the person in the house, he just arrested them first.

However...the identity of the person in the room did surprise Xie Yi.

The people in the room were an adult man and a young servant.

This is the man's outer residence. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary house, but inside it is a different world. The various furnishings and utensils are very precious, and there are even items made by the emperor.

This man...is the third son-in-law of the current emperor and the consort of Princess Fengning Lu Zaiguang.

When interrogating an actor suspected of murdering the princess, no matter how cruel Xie Yi's methods were, others would not say anything. But it was different for the prince consort. After all, he was half a member of the royal family, and he was also Xie Yi's "stepbrother-in-law". If he was arrested and interrogated at will, it would inevitably be suspected of bullying the elder with the younger, which would offend Princess Fengning.

But Xie Yi had no hesitation or entanglement, and he forcefully captured the man and brought him back to the mansion. By the way, he found the least noticeable and most secure place in the mansion - the courtyard where Wang Cheng, the former emperor, had secretly spied on his son - and lost no time to get the information out of his "brother-in-law" and the actress.

At the same time when the Third Prince Consort was about to suffer disaster because he failed in his secret affair and was caught in adultery by his "brother-in-law" in the yard and was about to be lynched, Lu Zaiguang in Princess Fengning's mansion finally received a letter handed to her by Princess Yongtai.

Princess Fengning had a very weak presence among the royal heirs. Her biological mother's background was very humble. She was just the daughter of a commoner in the suburbs of Beijing. She died early and was still a noble concubine when she was buried. Although she was later raised by Concubine Ning, who was of noble birth, her adoptive mother was mentally ill and had no palace power. Although Concubine Ning treated Princess Fengning very well, the two of them were more like playmates than mother and daughter. Because of Concubine Ning's special situation, they stayed in their own palace most of the time and never went out, making them even more inconspicuous.

Later, when Concubine Ning "passed away" and Princess Fengning was old, the emperor did not find another adoptive mother for her, but moved her directly into Chonghua Palace. Xie Yuzhen had a good impression of this quiet, gentle, and book-loving princess, and because of the old relationship between Wang Linghui and Lu Yinggui, he also took Princess Fengning under his wing. Although he was not as attentive as he would be to his own daughter, he did take better care of her.

As for the eldest prince and the third prince in Chonghua Palace, who had been entrusted by Concubine Huaijing before her death, Xie Yuzhen could only ensure that they had enough food and that the palace servants who took care of them would not do anything unnecessary. Apart from helping to uphold justice when the second prince tried to bully him... there was no other extra care.

Princess Fengning's relationship with Empress Xie was not distant, but not as close as Princess Yongtai's. Her husband was just a man of decent looks chosen from among the sons of nobles. He had no concubines and was not rumored to have any special hobbies, let alone a second son who could inherit the title.

After being married off, Princess Fengning lived a peaceful and ordinary life, except that she had not been able to get pregnant for a long time. The princess herself remained calm about the situation, but her husband could no longer tolerate it.