The Gilded Cage - Chapter 167

Plead Guilty – In His Life, He Really Failed Completely. (2)

“You killed my father, insulted my elder brother, trapped me in the East Palace, and lied to me for so long. Shouldn’t I hate you, shouldn’t I leave you?” Chu Ning put away her expression and looked at him coldly, trying to restrain her emotions. “In the past few years, you have been on guard against me in every possible way, whether it is the other relatives or servants left in my family, getting rid of them one by one, my two cousins would not have been spared, if not because of their young age. If I didn’t know anything, how can I save my life?”

Facing her eloquent statements and questions, he subconsciously wanted to avoid them, barely daring to look her directly in the eyes.

“I—A’Ning, do you think I’m willing to be such a person?” He recalled the past and couldn’t help shaking his head in pain, “Who doesn’t want to be clean? But me, as a prince, I have never had a single day of peace. My father is weak, and he treats me far worse than my younger brother. The Empress Dowager doesn’t like me either. If I did not do these things, how can we survive to this day?!”

Looking at him still looking for excuses for his actions, Chu Ning couldn’t help but point it out directly, “You don’t have to deceive yourself anymore, your bad situation is not an excuse for you to do so many evil things. You are the prince but never pointed the finger at the treacherous and villainous people in the court. Instead, in order to win people’s hearts, you indulge them in doing evil and enrich your own pockets. Selling out your own people and colluding with foreign enemies?”

Even the Qi family, who had been lobbying for power for so many years, had never done such an unfaithful thing.

Under her rebuttal, Xiao Yu felt more and more at a loss, but he kept shaking his head, trying to deny all of this.

“Now that I’m down, everyone scolds me for being incompetent, weak, and unfaithful. You are not me, so how do you know the pain in my heart?”

“I really don’t know.” Chu Ning looked at him quietly, with wet eyes, “If I hadn’t met His Majesty, I’m afraid I would have made many excuses for you—after all, you have difficulties, and you have faced many problems. You had no other choice. But look at Your Majesty, is his past better than yours? Even though you have the rightful status as a legitimate son, you have been carefully raised and cared for since you were a child, and you are extremely honorable. He was forced to go to the frontier when he was a teenager, and no one helped him. He had to fend for himself, but he knows respect, responsibility, and courage. He can distinguish right from wrong, and he has a bottom line. Do you still feel that everything you do is justified?”

Xiao Yu was so blocked by her sharp rebuttal, he took two steps back, gritted his teeth, and said, “Yes, he has become the emperor, he is good in everything, I am useless, everything is wrong… So, are you satisfied? When you saw me today, you just wanted to see my embarrassment, so that I would be ashamed?”

Chu Ning lowered her eyes, waved away the complicated emotions in her his heart, and signaled the waiter waiting on the side to bring up the prepared table.

“I brought you here today because I want you to take the initiative to confess to framing my father back then and give him a clean posthumous name.”

This was her biggest wish in the past three years, and it should be fulfilled by herself.

Xiao Yu stared at her, with a twisted expression on his face, “Why should I listen to you? You betrayed me, do you think I will justify your father’s name? It’s been so long, you can’t find evidence?”

She was silent for a moment and said softly, “Yes, there is no evidence. But don’t forget, besides you, Xu Rong also participated in this matter.”

He narrowed his pupils and subconsciously denied, “He won’t betray me!”

“Of course he won’t, but the more he is like this, the more he will be punished. He has worked hard for you for so many years, but now he is old and weak, but he still has to endure the torture in prison for you, and he can’t get out. Don’t you have a heart?”

“I…”

His legs and feet were weak, and he took two steps back again, shaking from side to side and almost unable to stand.

Xu Rong had served as a minister in the East Palace since Xiao Yu was a child. Over the years, the relationship between the two was not only of prince and minister, but also of father and son. They were very close. He had lived for more than twenty years in his life, and only Xu Rong was the one who stood by his side sincerely and worked hard to remove all obstacles and pave the way for him.

Trembling, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes silently. His shoulders drooped, and he slowly knelt down in front of the desk, picked up a brush, and wrote down what happened back then.

The vermilion ink pad was placed by the desk, and he stretched out his trembling hands to press it. When it was about to fall on the white paper, he stopped again and said in a hoarse voice, “When I finish, I will give all of these to you. Please tell Xu Rong to read them.”

Xu Rong was stubborn. Even if someone told him that the matter has been investigated, he would never say a word. Only by letting him see this confession with his own eyes could he be spared the punishment for not refusing to speak and the suffering of prison.

“Alright.”

Chu Ning looked away. This was probably the only time in his life when he was truly willing to think about others.

The red fingerprints fell between the black and white paper. He stood up with difficulty, and without another word, he stumbled away from the Ganlu Temple like a walking dead.

The sun outside the hall was still scorching hot, making everything limp and lifeless.

He walked in a daze as if he had lost consciousness, and finally couldn’t bear the scorching heat, falling headlong on the hard, hot ground.

The finely crushed gravel was embedded in the flesh of his palms and arms, leaving shocking bloodstains.

He lay powerlessly on the ground, looking up at the scorching sun above his head, and couldn’t help spitting out a mouthful of blood.

In his life, he was really defeated.