Mama Wang trembled all over. Her own princess had been married off by the Emperor to a convicted criminal—a criminal who had lost both feet, no less? From now on, what happiness could her princess possibly have? "Your Majesty the Empress!" Mama Wang knelt on the ground and wailed, "Open your eyes and look upon Her Highness the Princess!"
The crowd, stirred by Mama Wang's cries, all looked up at the sky. What could the Empress accomplish by opening her eyes one more time? Call down lightning to strike Consort Zhao dead?
At that moment, above the imperial palace, the red sun hung in the sky beneath clear, cloudless heavens. Yet with Mama Wang's wailing, a bolt of lightning shot straight down from the sky. In broad daylight with the sun shining, the people in the imperial palace heard a crack of thunder!
Had the Empress opened her eyes at their cries?
Perhaps the Empress truly had opened her eyes. Consort Zhao was standing beneath a banyan tree when the lightning struck the great tree down, pinning her beneath it.
Did they think humans of the apocalypse had merely evolved great strength? How naive. Without special abilities, wouldn't you be pounded to pulp by the zombies? In her past life, if Yu Xiaoxiao hadn't been gravely injured and unable to use her abilities, she wouldn't have had to pull a grenade and die together with the zombies. She could have blasted that pack of zombies dead with lightning and thunder!
"C-C-Consort Zhao?" In the deathly silence, Jing Zhong was the first among them to come back to his senses.
By the time the Head Steward Jing ran over to Consort Zhao's side, Xianzong was still staring up at the sky. How had that thunder come and gone just like that?
Yu Xiaoxiao looked down at her own hands. Her abilities had weakened considerably now—she'd meant to blast a person dead, and had only felled a tree.
At that moment Mama Wang recovered from her shock, kowtowed toward the heavens, and cried, "How merciful is the Empress!"
The crowd stood dumbfounded, thinking: so the Empress was merciful after all. Couldn't she have just blasted Consort Zhao dead on the spot? Why fell a banyan tree instead?
"Your Majesty, Consort Zhao is coughing up blood!" Jing Zhong, together with several eunuchs, moved away half the fallen tree, and upon seeing Consort Zhao's condition, loudly reported to Xianzong.
"My beloved, you..." Xianzong rushed to the tree, and at the sight of Consort Zhao's pitiful state, blood streaming from her mouth and nose, the Emperor Xianzong's voice broke.
"Your Majesty the Empress, may you rest in peace!" Mama Wang was still shouting.
The people of the Fengtian Dynasty revered ghosts and gods, and a good number knelt down on the spot once more.
Thinking of the Empress watching him from above, the back of Xianzong's neck went cold, and he hunched his shoulders slightly.
"We're leaving." Yu Xiaoxiao turned and walked away.
In the past, whenever Consort Zhao was unhappy, Mama Wang was happy. But this time, even with Consort Zhao struck by lightning, Mama Wang couldn't feel happy. She followed Yu Xiaoxiao, murmuring as she went, "Princess, why must you spite His Majesty like this?" As for her princess's sudden display of ferocity, Mama Wang selectively ignored it.
Xianzong no longer had any attention to spare for the ministers still kneeling on the ground. He ordered men to carry Consort Zhao back and sent for the imperial physicians. His daughter's sudden ferocity could wait until his beloved consort's life was out of danger.
When Grand Academician Ying and the others saw this, they realized they no longer needed to plead for their lives. No matter how unreliable His Majesty's actions might be, he couldn't possibly watch his own daughter become a widow, could he? Several ministers left the palace and hurried straight to the Court of Judicial Review, to bring the good news to the Gu family—old and young alike—still languishing in the imperial prison.
Yu Xiaoxiao returned to Fenghua Hall, where she resided, summoned everyone around her, and asked, "Now tell me—what exactly is the situation with this Gu family?"
Mama Wang's head spun and her legs went weak; she could barely stand. She said to Yu Xiaoxiao, "You don't know anything at all, and yet you told His Majesty you'd marry?"
Yu Xiaoxiao said, "Didn't you say that young Gu was a good man?"
Mama Wang said, "And just because he's a good man, you'll marry him? But—but the world is full of good men, I..."
"Old Marshal Gu and the others were framed by Zhao's faction!" Before Mama Wang could finish, the little palace maid Xiaofeng declared loudly.
"That's right," the little eunuch Xiaosha shouted too. "The Gu family are loyal ministers!"
Looking at her subordinates all nodding along, Mama Wang suddenly discovered that the people of Fenghua Hall were all righteous souls after all.
Though Xiaofeng, Xiaosha, and the rest chattered all at once, each speaking over the other with little logic to their words, Yu Xiaoxiao still managed to tease out the central point.
The Gu family were loyal ministers, a house of generals whose every generation had died for the country. It was only a pity they had offended Consort Zhao's faction, and their reward for merit had been not honors but conviction.
"Your Highness!" Xiaofeng's face was full of indignant fury as she said to Yu Xiaoxiao, "It was Old Marshal Gu who drove off the people of the White Tiger Nation, yet the son of Chancellor Zhao stole the credit! Old Marshal Gu and his family could never have colluded with the enemy!"
Xiaosha said through gritted teeth, "If the Gu family didn't possess the late Emperor's death-exemption gold medal, they would have been executed down to the last man this time!"
Mama Wang sighed. "The Gu family was wronged, but even Her Majesty the Empress couldn't save them. If you marry into that family, Princess, will you have to become commoners together with the Gus? The whole Gu household is locked up in the imperial prison as we speak!"
As a child of the apocalypse, Yu Xiaoxiao couldn't understand the blood and tears of ancient loyal ministers and good generals destroyed by treacherous villains. She only knew that she would die before walking the path of that tyrannical empress. Fleeing on her own would be no problem—but what about all these people before her? Though she had known them for less than twenty-four hours, Yu Xiaoxiao had already made inquiries: if she ran away, every one of them, for failing in their duty to serve the princess, would have their heads chopped off. If she wanted to leave the palace legitimately, without going to the fief, marriage was the only path available.
As for what kind of person this young Gu might be, and how marriage meant spending a lifetime together and whatnot—sorry, but in the apocalypse, for the sake of humanity's survival, men and women who took a liking to each other could simply get together and have children; even basic decency didn't exist there, let alone something as lofty as chastity. In Yu Xiaoxiao's mind, the priority was figuring out how to get Mama Wang and the others out of the palace first. As for this young Gu—well, she'd think about him when she had a spare moment.