The Grand General and Jade Courtesan

Chapter 11

Western Kingdom Imperial Palace

Naturally, thanks to the trap laid about the scarlet seductress the reputation of the entire imperial family fell into shambles as all kinds of various scandals about them began popping from one place to another

The empress dowager had murdered the previous virtuous magnanimous empress out of due fear for her growing influence and power within the imperial palace

The third prince was born out of an affair that the imperial noble consort had with the emperor's very own imperial half-brother whom he had cherished and taken care of all these years only to be stabbed in the back

While the first prince was indeed the son of the emperor he was also being put under the suspicion of being a bastard child born out of his mother's affair like his brother

They were all later imprisoned in the cold palace while an investigation was being conducted. They would either be executed or exiled out of the kingdom for their sins depending on the result. 

The second prince and his mother were barely able to avoid suspicions as there was no doubt the prince was the emperor's child. He greatly resembled his father, who in turn resembled the emperor's biological mother, the empress dowager.

Just as he escaped one scandal though he got himself caught up in another one where it was discovered that the second prince was actually impotent therefore explaining the reason why he had been unable to birth any royal heirs despite his given age unlike the 1st and 3rd princes who already had at the very least sired two or three royal children 

As for the 6th prince well like the second prince, there was no doubt he was the emperor's son as well. 

Except he was born with an extremely sickly body that prompted his mother the pure consort to call for a shady quack shaman to heal her son

She invested a lot of money into that conniving schemer who conned her out of not only her yearly allowances but also all her personal belongings that had been personally gifted to her by the emperor himself

The seventh prince had long been killed off by the paranoid second prince way before the scandals broke out. He had died at the same timing as the scarlet temptress

And last but indefinitely not least the 4th prince Yue Qingyuan wasn't actually the biological son of the empress

The 4th prince had passed away early on in infancy due to an accident caused by a negligent new rookie palace maid

In order for her secret to not be found out, she hid the fact of the infant's death behind her mistress's and the emperor's back 

However, over time as it became difficult to hide the truth of the matter she decided to use the infant son of a lowly forgotten concubine who had been around the same time and presented him before his parents as the empress's biological son.

In other words, while it was certain that Yue Qingyuan was a royal prince, he was not the blood son of the late empress

Something the prince had actually known right from the very start.

He knew that he wasn't the empress's actual biological son after all there really wasn't much resemblance between the two

Everyone brushed it aside of him strongly inheriting his father's emperor's blood 

While that may have been true it was quite odd the prince shared not even a single similarity with his supposed mother 

He figured that he must be someone else's child but didn't really care much