CH 56

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Yan Huo Hang

"You are the emperor, you should have a harem of three thousand beauties. This kind of thing, why do you need to ask if I agree or not?" Ning Zhiyu closed his eyes, his lips tinged with a smile. "It's fine if you are happy."

Seeing him like this, Yan Yuan suddenly felt very uncomfortable in his heart. In his last life, this man died because of him, and in this life, he was not treated wholeheartedly.

“A'Yu…”

Ning Zhiyu closed his eyes and did not respond to him. Yan Yuan was silent for a moment and spoke guiltily, "If you are unhappy, then forget it, let him be a nameless and faceless person by my side, and you can pretend that he does not exist, I will never treat you lightly because of him. Okay?"

“Okay." Ning Zhiyu said.

Yan Yuan was afraid that he wouldn't be able to think straight and continued, "You can only live because of his flesh and blood... When the dragon scales are finished being used, I will ask him to continue to pluck them for you."

"Mm." Ning Zhiyu responded.

"Are you sleepy?" Yan Yuan probed for his hand that was resting on the brocade quilt and shook it, "Sleep if you are sleepy, I will wait for you to sleep before I leave."

Ning Zhiyu did not speak again.

Yan Yuan stayed by his side for half an hour. Ning Zhiyu was breathing steadily and must have fallen asleep, so Yan Yuan gently put his hand under the blanket and got up to leave.

When Yan Yuan's back was about to disappear into the hall, Ning Zhiyu slowly opened his eyes and turned his head to look at his tall back, his dark eyes covered with intense sorrow and despair.

His A’Yuan was leaving him after all.

……

After several days of ignoring the government affairs, Yan Yuan went to the imperial study. According to the pile of documents, the heinous fox demon at the border is no longer causing trouble. No matter what the reason is, this is a good thing.

When he thought of this, Yan Yuan suddenly remembered the male fox demon beside Xuan Long in the ancient pond... At first, he was jealous of the relationship between Xuan Long and the fox demon and did not think much about it. Now that he thought about it, the male fox demon and the fox demon that harmed his people are not the same, right?...

They should not be... Xuan Long, such a good dragon, how could he befriend a fox demon like that? Although Hu Le was not a good thing either.

"Someone."

"Summon General Chen and the Prime Minister to the palace."

Yan Yuan didn't know what came to mind, but hatred and loathing flashed across his eyes.

He had reached the limit of his patience with Yan Huo Heng.

Yan Huo Heng was Yan Yuan's half-brother and the son of the current Empress Dowager, born on the same day, same month, and same year as Yan Yuan, only one hour before him.

It has always been the practice of Darong to appoint the first son, not the eldest. When Yan Yuan's mother died in childbirth, the Emperor chose the Empress Dowager, who was a noblewoman, as Yan Yuan's adoptive mother in order to find a virtuous and benevolent mother for him. In order to balance the power of the court, and to avoid concubines of noble birth using Yan Yuan's status as the Crown Prince and the power of his mother's family to form cliques in the court and disrupt the dynasty, Lady Heng, who was the daughter of a minor magistrate, was undoubtedly the best choice at the time.

Ten fingers can be long or short, and one's own children are not always equally good, let alone those coming out of someone else's womb. Although the late emperor did not treat Yan Yuan with affection, he was completely partial to him. After all, he was the child of his beloved, and just because he did not want to look at him for fear of being hurt, it did not mean that he did not value him.

The previous emperor issued an imperial decree ordering Yan Yuan to be sent to the side of Lady Heng, and at the same time, took away Ledy Heng's own son, Yan Huo Heng, and gave him to Concubine Liang to raise.

She had a problem with her health and was born unable to have children, so it was good to have an adopted son to fall back on in her old age, but she was spirited and short-tempered. In front of the late emperor, she could still pretend to be gentle, while treating the palace staff with a bad temper, she would shout at them and scold them, so Yan Huo Heng had not had a good life since he was a child. Concubine Liang loved to fight and be jealous, and when she was at a disadvantage with other concubines, she would use him as an outlet for her anger, beating him to the point where he was bruised and battered, thus developing his gloomy and cold-blooded nature.

Until he reached adulthood, he was not allowed to see his own mother, and even though she knew that her own son was living a life worse than that of a dog, she could not say anything bad about Concubine Liang in front of the late emperor, because she had sworn that from the day Yan Yuan came to her, she would Yan Yuan's own mother and could not care about anything else.

Because of Yan Yuan, she was promoted from a concubine to an imperial concubine, and her father became a fourth-ranking governor from a ninth-ranking official. If Yan Yuan is good, her family prospers, but if Yan Yuan fails in any way, she and her mother's family will all suffer the same loss.

She could only secretly give some silver to the palace maids and eunuchs around Concubine Liang in the hope that they would take care of Yan Huo Heng, but how could the palace maids and eunuchs influence their master's affairs?

Concubine Heng was a good adoptive mother, gentle in nature and kept a close distance from him. It was only when Yan Yuan became an adult that he realised she was not his real mother.

On the day of his accession to the throne, Yan Huo Heng killed his adoptive mother, Concubine Liang, and when the royal son was sent to the heavenly prison, Concubine Heng knelt down and begged Yan Yuan, tearfully telling him about the son swap.

As she watched her own son suffer, there was nothing she could do about it, and she had to genuinely care for someone else's son every day. This was an extremely cruel thing for a mother to do.

Although Yan Yuan did not see all this happen, it did happen because of him. The crime of matricide was an unforgivable one, and under pressure from the courtiers, Yan Yuan had to send him into exile.

Although he was exiled, he was actually sentenced to become a junior general at the border. Yan Huo Heng had a talent for leading troops into battle, and in just a few months, he was promoted from a junior general to a lieutenant, and then from lieutenant to captain in a year, leading his men to drive out the rampaging Huns on the southern border, and to take over several small countries.

Yan Yuan, thinking of all the suffering he had endured for nothing, gave him special attention and personally went to the palace to welcome him when he was triumphant.

Unexpectedly, Yan Huo Heng was not only ungrateful, but also harboured a wolf's ambition. He was at the border, but his hands were so long that he wanted to take his life repeatedly, and as his military power grew, he became more and more undisguised...

An hour later, General Chen and the Prime Minister received their orders to enter the palace.

The two are both more than fifty years old. Having been the right hand of the previous emperor when they were young, they were now loyal subjects of Yan Yuan.

From the time Yan Yuan was attacked at his birthday banquet last year, they suspected that the culprit behind the attack was Yan Huo Heng. The rest of the princes left for their territories when they reached adulthood, all of them being idle princes with no power, and even if they wanted to rebel, they would not have the strength to do so.

Only Yan Huo Heng, whose biological mother was the Empress Dowager and who held the power of a million soldiers, had the power to rebel and make the Imperial City change hands at any time.

At first, Yan Yuan was not sure until after the assassination, when Chen Yan ordered his men to look for Yan Yuan's body. He used the arrows used by the dead soldiers and found the underground workshop where the arrows were forged according to the material of the arrows, and through the workshop, he found an assassin group called the Ghost Pavilion.

The Ghost Pavilion is well known in the rivers and lakes, with a large network of organisations throughout the country. In the Ghost Pavilion, you can buy human lives and information, as long as you can think of it and pay enough money, everything is possible.

The identity of the buyer was revealed to be Yan Huo Heng; he had bought the life of Yan Yuan.

If Yan Huo Heng wanted to hide his identity, it was definitely an easy task, and to be discovered so easily meant that – he had done it on purpose.

His wolfish ambition no longer had the patience to hide.

After General Chen and the Prime Minister entered the hall, Yan Yuan gave a cursory account of his own assassination on this trip out of the palace in his modest clothes, saying only that he had suffered a minor injury and omitting the incident of Xuan Long saving him and bringing him back from the dead.

This alone was enough to make General Chen's face and neck red with anger, and he cursed in the hall, "That wolf-hearted, dog-lunged thing! If the Emperor hadn't let him off the hook, he would have died years ago!"

Compared to General Chen's excited expression, the Prime Minister was calm: "Things have come to this, this Yan Huo Heng cannot be kept, what is Your Majesty going to do?"

Yan Yuan's eyes were dark, "Next month, it will be my birthday, so we will take the opportunity to ask Yan Huo Heng to come back for my birthday banquet. Once the holy decree is issued, he will not dare to not return. If he wants to assassinate me, then I will return the favour. What do you two ministers think?"

The Prime Minister folded his hands in a thoughtful manner, "In that case, it would not be a bad idea. It’s just that... Yan Huo Heng is very strong in martial arts, if you want to get close to him, I'm afraid it's not that easy to deal with him, and it's even more difficult to do so unnoticed."

"I have a candidate in mind who can definitely make him die without a place to be buried." Yan Yuan said.

"Who is it?" General Chen asked curiously.

"A strange man." Yan Yuan smiled mysteriously.

"Before next month, you must tighten the deployment of the city's defences, but don't worry about the rest, I have my own arrangements."

"Yes." General Chen took orders.

"Ning Aiqing, why don't you go to Luanfeng Hall later to see A'Yu, he is not in a good mood these days, you are his father, he should be happy to see you.

"Yes." The Prime Minister bent his thin back and replied.

He was ashamed to say that he hadn't treated Ning Zhiyu with much importance in the past, after all, he was a product of drunken recklessness. Ning Zhiyu's birth mother was humble, and in his opinion, what happened that night was a stain on his life, so he ignored Ning Zhiyu altogether.

Who would have known that his sickly son would be picked up by Yan Yuan and become a phoenix on a branch?

Yan Yuan knew more or less what was in the Prime Minister's mind, but that did not affect Ning Zhiyu's feelings when he saw his father, for a late father's love is still a father's love, and he felt guilty for Ning Zhiyu, so he tried to make up for him in other ways.

In the evening, Yan Yuan finally finished the pile of government affairs and returned to Qiankun Palace.

The strange man he was talking about was, of course, Xuan Long. He said he couldn't get rid of the fox demon, but in the end, the fox demon had stopped, so Yan Yuan thought it was Xuan Long's doing.

If Xuan Long could subdue the demon, what was so difficult about helping him kill someone?

It was wonderful to have that dragon by his side, he was simply his lucky star; not only did he like him like that, he was also able to save Ning Zhiyu's life. That was nothing, the most important thing was that with Xuan Long around, the thorn in his side was not even an annoyance anymore.

Yan Yuan sometimes wondered if Xuan Long could be the divine dragon sent from the heavens to guard him, otherwise how could he be so divine, always feeding him and even securing the kingdom for him.