Chapter 138 Uncle and Nephew 44.8%
The fourth year of Chongming was the last year of Wei Chi's reign. At the end of November of that year, the palace gates were breached, and he was drugged by his own empress. When he woke up, he was already a prisoner and was quickly transferred to Huaicheng and handed over to Wei Hong's subordinates.
But Wei Hong never went to see him, and he lived in the dark and gloomy dungeon for a long time.
In February of the following year, Wei Hong ascended the throne, changed the era name to Jiaqing, and officially designated Huaicheng as the capital of Daliang, renaming it Huaijing.
On the day of his coronation, Wei Chi, who had been in the dungeon for more than two months, finally saw his uncle, the new emperor of Liang, again.
He looked at the person in imperial robes outside through the wooden fence. His eyes, which had been calm for a long time, finally showed a strange light. Resentment, anger, hatred and many other emotions surged up.
Especially when he saw the other person standing there tall and straight like a majestic mountain peak, wearing the imperial robes that should have been on him, looking down at him with disdain.
He himself hadn't properly washed or changed clothes for over two months. He was still wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he was arrested, and his hair was a complete mess that he couldn't comb.
The contrast made him appear even more pathetic, a loser in this struggle, and his defeated opponent.
Even so, Wei Chi was still unwilling to show weakness in front of him, and said, "Fourteenth Uncle, have you finally remembered your nephew? You've been waiting so long to see me, and you even chose this day, just to show off in front of me and let me know that you've ascended the throne, right?"
Wei Hong nodded, readily admitting it.
“You and your father both value this throne highly, and you would do anything to get it.”
"Since you care so much, then I've come here specifically to show you what it feels like to have something you care about taken away by someone else. That way, when you meet him in the future, you can tell him what I looked like when I ascended the throne, so that he won't forget what his younger brother looks like after too much time has passed."
Wei Chi's hands clenched tightly at his sides, his cloudy eyes filled with anger.
"You seized the throne from your own nephew, what is there to be proud of!"
Wei Hong chuckled: "You're wrong. I didn't take this throne from you; you personally delivered it to me."
He then shook his head: "No, I should say that you and your father delivered it to me together."
“If he hadn’t harbored ill intentions towards me in order to consolidate his throne, and hadn’t killed my mother in order to get rid of me, then I wouldn’t have specially sent him an alchemist, and he wouldn’t have died after only five years on the throne, and had to hastily pass the throne to you.”
After he finished speaking, he waited a while to watch Wei Chi's reaction. Sure enough, he saw Wei Chi's eyes widen in disbelief.
"……What did you say?"
Wei Chi murmured, frozen in place, his shoulders and back feeling as if they were cast in iron, his whole body stiff.
Soon, he heard Wei Hong say those words again.
“I said, I specially sent him an alchemist.”
Wei Hong answered in a deep voice and briefly recounted what happened back then.
"My reason for moving the capital was not false. I did promise your grandfather that I would never be an enemy of the royal family and would never attack the capital, but on the condition that you would not take the initiative to attack me."
"But your father wanted to get rid of me as soon as he ascended the throne, which led to the death of my mother!"
"How could I not avenge my mother's death? But once war breaks out, the Great Liang will inevitably fall into internal strife, making it easy for the Great Jin and Southern Yan to take advantage of the situation. And I can't be sure of my chances of winning."
"Therefore, I have decided to remain still. The grievances have their perpetrators, and the debts have their debtors. I will only seek revenge on your father, the Emperor."
"He was a man who valued his life very much, so poisoning and assassination were indeed not easy, and... to die so quickly was too easy for him."
As Wei Hong spoke, his gaze darkened slightly, and his voice still carried a hint of hatred.
"Didn't he like the throne? In order to sit on the throne for a longer time, he searched everywhere for the way to immortality and recruited a lot of so-called talented people to make pills for him. I arranged for one of my own people to be mixed in with them. Every few days, he would increase the dosage of a drug that was already somewhat toxic in the pills. Even the imperial physicians couldn't find anything wrong with it."
Wei Feng's elixirs were all tested by palace servants beforehand. Directly poisoning him would not only fail to kill him, but would also alert the enemy.
The pill did indeed make people feel more energetic when they first took it, and they couldn't detect anything wrong with it.
While poisoning Wei Feng, he also had someone invite the young eunuch to drink wine from time to time, adding an antidote to the wine. As a result, the toxins in the young eunuch's body did not accumulate, and he was fine every time he tested the medicine.
However, Wei Feng's body became hollow inside after taking such pills for a long time. He seemed energetic, but his body was actually depleted. Once the illness took hold, it would be fatal.
The Imperial Medical Academy naturally noticed something was wrong, but they couldn't find the source and could only advise him to stop taking the elixirs.
Wei Feng was obsessed with achieving immortality and refused to listen to advice, ultimately causing his body to deteriorate completely. Although the Imperial Hospital managed to keep him alive with all their might, it only extended his life by a few more days.
He watched helplessly as his body deteriorated day by day. No matter how unwilling he was, he had no choice but to hand over the empire he had just acquired to others.
"You should thank me, actually."
Wei Hong said.
“If it weren’t for me, how could you have ascended the throne so smoothly? Your father actually favored your third brother more, but because he was young and he was on the verge of collapse, he passed the throne to you.”
“If he were still alive, even if it were just three to five years, when your third brother grows up to be fifteen or sixteen, then the throne would be out of your reach.”
Wei Chi was naturally aware of this, which is why he was so eager to please Yao Yuzhi and why he took such good care of Wei Feng after he fell ill.
Wei Feng only made him the crown prince after a serious illness. Even after he was made the crown prince and entered the Eastern Palace, he was still worried and afraid that his father would change his mind and depose him and make his younger brother the crown prince instead.
This is just like when the late emperor was also the crown prince, but he was always trembling with fear that Emperor Gaozong would pass the throne to the Prince of Qin.
Before the late emperor passed away, he lay on his sickbed and said that Wei Chi was hoping for his death. Wei Chi denied it at the time, but he did indeed hope for it in his heart.
He not only wanted to make Yao Youqing empress after the late emperor died, but also because only after his death could his throne be truly secured.
But he naturally wouldn't tell Wei Hong any of this. He only accused him with bloodshot eyes: "Father took action against you because you were too powerful! Looking across the Great Liang, which prince is as unruly as you! You don't even respect the imperial court!"
Wei Hong sneered: "Looking across the Great Liang, how many are left who obediently follow your requirements, not holding military power or raising private armies, and simply living as idle princes in their fiefdoms?"
"Leaving aside how many of your father's brothers he killed, do you even remember how Prince Ning died?"
Prince Ning is the third brother of Wei Chi, whom Wei Hong just mentioned. He was a bright child who was favored by the late emperor from a young age.
Not long after Wei Chi ascended the throne, Prince Ning died suddenly on his way to his fief.
Wei Chi's gaze flickered slightly: "He...he is..."
"You know very well how he died, and so do I, so there's no need for you to try to deny it to me anymore."
Wei Hong interrupted.
"I've come to tell you all this today for two reasons: first, so you can see with your own eyes that I've ascended the throne; and second, to tell you the cause of the late emperor's death. When you arrive at the imperial mausoleum in a few days, you can explain it to him clearly, so he can die knowing the truth."
But if ghosts truly exist, the late emperor would probably jump out of his grave if he heard about this.
Wei Chi, however, sensed something else in his words and said in a hoarse voice, "You...you're going to send me to the imperial mausoleum?"
Logically, as a member of the royal family, he should indeed be buried in the royal mausoleum after his death.
But since he had betrayed the country and colluded with the enemy, it wouldn't be too much for Wei Hong to grind him to dust. Even if he wasn't allowed to be buried in the imperial mausoleum, the civil and military officials wouldn't say anything.
So when Wei Hong tells him to go to the imperial mausoleum, it might mean he's there to guard the mausoleum, not that he's going to kill him.
Indeed, if we wanted to kill him, we could have done so long ago. Why wait until today? After all, the throne is clearly his.
Wei Hong remained noncommittal, gave him one last look, and then turned and left.
The following day, Wei Chi was sent to the imperial mausoleum. After getting into the carriage, he finally realized that Wei Hong did not want to kill him, but rather to have him guard the mausoleum. Otherwise, he could have just sent a corpse there directly. Why go through all the trouble of bringing him there and then killing him?
He slowly made his way toward the imperial mausoleum, feeling unwell along the way. He took medicine, but it didn't help; in fact, his dizziness worsened. By the time he reached the mausoleum, he was practically half dead.
The people who came with him carried him into the room and put him down. He weakly stretched out his hand and said intermittently, "Please...the imperial physician."
Someone was bowing respectfully by the bedside, smiling at him, but instead of obeying his order to summon the imperial physician, they took out a medicine bottle from their bosom.
"This is medicine bestowed by His Majesty before his departure. He said it was given to the Empress by the young master years ago, and it is specifically for treating dizziness and discomfort caused by the bumpy ride of carriages during the journey."
"I saw that you were not feeling well on the way, so I gave you a few pills, but judging from your condition... it doesn't seem to have helped much."
The man looked at him with concern, then at the medicine bottle in his hand, and finally said with certainty, "You must not have taken enough medicine! Maybe taking two more pills will make you better!"
He then ordered someone to help him up and feed him the pill.
Wei Chi never expected that the medicine he took on the way was the same medicine he had given to Yao Youqing. His eyes widened immediately, and he struggled to push away the medicine that was being stuffed into his mouth.
How could the other party allow him to refuse? They forcibly pressed his shoulders, pried open his mouth, and shoved the pill into his mouth, forcing him to swallow it.
He nearly choked on the pill, and after falling back onto the bed, he gasped for breath like a fish out of water, turning over to try and pry the pill out of his throat.
But someone was watching him and wouldn't let him vomit.
The person who had taken out the medicine bottle earlier was still smiling at him, saying, "The medicine you gave me, young master, must be of the highest quality. His Majesty said that the Empress was not fortunate enough to enjoy it back then, and such a good thing should not be wasted, so please use it yourself, young master."
So the whole bottle of medicine was stuffed into Wei Chi's mouth, and in the end he could only collapse on the bed, his mouth covered with traces of pills and saliva.
As he racked his brains with endless headaches, he wondered when exactly it happened. When exactly did they discover his plot?
Was it on the way out of the capital? Was it when that maid died?
Doesn't that mean he exposed everything about himself to them from the very beginning?
Does that mean he... lost from the very beginning?
The headache was getting worse and worse. Wei Chi reluctantly turned to look out the window, his eyes wide open and unable to close.
Chapter 139 Imperial Marriage
Wei Chi died quietly and did not cause any disturbance. In contrast, the series of decrees issued by Wei Hong after his ascension to the throne attracted more attention.
Everyone had a deep impression of his unruly nature, and coupled with his previous actions of moving the capital and suppressing a number of powerful families, many people felt that this new emperor must be cunning, mean, and difficult to deal with.
So when his decrees were lenient and not as harsh as people had thought, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
It was as if they had prepared themselves for the other party to force them back ten steps, and decided to argue that they could only retreat five steps, but the other party unexpectedly only made them retreat six steps.
It's about the same if we move five or six steps. If we insist on not giving in, it will seem like we're deliberately going against the new emperor and refusing to cooperate with the court, which will only give people something to talk about.
The series of decrees were thus promulgated and implemented smoothly without encountering any obstacles. In the end, the only one that caused a lot of discussion and remained unforgettable was a slightly erotic imperial edict.
The new emperor, Wei Hong, bestowed a marriage upon Cui Hao, his closest subordinate, ordering him to marry a princess and become the consort of Princess Chenglan.
This decree caused a huge stir.
Princess Chenglan was the daughter of Wei Feng and the younger sister of the deposed emperor. She was notorious for keeping male concubines.
Wei Hong is giving away a great hero who has followed him all the way and made great contributions to the rise of the new emperor to such a princess. Isn't this like crossing the river and then discarding the bridge, or killing the millstone after it has been used? It's chilling.
It should be noted that the sons-in-law of the Liang dynasty have never held real power, and marrying a princess basically means leaving officialdom behind.
With all his skills, is Cui Hao going to be abandoned just after assisting the new emperor to ascend the throne?
"You were the one who asked your fourteenth uncle to arrange the marriage, weren't you?"
Cheng Lan looked at the man who had personally brought the imperial decree of marriage, her voice trembling slightly.