Quickly wear salted fish, she won by lying down

Chapter 1600 Substitute Bride 4
The Prince of Qinghe's mansion arranged the wedding quite hastily.

Logically speaking, it's quite normal for a royal family to go through the process from engagement to marriage to take one or two years.

However, the Prince of Qinghe's mansion, citing Linlang's advanced age, did not delay any longer and allowed Linlang to marry into the family after only a few months.

Such haste is enough to suggest that there's something fishy going on at the Prince of Qinghe's residence.

The people in this prince's mansion are quite good at hiding their true intentions; you wouldn't notice anything amiss under normal circumstances.

Perhaps, just as those gossipers said, the Prince's Mansion was afraid that Prince Qinghe still had ties with the daughter of the Duke of Cheng in the palace, which would affect the Mansion in the future. So they quickly arranged for him to marry a princess to settle down.

However, Linlang has not yet discovered any connection between Prince Qinghe and Consort Ding in the palace—this Consort Ding is the daughter of Duke Cheng.

Despite being a duke's mansion, this Chengguo Duke's mansion, like the Changning Marquis's mansion, had a lack of ambition among its male members, and none of them held any real power in the court, so it declined.

Fortunately, the young ladies in the household were beautiful, so when Consort Ding reached the appropriate age, and the palace held another selection of concubines, Consort Ding was chosen to participate.

If Consort Ding and Prince Qinghe really had an affair, it's unclear why Consort Ding didn't mention it to her family. Perhaps she did, but the Duke of Cheng's family felt that Prince Qinghe's family wasn't high enough to bring them prosperity, so they refused, yet still allowed their daughter to enter the palace for the imperial concubine selection? This still needs further investigation; currently, there are no clues.

In short, because of her beauty and the fact that she came from a noble family, Consort Ding entered the palace very easily and was immediately made a concubine. Now, three years after entering the palace, she has already risen to the rank of imperial concubine.

Although she held the rank of concubine, both her entry into the palace and her conferment of the title were actually bestowed upon her by the emperor because of her background; she was not particularly favored in the palace.

This is quite normal. Don't be fooled by the fact that the daughters of the Duke of Cheng's family are beautiful. They are not considered outstanding in the whole country. The imperial selection in this dynasty is a nationwide selection. There are plenty of beauties in the palace who can topple empires. The emperor has seen too many beauties, so he is immune to seeing someone as beautiful as Consort Ding.

In a society where everyone is beautiful, gaining favor still depends on cunning, and Consort Ding was clearly not good at vying for favor, so she was not very favored.

She was born into a wealthy family and couldn't bring herself to please the emperor, which led to this situation.

It's unclear whether Consort Ding and Prince Qinghe really had a relationship. If they did, how did she cope with this psychological gap? Prince Qinghe was young and handsome, while the Emperor, though perhaps good-looking in his youth, was now old. No matter how good-looking he was, he certainly wasn't as handsome as Prince Qinghe.

If Consort Ding had dated someone as young and handsome as Prince Qinghe before, and now she's with the old emperor, having to compete for his favor with a bunch of other women, doesn't she find it disgusting?
Anyway, she couldn't stand a bunch of young and beautiful women fawning over an old man who looked much older. Just watching it on the monitor was an eyesore, let alone Ding Fei herself. She probably felt very reluctant to compete for favor with such an old man, unlike when she genuinely wanted to snatch him away.

It's actually quite normal that Prince Qinghe and Consort Ding had little contact. A prince can't enter the palace without an imperial edict, and there are specific routes for entering the palace. He can't enter the inner palace, and Consort Ding lives in the inner palace and can't go to the front court. How could they contact each other?

Emperors are naturally afraid of their concubines cheating on them, so they take strict precautions. It's very difficult for a concubine to have an affair.

The only one who is somewhat suspicious is Prince Qinghe himself.

The Prince of Qinghe is one year older than the original owner of this body, and is nineteen years old this year. At this age, and being a prince, other young masters of the same level in other families would have countless concubines and a dozen or so maids serving them, all of whom are beautiful and can be slept with whenever they want.

Although Prince Qinghe had quite a few maids serving him, he did not have any concubines or sleep with any of them.

This is not right. It's very strange that he is not tempted by so many women. If it weren't for the fact that he doesn't sleep around with any other men, Linlang would have suspected that he is attracted to men.

This was strange, but the Dowager Empress didn't think anything was wrong with her son and didn't advise him to sleep with the maids.

This reaction is very wrong. Although some matriarchs are afraid that their sons will mess around and ruin their health, they will also be anxious if their sons have no reaction to a room full of beautiful women. They will always worry that their sons are impotent.

But the Dowager Empress was not worried.

It has to be said that something is amiss at the Qinghe Prince's Mansion, but Linlang was completely baffled and didn't know what was wrong.

Perhaps this is why Prince Qinghe liked Consort Ding? Even after Consort Ding entered the palace through the imperial concubine selection, he still had to remain chaste for her?
If that's true, then this Prince of Qinghe is a rare example of devotion in ancient times. After all, even if a man liked a woman, he would still sleep with other women. Just look at the male protagonists in those classical novels; they liked the female protagonist but still had concubines. You can see that they didn't have the concept of being devoted to one woman.

However, whether the Prince of Qinghe's aversion to women was due to his affection for Consort Ding and his vow of celibacy, or whether there were other reasons—such as his upright character and lack of promiscuity—Linlang still needed to investigate.

Linlang was uncertain because in the original world, Prince Qinghe was with the original owner of the body. If that was the case, it meant that Prince Qinghe had no intention of remaining chaste for anyone. So, why he hadn't been close to women before was something that needed to be investigated.

Actually, the Dowager Consort wasn't that old. After all, Prince Qinghe was only nineteen years old, so the Dowager Consort was only in her early forties.

The reason why the old prince died young was not because the Qinghe Prince's lineage had bad genes and was short-lived, but because the old prince caught a cold.

In this era, a cold, if severe and without medication to treat pneumonia or reduce fever, is easily fatal.

That's how the old prince passed away; it's pitiful, considering he wasn't even that old.

Although it was strange that Prince Qinghe was not close to women, Linlang had been watching him for several months since he entered this world until he got married, but she hadn't found anything wrong with him. She could only wait until he entered the mansion to see if anything was amiss. She hoped that he wouldn't disappear inexplicably like the original owner and Li Sanniang.

Thinking of the strange circumstances surrounding the deaths of the original owner and Li San Niang, Lin Lang wore the Heart-Cleansing Bell before she went there, to prevent anything from attacking her mentally.

As for physical attacks, she wasn't too afraid, because she had many defensive items in her space.

Just like in the original world, after Linlang married into the family, the Prince of Qinghe also shared a room with her.