Quickly wear salted fish, she won by lying down

Chapter 1824 My Aunt is the Empress 31
However, after observing the Sixth Prince's investigation of the beautiful palace maids who approached him, Linlang discovered that those women either had feelings for other princes or were arranged by others. She thought to herself, "Perhaps that's why I don't touch them. When the imperial concubine selection comes later, and the old palace maids are sent away and new ones are brought in, maybe the Sixth Prince won't be like this anymore." She didn't believe he would always be like this, so she wouldn't pin her hopes on him not finding other women, as long as he didn't have any intention of targeting her or the Zhou family.

It seems that the Sixth Prince has kept his promise. There is no indication that he has any plans against her or the Zhou family. At least one thing is clear: unlike the Third Prince and the First Prince, who prevented the original owner from having children and then killed her soon after, the Sixth Prince allowed her to have a child and did not use any drugs on her.

Of course, it's probably mainly because the Zhou family's sons aren't very promising, and Master Zhou is getting older every year. He probably thinks that once Master Zhou passes away, the Zhou family will no longer be a threat, so he doesn't care.

Well, if Lord Zhou lives to be seventy or eighty years old, the new emperor's mood will probably not be so pleasant, and who knows what he might do then.

Fortunately, Linlang didn't intend to let Master Zhou live that long. After all, she always remembered that the biggest culprit behind the original owner's tragedy was Master Zhou. If Master Zhou hadn't forced the original owner to marry a prince, with the Zhou family's resources, she could have married into any family and wouldn't have ended up like that.

So now that the Sixth Prince has ascended to the throne, there's no need to worry about Master Zhou falling down and the Sixth Prince being unable to take the throne. Linlang plans to have Master Zhou "retire due to illness" after a while—for example, by having him suffer a stroke, not paralyzed, but unable to speak. He'll be fine in daily life, but he certainly won't be able to be an official.

The original owner of this body didn't mention dealing with her father, so Linlang wouldn't kill him; she would just let him "retire due to illness," which shouldn't be a problem.

Master Zhou has "retired due to illness," which can be considered as her avenging the original owner of the body. Then the new emperor should also feel at ease about the Zhou family. This is a win-win situation.

If Master Zhou retires due to illness, the Sixth Prince won't have to worry about the Zhou family continuing to grow stronger and influence the court, or about them going back on their word and treating her and the Zhou family differently. In that case, Linlang will definitely leave the father and son behind.

Time passed quickly, and soon the Sixth Prince's three-year mourning period was over. He came to Linlang again, but he did not heed the call from the court for a selection of concubines. He said that the treasury was empty and that he would wait until the treasury was better managed.

They released some of the older palace maids and recruited some new ones.

Now that new palace maids have entered, naturally new women will want to climb into his bed. Linlang wonders if the Sixth Prince will choose some of these new palace maids to be his concubines.

There was no result.

I don't know what the Sixth Prince was thinking.

Regardless, the fact that the other party didn't choose another woman is naturally a good thing for her, since she doesn't need to use the dream props to avoid having sex, which saves her some money.

Three years have passed, and Empress Dowager Zhou is still alive. Linlang noticed that some people were acting strangely. Finally, someone whispered in private, "Why isn't Empress Dowager Zhou dead yet? Logically speaking, she shouldn't have lived to such an old age."

Clearly, the reason they didn't murmur before wasn't because the other party was so cunning as to not say anything in private, but because the matter had already been accomplished, and they no longer needed to say anything in private; they just needed to wait for Empress Dowager Zhou to pass away.

He didn't die, and the other party couldn't help but start muttering about it.

When Linlang saw someone muttering such things, she knew the murderer had probably been found. To be honest, this person was not one of Linlang's expectations.

She always thought that it must have been the concubines who had given birth to princes before Consort Cai who were behind it, with the aim of preventing Empress Dowager Zhou from having children so that the princes they gave birth to could ascend to the throne.

It turned out that... it was an old concubine who had only given birth to a princess who was responsible.

Linlang immediately investigated Consort Han, who had been privately wondering why Empress Dowager Zhou was still alive, and quickly understood why the other party had targeted Empress Dowager Zhou back then.

This Consort Han was older than Empress Dowager Zhou. She was a maidservant of the late emperor when he was a prince, and she was already one of the late emperor's concubines before Empress Dowager Zhou married him.

At that time, Empress Dowager Zhou had not yet married into the family, so she was the most favored person and the most beloved person in the late emperor's court.

After Empress Dowager Zhou married into the family, things changed. Empress Dowager Zhou was quite beautiful when she was young, and like Master Zhou, she was very good at getting along with people. She quickly won the favor of the late emperor. Otherwise, the late emperor would not have visited Empress Dowager Zhou's palace on the first and fifteenth of each month even when he was old. It was clear that he had feelings for her.

This affection was clearly unacceptable to Consort Han—she became jealous.

Although she was just a lowly maidservant of the late emperor, she knew that he would never marry her, much less have her as his only woman. After ascending the throne, it was already quite generous of him to give her a respectable title, so she had no right to be jealous.

However, whether one is qualified or not is one thing, and whether one can control one's emotions is another. At that time, Consort Han obviously could not control her emotions. She was jealous because she saw that the late emperor had a good relationship with Empress Dowager Zhou, and she poisoned Empress Dowager Zhou.

Of course, the main reason was that she was pregnant at the time. She thought she was carrying a prince, so she poisoned Empress Dowager Zhou to prevent her from giving birth. She thought that the child she gave birth to would be the eldest son, who would have the best chance of becoming emperor. But she ended up giving birth to a princess. After the birth of the princess, there were too many new beauties in the palace, and she gradually fell out of favor. Later, she was unable to conceive a new child or give birth to a prince, which led to her being used as a stepping stone for someone else.

She knew that killing the person directly would definitely be discovered, so she used a slow-acting poison. The person wouldn't die immediately, but would die sooner and would also be unable to have children. It was said to be a drug used on prostitutes in brothels, and even doctors couldn't detect anything wrong with it.

It worked very well. After Empress Dowager Zhou took it, she really didn't get pregnant or give birth. But why hasn't she passed away yet?

You should know that prostitutes who took these drugs generally didn't live past thirty, and even the lucky ones didn't live past forty. Even if Empress Dowager Zhou lived a life of luxury, she should have died around fifty.

But Empress Dowager Zhou is now over fifty years old and has not yet passed away. How is that possible?

Moreover, she seemed to be feeling unwell before, but now she's completely recovered and even getting better—this is, of course, because Linlang cured Empress Dowager Zhou.

Linlang didn't cure Empress Dowager Zhou right away. Instead, after entering the palace, she found that Empress Dowager Zhou treated her as well as she had before they became mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. In addition, the original owner of this body probably didn't want to see her aunt poisoned to death, so Linlang helped her.