After being forced into a marriage with a wealthy family, the virtuous wife caused a huge uproar.

"I was summoned to the capital by the Emperor last year, so I'm here now," Li Xuanye said.

Actually, he came to Beijing as a hostage.

Only with him here will the Emperor feel at ease letting his father guard the border between Beicang and Nanxia.

Only when his father went to the capital at the age of forty-five could he return to Beiyuan City to succeed his father.

That was the fiefdom of the Li family.

"You've been poisoned?" Rong Yingluo opened her eyes and saw a dark patch under his eyes.

"How did you know?" Li Xuanye was stunned.

"Of course I could tell." Rong Yingluo looked like she had been underestimated.

"Young Taoist priest, you're truly amazing. You recognized it at a glance. Your master's medical skills were already remarkable when he saved my father, but you've surpassed him." Li Xuanye praised.

"That's right." Rong Yingluo raised her head, naturally proud of being praised. "Who poisoned you?"

"More than a year ago, the Beicang Kingdom invaded the border of my Southern Xia, and I went to war with my father. The Beicang general was despicable and wicked, and he smeared poison on his sword. I was stabbed in the back, but the injury was not serious."

To win that battle, I persevered to the very end, but I didn't have time to detoxify, which left me with a chronic illness. The Emperor summoned me to the capital so that the imperial physicians could detoxify me.” Li Xuanye answered Rong Yingluo's questions as if he were meeting an old friend.

"You've been in the capital for a year now, how come you still haven't recovered?" Rong Yingluo was very skeptical of the imperial physician's medical skills.

But there is another possibility: he was tricked, and the imperial physicians never actually cured him.

He was the heir of the only non-royal prince in Southern Xia. If the emperor wanted to control the non-royal princes who held fiefdoms, he needed to have leverage.

Of course, this was just Rong Yingluo's guess; she didn't really know the Emperor.

"The imperial physicians' abilities are limited, right? Can the young Taoist priest save me?" Li Xuanye asked pleadingly.

He knew that the young Taoist priest's master was a skilled physician, and perhaps she could save him.

"Since I saved your life, let's set a time for me to take a look at you." Rong Yingluo readily agreed.

Back then, it was the King of Liao who invited her master to the north to treat his injuries. She and her master stayed at the palace for a month, and that's when they happened to see this boy fall into the water.

As the crown prince of Liao, he couldn't even swim. After rescuing him, she gave him a severe scolding, saying that he had disgraced the prestige of the Liao king.

For a while afterward, the boy always liked to follow her around, calling her "Little Taoist Priest" repeatedly. He even gave her a small wooden sword, saying that he had carved it himself.

"Thank you, young Taoist priest." Li Xuanye bowed solemnly.

"Prince of Liao, you are not allowed to call me Little Taoist Priest anymore. You must call me Miss Rong or Young Madam Gu. Also, you cannot tell anyone that you know me, understand? Otherwise, I will be beheaded by the Emperor." Rong Yingluo moved closer and lowered her voice.

"You're married?" Li Xuanye exclaimed in surprise, only then noticing Rong Yingluo's hairstyle, which was now up in a bun.

She actually got married. Wasn't she a hermit?

He had dreamt many times that he had married her, but when he thought that she was a Taoist priest and generally did not marry, he suppressed his feelings and never told anyone, treating it as just a dream.

But at this moment, upon suddenly learning that she had gotten married, my heart surged with emotion.

"Cough cough cough..." Li Xuanye coughed violently for a while, "Who did you marry?"

He knew that the person she was marrying must be of high status, so he had to find out who it was.

"Gu Ce, the heir of the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion." Rong Yingluo didn't hide it from him; everyone in the capital knew about it.

"What? How could you marry him?" Before Li Xuanye could even mourn his own heartbreak, his heart instantly turned to worry. Gu Ce was the most notorious jinx in the capital, known for bringing misfortune to his wives.

What if she also gets killed by the curse?

He knew that Gu Ce had gotten married, but he never expected that it would be the little Taoist priest he had been keeping in his heart.

"It's difficult to disobey the emperor's orders," Rong Yingluo said in a lowered voice.

Li Xuanye slapped his chest, heartbroken.

That's right, the Gu family obtained the marriage through an imperial decree.

The Crown Prince and Princess Xiangyi witnessed the two of them chatting in the side hall for so long without separating.

The two people, one at the north end of the side hall and the other at the south end, could clearly see the two meeting from both directions, but they could not hear what the two were saying.

The prince's lips curled up to his ears. The merchant's daughter was so ignorant of manners and didn't know how to avoid suspicion between men and women. This was good; it would be much easier for him to do whatever he wanted.

Princess Xiangyi revealed a sinister smile, her eyes brimming with scheming.

Rong brought this upon herself, so she shouldn't be blamed.

The two, engrossed in their conversation, were completely unaware that someone was watching them from afar.

The two agreed to meet at Mingyue Tower two days later.

Rong Yingluo hasn't even had a chance to enjoy the token given to her by the Crown Prince yet.

She could take this opportunity to enjoy a good meal. If it was really as delicious as the rumors said, she would eat it whenever she had free time, and she wouldn't stop until she had eaten the Crown Prince out of house and home.

She had her guards find out that it was the Crown Prince's property, which explained why he had a token.

Li Xuanye wanted to accompany her for a stroll, but considering that this was the Imperial Ancestral Temple and neither of them had any servants with them, he decided it was inappropriate to stay too long and left on his own.

Rong Yingluo continued her stroll. When she arrived at the right-hand side hall, she saw the statue of the first Duke of Zhenguo, as well as Li Xuanye's ancestor, the first Prince of Liao.

Master said that the first King of Liao conquered the Southern Xia Dynasty together with Emperor Taizu.

In those years, natural disasters and man-made calamities were constant, and enemy countries took the opportunity to invade, causing widespread suffering among the people.

When Emperor Taizu led the people in rebellion, the Lê clan ancestor was one of the most valiant generals by Taizu's side. The success of the rebellion was largely due to the contributions of the Lê clan ancestor.

Therefore, after Emperor Taizu ascended the throne, he enfeoffed the ancestors of the Li family as the King of Liao, a hereditary title.

However, the King of Liao knew when to advance and when to retreat, and only asked for a prefecture adjacent to Beicang Kingdom as his fiefdom, to be guarded on the border forever.

Later, some emperors became wary of the Prince of Liao and frequently summoned their heirs to the capital as hostages until the princes were able to inherit the throne. Then, they would summon the old princes back to the capital, and so on. This is why Li Xuanye was summoned to the capital.

When she arrived at the central hall, Gu Ce happened to be there.

"Why aren't you with the Emperor?" Rong Yingluo asked.

"His Majesty is alone with the ancestors in the Hall of Offering, and doesn't need anyone to accompany him, so he came to find you." Gu Ce thought she was with the Empress, but it turned out she was wandering around the Imperial Ancestral Temple alone.

The Imperial Ancestral Temple is not a place you can just enter anywhere.

"Would you like to go in and take a look?" Gu Ce asked when he saw her sticking her head out to look inside.

People are usually not allowed to enter this area.

But Gu Ce is the heir of the Duke of Zhenguo, and his great-grandfather was enshrined in the Imperial Ancestral Temple. With this honor, he can certainly go in and take a look.

"Can?"

Gu Ce nodded and led her into the central hall.

The central hall was actually a series of bedrooms, each housing a former emperor, with lifelike statues of them, as if they were still alive and living there.

Gu Ce led Rong Yingluo to visit each room one by one, starting from the first generation of the founding emperor.

Rong Yingluo bowed to each of the emperors.

They were all monarchs of their time, possessing the aura of dragons, and worthy of her respect.

When Rong Yingluo arrived at the last emperor's bedroom, she froze, her eyes wide open.

"This is the late emperor?" It was unbelievable. Rong Yingluo was so shocked that she couldn't express it, and she couldn't say it out loud.

"That's right, he passed away fifteen years ago. He was fifty years old and reigned for eighteen years. He was a wise emperor. During his reign, he recovered the two cities that the Beicang Kingdom had occupied and signed a ten-year non-aggression pact, giving the Southern Xia a long period of rest and recuperation, and ensuring that the national treasury was no longer in deficit."

After Gu Ce finished speaking, he respectfully bowed deeply to the late emperor.

If it is confirmed that he is not a child of the Gu family, and is indeed the Emperor's child as the lady suspected, then this would be his imperial grandfather.

Rong Yingluo looked at the statue of the late emperor again and again.

She knew this person very well; he looked almost exactly like her master, except he didn't have a beard.

The master liked to grow a long beard, while the late emperor's face was clean and tidy.

What's going on?

Could my master be a member of the royal family?

Even royalty couldn't possibly look that much like them.

Unless Master is the late emperor, but didn't he pass away fifteen years ago?