This drama came so quickly that she wouldn’t believe it if someone didn’t deliberately plan out this scheme!
How could it be so coincidental that Noble Lady Ying just so happened to encounter the wet nurse carrying the child out to find a doctor?
Noble Consort Zheng was highly anxious, and she even wanted to dispatch her personal attendant Cailing to quickly return to her palace to take a look.
However, Queen Zhao coldly stopped her. “It is best if Younger Sister waits here. This queen also wants to see how exactly Little Fifteenth, this child, is being taken care of in Sophora Flower Palace. It couldn’t be that a legitimate daughter of the king only has a single wet nurse to tend to her? The other maidservants inside Sophora Flower Palace are all corpses?”
All of the sweat on Noble Consort Zheng’s forehead immediately rolled down at Queen Zhao’s statement. “Your Majesty the Queen, since Noble Lady Ying has said that treatment has already been concluded, perhaps the child is sleeping right now…”
Meanwhile, a senior royal maid walked inside with fear and trepidation and inquired in a soft voice, “Your Majesty, it is time to eat the dumplings, do you want them to be served now?”
Noble Consort Zheng was enraged. “Eat what dumplings at this kind of time? Scram!”
The senior royal maid shuddered.
Yet Queen Zhao said with a smile, “That’s just perfect. Serve all the dumplings, and we’ll eat while waiting. It won’t take too much time to make a round trip to Sophora Flower Palace.”
Noble Consort Zheng’s eyes were practically about to shoot out a poisonous light.
Sure enough, this daughter of hers was only born to collect debt from her[1]**! Naturally, she bitterly hated that scheming person who used her daughter as a weapon against her too.
The dumplings were exactly the ones that Queen Zhao and the many noble ladies and madams with mandates had wrapped together yesterday on New Year’s Eve as a mere formality.
Since Qiao Mu had eaten breakfast, she wasn’t hungry at all. However, she still ate two in consideration of the queen’s pride.
Everyone silently ate dumplings, not daring to speak either. They were oblivious to the taste of the dumplings going down their throats, only feeling that all their internal organs were trembling uncontrollably.
This was the silence before the storm!
Soon, a woman dressed in thin clothing, while carrying a small three-year-old girl, blindly followed suit behind a royal maid into the Brilliant Sun Hall.
It was probably the little girl’s first time around seeing so many people, and she shrunk into the wet nurse’s embrace at once while anxiously peeking at her surroundings.
Queen Zhao revealed a benevolent smile and beckoned towards the wet nurse. “Carry Little Fifteenth over for me to take a look.”
The wet nurse knelt to the ground at once, and she trembled while crying out in a low voice, “Please forgive me, please forgive me.”
Noble Consort Zheng’s heart hung high up in the air at once, and she hit the table and stood up vigorously with furrowed brows and blazing eyes. “Wet nurse, what kind of act are you putting on?”
“You come over!” Qiao Mu impatiently beckoned towards the wet nurse.
The wet nurse gazed blankly at her, and then she looked up at Queen Zhao.
“Come over!” Qiao Mu shouted, scaring the wet nurse so much with her imposing manner that she scrambled over.
Afterwards, Qiao Mu clapped her hands at the child. “Come.”
Little Fifteenth turned her head around, and she glanced at Qiao Mu with eyes so red they looked like a bunny’s before suddenly extending her arms towards her.
The wet nurse couldn’t help being momentarily dumbfounded.
The princess had never liked it when other people came close to her, even hiding far away from Noble Consort Zheng whenever she saw her.
“Crown Prince Consort.” Queen Zhao coldly called out.
Qiao Mu looked up at her stand-offishly, and then she placed Little Fifteenth on her knees, undoing the small thin blanket wrapped around the child.
“Both her arms and legs have bruises. She had just been beaten by someone two days ago.” Qiao Mu said dryly while taking out her needle pouch from her inner world. “Her asthma isn’t too serious, but she hasn’t been well cared for from young.”
[1] When a child is a constant source of trouble to the parent, it’s characterized as a form of karma of the child collecting debt from the parent for what happened in their past lives.
