The magnificent carriage rolled slowly on.

Ning Chen looked out through the curtain over the carriage’s little window. “This is not the road to the palace.”

Mingzhu, driving the carriage, answered, “We aren’t going to the palace.”

“The child is being kept outside the palace?”

“My lord will understand when we get there.”

Ning Chen asked no more.

An hour later the carriage stopped at the back gate of a large house.

“My lord. We have arrived.”

Ning Chen ducked out through the carriage door and got down from the carriage, and looked at the house in front of him. “What is this place?”

“Prince Qing’s residence.”

Ning Chen nodded slightly. He knew of Prince Qing — the Third Princess of the Wu Kingdom, and the woman emperor’s third elder sister.

In the Wu Kingdom, women of the imperial house may hold office.

It seemed that after the woman emperor came to the throne she had enfeoffed this Third Princess as Prince Qing.

“This way, my lord.”

Ning Chen followed Mingzhu in through the back gate, and saw nobody the whole way.

It seemed the servants of the house had been sent away.

Half an hour later Mingzhu brought Ning Chen to a room.

The room was very large and open, and richly furnished.

There were two people in it. One was the woman emperor.

Today the woman emperor wore a pale yellow gown, with a gold pin in her hair, and she looked much softer for it.

The corner of Ning Chen’s mouth lifted. The gold pin in the woman emperor’s hair was one he had given her.

The other had a noble bearing and was thirty or so, a few years older than the woman emperor, but very beautiful too, and there was something of the woman emperor about her brows. This would be Prince Qing.

Prince Qing looked Ning Chen over with interest.

“Sword brows and starry eyes, and a fine figure of a man… Your Majesty’s eye is as good as it always was.”

Prince Qing said it smiling.

Ning Chen cupped his fist. “I greet Prince Qing.”

“Marquis Ning. No ceremony.”

The woman emperor, though, was contemptuous of Prince Qing’s praise.

In front of outsiders Ning Chen did indeed carry himself with proper measure and proper courtesy.

But she knew that in the bone the man felt no awe at all for imperial authority. He was a scoundrel, black-hearted and foul-mouthed.

Ning Chen’s eyes came to rest on the woman emperor, and there was wonder in them. “You’re beautiful. You look far lovelier in plain clothes than in the dragon robe.”

The woman emperor’s pretty face went a little red, but she still made a show of reserve and gave a cold snort.

Ning Chen gave a small smile. “Where is the child?”

Prince Qing took up the question. “Inside.”

The three of them went through to the inner room.

Ning Chen could not help blinking.

Because there were two children.

Both children were plump and rosy, and both sound asleep.

Ning Chen looked at the woman emperor without thinking. “You had two?”

Prince Qing said, smiling, “One of them is this prince’s child.”

Ning Chen made a sound. “I think I see how Her Majesty covered people’s eyes and ears and got the child born.”

“The two of you had your children at about the same time, and it is given out that both children are Prince Qing’s. Is that it?”

The woman emperor inclined her head slightly.

Prince Qing said, smiling, “Marquis Ning is as clever as they say… Can you tell which one is your child?”

Ning Chen came forward and looked at the two little creatures in their swaddling.

Both little creatures were very sweet.

But neither little creature was two months old yet, and telling them apart was not going to be easy.

They all say blood is thicker than water, that a father and son are joined at the heart, that there is a feeling between them… but he felt for it a long while and all he felt was his own company.

Ning Chen was still stuck when the little creature on the left opened his eyes.

His eyes were very large and very bright, like black grapes, and he looked at Ning Chen with curiosity, kicking both small legs about and putting his own small hand in his mouth to suck it.

It melted Ning Chen’s heart clean away.

He pointed at the little creature who had woken and said with perfect certainty, “This is my son.”

The corner of the woman emperor’s mouth lifted.

Prince Qing said, smiling, “Blood really is thicker than water, and a father and son really are joined at the heart.”

“Can I hold him?”

Prince Qing said, “Do you know how to hold a child?”

The child was very small and his bones were very soft, and holding him wrongly could easily hurt the child.

Ning Chen shook his head.

Prince Qing said, “I’ll teach you.”

“Thank you.”

With Prince Qing showing him how, Ning Chen wrapped the little creature in the swaddling and lifted him up.

The little creature did not cry or fuss in Ning Chen’s arms. He kept his round black eyes open and looked Ning Chen over with curiosity.

Prince Qing said, smiling, “How strange. He usually cries louder than anyone, and here he is in the marquis’s arms and not crying at all.”

Ning Chen was pleased with himself. Look whose seed he is.

Good seed and good ground. How could the child be anything but good?

“Has the child not been named yet?”

Prince Qing said, “He has. Wu Sijun.”

“Wu Sijun?”

Ning Chen frowned slightly. Sijun. That sounds like a girl’s name.

But the corner of his mouth lifted almost at once, and he looked at the woman emperor.

Sijun. Thinking of her lord? Does that mean she thinks of me?

The woman emperor’s pretty face went a little red, and she glared at him.

Ning Chen let out a breath. “My own child, and I don’t even get the naming rights?”

The woman emperor said coolly, “Would you dare let him take the surname Ning?”

Ning Chen: “……”

If the child took the surname Ning and word of it reached the Great Xuan, an idiot would think of me.

Ning Chen looked down and played with the child, smiling. “Wu is a good surname too. Your mother is an emperor. Her surname is much nobler than your father’s.”

Ning Chen looked up suddenly at the woman emperor and asked, curious, “I forgot to ask. What is your name?”

The woman emperor took no notice of him.

Ning Chen was about to press her when the child in his arms began to cry, and cried loud and clear.

Ning Chen did not know what to do with him. “What… what’s the matter with him?”

The woman emperor came forward quickly, sniffed, and said, “Can’t you smell it? He’s wet himself.”

Prince Qing went and fetched a diaper.

With Prince Qing showing him how, Ning Chen changed the little creature’s diaper with his own hands.

But the little creature went on crying and would not stop.

Prince Qing said, smiling, “He must be hungry too. Give him to me… Mingzhu, lend a hand.”

“Your Majesty, it is perfectly safe here. Your Majesty and the marquis may speak as freely as you like.”

Prince Qing and Mingzhu took the children and withdrew.

Ning Chen looked at the woman emperor. She seemed fuller in the figure since the child was born.

The woman emperor looked at him, her face showing nothing. “You have seen the child. You may go back now.”

“Don’t be like that. It isn’t often we get time alone.” As he said it, Ning Chen came forward and took the woman emperor by the hand. “Come to think of it, we have a child and we have never properly performed the rites of husband and wife, have we?”

“No time like the present. Why not —”

Ning Chen turned his head and looked at the big bed beside them.

The woman emperor’s pretty face went crimson, and she said it with more voice than force. “You take liberties!”

Ning Chen pulled her into his arms by force.

“Let go of this emperor!”

“I won’t.”

“Do you think this emperor will not kill you?”

“No, I don’t. I am a marquis of the Great Xuan. Kill me and the Great Xuan’s million men are not a soft touch… And anyway, could you bear to?”

“This emperor can let the Great Xuan emperor know about the child, and then you couldn’t swallow it and would have to carry it out with you.”

“A tiger down on the flat still has his courage; a dragon swimming in the shallows still has his claws. The man I am now is not the weakling boy I was. Reduced to commoner or not, my power still reaches the sky.”

The woman emperor looked at him, dazed. “What a waste.”

“What?”

“A bellyful of brocade, and a scoundrel with it.”

Ning Chen gave a dirty grin. “And you’re a woman thug. Drugging a man and stealing his seed.”

“You — you —”

“Your Majesty the woman emperor.”

春宵一刻值千金

One moment of a spring night is worth a thousand in gold.

Ning Chen picked the woman emperor up and carried her toward the big bed.

“You take liberties. Let go of this emperor —”

Ning Chen laid her on the bed, and the curtains at the bedside came down.

One garment after another flew down off the bed.

“Ning Chen, you dare. This emperor will kill you!”

“Killing me can wait until tomorrow.”

“You take liberties, how dare you… This emperor will be on top!”

(End of Chapter 416)