Chapter 511: Chapter 512: The Secret of the Nanyue Royal Family

The man was wearing a hat that covered most of his face, making it difficult for anyone to see his true features.

Qi Yue was puzzled when suddenly she heard the man kneel down and bow deeply in a grand gesture of worship.

“Lowly subject Wolf Nine pays respects to His Majesty the Emperor, long live the Emperor, long live, long live!”

“What? Wolf Nine? The one-eyed Wolf Nine?”

Qi Yue was surprised, but then she heard Wolf Nine continue, “This lowly subject begs Your Majesty, please allow me to remove this hat so that Your Majesty…”

Not waiting for him to finish, Qi Yue impatiently waved her hand.

“Take it off, let me… let me see if you are that Wolf Nine?”

Wolf Nine bowed again and then said, “This subject’s face is disfigured, please forgive this subject for the offense of marring the heavenly countenance…”

“Cut the nonsense, do you think I… I haven’t seen you before?!”

Qi Yue was anxious!

She had been deeply interested in this Wolf Nine who had sneaked into the Imperial Palace at midnight to secretly sniff the Emperor of Nanyue’s underpants; now that Zhao Xiyan had brought him here, it clearly suggested there was a significant story!

How could she hold back?!

One of the palace attendants swiftly removed Wolf Nine’s hat, revealing his damaged, blind eye in an instant.

Qi Yue squinted at him, quickly matching the Wolf Nine before her with the one-eyed man she had seen that night.

“It really is you!”

Wolf Nine didn’t know that Qi Yue had been watching him all night; he was utterly bewildered at this moment.

“Your Majesty, you’ve seen this subject?!”

Qi Yue pursed her lips.

“Seen before? More than that!”

She summoned Qingzhu and began to describe in detail what she had seen that night, leaving Wolf Nine utterly embarrassed.

His face, except for the dark and damaged blind eye, resembled a cooked shrimp.

“Your Majesty, this subject… this lowly one was unaware of Your Majesty’s presence, an offense to the heavenly countenance unworthy of life… this humble one thanks Your Majesty for the rescue…”

“Enough, enough, no more of this ‘humble subject’…”

Qi Yue waved her hand, then turned her gaze to Zhao Xiyan, “My husband…”

As soon as she spoke, she suddenly remembered she was playing the role of the Emperor, but then she saw Zhao Xiyan looking at her with a charming smile.

His eyes were full of unspeakable tenderness.

At that moment, she felt a surge of the audacity that befits a tyrant spoiling his beloved.

What was there to fear?

She was the Emperor, her word was law!

The way she wanted to address her man was her own business!

Who dares to say she doesn’t understand propriety, let them try!

“My husband,” she smiled at Zhao Xiyan, “is this Wolf Nine connected to the Princess of Nanyue?”

Zhao Xiyan, however, was very serious.

“Reporting to Your Majesty, Wolf Nine knows the true identity of the Princess of Nanyue. Once Your Majesty hears it, you would realize that Nanyue Kingdom was never meant to exist.”

“Oh.” Qi Yue became greatly interested, urging Wolf Nine to elaborate.

It turned out that when this one-eyed Wolf Nine was a hitman, he had once taken on a job from the Nanyue Palace and did a dirty deed.

Because of that deed, he had once seen the young Empress Dowager of Nanyue.

By a twist of fate, one evening he inadvertently heard the Empress Dowager weeping bitterly.

Filled with a moment of compassion, he went up to the rooftop to look.

That one look had lodged a mystery in his heart that had lingered for many years.

From the hitman Wolf Nine to the later one-eyed Wolf Nine, it remained unsolved.

Therefore, upon hearing of turmoil in Fengdu City, he had returned to Fengdu once more and ventured into Nanyue Palace at night again!

“Your Majesty, what I did back then was just to confirm that the Emperor of Nanyue was a woman, not a pervert…”

Upon hearing this, Qi Yue abruptly sat up.

“What? You’re saying that Han Linghe is a woman?”

“Yes.”

One-eyed Wolf Nine “banged” his head several times, almost swearing to heaven.

“That year, following the sound of crying, I saw with my own eyes the Empress Dowager holding two people and crying bitterly, one of whom was clearly a woman, yet she was referred to as the ’emperor’. This subject, after entering the palace multiple times, has confirmed that Han Linghe is indeed a woman.”

At those words, the face of the one-eyed Wolf Nine turned strangely red again.

Qi Yue was merely curious.

“How did you confirm that?”

One-eyed Wolf Nine stuttered, unable to speak clearly.

It was Qingzhu next to him who opened his mouth with ill-intent.

“Your Majesty may not know, after you left Fengdu, this fellow sneaked into the Imperial City of Nanyue more than ten times, putting snakes in Han Linghe’s bed and pretending to be a ghost in the sleeping quarters. After so many times, he saw what he should have seen and what he shouldn’t have seen, all…”

Images instantaneously formed in Qi Yue’s mind.

On pitch-black nights, ghostly wails sounded outside the Emperor of Nanyue’s sleeping quarters, and cold snakes scurried across the bed…

It could scare anyone to death…

Actually, thinking about it, she felt goosebumps all over her body.

Luckily, she had Zhao Xiyan by her side.

However, since this one-eyed Wolf Nine was so dangerous, he still needed to be handled properly.

Just as she was about to ask, she heard Wolf Nine say again, “Your Majesty, this humble one has another conjecture he wishes to inform Your Majesty about!”

“Speak!”

Wolf Nine looked in Zhao Xiyan’s direction, cautiously saying, “This humble one believes, the current Princess of Nanyue is actually the Emperor Han Linghe of Nanyue. From what this humble one has observed, these two are actually the same person. The Empress Dowager gave birth to two daughters back then but claimed to the outside world they were twins, a boy and a girl. After the political upheaval in the Nanyue Palace, one died and the one remaining is also a female!”

This revelation truly shocked Qi Yue.

She quickly glanced at Zhao Xiyan, only to see him nodding slightly at her.

If Zhao Xiyan acknowledged it, then it must be beyond doubt.

For a moment, Qi Yue was also a bit stunned.

Han Linghe being female was something she had never imagined.

Thinking further, she couldn’t help but feel an indescribable sentiment rising in her heart.

It had been almost twenty, nearly thirty years.

Han Linghe had been forced to pretend to be a man since birth, standing to urinate, speaking in a forced pitch.

She must have lived in constant trepidation, suffering deeply from humiliation.

If she were Han Linghe, she probably wouldn’t have lasted this long.

No wonder she resorted to such a trick, using Nanyue Kingdom as a dowry in exchange for a chance to enter the palace.

Perhaps what she desired most was not the position of Empress but the freedom to be a woman.

Thinking this, Qi Yue suddenly felt a headache coming on.

What should she do about this?

She surely couldn’t just bring a woman in to be the nominal Empress, could she?!

The scene quieted down for a moment, and to shift the topic, Qi Yue couldn’t help but lightly cough.

“Wolf Nine, are you really as capable as you say, moving in and out of the Imperial Palace as if entering a vacant territory?”

Wolf Nine’s battered face brightened, and he eagerly responded.

“This humble one might not be good at much, but I have a good memory. I clearly remember every place I’ve been and every person I’ve seen, allowing me to connect various things together and use them, so most of the time things go very smoothly…”

Suddenly, a cough intended as a signal sounded.

It was Qingzhu.

He was covering his mouth with his hand, coughing, and the gesture clearly meant he was giving a hint.

One-eyed Wolf Nine abruptly stopped talking, terror flashing in his intact eye.

The next second, he kowtowed fervently like pounding garlic.

“Your Majesty, spare my life, Your Majesty, be discerning, though this humble one has come here, I absolutely haven’t remembered anything, this humble one dares not harbor any disrespect towards Your Majesty…”

Qi Yue was not really worried about this, but seeing Qingzhu’s action, she knew this Wolf Nine must have been taken in.

Indeed, Qingzhu stepped forward, knelt down, and explained the situation.

It turned out that during this period, Zhao Chong and Zhao Tai in Fengdu had already gotten well acquainted with Wolf Nine.

Wolf Nine had even helped out a lot with information gathering, to the extent that Zhao Chong considered him a talent and had plans to recruit him into the Black Feather Guard, just waiting for her approval.

Qi Yue immediately authorized Qingzhu to handle it on the spot.

Setting aside everything else, just discovering that Han Linghe was the Princess of Nanyue was deserving of a reward.

But since she was the Emperor, she should grant a reward that was out of the ordinary.

Seeing Wolf Nine’s one blind eye exposed, particularly horrifying, Qi Yue’s medical instincts kicked in, and she couldn’t help but gesture for him to come forward.

“Wolf Nine, come here, let me… let Us see if your eyes are still salvageable?”

Upon hearing this, Wolf Nine’s face instantly filled with both shock and joy.

He first looked at Zhao Xiyan tentatively, and seeing no reaction from him, he crawled on his knees to the front of Qi Yue’s desk.