Chapter 102 - 88: Hearing the News
Chang’an City, Taiji Palace, Ziwei Hall.
The sound of silk and bamboo was soft, and the music and dance were refined, but Princess Le’an of Zhao Mansion, Li Nanlei, had no mood to appreciate it.
She picked up her wine cup for a sip, and her peripheral vision subtly swept across the hall to a row opposite, where a handsome young man with a calm smile remained seated in a corner—Li Shan, the Ninth Prince of the Emperor of Yu.
Today was the annual feast day for the Imperial Family, which coincided with the final exams at the Academic Palace.
According to custom, the Emperor and Empress met with the Imperial Family in the afternoon at Ziwei Hall and hosted a banquet for this year’s Academic Palace Disciples who passed the final exams at Liangyi Hall in the evening.
At this moment, the Emperor and Empress were seated at the head, chatting with the elder members of the Imperial Family to their left, while to their right stood Crown Prince Li Si and the Fourth Prince, Li Hui.
Li Si was tall and handsome, loyal and sincere. Li Hui was talented and extremely intelligent, greatly favored by the Emperor. It was said that sons are precious because of their mothers. Empress Xue, deeply loved by the Emperor Li Shun, had given birth to both, and their status in the palace far surpassed the other princes.
Especially... Li Shan.
From her angle, Li Nanlei could clearly see the unnoticed loneliness in Li Shan’s eyes.
His position was below that of the other princes, and none of the Imperial Family cousins wished to engage in idle chatter with him—only because his mother was a concubine of the Wu surname.
The Wu of the "Holy Empress."
Even though the Holy Empress had been deposed fifty years ago, and the former emperor who had initiated the coup d’etat and forced the Holy Empress to step down had already passed away over twenty years ago, the memory of the Holy Empress’s reign fifty years ago, during which she aggressively slaughtered relatives of the Li Family to consolidate power, was still painfully vivid.