Princess Shio returned at exactly the right moment.
She went to the Empress in the morning to greet her, and now she has not been able to find out any news about the Grand Prince, and now her face is full of worry.
When she heard that Xue Yao was asking for an audience, Concubine Shih hurried to the flower hall, dismissed the attendants, and had the nursemaid carry the little prince out as well.
"Has Your Highness heard about the Grand Prince being grounded by the Emperor?" Xue Yao couldn't wait to inquire.
Shih Fei nervous: "last night heard, I am today is to go to the Palace to the Empress to ask for news, but the Empress a little bit of wind will not penetrate, I have only from the Yangxin Hall eunuchs mouth to buy a little bit of news. According to the little eunuch said: Chintian Supervisor Qin Ta-Jen advised a few days ago that the repair of the Shu Road can not be done, and was confirmed that the results of the occupation of the results are wrong, received twenty canes. The great prince yesterday is for the Lord Qin pleaded with the emperor, was taught a lesson by the emperor, grounded."
"Lord Qin?" Xue Yao immediately recalled the name he heard yesterday when he was docked the whitewash point, Qin Zhaoxuan.
Turns out he's an official of the Chinatown Supervisory Authority.
"This Lord Qin, must be someone that the Grand Prince has arranged for us." Concubine Shih figured it out last night: "Listening to that little eunuch, Lord Qin mentioned a prophecy of a 'heavenly stone descending from the heavens', it should also be a rumor arranged by the Grand Prince, I don't know when it will be fulfilled. I heard that the auspicious date for the start of the construction has been submitted to the cabinet by the newly appointed supervisor of the Qin Tian Supervisor, what can we do? The imperial decree will be issued in a few days!"
Xue Yao frowned uneasily.
"What's wrong?" Princess Shio saw this look on his face and became more and more nervous.
"I'm afraid it won't work ......," Xue Yao spoke in a low voice, "The Grand Prince probably wanted Lord Qin to stall for time, waiting for the right time for the ominous omen to be fulfilled, and now, the results of Lord Qin's divination test have been overturned, and the Grand Prince has been grounded, even if the ominous omen reaches the palace after some time, there is no way for them to clear their name."
"Why?" Princess Shio's eyes widened.
"Because the Emperor is not wrong." Xue Yao lost her head and looked at Concubine Shi: "If things had been delayed smoothly, the Emperor would have had the patience to wait until it was fulfilled, and this time the project might have been put on hold, but now that the Emperor has already determined that Lord Qin has been derelict in his duties, and the ominous omen, if it is brought up again, the Emperor might get annoyed and qualify the omen as a rumor, or even order a thorough investigation and implicate the masterminds behind it, and then we'll be harming the Grand Imperial Prince. "
Princess Shio's eyes went black!
Xue Yao originally only wanted to allow Consort Shi's mother and son to escape the first calamity, but now not only did she fail to escape, but she also shook the foundation of the Grand Prince, which was simply a botched job!
In her heart, anxious and blaming herself, Xue Yao asked Consort Shi in a low voice, "No matter what, His Majesty should always take the Empress' side into consideration, right?"
Concubine Shih urgently said, "The Empress does not have the backing of Concubine Tong, and that bit of affection of the teenage couple, the Emperor can take into account a few points?"
"The Empress has no backer?" Xue Yao said in disbelief, "The Emperor was always the Crown Prince before he ascended the throne, how could he marry a ......"
"You, a native of Da Qi, how could you not know the unwritten rules of the imperial family?" Concubine Shio explained in surprise, "I had heard that Emperor Taizu of Daqi was worried about foreign relatives interfering in his politics, so all generations of Crown Princesses were of unusual origins, and there was no heavenly power in their families."
Xue Yao's frown deepened.
No wonder the Empress in the original story didn't screw up much, it turns out that her mother's family didn't even have a backer.
Xue Yao felt even more sorry for the Grand Prince in her heart.
In the original, the Grand Prince stepped in to persuade the Shu Road project to stop, and Xue Yao thought that the Grand Prince had the backbone to do this, which is why he pulled him into the game in advance.
Now that I think about it, in the original, when the eldest prince persuaded to stop, the emperor himself had already been struck by public grievances and lost his motivation, and the eldest prince chose a suitable time to give the emperor a step down at that time, which was diametrically opposite to the current situation.
To dissuade it now would be completely antithetical to the Emperor!
"It's my fault." Xue Yao was filled with self-blame and dizziness for an instant.
He hobbled over to the coffee table and sat down, murmuring as if no one else was there, ''Things can't be avoided, and it even involves the grand prince, it's all my fault. How is ...... that Lord Qin s injury? The one who deserves to be slapped is me!"
"Xue Yao?" Concubine Shih was frightened by the child's ghastly white face and rushed forward to console him, "Don't feel bad, that little eunuch said that no one should be killed before the project, and Lord Qin only suffered a few superficial injuries."
Xue Yao did not respond, seemed to have fallen into complete despair and self-reproach, bending his back to cover his face, his tiny body curled up like a shrimp.
Concubine Shih's face was pained, she stepped forward and said, "Xue Yao, this palace has always treated you as a little man, I can't see you feeling sorry for yourself, there is no such thing as a lucky man who gets everything he wants in the world, you tried your best, I can see it in my eyes, how it turned out is fate, I won't allow you to be so down in the dumps! We mother and son is not going to be dragged out to beheading, in the future also refers to you climb on the table for us to top the sky, this is what you said yourself."
Xue Yao remained silent, covering his face.
Shiofi sat down beside him helplessly.
"Are you still willing to believe me?" After a long time, Xue Yao slowly raised his head and looked at Princess Shi Shi with red eyes, and spoke in a breathless voice: "Give me another chance."
Princess Shio froze, dropping her long eyelashes to look at the boy in silence.
"Of course I am willing." Concubine Shio smiled bitterly, "Efforts will have the possibility of failure, it's better than waiting for death with two hands, you and the Grand Prince are both benefactors of Old Seven and I. Is it hard to believe that because the plan won't work, I'm going to be ungrateful and turn against you?"
Xue Yao stared at Concubine Shio with a serious gaze, "I have another way, a way to cure a dead horse that may bring the Emperor back to his senses, you will have to implement it yourself."
A flicker of awe flashed in Princess Shio's eyes as she spoke in a low voice, "You say."
Xue Yao looked at her steadily, "I heard that every time you were born, a divine sorcerer would set up an altar to perform magic? Did you bring that witch from your own country?"
Princess Shio was surprised, "How do you know all this? She's not called a Divine Witch, we call them Aunt Po, and the birth ceremony isn't a spell, it's a blessing ceremony, a tradition of our old family."
Xue Yao nodded.
That's right, in the original story, when Consort Shio became the Empress Dowager, before her birthday banquet, Lu Qian specially sought out the most prestigious Divine Witch in her old home to organize a ceremony for her.
This episode Xue Yao remembered in great detail, he just didn't know what this God Witch was actually capable of.
"Does the Aunt Poi you brought with you have any divination skills?" Xue Yao asked.
"What are you going to do?" Princess Shi seemed to have seen Xue Yao's intentions and said uneasily, "You don't want me to join forces with Aunt Po to deceive the Emperor, do you? The Emperor doesn't even believe in the divinations of the Qin Tian Supervisor, so how can he take the sorcery of our small populated country seriously? And ...... Aunt Po doesn't have any divination skills, if she can really be forewarned, why would I end up in this field?"
Xue Yao suddenly hooked up the corner of his mouth and replied calmly, "There is no need to deceive the Emperor, to convey the true heavenly order to the Emperor. Aunt Po can't foretell, but I can, I just need to borrow her mouth to say it."
Concubine Shih was so shocked that she stood up, "Don't be sick and desperate! The crime of deceiving the king is punishable by loss of head, you're a half-grown child, what can you foretell?"
Xue Yao spoke with certainty: "On the day of the Mid-Yuan Festival, about the 18th day of the construction of the Shu Road, the strong men serving in the Liangshan Mountain road-cutting will encounter a mudslide, with seven deaths and twenty-three injuries, that's the prophecy. Your Majesty as soon as possible this news as Aunt Po prophecy, tell the Emperor, and then let the Qin Tian Supervisor's 'heavenly stone descending crime' be fulfilled afterward, the Emperor will surely have scruples."
Concubine Shih froze for a long time before she realized, frowning as she stared at Xue Yao: ''How can this be allowed? Mudslides are natural disasters, even if the Grand Prince has heavenly abilities, he can't create such an accident, not to mention the deaths? You want the Grand Prince to kill people? The lives of the people are also lives. How can you use their lives to intimidate the Emperor on behalf of my mother and son? Stop fooling around, you are tired, rest in the palace tonight."
"Your Highness just said that she is willing to believe me." Xue Yao raised his voice and stared firmly at Concubine Shi, "On the day of the Mid-Yuan Festival, there will really be a disaster, it's the prediction of a high ranking person, but I can't disclose the high ranking person's identity, and those people will really die because of it.
I had planned to stop this from happening before the holy decree to repair the Shu Road was issued, but now it seems impossible.
I had no way to save the first people who were killed, but I could only rely on this disaster to stop in time to prevent more people from being killed.
Such a natural catastrophe occurring on the Mid-Yuan Festival, said to be a warning from Heaven, is much more credible than the Qin Tian Supervisor artificially creating a 'Heavenly Stone Sentence', so please think twice, Your Highness."
Princess Shio was dismayed, and in her heart she suspected more and more that this child was crazy.
What kind of high profile person can predict a mudslide on a certain mountain road in Basho? This is nonsense!
Xue Yao also gave up at this moment, foretelling the future in front of Princess Shi Shi, there was a possibility that he would be treated as a member of the evil path and his little life would be in jeopardy.
But now that things had come to this, he could only let go.
In the original, the great prince remonstrated with the suspension of the construction of the instrument, recorded from the construction of Shu Road, to the local civil unrest in three years, occurred in large and small ten natural disasters, flash floods and mudslides, so the road construction workers killed a total of more than 1,000 people.
It is much more credible to describe such disasters as Divine warnings than as human fakery.
Predicting in advance the exact location of the disaster and the number of people killed would definitely deter the Emperor.
Xue Yao's idea at the beginning was to solve the matter before the start of the construction, he couldn't possibly plan in advance to let the people be killed a group of people, and then take this matter.
But now he deeply realized that the emperor really did not see the coffin, and it was impossible to muddle through with artificial rumors.
Seeing that the holy will of repairing the Shu Road is unstoppable, and the Grand Prince has been pulled down, Xue Yao can only face the reality that it is impossible to save all the people in distress and Consort Shih's mother and son without any damage, and it is already fortunate to be able to call a halt to the Shu Road project within a month.
Then, the first real natural disaster could only be used to stop future disasters, and in the meantime, it would be able to consolidate the prestige of Lord Qin of the Qin Heavenly Supervisory Authority, and regain the Emperor's trust for the Grand Imperial Prince.
However, after hearing his words, Princess Shio's face was clearly written with the words "Are you crazy?", obviously unable to believe that he could foretell the natural disaster.