The Dog Emperor Begs for Reconciliation

When the golden hairpin falls, it is the heart that breaks, not the life.

In the spring of the thirty-sixth year of the Dayong era, the ancestral rites were halfway through. Incense curled through the Imperial Ancestral Temple as the officials stood in solemn silence.

Emperor Xiao Xuance presided over the ceremony himself. Dressed in black ceremonial robes embroidered with dragons, he stood tall and straight as a pine, but at a piercing cry, he suddenly turned around

“Your Majesty! I... the child in my belly is moving terribly!”

Bai Yuehua fell to her knees, one hand clutching her abdomen. Her face was as pale as paper, and a trace of blood seeped from the corner of her lips.

The maid beside her screamed, “The Noble Consort is six months pregnant, and the baby is in danger! She must have been afflicted by evil spirits!”

The hall erupted in an uproar.

Before the words had even faded, an attendant came rushing from the direction of Fengyi Palace, trembling as he presented a black sandalwood box with both hands. “Y-Your Majesty... this was found beneath the incense burner in the empress’s bedchamber.”

The lid was opened.

A paulownia-wood figurine lay still on the red velvet. Its entire body was carved with the birth date and hour that determined the fate of Bai Yuehua’s unborn child.

A red cord was wrapped around its neck. On its back, four shocking characters had been written in cinnabar: “Sever the bloodline, end all heirs.”