The Cannon Fodder Awakens, Training the Cold and Proud Protagonist into a Submissive Dog - Chapter 4

Shen Chaoqing had originally resolved to keep Xiao Huaiyan, but at that moment, a spike of mischievous curiosity suddenly stirred within him.

He arched a brow slightly. “What the Empress Dowager says also makes sense. Since she has such a benevolent heart and extends a sincere invitation, Prince Xiao, why don’t you… simply go along with Her Majesty?”

As soon as these words left his mouth, a flicker of unexpected delight flashed across the depths of Li Miaorong’s eyes, while Fu An snapped his head up in shock.

Xiao Huaiyan remained completely expressionless. “Many thanks for Empress Dowager’s kindness, but I decline.”

Such a direct refusal, lacking even a single polite pretext, caused the Empress Dowager’s expression to stiffen instantly, leaving her stranded without a graceful way down.

Shen Chaoqing glanced sideways at the Empress Dowager’s nearly unsustainable fake smile, and the slight quirk of mischief in his heart was immensely satisfied.

Feigning helplessness, he spread his hands. “Oh dear, Mother, you saw it too. It is not that I am unwilling to let him go; it is simply that Prince Xiao is stubborn as a mule and insists on staying behind to serve me. Whatever shall we do about this?”

Li Miaorong’s chest heaved up and down as shades of pale and green chased each other across her well-preserved face, and her strained smile finally vanished entirely. She gripped her sleeves so tightly that her fingernails nearly bit deep into her palms.

Fine, very well indeed! The emperor was utterly determined to oppose her!

Taking a deep breath, she forcibly pushed down the churning fury within her chest, her face once again donning that dignified yet false expression of concern. “Since that is the case, then let it be as His Majesty wishes. Only, Your Majesty must take good care of your imperial constitution and refrain from letting these trivial matters agitate you and harm your health.” She offered a few more hollow, perfunctory words of care, every single one sounding as though it had been squeezed out through clenched teeth.

Even if she could not kill Xiao Huaiyan right now, having him in Shen Chaoqing’s hands meant that if he ever managed to provoke Shen Chaoqing, a miserable death was guaranteed!

In the end, Li Miaorong did not even deign to glance at the unconscious Wuhuo lying on the floor—treating him as though he were nothing more than a piece of worthless trash—and swept away with a heavy aura of pressure and venomous frustration, disgruntledly ordering her entourage to return to her palace.

Tranquility returned to the grand hall, leaving behind only a faint scent of blood and a lingering, tangible sense of exhaustion. Shen Chaoqing rubbed the bridge of his nose and waved a hand. “Take them all away. Find an imperial physician to patch them up; make sure they don’t actually die.”

Receiving their orders, the guards dragged away the unconscious Wuhuo and Xiao Huaiyan, who was barely able to move under his own power.

When the palace doors slowly closed, cutting off all outside gazes, the spine Shen Chaoqing had forced himself to keep rigid instantly collapsed.

He broke into a violent fit of coughing as his body trembled uncontrollably, and a mouthful of dark crimson blood unexpectedly welled up, splashing across the cold golden bricks before him with a shocking, eye-catching splatter.

“Your Majesty!” Fu An gasped in alarm.

Under the candlelight, a layer of thin frost was spreading across Shen Chaoqing’s hand at a visible rate, the blue-purple veins bulging and intertwining beneath his near-transparent skin, looking freakishly grotesque.

Back when he was executing the assassins, he had already reached his limit, forcing himself to hold on until now. His body was long past the point of exhaustion; had the Empress Dowager and Xiao Huaiyan lingered a moment longer, he would have collapsed coughing up blood right in front of both of them.

Almost simultaneously, a figure slipped out like a ghost from the shadows behind the screen it was the imperial physician Su Chengjin, who had been waiting there all along.

With a grim expression and without uttering a word, Su Chengjin quickly retrieved a bowl of deep brown medicinal soup kept warm by a cozy container from his medical box and handed it to Shen Chaoqing’s lips.

Shen Chaoqing forced himself to swallow down the entirety of the intensely bitter broth. The heavy medicinal aroma mixed with the lingering scent of blood caused his stomach to churn violently, turning his complexion frighteningly pale.

After a long moment, the bone-piercing chill and the churning blood were barely subdued by the potency of the medicine.

Leaning against the soft bolster, Shen Chaoqing breathed weakly, his very first action being to reach out toward Fu An with a hoarse voice: “Plum preserves…”

Fu An hurriedly fetched a crystal bowl prepared beforehand, filled with plump, crystalline candied plums.

Shen Chaoqing swallowed several pieces in succession, letting the sweet and tangy flavor wash away the overwhelming bitterness in his mouth, before his tightly furrowed brow finally relaxed somewhat.

He hated bitterness—hated it to an extreme degree. This vulnerability, known to almost no one, had been drilled into him by countless bowls of stale, foul, and bitter medicinal dregs during those years in the cold palace where even a clean bite of food was a luxury.

Watching the emperor in this state, Fu An felt his heart ache terribly. He turned to Su Chengjin, who was packing up his medicine box, lowering his voice in urgent inquiry: “Imperial Physician Su, is there truly no more effective remedy for His Majesty’s cold affliction? Every single flare-up is so perilous…”

Su Chengjin paused his movements, his expression solemn as he shook his head. “His Majesty suffered severe dampness and cold invading his core during his early childhood in the cold palace, severely damaging his foundational vitality. The cold toxin has already deeply penetrated his lungs and marrow. At this point, we can only treat it gradually and nourish it slowly over time. Drastic medicines must be avoided at all costs, and above all, he must avoid extreme emotions, great joy, or great sorrow, and emotional volatility. Today’s events dealt a heavy blow to His Majesty’s imperial constitution.”

Acting as though he had heard none of their conversation, Shen Chaoqing merely lifted his eyelids lazily and addressed Su Chengjin: “The prescription… change it next time.”

Su Chengjin blinked in surprise: “What does Your Majesty mean?”

“It’s too bitter.” Shen Chaoqing furrowed his brows, undisguised disgust coloring his tone. “Find a way to make it taste less foul. It doesn’t matter if the efficacy drops a little; just don’t mix up that damned bitter medicine anymore.”

Su Chengjin: “…”

Having practiced medicine for many years, this was the first time he had ever heard a patient—let alone the Son of Heaven put forward such a… unique request. Remaining silent for a moment, he eventually bowed and replied: “…This subject understands. I will certainly do my utmost to adjust the flavor profile for Your Majesty.”

Leaning back against the soft pillows, Shen Chaoqing instinctively pressed one hand tightly over his chest, where it felt as though the space was stuffed with cotton soaked in icy water—heavy and freezing. Every single breath pulled at a fine, needle-like ache.

Listening to the murmur of Su Chengjin and Fu An discussing his condition, his gaze remained hollow and unanchored, resting blankly on the intricate carved patterns of the palace ceiling.

Treat it gradually? Nourish it slowly over time? Where on earth did he have that much time left?

This dilapidated body, this cold and tedious throne, this treacherous and deceptive deep palace… He had never truly felt any attachment to any of it.

The only reason he was still sitting here was simply because his deep vengeance remained unfulfilled.

His birth mother had once been the most radiant and dazzling beauty in the misty rain of Jiangnan, a legendary courtesan renowned across the land. A single romantic encounter during an imperial micro-inspection tour had resulted in him. Brought into the palace, his mother’s humble background meant she lived her whole life without even the lowest-ranking title, forced to huddle with him in the most remote corner of the cold palace until her dying day.

Shen Chaoqing grew up in the cold palace, enduring scorn and cold treatment alongside his mother. The Imperial Household Department constantly docked their provisions less ice in summer, fewer charcoal briquettes in winter and everyone cursed him as a bastard. It was not until later, when some “kind soul” offered guidance and arranged a blood test to verify parentage, proving he was indeed of royal blood, that those blatant insults gradually subsided, though the private contempt and cold disdain had never ceased.

Hard though those days were, his mother could always lull him to sleep with her gentle embrace and soft Jiangnan ditties.

Until the year he turned eight. The reigning empress at the time, now the Empress Dowager Li Miaorong, grew jealous of his mother’s beauty, which had not completely faded despite their destitution. With a casual sentence accusing her of “illicit relations with an imperial guard,” she had his mother dragged away and drowned in the pond.

He had been hiding right nearby inside a rockery cave. The final look his mother gave him before being dragged away was filled with terror, desperate entreaty, and boundless desolation, silently telling him with her lips: “Don’t come out…”

He had clamped his hand tightly over his mouth, tears surging forth to wet both palms, watching his mother’s struggling figure vanish into the depths of the pond, watching a string of desperate air bubbles rise to the surface before the water calmed once more.

The Empress Dowager assumed he knew nothing. She even hypocritically took him in to be raised in the Changle Palace, putting on a grand show of magnanimity and benevolence. On the surface, she showered him with fine food and clothes while severely punishing any palace servant who dared disrespect him. Behind the scenes, she condoned—and even tacitly permitted her trusted eunuchs to humiliate him in the most malicious ways.

Docking his meals, intentionally wetting his bedding, scattering allergy-inducing pollen along paths he had to walk… On several midnight occasions, he had even woken up with his mouth muffled and filthy hands groping wildly over his body, managing to escape only by fighting and biting with all his might.

The most lethal incident occurred during the dead of winter. He was “accidentally” pushed by several eunuchs into a lake covered in thin ice, and by the time he was hauled out, he had almost lost his breath. Although he miraculously managed to cling to life, that cold toxin took deep root within his lungs from that day forward, gnawing away at his vitality day and night to become an incurable chronic illness.

Thus, he endured eighteen years under the Empress Dowager’s “maternal affection” and actual torture.

When Emperor Xianode passed away and his sons fought tooth and nail for the dragon chair until none of them survived some cleared out as threats by the emperor himself, others victims of fratricidal slaughter the only one left standing was him: the “bastard” whom nobody had ever taken seriously and who had been chronically forgotten in the corners of the cold palace and Changle Palace.

Li Miaorong had no choice but to swallow her pride and help him ascend the imperial throne.

At first, she merely regarded him as an easily manipulated puppet, and Shen Chaoqing was quite happy to play along, acting ignorant, naive, and spineless.

It was not until his wings grew stronger, when he began gradually clawing back authority step-by-step and driving the Empress Dowager and the Li family faction behind her into steady retreat, that Li Miaorong finally woke up with a start: the docile lamb she thought she had raised was actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing with poison-laced fangs.

The sole purpose for which Shen Chaoqing drew breath was to watch Li Miaorong and the Li family completely collapse, avenging his mother.

And after that?

If Xiao Huaiyan launched his invasion down the road and the dominion of Jin crumbled to dust, what did that have to do with him?

He never… wanted to live anyway.