After an investigation, it was found that Wen Xiangming gave in to the impulse to kill that day because someone was provoking him— instigating his anger and fanning the flames. Also, the civil servant managed to hand the letter through the hands of a courtier.
Most importantly, these two middlemen were from the Empress’s faction.
Over the past year, these two factions have been in constant disharmony, but they have not hurt each other directly. Now that the Empress had started to break the Ruan family’s wings, she wanted to eliminate the Ruan family’s forces in the court one by one.
The two factions have already reached the point where conflicts between them became a norm, causing the relationship between Lin Qing and Lin Ting to also drop to a severe point.
They used to sit in the first row of the Imperial School and were always seated at the same table. At some point, Lin Ting moved his position to the last row.
However, he was different from the weaker students in the back row. He didn’t sleep, never skipped classes nor did he eat snacks during class. He still sat upright and looked in the direction of the mentor in front of him, but his eyes were not focused as he looked like a lifeless wooden sculpture.
Lin Feilu drew a joke on paper with stick figures on it, telling the story of a little white rabbit and the big bad wolf.
She quietly handed it to Lin Ting, trying to make him laugh.
He only glanced at it, but still, he turned his head and smiled at her.
He smiled, but Lin Feilu felt even more uncomfortable when he did.
In the afternoon, when she told Song Jinglan about this incident while they were having a popsicle, he just looked at the white clouds overlapping the sky and said softly, “This is just the beginning.”
The road to the succession was destined to be paved with blood and human lives.
The struggle between the two factions for the position of inheritance lasted for six years.
In six years, Lin Feilu had grown from a cute baby who was no taller than the waist of an adult, to a beautiful thirteen-year-old girl. Even Lin Wei, a baby who once only drooled when she was hugging her thighs, had become a nine-year-old girl. She now knew how to dress up and cared a lot for her appearance.
In the past, only Lin Feilu and Song Jinglan were aware of the tensions between Lin Ting and Lin Qing, but now, even someone as slow as Lin Jingyuan had started to realize that something was wrong.
Although the two factions have never fought against each other in person and even maintained their peaceful demeanor on the surface, the smoke of gunpowder(3) that pervaded the palace had shrouded all those who were in it, regardless of the harem or the court.
(T/N: Refers to the heinous tension that grows between the two factions)
Even though Lin Jingyuan was now grown up, his temperament did not change at all and he was still the same as before. He had been working hard to restore the relationship between the eldest brother and his third brother. The two of them would always go along with his wishes just for his sake, but afterward, they always reverted back to ignoring each other.
Lin Jingyuan asked Lin Feilu worriedly, “Do you think the two of them will fight in the future?”
Lin Feilu felt that according to Lin Ting’s temperament, it was probably impossible.
But she was also uncertain.
After so many years, Lin Ting’s gentleness was gradually dyed into silence. His entire being was always very depressed and the once soft eyes were also covered by a thick layer of fog, making her unable to see what he was thinking about.
Initially, he truly didn’t intend to fight, but after so many years, could he have changed his mind?