Luo Wei stood beside the emperor during today's morning audience(1). After the audience, he followed the emperor back to the Hall of Eternal Light. Emperor Xing Wu has already ordered people to set up a desk to the left of his for Luo Wei. So Luo Wei read under the sight of the emperor while the emperor leaned over his own desk as he approved the bills proposed by the ministers. The two of them kept quiet, one older and one younger, but neither felt awkward or lonely in the silence.

From time to time a minister would enter for s private audience with the emperor, but Xing Wu did not ask Luo Wei to excuse himself, instead letting Luo Wei listen along with him. From what the ministers spoke of, Luo Wei could tell that most were about the mining case in Yu Zhou. This big case in the Xing Wu era was uncovered immediately in the Ping Zhang era, which wasn't out of anyone's expectations. After all, Liu Shuang Shi was at the head of this embezzlement scheme. Long Xuan wanted to be emperor, and for that he needed to buy people off, he needed to train his own army, and all of that required a substantial amount of money. Yu Zhou's ore had long since become second prince Long Xuan's private ore mine. The bronze, iron mined from these ores were used to make weapons and equipment, some had been taken under the table, and all of this build a strong financial foundation for Long Xuan's ambitions to take over the empire.

Luo Wei's eyes were on the book in front of him but he was calculating in his head. Would his father be able to discover the culprit of the case this time around? If he wanted to take Long Xuan down, he'd have to take out the biggest supporter standing behind Long Xuan, and that would be the Junior Chancellor Liu Shuang Shi. Ever since Long Xuan crawled out of Consort Liu's belly, the Liu family has been scheming to get him on the throne. And now that they've been at it for sixteen years, the tree has already taken root. Between all the interconnected parts, how could one uproot the tree without hurting themselves?

Luo Wei was thinking about this when imperial physician, Doctor Sun came to see Emperor Xing Wu. He was relaying the fact that Noble Consort Liu's pregnancy turned risky last night, but she'd taken her medicine now and both the mother and the baby are safe. Emperor Xing Wu said nothing to Doctor Sun and only hummed in reply. Doctor Sun paid his obeisance and excused himself.

This caught Luo Wei's attention. Consort Liu was in the seventh month of her pregnancy right now, but Luo Wei knew that this child would never be born. In the past life, Consort Liu suffered a miscarriage. She hid it from the emperor for three days, then after a visit from Luo Wei's aunt, the Empress, the news that she'd miscarried suddenly broke in the palace. Last time around under Long Xuan's instruction, Luo Wei had purposefully said in front of a crowd "maybe the empress gave Consort Liu something bad to eat? I just learned today that safflower can cause women to miscarry". After that, the Empress Dowager found safflower in the Hall of the Empress, and this was what started the bad blood between the emperor and the empress.

"Wei Er," Emperor Xing Wu saw that Luo Wei had stopped writing and was deep in thought, so he asked, "What are you thinking about?"

Luo Wei quickly brought a smile on his face, addressing the emperor, "I'm thinking about the mining case in Yu Zhou. My father's stressed to death about it."

Emperor Xing Wu said, "You know about this?"

Luo Wei replied, "My father's been forgetting his meals and tea lately, so I asked him but he wouldn't tell me. So I kept bothering him about it until he said that all the people in Yu Zhou should just drop dead."

"Oh? What else did your father say?"

"He didn't say much else, but my big brother said," At this, Luo Wei seemed to have remembered something and quickly closed his mouth.

Emperor Xing Wu asked, "Why did you stop? What did your second eldest brother say?"

Luo Wei shook his head, "Father told me not to talk nonsense, he even yelled at my big brother for it."

"Let me hear it," The emperor was interested, "I won't yell at anyone."

Luo Wei glanced at Emperor Xing Wu.

Emperor Xing Wu smiled gently, "What, you don't believe me?"

Luo Wei quickly shook his head again, "My second eldest brother said that we need to properly investigate the Yu Zhou mining case. The bronze and iron from the mines there are materials that could be made into weapons, and if they got stolen by someone, that someone must," Luo Wei purposefully paused as if he was trying to recall something, "must have some vicious intentions, and for those intentions, one could be put to death."

Emperor Xing Wu nodded once, "And what did your father say?"

Luo Wei replied, "Father ordered me out of the study after that, but I heard him yelling at my brother saying that he's making some highly inflammatory statements, and if he wanted to bring even more chaos to the nation or something."

"Then what do you think?" Emperor Xing Wu asked Luo Wei.

"Me?" Luo Wei thought about it for a long time before he said anything, "If it was me, I'd go to Yu Zhou and take a look with my own eyes. If that doesn't do the trick, I'd find a miner there and ask them myself. I don't think this case is so difficult that there's no way to solve it."

Emperor Xing Wu smiled and gave Luo Wei a little poke, "Get busy with your readings, I'm going to test you on it later."

FOOTNOTES:

1. Morning audience - Emperors delegate the governance of the country and various parts of it to the ministers, but they need to report their findings back to him. Taking audience is a court gathering where the emperor hears the requests and reports for the different regions and departments, and offers solutions or approves/denies suggestions. The morning audience is one that happens in the morning, sometimes the emperor will stay much longer at audience.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES:

Hey everyone!! Thanks so much for all the comments. I try to get back to all of you to say that I appreciate them, but wattpad is making it hard sometimes to track down comments in my notifications. : ) So I wanted to thank you all again here and to apologize if I don't reply to some of your comments!!