Chapter 11 — Kneeling before the Queen and Duke

News of the return of the lost little princess spread to Tu Palace in less than half an hour after the audience ended, as a distant relative present at the main hall hurriedly rode back to report the news. After listening, Tu Bach Quan, who was sitting in the study room handling books, suddenly felt the tea cup in his hand fall to the ground and shatter, the clanging sound rang out like a death knell echoing straight into his heart. His face was pale as if there was no blood left, his hands were shaking, he couldn't believe what he had just heard.

"No way," he muttered, his voice completely lost. "She is dead. I personally buried her at Tay Lang mound. How could she come back alive and still carry the identity of a princess?"

Bach Quan stood up and walked unsteadily around the study room, his hands still shaking from the broken porcelain pieces scattered under his feet. He looked out the window, his eyes were uncertain, his mind was filled with hundreds of unanswered questions: how could Khinh Vu survive after being buried underground for many days, who saved her, and most importantly, how much did she know about what really happened on that fateful night. If she remembered everything clearly, if she had been able to collect evidence during the past half a year of absence, then the prospect that awaited him would not simply be shame before his relatives, but could be the death penalty for attempted murder of the royal family, the heaviest crime in imperial law in which no one, no matter how prestigious a descendant of a mandarin, could escape the harsh punishment of the law.

The relative hastily recounted the details of what he had seen and heard in the main hall, from Khinh Vu's appearance in a gorgeous princess outfit, to the fact that the old mandarins had confirmed her identity, to the fact that the Holy King personally ordered to reopen the fire investigation file twenty years ago. Each word was like a knife cutting deeper into the panic rising in Bach Quan's heart, causing him to no longer be able to stand and had to lean on the table to avoid falling to the floor.

As soon as the relative said goodbye and left, Bach Quan hurriedly ran to find Nhuoc Lan, rushed straight into her room without even knocking on the door, his face was so panicked that as soon as Nhuoc Lan saw it, he knew something was wrong. "She's alive," he said, his voice trembling so much that he could barely make a sound. "Khinh Vu is still alive, and she is the lost princess of the royal family, just publicly recognized by the Holy King right in the middle of the main hall."

When Nhuoc Lan heard the news, her face also changed in an instant, but she calmed down much faster than Bach Quan, just slightly frowned and asked again in her usual cold voice. "Are you sure? Could this be just a mistake, an impostor taking advantage for personal gain?"

"I don't know," Bach Quan replied, holding his head with both hands, "but the relative told it very clearly, even the old court officials corroborated it, and even the Saint personally confirmed it. If this is true, what should we do now? If she remembers everything, if she denounces us to the court..."

Nhuoc Lan stood up, walked to the window, her eyes looked far away towards the palace, where now contained the biggest threat in her life. A series of chaotic thoughts appeared in her mind, both fearing for her own life and wondering whether the person behind the task assigned to her since childhood knew Khinh Vu's true identity, and why he had not revealed a word to her over the years about who he was spying on.

She remembered the first time she received a secret order from the mysterious contact. At that time, she was still an ignorant child, only obediently doing what she was told, observing and remembering everything that happened in the Sam family, periodically reporting through a secret communication channel whose recipient she never knew. Over the years, she had never once known the real reason behind that mission. She only vaguely guessed that the Sam family must be related to some important secret, but she could never have imagined that the secret would be so great that it was directly related to the royal bloodline. Now, when the truth was revealed, she felt both terrified and betrayed, because the person who assigned her the task since childhood clearly knew everything in advance, yet never once warned or prepared her mentally to face a dangerous situation like this.

"Calm down," Nhuoc Lan said, trying to keep her voice calm even though inside she was no less panicked. "If she really wanted to denounce us immediately, then today's audience would have been the time for her to do it, not wait until now. The fact that she hasn't acted right away may be because she's still gathering more evidence, or maybe because she's still afraid of something. Either way, we can't sit still and wait for death, we have to find a way to deal with it right now."

"How to deal with it?" Bach Quan asked, his voice full of confusion, his hands clenched on the table until they turned white.

"First of all," Nhuoc Lan replied, "we must erase all remaining traces in the palace, especially the documents related to the transfer of assets immediately after the funeral, as well as all connections with the physician who sold me the poison. After that, we need to find powerful people to ask for help. We cannot rely on ourselves alone to fend off a princess who has just been recognized by the Emperor."

Bach Quan nodded, but his heart still could not calm down, the image of Khinh Vu majestically in the main hall haunted his mind all night. He remembered her gentle face during the three years of their marriage, the nights she stayed awake over her husband's accounts, and a feeling of guilt began to creep back into his heart, although he still tried to push it away to focus on finding a way to survive this crisis.

He sat alone in the study room all night, watching the oil lamp swaying with the wind blowing through the door. Images of the first years of his marriage to Khinh Vu appeared in his mind, when she was still innocent and had absolute trust in him, always gently asking him when he came home late, always preparing each meal herself no matter how busy she was. He once thought he had completely extinguished those memories so that he could act without hesitation, but now, knowing that she was still alive and had become a powerful princess, he unconsciously raised his hand to cover his face, his fingers pressing hard on his temples as if to force the old images to stop appearing, both afraid for his own life and unable to help but feel tormented by what he had done to the person who had once devoted himself to him.

Meanwhile, at Tu Palace, the atmosphere became unusually heavy. The servants in the palace began to whisper about the shocking news that had just spread. Many people still remembered the unusual details of Bach Quan and Nhuoc Lan's behavior before and after their wife's death. Now when combined with the newly revealed truth, everything seemed to have a more reasonable explanation than ever. Butler Binh stood quietly in the corner of the yard, the corner of his mouth curled up in a secret smile, knowing that what he had quietly collected over the past half a year was about to come into effect, bringing justice back to its rightful place after many days of being buried under a layer of sophisticated lies.

Old lady Tu, when she heard that the daughter-in-law she had loved for so many years had become a princess of the royal family, was initially shocked, but then felt a mixture of joy and confusion, not knowing how to treat her son in this chaotic situation. She did not know anything about the poisoning plot, simply believed that her daughter-in-law had died due to illness, so when she heard rumors starting to spread in the government about the possibility of her son's hand being involved in that death, she absolutely did not believe it. She repeatedly asked Bach Quan but only received tortuous and evasive answers, making her increasingly insecure, with a feeling that there was a terrible truth being hidden right in her own family that she had not yet discovered. unable to reach her, causing her to toss and turn in the following nights, unable to sleep. One night, she wandered down to Bach Quan's study, intending to ask why, but standing in front of the closed door, hearing her son tossing and turning and sighing inside, she stopped, just quietly returned to the room, leaving the flickering oil lamp burning until bright next to her pillow.