As he spoke, he leaned against the wall, and slid down weakly, as if the mountain was broken, the rock collapsed, and as he fell, a small, sharp hard object pushed up to his throat, and it was really terrifying to break it. When he sat on the ground, his eyesight finally recovered to barely seeing, and he saw a pair of beautiful eyes shining in the dark, faintly weird, and he knew that it was the queen, so he smiled vigorously: "Queen Mother, did you misunderstand me as a killer?"

I didn't expect the queen to be so athletic, or maybe he was too fragile and incompetent.

"I know who's coming. You killed the emperor, who will I kill if I don't kill you?" was a sharp and delicate cat voice, with murderous intent and hatred hidden behind it.

As the lights turned on, Zhao Ji finally saw clearly the person in front of him, who was the queen. The queen's face was amazing, she looked at him coldly, her beautiful long nails full of patterns were against Zhao Ji's throat, and her beautiful eyes stared at him fiercely.

She is the same age as Zhao Ji, no more than two years old, but she has become the queen of the world. But Zhao Ji was not very envious of her, and he had no sense of closeness to his peers, he only felt majesty and awe, as well as panicked fear, and this fear began from the moment he stepped into the cold palace. His eyes glanced behind the queen and elsewhere in the cold palace, only to see that the empty palace behind him was broken dishes and chopsticks on the ground, and the maid who knelt on the ground to clean up lit the lamp in her hand.

Zhao Ji shuddered, and a poem "Qin E's dream of breaking Qin Yuelou" came to his mind - the sound dust was cut off and the west wind was scattered. The layout in the hall is very simple, there is only one person and one bed and one table in the huge palace, and there are only three people in total, and the atmosphere is extremely strange. At this moment, it is evening, it is the time when the sunset is orange and red, and the light is warm, but in this dilapidated cold palace, the light is only slowly and slowly projected through the window lattice, and a few irregular quadrangular shadows are cast on the ground, there is no warmth at all, only the cold of the killing penetrates into the skin, nerves and bone marrow, and drills into the body madly, which makes this cold palace even more bleak and terrifying.

Zhao Ji swallowed a mouthful of saliva silently. When he swallowed, the Adam's apple rolled up and down, so that the nails against the mouth of his throat were embedded deeper, and he broke out in a cold sweat with fright, his clear and fragile young voice was not loud, but it was still very clear in this closed room, he took a trembling breath, and said, "Queen, I have come to ask you about something." Before I say it, please be sure not to kill me by mistake, if the poison hidden in your fingernails really flows into my blood and causes my death, you will really never be able to escape the suspicion of murdering the emperor. ”

Click. The nails are a little deeper. Zhao Ji muttered in his heart, and felt a tingling pain again, so he straightened his body and didn't dare to shake it, for fear that he would accidentally tilt forward and his life would end here. When he was about to repeat it, he didn't think that the queen in front of him had red eyes, so he asked: "Queen Mother, can you collect your nails first......

The queen smiled bitterly and said to herself: "I, kill the emperor? Why do you think that I will murder the emperor? What kind of reason do I have, and how credible is such a reason? I am just a woman, powerless and powerless, and the only thing to be proud of is that I am under the favor of the emperor, and everything I have is born from the emperor's favor, and it will dissipate with the emperor's death in the future, why should I? Ha, why should I ...... The Queen Mother actually blamed me for such a ridiculous and flawed reason, obviously she usually hates me and the emperor like glue, which is really ridiculous and ridiculous. ”

Zhao Ji said: "I know, queen, I know that you are not that kind of person." ”

The queen said coldly: "What do you know? What do you know as a prince, do you live in the palace all day long?"

Zhao Ji's eyes returned to Queen Liu, and said with a gentle smile: "Since the queen mother has to let me say it, then I will just say it." The Queen Mother has always disliked you, Empress Liu, thinking that you are a dove occupying the magpie's nest, and you are too charming, and even affect the emperor's reputation, which is a symptom of deserving death. But I also wonder if when something happens to a man, even just because he is not perfect, and the blame is always shifted to the woman with whom he has the closest relationship, as if it is not his fault, and what is even more ridiculous is that it is always said by the mouth of a woman who loves him the most, is this not doubly hurt and persecuted? ”

The queen's voice trembled: "Then why are you talking so much, what do you know?"

Zhao Ji said: "I know the emperor, that is, my brother, his feelings for you. He has lived hard enough, a puppet, he is powerless and futile to do anything, and only when he sees you, there will be light in his eyes. On the night of the winter solstice, he tried to blend in with us, he wanted to find the intimacy of ten or twenty years ago, when we were still teenagers, but unfortunately age and identity made all this impossible. He lost us, and he lost the past, at this time I saw him looking back at you, Queen Mother, at that time you were drinking by yourself, when the emperor looked at you, his eyes were envious and gentle, his eyes were like a warm jade, melancholy swept away, it was only a moment. But for a moment, it was also real, and this feeling had nothing to do with anything else, just his own business. I know that he loves you dearly. ”

With a sigh, finally, the nails left Zhao Ji's throat slightly, and Zhao Ji was reluctantly relieved. The queen seemed to be a little lost, she looked at Zhao Ji, there was no more ferocity in her eyes, like a deflated ball, like melting ice and snow, she straightened up and walked back, walked to her bed, and then passed by the maid's side, and said: "Light all the lights, and be numb with your hands and feet." ”

The maid hurriedly got up and said, "Yes, the slave has temporarily cleaned up the debris under the table, and the queen mother should be careful not to step on it." ”

The queen sat back on the bed, held her forehead, and said with a tired expression, "What do you have to ask?"

Zhao Ji subconsciously touched his neck, there was a small protrusion on it, if there was a mirror at this time, then Zhao Ji could see that this scar was flesh pink. Zhao Ji is very easy to have scars on his body, and if he is really injured, it will take ten days and a half months to recover his original state. His hands quickly left the wound, and he stroked back from his neck, pinched the end of a thin rope hanging from his neck, and pushed the hooks that were hooked inward, and broke them down to untie the rope.

While doing this, he kept walking in the direction of the queen, until he stopped three steps away from the queen, he knelt down, took the pendant off his neck, held it in both hands and handed it to the queen, and said: "Queen, this is delivered to me by the fourth brother, I have worn it for more than ten years, does the queen still remember this thing?"

The pendant was born inconspicuously, it was tied by a very thin rope, and the pendant part was a round copper plate with a worn pattern and smoothed, and it began to rust and show signs of patina. The queen glanced at it with a straight face, and immediately glanced at the patina on the pendant, frowned, slapped it, slapped the pendant into the distance, and said: "What dirty thing, you want to poison me, right? How old was I more than ten years ago, do you think I'm over forty years old, or do you think I'm an old monster like the Queen Mother? Don't you want to come and humiliate me, get out of here!"

The pendant made a breaking sound in the distance, causing Zhao Ji to look up and smile abruptly. Then Zhao Ji made a move that surprised the queen: he crawled in the direction where the pendant fell without saying a word, lowered his head and picked up the pendant, and the maid on the side looked at Zhao Ji sympathetically, Zhao Ji felt her gaze, looked up at her and smiled slightly, held the broken pendant in his hand, returned to the queen, and said, "Queen, don't you look at it anymore?"

The queen said: "Do you have to come to make things difficult for me? I-" She suddenly saw that something suddenly twitched in the handful of fragments that Zhao Ji was holding, and her heart shook violently, and she was shocked when she looked at it.

I saw a small worm with a strange shape twitching in Zhao Ji's hand, the insect was golden red, with a hard horn on the top of its head, two sharp huge chelates, and a dozen legs densely packed under the body trembled, like an arc drawn in the sky before the fireworks burst, and then, the purple flowers exploded with a snap, and the limbs were torn apart into colored ashes, like a dried grape crushed in Zhao Ji's palm. Zhao Ji looked down at the wreckage in the palm of his hand, and blew it, and the fine ash dissipated with the cold wind in winter. He watched the ashes fly away, with a bit of pity in his eyes, and shook his head with a light sigh.

The queen stiffened in astonishment. She looked at Zhao Ji's hands fixedly, and watched Zhao Ji clapping his hands clean, she was dumbfounded: "What are you...... It's ......"

Zhao Ji smiled and said softly in a kind tone: "This is a Gu worm, put all kinds of poisonous poisonous insects in a closed container, let them fight each other in it, and the last one left is called a Gu." More than ten years ago, the fourth brother gave me the Gu worm in this small copper plate, saying that it was a gadget developed by a wizard in the palace, as long as this thing is not broken, you can hear the sound inside every night, it is alive, and everything in it forms a small cycle of life. But once it is broken, it will all turn into ashes, the fourth brother said, this is also to protect my safety. It had been less than a month since he disappeared, and this thing could be considered his relic. It took me a long time to ask someone to understand that there were all kinds of small poisonous insects inside, fighting all day and all night. What I hear is not the voice of life, but the sound of life passing away. His eyes were deep, like a calm and dark lake, bottomless.

The queen heard her trembling breath and said, "That's right...... Gu is a death to life, starting from death and ending with complete annihilation......"

"That's right. Zhao Ji added lightly, "Gu is a thing, the queen should be familiar with it, right?"

"I ......" The queen gritted her teeth, covered her face, and did not speak for a long time, only her body and arms trembled, and finally put her hand down exhaustedly, her face was covered with fine beads of sweat, and in this cold season, she was covered in cold sweat.

Zhao Ji got up and said: "The queen doesn't have to be afraid, I just want to know the origin of this thing, this may be the last way to save the emperor." When I was a child, it was impossible for the fourth brother to tell me the whole truth, and he even just gave it to me as a toy. Now that it has done its job and is reduced to ashes, I can't just let it go, Queen. From an emotional point of view, we might be on the same page, right?"

The queen's eyes were still fierce, but at the moment when Zhao Ji finished speaking, it became a helpless ferocity, she stopped and looked at the ground weakly, and said with a blank look in her eyes: "That's right, I used Gu many years ago...... When I first entered the palace. ”

Zhao Ji raised his eyes to look at the queen and said, "Queen, but you are beautiful enough, there is no need to do this." ”

This sentence made the queen very comfortable, so she smiled lightly. However, the pleasure did not last long, and her smile was a misty starry sky, looming and then hiding in the darkness.

The queen murmured: "I know that I am beautiful, but I am also afraid that I will be old and decrepit, and the more brilliant and beautiful the flowers are, the more cruel and pitiful they will become, and they will be shocking." I was still young at that time, and when I was fourteen years old when I received my first favor, I began to worry about such problems, so that I was so trembling that I could not face the emperor, so much so that once the emperor became angry and carried me out completely. Since then, I haven't been blessed for more than a year. ”

Zhao Ji asked: "What happened after that? How did the queen get favored? Did you put Gu on the emperor?"

The queen stared at him, raised her eyebrows and smiled: "Is this possible? What kind of identity I was at that time, I couldn't get in touch with the emperor at all, and when I had such a thought, all the things about the emperor around me had disappeared, and I couldn't do it." The only thing I can do is to—" she laughed sadly, "it's just me." ”

Zhao Ji sighed: "I guessed it." The queen found someone to play a trick on herself?"

"Yes. At that time, there was a person in charge of the sacrifice in the palace, and the concubines often looked for him to see a doctor or fortune teller, which was a strange role beyond common sense, and the palace also specially arranged a job for him, but he was an idle official, and he had nothing to do on weekdays, so he loved to see the ladies in the harem, in fact, everyone knew that it was 'witchcraft'. I found him, hoping that he would make the emperor favor me again. He glanced at me and said to me, it is impossible to do it on the emperor, and your request cannot be fulfilled. I said, no, please transform me, I can pay the price, whatever the price is. ”

Zhao Ji's throat tightened, his eyes turned to the wall to the side, and said, "Do you think the emperor's liking for you is so important? You are desperate to get it, even if he knows that it will be painful, don't you care?"

The queen said: "He will never know, or he has known for a long time, a harem full of women, a complete man came, stayed all day and all night, and nothing happened to be abnormal." After that, he gave me a jar of Gu worms and told me to bury them under the bed for seven hundred and forty-nine days, and when there was only one worm left, swallow it, and it would take effect. After I did this, I had unbearable abdominal pain at the moment I swallowed the worm, and I woke up after a whole day in a coma, and the emperor was already by my side. ”

"It worked?"

The queen sighed and said, "I thought it was so, because no matter how I exposed my bad temper later, the emperor still liked me very deeply, and I thought it was because of Gu." Until I became pregnant, I thought I was going to give birth to a prince, and on the day of delivery, the midwife held my baby and showed me that it was a freak with horns on its head, golden eyes, a tail and small hands. It did not live more than an hour. Later, I was happy again, but that time it was exactly the same scene, exactly the same fetus, it was like the Gu worm I swallowed, with horns on its head, golden eyes, and hundreds of feet on its body...... I realized that the purpose of Gu was to hurt me, to make me lose my threat, so that I would not threaten his daughter. As for the emperor's feelings for me, they are real. Even if I am relieved, my body will not be able to fully recover, and my current body will not be able to give birth. ”

"His daughter?" Zhao Ji said, "Is the priest's daughter also a concubine?"

"Not just a concubine?" the queen smiled, "that's the one who is in the middle palace, Queen Meng." ”

Zhao Ji suddenly raised his head and said, "What?"

The queen said: "The queen mother, the first emperor, and the emperor, they all know it." ”

The atmosphere froze instantly, and silence enveloped the cold palace.

After a long time, the queen spoke: "Do you still want to listen? ”

"I want to listen. Zhao Ji said, "The queen mother, please speak." ”

"I later heard that a long time ago, when this priest was still very young, he conducted an experiment on the Four Princes, and he quietly placed a Gu on the Four Princes to test whether it would be effective. He was later killed because he used these crooked spells in the palace and caused misfortune to the royal family. For example, the fourth prince was quite normal on weekdays, but he suddenly fell in love with a little boy like crazy, and later even his spirit was seriously damaged, and this behavior was probably caused by Gu poison. ”

Zhao Ji's eyes were cold, and he was slightly surprised, he said softly: "The queen is sure enough, do you know everything?"

"I know, I know that. Because at that time, the fourth prince once found a master and asked him to remove the Gu from his body. The fourth prince was already terminally ill, and the Gu poison was deep, and it was even planted in his spirit, slowly eroding him. But it's not incomprehensible, the fourth prince is also very optimistic about this, he even asked to take off a part of the Gu on his body and refine a Gu worm to play with, and he doesn't know where he ended up, who knows that it ended up in your hands......"

"Maybe the fourth brother wants me to know the truth one day. Zhao Ji sighed faintly, "Queen Mother, this is really ...... It was really unexpected. ”

The queen sneered and said, "The truth? Even if you find the truth, it's useless. He was an accomplice of the former emperor, a hero of the former emperor, who solved the trouble in the heart of the former emperor, and by the way, also solved the first emperor himself...... The more effective the thing, the more dangerous it is, and no matter how close and loyal a person is, when he shows his fangs and bites back, it will cause damage that is several times more terrifying than usual, and this is how ironic things in this world are. He did these things, and the emperor rewarded him, but what he did next was something that the emperor did not expect when he was dying, this inexplicable betrayal, the emperor may not have figured out what was going on until he died, but this disaster continued all the way and befell the emperor's head. ”

"And the reason why I know this is because it is the same master who solved the Gu for the Four Princes. And his name is - Lin Jingzhen. ”