Murong Fu should really thank Luo Xueyao.
If Luo Xueyao hadn't removed the glazed tiles and crucial roof beams yesterday, he would have been crushed to death by the collapsing palace today!
And as the Hall of Supreme Harmony collapsed, the massive tremors triggered a chain reaction, bringing down the rest of the inner palace one after another.
The imperial palace had become a pile of ruins.
So everyone should thank Luo Xueyao; if she hadn't worked so hard last night to help everyone tear down roofs, there's no telling how many people would have been crushed to death today!
Noble Imperial Consort Xi, Murong Fu's own mother, had moved into the Palace of Compassion and Tranquility for less than two days before it collapsed.
Now, the only building left intact in the inner palace was Shoukang Palace, alongside the late emperor's mourning hall.
The whole affair looked as though the late emperor was flying into a rage, reeking of strangeness at every turn.
Rubbing his aching head, Murong Fu ordered, "Go outside the palace and buy two carriages. Starting today, I am relocating to the Longevity Garden. Until the palace is repaired, all the imperial concubines are to move there as well."
Clad in only a single undergarment, Eunuch Wang trembled as he said, "B-But Your Majesty, the national treasury is out of silver! We probably can't afford carriages..."
"Then go borrow them! Go snatch them! I am the Son of Heaven; all land under heaven belongs to the king. Can I not even get a single carriage? If there's no silver, ransack some estates! With so many officials refusing to submit to me, why keep them around? Go ransack their homes for me!"
...
The collapse of the palace shocked the entire Shengjing. When the commotion reached the prison cells, Luo Xueyao made sure both cell blocks were well-supplied with food and drink before donning her Invisibility Cloak, mounting Mengmeng, and heading out for a spin.
It wasn't until dusk was falling that Luo Xueyao returned, perfectly content.
Lin Yue didn't ask where her daughter had gone; she simply pulled her close in the quilt, and they made do for another night of sleep.
...
"Your Majesty, it's not that we servants didn't try our best; the whole situation is just too bizarre. Every single carriage and horse belonging to the ministers has vanished overnight! Their homes, just like the palace, were reduced to bare skeletons overnight—the roof beams and tiles are completely gone! We wanted to go to the market to snatch—ah, no, rent a few carriages. But strangely enough, there isn't a single carriage left in the entire capital!"
Murong Fu sat on the bare ground, lacking even a straw mat—ah, right, the ground didn't even have floorboards left; he had no choice but to sit in the mud.
"How could all the carriages simply vanish? Did the city gate guards notice nothing unusual?"
Eunuch Wang shrank his neck and whispered, "The city gate guards' armor and weapons all vanished overnight as well... The capital is in utter chaos right now..."
Normally, Murong Fu would have smashed a tea set at a time like this, or hurled an inkstone, or at the very least shattered a vase.
Pity he had nothing left now; he could only pound the mud in frustration: "Send the Golden Guard to investigate! Find those thieves at all costs!"
Emboldening himself, Eunuch Wang tried to poison Murong Fu's mind: "Your Majesty, ever since Prince Pingxi—ah, no, ever since the criminal Murong Jing returned to the capital, bizarre occurrences have been endless. In this servant's view, all of this is the evil wind brought by that criminal Murong Jing!"
"Murong Jing..." Murong Fu's eyes hardened like poisoned blades. "This must be the work of Murong Jing's shadow guards! Hear my decree: tomorrow, banish the criminal Murong Jing and his accomplices from the capital!"
A young eunuch led a donkey over, treading carefully as he said, "Your Majesty, this is the only beast of burden left in the entire capital... If it pleases you... perhaps..."
Murong Fu stared at the donkey, which didn't even come up to his chest.
The donkey gave him a contemptuous glance.
...
Half an hour later, draped in a guard's tunic with a tattered cloth wrapped around his head, Murong Fu rode a donkey out of the city gates under the escort of the unarmed Golden Guard.
...
A little mouse scurried past the outside of the cell, squeaked for a moment, and scampered off.
Mengmeng, inside the Spatial Dimension, said to Luo Xueyao, "Yaoyao, the dog emperor has left the capital. Before he went, he said we're being exiled tomorrow."
"We've spent two days in this cell; it's about time we went out to catch some sun."
After nightfall, Luo Xueyao put on her Invisibility Cloak once more, visited the commoners' residential areas, and returned every single carriage, mule, and donkey to their owners.
Then, she sneaked quietly into the imperial palace. Upon emerging, she scattered a few sheets of paper across the capital's streets and alleys.
These were the pulp fiction tales she had written overnight, detailing not only Murong Fu's collusion with his little stepmother to usurp the throne, but also how the late emperor's wrath had swept the capital clean, leaving Murong Fu to slink out of the city in disgrace atop a little donkey.
Luo Xueyao's beautiful eyes stared fixedly in the direction Murong Fu had fled, a blazing inferno of rage burning within them, as if she meant to reduce him to ashes.
"Murong Fu, didn't you want to torment my family? Your big sister is going to torment you first!"
...
At the crack of dawn the next day, the jailguards came swaggering over with whips, lashing at the cell doors.
"Up, up, you lazy lot! Move out!"
Without even handing out the usual moldy flatbreads in the morning, they drove everyone out of the cells.
Not only the Luo family, but prisoners from several other cell blocks were to be exiled together today.
Gathered once more at the dungeon entrance, everyone could finally see each other clearly.
Thanks to Luo Xueyao's care, the Luo family had enjoyed fine food by day and cotton quilts by night; aside from being unable to wash their faces or bathe, their lives had remained undisturbed, and consequently, they didn't look particularly haggard.
The men rushed to their wives and children, exchanging anxious inquiries.
Unlike the tearful wails of the other households, the well-prepared Luo family looked almost as if they were setting out for a spring outing.
Luo Xueyao had stowed all the torture instruments away into her Spatial Dimension on the very first day of imprisonment, leaving the jailguards no opportunity to use them on the Luo family.
Coupled with the chaos in the capital that night, which saw the Six Ministries and the imperial palace cleaned out, alongside the destruction of the Fourth Prince faction's estates, absolutely no one had the bandwidth to care whether the Luos were tortured or not.
The charges had already been hammered home, and exile was a certainty.
Yet not everyone had escaped punishment. Some had received beatings, their clothes and trousers slowly seeping with bloodstains from behind. It was doubtful whether bodies in such a state could endure the journey to Ningguta.
Everyone else wore filthy, tattered prisoner garb. Tormented by moldy food for two days and freezing through the nights, some had begun running fevers; even those who hadn't fallen ill had long since lost all spirit.
Most were weeping bitterly, filled with terror at the thought of Ningguta three thousand li away. Even if they managed to survive the trip there, how was one supposed to survive in such a freezing wasteland?
The atmosphere felt oppressive to Luo Xueyao, so she withdrew her gaze and stopped looking around.
With a startled cry, Lin Yue pointed toward a cluster of flashily dressed people not far away: "Why are your uncles' family being exiled too?"