Concubine Rong opened her eyes and was greeted with a stranger's face who was looking down right at her. She was weirded out by this stranger's peculiar behaviour, but has no energy left to scream 'get off me ' right at his face.
The stranger then moved away from her face and turned to another strange woman who was standing beside him.
"Seems like the concubine had regained her consciousness. Don't forget to give her medicine according to my instruction." the strange man than turned around and left both of them in her room.
The woman crept closer to her bed. She had an unsettling smirk displayed on her face. Concubine Rong could not make out whether she was smiling or looking down at her.
"Are you awake? Do you want to drink something?"
Concubine Rong nodded her head. The woman than immediately help her to sit properly on the bed. She handed a cup of water to her in which Concubine Rong gulped in mere second.
"Be careful now…" she said with a concern voice.
After quenching her thirst with two cups of water, Concubine Rong felt much better and energetic. She was looking at the woman - who was now putting the cup away- with so much interest. Who is this woman? By looking at her appearance, she was not a servant.
"Who are you miss?"
"Hmm?? Me? You don't recognize me?"
"Have we met before?"
"Ah….the emperor was not lying when he said you have lost all of your memories" the woman shook her head.
"Never mind. My name is Zheng Er. I am the wife of the crown prince. We were acquaintance when we were young" she explained.
"Acquaintance?"
"Ouhh…yes! Back then you were the princess Liu Shi. I struck a friendship with you as I wanted to get closer to your brother the crown prince at the time. But I ended up marrying Xiao Zhan instead"
"Xiao Zhan?"
"My husband. The emperor younger brother"
"You are the crown princess?!"
"Ahahahahah…. don't be to surprise by it. To think that you were the late empress, that's much more shocking"
"Why are the crown princess attending me? Where is Meng?"
"The emperor deemed Meng as no longer suitable to attend to your needs, hence, here I am" she said cheerfully.
Concubine Rong stayed silent for a while. She had a lot of questions to be hurled at the woman in front of her. But she was worried that this woman was also colluding with the emperor. After all, she was his sister-in-law.
" Your Highness may I -"
"Just call me Zheng Er. You are the real royalty anyway"
" Am I really the late empress? How can all of you sure that I was the empress? I lived the ordinary life of a peasant woman in a small border town. How can I be mistaken to a former empress?"
Zheng Er took her time to answer Concubine Rong's question. Given that the poor woman had lost her entire memories and was whisked away from her former hometown without her consent, Zheng Er understood her plight and horror when she discovered that her entire life was fabricate by her beloved 'brother'.
"You look just like her" Zheng Er pointed out slowly.
"This face doesn't mean anything. It was not a good evidence that I was the empress!" Concubine Rong was adamant that face alone was not a strong evidence.
"Hmmmm….then…let me think" the crown princess really spent a while to think of ways to prove that she was indeed the long lost empress.
"Alright. Hear me out. I heard that when you first arrived at the palace, you were not equipped with adequate lesson about the rules and regulations of the inner palace nor do you know how to act properly like any other royal concubine. Is it true?"
Concubine Rong turned her head sideways. She hated when people pointed out about her darkest moment in the palace. She was left to fend for her and the servants alone by the emperor. They had to endured humiliation before they managed to learned everything by themselves!
"But then, I heard that in a span of six months, you've managed to learn everything just by observing the other concubine in the inner palace." Zheng Er pointed out.
"That was because I need to master them in order to survive in the inner palace. What does it have to do with me being accused as the former empress?"
Zheng Er flashed her smirk once again. She gotten up from her chair and began to slowly sauntered around the room.
"The inner palace is an dangerously intricate place. The rules and regulations, as well as the subtle twist and turn of hierarchy uniquely belonged to this place are not easy to be learned by any outsider, what more for a peasant girl from small town"
Concubine Rong frowned. She did not understand what the woman in front of her was trying to say.
Seeing the confusion on her face, Zheng Er let out an exasperated sight. The woman who was sitting in front of her was the spitting image of the royal princess who was she once considered as her good acquaintance a long time ago.
Despite the eerie similarity, both of them exude different aura and mannerism. Princess Liu Shi was much more reserved and taciturn person, while the concubine was practically wearing her feelings on her sleeve.
It was difficult to imagine that the fragile concubine was once a powerful ruler of this empire who had scheming viciously against her entire family.
" Concubine Rong, no one had ever been able to familiarized themselves with the intricate inner palace's rules in short amount of time. It was your body and mind regaining the old memories that you decided to discard by drinking the drug thirteen years ago."
"No! You are wrong! I know nothing about this palace before I was forced to come here!" Concubine Rong was adamant. Everything about Tang Empire was foreign for her. The allegation about her being the former ruling empress was utterly ridiculous!
" Concubine Rong. Have you ever find it difficult to adjust your speech pattern when you was first interacted with the people in the palace?"
"No" she shook her head vigorously.
Zheng Er once again flashed her infamous smirk. That particular smirk somehow annoyed Concubine Rong.
" When you were residing in Peony Town, do you enjoy talking with the villagers?"
"Not really. I lived a rather isolated life with my brother"
"Regardless, do you find it difficult to interact with the villagers?"
Concubine Rong slowly nodded her head.
"Why?"
"I did not really understand their speech pattern" she admitted. Concubine Rong always found it difficult to mingle around with the villagers. That was how she had the six year old Yue Liang as her close companion in the village. She trained the little girl to speak like her!
" You find it difficult to understand them as both of you were not one of them. No matter how much you tried to dress up and mimicking their life style, your demeanor and speech pattern stays with you." Zheng Er offered a rational explanation.
Concubine Rong felt as if she was struck with thunderstorm. Bit by bit, realization began to creep into her mind. However, her ego sill stood strong against her clear conscience.
"No....." her defensive mode slowly crumbled in front of Zheng Er. The stubborn Concubine began to appear miserable and vulnerable , Zheng Er felt bad for a moment.
Not wanting for the matter to messed up her state of mind, Zheng Er reached for Concubine Rong's hand.
"Now, listen to me. We could be wrong here. But you do look exactly like the former empress and you brother was indeed the her general who disappeared alongside her. There's only one way for you to find out the truth"
" But I was not allowed to visit him"
"It's alright. I will try to talk to the emperor" Zheng Er promised the Concubine.
********
"No!" the short answer sealed away Concubine Rong's chance to visit Gao Wang in his prison cell.
"Your Majesty, please reconsider your decision regarding this matter" Zheng Er calmly persuading the emperor to change his mind.
"Why would I allow Liu Shi to meet the vile man?" He clinched his teeth while trying to stay calm. Xiao Song was generally a calm man, but anything that was related to Princess Liu Shi never failed to make his blood boil
Regardless how apparent the emperor's anger was, the shrewd Crown princess show no signs of being intimidated with him. She was on the same league with Dr. Zhan. Both of them show no fear in riling him up.
" I believe that by letting the concubine to meet Gao Wang was the only possible way for her to accept her former identity" Zheng Er tried to explain.
"What makes you think so?"
" If what the maid said was the truth, it was Gao Wang's decision to switch the fatal poison that she intended to consume in the first place. In other words, without that man, you would not get this second chance in both of your life time. The least you could do is let both of them meet to resolve this problem"
There was a long , deafening silence ensued after Zheng Er spouted her wisdom to the emperor. Despite his annoyance toward his sister-in-law, Xiao Song could not deny that she was a sensible person with rational head on her shoulder.
Seeing that his stubbornness were crumbling at the moment, Zheng Er tried to soften her blow.
"Your Highness, you are always known to be someone with high sense of justice. You would never allowed your feelings get in the way when ever you made a decisions for the empire. But you are a different man when it comes about the concubine. Why don't you detach your feeling from this issue. Why not observing this action through your sensible lens? Be the bigger person and you might help the concubine to find a closure"
His sister-in-law's perspective had evoked his deepest regret. Xiao Song had always known that he was selfish and treated the concubine unfairly throughout her three year in the inner palace.
He enjoyed seeing her suffer throughout the years. It makes he felt as if she was paying for using, lying and manipulating him a decade ago. While he did admit it was petty of him for doing so, yet he could not find any other way to resolve the pain that had been lingering for so many years.
"Huh…." he let out a heavy sigh.
" I will let them meet. But! I want you-" he pointed at Zheng Er. "- to accompany and supervised the meeting"
Finally, Xiao Song relented. He was also exhausted with these unintentional push and pull games between both of them. What he wanted was a closure that would bring inner peace that he had been desiring since thirteen years ago.