When Ren Baqian heard the empress say those words, he immediately felt that he was in deep sh*t!
He still had an elder brother-in-law?
How did he not know about this?
He hadn't heard this before!
This meant that the late emperor actually had an heir and furthermore, a son? How did the empress ascend the throne?
Ren Baqian naturally didn't know that the empress had once left a message back when she took him to Great Xia. She requested all the officials to bring that man back if she couldn't make it back alive.
If Ren Baqian hadn't passed out at that time, he could have probably guessed it.
However, he didn't hear it then and nobody mentioned it afterward. As such, he completely didn't expect the existence of such a person.
After all, this wasn't a matriarchal society. As a woman, the empress became the monarch of Dayao. Ren Baqian then naturally assumed that the late emperor only had one heir, who was Qi Zixiao.