The Mad King's Heir

"Why did you think I wanted you two to get close. It was all for your future, our future," Xiu Ying replied, her thumb caressing her cheek. Li Yu bit her lips, feeling ashamed. She had screwed up her one chance to be with Yu Wen. At least if she had done things right at that time, Red Valkyrie would be their solid ally.

"I am sorry, I failed you," she whispered, but Xiu Ying wouldn’t let her blame herself. Knowing what she knew about this world, she couldn’t control things. Li Yu was just a small drop in the ocean, so how could she predict that something would go wrong that night?

"Don’t blame yourself," she said while stroking her hair.

"What are we going to do?"

Xiu Ying smiled slightly and said, "That’s for me to worry. You just live your life carefree, okay? Do what you normally do and let your mother take care of things." Li Yu nodded her head, but she wasn’t going to just sit back. She had to deal with that man; otherwise, he might tell on her.

***

A few streets from the imperial palace, Yu Wen was sitting in his office, looking like the walking dead. His eyes were sunken, and his hair, which was always meticulous, was a little messy. His lips were cracked and dry like he hadn’t had water in days. He was looking at the floating screen, going through endless files.

It had been days already, and they had had a state funeral for Li Jun, but he refused to go. Xiu Ying must have been so afraid of Draco’s retaliation that she organized this large funeral for him and erected a monument for him in the imperial burial mounds. She wanted to absolve herself of the guilt, but Draco already had a mark on her.

There was chaos in the city. People were displeased. They didn’t want their tax money spent on a large state funeral for a treasonous criminal. They rioted on the streets, and the military police had to be deployed. Draco finally retaliated. While no one was there, he bombed businesses and warehouses simultaneously.

At first, there seemed to be no correlation with Xiu Ying, but Yu Wen did a little digging and found that all these businesses were hers but were registered under different aliases. Xiu Ying bled heavily, but that wasn’t enough.

Yu Wen wanted to speak to the man who killed Li Jun, but she wouldn’t allow anyone to see him. It was incredibly frustrating. The only way he could find a way in was if he found something, anything to use against her. This was why he had barricaded himself in his office and refused to see anyone.

His phone, which had been ringing incessantly for days, had long been switched off, so he didn’t know that Lu Anu was coming. She wasn’t the type to coax him out of the office. She burst through the door using a battering ram from the armory. Yu Wen looked over and saw his reinforced door collapse to the ground and his mother standing there, her hand on her hip.

She dropped it on the ground, and Alex, who was standing behind her, silently apologized to the general before leaving. He tried to stop her, but she scared the living hell out of him. Lu Anu walked into the office and slammed the food bag on his desk.

Yu Wen said, "Was that really necessary?"

"What do you think?" she said, looking at her son, who looked half dead. This wasn’t the first time she had seen him like this. When Yu Hu died, her son closed himself off and buried himself in an investigation looking for ways to bring Li Mingze down. It was an unhealthy way of grieving. It was his way of avoiding the pain.

"I am worried about you," she continued to say as she sat opposite him.

Yu Wen glanced at the door and said, "I can see that."

"Eat, I spent a lot of hours making this," she said, her arms crossed on her chest. She looked at him, like if he didn’t eat it, she would force feed him. He met her gaze, and with a sigh, he took the food bag.

Lu Anu watched him eat until the last bite. It was only then that she was satisfied. After he was done, she finally asked, "What is the plan here?"

He packed away the insulated box while saying, "I need to speak to the murderer, but she won’t let anyone see him. I would have to force her hand."

She nodded her head, but she had been having a hunch that she couldn’t shake off for the past few days. Unlike Yu Wen, she was less emotional, so she could see things clearly. She wanted to run this hunch by him, but now seeing his current state, she was no longer sure if she should mention it. Wouldn’t that throw him into an even bigger pit?

"I thought you disliked him?" she said, trying to assess where his mind was.

Yu Wen met her gaze, and after a slight hesitation, he said, "Things were different, plus he never really told me what happened to my father."

Lu Anu sighed and said, "Have you ever wondered why I divorced your father?" She had been avoiding this conversation for a long time because, in Yu Wen’s eyes, his father was a hero who could do no wrong. She didn’t want to taint that image of him all these years, but now that it was affecting Yu Wen’s life, she knew he had to know the truth.

"Didn’t you say that you fell out of love with him and that you wanted to find something new?" he responded with the exact words she said to him when he was a kid. At the time, he was angry with her, but as he grew older, he only wished for her to be happy.

Lu Anu pursed her lips before saying, "Actually, I loved your father till the day he died. He was the love of my life."

"Then why did you divorce him?" he asked, his brows creased. He was confused. If she loved him, then why did she leave him? There was only one thing he could think of, and that was infidelity. "Did he cheat on you?"

She shook her head and said, "I would have killed him if he did. I divorced him because he was conspiring with spies from Helion."

Yu Wen, "???"

AN: Missing for two Chapters.

Li Jun: I am on vacation.