Billionaire's Long Journey of Chasing His Love-Chapter 554 - 476: Fifteen More Updates

"Mom, can I come in?" Nancy’s voice came from outside the door. The Queen quickly put on a warm smile, "Come in quickly."

Nancy and Xia Rou entered one after the other. Both of them paused briefly upon seeing the Emperor in the room.

Nancy was just about to bow when the Emperor hurriedly held her up, "Nancy, can you forgive your father?"

Nancy froze in place.

The Queen’s eyes reddened. After all the suffering her child had endured over the years, this reaction was only natural.

Xia Rou gently nudged Nancy, "Your father is talking to you!"

Nancy’s lips twitched, "If I call you father now, will you disown me again later?"

The Emperor’s eyes dimmed slightly, "Nancy, the DNA results are out. You are my daughter..."

Nancy pursed her lips and bypassed the Emperor, diving into the Queen’s arms. "Mom—after all these years, I can finally clear your name."

The Queen held her daughter tightly as they both cried uncontrollably.

The Emperor’s eyes brimmed with tears as well. Tilting his head slightly upward, he managed to suppress them with great effort.

"Xia Rou, after you escaped from the fire back then, what did you hear? Can you repeat it now?" To prove his innocence, the Emperor finally spoke.

Xia Rou cast her eyes downward, choking back her emotions. "I was carrying Nancy and narrowly escaped death. Just as I emerged, I heard someone in the corner say: ’The Emperor of Haotian has decreed that this child must not live through tomorrow.’"

"Did you see who it was? If you were to see them now, would you be able to recognize them?"

Xia Rou shook her head. "I was so terrified at the time that I didn’t dare to look at them. I glanced at the raging fire behind me, thinking the young lady was surely doomed. My only thought then was to preserve the young lady’s only bloodline."

The sobbing of the mother and daughter in the room had yet to cease, and now Xia Rou began crying as well. "It was my incompetence. I’m sorry to the young lady and to Nancy! Nancy has suffered so much with me over the years. I was afraid you’d discover that she was still alive and send people to kill her, so I fled with her, hiding everywhere. We finally settled in a remote farmstead in Beidi."

The Emperor’s hand clenched tightly, the veins on it bulging. Beidi had been embroiled in war for so many years—how Nancy and Xia Rou managed to survive there could only be attributed to the heavens’ mercy.

"Didn’t you know I had already brought Zhi Lan back to the palace? Why didn’t you come to her, even when life was so difficult?"

Xia Rou looked at the Emperor, shaking her head gently. "Beidi was at war, and so was Haotian. The place where Nancy and I lived was extremely remote. It wasn’t until two years ago, when Haotian ceased fighting, that I learned the young lady had returned to the palace.

I wanted to bring Nancy back then, but after inquiring carefully, I found out that apart from Prince Danden, no one in Haotian knew that the young lady had another daughter. Remembering what I’d overheard, I feared that before I could bring Nancy to the palace, you’d send people to kill her. Yet homesickness consumed me, so I brought Nancy back to our homeland. I thought that even if we lived at the border, it would allow Nancy to be a little closer to her birth mother. If it weren’t for the young lady sending people to find us this time, I probably would have grown old and died at the border, never daring to return."

The Emperor’s chest subtly ached. He turned to look at his wife. "Zhi Lan, how did you know they were living at the border?"

"We have to ’thank’ your dear sister for that. With a guilty conscience from swapping the DNA results, she sent people to keep tabs on Xia Rou’s family. A year ago, Xia Rou wrote her brother a letter mainly to inquire about me. That letter fell into Kai Di’s hands."

The Queen looked at her husband. "Fortunately, Kai Di was pregnant at the time. To accumulate some virtue for her own child, she refrained from sending people to kill Nancy and Xia Rou. Now, she conveniently used this information to make a deal with me—she helped me find Nancy in exchange for her own son being allowed to live peacefully in the palace."

The Emperor’s eyes narrowed dangerously. "Do you think the one who impersonated me and ordered Nancy’s death back then might also have been her?"

"Only she knows for sure. But even if you beat her to death now, she wouldn’t admit to it." The Queen helped her daughter up. "In any case, Nancy is back. I’ll fulfill my promise to Kai Di. No matter how much I despise her, I won’t stoop to her level and use children in my schemes!"

"Zhi Lan, thank you!" The Emperor gripped his wife’s hand tightly. "Kai Di was the one who committed the crime, but the child is innocent. And... if it weren’t for her, Danden might have left us long ago."