The air seemed to freeze for a moment. Yu Tang was silent for a long while. “…You may rise.”
Lu Guozhong, the Dingbei general, was the one who had gone into battle with Yu Jintang against the Xiongnu, and who had personally sent the heavily injured emperor back to the imperial palace. When Song Xiao killed himself, the general had been standing by the dragon pillar at the front of the imperial hall.
The great general got up excitedly. When he lifted his head and spotted Song Xiao standing by Yu Tang’s side, his eyes instantly widened. “Empress…”
When he and Cao Gonggong met previously, the two of them had been shocked, but things had been too rushed, and they hadn’t been able to communicate much. Hence, the general had no idea that the empress had come as well. That year, he had been the one standing the closest to the empress, and the blood from the suicide had splashed on the general’s face, becoming the weight in his heart that he couldn’t get rid of, even after his reincarnation.
“General, I trust you’ve been well.” Song Xiao smiled faintly.
The Lu family had been very loyal for many generations, and each generation had been able to produce a formidable general. Before Song Xiao entered the imperial palace, the two of them had been a civilian court minister and a military general, and had bickered in the imperial court. When the emperor chose a male empress, this general had also opposed it, but when the emperor insisted, the general didn’t say any more. Instead, he even swore his loyalty and devotion to the empress as well.
Lu’s loyalty to the country was genuine loyalty: whatever the emperor wanted, he would make it so.
The great general was stupefied for a long while, then his fierce eyes gradually filled with tears as he wailed and knelt before Yu Tang, hugging his legs and sobbing. “Your Majesty to hold me like when I was young