262: Only when we meet do we realize how much we miss each other.

The starship carrying Your Majesty finally docked at the spaceport on this day.

As the door opened, Tu Nan rushed forward impatiently.

The Emperor, dressed in his military uniform, was the first to step out.

"Your Majesty." Tu Nan performed a curtsy, then looked behind him impatiently, but her gaze was interrupted as The Emperor scooped her up into his arms.

Amidst the astonishment of everyone present, he gave her a domineering kiss.

"Did I not return safely, hmm?" He released her, and with eyes full of doting affection, uttered the latter half of his sentence, "Look at how anxious you are... My Empress."

Tu Nan leaned back, hearing an uproar and gasps coming from in front of and behind her.

"See, I knew it all along!" She heard someone say.

"Your Majesty!" She growled lowly.

"No need to be shy; everyone will know soon enough." The Emperor continued to tease her.

She maintained a polite but stiff smile on the surface, her lips twitching slightly, and asked in a low voice, "Where is he?"

The Emperor's casual demeanor restrained slightly, and he signaled for her to look behind.

Near the back of the queue, a Treatment Pod encased in a silver metal shell sat quietly, with Dr. James standing to one side.

Finally, she had received him—her Your Majesty.

Tu Nan's mind was captivated, and like someone ensnared, she began to walk backward. The Emperor clamped down on her hand, earning a fierce glare from her.

"My Empress, where are you going?"

He questioned her with a forced smile while forcefully turning her around.

"Return to the flagship first," he commanded.

Tu Nan pinched her own palm, forcibly suppressing the urge to look back.

Yes, in everyone's eyes, that was the Silver Armored Knight, and she should not show excessive concern, as that would be very suspicious.

She had no choice but to restrain her heart, take the arm of the person beside her, and follow him back to the flagship.

Behind her were the gazes of a crowd, unable to decide whether they were shocked or had long expected this.

Once all irrelevant people had retreated, in the specially cleared-out treatment room, the outer shell of the Treatment Pod was opened and re-installed.

Tu Nan once again faced a similar situation, confronting this ominous treatment apparatus.

But this time, there was no Your Majesty, and there was no treatment plan.

She climbed onto the attached platform, finally able to look down at this pool of ink-black water that seemed devoid of hope.

The water surface had calmed down, and the person beneath it faintly revealed a blurry outline.

But this calmness was disrupted again, bit by bit, as ripples spread.

They were as dense as if it were raining indoors.

The Emperor's emotions were disrupted by those raindrops. Watching all of this, he felt unfamiliar emotions churning.

Tu Nan crouched down, but she found it wasn't enough; only her fingertips could just barely reach the water surface. Without a word, she lay on the platform, leaned over, and reached her arm into the water.

This liquid was more viscous than last time, and colder, too.

Tu Nan moved her hands down, further down, until finally, she touched him.

His cheeks were so gaunt, his jawline as sharp as a knife; his lips were so thin, yet still so soft; his nose bridge was so firm... and his eyelashes were so long and dense.

Why did he think that everything had already been arranged?

How could he write the ending himself without telling her, and how could he be so at ease leaving everything behind to sleep?

power ring.

He thought he had finally found a suitable agent for the Empire, didn't he?

Did he ever ask if she was willing to accept all of this?

Tu Nan was picked up by someone again.

"Enough. The water temperature is very cold. Have you forgotten what your condition is right now?" The Emperor roughly lifted her face and, without any gentleness, wiped her tears with his sleeve.

"What are you crying for? He doesn't regret it himself; is it worth it for you to feel aggrieved for him?"

Tu Nan glared at him viciously. "Who are you to tell me what to do?"

"Why shouldn't I be able to?" The Emperor asked in surprise.

He thought for a moment, then asked quite seriously, "If the person lying inside were me, would you also look like the sky had collapsed?"

Seeing that Tu Nan remained silent, he sneered.

"Oh, you wouldn't."

"It seems I am not worthy. Yes, perhaps you wish I would die in place of your Your Majesty."

He carried Tu Nan and returned to the floor in two steps.

He dumped her in front of the Treatment Pod and mocked her with full malice, "Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of spirit of sacrifice. Do you think I want this throne so much? This Empire?"

Tu Nan's reactions were already a bit slow, and being bombarded by his outburst gave her a headache, making it even harder for her to notice his emotions.

The Emperor became even angrier; he grabbed Tu Nan by the throat and pinned her against the wall of the Treatment Pod.

"You don't want it? It doesn't matter if you don't want it. I acted like a rat in the dark for twelve whole years; I need to play with this throne for at least twelve years. Just wait!"

The guard standing to the side moved with lightning speed, trying to pull him away.

The Emperor kicked him hard into the corner.

"Get lost! It's even less your place," he roared at the tactless knight, though he couldn't help but relax the force in his hand.

He looked at Tu Nan with gloom and violence, "You, at the very least, must endure me for twelve years; even if you have to fake it, you will act like an Empress for me."

Withdrawing his hand, he turned and stormed off in a rage.

Bang!

The high-quality metal cabin door of the flagship was shaken by the impact.

Tu Nan rubbed her neck; it didn't hurt, but there was a sense of oppression.

Frowning, she looked at the knight who had walked back to her side and examined him with concern.

"How about you, are you okay?"

The other person shook his head slowly.

Tu Nan sighed, "…What is wrong with him?"

She hadn't even said two sentences, had she? Tu Nan looked toward the melancholy old Dr. James standing to the side.

"What is this person's real name?" she asked.

James wearily wiped his face.

"None, he has no name," he said, somewhat distracted, "I didn't dare to give him a name; I was afraid that the bond with him would be too deep."

"Your Majesty said he could share his name with him." He showed a strange expression toward Tu Nan.

Tu Nan quietly waited for his story.

At this point, what else could there be that Miss Tu Nan shouldn't know?

James began to elaborate.

"Not long after that Foster Mother became pregnant, the Empress Dowager received the news and immediately ordered me to perform a surgery."

He recalled the situation at that time...

"But Empress, the surgery risk is too high right now." James swallowed his doubts—that Foster Mother seemed to be carrying twins.

"What risk? To me? Or will the Children not survive?" The Empress only cared about this point.

"It is the Children; the gestation period is too short and the genes are too unstable; they won't survive until birth."

"In that case, at most one more month. After all, I need to have been pregnant with the Children for at least six months, otherwise it won't make sense." The Empress said this.

James could not argue further; he was not yet the head of the Medical Institute at that time. When the Empress was pregnant, The Emperor would inevitably have the Medical Institute send someone to verify it.

And a month later, he implanted one embryo for the Empress and secretly kept the other one.

He could not save the life of that pitiful mother, watching helplessly as she was smothered to death directly by people sent by the Empress.

Saving his own life still relied on his research.

He was already an expert in genetic research at the time, and the Empress needed to rely on him to stabilize the little Prince's life...

And the embryo he stole was secretly raised by him using a Foster Mother cultivation device in his private research room.

After Your Majesty was born, he kept trying to use stabilizing Foster Mother potions to alleviate his genetic collapse, but unfortunately, the results were minimal.

The other poor Child appeared to be healthier, but having grown up in a lonely basement with no outsiders, his mental state became increasingly unstable.

He knew he had planted a bomb that would explode at any unknown time, and he waited for it to blow him to pieces, so for all these years, he divorced, broke away from his Family, and almost never left the research institute.

But the way accidents arrive always catches people off guard.

On a certain day when he returned to his laboratory, the twelve-year-old Your Majesty emerged from the basement holding his identical younger brother, and they stood before him.

"This is my blood relative; I can feel it."

The adolescent Emperor's eyes were clear, yet he already possessed the initial, undeniable majesty he would have when he grew up.

"Tell me everything, all the facts."

James felt a sense of relief.