The empress was extremely vexed. She had been prepared to use Zu An’s disrespect towards her as a bargaining chip to threaten him further, which would eventually allow her to control him completely.

However, Zu An just had to turn this phony ‘offense’ into something real. This made things much more troublesome.

Whether or not his earlier actions constituted an offence was up to her discretion, which left her some leeway as to how to proceed.

However, now that he had truly disrespected her, it was all in His Majesty’s hands. If the emperor really looked into this matter, Zu An would be dead for sure, but the emperor would forever loathe her.

She had only planned to use this little secret to keep Zu An on a leash, but it was now a secret that both of them were forced to keep.

If she only had herself to worry about, she might have risked it and tried...