Revenge and Ninth Royal Uncle’s Remarkable Luck
The events at morning court reached the Wang, Cui, and Hsieh clans that very day. Their spies inside the palace even learned that the Crown Prince had submitted a memorial, voluntarily asking to be stripped of his title and to yield the heir’s position to a worthier man.
This sent all three clans into a panic. With that memorial out in the open, who had time to bother with Prince Nolan’s little “incident”? Compared to the Crown Prince’s abdication, the deaths of their own men seemed trivial.
In the Wang Clan’s main compound, several newly appointed elders and stewards all looked to William Wang Jinling, waiting for him to decide what to do.
This time, the Wang Clan suffered heavy losses—without warning, a whole group was wiped out by Prince Nolan. If the clan didn’t respond, how could they maintain their standing in the world, or face others with any dignity?
Everyone in the Wang Clan insisted they had to strike back at Prince Nolan, to show him the clan wasn’t to be trifled with. But William Wang Jinling suppressed this urge, arguing—
Let’s wait. Revenge isn’t urgent.
And so they waited—three days passed until even the Emperor couldn’t do anything about Prince Nolan, and the Crown Prince formally asked to step down.
“Patriarch, you need to decide quickly—we can’t let others look down on the Wang Clan.” Though the elders respected William Wang Jinling, when it came to the clan’s reputation, they wouldn’t let him act on personal feelings.
Clan honor is above all.
“I want to hit Prince Nolan hard too, but tell me—where can we even start? His strength in court is mostly gone, and nearly all his trusted men were swept away in the mountain ambush. He’s got no obvious weaknesses left. The reason he dares strike at us now is because he’s already lost so much—he has nothing left to fear. But we can’t afford to be so reckless.” The Wang Clan is a great house, its branches and influence sprawling far and wide. Those branches are the clan’s pride and power, but also its greatest weakness.
"So what do we do now? The Emperor has made it clear he can't touch Prince Nolan. And now... with the Crown Prince submitting that memorial, Prince Rowan and Prince Jason will be too busy fighting over the succession to care about reining in Prince Nolan. Are we just supposed to let our people die for nothing?" Prince Nolan's move was a slap in the Wang Clan's face, and none of them could stomach it.
The Wang Clan has always kept to itself. What did Prince Nolan's ambush have to do with us? Even if Prince Nolan died, we'd gain nothing. We don't care who sits on the throne; we never meddle in the fight for the crown. We serve only the one who wears it, no matter who that is.
"Elders, there's no need to get angry. I know you all care for the Wang Clan, but ours is a family of scholars, not killers. Let's not teach our children and grandchildren to solve problems with bloodshed." William Wang Jinling ignored their outrage, speaking softly but with unwavering authority.
The moment William Wang Jinling finished, every face in the room flushed with embarrassment.
They called themselves gentlemen, yet their words sounded no different from bandits. How were they any better than Prince Nolan?
"So what should we do?" Everyone looked to William Wang Jinling, hesitant and unsure. He might be young, but after crushing the clan rebellion in a storm of blood, William Wang Jinling was the backbone of the Wang family—no one dared defy him now.
"If violence won't work, we'll try something else. Didn't the Emperor order us to send a legitimate daughter to Prince Chase's manor as a side-consort? But our Wang Clan has no women who serve as concubines. Not just our legitimate daughters—even a collateral girl would rather marry into a humble household as principal wife than become a side-consort in a grand prince's manor." This whole mess was the elders' fault; if they hadn't rashly agreed to the Cui marriage, the Emperor would never have humiliated them by forcing a Wang daughter to be a concubine.
If you want to talk about humiliation, this is the real slap in the face. If the Wang Clan obeys, we lose all honor before the world; if we refuse, we're defying the imperial edict.
After William Wang Jinling spoke, everyone fell silent, eyes darting away, too ashamed to meet his gaze.
William Wang Jinling wasn't angry; he'd made his point. He swept his gaze over the room, making sure no one dared object, then stood and declared, "I'll go to Prince Nolan and have him resolve this. No Wang woman will ever be a concubine."