“—He’s back in the capital again?”
In Cining Palace, the Empress Dowager’s hand slipped. With a sharp “ka-cha,” the golden scissors she held snapped the stem of the longevity chrysanthemum she was arranging.
Her fingers, painted with bright red nail polish, crushed the flower to pieces. Slamming the scissors onto the table, the Empress Dowager hissed: “To have caused such scandal with the Crown Prince, yet he still has the face to return!”
The senior palace maid Qiong Gu hurried to pick up the scissors, lest they fall and stab the Empress Dowager’s feet, murmuring, “Your Majesty, quell your anger, for the sake of your health.”
The Empress Dowager ground her teeth in hatred. “That man is truly ungrateful! It would have sufficed to exile him far away, yet he insists on returning just to disgust me. The Crown Prince was demoted to Nanjing because of him, and what does he want now? To continue seducing the Emperor or my Cheng’er?”
Qiong Gu said, “Without an imperial order, how could he dare return to the capital of his own accord? But as far as this servant knows, His Majesty has not summoned him these past two days, nor allowed him to speak in court.”
The Empress Dowager’s expression eased slightly. “It seems the Emperor has not yet been bewitched into losing all reason. All the same, this Su Twelve cannot be left. If he cannot be dealt with openly, then have someone quietly remove him.”
Qiong Gu nodded. “Shall it be done with dignity, or without?”
The Empress Dowager sneered. “I don’t care whether he dies with dignity or not as long as he’s gone, I’ll be at peace.”
Qiong Gu knew, the Empress Dowager was venting all the fury from the Eastern Palace affair onto Su Yan.
Three months ago, on the night of Qixi, the Crown Prince had defied the Emperor in the Eastern Palace, even accidentally shattering a large vase. The Empress Dowager had heard of it the very same day, and was told the cause, because the Crown Prince stubbornly refused to take a wife, and had burned the portraits of the candidate women the eunuchs presented.
Although the Empress Dowager disliked Zhu Helin, the matter of establishing a Crown Princess was, after all, tied to the succession, something she was duty-bound to oversee. She intended to discuss it with the Emperor, choose a young lady from a reputable, clean family, and have her betrothed. The Crown Prince would have no say.
Who would have thought there was something hidden in that large vase in the Eastern Palace study? The moment the Emperor saw it, his face darkened with rage. After fiercely scolding the Crown Prince, he personally collected the contents, clearly unwilling for others to know.
After the Emperor and the Crown Prince left, an eunuch named Yongnian, who had been attending the imperial entourage, lingered in the study. He searched carefully in a corner and discovered two loose sheets of paper that had slipped into a crevice and been overlooked. He hid them away and later presented them to the Empress Dowager in Cining Palace.
Only then did the Empress Dowager realize what had angered the Emperor, and what he had sought to conceal. They were erotic illustrations drawn by the Crown Prince himself! The images depicted him and Su Yan in explicit same-sex acts, interspersed with vulgar marketplace phrases, obscene beyond words. The Empress Dowager nearly fainted with fury at the sight.
In her view, Zhu Helin was unruly and without virtue, utterly unfit to be heir to the throne. If not for the Emperor shielding him, his position as Crown Prince should already have been abolished. This only strengthened her conviction. She thought to seize this chance, expose the matter, and stir public opinion, thereby forcing the Emperor to take a stand.
But before she could act, the Emperor himself came to her palace to demand the two drawings. The Empress Dowager refused to hand them over.
“That Yongnian,” the Emperor said, “since he serves at Royal Mother’s side, let him return to Cining Palace. He needn’t come back to Yangxin Hall.”
The Empress Dowager replied, “What does this mean? Do you think Royal Mother planted spies around you? Yongnian was not originally of my palace.”
The Emperor smiled. “Not of Cining Palace, yet his heart is only for you. He risked being beaten to death by my rod, and still rushed to inform you. Does Royal Mother not find that strange?”
The Empress Dowager, seasoned in palace affairs, immediately sensed something amiss. “Whose hound is this, then? Could it be Wei Lan’s?”
Consort Wei was still confined in the Cold Palace. The Empress Dowager shook her head. “Unlikely.”
The Emperor said, “That makes it all the more intriguing. I even doubt whether Helin truly has the ability to draw such things. I still remember when I personally taught him to paint landscapes, he managed to turn a waterfall into a pair of splayed white legs.”
The Empress Dowager thought for a moment. “You mean someone is manipulating this from the shadows, and the Crown Prince is innocent?”
The Emperor replied, “I am still investigating. For now, I ask Royal Mother not to publicize it, lest we alert the snake. As for Yongnian, I will pretend to know nothing. Keep him, reward him, and then plant him at my side as your supposed spy. Watch his reaction. If he agrees, then he truly means to sow discord between us, and there must be someone behind him.”
The Empress Dowager felt her son’s reasoning sound, so she nodded. “Very well. But the Crown Prince is arrogant and undisciplined, even disrespecting his own father. He cannot go unpunished.”
The Emperor said, “I will send him to Nanjing to perform the ancestral rites. Let him be tempered a while.”
The Empress Dowager felt this far too light. Ideally, Zhu Helin should be stripped of his title. “What kind of tempering is this? Emperor, can you still not see? The son of the Zhang clan cannot bear the weight of ruling a nation’s future.”
“If Helin cannot, then who can? The infant Zhao’er, barely more than a year old?” the Emperor countered.
The Empress Dowager, stung by his words, softened her tone. “The Emperor is still young, in the prime of life. Why rush to settle the heir so soon? Favor more of the harem, beget more princes, and later choose slowly, it won’t be too late.”
Knowing there was no persuading her on this point, the Emperor rose to take his leave.
When he had gone, the Empress Dowager let out a cold snort and sighed to her chief maid Qiong Gu: “My son… when he speaks to me now, I can no longer tell which words are true and which false. They say a Royal Mother and son are bound heart to heart, yet in the end, we’ve come to this. It chills me deeply.”
Qiong Gu asked, “Which words does the Empress Dowager think false? About the eunuch Yongnian, or about the Crown Prince?”
The Empress Dowager said, “Whichever they are, his aim is only one: to stop me from revealing the disgrace hidden in that vase. He wants to protect Zhu Helin, and protect… Su Twelve!”
Qiong Gu was silent a moment, then softly consoled, “But the Emperor is still the Empress Dowager’s own son. He would not deliberately deceive you.”
“…We shall see,” the Empress Dowager said.
The Emperor left Cining Palace and returned to the Imperial Study, not to Yangxin Hall, where he usually resided, since it was too near Cining Palace; nor to Qianqing Palace in the inner court, for Kunning Palace, where the Empress lived, was under reconstruction and noisy. The front-court Imperial Study was the most comfortable.
He had even ordered the side halls of the study newly arranged, clearly intending to pass the winter there.
Seated upon the luohan couch in a side hall, the Emperor accepted tea from Lan Xi. Seeing his expression, Lan Xi cautiously ventured: “Your Majesty, that Yongnian’s origins are unclear. To keep him at your side, this servant fears for your safety. Would it not be better to seize him and question him thoroughly?”
“If I wanted to take him,” the Emperor said, “I would have done so long ago, back when he secretly used carrier birds to pass messages outside the palace.”
“Carrier birds… Ah, Your Majesty means that time you secretly summoned Su Shaoqing to Yangxin Hall, when Shen Tongzhi’s true face was exposed?” Lan Xi recalled Yongnian’s unremarkable face, forgettable except for the small black mole on his nose.
“And when Shen Qi was escorting Mister He, the prison cart was intercepted and Mister He escaped. Su Yan pleaded for Shen Qi, and I permitted it. I also had him watched from afar.” The Emperor toyed with the tea leaves in his cup. “Since he is so intent on matters between me, Su Yan, and Shen Qi, let him be. Let’s see where all this intelligence ends up.”
Though he knew the Emperor was skilled in schemes, Lan Xi still worried. “But if such reports leak out, might it not cause trouble? Like this time, if not for Your Majesty’s timely discovery, those drawings from the vase would soon have been spread through the Empress Dowager’s mouth, causing a furor in court and beyond.”
The Emperor sipped his tea. “If not for this, how could I rule out the possibility that Yongnian was the Empress Dowager’s man?”
Lan Xi finally understood. The Emperor continued: “Rest assured, the reports he carries out are precisely the ones I want him to.”
Lan Xi smiled and said, “This servant understands. I will not ask unnecessary questions again in the future.”
Seeing that the hour of Shen was nearly over, the emperor said to Lan Xi, “You are getting older, your energy is lacking, and you have served for several nights in a row. Go rest tonight. Call someone sharper to grind ink for me.”
Lan Xi thanked the emperor for his consideration and recommended, “This servant’s young apprentice, Duo Guier, has been trained fairly well now. Let him serve.”
The emperor nodded.
Lan Xi withdrew from the imperial study and went to his own side room. Seeing Duo Guier cracking melon seeds, he immediately scolded, “Stop cracking! You little brat! Wash up quickly and go serve His Majesty in the study! Remember, His Majesty doesn’t like any noise when reviewing memorials. You grind ink quietly and honestly, don’t you dare even let out a single fart! Understand?”
Duo Guier shivered, spilling melon seeds all over the table. “U-understood, Grandpa!”
Lan Xi sighed, feeling he had chosen the wrong god-grandson to rely on in his old age. No matter how he trained him, he wasn’t even one-tenth as calm and clever as Su Yan, that conveniently acquired nephew. But things were already as they were; he could only pinch his nose and accept it.
After Duo Guier served a few times without causing trouble, Lan Xi gradually relaxed. Over the next two or three months, he let Duo Guier serve in the imperial study at night more often so he himself could rest.
But Lan Xi never expected that on the second night after Su Yan returned to the capital, his not-so-bright god-grandson would be targeted by Yu Wang.
—
Dusk fell outside the window. A eunuch walked quietly into the imperial study and lit the lamps one by one.
Emperor Jinglong sat behind the imperial desk, not lifting his head as he ordered, “Come grind ink.”
The eunuch bowed with his head lowered, walked over, poured a spoonful of cold spring water into the She inkstone, held his sleeve with one hand, and with the other hand held a lacquer-black Hui ink stick, grinding it evenly with gentle, elegant movements.
The emperor wrote a few characters, then suddenly caught a faint, subtle fragrance: something quietly refreshing, familiar, mixed with the scent of paper and ink, barely detectable.
He abruptly set down his brush, grabbed the wrist of the eunuch grinding ink, and said sharply, “You are not Duo Guier!”
When the emperor turned to look, the eunuch lifted his face at the sound. Their eyes met squarely.
“……”
“……”
Both of their lips moved slightly, but for a moment neither could speak.
After a brief silence, the emperor sighed helplessly. “You…”
Su Yan kept a stiff face. “This servant is here by order to grind ink. May His Majesty release his hand.”
The emperor loosened his fingers. Seeing the red marks quickly rising on Su Yan’s wrist from the grip, he sighed again.
Su Yan continued grinding ink, lips pressed together, saying nothing.
The emperor asked, “How did you get into the palace?”
Su Yan’s voice was cold. “Castrated and entered the palace.”
The emperor: “……”
The ink was about to overflow from the inkstone, yet Su Yan was still grinding. The emperor grabbed his hand, snatched the ink stick from between his fingers, and said in a deep voice, “You are bold indeed! If the Imperial Guards discovered someone impersonating an eunuch to infiltrate the palace, they could kill you on the spot!”
Su Yan said, “Then right before dying, I’ll shout loudly, ‘I carry a dragon fetus in my belly, who dares touch me?’ Let’s see whether His Majesty will come see me.”
At that moment, the emperor’s expression was simply indescribable.
Seeing the emperor’s once-in-a-millennium petrified face, Su Yan curled his lips in mockery. “Don’t worry. Even if I really were pregnant, it wouldn’t necessarily be Your Majesty’s.”
The emperor’s fingers trembled. The ink stick fell onto the golden brick floor and snapped cleanly into two pieces with a crisp sound.
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