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The Vast Longevity Feast on the twenty-sixth year of Yuantai began with a hundred officials congratulating the Emperor on his long life, all the citizens merrymaking together, and ended with the Emperor fainting and the Empress having a miscarriage.
Yan Xiaohan was itching to get back and deal with the case, so he could only send Fu Shen off to the East Victory Gate. He had the young eunuch go call for the Yan Estate"s folks to wait outside the palace gates, taking advantage of the time when no one was around to bend over and hug the other man. "I don"t know when this case will go to trial. You don"t need to wait for me at night, go to bed early."
Fu Shen was likely still thinking about what had just happened, the expression on his face not relaxed in the least. Upon hearing this, he nodded.
"I saw that you didn"t eat well at the banquet," Yan Xiaohan continued. "Eat a little bit when you get back. Don"t go hungry, and don"t forget to take your medicine."
Fu Shen finally withdrew from his thoughts, dragging Yan Xiaohan over by the collar to be right before his eyes – though, rather than say that he kissed him, it"d be better to say that he ran into him, on the lips. "You"re young, and it"s not good for you to learn to be an old amah. Shut it and don"t keep chattering."
His positively flirty gaze could make a blind man see. Yan Xiaohan wasn"t sure how to react, thinking to himself that his typical overt care was something this darling Marquis did not yet appreciate. Next time, he should make him not be able to get out of bed for three days. Only then would he realize the preciousness of an old amah and learn to be content with his lot in life.
They had time for only a few affectionate words before the young eunuch came back to report his task completed. Yan Xiaohan followed the two figures with his eyes as they disappeared outside the palace gates, the smile on his face gradually icing over. He swapped it for a stone-hearted look, and when he turned to go back to the North Prison, he had once again become that merciless Sir Royal Inspector Envoy.
The instant Fu Shen returned to the Yan Estate, he shut himself up in his room and commanded that he was not to be disturbed. The servants could sense that he was in a bad mood, and none dared persuade him – even Du Leng was barred outside the door. That went until evening, when someone had enough guts to come knock on the door and request for him to have a meal, saying with trepidation that if he didn"t eat, the Master was sure to be angry when he knew.
As soon as that was said, Du Leng felt that things were going to get messy. A leaderly one like Fu Shen loathed when others threatened him the most. Forget about Yan Xiaohan – it wouldn"t be any use even if that old man the Emperor was here.
Sure enough, Fu Shen"s cold voice sounded out from the room. "So I can give you all face, right?"
The maidservant carrying the food was on her knees in fear, her eyes welling up with tears, unable to go yet unable to not go. Du Leng couldn"t stand it. When he was about to send them away, Fu Shen was suddenly heard to speak again. "…Forget it. Bring it in."
Wha?!
As a medic of the Northern Yan, Du Leng was all too aware of how Fu Shen was. He kept exactly to his word when he was in the army, and once his temper was set off, it was a thunderous fury that paid no heed to friend or foe. Below his ama.s.sed might, few dared to oppose his edge. That disposition was tolerable when it came down to business, but he seemed to be especially stubborn in everyday life. Du Leng himself had once been lifted up by his collar and thrown out of the tent because he had forced him to take medicine; he really could"t imagine that this person who backed down after issuing only one statement was the Marquis of Jing Ning he was familiar with.
Fu Shen didn"t really have an appet.i.te, but when he heard the maid say "the Master will be angry", he remembered what Yan Xiaohan had said to him that day: "This is first time I"ve been so fond of someone."
Since he was so fond of him, what"s wrong with conceding a step or two to him? Were a big macho man to come across something unpleasant outside and vent his anger out on his wife and family when he came back, could he still be called a man?
Even heroes have had a weakness for a beauty"s charms since time immemorial, and this was nothing more than that.
The inside of the palace was frenetic until very late at night. The Emperor had woken back up in the afternoon, dragging his sick body over to deal with Yang Xu and the Empress. What ended up causing the Emperor such great furor was an inside story not known by those out. Yan Xiaohan had heard it loud and clear, even feeling a bit sorry that the Crown Prince wasn"t also sorted out by the bye.
At this campaign"s end, however, the Prince"s special favor would perhaps completely wane.
The Flying Dragon Guard was not making smooth headway on their end. Clear Void Monastery was raided sideways, those who had daily dealings with Priest Chunyang interrogated one by one, yet the source of the poison and the motive for a.s.sa.s.sination remained in the fog. Priest Chunyang was like an airtight clamsh.e.l.l – there were spurts of torture and menacing in turn, yet he obstinately hadn"t spat out a single word.
Yan Xiaohan was speculating that if things kept going on like this, the Flying Dragon Guard would become the next Golden Crow Guard. Right as he thought that, Tang Guo came out of the torture chamber, washing his hands with an indifferent look. Attentively cleaning each of his ten pale, slim fingers, he raised his eyes up to Yan Xiaohan. "He"s already only half-alive. If he doesn"t start talking by tomorrow, there"s nothing I"ll be able to do."
"Getting here today… let me think about it again," Yan Xiaohan mumbled. "I"m getting the overall sense that there"s something bizarre about him. It"s not like he was going for the Yang family… Clear Void Monastery has been an heritage site in the capital for decades, and a burgeoning amount of incense gets burned in it. He"s a monk, so it"d be improper for him to act like he was above the rest. What was he doing getting mixed up in the Court?"
Tang Guo could only flay, not dissect. He listened to his question blankly and gave him an equivalent doubtful look in return.
"…Nevermind," Yan Xiaohan said. "Go back and take a rest, then try again tomorrow."
It was quite late at night when he got home. The whole Estate had since gone to bed, a sleepy-eyed gatekeeper carrying a lantern coming to open the entrance for him. Yan Xiaohan entered the courtyard quietly; the maid standing night watch outside heard him, and she got up to a.s.sist him in changing his clothes and freshening up, simultaneously reporting the situation the Estate had been at noon in a whisper.
He recalled that Fu Shen had been alright when he exited the palace, puzzling him while he did everything he could to not make a sound as he pushed the door open. The moment he took a step inside, an unexpected line of inquiry came from within the darkness-filled room. "You"re back?"
Yan Xiaohan relaxed his tensed movements, going to the desk to light the light. "Why aren"t you asleep?"
He turned to peer at him thought the not-very-bright candlelight. Fu Shen wore a thin inner robe as he leaned against the headboard, the blanket only covering his legs, and he was squinting slightly from the light that had come on all of a sudden. His slender silhouette gave a strangely weak, dispirited feeling.
"I can"t," Fu Shen replied. "How are things in the palace?"
Yan Xiaohan didn"t answer him, taking off his shoes and getting into bed. The first thing he did was pull the blanket up to wrap him securely in it. "You"re sitting here in meditation, not sleeping in the middle of the night. Would draping clothes over yourself tire you to death, your elderliness?"
March"s spring nights were still quite cold, and the blanket was freezing. Yan Xiaohan touched it for a moment, then went ahead and embraced the other man, shaking out the bedding so that it covered them both. Fu Shen was like a feral cat that had found his lair, not giving a retort to the scolding. He tilted his head, pillowing it atop Yan Xiaohan"s shoulder.
"Tell me, can you just not sleep, or is there something on your mind?" Yan Xiaohan used one hand to hold him by the waist, the other affixing his messy, long hair behind his ear. "I heard a servant say that you were in a bad mood this afternoon. Who"s made you upset, hm?"
Fu Shen pressed his lips together tightly. He felt like he needed a gap to say all that was on his mind, but he had gone without complaining about his hardships for too long and had forgotten how to speak them. There were thousands of words in his mind, but he didn"t know where he should begin.
For an adult man who habitually bore responsibility, explaining himself was a more difficult endeavor than cutting open his chest.
Yan Xiaohan didn"t press him, either, casually extinguishing the light. The dark became the best hiding place, allowing him to slowly take down his heart"s defenses.
"How"s the Empress?" Fu Shen asked a good time later, voice quiet.
"A cup of poisoned wine," Yan Xiaohan responded calmly. "All that was said to the outside was that it was from excessive blood loss, and she died despite medical treatment."
Fu Shen seemed to be smiling in the dark night. "Yeah. It"d be impossible for the Emperor to let her stay alive in this world."
"You knew?"
"Mhm. The Empress didn"t conceive from the Emperor"s grains[1], as he hadn"t visited the Terrene Calm Palace in a long time. He understood right away during that incident in the Hall, otherwise he wouldn"t have had so much wrath attacking him that he"d straight-up faint out of anger."
"You…" Yan Xiaohan"s voice was rough.
"I did it," Fu Shen openly admitted.
Yan Xiaohan nearly leapt out of bed like his tail had been stepped on. It wasn"t until a moment after that he reacted to Fu Shen"s implication, slapping him on he arm in embarra.s.sed amus.e.m.e.nt. "What was your answer so curt for?! Her miscarriage was your doing, her conceiving was not! Don"t say something so ambiguous to the one you have a house and family with! Do you want to scare me to death?"
Fu Shen rubbed his sore arm, inwardly suspecting that he"d been spooked. Yet, because of Yan Xiaohan"s reaction, the duskiness of his heavy heart had weirdly dispersed a bit.
"Well then, I"ll say it again. The Empress"s miscarriage at the Vast Longevity Feast was planned out by my people earlier on," Fu Shen explained. "She had a dose of a drug in her diet every day. It"s harmless when taken by itself, but when taken with wine, it has an anticoagulatory effect. She had conceived in March and the fetus wasn"t stable, so she immediately miscarried after drinking a few cups of wine at the Feast."
Yan Xiaohan wholly did not expect that he"d had an ulterior motive of this cla.s.s. "You planted people at the Empress"s side? When did that happen?"
"I didn"t plant them there deliberately. It"s a long story. Do you remember that young eunuch I saved at the polo compet.i.tion a few years back?
He was later a.s.signed to cleaning duties in Terrene Calm Palace, relying on his skill at combing hair to get into the Empress"s good graces. After I returned to the capital, he pa.s.sed information to me from inside the palace, saying that there was an affair between the Empress and some bodyguard.
He wanted to repay a kindness and get revenge for me. About a month ago, he sent another letter saying that the Empress seemed to be pregnant. The Emperor hadn"t been to Terrene Calm Palace in several months, though, so the child was definitely not to be kept – but the Empress was unwilling to part with it. She even planned to take advantage of the Vast Longevity Feast to seduce the Emperor to stay a night, so that the pretense would turn into a reality.
My thought, then, was that they shouldn"t be let off so easily."
All his insides had once been torn open in the flooding downpour, and he had once sworn an oath that it would be repaid tomorrow.
Out in a public area, under everyone"s staring eyes, the Empress had placed a green hat on the Emperor"s head while he swallowed down his anger to uphold his reputation, pinching his nose shut as he recognized the b.a.s.t.a.r.d child, resulting in him pa.s.sing out from rage. Compared to the insult of the marriage sanction from that very day, how did it taste?
And, once the Crown Prince"s birth mother had engaged in a scandal of this degree, the end of Prince"s good life would also immediately follow.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. A debt of blood must be paid in blood. Furthermore, the Yuantai Emperor"s actions were definitively a thousand times worse than Fu Shen"s. The Yuantai Emperor had invited him to spectate that meticulously arranged farce – his heart should have been br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the elation of vengeance and long since yearning for the Emperor"s early death, yet the ways of the world were difficult to predict, and Priest Chunyang had attempted murder.
At the cusp of imminent peril, Fu Shen had moved to save the Emperor"s life.
Those unforeseen circ.u.mstances came so suddenly that he hadn"t time to deliberate on them. All of his actions in that instant were the responses of his subconscious mind. When he finally understood what he"d done, everything was already done and over with.
Fu Shen promptly became aware, in that moment, that the biggest clown in the farce… was actually himself.
[1] This was specifically called ‘dragon seed" (龙种), dragon for the emperor, seed for… yeah. Yuck. No thank you.
The author says: A little explanation pertaining to this chapter; General Fu is really quite an integrous person (truly, no joking here), and actually isn"t too fond of playing around with shameful schemes like slipping in drugs and such. When he had just raked up the truth, however, he honestly went mad with anger, and made a bit of an unscrupulous decision to nudge the matter to light. Yet, as he"s still inherently a young man loyal to the country (within the limitations of the era), he subconsciously a.s.sisted the Emperor, having the thought afterwards: what am I doing wanting to help him? Am I sick? Am I so awfully tawdry? Am I selling myself as higher than I am, just to act differently than that? Thus he sank into low spirits.
Furthermore, though he feels the Emperor, Empress, and Crown Prince are all good-for-nothings, the child was innocent. This means of retaliation was a bit too much and at-odds with the principles he"d had all his life, so the horn-tip of self-spurning gored into him.
That"s exactly the protagonist"s nature, not completely positive, and I"ve always been trying to reconstruct historical limitations upon him; a born-and-bred ancient person who wasn"t reborn, didn"t transmigrate, didn"t get a golden finger, can"t have outside cheats, and doesn"t have a System. He may have a certain extent of prescience, but he doesn"t have an (excessive) foresight into the times ahead.
So, everyone, please don"t take this as a "Vicarious Story"*. Our protagonist still tortured a confession out of someone and could kill without batting an eye, which doesn"t agree with him, but both their hearts are like this author, merely being zen salted fish who want to enjoy life in retirement. Taking a break tomorrow~
The translator says: …And I thought I could talk a lot in my endnotes.
*爽文 – lit. "Cool Story", and IIIII can"t remember if there"s a consistent English term for this? It"s those novels that are 8324 chapters long where the protagonist never gets beaten (except maybe a few times when he"s [rarely she] young and weak), collects 48093 members for his harem, get all sorts of rare junk, and earns (gets handed?) a happy ending. They"re "vicarious" in that you"re supposed to get immense satisfaction from the protagonist winning all the time, but it"s just weak seinen s.h.i.t IMO.