Golden Stage

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The room fell into deathly stillness, the atmosphere suddenly cooling down. Yan Xiaohan"s gaze dropped in concentration. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Fu Shen turning his head away for a tiny yawn, seemingly tired.

Only then did he bring to mind that the man was still sick. If he knew of their mutual scheming in the middle of the night, Shen Yi"ce would definitely be nagging him the next day.

“Rest first. We"ll talk more tomorrow.” Yan Xiaohan helped him to lay down, pulling the curtains over. Fu Shen made a ‘mn" that was thick with exhaustion. “Thanks for your trouble,” he said softly.

Sitting back down on the low bench at the bedside, Yan Xiaohan wasn"t a single bit fatigued. Fu Shen"s words continuously spun about in his mind. So that"s why the Yuantai Emperor was so impatient to tamp down Fu Shen; privately contacting Khadun, who"s of the enemy country, and taking the Prince of Ying"s descendant back to the Central Plains both look like tells of a brewing rebellion. The Emperor"s struggle to replace the first wife"s son in succession was a tender spot in his heart, and if you b.u.mp it, you die.

Fu Shen is simply gambling with his life. The broken legs plus decreed marriage were a lucky outcome.

For the sake of the parting wish of his predecessor, he"d turn his back on his way of life… it"s impossible that he didn"t know what would be in store for him were this plot ever to be brought to light.

Yet he always seems to be doing these thankless, harrowing tasks.

Why?

“There are some things in this world that will always need someone to do them,” Fu Shen said.

Yan Xiaohan jumped in fright, abruptly stirred from his contemplation. “Why are you awake?”

“With how you"re doing so, Mister Yan, you could stare the dead back to life,” Fu Shen mocked.

Yan Xiaohan had simply been in a trance, unaware that his gaze had landed upon Fu Shen this whole time. The moment Fu Shen saw the pitying expression on his face, he knew what he was thinking, and his own heart couldn"t help but soften up with the desire to tease him.

“Finding the Prince of Ying"s descendant was the wish of my uncle and His Majesty, the Prince of Su. For that reason, I would do it no matter the cost. There"s nothing to regret.”

“You were gravely injured and your effort was wasted. Is that not regrettable?”

The sound of Fu Shen"s gentle laughter echoed within the dark night.

Yan Xiaohan paused, enlightenment suddenly dawning on him.

“The two different routes were the first diversionary tactic, and the Han diplomat on the envoy was the second… in reality, you and the Prince of Su had sent the real descendant off a good time before that, right?”

“Hm.” Fu Shen made a show of nodding very seriously. “If it had been as you said where everything I did was for nothing, I probably would have hung myself a long time ago. I"d genuinely be too ashamed to live.”

He held in a smile, lifting his eyes up to Yan Xiaohan. “Quit stretching your face like that now, Mister Yan. I didn"t even know that you could feel so sorry for me. Very embarra.s.sing.”

Yan Xiaohan couldn"t tell where he had seen ‘sorry for you" written on his face, but he could tell that he was messing with him. “No need to mention it. I should be, since we"re going to be a family later,” he thusly responded, with just a hint of coolness.

Fu Shen: “……”

“You seriously… don"t have any sort of filter,” he grills him, not knowing how to react to this. “You"ve felled a thousand enemies just to be down eight-hundred yourself – yet you"re still willing to go be a ‘family" with me, huh?!”

“You should think this all the way through, Marquis,” Yan Xiaohan said patiently. “You"re first-rank, I"m third-rank. If we truly do become one household, then I won"t suffer any losses; I"ll profit.”

Fu Shen was struck mute.

Noticing that his anger was swelling up enough to start spitting fire at him, Yan Xiaohan knew to quit while he was ahead, aptly taking a step to the side and trying to keep the peace. “Alright, if we talk anymore it"ll start getting light out. Don"t tire yourself out and go to sleep.”

Fu Shen"s raised hackles went back down instantaneously. He was aware that Yan Xiaohan was trying to coax him, but he couldn"t help from feeling a little sleepy from his gentle words.

The two had been talking on and on about rubbish for half the night, only lying down to rest for a while at fourth watch[1]. At daybreak, a few notes from the watcher"s waterclock sounded, and Yan Xiaohan quietly got up from the bench from listening to them. He didn"t expect that his movement would immediately wake up Fu Shen. “You have to go?” he asked drowsily.

“Mhm.” Yan Xiaohan came over to the side of the bed, first touching his forehead to make sure there was no fever, then evening out a corner of the bedding that had flipped over. His long hair slipped down to land on the edge of the pillow when he leaned over, gently grazing the side of Fu Shen"s face. “I have to go take my shift at the palace today. You keep sleeping.”

Fu Shen closed his eyes, making a vague sound from his nose.

The long hair softly brushed his cheek, a small gust of wind making the bed"s canopy gently sway. He heard footsteps walking away from him, the screen before the bed turning around some, and then the noise of other people coming through from outside.

For one with honed senses, these fragments of sound are still extraordinarily distracting even if there"s a few doors of separation between them. Fu Shen endured his wayward ears taking in the external noises of water, footsteps, speech, the soft b.u.mp of things being picked up and put down, and then Yan Xiaohan"s instructions that he deliberately kept in a hushed voice. “…do not disturb him. Shen Yi"ce will come in the afternoon… eat and take medicine on time…”

Maybe because someone was always being considerate to him, or perhaps also because of delighting in the contrast of his colleagues having to get up and go in the morning while he gets to sleep in at home, but this brief racket didn"t do anything to destroy his good mood. As he waited for Yan Xiaohan to leave, Fu Shen"s thoughts wandered aimlessly until they yanked out the dust-covered memory of a line from a poem he was familiar with — “most fearing brief spring nights with the cold‘s annual pa.s.sing.” [2]

General Fu might have been the Young Master of a rich family, but his scholarly knowledge was rather limited. This was a book he"d studied for his teacher before, yet he actually can"t think of any verse before or after that!

He can hazily recall that the poem seemed to have a section written about being unwilling to get out of bed, and it happens to have Yan Xiaohan"s name in it, thus he mumbled it over and over again to himself until the noises outside ceased. Even when he fell into a deep sleep once more, he still kept it going.

He napped "til the sun hung high in the sky, when a maid of the Yan Estate came to help him freshen up and serve him his meal. After pinching his nose and downing a big bowl of bitter medicine, Fu Shen still hadn"t remembered the poem"s full name. He is the sort who, if he doesn"t understand something, will dig into the heart of the insurmountable problem until he gets to the bottom of it. Sitting before the window and thinking about it for half the day, he bluntly said to the maid, “Go to your master"s study and bring me a few poem collections. They must have seven-character quatrains.” [3]

The maid had received instructions earlier from Yan Xiaohan and didn"t dare to slight him, so she quickly lifted her skirts and went to search through the books. Yan Xiaohan was not a man of many literary pursuits and didn"t have much poetry in his study; the maid brought back a small pile of books for Fu Shen, saying respectfully, “This is every poetry anthology from the study, Marquis.”

Fu Shen picked up a book and leafed through it, unexpectedly jeering as he perused. “Unskilled and unlearned.”

The maid lowered her head, her shoulders suspiciously shaking for a short period of time.

Flipping through the stack of anthologies for no less than a shichen, he at last found the portion of the verse that had been vexing him for such a long time in a yellow-paged, gray-lettered book of Tang Dynasty folk. t.i.tled ‘Exists There", the full poem was: [7]

Fu Shen turned green. It almost hurt to breathe. He threw down the book in fury, flames spouting three chi off of him.

Yan Xiaohan returned home from Court in the evening, and when he entered the room, he saw Fu Shen in the middle of staring blankly at the calligraphic utensils on the table in front of the window.

Yan Xiaohan purposefully made his footsteps heavier. Fu Shen looked up, discovered it was him, and that awful phrase ‘back turned to their sweet bed" immediately began to incessantly echo within his mind. His complexion morphed, breath stuttering, and he promptly broke out into an impressive coughing fit.

Yan Xiaohan startled, hurriedly going to pat him on the back to help regulate his breathing. “What"s wrong? Did I scare you?”

It was preposterous to even ask that. Fu Shen waved with one hand and used the forearm of the other to try and stop his endless coughs. Yan Xiaohan observed him for a moment, a.n.a.lyzing that he didn"t seem to have anything wrong – he just wasn"t being careful with how he was breathing. His heart, suspended with worry, sank back into his abdomen. “You are truly a dignified one, Marquis,” he can"t resist jabbing.

Fu Shen flung his hand off to the side.

One standing and one sitting, their slender silhouettes reflected in the cutout window like matching jade pendants. Fu Shen barely managed to keep his cough down. “Are you accustomed to staying in the Estate yet?” Yan Xiaohan asked casually. “If you want anything, just tell the servants. Don"t constrain yourself. I heard you threw a book on the floor today, can you tell me what happened?”

Fu Shen poker-faced. “My hand slipped.”

Yan Xiaohan doubted that. “Really? If a servant"s offended you, you don"t need to save me any face…”

Fu Shen side-eyed him. “How much face do you have when you"re with me? Is it worth me swallowing down my anger?”

Yan Xiaohan then ceased to question him, mentally snickering to himself that maybe he thought Fu Shen too fragile. The heart within a body that"s endured the cutting elements, belonging to a person speaks out on what they think is right and wrong, has the ability to endure far more than that of those who blindly go with the flow.

In this world, warm blood will turn cold and grand aspirations will die off. Both heroes and villains will ultimately return to dust, both admirations and admonishings changed to nothing. Forcing him to do anything would be pointless, so he only hopes that the man"s complete devotion and proudly unbending character will slowly whittle away, just a tad.

“Was there any commotion in the palace today?” Fu Shen unhurriedly cleaned up the spread of papers and brushes on the table. “The news has since spread, so I"m just watching from the sidelines now,” Yan Xiaohan said, “I heard the imperial censor"s bureau was going to put you on the books, as you knelt for such a long time before the palace"s gates. How does your leg injury feel? Does it hurt right now?”

“A little. It"s no big deal. Mister Shen came to see me in the afternoon,” Fu Shen said. “An engagement is a private matter, in the end. If you and I don"t say anything, others won"t feel it appropriate to bring up either. What do you say?”

“I"ve already agreed to in in front of the Emperor. I can"t take back my words.”

Fu Shen made a deep, grunt with no clear meaning. “Yeah, I know,” was all he replied.

Yan Xiaohan caught the chaos of used papers on the desk out of his peripheral, the top ones being full of Fu Shen"s indecipherable scrawlings of unknown function. He took a sheet out of curiosity, first asking Fu Shen, “Can I look at these?”

He didn"t mind. “Do as you wish.”

The chicken-scratch on the paper could be made out to be variant characters only with careful observation, looking a bit like stylized signatures. “Do you recognize it?” Fu Shen asked upon noticing him taking it seriously.

Yan Xiaohan pointed to one of them. “This ‘character" is the signature of the Armament Supervision[4]. All weapons made by them will have this seal. This stroke you wrote here has a pair of small hooks shaped like arrows, which should come from the Supervision"s Crossbow Manufacturing Office.”

Fu Shen had been indifferent at the start, but his pupils suddenly contracted upon hearing the two words ‘Armament Supervision". “The arrows used by the Northern Yan Army are without emblems or branding. I"ve never seen a signature like this on them before.”

“Generally speaking, a vast amount of military-use arrows are made by all sorts of miscellaneous manufacturers. Some will brand them, others won"t. Armament Supervision is mainly in charge of testing new sorts of weapons, as well as producing all sorts of weaponry for the capital"s garrison. Consequently, only bows and arrows used by that garrison will have the mark of the Crossbow Manufacturing Office.”

Fu Shen subsequently turned over another sheet of paper, the symbol-like drawing of a running beast upon it. “Do you recognize this one?”

Yan Xiaohan smiled, bent over to pick up a brush, and indicated for Fu Shen to set aside a paper for him. He then wrote an even more rounded-out, symbol-like object in the middle.

“This is cursive [5] for the character for ‘leopard" (豹).

When the previous dynasty"s Imperial Guard had not yet been split up into smaller chunks, the Imperial City had only had ten subdivisions; Left and Right versions of the Golden Crow, Leopard Scabbard, Luan Ceremonial, Soaring Hawk [6], and Feather Forest. For convenience at the time, each one was referred to by a certain animal, the form of its character changed slightly to become their unique symbol.” He drew them on the paper as he explained. “Such as Golden Crow being a ‘gold" (金) character that takes the form of the three-legged crow, Leopard Scabbard being what I wrote before, Luan Ceremonial being a fenghuang-shaped ‘luan" (鸾), Soaring Hawk a ‘hawk" (鹰), and Feather Forest a crane-like ‘feather" (羽).

However, following the later separation of the Imperial Guard into the Ten Protectors of the Southern Office and Six Armies of the Northern Office, this set of characters is no longer in use. Why did you suddenly ask about this?”

The translator says: I"m not good at poetry, but I"ll be d.a.m.ned if I"ll let myself ruin that joke.

[1] Nighttime was split into five 2-hour ‘watches", starting at 7pm and going until 5am. Fourth watch is 1-3am, aka the time of the Cow.
[2] This is a real poem by Li Shangyin, and the ‘spring nights" portion of it was censored (I"m guessing because it could be a euphemism for ‘spring (erotic) dreams", if you squint…?), which rendered the reference kind of pointless. Cold (寒) and nights (宵) are in bold because, lo and behold, it"s Xiaohan"s name (宵寒).
[3] The original poem is indeed four seven-character stanzas, but doing that in English is impossible, so I made it four 14-character stanzas.
[4] 军器监 – lit. Army Tool Supervisor. 弩坊署 – lit. Crossbow Workshop Office. I"ve long forgotten what"s going to be a recurring proper noun or not so here I go with capitalizing Everything.
[5] Chinese cursive is writing characters with 1-3 lines as opposed to strokes. It"s awful.
[6] 鹰扬 (yingyang) – This is the only new one. Its name is a term that, in general, means militaristic might.
[7] Poetry is hard, but I"m pretty proud of this. t.i.tle is 为有 by Li Shangyin 李商隐.