Chapter 5: The Investiture of the Humble Prince
Though Fu Yuanyuan resolved to despise Ye Ling utterly, she found herself ensnared in the cadence of his whims.
Liu Ren and his retinue, catching murmurs from the tent, edged backward as though struck by sudden deafness—their eyes averted, their ears willfully sealed.
When two hours had passed, Fu Yuanyuan lay spent, her limbs in liquid weakness. Escape was unthinkable; even the simple act of draping robes over her trembling form seemed beyond mortal effort.
Ye Ling, meanwhile, emerged revitalized, his skin still clinging to her jasmine scent. He pondered the ancient verse—*Why should a sovereign heed the dawn court?*—and grasped its wisdom anew. What fool would spurn a lotus in bloom? Only a creature less than human.
Breezing from the tent as soldiers struck camp, he found Lü Xuan directing maids toward Fu Yuanyuan's quarters. "Let her tend to herself," he dismissed with a cavalier wave. "Ceremony wastes moonlight."
Thus concluded the Grand Rite between Shang and Chu: envoys slinking home with shame-cloaked treaties, twin princes ascending—Ye Ling and Ye Changfeng crowned with jade diadems.
Yet shadows lingered. Behind Lingluan Peak's misted slopes, imperial guards uncovered Chu assassins in bloodied heaps. The Emperor received this news in granite silence before summoning his sixth son.
*"By Heaven's Decree, the Son of Dragons proclaims: Ye Ling, sixth scion, whose filial heart beats in rhythm with mercy, whose loyalty outshines the polestar, is hereby invested as Prince of Humility. Three thousand households shall kneel to his seal. Let jade tablets sing his glory."* The castrato's cry pierced Chaohua Hall's vaulted ceilings.
"This unworthy son receives the mandate." Ye Ling's brow met marble as ritual masters cloaked him in sable and kingfisher feathers.
"Father—" He entered the Celestial Study with a duelist's grin.
"The corpses." The emperor's jade scepter tapped an impatient staccato.
"An impromptu test," Ye Ling shrugged. "Lü Xuan's new cannon design required… enthusiastic volunteers. Darwin sends his regards."
"Their entry?"
Candle flames writhed in the chamber's glacial air, carving Ye Ling's face into light and void. "Rot grows where shadows linger. Chu's spies nest in our rafters—but any moth drawn to this flame becomes ash."
*No survivors.* The unspoken credo hung sharper than blades.
The Emperor's gaze drifted to schematics unfurled by trembling eunuchs—armoured behemoths sketched in Ye Ling's flamboyant hand. Here was the genius that could crush Chu's legions… and beggar an empire.
"Today you danced well," the Dragon Throne rumbled. "But remember—twin saplings grow where one might be felled by storms."
A sigh older than dynasties escaped him. Ambition's price glared brighter than any war machine.
Crown of Barren Fields
Three iron colossi demanded steel forged from the capital's subterranean veins. To arm legions? The realm's coffers would bleed argent rivers before such ambitions stirred.
"Perchance in a decade—two at most—you might bring this vision to fruition," Emperor Shang murmured, his sigh carrying the weight of dynastic tombs. War's thirst outpaced monsoon floods—crops left to wither beneath soldiers' tread, storehouses emptied to feed the god of battles.
Beneath jade nails, a sovereign's compassion stayed the blade. Let ploughshares melt into swords while children starve? Never.
"Imperial Father?" Ye Ling's gaze sharpened like a honed dao. *Two decades?* Arcane machinations already kindling in his mind would birth world-rending engines ere the next moon's wane.
"An ageing wyrm's idle thoughts," the emperor demurred, sunlight fracturing through his gemmed rings. "Your counsel regarding Chu's dagger-in-shadow?"
"Chu sought pheasant eggs at Yanhu's slope but cracked their golden goose." Ye Ling's mirth held winter's edge. "Their equine lord Zhuge Yao shall dance with headsmen's axes before midwinter—if Chu's court retains any shred of honour."
Yet when the Emperor extended a vermilion-sealed scroll, shadows deepened beneath the dragon throne. "Youzhou's return... remains a crown of thorns. Three years' truce would be celestial mercy."
"After today's pyrotechnic sermon?" Ye Ling's fingers brushed imaginary gunpowder motes. "Chu's beard lies smouldering—they'll nurse burns for seven harvests. As for Youzhou..." His smile turned lupine. "Our parchment grants casus belli writ in phoenix blood."
The scroll struck his palm like a challenge gauntlet.
"Study. Contemplate. Return with wisdom at first light."
Midnight's third watch found Ye Ling tracing characters glowing blood-red in lamplight. Ji Province's agony unfurled—three moons sans heaven's tears, rivers reduced to skeletal cracks, fields blistered under unrelenting skies. Landed magnates circled like carrion crows, inflating grain to ruinous heights as peasants chewed elm bark and swallowed "Mercy Clay".
Beyond the veil of ink—darker horrors. Mothers' eyes gone wolfish, cooking pots singing forbidden lullabies.
As the clepsydra's bronze frog spat its fourth hour, Fang Yan breached the Humble Prince's gates, frost limning his beard.
"Cataclysm approaches, my lord! The dawn audience—"
"Ji Province's blight." Ye Ling didn't lift his gaze from the cursed parchment.
"You... anticipated this?" The tutor's words crystallised in the frozen air. This prince's web of whispers outran even the palace's shadow-runners.
The Gilded Chalice
"His Majesty entrusted this memorial." Ye Ling extended the scroll to Fang Yan, its crimson threads shimmering with dragon breath urgency.
"Has Your Highness devised remedies?" The tutor's whisper frosted the chamber—a scholar's blade honed to carve solutions from midnight's void.
"Four words." Ye Ling's lips curved like a crescent moon over battlements, syllables cascading like mercury through an hourglass: "*Plague becomes the Purge.*"
Fang Yan's ink-stained fingers trembled.
*Who spun lies of this prince's ignorance?* The old scholar's mind reeled through decades of court scrolls. *These schemes taste of Sun Tzu's ghost whispering through burning libraries.
Morning's first gongs found Ye Ling entering the Hall of Celestial Balance, where Ye Changfeng held sway amid simpering counsellors. The Illustrious Prince's voice rang with peacock pride as he unveiled three edicts:
"First—unlock provincial granaries, bleed silver from the treasury's arteries to buy grain from untouched prefectures. Second—"Here" his gaze glittered like stolen jewels—let wealthy patrons 'rescue' starving peasants by purchasing their ancestral lands, later leasing fields back as tenant plots. Third—"pious hands clasped toward the throne"—grant Ji Province three years' tax reprieve, that heaven's mercy might nurse blighted earth." "Ji Province's three years' tax reprieve, that heaven's mercy might nurse blighted earth."
Emperor Shang's obsidian eyes narrowed—a predator scenting flawed logic. "Expand upon the second measure."
"By transferring deeds to magnates during famine", Ye Changfeng's tongue danced around the rot at his plan's core, "peasants gain immediate relief while lords shoulder cultivation burdens. Post-crisis, these lands return to tillage through equitable leases—a self-mending cycle."
Adulation erupted like pustules.
"A tripartite masterpiece!" Minister Fu Hai's jowls quivered in counterfeit awe.
"The Illustrious Prince's wisdom rivals Lu Shang's river strategies!" The Minister of Works kowtowed until his forehead kissed jade.
Ye Changfeng's chest swelled—here bloomed his redemption. Two prior humiliations dissolved as courtiers' tongues painted him sage. Let the disaster commission's golden coffers flow; let history remember his "compassion".
"Dear Sixth Brother." The Illustrious Prince's voice oozed serpent oil. "What pearls of *humble* wisdom might you cast before swine?"
A hundred eyes swivelled to Ye Ling—pitying gazes that recalled drunken verses scrawled on brothel walls and half-learnt scrolls abandoned beneath courtesans' silks.
The silence thickened like congealed blood until Ye Ling's laughter shattered it—a dagger drawn across zither strings.
Feast of Crows
"Prince of Humility", Minister Fu Hai's syllables oozed serpentine sweetness, "what *divine* wisdom might you impart?" The query floated like a poisoned lotus atop ceremonial wine.
"Your Illustrious Sibling's tripartite remedy", Ye Ling's declaration slithered through incense-thick air, "reeks of national sepsis. Maggots costumed as physicians."
The hall erupted—a cacophony of scandalised gasps and shattered decorum.
"The deranged princeling spews bile!"
"Envy's viper poisons his tongue!"
"Mountebank! Defiler of solemn councils!"
The uproar crested—mandarins' sleeves flapping like panicked cranes as they decried this "heresy against statecraft". Through the tempest, Emperor Shang's jade nails scored grooves into armrests carved with ancestral dragons.
"Unravel this slander," the throne commanded, each word a blade unsheathed.
Ye Ling's grin mirrored a tiger assessing prey. "Shall I autopsy this corpse policy limb by putrid limb?"
"Educate us, *erudite* brother." Ye Changfeng's veneer of civility fissured, rage pulsing at his throat like a trapped scorpion. "Stammer, and you'll sup on the bitter draught of treason's penalty."
"First fallacy—" Ye Ling's raised finger became an executioner's axe "—provincial granaries hold provisions sufficient for three dawns of gruel. As for purchasing grain..." His chuckle frosted goblets. "Border prefectures demand thirtyfold prices. Half the silver dispatched would nest in bureaucrats' sleeves; the remainder purchases chaff sold as millet."
Ye Changfeng's jaw clenched. "The imperial reserves—"
"Second abomination—" Ye Ling's voice swelled like temple bells tolling doom "—this 'benevolent reform' forges debt chains binding peasants to magnates' whims. Come spring planting, Ji Province won't starve—it'll birth a legion of rebels sharpening scythes into swords!"
The Illustrious Prince's ceremonial guan tilted askew, its pearls trembling.
"Third farce—" Ye Ling pivoted toward the dragon throne. "—tax remission for whom? The land-gorged gentry! Your policies don't relieve paupers—they gild vultures' nests!"
A minister's ivory tablet clattered to jade tiles—the sound echoing like a dynasty's first fracture. Emperor Shang's countenance shifted—granite yielding to volcanic fury... and terrible clarity.
"To govern is to tend the roots." Ye Ling's tone softened to a surgeon's scalpel stroke. "These edicts salt the very soil of our realm."
Fu Hai pressed his brow to cold stone, tears smearing vermilion memorial ink. "Majesty! The Illustrious Prince sacrificed sleep and health to birth these remedies! To permit this... this *degenerate* to defile—"
"Let our lifeblood consecrate this hall!" The Minister of Rites drew the ancestral dagger. "We'll paint these pillars with our brains ere endure this profanity!"
Ye Ling observed the pantomime, smiling sharper than the dagger at his brother's belt.
The Philosopher's Stone
"Prince of Humility's dalliance with lotus-eater indulgences spawns such gaseous rhetoric!" Ye Changfeng pivoted with martyred elegance—a Confucian sage burdened by a prodigal sibling.
The chamber boiled like cauldrons of scandalised censure, waves of denunciation breaking against Ye Ling's ramrod composure. Where lesser men might crumple beneath vituperative tides, he remained unyielding as ancestral stelae weathering dynastic storms.
"Since His Humility deigns to vilify celestial wisdom," the Minister of War's chins quivered like aspic, "what alchemical formula does our *ascetic* prince propose?"
"At last—interrogation worthy of breath." Ye Ling's smirk danced between mischief and menace. "Why gild gangrene with ornate policies? My panacea requires but four syllables: *Toil Transubstantiates Want.*"
"Transub... what sorcery?" Ye Changfeng's brow furrowed like drought-cracked riverbeds.
The hall erupted into scholastic chaos—mandarins clustering like panicked hens confronted by novel grain.
"Heretical! No sage's chronicle recounts such alchemical folly!" Fu Hai's indictment dripped nightshade venom.
"Disaster demands gravitas, not pleasure-quarter sophistries!" Chen Huai, Scion of Revenue and maternal uncle to Ye Changfeng, sneered with the arrogance of jade-bred privilege.
"Speaking of pleasure quarters—" Ye Ling's gaze sharpened to poniard points "—does Minister Chen still irrigate brothel carpets when overmatched in drinking contests? Or has the Nightblossom Pavilion's golden chamber pots cured your... enthusiastic expressions of admiration?"
Laughter detonated—a cannonade of mirth cracking decorum's veneer. Chen Huai's complexion purpled to spoilt eggplant hue, his most guarded humiliation—drunken incontinence before courtesan chorus—now lay bare beneath heaven's gaze.
"Decorum!" Eunuchs' nasal shrieks severed merriment like sacrificial blades.
"Expound this... alchemical labour." Emperor Shang's lips betrayed ghostly amusement beneath ceremonial reserve.
"Enlist refugees as living mortar—dig irrigation veins, forge stone arteries for commerce. Compensation in golden grains." Ye Ling's words fell precisely as minted coins. "Empty bellies become furnaces forging provincial rebirth."
"Abominable!" Chen Huai's jowls trembled with outraged privilege. "Walking skeletons lack the strength to lift spoons! Would you harness ghosts to waterwheels?"
"Sixth Brother," Ye Changfeng's voice oozed poisoned honey, "ignorance merits compassion, not censure. But reckless alchemy risks the realm's delicate humours."
"Such magnanimity!" Fu Hai kowtowed until his forehead imprinted tile patterns. "The Illustrious Prince suffers calumny while shepherding strayed lambs!"
"Free gruel breeds locust souls—ravenous, indolent, eternally grasping." Ye Ling's gaze swept the assembly like cleansing wildfire. "But let the throne extend credit—satiated guts fuel productive hands. Debts redeemed through sweat's alchemy."
Emperor Shang's chuckle resonated like subterranean magma flows. "Let the inaugural meal be our imperial largesse. Thereafter, each grain earned through honourable toil."
The proclamation hung—Damocles' blade above calcified traditions.
The Alchemical Wager
The Emperor's pronouncement hung like a comet's tail across the vaulted chamber—an unorthodoxy scorching centuries of bureaucratic tradition. Mandarins traded glances over folded sleeves, minds reeling yet begrudgingly acknowledging fiscal alchemy: empty coffers couldn't haemorrhage phantom silver, while gentry tax exemptions promised economic haemorrhage.
"Celestial Father!" Ye Changfeng's prostration carved his silhouette into jade tiles. "These machinations kindle rebellion's spark! This unworthy son implores heavenly prudence!"
Chen Huai's chins rippled with quicksilver audacity. "Should the Illustrious Prince helm relief efforts, this lowly servant vows three million gleaming taels from ancestral vaults!"
The sum detonated—a financial supernova. Three million! The Chen clan's mercantile leviathan, its argent tentacles strangling Shang's economic arteries, flexed gilded might. The unspoken compact shimmered—invest in regal patronage today, reap imperial monopolies tomorrow.
"Such largesse elevates our dynasty's virtue." Ye Changfeng's bow masked exultation—his maternal kin's wealth would transmute disaster into coronation stepping stones.
"Minister Chen's munificence eclipses the Seven Sages!"
"A beacon illuminating our benighted age!"
The sycophantic litany crescendoed as Chen Huai preened beneath gilded accolades.
Emperor Shang's gaze found Ye Ling, still as a honed blade awaiting blooding. "Let celestial arbitration cleave the trial—Tianmen's spine as fulcrum. Each prince governs a county. After lunar rebirth, the victor claims twin imperial orbs and council ascendancy."
The chamber stilled—a bronze bell frozen mid-toll.
"This unworthy son humbly selects Tianqu County beyond Tianmen's northern crags." Ye Ling's declaration split the silence like a guillotine's fall.
A collective inhalation hissed. North—where scree slopes devoured hope, a wasteland where even crows carried provisions. South—verdant vales where gentry pavilions floated on rice wine rivers.
"The Humble Prince's folly is eternally inscribed!" Chen Huai crowed, slamming the bureaucratic seal on irreversible folly.
"Sixth Brother", Ye Changfeng's concern dripped with arsenic sincerity, "Tianqu's wretches gnaw their flesh in famine. Recant this madness—I cede southern bounty to preserve fraternal accord."
Ye Ling's smile mirrored a Go master placing the killing stone. "Let Tianqu's flinty soil judge where silken tongues deceive."
The gauntlet thrown spun gleaming toward fate's anvil.
The Salt Alchemist's Calculus
"The Illustrious Prince's benevolence risks being mauled by vipers!" Chen Huai hissed with venomous courtesy, their orchestrated duet binding Ye Ling to irreversible folly.
From the obsidian throne, Emperor Shang's gaze narrowed to slits of smouldering jade. "Have you measured this madness threefold, Ling'er?" The query trembled with tectonic restraint—a monarch's gambit misfiring. The Tianmen demarcation had been crafted to steer Tianqu's desolation toward Ye Changfeng, whose Chen-bolstered coffers might salve the festering wound. The Chen hydra—its silver tentacles constricting half the realm's economic arteries—served as shadow exchequer, keys dangling from Ye Changfeng's girdle rather than imperial grasp.
"This unworthy son kneels before Tianqu's crucible." Ye Ling's smile flashed like lightning across storm clouds.
"Then let Sixth Brother marinate in wilful delusion." Ye Changfeng's bow of false magnanimity concealed triumph. Privy Counsellor Fang Yan observed from lacquered shadows, teeth etching grooves in his tongue: *Charity? Nay—carrion crows scenting royal carcass.
Ceremonial niceties crystallised into glacial formalities. South of Tianmen sprawled Shanyang's abundance—loam-rich valleys where Chen manors rose like gilded fortresses. A single decree would unleash grain mountains, coin rivers, and cities reborn from ash. North festered as Xianxia purgatory—clawing peasants, spectral livestock, despair's metallic tang permeating bone-dust winds.
None discerned the alchemical fire in Ye Ling's deferential gaze. His starveling's study of lunar maps had unveiled Tianqu's buried trove—a halite behemoth whose crystalline veins could bankroll dynasties. Crude mineral poison, true... unless one wielded forbidden alchemical knowledge from beyond the celestial curtain.
"Gratitude flows like mountain springs, honoured brother." Ye Ling's ceremonial obeisance needled Ye Changfeng's spine with crevasse-deep disquiet—the primal dread preceding glacial calving.
Imperial rites demanded princely domiciles beyond vermilion walls. Though thunderclouds gathered on the imperial brow, the emperor bestowed upon Humble Prince Manor 5,000 sun-gold taels and 200,000 moon-silver from privy vaults—a cryptic alloy of paternal anxiety and regnal chessmanship.
Ye Ling surveyed the bullion with transmuter's fervour. *These elemental metals would've powered fusion reactors in that lost world.* His mind's crucible already smelted coins into alembics and mortars—instruments to refine Tianqu's cursed salt into alabaster wealth.
As eunuchs trundled cinnabar-lacquered chests, none grasped the profundity taking root—a stratigraphic colossus slumbering beneath Tianqu's crust, awaiting catalytic awakening. Not jade nor rice nor dragon favours would decide this contest, but crystalline NaCl and the hermetic arts of dissolution and recrystallisation.
The Dowry of Poisoned Blossoms
"His Highness appears bewitched by base metallurgy."
Lü Xuan observed Ye Ling's undignified glee over bullion post-ceremony, the clatter of gold ingots against marble punctuating his laughter. Even Liu Ren's retinue averted eyes—such bourgeois enthusiasm was ill-suited to celestial lineage. Crowned diadems and Song-era porcelains lay abandoned as princely fingers traced silver's vulgar curves.
"Such myopic vulgarity," Fu Yuanyuan spat through tear-bitten lips. The Humble Prince's compound loomed a stone's throw from Ye Changfeng's gilded palace—an architectural mockery of her stolen destiny. News of the illustrious prince's impending nuptial selections carved fresh wounds where old scars throbbed.
"Does wealth offend?" Ye Ling lobbed a tael toward Lü Xuan. The concubine fumbled its sun-warm weight, rouge blooming across ivory cheeks.
"All... all revere prosperity's glow..." Her stammered lie hung fragrant as censer smoke. Palace-bestowed treasures—Han jade armlets and Tang tri-colour ewers—lay entombed in inventory scrolls while silver whispered marketplace incantations.
"As do I." The prince's mirth echoed through vaulted treasuries where stewards inscribed ledgers with monastic devotion. Liu Ren's brows knitted—what thief would court crude bullion when Wu Daozi landscapes hung unguarded?
The compound unfolded like nested lacquer boxes—five courtyards walled against plebeian gazes. Central pavilions boasted moon-gate gardens and fifty attendants polishing already-lustrous floors. East Wing cradled Lü Xuan amidst peony terraces and forty serving maids; West stood a virgin, awaiting future consorts. Fu Yuanyuan's quarters festered in peripheral shadows—a four-chamber purgatory shared with Red Phoenix and two taciturn matrons.
At the fifth dawn's breaking, chrysanthemum-scented decrees arrived borne by simpering eunuchs: "Noble Consort Chen condenses nuptial preparations—disaster's urgency compels immediate provincial departure."
"Her ladyship curates jade maidens for Your Highness' consideration," the castrato oiled, "though final selection remains your celestial prerogative."
"Consort Chen presumes to broker my bridal bed?" Ye Ling's fist whitened around a Ming-dynasty inkstone.
"Merely presents cultured blossoms," the eunuch demurred, smile slick with camellia oil. "Principal consort's chrysanthemum throne demands personal cultivation."
Unspoken implications perfumed the air: Ye Changfeng's marital cortege would bloom with Chen-affiliated nobility, while Ye Ling's "choices" might include salt merchants' daughters and disgraced clans. The game expanded beyond disaster relief into genealogical chess—moves spanning generations.
Lü Xuan watched storm clouds gather on her prince's brow, fingers unconsciously tracing her ingot's reassuring geometry. Bullion's mute truth outshone jade's fragile pretensions—weighty, malleable, deliciously corruptible.
Garden of Venomous Peonies
"Might this unworthy prince enquire which pedigreed blooms grace Consort Chen's selection?" Ye Ling's query flowed like poisoned honey. With Fu Yuanyuan—once pledged to Ye Changfeng as the capital's celestial maiden—now diminished to his sixth-tier concubine, the question thrummed with serpentine intrigue.
"Scions of the Five August Lineages and Seven Hallowed Houses," the courtier fawned before withdrawing.
Word soon arrived of Fu Xianxian's visitation—the Fu clan's second daughter, newly anointed as their principal marital chess piece following her cousin's disgrace.
Fu Xianxian appraised her cousin's quarters with adder-like relish within the eastern courtyard's cloistered confines. "This sty lacks even a proper hearth!" Her mockery dripped saccharine malice. "How the phoenix has plummeted—from lotus ponds to gutter trenches."
Red Phoenix's cheeks burned vermilion. "Second Lady's audience concludes! "You presume?" Fu Xianxian's palm sliced toward the maid's cheek, arrested by Fu Yuanyuan's talon-like grasp.
"A sixth-rank consort still eclipses titleless vermin," Fu Yuanyuan hissed, her former grace honed to dagger sharpness.
"Consort?" Fu Xianxian's lips curled. "When I ascend as principal wife, you'll lick my golden slippers!"
"Whose slippers demand obeisance?"
Ye Ling's voice crystallised the scene—sovereign beholding squabbling songbirds. Fu Xianxian's performative prostration revealed more than protocol; the strategic plunge of her neckline and fluttering of gilded lashes wove calculated temptation.
"Th-this lowly one merely..." Her protest dissolved upon witnessing the prince's countenance—aristocratic planes sculpted from moonlight jade, eyes holding midnight's fathomless depth. Ambition transmuted into baser hunger.
"These walls brook no serpents," Ye Ling decreed, though his gaze lingered on the intruder's peony-silk curves, where Fu Yuanyuan embodied restrained elegance, and her cousin exuded carnality's raw perfume.
The courtyard's osmanthus-scented air thickened with combustive potential—blood rivalries, political gambits, and primal tensions coiling like incense smoke.
Fu Yuanyuan observed comprehension's glacial dawn—her cousin's sudden flush, the prince's lingering scrutiny. Epiphany struck colder than midwinter's kiss: this gilded menagerie might soon cage twin Fu vipers in lethal symbiosis.
The Temptress's Gambit
Were Lü Wu to ensnare men through equal measures of allure and artifice, the enchantress before them now radiated an ineffable magnetism—her every movement a symphony of seduction, as though carved from the very essence of temptation.
"Your Highness," murmured Fu Xianxian, her lips quivering in feigned distress, "I came to pay my respects to Sister... yet she vowed to grind me beneath her heel. How utterly dreadful." She punctuated this lament with a deliberate sway, the opulent curves of her décolletage trembling like storm-tossed waves.
Even a paragon of virtue such as Ye Ling—a man forged by mortal trials—found his gaze ensnared. His scrutiny lingered not upon her theatrical distress but upon the serpentine trail of jade beads adorning her throat, their verdant cascade plunging daringly between alabaster cliffs.
"Indeed?" Ye Ling's query dripped with languid amusement.
"Truly! Sister's ferocity chilled my very soul," she protested, advancing to clutch his sleeve with calculated timidity. Emboldened by his earlier attentiveness, she cast Fu Yuanyuan a glance brimming with venomous triumph as she rose.
"Ferocity becomes her—a lesson of my imparting," Ye Ling declared with a booming laugh, his eyes softening imperceptibly toward Fu Yuanyuan. She was his, and none—not even this gilded serpent—would dare diminish her.
"Ah!" Fu Xianxian recoiled, her doe-eyed gaze shimmering with counterfeit trepidation. "Your Majesty's countenance darkens most fearsomely."
"Depart ere my patience expires," he intoned, frost lacing each syllable.
"Your Majesty..." Her breath hitched theatrically as she guided his hand to the fevered flutter beneath her bodice. "Does Your Majesty not feel how your wrath sets my heart a-quiver?"
The sudden warmth beneath his palm gave Ye Ling pause. What manner of noble scion was this? Her brazenness surpassed even the painted houris of Lü Wu's demimonde.
"A palpitating heart betokens infirmity," he retorted, withdrawing his touch as one might from venomous silk. Such unbridled forwardness reeked of stratagem, and he had no appetite for poisons disguised as pleasures.
"Prince Ling..." She crumpled to the floor in a cascade of tears, a fallen nymphaeum of calculated sorrow.
"Must I summon guards to hasten your exit?"
"Your Majesty!" she cried, her voice trembling with manufactured anguish. "Having sullied my virtue through your touch, honour compels you to claim responsibility!"
"Responsibility?" Ye Ling's lips curved in glacial amusement. When fools courted humiliation, who was he to deny them?
"This..." Her gaze flickered toward Fu Yuanyuan, ambition blazing beneath demure lashes. The prize she sought glittered clear—the Princess Consort's coronet, a gilded chain to eternally fetter her rival.
"My heart has been Your Majesty's since first our eyes met," she breathed, adopting the cadence of sacred oaths. "Let our locks entwine as man and wife, that no earthly force may sunder our devotion."
*A wife?* Fu Yuanyuan's inner scorn crystallized. *This simpering jade would yoke herself to Ye Ling—that libertine princeling? What majesty resides in a peacock preening his borrowed plumes?
"Your Majesty—unhand me!" Fu Xianxian's cry pierced the air as an iron grip wrenched her upright.
The Bitter Harvest of Ambition
Even the most audacious temptress quails when artifice meets reality, particularly one like Fu Xianxian, who trafficked in carnal currency and is now confronting the spectre of dishonoured debts.
"Was your professed ardour but fleeting vapour?" Ye Ling's derisive murmur accompanied his grip on her wrist, hauling her toward the bedchamber's shadowed sanctum. "Does resolve wither when shadows deepen?"
"Your servant would traverse molten seas for Your Majesty's favor…" Her bravado fractured like gilded lacquer, exposing the tremulous core beneath. "Yet…"
"Reluctance? Then vanish." He cast her sprawling across cold tiles, theatrical fury honed to a lethal edge. "You intrude upon moments meant for Yuanyuan alone."
At that detested name, venom surged through Fu Xianxian's veins. *Bow to that gutter-born pretender? Let hell freeze first.
"Mercy, Your Eminence—" She crawled to entwine fingers in his dragon-embroidered hem, saccharine desperation coating each syllable. "Your handmaiden bleeds from Your Majesty's ungentle touch…"
With feral determination, she clawed at his waistband—a courtesan-turned-harridan resolved to chain this prince through carnal alchemy. The Qian throne might pale beside imperial glory, yet its bearer's comely visage and princely mantle sufficed. To wear the consort's phoenix crown, however hollow its gleam, would eternalise her rival's eclipse.
"Desist." His pivot scattered her like autumn leaves before frost. "Divest *thyself."
"Your Majesty jests…" The chamber's air curdled with shame. She knelt frozen, vermilion nails gouging brocade.
"Disrobe or be removed."
"*Beseeching* Your Majesty's compassion—" Pearlescent tears pooled beneath lowered lashes, a Guanyin statue's artful sorrow.
Ye Ling reclined against bedposts, a monarch observing street theatre. "The last minx who feigned coyness earned third-tier concubinage. Do pantomimes please you?"
*Ah.* Epiphany dawned. *Submission is key.
"This unworthy one complies…"
Layer by mortifying layer, silks whispered their descent—peach-blossom arms emerging like tender shoots from shed petals. When no reprieve came, she continued: gossamer shifts, embroidered bindings, until naught remained but moonlit flesh, every secret bared.
"Your Eminence?" Her query trembled—a dissonant chord in the thickening silence. What manner of man remained impervious to such surrender?
"Regrettable." Ye Ling straightened his cuffs with fastidious disdain. "Your... *offerings* lack aesthetic merit."
*Uncomely.
The verdict shattered her looking-glass soul. He mocked the arsenal she'd polished to diamond brilliance—the very sinews of her power.
"Your Majesty… spurns me?" The words bled like opened veins.
To stand thus denuded, commanded to reclothe her desecrated temple? To proffer divinity's chalice and have it deemed a chamberpot? The walls themselves seemed to sneer.
The Unraveling of Painted Facades
Fu Xianxian's carefully constructed artifice crumbled—a gilded mask slipping to reveal the cracked visage beneath, despair leaching vitality from her kohl-rimmed eyes like ink bleeding through parchment.
Yet the prince's countenance remained an impenetrable monolith, reflecting neither mockery nor mercy—only truth's glacial sheen.
Though vernal warmth caressed the courtyard beyond, though no errant breeze penetrated latched casements, permafrost humiliation crystallised in her marrow. The arctic gale of shame snuffed her meticulously kindled flames, leaving only spectral wisps of ambition.
"Uninspiring," Ye Ling pronounced, each syllable honed to surgical precision. "A banquet too meagre for a royal palate."
His verdict flensed skin from pretence. The silks pooling at her feet transcended mere attire—they were the unravelled scroll of her value, its ink forever blotted. Certain veils, once rent, defy restoration.
"Why… orchestrate this theatre?" Her whisper frayed at the edges, clutching dignity's tattered remnants.
"Why not?" His smile mirrored moonlight on a dagger's edge.
*Presume to challenge his choice?* As though he'd hoard counterfeit coins for their dross.
Beyond arched windows, Fu Yuanyuan and handmaiden Hongluan observed from moon-washed benches, their countenances storm clouds pregnant with thunder.
"My lady, this pantomime defies decency!" Hongluan's protest hissed like steam from a sealed cauldron. "Should that serpent nestle in his bedchamber—"
"What storm can alter heaven's course?" Fu Yuanyuan's murmur carried the brittleness of frosted reeds. The man she'd disdained now dealt poetic justice—yet when he'd championed her hours prior, traitorous hope had unfurled like night-blooming cereus. *Could venom nourish affection's roots?
Now witnessing her rival's immolation, acid shame dissolved those nascent tendrils.
"We just chronicle phantom days," she sighed. Since Crown Prince Ye Changfeng unfurled his bridal scrolls, her celestial aspirations had calcified—dreams of warrior-scholar consorts reduced to funeral ash.
The chamber door sighed open.
Ye Ling emerged, robes undisturbed as mountain snowfall.
"Your Majesty… returns with unnatural haste?" Fu Yuanyuan's traitorous pulse quickened. Barely a watchglass spilled—insufficient for conquest. Unless…
"Does premature return offend?" He tilted her chin upward, calloused thumb branding her cheek. "Does Fu Yuanyuan's jade-carved heart… quicken with envy?"
Her lashes dipped—moth wings resisting flame's seduction. Men's mercurial whims exhausted her: scorning offered wine, thirsting for withheld draughts.
"No… such frailty…" Carmine bloomed beneath his scrutiny, fever spreading through wintered veins.
"None?" His laughter dripped with aged pu'erh bitterness. These silk-draped enigmas—why must their tongues duel with silenced hearts? Had she surrendered to truth's blade, phoenix coronets might've graced her raven coils.
"My sister's fate…?" She turned from his penetration, the unspoken query hovering like unsheathed steel.
*What spectre haunted that silent chamber? What became of ambition's sacrificial lamb?
Ye Ling's smile widened—a weaver admiring silken snares.
The Inferno of Mortal Desires
"Her vulgarity proved inadequate for royal indulgence," Ye Ling purred with malicious mirth, fingertips branding possessive heat through Fu Yuanyuan's robes. "Your jade-perfected form eclipses all."
"You—!"
The vulgarity should have ignited her scorn, yet Fu Yuanyuan found revulsion faltering beneath treacherous warmth. His features, carved by celestial hands yet animated by mortal fire, now compelled reluctant appraisal—*Were he not gilded emptiness, perhaps…*
*Thud.
Fu Xianxian materialized—a spectre of smeared vermilion and fractured arrogance. Her hollow gaze burned into Ye Ling, each breath a dagger drawn across her own throat.
"Mistress! What devilry?" Maid Hongcha surged forward, recoiling at the abyss within her lady's stare.
"Speak, I implore!"
No answer came save the mute keening of Fu Xianxian's ruin—a soul reduced to funeral pyre embers.
"What sorcery stains Your Majesty's hands?" Hongcha wheeled toward the prince, reckless fury overriding protocol.
"Insolent gutter-spawn!" Matron Rong materialized, gold needles shimmering like viper fangs. "The prince's halls tolerate no harlot's screeching."
"Our mistress descends from five dynastic houses! This defilement demands—"
"*Cease!*" A needle hissed, etching crimson across Hongcha's wrist. The maid's wail shattered courtyard serenity.
"Lodge petitions till doomsday," Ye Ling inspected his jade ring's glow. "My hands remain unsoiled by her… *deformities*. Does truth's mirror not reveal the cruellest reflections?"
His laughter pursued their retreat—Fu Xianxian shuffling like a ceremonial paper effigy, Hongcha cradling wounded pride.
As the gates groaned shut, Ye Ling's gaze kindled with lupine hunger.
"Now…" He closed the distance between the throne and temptation, fingers tracing incendiary paths along Fu Yuanyuan's neck. "Shall we settle *your* arrears?"
"Your Majesty—the sun still claims dominion!" She retreated, pulse a war-drum cadence.
"What care have celestials for mortal hours?" He swept her into his arms, strides devouring corridors. The musk of restrained craving clung to him—banked flames now wildfire.
*That painted strumpet's display had stirred primal thirst, yet her tinsel allure repelled.* Only Fu Yuanyuan's glacial purity could douse this conflagration.
"Your sister's deficiencies necessitate reparation," he growled against her earlobe, silken barriers sundered by ravenous hands. The ferocity of his appetite startled even its master—monarch transformed to a famished beast.
Some accounts, it seemed, demanded settlement in nectar-salt currency.
The Monarch's Stratagem and the Consort's Veil
Fu Yuanyuan observed Ye Ling's post-coital serenity through narrowed eyes, mistrust coiling like incense smoke. *What alchemy could deter this sensualist from her sister's wiles?* The prince's caprices remained as enigmatic as vanishing ink on imperial parchment.
"Your Grace… mercy…" Her protest melted into breathless acquiescence as his ardour transmuted ravishment into unexpected communion.
The bedchamber simmered with paradoxical perfumes—animal musk entwined with sacred sandalwood. Fu Yuanyuan's unexpected acquiescence unfolded as a waltz of feigned reluctance and tacit surrender, stoking his satisfaction beyond measure. This gradual dismantling of her fortifications proved sweeter than any hurried triumph.
When dawn's third chorus of temple bells resonated, they lay interlaced like twin serpents adorning a throne. Ye Ling roused to sunlight gilding Fu Yuanyuan's slumbering silhouette—a princely prerogative unchained from the tyranny of morning courts.
"Your Majesty… awakens?" Her gaze darted sideways, unaccustomed to daylight's unsparing clarity.
This fragile armistice between nocturnal passion and diurnal reality felt foreign—a pearl cultivated in typhoon-tossed depths. Memories of yesterday's abandoned painted carmine across her throat, her instinctive withdrawal arrested by his possessive embrace.
"I journey east within the week," he murmured against her crown.
"Journey?" Silk quilts crumpled beneath her whitening knuckles.
"Tianqu's unrest demands my intervention. The Azure Drakes remain as your shield." His thumb charted the pulse beneath her jade bracelet. "Lü Wu attends to me—her talents prove irreplaceable."
The unvoiced dismissal stung like winter's first frost. "This humble consort comprehends."
"No palace viper shall breach these walls," he added, mind already navigating labyrinthine intrigues—Consort Chen's poisoned honey, ministers' barbed whispers.
Their parting repast unfolded in tremulous harmony, porcelain chimes punctuating unspoken words.
At high sun, while charting strategies with Grand Tutor Lu beneath painted eaves, Lü Wu delivered silken-thread intelligence: "Fu Xianxian has burnt with fever since yesternight—her ravings murmur of spectral disgraces."
Grand Tutor Lu's vermilion brush hovered mid-character. "Whispers names her Xiang Prince's chosen bride. This insult may kindle the Fu clan's conflagration."
Ye Ling's jade teacup crystallized mid-air. "Xiang's betrothed?"
The revelation hung suspended like executioner's blades—a chess piece advanced across shadowed boards. Beyond latticed windows, cicadas shrilled prophecies of gathering tempests.
To be continuous…