Chapter 15: Serpents in the Court
"Sixth Prince", Ye Changfeng's voice dripped vitriol, "Fu Yuanyuan occupies but a concubine's rank in your household. Since when does the disgraced Fu patriarch merit the title of your esteemed father-in-law?"
He had anticipated cowering evasion, not this brazen pantomime where the once-obscure prince now brandished audacity like a court fool's bells.
"Has Eldest Brother forgotten?" Ye Ling's smile glinted like poisoned honey. "Precisely _because_ the Fu clan deemed me unworthy, I must grasp this opportunity to... refine my standing." His obeisance mocked ceremonial decorum. "Surely my honourable sibling wouldn't begrudge such modest aspirations?"
The theatrics worked. Whispers of approval rustled through ministers disarmed by his brazen charm.
Emperor Shang inclined his head. "If Ling'er's intentions—"
"Hold!" Ye Changfeng's interjection cracked like splitting jade. "The entire capital witnessed your blood-soaked emergence from Fu Manor! How _fortuitous_ your 'heroic intervention' coincides with their decimation!"
"Father!" The Xu prince pressed his assault. "Permitting the prime suspect to oversee his trial? This travesty reeks of complicity!"
Chen Huai, Grand Coordinator of Revenue, slithered forward. "Gossip already brands Prince Qian the architect. Appointing him an investigator would stink of imperial partiality!"
Ye Ling's façade of civility shattered. "_Proof!_" He thundered, smacking a jade sceptre against alabaster tiles. "Where are your memorials of evidence? Or does the Xu faction now condemn royalty through wineshop slander?" Spittle flew as he thrust a finger toward Chen Huai. "What filth do _you_ conceal, that my inquiry terrifies you so?"
The chamber froze.
Chen Huai blanched. "Absurdity! My lineage shares centuries-old covenants with the Fu—"
"Covenants?" Ye Ling's laughter iced spines. "Did those covenants endure your foiled scheme to install a Chen b*st*rd-branch ingénue as Xu's consort? A plot of the Fu clan... _dissuaded?"
Gasps rippled through the assembly. Chen Huai's countenance purpled—the exposed secret deadlier than any blade. His failed machination to place a puppet queen through Ye Changfeng had been buried beneath bribes and threats.
"Falsehoods!" Chen Huai rasped, but the poison spread like spilled mercury. Even Ye Changfeng recoiled, unprepared for this festering wound's unearthing.
"Silence!" The Emperor's decree stilled the storm. His gaze swept the warring heirs. "Let justice arbitrate. Prince Xu shall lead the inquiry—"
"With Sixth Brother as adjutant!" Ye Ling interposed with serpentine grace. "To guarantee...rigour."
The edict hung like a silken garrote. Ye Changfeng's jawline sharpened, trapped between rejecting imperial will or enduring his nemesis as a shadow inquisitor.
Beyond vermilion gates, the maimed Fu Hai received tidings of this concord... and chuckled through shattered teeth. Let the princelings rend each other's throats. His vengeance required only survivors to manipulate.
Masks of Virtue, Blades of Verse
"Honoured assembly bears witness," Ye Ling purred, venom swathed in silk, "how Minister Chen's composure frays like cheap brocade."
The court rippled with knowing glances. All recognized the Chen clan's dominion—spiderweb networks of spies and assassins coiled in every prefecture. None, but they could orchestrate Fu Manor's decimation. Even Princess Xu's mutilation now seemed... conveniently aligned.
Ye Changfeng stepped forth, hypocrisy cloaked in magnanimity. "Sixth Brother, Minister Chen embodies ministerial virtue. These slanders stain the court's honour."
"Virtue?" Ye Ling's countenance flushed with artful indignation. "When he demanded my recusal, did he not brand me a kin-slayer through innuendo?" His trembling hands clutched imaginary wounds, masking razor calculation.
Censor Fang Yan unsheathed the blade. "To besmirch imperial blood sans evidence reeks of lese-majesty! These 'recusal' ploys mask seditious designs!"
Chen Huai's sneer wavered. "Lord Fang guards Prince Qian's honour with... uncommon zeal."
"**SILENCE!**"
The Emperor's thunderous decree stilled the storm. A eunuch's jade gavel echoed finality.
"Liu Yi of the Feather Forest Guard shall arbitrate truth," the Son of Heaven proclaimed. "Let no soul—prince or peer—escape celestial scrutiny."
Ye Ling's bow concealed triumph. The Feather Forest answered solely to the throne, and Liu Yi was Liu Ren's kin. This "impartial" inquest would unearth truths beneath bureaucratic sediment.
***
As silken slippers whispered across marble, Ye Changfeng unsheathed subtler steel. "Father, the Decennial Mid-Autumn Literary Conclave approaches. With Fu Hai maimed, I nominate Fu Xun as Acting Minister of Rites."
Murmured assent arose—Fu Xun, Fu Hai's spawn and Ye Changfeng's former acolyte, danced readily on political strings.
Ye Ling's laughter shattered gravitas. "Fu Xun? The same who wrestled me for a sing-song girl's garter at the Pavilion of Vanishing Virtue?"
The hall convulsed with stifled mirth. Even the Emperor's nostrils flared against amusement.
Ye Changfeng's mask fissured. "Sixth Brother! This forum demands—"
"—testaments to Fu Xun's... _hands-on_ governance?" Ye Ling batted lashes, the image of roguish innocence.
Chaos resurged—inkwells "slipped", coughs camouflaged guffaws. Beneath farce, power's tectonic plates shifted.
***
By guttering candlelight, Liu Yi perused predetermined verdicts. Names selected: western swamp-scum, their heads convenient offerings. The Feather Forest's report would gleam with fabricated purity.
As for Fu Xun's ascension? The Emperor's vermilion brush hovered. Let rival jackals gnaw each other's flanks. A poet-prince's jests often carried unanticipated barbs.
In shadowed chambers, Ye Ling toasted his wine-stained reflection. Let them crown the brothel-brawling Fu Xun. Each ribald ballad would corrode Ye Changfeng's faction like vinegar on bronze.
The game, he reflected, demanded verse-sharpened daggers and laughter laced with arsenic.
Virtue's Facade, Vice's Blade
Ye Changfeng's stratagem lay in tatters as Ye Ling's mockery reverberated through the hall. "To appoint a brothel-brawling degenerate as acting minister of rites? A farce worthy of imperial annals!"
The court dissolved into raucous derision. Beneath the onslaught of scorn, Ye Changfeng's countenance darkened like storm-laden skies.
"Sixth Brother traffics in falsehoods!" the Xu prince thundered. "Fu Xun embodies Confucian virtue—a scholar of unimpeachable propriety!"
"Propriety?" Ye Ling's smile turned lupine. "Three nights hence at the Pavilion of Celestial Delights, this 'virtuous' heir strangled two child courtesans in drunken revelry. Shall I produce the coroner's parchment?"
A seismic hush gripped the assembly. Ye Changflin's pallor mirrored the accused's crimes—atrocities rendering Fu Xun unfit for office, for breath itself.
"Calumny!" Yet doubt poisoned Ye Changfeng's rebuttal. "Where blooms this weed of lies?"
"Plucked from the magistrate's own garden." Ye Ling unfurled a silk scroll bearing vermilion seals. "The victims' kin petitioned yesternight. One maid was freshly torn from her father's arms—her blood cries for recompense."
The revelation hung like a headsman's axe. Fu Xun's depravity—preying on trafficked youth, his savagery unleashed during the Fu clan's interregnum—painted hieroglyphs of moral decay.
Ye Changfeng shifted tactics, venom crystallizing. "How assiduously Sixth Brother monitors his own kin's transgressions. Such... _dedication_ to the family he professes to champion."
The barb struck true: Ye Ling's dual guise as Fu Hai's "son-in-law" and Fu Xun's accuser reeked of duplicity.
Undeterred, the younger prince stood as righteousness incarnate. "Shall nepotism pardon atrocity?" His voice cleaved the silence. "The Ministry of Rites guards our empire's moral constellation! To cloak villainy in familial loyalty betrays Heaven's Mandate!"
Censor Xu Shimao's approbation thundered. "Prince Qian channels sage wisdom! Let justice's flames purge corruption!"
Neutral ministers buzzed like stirred hornets. Ye Ling's gambit—sacrificing a pawn to checkmate his rival—recast the court's allegiances.
"How... _fortuitous_," Ye Changfeng sneered, "that judicial missives bypass protocol to reach princely ears. Since when do royal scions moonlight as magistrates?"
The insinuation of conspiracy lingered, but the deed was done. Fu Xun's political carcass already festered, and with it, Ye Changfeng's credibility.
***
Beyond vermilion portals, the tale spread like wildfire—a prince who flayed his kin upon virtue's altar. In wine shops and alleyways, minstrels began composing ballads of Ye Ling's paradox: the debauched reformer, the kin-shaming saviour.
As for Fu Xun? His destiny now dangled between the executioner's block and prison's eternal night—a sacrificial lamb in the princes' ceaseless chess match.
In shadowed chambers, the crippled Fu Hai received tidings... and chuckled through broken teeth. Let the princelings gorge on each other's entrails. Soon, very soon, he would rise from his sickbed to harvest the spoils.
Gilded Mandates, Scarlet Webs
The Metropolitan Magistrate's dominion stretched beyond mere peacekeeping—three hundred constables patrolled the capital's arteries, guardians of its gates and tribunals. In this city where nobles swarmed like minnows in a gilded pond, his authority to bear arms under imperial decree rivalled even the Feather Forest Guard.
Ye Changfeng's accusation dripped serpentine venom. "Since when do judicial whispers flutter to princely ears?"
"By the Emperor's edict", Ye Ling countered, eyes glinting like honed steel, "the Metropolitan Magistrate became my kin when Lü Wu ascended to the consorship. Must I silence my wife's confidences?"
The revelation reverberated through the hall. Lü Wu—once a Yangzhou courtesan, now reborn as the magistrate's adopted daughter—had been dismissed as an ornamental scandal. Her transformed status now shielded Ye Ling like ceremonial armour.
Ye Changfeng's neck flushed crimson. "Heresy cannot arraign an official of the realm!"
"Then let truth's crucible decide," Ye Ling parried. "Summon the magistrate and plaintiffs for imperial inquest."
Emperor Shang's voice crystallized the fray. "Liu Yi shall forthwith investigate these claims. Should Fu Xun stand convicted of defiling mourning rites with debauchery…" His gaze hardened to obsidian. "…he shall forfeit not office, but breath itself."
The rebuke seared. Ye Changfeng's chosen pawn—a libertine heir carousing amidst his clan's ruin—threatened to make the empire a jester in foreign courts. With Chu envoys nearing, celestial dignity hung by a silken thread.
"Father!" Ye Changfeng entreated. "The Decennial Poetry Conclave—"
"—demands a Ministry of Rites unstained by filial sacrilege!" Ye Ling's interjection cleaved the air. "Our laws decree twenty-one months' mourning for paternal demise." A lethal pause. "Unless Elder Brother would rend ancestral rites asunder?"
The trap snapped shut. The Ministry of Rites stewarded the sacred ceremonies, upholding Heaven's Mandate. To install a mourning-defiling reprobate would unravel the empire's spiritual tapestry—heresy Ye Changfeng dared not endorse.
As the court dissolved, murmurs spread: Ye Ling had immolated a pawn to incinerate his rival's gambit. Yet in shadowed alcoves, the maimed Fu Hai received tidings… and chuckled through broken teeth. Let princelings scorch the realm. From ashes, phoenixes would ascend.
***
That night, beneath a veiled moon, Liu Yi's men disinterred two diminutive forms from unconsecrated earth. The Spring Breeze Pavilion's matron confessed beneath the searing persuasion of hot irons. By dawn's first light, Fu Xun's fate was sealed—a testament to how swiftly royal stratagems devoured their pawns.
As for Ye Ling? He raised a goblet to Lü Wu's artistry. A courtesan-turned-consort, a magistrate's legal progeny—his adversaries forever underestimated the pieces he advanced. Let them. Soon, the board itself would blaze.
Ceremonial Ashes, Ascendant Phoenix
"Naturally", Ye Ling intoned with venomous decorum, "I acknowledge the *mandate's reprieve*—where state exigencies supersede mourning obligations. Yet can our Great Shang, repository of ten thousand talents, stoop to stripping grief's veil for mere convenience?"
The phrase *mandate's reprieve*—a theoretical edict permitting officials to truncate the twenty-seven-month mourning period—hung like a serpent in imperial annals, never invoked. Ye Ling brandished it as a scorpion's sting to flay Ye Changfeng's credibility.
"Elder Brother's perspicacity dazzles," Ye Ling continued, his smile a crescent blade. "Fu Xun's brothel revelries scarcely whisper of filial anguish. Why trouble with mourning's pretence?"
Each indictment—debauchery amidst bereavement, lives extinguished, rites profaned—stacked like funerary bricks. Fu Xun's ministerial aspirations crumbled to dust.
Ye Changfeng's stately veneer fissured. "The Decennial Mid-Autumn Poetic Symposium looms! To eviscerate the Ministry of Rites now would cripple its sinews!"
"Eviscerate?" Ye Ling's feigned innocence glittered. "Nay—*venerate* their filial devotion. Let Fu's scions drown in twenty-one months of ceremonial grief. Would you deny them this sacred catharsis?"
The snare snapped shut. By invoking ancestral law, Ye Ling compelled his brother to either desecrate tradition or relinquish the ministry, keystone of imperial ritual and diplomatic theatre.
Emperor Shang kneaded his temples, the celestial mandate weighing his words. "To deny mourning's sanctity... Our heavenly heart quakes." His gaze drifted toward Censor Fang Yan's progeny, long marooned in the Ministry's shallows. "Fang Ning—your nephew curates Funerary Rites, does he not?"
"Your unworthy subject's kinsman", Ye Ling interposed silkily, "has shepherded death's ceremonies for a decade. A man intimate with... *final honours."
The court stilled. Funerary Rites—a backwater overseeing graves and mourning protocols—now emerged as power's fulcrum.
"Let Fang Ning assume the ministry's interim stewardship," the emperor ordained. "Hands versed in instruments may yet midwife poetic splendour."
From the hall's rearmost shadows, a gaunt scholar prostrated himself, voice trembling with decades of stifled ambition. "This lowly servant shall inscribe loyalty in marrow and deed."
As Fang Ning rose, his gaze locked with Ye Ling's—a silent covenant. The Fu clan's dynastic grip, forged through generations of ritual mastery, now dissolved beneath a mortician's ascent.
***
Beyond vermilion portals, the tale unfurled—a prince who weaponized grief's pageantry and a mortuary steward, anointed cultural architect. In scholars' pavilions, literati dissected the irony: a curator of epitaphs tasked with verses to awe foreign emissaries.
Ye Ling raised a cup to the cosmic jest. Let the Fu clan moulder in ceremonial limbo. From grave-tenders to verse-weavers, the board's pieces pirouetted to his hidden cadence.
As for Fang Ning? He lit sandalwood before ancestral tablets. Twenty-one months of Fu mourning purchased eternity to reshape the ministry, one funerary stele at a time.
Diadems of Ash, Silken Nooses
"Father," Ye Changfeng entreated, tendons cording like strained lute strings, "the Mid-Autumn Poetic Colloquium transcends mortal affairs. Entrusting its grandeur to a mortician invites cosmic ridicule!"
Emperor Shang caressed his nephrite sceptre, its serpentine dragons shimmering with aqueous malice. "Indeed, the colloquium channels celestial harmonies..."
"Then allow—"
"Ling'er." The imperial interjection cleaved the air like sacrificial bronze. "As Fang Yan's acolyte and Fang Ning's oath-brother, you shall conduct this celestial symphony. Fang Ning performs."
Ye Changfeng's molars ground silently. His machinations had anointed his nemesis maestro of imperial theatre—a disgrace etched in oracle bones.
"Feng'er", the Emperor crooned, paternal cadence frosting steel, "minister to your wounded Fu consort. Our celestial healers shall bleed compassion upon her kin."
Chancellor Fang Yan's obeisance dripped gilded venom. "Your magnanimity cascades like heavenly nectar! Even Fu's vipers must sip gratitude's draught."
The stratagem crystallized: mandating mourning sabbaticals under compassion's veil eviscerated Fu's bureaucratic sinews. None could protest—only kowtow to "mercy" that flensed their influence.
***
Beneath the Astrological Bureau's starmapped vaults, Ye Ling conjured mechanisms resembling archaic _fengxiang_ fire-altars. "The symposium's marvel demands aerial pyrotechnics," he murmured, ink-stained fingers tracing celestial geometries. Dusk found him exhilarated yet disquieted—Lü Wu's absence yawned like an unquiet tomb.
"Consort Fu... attempted aerial suspension anew." Matron Rong's whisper slithered through lacquered corridors. "Fu's emissaries came—branded her a bone-treading harlot scaling your bed of carnage."
The tableau unfolded: Fu Yuanyuan, nacreous as funerary jade, swayed from cinnabar rafters after enduring her clan's asp-tongued emissary. _Blood traitor, they'd venomized. _Kin-devouring jade fox_. Her convalescent spirit, already fractured by Ye Ling's lethal "rescue", crumbled like Song porcelain.
"Must you choreograph these thanatotic ballets?" Ye Ling sighed, fingertips grazing her throat's violaceous bruise. "Hanging ill-suits your jade neck, songbird."
Fu Yuanyuan's laughter rasped like rusted coffin nails. "You... they... all carve me into a puppet or carcass." Salted tracks eroded her powdered mask. "What path remains?"
In that liminal breath, Ye Ling glimpsed not an adversary but mirrored anguish—another soul trussed in dynastic puppet strings. He snapped jade rings. "Triple the guard. No Fu carrion-crow trespasses these grounds."
As midnight's ink seeped through rice-paper windows, Lü Wu materialized like lotus-born _yaoguai_, her lips tracing prophecies against his jugular: "The Fu necropolis deepens. Soon, even wraiths shall shun their miasma."
Yet in poppy-scented chambers, Fu Hai's morphine-laced chuckle bubbled through rotting teeth. Let the princeling glut on transient triumphs. When poetic flames guttered, true power would rise, sprouted from blood-fertilized loam.
Gilded Cages, Vermilion Wings
Desperation's vice had driven Fu Yuanyuan to fashion a silken noose—a botched self-erasure thwarted by vigilant handmaidens. She now reclined on peony-embroidered divans, the ligature's ruby brand encircling her throat like a grotesque adornment.
"That this farce springs from my... uncalculated mercy," Ye Ling mused, surveying her fractured poise. Her refusal to bear witness against him and severance from Fu's viper nest kindled perverse gratification. _At last,_ he thought, _the cloisonné doll sprouts talons.
As he traversed the moon-washed courtyard, her splintered lament seeped through rice-paper screens: "Kin-turned-carrion crows, the world's bile upon me—what sanctuary endures? Death itself spurns my touch!"
Ye Ling's arrival shattered the chamber's sepulchral hush. "Your breath is _mine_ to extinguish, songbird. You expire when my ears tire of your aria—not a cadence sooner."
Fu Yuanyuan's tear-brightened gaze remained lowered. "I... I encumber Your Grace..."
"Encumbrance?" His mirth crackled like winter frost. "You are _chattel_. My treasures don't burden—they scintillate." He gripped her jaw, tilting her face upward. "Your sole vocation? To kneel. To gleam. To unfurl plumage solely within my vermilion aviary."
Lü Wu manifested like jade-carved Kuan Yin. "Sister, our charge is concord. Let men duel beyond these ramparts." Her fingers grazed Fu Yuanyuan's tremulous shoulder—a tigress gently cornering prey.
"Yet I..." Fu Yuanyuan's demurral dissolved into fractured whimpers, the noblewoman reduced to quivering nerve endings.
Ye Ling's forbearance vaporized. "Shall I manacle you to the bed's phoenix posts to demonstrate belonging?" His thumb traced her bruised trachea, dominion and desire entwining. "Your worth flows not from Fu ichor but from how exquisitely you fracture."
The ultimatum crystallized—a curator's edict to flawed porcelain. Lü Wu began unlacing Fu Yuanyuan's mourning silks with ceremonial languor, transmuting resistance into ritual capitulation.
As the Hour of the Ox tolled, Ye Ling claimed his recompense with calculated brutality. Beneath him, Fu Yuanyuan's whimpers crescendoed into a keening epiphany—a phoenix incinerating ancestral chains in conflagrations of flesh.
***
Dawn unveiled the discarded noose, replaced by gilded fetters of altered design. In death's penumbra, Fu Yuanyuan had discovered paradoxical emancipation—the liberty of absolute possession.
Lü Wu observed the transformed concubine dabbing cinnabar on her throat's violaceous blooms. "She'll weaponize that remorse exquisitely now," she murmured, arranging peonies in Ru kiln vases.
Ye Ling sipped bitter pu'erh, savoring triumph's tannic afterglow. Let Fu's jackals gnaw their rancour. Their repudiated scion now blazed fiercest in his private menagerie—a battle-phoenix nourished on kin-ash and exquisite shame.
Quivering Penumbras, Regal Conflagrations
The chamber's lotus lanterns cast quivering penumbras as Fu Yuanyuan's tear-glazed demurral dissolved into fractured whispers. "Nay… not thus…" Her alabaster digits clutched mourning silks, suspended betwixt ancestral fealty and survival's primal allure.
Ye Ling's gaze honed—a peregrine appraising quivering quarry. "Your refusal crumbles like sere foliage, nightingale." His thumb traced the fading ligature encircling her throat—a carmine choker from abortive self-annihilation. "The Fu brood brands you _kin-rending vixen_, whilst _I_ preserve your jade-wrought grace. Choose – spectral honour or corporeal radiance?"
Fu Yuanyuan's breath fractured. Twin phantasms materialized: Father Fu Hai's opium-tainted snarl and Ye Ling's scarred palm that had shattered yet salvaged her being. Lü Wu's counsel slithered through her psyche—_"Survival is filial devotion's apotheosis." _
"Your Eminence…" The honorific emerged raw, half-entreaty.
Ye Ling's mirth reverberated through lacquered rafters. "Let us discard theatrics." His fingers traced her clavicle, unknotting onyx mourning robes with sacerdotal precision. "Your tremors betray more than dread, my recalcitrant phoenix."
Memories deluged—Ye Changfeng's impotent grazes versus Ye Ling's conflagrant possession. Her treacherous flesh ignited beneath marauding hands, ancestral censure drowned by arterial torrents.
"My lesions…" She feebly protested as crimson linens pooled like sloughed serpent skins.
"Falsehoods." Ye Ling's incisors grazed her auricle, scorching breath warping words into carnal sigils. "The physicker pronounced you hale three sunrises past. These nascent contusions?" His palm descended. "Self-wrought theatrics".
When his incursion breached final ramparts, Fu Yuanyuan's talons carved moonstone furrows across his dorsum—half-defiance, half-anchor. Ancestral censure shattered beneath visceral truth: Ye Ling's musk of steel and santal, the rapacious cadence charting her despoliation and deliverance.
"Behold me!" His edict fractured her protective gloom. "Witness your claimant—architect of your shattered urn!"
Through tear-hazed vision, the conqueror's visage transmuted—despot and saviour, violator and Pygmalion. Her ululation at his profundity bore ancestral wraiths' death-rattles and the phoenix egg's primordial fissure.
Lü Wu's silhouette coalesced at moonlit shoji, her approving incline sealing Fu Yuanyuan's metamorphosis. The concubine's ultimate lucid thought ere sensation's deluge—_Let Fu Hai strangle on poppy dreams. This pyre, however cruel, outshines sepulchral candles.
As dawn's maiden rays pierced rice-paper panes, Ye Ling surveyed his magnum opus: Fu Yuanyuan's tear-streaked rapture, throat's dental blossoms eclipsing bridal vermilion. He pressed a chrysanthemum petal to her tumid lips—a victor's macabre benediction.
"Your clan's maledictions?" His whisper coiled like narcotic fumes. "They'll stoke your ululations in our next nocturne."
Beyond cinnabar gates, messenger corvids bore tattered silk nooses to Fu's demesne—each threaded with chrysanthemum stems. The throne-war had claimed its supreme casualty, tempered in shame's crucible and silk's forge.
Cicatrix Elegance, Monarchical Appetites
The chamber's sandalwood smoke spiralled like amorous adders as Ye Ling surveyed his quivering prize. "Ephemeral indulgence versus perpetual satiation," he ruminated, fingertips charting the moonlit scar adorning Fu Yuanyuan's collarbone—a testament to her suicidal pageantry. "This mar…" His tongue traced the ridge with hieratic precision, "…augments your worth like intentional kiln flaws in Ru ware."
Fu Yuanyuan's objection fragmented: "The… the imperfections…" Her nephrite nails clawed silken sheets, suspended between aristocratic fastidiousness and primal exposure. Capital noblewomen were cultivated as immaculate lacquerware—flawless veneers cloaking vacant interiors. Yet through Ye Ling's alchemy, blemishes transformed into cartouches of survival.
"Still fettered by Fu's fatuous edicts?" His mirth vibrated against her sternum. "Scars are campaign medals, nightingale." The ultimate undergarment cascaded away, unveiling constellations of cicatrized wounds. "These…" His incisors skimmed a lunar crescent upon her thigh, "…chronicle your transmutation from marionette to simurgh."
When conquest commenced, Fu Yuanyuan's inhalation fractured twin realms—ancestral decorum's terminal gasp and nascent voracity's inaugural cry. Ye Ling's pledge of leniency proved technically honoured; sutures remained intact beneath his calibrated ferocity. Yet elsewhere—
"Your Eminence… quarter…" Her entreaty dissolved into aeolian modulations as ancestral visages glared from psychic frescoes.
"Quarter?" Ye Ling's onslaught punctuated lexicon. "I… inscribe… your… authentic… lineage!"
The ancestral shrine's censure disintegrated beneath briny reality. Three night-watches elapsed ere the tempest abated—Fu Yuanyuan's cognisance unravelled like overtaxed zither strings, her corpus paradoxically rejuvenated through methodical deconstruction.
At auroral intrusion, Ye Ling contemplated his magnum opus: the concubine's scar-embroidered form scintillated with vigour, ecchymoses efflorescing like camellias upon alabaster. "Your stamina underwhelms," he observed, securing his chiwen-embroidered girdle. "Morrow commences endurance tutelage."
The cloistered mandate hovered betwixt them—the equilibrium of menace and erotic pedagogy. Fu Yuanyuan delved deeper into mulberry sheets, her stifled plaint harbouring unforeseen cadences.
Lü Wu manifested with restorative decoction, scrutinizing the transfigured concubine. "Phoenixes demand pyres for apotheosis," she breathed, depositing elixir near talon-grooved bedposts. "My Liege's… didacticism demonstrates singular efficacy."
As gilded rays anointed the chamber, Fu Yuanyuan navigated her cicatrices with nascent veneration. Let Capital's pristine dolls clutch their virginal veneers—she now bore vital topography of perseverance, each keloid a glyph in Ye Ling's pitiless lexicon of possession.
***
Vespertine shadows found three vacant porcelains testifying to silent compliance. When nyctalopia descended, she anticipated her sovereign's return not with trepidation but the voltaic expectancy of raw clay before the potter's wheel—poised for shattering and reformation ad infinitum.
Cicatrix Monarchies, Disintegrating Diadems
Fu Yuanyuan's tremulous form beneath brocade coverlets diverted Ye Ling momentarily, though pressing summons to strategize the Mid-Autumn Symposium with Fang Ning stayed his hand. Women, he reflected while dispatching messengers, resembled moon-viewing lanterns—their fragility pardonable if beauty justified the frailty. But let homeliness wed presumption? Behold Xu Manor's mutilated fury—Fu Xianxian.
The erstwhile Fu jewel now resembled a deranged funerary effigy, pus-encrusted bandages quivering as she howled before Xu Palace sentries. "Where skulk my lord? I am his consecrated phoenix consort!"
A steward bowed with Arctic deference. "His Highness entertains paramount guests. None may intrude."
"None?" Fu Xianxian's cackle shredded twilight like shattered zither strings. Her once-swanlike throat bulged beneath festering gauze, gemmed hairpins skewering unwashed tresses. "I am the Imperial Dowager's handpicked bride! You carrion beetles dare—"
The steward's nostrils twitched at her reek of necrotic flesh and rancid osmanthus unguents. Memories of her former jade-carved elegance curdled into visceral repugnance. "Regrets, Magnificence. The edict stands immutable."
"Treasonous worms!" She lunged, unravelling bandages, exposing weeping lesions. "You gorge on Fu's decaying carcass!"
Sentinel shadows coalesced—implacable, their staves forming an insurmountable barrier without sullying themselves through contact.
***
Within the cedar-panelled sanctum, Ye Changfeng kneaded his migraine-ridden temples. "Must this grotesquerie persist?"
Chancellor Chen Huai's gaze lingered on blood-flecked courtyard stones. "The Ministry of Rites' restructuring under mourning protocols... your recent reversals—"
A celadon teacup exploded against aromatic panels. "That pustulant hag sabotages me at every juncture!" Ye Changfeng's whisper dripped vitriol. Residual guilt over conjugal… Inadequacies had evaporated with her metamorphosis from trophy to festering millstone.
Chen Huai's jade signet tapped rhythmically against porcelain—a tactician's Morse. "Perhaps… grievous tidings from Fu Manor might alleviate your burdens."
Silence pooled. Expanded. Crystallized.
Ye Changfeng's smile unfurled like poisoned silk. "Uncle's perspicacity lights even Hades' labyrinth."
***
Beyond rice-paper partitions, Fu Xianxian's ravaged visage spasmed with revelation. The guards' averted eyes, their breath-holding deference—this transcended mere insult. Power's fulcrum had shifted. Her bandaged talons scrabbled at nephrite betrothal pendants—final relics of nuptial grandeur—as comprehension dawned: the Fu dynasty's death knell tolled for her.
She careened through moonwashed corridors, spectral mirth trailing crimson droplets. "Damask empires fray thread by silken thread... let future poets hymn this scented decay..."
By dawn's first blush, physicians would discover her suspended from vermilion rafters, swaddled in shredded bridal silks. The Xu lineage would mourn with decorous lies, extolling her fidelity to extinguished kin.
As for Ye Changfeng? He commissioned sandalwood screens to cleanse tainted air, already auditioning replacement phoenixes—unblemished, tractable, and deliciously unencumbered by inconvenient pedigrees.
Cerulean Venoms, Regal Disclosures
The Feather Forest Guard and Metropolitan Magistrate's collaborative inquisition dissected Fu Xun's brothel transgressions with forensic exactitude, unmasking a cabal of Fu scions who'd caroused through their clan's mourning rites—heresy that obliterated their bureaucratic prospects in this filiality-worshipping realm.
"Were imperial edicts not binding me..." Ye Changfeng's venomous murmur trailed as he glared through moonlit latticework. The Fu dynasty, though eviscerated, remained a millipede that expires yet never stiffens—its legal heiress still offering residual influence, however repulsive her metamorphosis.
"Your magnanimity elevates celestial aspirations," Chancellor Chen Huai intoned, veiling triumph. The suppurating grotesquerie he'd witnessed in courtyards confirmed Fu Xianxian's disqualification as future empress—a void his Chen lineage stood poised to fill with more complicit blossoms.
Their discourse shifted as Chen Huai unveiled fresh intelligence: "Chu's Princess Zhao Ling'er approaches with a hundred-horse retinue—three sunrises hence."
"Three dawns?" Ye Changfeng's jade teacup chimed against the saucer. "The Mid-Autumn Poetic Convocation lies seasons yonder!"
"A serendipitous acceleration," Chen Huai's smile mirrored whetted steel. "Eliminate Ye Ling amidst Chu's visitation. Let suspicion alight on foreign shoulders."
The prince's fist collided with rosewood. "Uncle's operatives shall reduce that mongrel to necrotic—"
A velvet pouch dislodged, scattering cerulean tablets across polished jetstone. Ye Changfeng petrified—a stag frozen in huntsmen's torchglow.
Chen Huai inspected the azure pellets with viperine scrutiny. These weren't the gilded virility enhancers gifted at royal nuptials, but something more arcane—alchemical testaments to the prince's recent... conjugal reticence.
"Permit me." Chen Huai knelt, gathering evidence of princely frailty and ambition. "Our apothecaries compound superior restoratives, should Your Highness desire discreet..."
Ye Changfeng's carotid throbbed. The tacit covenant solidified—a chancellor now custodian of regal vulnerability, fealty ensured through mutual complicity.
Beyond cinnabar gates, Feather Forest Guards immolated Fu genealogical scrolls, their pyre's smoke inscribing elegies for a once-illustrious house. Yet in shadowed laboratories, alchemists triturated novel toxins—cerulean as abyssal depths, virulent as drowned titans' final breaths.
The gambit quickened.
Cerulean Shames and Crowned Conspiracies
The vivid azure hue of the pills—a chromatic signature universally recognized for male virility tonics—hung thick with unspoken mortification. As Ye Changfeng scrambled to retrieve the scattered tablets, Chancellor Chen Huai discreetly crushed one beneath his boot, sparing the prince further disgrace. This overlooked pellet, later discovered by Fu Xianxian's maidservant Hongyi, would ignite catastrophic turmoil within Xu Manor.
"Your Highness's natural vigour transcends such crude aids," Chen Huai dissembled, veiling perplexity. The prince's recent abstinence from concubines rendered this pharmacological desperation baffling. "Our alchemists compound superior elixirs, should nature's course require... augmentation."
Ye Changfeng's jawline hardened. The chancellor's feigned solicitude carved fresh wounds—a metaphorical eunuch counselling restraint to a man severed from manhood's essence.
***
Amidst strewn assassination schematics later, Chen Huai delineated stratagems: "Chu's emissaries approach—let their steel strike first. We'll disseminate Ye Ling's itineraries as provocation."
The prince nodded absently, fingers tracing phantom pills. His chambers still echoed with Ye Ling's theatrical groans from that accursed night—a calculated humiliation branding him impotent before spectral spectators.
***
Three sunrises hence, Chu's procession arrived in peacock splendour. Princess Zhao Ling'er's gaze pierced Ye Ling like envenomed stilettos. "Had vermin not meddled at Yanhu Mountain," she hissed through ceremonial simpers, "Chu's banners would drape iron-rich peaks!"
Her silk-gloved hand brushed a dagger's hilt—its twin having once sought Ye Ling's heart in hunting grounds past. The Mid-Autumn Symposium's approach now veiled darker designs, where verse failed, steel would triumph.
As twilight gilded palace eaves, Hongyi presented her mistress the cerulean tablet. Fu Xianxian's bandaged digits quivered—not with shame, but revelation. The pellet's provenance whispered secrets outweighing jade: princely frailty, ministerial complicity, vengeance's gilded blueprint.
The game board quaked as pawns stirred. In shadowed corridors, Ye Ling saluted the gathering storm—his languid yawns masking anticipation. Let envenomed blades fly. Each assassin's footfall had been choreographed since Yanhu Mountain's primordial betrayal.
As the midnight gong's resonance faded, two maidservants crossed paths—Hongyi bearing pharmacological evidence, and Lü Wu cradling chrysanthemum wine steeped in truth serums. Their muted curtseys veiled mutual recognition: the true war raged not between princes, but in liminal spaces where women quietly reforged empires.
Saffron Scorns and Gilded Gambits
"Most detestable is Zhao Miao'er—that serpentine spy dispatched to infiltrate our courts," Princess Zhao Ling'er seethed, her vermilion nails scoring the banquet table. "Instead of gathering intelligence, she floods Chu with Shang's decadent spices—numbing our herdsmen's resolve with *mala* crab and sour-noodle broths! A blundering fool funnelling silver into your coffers!"
Ye Ling sauntered from his seat, the very portrait of indolent mischief. "Long absent, little foreign flower—did your nights ache for my... *gifts*?" His whisper curled around Zhao Ling'er's earlobe like perfumed smoke, calloused fingers brushing her silk-clad waist. "The *mementos* I bestowed at Yanhu Mountain still warm your memory, no?"
"Outrageous!" She recoiled, jade hairpins trembling.
"Outrage?" Ye Ling turned to the assembled courtiers, arms spread in roguish appeal. "Merely enacting what every man here thirsts to attempt! Can any deny Chu's princess blooms like desert rose—all thorns and forbidden nectar?"
Though officials clenched fists over such vulgarity, suppressed chuckles rippled through Shang's ranks. The barbaric Chu delegation deserved this humiliation—their iron-mountain ambitions crumbling before Ye Ling's calculated crassness.
Zhao Ling'er's porcelain mask fractured. "So this is Shang's courtesy—a prince reduced to alleycat manners!"
"Ah, but Chu's hospitality proved... *hands-on* during my last visit." Ye Ling's grin sharpened. "Or have you forgotten how your scouts *groped* through Yanhu's passes?"
The court erupted—Shang's ministers roaring approval while Chu envoys purpled with rage.
***
"Enough!" The Chu emissary slammed his wine cup. "The Mid-Autumn Symposium rightfully belongs to Chu—stolen during our ancestral turmoil. We reclaim it to showcase celestial treasures!"
Ye Changfeng rose, the consummate peacemaker. "Brother, your antics shame our—"
"Shame?" Ye Ling whirled, cutting him short. "When Chu's 'celestial treasures' include poisoned daggers and broken treaties?"
The emissary pounced. "Let repentance cleanse this insult! Prince Qian shall kowtow before our princess—or face war's golden gongs!"
A deathly hush fell. All eyes fixed on Ye Ling—would the empire's pride bow or break?
***
Ye Ling laughed—a sound like shattering ice. "Kowtow? Why, I'll gladly kneel..." He approached Zhao Ling'er, every step a duellist's feint. "...if Her Highness first removes what hinders proper reverence."
His gaze dropped pointedly to her sash-bound waist. The double entendre detonated—courtiers gasped as Zhao Ling'er's composure shattered like overfired celadon.
In that chaos, unseen by all, Ye Ling slipped a folded missive into the emissary's sleeve—terms for Yanhu's iron, written in Zhao Miao'er's hand. The true game, veiled beneath vulgar theatrics, advanced another pawn.
To be continuous…