Chapter 16: Regal Defiance and Vermilion Retorts
The banquet hall's atmosphere congealed into crystalline tension, every gaze riveted upon Ye Ling. To kneel would fracture the empire's dignity; refusal courted war's tempest. Yet the prince remained unbent, his smirk honed sharper than ancestral blades.
"What recompense awaits this prince's refusal?" Ye Ling's voice cleaved the silence, his eyes raking over Shang's cowering ministers. "Your collective resolve appears more pliant than overcooked vermicelli."
The Chu emissary's roar shook jade pendants. "Defiance ignites war's pyre! Rivers will choke on Shang's arrogance—your name eternally damned as nations' executioner!"
Ye Changfeng fretfully thumbed jade prayer beads. "Must you court catastrophe, brother? Consider the starving multitudes!"
"Multitudes", Ye Ling sneered, "whose granaries your tax vultures perpetually pillage?" He wheeled toward the Chu contingent. "You claim ancestral symposium rights? Let us exhume your so-called 'ten-thousand-epoch legacy'".
Princess Zhao Ling'er's ivory fan snapped like a sword sheathing. "Our annals predate—"
"Predate what? Five decades passed, your forebears herded goats in uncured hides!" Ye Ling's laughter caromed off gilded columns. "Your 'imperial script' was etched on sheep scapulae! Now you masquerade as heaven's chosen?"
The emissary's face was mottled crimson. "Blasphemous falsehoods!"
"Falsehoods?" Ye Ling flourished a moth-eaten pelt—Chu's primordial "edict" scarred with goat-herder glyphs. "Shall we decipher your patriarch's treatise on... Ah, yes, optimal yak-milking techniques?"
Shang's ministers erupted in decades-suppressed guffaws. Emperor Shang veiled a smile within his dragon-embroidered sleeve's shadow.
"Enough!" Zhao Ling'er's coiffure trembled with jade fury. "Your poisoned tongue alters naught! Surrender the symposium or face our cavalry's hooves!"
Ye Ling advanced, each step a duellist's feint. "Let your horsemen come. They'll find Shang's frontiers sown with *mala* pepper groves—our peasants eager to spice Chu's carcass."
As Chu's envoys sputtered, Ye Ling unsheathed his ceremonial dagger, slicing air with finality: "Retreat to your goatskin tents, pretenders. The symposium dwells where civilization flourishes—not amidst barbarians' pantomimes."
In the reverberant stillness, Emperor Shang rose, slow, tectonic, radiating solar authority. "Our son articulates harsh verities... with regrettable theatrics. The Ministerial Council shall formalize our refusal."
That night, as Chu's delegation fled with lacerated pride, border beacons blazed above Yanhu Mountain, where Ye Ling's "spice merchants" fortified passes with ironwood palisades and seething oil cauldrons. The symposium's moon would ascend over Shang... and set upon a transformed world order.
Celestial Scripts and Regal Defiance
"A fledgling realm of fifty winters dares trumpet 'ten-thousand-generation sovereignty'?" Ye Ling's derision dripped like aged venom. "Goatherds swaddled in wolf pelts—how droll! Your cultural pretensions mimic paupers parading hollow calabashes as jade vessels."
Princess Zhao Ling'er's vermilion nails curled like raptor talons. "Novel empires eclipse decaying dynasties! Remember how Shang's forces quailed before Chu's horsemen until your trifling *modao* stratagems!"
"Stratagems?" Ye Ling circled her, predator assessing wounded quarry. "Yet your 'mighty steeds' now stink of pestilent stables. Do Chu's bone-readers still prescribe leeches for hoof blight? Or has your shamanic gibberish transcended crow's feet auguries?"
Zhao Ling'er's jade countenance blanched. "Viperous falsehoods—"
"Falsehoods?" Ye Ling flourished in mercantile ledgers. "Chu's spice caravans now yoke donkeys where stallions once trod. Either plague decimates your stables... or warhorses starve to nourish delusions of grandeur."
The court gasped as the revelation detonated. Emperor Shang leaned forward, dragon-throne groaning. "Illuminate us, Prince Qian—what theatre does Chu perform?"
"Desperation costumed as bravado," Ye Ling proclaimed. "Plague-ridden and grain-blighted, they crave symposium rights to veil internal rot—a dying boar's death-squeal!"
The Chu emissary hammered his ceremonial mace. "Cease! Witness Chu's celestial mandate!"
Silken veils parted, revealing an ivory reliquary. Within lay bamboo strips carved with cosmic sigils—the fabled *I Ching*, vanished for centuries.
"The sage-kings' wisdom resurrected!" The emissary's voice swelled with sacrilege. "Fu Xi's Eight Trigrams! King Wen's Hexagrams! With this treasure, Chu claims cultural supremacy!"
Awe rippled through the hall. Even Emperor Shang's breath caught—the *I Ching*'s mystic authority could redraw empires.
Ye Ling's laughter severed the spell. "How opportune this 'lost' text surfaces as Chu hungers for legitimacy! Tell me—" he plucked a bamboo slip, "—does this 'hexagram' counsel thieving neighbours' heritage? Or is that wisdom in the absent commentaries?"
Zhao Ling'er's fan clattered like broken chimes. "You dare blaspheme—"
"I decry fraud!" Ye Ling snapped the slip. "True sages require no forged relics! Let us assay Chu's 'wisdom' through the symposium's triune trials—poetic craft, strategic genius, and cosmic insight!"
The gauntlet hung like a headsman's axe. Chu's delegation exchanged furtive glances—their pilfered manuscript lacked critical annotations.
Emperor Shang rose, eyes smouldering coals. "Heaven shall arbitrate. Three dawns hence, the trials commence. Victor claims symposium rights... and the celestial mandate's truth."
As twilight gilded the hall, Ye Ling murmured to his shadow, "Summon Mount Kunlun's hermits. If Chu stole the *I Ching*... we'll resurrect its true heirs."
The conflict transcended steel and silk, ascending into the realm of cosmic reckonings.
Celestial Codices and Imperial Scorn
The hall's murmurs congealed into reverential silence as the words "*I Ching*" lingered like sacred incense. Chu's emissary stood triumphant, cradling a silk-swathed tome—a relic whispered lost to aeons. To possess such scripture meant deciphering cosmic machinations, mastering destiny's tapestry. Yet doubt slithered through the assembly: *Would barbarians truly unveil heaven's blade?
"Witness!" The emissary hurled a slender volume at the eunuch's feet, its pages splayed like a ritual sacrifice. "The inaugural five hexagrams—a sip from wisdom's celestial chalice. Let Shang's scholars grovel before inadequacy!"
Ye Ling's boot crushed the parchment ere the quivering eunuch could kneel. "Tinder for barbarian pyres," he jeered, grinding vellum beneath his heel. "Does Chu peddle moth-riddled theatrics as divine writ?"
Emperor Shang's knuckles blanched upon the dragon throne. "Desist this sacrilege! The *I Ching* transcends mortal sport!" His censure veiled stratagems: *If Chu's trove proves genuine, one symposium's forfeit might purchase eternity's cypher.* Yet trusting Chu's honour? A fool's wager.
Zhao Ling'er's laughter chimed like shattered celadon. "The rabid hound bays at celestial charts! What need has a brute for Fu Xi's trigrams?" Her vermilion sleeve flicked dismissively. "Let cultured realms adjudicate Shang's... *hospitality."
Murmurs swelled among ministers. A censor spat, "Unbearable effrontery!" Yet none dared strike—the text's allure paralysed retribution.
Ye Ling plucked a fragment from his sole, mock-squinting. "*Qian: The Creative. Hexagram One.* How novel!" His tone dripped gilded venom. "Carved betwixt yak-milking chores? These glyphs reek of stable ordure."
The emissary mottled crimson. "You presume—"
"I proclaim truths!" Ye Ling pivoted, addressing the court. "Chu's 'heavenly boon' lacks the *Xiang* commentaries—divination's lifeblood! What's worth skeletal hexagrams sans marrow?"
A scholar gasped. The omission proved fatal—trigrams without exegesis were constellations nameless.
Zhao Ling'er's poise fractured. "Falsehoods! The complete—"
"—exists solely in Chu's delusions," Ye Ling interjected. "Or did your scribes find eight trigrams too taxing?" He produced a bamboo slip—*Hexagram Sixteen: Enthusiasm.* "Compare, if your eyes discern ink from hoof-scrawl."
The court leaned as one. Chu's symbols sprawled crudely; Ye Ling's markings thrummed with archaic veracity.
Emperor Shang's breath caught. "*Whence...?*"
"A novice's primer from Kunlun's archives," Ye Ling lied silkily. "Shang's sages preserved what Chu's usurpers mangled."
Bedlam erupted. Chu's delegation traded panicked glances—their plundered manuscript *was* maimed. Ye Ling's ruse struck deeper than steel: *Shang harboured profounder mysteries.
As twilight gilded the hall, the game inverted. Chu's celestial ploy crumbled to ash, while Ye Ling's shadow lengthened—keeper of enigmas, weaver of unseen designs.
The *I Ching*'s lunar dance had but commenced... and its true scion wore a rogue prince's smirk.
The Unabridged Canon
Were it not for Great Chu's possession of merely the fragmented prologue, bereft of scholars capable of deciphering its profundities, what fool's errand would drive them to barter such esoteric wisdom for transient advantage? The treatise's cosmic significance stood incontrovertible. As for Ye Ling's audacious pronouncements, Zhao Ling'er relegated them to the realm of buffoonish babble.
"Our disdain lies not in the text itself but in your paltry exhibition of five primordial hexagrams!" Ye Ling rejoined with sardonic poise.
To trumpet five fragments from sixty-four celestial configurations? What utter folly!
"Dare we ascertain whether this reflects Great Shang's sovereign disposition?" the envoy entreated. Should the empire indeed spurn this celestial manuscript, neighbouring realms would gain righteous cause for conquest—a kingdom besieged by enkindled adversaries marches inevitably toward oblivion.
"Your Imperial Majesty, Prince Qian's temerity transcends all bounds of decorum! This aged counsellor beseeches the revocation of his princely dignities!" Minister Chen Huai exploited the moment. Regardless of assassination intrigues yet unfolding, divesting Ye Ling of titles now would grease the wheels for his eventual quietus.
"Noble assembly, my sixth sibling lies prostrate with lingering malady, his psyche adrift in febrile visions." Crown Prince Ye Changfeng proffered simulated advocacy, artfully buttressing the narrative of derangement. "I implore you to disregard the demented vapourings of an addled mind."
"Does Your Highness so confidently presume my lunacy?" Ye Ling countered with sphinx-like serenity. Addressing the throne, he feigned perplexity: "Imperial Father, does not our Great Shang safeguard the integral *Yijing*? Only cultural barons like Great Chu would parade mutilated scrolls as priceless relics!"
"What sorcery is this?" The Emperor's composure fractured.
An intact compendium?
Procured from some peddler's stall?
"Complete edition? What midsummer phantasmagoria!" The Chu emissary jeered. "More plausibly, our Prince Qian conflates ribald chapbooks with celestial scripture!"
Peals of derisive mirth erupted from the Chu contingent, their gazes branding him court jester incarnate.
"Desist this madness, sixth brother," Ye Changfeng urged with crocodilian solicitude.
"Let disbelief yield to demonstration!" Ye Ling ascended to his full stature, hands clasped in hieratic posture. His voice reverberated through the vaulted chamber.
"Qian Hexagram: Celestial firmament above and below. Commencement, Prosperity, Harmony, Constancy. The Great Image proclaims: As heaven's course manifests vigour unremitting, so the noble mind forges resilience indomitable. First Yang: Submerged draconis—abstain from motion..."
His recitation cascaded unimpeded through the celestial sequence, early hexagrams mirroring Great Chu's fragment with oracular precision. As Ye Ling surpassed the thirty-second configuration, Chu's mockery curdled into ashen silence.
Zhao Ling'er's countenance blanched. Recognition dawned—the initial thirty-two hexagrams aligned flawlessly with their hallowed fragment. Ergo, the latter revelations must hold equal veracity!
By the fortieth hexagram, the Chu delegation stood transfixed—a congress of petrified sentinels, auditory faculties strained to hoard each numinous syllable. Here flowed cosmological truths capable of elevating any sage to preeminence, yet they remained empty-handed at this diplomatic symposium, frantic intellects labouring to imprison ephemeral utterances they'd hunted through generations.
The hall thrummed with apocalyptic disclosure as Ye Ling's diction wove sidereal tapestries overhead, each hexagram a thunderous impact demolishing Chu's pretensions of erudition, each mutable line a death knell tolling for their diplomatic hubris.
Bloodied Truths and Shattered Pretense
Were merciless resolve quantified, Zhao Ling'er would ascend as its paragon.
The maiden gnawed her fingertip to sanguine rupture during Ye Ling's latter hexagram exposition, flaying a swath from her hem to transcribe revelations in vermilion ichor—a visceral chronicle of desperation as cosmic truths eluded capture. Yet the prince's deluge of wisdom outpaced her bleeding quill, leaving but fractured enlightenment preserved upon incarnadine silk.
Amidst this epistemic tempest, the Emperor embodied imperial equanimity. Though thunderstruck by his progeny's mastery of the *Yijing*, sovereign pride swiftly eclipsed astonishment. This erstwhile disregarded princeling now emerged as providence's instrument—not merely accruing recent glories but serendipitously brandishing celestial erudition to humble Great Chu and safeguard Shang's celestial mandate.
"Deign to illuminate—has any glyph strayed from authenticity?" Ye Ling concluded his cosmic litany, spearing Zhao Ling'er with basilisk intensity. Seizing her hematographic scroll with falcon's swiftness, he mocked, "Does not Chu's vaunted complete edition corroborate my textual fealty?"
"Restore what you've purloined!" Zhao Ling'er hissed, homicidal fury simmering beneath her courtly veneer as her sacrificial manuscript vanished into his possession.
"How passing strange," Ye Ling simpered, undulating the crimson parchment like a battle standard. "Proclaims not great Chu's custodianship of the integral canon? What alchemy, then, transmutes your envoys into scribbling supplicants?" The unvoiced indictment loomed—had Chu truly commanded the full text, they'd never have trafficked fragments for ceremonial vanity.
"Mark well this self-styled great realm," a Shang dignitary crowed, valour resurrected like a phoenix from ash, "debased to a mountebank's artifice! Heaven's grace shines upon Shang's unimpeachable wisdom!"
"This knowledge resides within Shang's celestial archives," Ye Ling proclaimed, enshrining the blood text with mock reverence. "Yet I shall preserve this... carnal billet-doux from our occidental admirer." His smirk carved deeper furrows. That Chu imagined fragmentary folios could purchase cultural hegemony—what sublime fatuity! In his antecedent existence as an eremitic scholar, the *Yijing*'s hexagrams had been childhood catechism. Chu's paltry shards merited only Olympian disdain.
"The *Classic* embodies mankind's collective heritage!" Zhao Ling'er countercharged, venom veiled in virtue's timbre. "Shang's avaricious hoarding betrays cavernous provincialism!"
"Ah, but cosmic communion demands reciprocal offering," Ye Ling riposted, inclining his head like lecturing Confucius. "Proclaims not Great Chu equal ownership of the canon? Why then grovel for crumbs at our board?"
The chamber detonated in scornful antiphon:
"Possess they not their treasury?"
"Could providence have... denied them completion?"
"Treachery staining diplomatic covenant!"
"Chicanery befitting gutter hucksters—never envoys!"
"Infamy drapes Chu's pretentious grandeur!"
Amidst this damnation's chorus, Zhao Ling'er stood sculpted in mortuary pallor, her nation's vainglory unravelling thread by exquisite thread beneath the merciless loom of sixty-four celestial verdicts.
Floral Machinations and Gilded Humiliation
Shang's mandarins, galvanized by Ye Ling's precedent, discharged a fusillade of erudite vitriol upon Zhao Ling'er and her Chu retinue—barbed epigrams interlaced with scathing allegories, crude excoriations entwined with Ciceronian sarcasm. The literati's lexical onslaught could reduce seasoned sophists to philosophical ruin.
"Transcending all bounds of effrontery!" The Chu delegation barked hollow wrath, their moral capital bankrupt.
"Pedagogical theatre of the highest order!" The chief envoy sneered, retreating to wounded propriety. "Thus manifests Shang's interpretation of xenia!"
Zhao Ling'er's veneer fractured. Unaccustomed to challenges in Chu's gilded courts, this onslaught breached her imperious armour. Her meticulous stratagem—leveraging *Yijing* fragments to commandeer the Mid-Autumn Symposium, followed by planned manuscript immolation—lay asunder. All undone by this reviled princeling who'd committed heaven's wisdom to memory.
"You traffic in falsehoods yet bridle at censure?" Ye Ling's voice cleaved the din.
"Ye Ling! Must your aggression mirror celestial fury?" Zhao Ling'er rasped through enamel-grinding restraint. Each prior slight and present sabotage etched itself into her vengeance's ledger—debts demanding sanguineous settlement.
"Fury suits celestial judgement," Ye Ling riposted, smile glinting like damascene steel. "Shang's cultural preeminence and unimpeachable archives naturally designate us Symposium custodians. Unless..." He feigned sudden enlightenment, "Chu's vaunted erudition proves counterfeit?"
"Civilisation's measure exceeds parchment and ink," Zhao Ling'er pirouetted gracefully, signalling her lieutenant. "True cultivation demands opulent demonstration. Witness—"
Two Chu guardsmen lumbered forth bearing a vermilion-lacquered jardinière veiled in onyx damask. With hierophantic gravitas, the envoy revealed: "'Aurora's Embrace'—decadal labour of Chu's botanical virtuosos."
The unveiled peony towered like an arboreal colossus, its bole rivalling a legionnaire's sinewed limb. Chalice-sized blossoms cascaded in vitreous splendour—petals diaphanous as moonlit cirrus, refracting dawn's palette through crystalline membranes. Even Ye Ling, self-proclaimed aesthetic agnostic, inhaled sharply at this horticultural heresy.
"This paragon of floral artistry", the envoy opined, "may be acquired by Shang's august treasury for ten million argent taels. Surely your realm's munificence..."
"Decadal extortion!"
Shang's ministers emerged from botanic hypnosis, fiscal horror overriding sensory ravishment. The sum eclipsed three harvests' taxation—plunder perfumed with floral deception.
"Does Shang's purse prove inadequate for cultural investments?" Zhao Ling'er's counterfeit solicitude oozed toxicity. "How shall you provision foreign emissaries at your symposium? Shall they sup on paupers' pottage and marvel at dandelions?"
Ye Ling's mirth resonated like temple carillons. "Capital! This floral tribute shall neighbour Chu's spurious manuscripts—paired monuments to your realm's... inventive statecraft." His fingertips grazed an iridescent petal, the blossom quivering as though presaging its role in imperial chronicles.
Petaled Extortion and Sovereign Dilemmas
To refuse this acquisition would be to proclaim insolvency! Yet to comply?
Ten million argent taels—no modest thousand—loomed as fiscal lunacy. Even were Shang's coffers groaned with bullion, none would countenance such prodigal absurdity.
"Ten million! Chu's avarice transcends mortal measure!" Roared a Shang censor, the ceremonial tablet quivering like a storm-tossed leaf.
"Does your 'bounteous realm' quail before mere millions?" Zhao Ling'er's earlier mortification dissolved into serpentine triumph. "How counterfeit your pretensions of affluence!"
Her stratagem unfolded with horological precision: first the *Yijing* feint to claim cultural ascendancy; now this botanical plunder to replenish Chu's war-ravaged vaults. Years of martial conquest had drained Chu's coffers, while Shang's silks and spices seduced her nobles to gilded profligacy—a haemorrhage of silver demanding a tourniquet.
"This floral apotheosis warrants its valuation," the Chu envoy orated, beard-stroking pantomime mirroring abacus calculations. "Can Shang's garden birth its peer?"
"Indigence masked as prudence!" taunted a Chu undersecretary. "Abandon your symposium fantasy—spare the world your cultural penury!"
Zhao Ling'er's diplomatic veneer sloughed away, revealing wolfish fangs. "This bloom embodies Chu's fraternal spirit. Would Shang rebuff amicable overtures?" Her ultimatum coiled like a strangler's vine, permitting no refusal.
Within the throne's gilded shadow, the emperor's whisper betrayed imperial despair: "Summon the treasurer—what remnants linger in our vaults?"
Eunuchs fluttered to Chen Huai, whose labyrinthine accounting concealed vulpine glee. Let the Dragon Throne writhe—each crisis cemented his clan's indispensability.
"Blighted harvests... princely apanages..." Chen Huai drawled, savouring each syllable like vintage wine. "Three million expended, three million garnered—a deficit autumn's tea taxes may transiently redress." His pause stretched, a cat prolonging the mouse's agony. "Ten million? Beyond current capacities."
Zhao Ling'er's crystalline laughter etched Shang's humiliation—an empire held hostage by horticultural banditry. Yet within her triumph nested darker embryos: tonight's rejection would midwife tomorrow's casus belli.
Aureate Shackles and Celestial Compromises
The Emperor's countenance ossified into sepulchral jade as the eunuch's murmur reverberated. Though cognisant of Shang's fiscal consumption, such indigence's unveiling lacerated his divine prerogative like a ritual dagger. Behind this monetary exsanguination thrived the Chen cabal's rapacious leechcraft—their coffers engorged as imperial vaults surrendered vital fluids.
"Determine whether Chen Huai might deign..." The monarch's fractured entreaty swayed like a suspended blade—Celestial Sovereign's voice made no supplications. Instead, he tendered poisoned regalia: "The Chen Concubine's probity illuminates seraglio shadows. Her merit demands coronation as Grand Imperial Consort." A vacant honorific traded for argent cataracts—thespian alchemy to preserve Symposium gravitas.
Chen Huai's retort distilled ophidian humility: "Her reticence forbids such pageantry. Yet Prince Xü's magnanimous spirit remains obscured..." The implication scintillated brighter than ceremonial ji halberds—consort's trinkets held no currency; only Ye Changfeng's Heir Apparent investiture would disgorge Chen coffers.
"Regicidal vermin!" The Emperor's phalanges bleached ivory upon the azure dragon throne. These fiscal lampreys now garrotted the Mandate, their aspirations uncloaked as execution grounds at dawn. Yet Chen Huai basked in ursine complacency, relishing imperial crucifixion—a scorpion assured of the cobra's capitulation.
Zhao Ling'er's glacial hilarity etched Shang's mortification: "Does Shang's indigence preclude embracing Chu's munificence? This choric prodigy incarnates our fraternal covenant." Her digits caressed the Prismatic Contemplation's pellucid corollas, each refractive facet mirroring Shang's Gordian paradox: beggared sovereignty or princely putsch.
The Symposium's disintegration would resound like sundered dynastic tripods—satrapy envoys already sniffing gangrene, their tribute caravans withering like frost-nipped fireflies. Yet enthroning Ye Changfeng meant cultivating insurrection's sapling within the celestial orchard.
"A paltry ten million..." Chen Huai's susurrus permeated the chamber, unctuous with meretricious solace. To this mercantile archon, it comprised astral calculus—a regnal diadem purchased with peasant lucre, the Dragon Throne's sanctity hocked for transient reprieve.
Floral Gambits and Regal Ripostes
"Can Great Chu's magnanimity be confined to potted trivialities?"
Ye Ling's scornful interjection fractured the throne room's gravitas as the emperor faltered. His dismissive glance reduced the Rainbow Epiphany to a roadside dandelion.
"Sixth Brother! Such imprudence threatens concord between realms!" Crown Prince Ye Changfeng's façade of fraternal care strained to preserve the Chen clan's impending triumph.
"Concord purchased through fiscal self-flagellation?" Ye Ling's mirth rang like shattering crystal. "Chu's emissaries elevate audacity to high art."
The Chu envoy's nostrils flared. "This masterpiece defies valuation. Has Prince Qian superior marvels to unveil?"
"Unquestionably." Ye Ling's assurance blazed like heliospheric radiance.
Whispers undulated through Shang's ministers like zephyrs through bamboo groves. Scepticism's arrows crisscrossed the chamber.
"Vainglorious boasts!" The Chu delegate scoffed. "Sixteen celestial cycles birthed this wonder—nature's caprice wedded to mortal genius!"
"Dearest Sibling, temper your..." Ye Changfeng's paternal charade wilted beneath Ye Ling's basilisk stare.
"Celestial Father", Ye Ling transmuted protocol into armament, "bestow three diurnal spans. I shall reveal Shang's authentic treasure, rendering Chu's bauble obsolete."
Zhao Ling'er's laughter cascaded like venomous chimes. "Three days? Let Shang's anguish amuse us."
"Does the Crown Prince mistrust Shang's ingenuity?" Ye Ling's riposte struck like a meteor. "Or perhaps you yearn to squander ten million taels? Shall I vend you mystic talismans instead?"
Ye Changfeng's mask of fraternal devotion fissured. "I merely..."
"Should this choleric aberration enthral you," Ye Ling pressed, "procure it privately. But beggaring Shang's coffers? Sacrilege."
The Crown Prince's theatrical anguish—tremulous lips, martyr's gaze—swayed credulous mandarins. Their condemnatory glares needled Ye Ling's spine like hoarfrost daggers.
"Child..." The emperor's murmur carried dynastic trepidation. "This treasure you profess..."
"Three solar ascensions hence," Ye Ling vowed, "Chu's botanical hubris shall desiccate before Shang's true marvel." His ocular duel with Zhao Ling'er crackled like fulminous heavens.
Oracular Wagers and Regal Stratagems
The emperor's countenance clouded—no treasure within the imperial reserves could eclipse Chu's botanical prodigy. Yet Ye Ling's conviction blazed like Sirius at zenith: *"Sovereign Father, three solar cycles hence, I shall compel Chu's legates and this occidental siren to genuflect before Shang's magnificence!"
Zhao Ling'er's mirth dripped poisoned nectar: *"Three days granted. Should you falter, Shang relinquishes the Symposium—and you, Third Prince, shall perform thrice-nine kowtows!"
*"Covenant accepted,"* Ye Ling riposted, lupine grin widening, *"but triumph shall see this foreign jade warming my nuptial couch. No further tergiversations!"* His fingers caressed the sanguine manuscript—a taunting trophy.
*"Your* Yi Jing *confers no omnipotence!"* The princess hissed, alabaster cheeks flushing. *"Celestial mysteries shall slip through Shang's clumsy grasp!"
*"Yet grasp them I shall,"* Ye Ling parried, ocular peregrination mapping her silhouette. *"My bed's celestial cartography will chart your hermeneutic limitations."
The calibrated insult left Zhao Ling'er quivering—a diplomatic tremor veiled as courtly repartee. Her parting salvo ricocheted through jade pillars: *"Three dawns won't resurrect Shang's expired dignity!"
Crown Prince Ye Changfeng exchanged arctic glances with Minister Chen Huai. The Third Prince's temerity had sown fortuitous seeds—"Chu-instigated assassination" now ripening into plausible deniability.
---
**Nocturnal Scriptorium**
Tallow flames stretched shadows into grotesquerie as Ye Ling inscribed the *Zhou Yi* within Nan Study's sepulchral hush. Vermilion ink birthed hexagrams upon mulberry paper—*Qian* to *Wei Ji*—each brushstroke conjuring cosmic edicts. Three clepsydra measures dissolved ere the terminal character crystallized.
*"Consummated?"* The emperor materialised like an ancestral spirit, phalanges grazing vellum edges. Lunar luminescence gilded his remorse: *"Such astral wisdom demanded sequestration, not carnival exhibition."
Ye Ling flexed scribe-cramped digits, cicada choruses underscoring his counter: *"Let Chu's jackals scavenge shards. True puissance dwells not in glyphs, but their alchemical transmutations."
Beyond latticework, silhouettes etched mental palimpsests—courtiers transformed into unwitting amanuenses. The Emperor's exhalation bore dynastic burdens: *"Chu's coffers shall reassemble these arcana. Their augurs even now whet hermeneutic blades."
Esoteric Enterprises and Imperial Monetization
"Celestial Father, such cryptic scriptures prove inert even when hurled at adversaries!" proclaimed Ye Ling, his scepticism toward the *Zhou Yi*'s divinatory claims etched in every cadence. To his pragmatist's mind, heavenly portents paled before human agency—a creed of *"forge destiny through toil, yet waltz unfettered by augury."* Were cosmic prescience so easily mastered, he contended, why should mortals labour at all?
Yet the emperor's grasp tightened on the manuscript, his gaze kindling with phoenix-renewal fantasies. This vellum, whispered to channel celestial murmurs, stoked visions of Shang's resurgence—an elixir few sovereigns could resist.
"Beyond prophecy lies its essence: pedagogic sovereignty," Ye Ling countered, channelling the text's philosophical marrow. "What mountebanks hawk as mystic revelation, we shall transmute into gilded erudition." His scheme unfurled like mercantile scrollwork—exploit the tome's infamy, commodify its mystique, and beggar rivals through **commercialized enlightenment.
The Emperor's jade sceptre tapped in admonition. "Regal bearing ill becomes marketplace haggling."
"Bare coffers mock regality," Ye Ling riposted, invoking Shang's fiscal anaemia. "Let us consecrate an Academy of Celestial Hermeneutics—vend wisdom through stratified pedagogy." His blueprint cascaded with an alchemist's precision:
1. **Regal matriculation**: 8,888 gold ingots per princely disciple, targeting vassal courts' ruling scions.
2. **Hierarchical tutelage**: Elemental (hexagram mnemonics), Intermediate (yin-yang statecraft), Supreme (cosmo-political exegesis).
3. **Ancillary lucre**: Ritual implements forged by imperial smiths, astrolabes engraved with royal seals, and even symposium pastries shaped as trigrams.
"Let Chu's jackals gnaw pilfered fragments," Ye Ling scoffed. "True puissance dwells not in characters, but **interpretive sovereignty**." Through franchised arcana, Shang would weaponize scholarly avarice—foreign realms impoverishing themselves to parse redacted truths, while imperial vaults brimmed with tribute disguised as tuition.
The emperor's laughter rumbled like subterranean rivers. "Most...**heterodox** application of Zhou wisdom."
"Orthodoxy breeds penury." Ye Ling's grin caught the candlelight like unsheathed steel. "Within five harvests, our academies shall root across continents—each 'authorised' curriculum pricier than the last. Let them beggar themselves chasing Shang's celestial copyrights!"
Chrysoprase Frenzy and Cinnabar Requiem
"Insolent hatchling! Enthralled by Plutus' mania!" The Emperor's phalanx bone cracked against Ye Ling's temporal ridge, suspended between theurgic devotion to the *Zhou Yi* and tungsten-hard governance. Though sacrilege's shadow clawed his psyche, he succumbed to the empire's anaemia—industries haemorrhaging beneath war's raptor talons could scarce survive fresh purgatory.
Ye Ling's vulpine grimace sharpened to a stiletto's kiss. "Chrysoprase tributaries pulse through my vasculature, Heaven's Regent." His mercantile conflagration—simultaneously irksome and numinous—sublimated into strategic chrysopoeia the fading autocrat craved. Where astral haruspices decrypted zodiacal crypta, Ye Ling perceived **negotiable mysteria**, battlements against hyena realms' carrion feast.
The Emperor's bullion-veined pronouncement dripped reluctant sanction: "Let Second Scion Fang Ming be enthroned as Hierophant of the Sidereal Museion. His quicksilver lingualis shall grace Paideia's grand macabre."
"Dragon Hoplon! Thanatos' cantors approach!"
Eos' vermilion talons gilded the ambush orchestra. Thirty war-cankered guardians coalesced into rhomboid testudo as envenomed kogatana shrieked through dawn's virginal exhalation. Ye Ling, torn from Morpheus' amniotic embrace, manifested wielding **obsidian behemoth**—his artisanal "dialectic" detonating _krak-THOOOM!
"Advance and glean Lethe's chalkoi!" he bellowed, incarnadine freshets of offal consecrating porphyry. Surviving condottieri spasmed, their Chen-clan tetradrachms reeking now of desecrated hypogea.
Pyroclastic Retribution and the Vermilion Tribunal
"M-maleficarum incarnate...!" The surviving assassin's jaw quivered like aspen leaves in a tempest.
Before their horror-dilated pupils, comrades collapsed mid-lunge—craniums detonating in cortical fireworks that splattered cobblestones with neural frescoes. Nitric fumes from the **Obsidian Basilisk**'s barrel intertwined with ferrous sanguine fog as assassins prostrated themselves like broken marionettes.
"Enlighten this audience," Ye Ling crooned, caressing the still-smoking firearm's ophidian carvings. The grovelling killers recoiled as if branded by spectral scourges.
To perish without death's courtesy of awareness, to have one's encephalic marmalade redecorate thoroughfares—such existential obliteration liquefied even veteran killers' resolve. Their chieftain's glacial growl froze retreat: "Flee? What Elysium awaits?" The man's dao shimmered like frost-rimed logic. "Our master's talons grasp beyond Lethe's banks. Fail, and your bloodlines shall dance on eternal coals."
Thus galvanized, the remnants unleashed their arsenal—strychnine-tipped shuriken humming like malignant hornets and tantō blades glazed with tetrodotoxin. The Dragon Hoplites compressed their testudo formation, bronze shields ringing under the metallic monsoon.
"Shield the Scion!" bellowed Centurion Liu Ren as onyx-clad wraiths materialized through the storm, their nakiri cleavers thirsting for regal haemoglobin.
Ye Ling stood immutable as the North Star, irises contracting while computing parabolic calculus. The Basilisk roared in triune judgment—_krak-THOOM! krak-THOOM! krak-THOOM!_—each detonation orchestrating cranial architecture's abrupt deconstruction.
"Presume regicide yet lack wit to burnish your death-mirrors?" He polished cerebral residue from the muzzle, emerging from the armoured carapace like Nergal's envoy. Cardinal rivulets cascaded down his greaves as he surveyed the abattoir.
"Your... magnificence..." Liu Ren's oculars dilated at the killzone—eleven corpses arranged in macabre orrery patterns, each extinguished via ophthalmic trajectory. A sole figure twitched: a limb-pulped specimen whose pristine cranium destined him for inquisitional theatre.
As the Hoplites dragged the living cypher away, Liu Ren contemplated the smouldering **Artifice of Hephaestus**—wrought by the arcane Artifex Lu. Their hallowed martial arts now stood obsolescent before this marriage of sulphur and genius. Where once musculature and katana ruled, now stoichiometric divinity ruled.
"Bid Artifex Lu mass-produces these vessels of celestial wrath," Ye Ling proclaimed, stroking the Basilisk's thermic barrel. "Soon, our phalanx shall march to the symphony of gunpowder psalms."
Thermodynamic Supremacy and the Sanguine Balance
Flesh's mortal coil proved inconsequential before **pyroclastic armaments**—this transdimensional domination through metallurgical transcendence redefined lethality.
"Artifex Lu channels his progenitor Lu Ban's divine craftsmanship," Captain Liu Ren simpered, gaze caressing the smouldering **Obsidian Basilisk**, "yet Your Eminence's blueprints bestow Promethean fire upon steel. Might we implore the grand smith to consecrate similar arms for your phalanx?"
"Post-Symposium, each sworn warrior shall brandish Hephaestian wrath," Ye Ling vowed, though prudence tempered his tone. Such puissance demanded hierophantic control—rival acquisition could unravel cosmic order.
The Dragon Hoplites' triage revealed negligible attrition: one soldier bearing a shuriken's venomous kiss neutralized by mithridatic elixirs. "Let solatium flow as monsoon torrents for those scarred in our defence," Ye Ling proclaimed, hurling argent ingots whose weight tripled his guard's annual stipend.
"Celestial munificence!" the warriors chanted, ocular flames kindling with fealty no treasury could purchase.
Liu Ren gestured at the necrotic tapestry, face ashen: "The quarry's cyanide dentition left no living testament."
"Interrogation would insult our perspicacity," Ye Ling derided. "Three asps coil in this Eden." The "spare" served not for confession but as a fiscal fulcrum in future leverage.
At his decree, unmarked sentinels dissolved into the capital's waking capillaries—silent arbiters against evidentiary obfuscation. Aurora's gilded rays now illuminated the grotesque fresco, eliciting merchants' cataleptic horror.
**Magistrate Xu Miao's** jade-inscribed girdle nearly fractured under the kowtow's force. "By the Nine-Heavenly Mandarates!" he keened, tallying cranial fragments like funerary tallies. "Census the vanished! Summon progeniture for... identification." His final syllable cracked, already drafting abdication memorials.
Bailiffs prodded bitumen-esque effluvium where visages once dwelled. The Hoplites' craftsmanship rendered recognition impossible—neural mortar fused with cobblestones while clotted sanguis pooled into inkblot patterns whispering of ballistic apotheosis.
Lycanthrope Revelations and Samite Stratagems
"Your Eminence, the thanatologist discerns keratinized metacarpals incongruent with agrarian labour," the archivist murmured, adjusting his sepia-stained maniple. "This necropolis tableau exhales Machiavellian vapours..."
"Quell your crepuscular realisations!" Magistrate Xu Miao's nephrite-adorned cincture clattered like discordant carillons. These remains bore the striated myology of praetorian guards—likely marionettes of some perfidious magnate or...
"Your Grace!" A lictor proffered haematite-encrusted talismans. "Lupine denticles exhumed from all carrion."
Xu's phalanges petrified mid-inspection. The bronze lycanthrope fetish in his palm retained vestiges of minium lacquer, precisely mirroring those pendants from Chu diplomats' sternums during yesterday's symposia.
"By the Ninefold Celestial Chancery..." he whispered, the amulet slipping through tremulous digits like quicksilver.
The archivist's visage blanched to mortuary vellum. "Should these prove Chu's get, the ambassadorial..."
"Ambassadorial?" Xu's mirth crackled like kindling in arid harmattan. "These are mere fluvial freebooters who filched barbaric ornaments!" His voice transformed through Mandarin sophistry, transmuting geopolitical nitroglycerin into pedestrian larceny. "Behold their umbral-weave gambesons and envenomed khanjars—heraldic blazons of the Stygian Fens Syndicate!"
As auroral multitudes swelled despite viatores' vigilance, Xu knelt before a cadaver whose frayed sleeve betrayed a damascene undersheath. His fingertips traced the textile's ophidian arabesques—a fabric exceeding steppe craftsmanship yet woven with the Central Plain's telltale diplothrix technique.
"Mobilize quaestors to all sericopola!" he hissed, clandestinely ensconcing a filament specimen within his dalmatics. "Unspool this sendal's provenance—with eidolic subtlety!"
To be continuous…