Chapter 17: Serpentine Weaves and the Mandate's Unraveling
"These assassins' subvestments whisper of palatine provenance," intoned Magistrate Xu Miao, digits caressing gore-flecked samite. "Dispatch plainclothes viatores to track this textile's genealogy—with Hades' discretion!" Nephrite plaques cascaded musically as he wheeled toward the archivist. "Engross a rescript consigning this hydra-headed affair to the Ministry of Justice's labyrinth."
The Celestial Capital's custodian surveyed the mortuary legion—outer mantles of Jianxiang brocade and inner linens embroidered with ophidian sigils known only to the Sericultural Bureau's master weavers. Yet mercantile ledgers showed no record of these phantom textiles.
"Eminence," the archivist whispered, mopping his glabella with an ink-besmirched maniple, "no progeniture claims these carrion. Their myology suggests palatine guard..."
"Denude the cadavers!" Xu's edict reverberated through nocturne-lit necrotic chambers. "Dissect each suture, each loom's cryptographic imprint!" His boot crushed a fallen lycanthrope amulet, its bronze fangs mirroring those gracing Chu emissaries' throats at yesterday's convivium.
Matutinal radiance revealed dual cataclysms. While Xu's agents unravelled textile enigmas, the Hall of Supreme Harmony quaked under Chancellor Fu Hai's disgrace. The Ministry of Justice's inquisition concluded: Fu Xun's bacchanalian slaughter during mourning rites now bore thirty-nine charges of sacrilege.
"Let the Celestial Guillotine cleanse this blight!" thundered Censor Fang Yan, his indictment scroll unfurling like a basilisk's tongue. "Shall we nurture adders that defile ancestral tablets with wine and courtesans?"
Prince Ye Changfeng's apologia shimmered with sophic alchemy: "The Chancellor forged ritual canon through fifty winter-summer cycles—shall we shatter jade for one flawed vein?" His courtly pauldron glittered with dangerous erudition, invoking precedents from the _Zhou Ritual Archives_.
Fang's riposte pierced like an envenomed tantō: "A mulberry tree blighted by canker demands the woodsman's axe!" Vermilion memorials snowed upon the Dragon Throne, each wax seal burning with dynastic febrility.
In the shadowed cryptoporticus, Xu's viatores unearthed stygian truths—the assassins' subvestments bore the _diplothrix_ technique reserved for imperial concubines' nuptial coffers. As aurora gilded vermilion merlons, the magistrate's communiqué to the Ministry of Justice became itself an astrolabe, its silken filaments connecting foreign talismans to gynaeceum intrigues.
Lupine Glyphs and the Celestial Masquerade
"Petty probity in sapling years rarely ripens into governance," intoned Grand Judge Liu Qiao, his jade-inscribed pectoral quivering with theatrical umbrage. "Mortals' spirits drift like Gobi's dunes—shall we impale Minister Chen Huai for sponsoring Fu Xun's sixteenth spring?"
The council chamber thrummed with tacit allegiances. Chen Huai, Architect of the Celestial Coffers and midwife to Fu Xun's political rebirth, sat ossified as his acolyte wove casuistries.
Censor Fang Yan's rebuke sheared through pretence like a ritual _zhanmadao_: "Does the sandstorm birth from quivering fern fronds? A man's essence leaks through capillary veracities!" His raven-feather court robes seemed to devour the hall's luminance. "Those who nominate basilisks as qilins merit their ancestral halls' conflagration."
Prince Ye Changfeng's visage flushed like sunset on bloodied snow as the inquisition pricked his recent patronage. "Does the Censor imply my consort syphons Fu's corruption?" His jade-beaded girdle clattered like duelling scimitars. "Even lotuses ascend spotless from turbid ponds!"
A mordant chortle fractured the deadlock. Prince Ye Ling slouched against cinnabar pillars, thumbing a wolf-canine amulet. "My blossoms thrive where nightsoil enriches chrysanthemum beds," he crooned, sparking stifled titters. The metaphor's venom—equating Fu lineage with manure—left Changfeng's carotid arteries engorged.
Minister of Justice Song Ci detonated celestial thunder: "Yesternight, seven-and-twenty cadavers manifested near Chonghua Arcade—six-and-twenty faceless, one clutching Dragon Phalanx sigils."
The throne room petrified as Song unveiled proofs—a lycanthrope fetish mirroring Chu emissaries', Jianxiang brocade subvestments, and a Dragon Hoplite's token from Ling's entourage.
"These _were_ my phalanx's executions," Prince Ling conceded, affecting a martyred mien. "They repelled midnight cutthroats masquerading as barbarian merchants." His sleeve concealed a haematite-crusted shuriken mirroring the slain's lesions.
Emperor Shang's nephrite sceptre fissured malachite tiles. "Why did your brush slumber through this steel-kissed nocturne, Ling'er?" The unvoiced indictment—_Why choreograph this mummery?_—hung denser than the Nine-dragon Caisson's gilded gloom.
Diplothrix Betrayals and the Vermilion Tapestry
The Emperor's jade sceptre hung suspended like a dragon coiled before a strike, trembling between celestial ire and paternal anguish. His gaze lingered on Prince Ling's artfully marred visage—this cunning scion who'd withstood midnight steel yet shielded the throne from political morasses.
"Divine Father..." Ling's voice fractured with calibrated fragility, fingertips brushing the Dragon Phalanx Sigil at his girdle. "Those lupine-branded assassins exuded Chu necromancy, their blades parched for imperial ichor. Yet this unworthy progeny dared not impose nocturnal phantoms upon Your Celestial Serenity."
Minister Song Ci unfurled condemnatory proofs like a silk syndic unveiling smuggled Jianxiang brocade. "These carrion donned duplicitous carapaces—outer husks of plebeian Xiao cotton and inner cerements woven through _diplothrix_ artistry exclusive to palace concubines." His forensic missive became a silken inquisition. "The embroidery's cryptographic knots mirror ateliers under Prince Xu's patronage... and Chancellor Chen's shadow-loomed workshops."
The throne hall detonated in choreographed fury. Censor Fang Yan's scarlet memorials cracked jade tiles like thunderbolts: "Chu's canine sigils defile our hallowed terra! Let their emissaries genuflect before the Nine-Dragon Decollation Blade!"
Yet the Emperor's falcon gaze discerned deeper patterns. Ling's "clumsy" exposition of Dragon Phalanx complicity and the serendipitous textile trails—this was no frontier skirmish but celestial _xiangqi_ played with mortal game pieces. His scrutiny pierced Chancellor Chen, whose damask under-robes now seemed spun from latrodectus venom.
"Let the Sericultural Bureau's grand maestros unravel these filaments," the Son of Heaven ordained, knuckles blanching around the Draconic Birthright amulet. "Each fibril shall chant confession—be their genesis steppe jackals or domestic adders."
As dawn's vermilion luminescence stained cinnabar latticework, inquisitors descended upon embroidery scriptoria. There, beneath still-trembling looms pregnant with collusion, they exhumed ledgers chronicling noctivagant silk caravans... and the damning crimson sigils of Xu's princely cypher burnt into wax seals.
Ophidian Gambits and the Derisive Fenghuang
The throne hall congealed into arctic stillness as Song Ci's denunciations crystallized. Twin colossi of the empire—Prince Xu and Chancellor Chen—now teetered in the crossfire of indictment, their silhouettes warring like entangled serpents across nephrite flagstones.
"Does the Minister of Justice insinuate this prince conspired in kin-slaying?" Ye Changfeng's boot crusted with jade filigree ground the wolf-tooth amulet to bronze dust. "My southern estates host silken scribes weaving ladies' pelisses—must I inventory every obsidian thread?"
Chancellor Chen's ivory tally stick creaked under blanched knuckles. "This mummery exudes the stench of marionette theatre!" His voice oozed venom honed through decades of bureaucratic skirmishes. "Shall we next indict the North Star for guiding assassins' blades?"
Song Ci pressed like a bladesmith hammering glowing ore. "Your southern scriptoria crafted mink-lined capotes for duchesses until last moon waned—what alchemy transmuted needles to fashion thirty-seven assassins' cerements?" His forensic parchment cascaded open, exposing textile ledgers branded with Xu's fenghuang sigil.
The Emperor's edict fell like a meteorite: "Prince Xu and Chancellor Chen shall meditate within their pavilions until this inquisition's ink dries." His gaze was molten towards Ye Ling. "Our Celestial Scion requires _Rana chensinensis_ essence to restore vital essences drained by... nocturnal perturbations."
In the cinnabar colonnade, Ye Ling cornered his brother amidst peony shadows. "Eldest Phoenix, how my spirit soars knowing you'd never sanction such artless cutthroats!" His smile glittered like fractured ice. "Though one puzzles—what addlepate forges assassins who disintegrate like lotus paper before a dilettante's sigh?"
Chen's viscera knotted. Those thirty-seven "lotus paper" killers had been his magnum opus—sifted from sanguinary crucibles involving three thousand aspirants. Each had consumed silver and ginseng root worth a prefecture's harvest.
"Your... magnanimity humbles this undeserving sibling," Changfeng rasped, tongue thick with gall. The profligate princeling before him—all indolent leans and barbed pleasantries—now seemed a funhouse mirror distorting decades of meticulously crafted deception.
As indigo twilight bathed the Nine-Dragon Obelisk, Chen contemplated his tremor-riddled palms. Had the years of inebriated moon-viewing verse and brothel "philanthropy" been elaborate masques? This Ye Ling—all quicksilver intellect and performative fragility—threatened to unpick tapestries woven since the prince's natal celebrations.
Ophidian Pacts and the Chrysalis Prison
Trepidation ossified within Chen Huai's marrow. This Ling was no dissolute profligate but a smouldering athanor of peril—the botched regicide reeked of impetuous miscalculations, chief among them Zhao Líng'ér's obstinate refusal to sanction bloodshed. The Chu princess, thrice ambushed during her northern hegira, now wore circumspection like chainmail—she'd never again pirouette to foreign daggers' rhythm.
Meanwhile, Ye Ling traversed his northern agro-alchemical demesne, where hydraulic automata consumed his glacial-resilient _Gossypium_ hybrids. "Seal the Portals of Humility," he intoned to an onyx-armoured sentinel. "Let no Fu wraith profane these hallowed precincts."
His prescience manifested with oracle's precision. Within the nones hour, Fu kinsmen descended like necrophagous scarabs upon the palace, their probing antennae thwarted by bastions transmuted into adamantine bulwarks. Green Wu's diamond-forged vigilance repelled even those bearing counterfeit matriarchal sigils.
In Xu's gilt-edged pavilion, Consort Fu Xianxian pulverized ancestral urns into alabaster dust. "That bloodline-traitorous jade! Does her cloistered existence hallucinate immunity from Fu's putrefaction?" Her cinnabar-lacquered talons rent spectral effigies of progenitors.
Maid Hongyi knelt amidst shattered celadon shards. "Celestial Consort, wrath dulls the strategist's stiletto. Our phoenix lineage's embers—"
"What phoenix ascends when Xu shuns my peony chambers?" Xianxian's laughter curdled into a banshee's ululation. Beyond diaphanous draperies, Chancellor Chen and Prince Xu spun fresh machinations—their sibilant conspiracies weaving silken gins to entrap Ling, oblivious to their arachnid queen's disintegrating psyche.
Serpentine Stratagems and the Scarred Sovereign
Consort Fu Xianxian's consciousness solidified the acrid verity—her disfigured visage and clan's ruin rendered her spectral to Xu's nephrite-carved gaze. Yet the basilisk coiled within her essence hissed: _Xu shall not moult me like withered serpent skin while breath yet stirs!
"Deploy shadow-hawks to these cypher-cloaked confederates," she decreed, extracting a mulberry-silk scroll from her nuptial coffer's arcane compartments. The manuscript throbbed with slumbering puissance—mandarins cultivated through Fu's aureate epoch, their feigned apathy veiling smouldering fealties. Fu Yun, the illicit scion from her sire's shadowed grove, would ascend as Minister of Celestial Adjudication. Let Xu and Chen orchestrate Liu Qiao's marionette ascent—her riposte would checkmate their gambit with viperous elegance.
As crepuscular indigo fingered lattice-work shadows, Xianxian's cicatrix-webbed digits quivered not with dread but voracity. "Summon the Willow Copse's songsmith," she crooned, moulting her scar-tissued chrysalis.
Maid Hongyi blanched. "Celestial Consort, the prince's detainment—"
"Chained or unchained, that gilt-clad castrato cannot douse a phoenix's pyre!" Xianxian's mirth splintered like Jian porcelain. The imperial medici's murmurs had unveiled truth—Xu's vaunted continence masked perpetual celestial impotence.
When the willow-wrought minstrel materialized, Xianxian's keloid traceries glinted with nocturne-orchid unguent. The youth's quill-delicate fingers charted her topography of scars, alchemizing disfigurement into hierophantic sensuality. Their cacophonous requiem crescendoed as lunar argent crowned the firmament, Xianxian's ravaged contralto braiding with his mercurial tenor in sacrilegious symphony.
Serpentine Seductions and the Alchemist's Gambit
Willow Songbird stifled revulsion as his fingers navigated Consort Fu Xianxian's keloid-mapped flesh. "My blood-sworn brother possesses... singular arts to elevate Your Grace's celestial palate," he whispered, tracing scar-glyphs across her ravaged décolletage.
Xianxian's breath fractured into staccato gasps. "This... sibling of yours... eclipses your... proficiencies?"
"By heavenly calculus, Noble Phoenix!" The minstrel's grin curdled as he tightened his grip on her cicatrix vines. His psyche seethed—this mutilated crone's insatiability demanded fresh meat. Let his brethren partake in this cursed banquet; let silver rivers flow where honour decayed.
Prince Xu, ensconced in jade-barred oblivion, remained ignorant of multiplying cuckold horns as Xianxian's chambers reverberated with profane tercets.
Meanwhile, at Golden Crustacean Pagoda, Ye Ling's lupine gaze flayed Zhao Miao'er's brocade-draped form. The Chu merchant-princess quivered like a caged oriole beneath his scrutiny, her jade peony coiffure trembling with each negotiation regarding textile quotas.
"You seek to resurrect incinerated bargains?" Ling's chuckle resonated like temple gongs. "What alkahestic tithe might restore my... munificence?"
Miao'er's porcelain composure fissured. "Name your athanor's levy!"
Ling's digits arachnided across vermilion lacquer, entrapping her recoiling wrist. "The catalyst demands... corporeal assay." His thumb caressed her radial pulse—a sage divining desire's fever chart.
"I... proffer argent ingots..." Miao'er's demurral expired as Ling's alternate palm charted her vertebrae's geography.
"Argent?" Ling's lips grazed her auricle, inhaling osmanthus-infused trepidation. "When the crucible hungers for mercurial sinew?"
The merchant-princess's struggles crescendoed, yet Ling's grasp transmogrified into gilded manacles. Behind moon-phase latticework, Green Wu's silhouette smirked—tonight's ledger would inscribe dual plunders: textile hegemonies and political chattel.
The Relic's Masquerade and the Ophidian Rondo
"Prepare what?" Ye Ling relinquished Zhao Miao'er abruptly, sending her reeling across the gilded floor.
The Golden Crustacean Pavilion's sanctum lacked even a threadbare rug—an unworthy stage for conquest. He'd not endure such indignity; this quarry deserved silken altars, not splintered planking.
"Ah?" Zhao Miao'er's jadeite eyes widened, disoriented by the princeling's mercurial metamorphosis from ravenous wolf to jade effigy.
"Yearn for mercantile communion?" Ye Ling's voice dripped liquid mercury, adjusting his sleeve's lethal drape. "My celestial retinue lacks a phoenix dancer. Assume this mantle, and fifty thousand cotton bolts shall cascade like the Milky Way's tears."
The poisoned chalice hovered. Twenty dawns to spin profit and predation into golden thread.
"Merely... terpsichorean arts?" Zhao Miao'er's whisper fluttered like a snared finch.
"Should your spirit crave deeper... immersion," Ye Ling's smile honed to a stiletto edge, "I'll not bar paradise's gate."
Reluctant quill scarred parchment as she sealed the compact, vengeance simmering beneath lowered lashes.
Meanwhile, northern machinations reached apogee. By Aurora's blush, humiliation would shroud Chu's emissaries like burial silks. Ye Ling's tongue flickered—would Zhao Líng'er's wrath or Zhao Miao'er's dread prove sweeter ambrosia?
---
"Trilunar respite concludes," sneered the Chu legate, peacock fan aflutter. "Shall we genuflect before Shang's *ineffable relic?"
Zhao Líng'er's laughter crystallized the hall. "Does the *humble princeling* plead celestial thieves pilfered his treasure? How... *artful."
Her stiletto struck true—rumours of northern cadavers had metastasized through the capital's veins. Ye Ling's orchestrated "Chu ambush" now threatened to ensnare its choreographer.
"Shang's wonders defy mortal pilferage," Ye Ling countered, obsidian gaze glinting. "But such marvels demand cosmic theatre. Imperial Father—" his voice cleaved the throne hall's murmurs, "let boreal zephyrs unveil our magnum opus."
A cacophony erupted.
"*The blighted north?*"
"Sterile as a castrato's loins!"
"Dragontongue dignity sullied in dust!"
Minister Liu Qiao's protest pierced the din: "The wasteland's desecration imperils Heaven's Mandate! What fool shoulders such anathema?"
Ye Ling's smile deepened. Let the jackals howl—the curtain ascended on his magnum opus. Beneath cracked earth and jeering firmament, Shang's dormant leviathan stirred, fangs bared.
Veiled Revelations and the Dance of Shadows
"With the Humility Prince presiding, what peril dares to arise?"
Fang Yan's voice thundered through the hall, his scholar's sleeves billowing like battle standards. Ye Changfeng and Chen Huaiquan's continued house arrest left dissenters like Minister Liu Qiao adrift, their critiques dissolving like salt in tempestuous seas.
Zhao Líng'er's crystalline laughter fractured the tension. "Treasure in wastelands? How quaintly Shang clings to delusion."
Ye Ling's gaze honed to a dagger's edge. "Even our most desolate earth eclipses Chu's gilded barrens," he countered, the imperial dragon on his sleeve glinting like a coiled asp in torchlight.
---
As obsidian night enshrouded the northern ruins, the imperial retinue arrived at a stage veiled in lunar gossamer. A solitary argent beam pierced the gloom, illuminating Zhao Miao'er, transmuted.
Her silhouette undulated beneath arachnidian lace, limbs adorned with soul-chimes that shivered like captive starlight. The obscenely commissioned costume alchemised Chu's merchant princess into a stygian siren—equal parts shadow and vulnerability. Ye Ling's lips curved; silks could be purchased, but this alloy of defiance and submission? Beyond valuation.
A discordant symphony swelled—zither strings spliced with war drums—as twenty rabbit-eared dancers materialized, their temptation-laced forms weaving through Chu's envoys like opium smoke. Trembling hands proffered goblets on lacquer trays.
"Enchantress..." A bewhiskered envoy's sausage digits grazed a dancer's cinched waist.
The maiden recoiled, her whimper severing the music's spell. "Milord—!"
"Feign virtue now?" The envoy's chuckle curdled as Ye Ling's voice cleaved the tableau.
"Observe intently, honoured guests," the prince purred, gesturing toward Zhao Miao'er's hypnotic undulations. "Behold Shang's *living relic*—the art of transmuting stone to ambrosia, barbarians to acolytes."
---
Upon the jade dais, Emperor Shang's grip tightened on his sceptre. The northern zephyrs carried more than grit this night—whispers of saltpetre beneath perfume, steel glinting behind silk scrims. Yet as Zhao Miao'er's ankle chimes bled crimson from her fervid dance, even celestial sovereigns forgot to tally shadows.
The Alchemist's Loom and the Fiber Gambit
"Does the Eminent Envoy require illumination?" Ye Ling's smile glimmered like whetted jade.
The choreography unfolded with fugal precision—provocation answered by riposte in contrapuntal mastery. When the Chu envoy's porcine fingers mauled the trembling dancer, her recoil fractured the orchestrated rhythm, a calculated dissonance in Ye Ling's geopolitical symphony.
"Your... hospitality profanes Chu's dignity!" The envoy blustered, sweat pooling beneath his ceremonial guan.
Fang Yan's cane struck marble with a maestro's authority. "In seven decades of ambassadorial service, never have I witnessed such reptilian comportment!" His censure reverberated through vaulted ceilings like ground bass.
Ye Ling ascended the dais with sonata-rondo fluidity. "Shang trades in steel and virtue, never flesh." The pronouncement hung like a suspended ninth chord, vibrating through nobles whose daughters had been currency in borderland bargains. A murmur swelled—"No more tribute concubines!"—as ministerial fists drummed lacquered armrests in alla breve tempo.
---
Zhao Líng'er's attempt at harmonic modulation faltered. "Are we to venerate this twirling courtesan as your 'treasure'?" Her sneer pierced the air like a tritone's devilish interval.
"Observe with care," Ye Ling riposted, unveiling the silk-shrouded tray with a virtuoso's flourish.
The revelation unfolded in Rondo's structural elegance:
A) Chu's derision ("Paltry cellulose pods!")
B) Shang ministers' awed silence
A) Envoy's scornful guffaw
C) Emperor Shang's anagnorisis (a modulating sequence)
A) Collective enlightenment resolving to tonic clarity
---
Before the Dragon Throne lay not mere flora but an alchemical marvel—snow-gold spun from northern desolation's womb. Fang Yan cradled a bowl with hands that had drafted myriad memorials. "These... transcend earthly Gossypium," he intoned, finalizing Ye Ling's contrapuntal argument.
The court's chromatic whispers stilled. Even Zhao Líng'er's venom crystallized into grudging awe—a diminished seventh resolving through Neapolitan progression. Ye Ling's rondo concluded not with martial fanfare but the pianissimo susurrus of revolution spun from cellulose filaments.
The Alchemist's Harvest and the Stolen Genesis
The Chu envoy's sneer petrified as he cast the cotton boll aside. "Your *treasure* mimics ditchside nettles!"
Ye Ling's mirth crystallized the nocturnal ether. "Chu genuflects before gilded trinkets—we venerate what saves our people from winter's fangs." His fingers caressed the lambent fibres, argent as lunar glaciers. "This *Gossypium celestis* triples earthly yields—thrice the cloth to arm humble backs."
Fang Yan's cane punctuated the rhetoric in contrapuntal staccato. "Your chrysalis-dead topiaries cannot nourish a sparrow, yet you anoint them treasures?" The venerable scholar's derision mirrored the envoy's prior hauteur—a masterstroke of mirrored disdain.
---
"Shang invests thirty million taels not in vanity, but in life's marrow!" Ye Ling's proclamation soared above the murmuring court. Northern wastelands bloomed in ministerial minds—desolation transformed into undulating cotton oceans. "While Chu peddles petrified vanity, we weave destiny's cerements!"
Emperor Shang's jade sceptre quivered with dawning revelation. "Let this fibre stand testament—true prosperity measured not in bullion but in paupers' warmed shoulders!" His edict unleashed a prostrate tide, bureaucrats' brows kissing cold marble in synchronous obeisance. The political theatrics crescendoed: peasant rags apotheosized into imperial regalia.
---
Zhao Líng'er's talons carved lunar crescents into her palms as acclamations swelled. Beneath diaphanous sleeves, her digits performed arachnid ballet—furtive caresses across discarded bolls. Three plump ovules nestled against her radial pulse: stolen genesis concealed in silk's embrace. Let Shang preen over botanical alchemy—Chu's soil would soon gestate twin miracles.
The Veil's Descent and the Serpent's Uncoiling
"Preach probity while consorting with asps?" The Chu envoy's sausage digit jabbed toward Zhao Miao'er, her arachnidian silks glimmering beneath flambeaux. "This kingdom-sinking temptress exudes Shang's duplicity!"
Ye Ling's mirth carried permafrost's bite. "Does the Illustrious Legate confuse a viper for a songbird?" His fingers snapped—twenty Dragon Guards materialized, rending the dancer's veil. A gasping carillon pealed as cerulean irises blazed—twin aquamarines mirroring Zhao Líng'er's tempest gaze.
"Behold chromatic verity," Ye Ling crooned, trailing a nephrite seal along Miao'er's alabaster throat. "Frigid ocular hues, ophidian poise—this adder suckles at *Chu's* teat, not ours."
---
Zhao Líng'er's porcelain façade fissured. Before her stood no common courtesan, but her mirror soul—Zhao Miao'er, the Silk Spider of Western Marches, now bound in shame's cerements. The strategic web unravelled: Ye Ling had ensnared the spy through Dragon Guard stratagems, orchestrating this geopolitical commedia dell'arte where northern ruins became truth's crucible.
"Unhand her!" Zhao Líng'er's edict quavered with unprecedented urgency.
Ye Ling's grasp constricted, thumb compressing Miao'er's laryngeal acupoint in counterfeit ardour. "My blazing bedchamber bauble lacks courtly graces," he simpered, the mob roaring at his lust-pantomime. "Unlike my sagacious concubine, ah, but Chu gestates only ornamental blossoms, while Shang nurtures orchids yielding *fruitful harvests."
---
The affront crystallized with scalpel precision. As Miao'er's stifled cries reverberated, Ye Ling unveiled his coup de théâtre: "Why acquire gilded topiaries when Chu *bestows* breathing ornaments?"
Emperor Shang's nod—a tectonic shift—cemented triumph. Zhao Líng'er's lacquered talons drew sanguine pearls—not from palms, but the epiphany that tonight's true performance wasn't Miao'er's dance, but Ye Ling's grand guignol of disgrace.
The Gossamer Throne and the Concubine's Disgrace
Zhao Líng'er's azure gaze glaciated as Ye Ling's grip constricted around Miao'er's ivory throat. "A scion of Chu's imperial blood prostrating as your bedchamber trinket?" Her words dripped rime-sharp disdain. "This charade profanes both thrones!"
Ye Ling's mirth resonated like a scimitar swathed in damask. "Since when do interlopers arbitrate my inner sanctum?" His thumb caressed Miao'er's carotids in counterfeit ardour, the gesture a geopolitical bishop's gambit masquerading as lust. "Shall I create this adder for your departing convoy?"
Emperor Shang's jade sceptre quaked the dais—tectonic censure. "Cease! Our courts abjure both foreign infiltrators and brothel-crawling paramours." The reproof hung like a zephyr-borne scimitar, severing Ye Ling's theatrics mid-stride. Beneath celestial robes, the sovereign's design shone clear: the Jade Successor's consort must gleam unsullied as altar nephrite, not this venom-dripping orchid from enemy loam.
---
Zhao Miao'er crumpled upon the marble, her stagily inhaled breath veiling triumph. This orchestrated shame surpassed nuptial sheets in utility—Ye Ling's repudiation became her chrysalis, Zhao Líng'er's meddling her political sacrament. Lacquered nails raked stone in feigned anguish while her psyche plotted: *Let these cocks preen over textiles and trysts whilst my web-spinners multiply.
Aurora unveiled Ye Ling's masterstroke. Along the capital's mercantile arteries, merchants genuflected before bolts of celestial gossypium—textiles eclipsing cloud silk in suppleness, dyed with dawn's stolen palette. Market matrons buzzed of "winter-kissed linens" priced as hemp, their tensile might defying blades. This textile renaissance transcended commerce—an osmotic coup d'état threading sovereignty through every warp and weft, silken tendrils strangling rival thrones.
Webs of Ambition and Treachery
While aristocrats adorned themselves in silken finery, the middling classes clothed their households in humble cotton—a commodity now catapulted to unprecedented demand after Emperor Shang's public endorsement.
Seizing this momentum, the sovereign formally established the *Jingzi Imperial Textile Bureau* under Ye Ling's stewardship, its government-sanctioned authority propelling commercial dominance. Within three days, the bureau amassed contracts worth thirty million silver taels, yielding profits surpassing twenty million after operational deductions—a staggering sum, excluding the cascading agricultural wealth from nationwide cultivation of revolutionary cotton strains.
Emperor Shang, ebullient at these triumphs, showered Ye Ling with accolades and rare tributes—many coveted relics that had once eluded Prince Ye Changfeng's grasp.
This meteoric rise plunged Consort Chen into desperation. Summoning Ye Changfeng to the palace under night's veil, they conspired until stars faded. Yet upon returning to his estate, the prince encountered a spectacle far removed from political machinations.
---
**Part II: Shadows Over the Royal Chambers**
Guided by his mother's counsel to manipulate public sentiment against Ye Ling through the Fu family's influence, Ye Changfeng resolved to mend fractured ties with his estranged consort, Fu Xianxian.
"To the inner court," he commanded, striding past uneasy retainers.
"Does Your Highness mean to…?" A page stammered, paling.
"Shall I require permission to traverse my domain?" the prince thundered.
"Has Her Ladyship not clamoured for audience these past weeks?" drawled bodyguard Yu Er, malice lacing his deference. "How quaint she now feigns repose."
Servants scattered like autumn leaves before his wrath.
The prince rose mid-stride. From Fu Xianxian's pavilion, split wanton laughter—a chorus of masculine voices entwined with his consort's breathless cadence. In this sacrosanct quarter where no man but the royal blood might tread unchallenged, the transgression blazed brighter than noon sun.
Rage crystallized into cold fury. *The serpent dared to coil in my very bed.
"Your Grace!" Gatewarden Hongyi prostrated herself, voice quivering. "The Princess rests—"
A boot cracked ribs. "Vermin!" Ye Changfeng stormed past the crumpled form, blade whispering from its scabbard as moonlight kissed steel.
Blades of Fury and Forbidden Secrets
The prince's blade quivered like a serpent poised to strike as he surged into the inner sanctum. Within, oblivious to the gathering storm, carnal revelries persisted—moans of ecstasy weaving through peals of laughter.
Fu Xianxian lay enthroned upon silken cushions, two lithe attendants catering to her every caprice.
"Pleasure me thoroughly," she drawled, trailing lacquered nails down a servant's chest, "and your coffers shall overflow with gold."
Each wanton sigh amplified Ye Changfeng's humiliation until his roar shattered the debauchery: "Vile serpent of the bedchamber!"
The splintered doors revealed a Boschian nightmare. Delicate sashes—four distinct hues—lay trampled amidst scattered scent satchels. Beyond the antechamber's partition, six unclad youths cowered, their comely faces blanching as moonlight kissed the prince's steel.
"Mercy, Your—"
The plea dissolved in a spray of crimson.
---
**Part II: The Viper's Counterstroke**
Nine butchered paramours later, Ye Changfeng's katana came to rest against his consort's throat. Fu Xianxian gazed up unfazed, her neck pearled with a single ruby droplet.
"Ninety deaths to salve princely pride," she mused, "Does this balance our ledger, husband?"
The blade pressed deeper. "You mistake restraint for weakness, harlot."
"Strike true," she challenged, "and watch your political corpses rise from pyres lit by my kin." Her eyes glinted. "Shall we discuss the strawberry birthmark beneath your left buttock? Or how the imperial physicians might interpret that disfiguring scar from your seventh summer?"
The sword twitched, etching a vermilion thread.
"Fabrications!" he snarled, yet the steel retreated.
Her laughter rang clear as temple bells. "My brother presides over the Court of Judicial Peers. Harm me, and every magistrate shall learn how the would-be Son of Heaven bears... *unorthodox* celestial markings."
Covenants of the Viper and Shattered Diadems
"Do you truly fancy me incapable of ending this farce?" Ye Changfeng's blade quivered, suspended between wrath and reason.
"Cleave this throat." Fu Xianxian arched her neck, the sword's kiss blooming fresh crimson, "and by sunrise, every alleyway bard shall croon of the *impotent prince* who slaughtered his bride to bury inadequacy." Her lips curved like a scorpion's tail, pupils dilated with lethal euphoria.
Bolstered by ancestral coffers and her dowry's political arsenal, she gambled with annihilation—secure in his craven thirst for supremacy.
*Clangour!
Steel met stone.
The prince stood shackled by the grim truth: Fu Xianxian's web ensnared his ambitions. Her clan's covert machinations remained indispensable against Ye Ling's agrarian triumph. Even this brazen cuckolding demanded tolerance—a festering wound beneath his regal mantle.
"What exquisite irony," she mused, draping untainted brocade over gore-streaked shoulders, "to chain oneself to a barren crown while hungering for an empire." Her gesture encompassed the charnel scene. "With my prior companions… *discharged*, shall I procure replacements? Or does my lord relish his *chaste* solitude?"
Ye Changfeng's knuckles bleached to alabaster. Each syllable etched fresh scars upon his sovereignty.
---
**Part II: Asps in the Garden of Power**
"Your brother's cotton crusade stinks of provincial frugality," Fu Xianxian drawled, aligning jade pins with ritualistic precision. "I've orchestrated murmurs through every court: *The Fourth Prince hawks peasant rags as imperial treasures, reducing Shang's glory to threadbare farce.*"
She pivoted, triumph glinting like a stiletto. "By morning's light, six kingdoms' emissaries shall deride this 'innovation' as a mendicant's ruse. Does this sate your appetite, my prince?"
The prince's mute acquiescence screamed louder than any oath.
"The Fu lineage may haemorrhage," she breathed, smearing vermilion across his jawline, "yet our tendrils strangle deeper than graves. Behead the millipede, and its legion limbs shall writhe for aeons."
In that suspended moment, sovereign and consort became reflections in a poisoned mirror—serpents coiled in lethal symbiosis, each fang steeped in the other's venom.
Crimson Requiem and the Lotus' Lament
With a final contemptuous snort, Ye Changfeng vanished into the night's embrace.
Fu Xianxian glided past coagulating pools of betrayal, her voice crystalline amid cowering retainers: "This courtyard reeks of failure. Prepare the Moonview Pavilion." A flick of her bloodied sleeve condemned the slaughtered attendants. "Burn every trace of this rabble."
Dead lovers mattered no more than shed serpent skins—fresh paramours bloomed like spring peonies. So long as her claws gripped the prince's ambitions, jade towers and silk sheets would remain her birthright.
Alone in the slaughterhouse chamber, the prince's howl shook hanging scrolls:
"Fu Xianxian! Ye Ling! Your skulls shall adorn my throne's footstool!" His blade shivered against stone, etching promises of future carnage. "Every humiliation shall be repaid in screams!"
---
**Part II: Thorns Beneath the Cotton Rose**
Ye Ling reclined against Lü Wu's perfumed bosom, idly twining her ink-black tresses around his fingers. "Why does my lotus wilt?" He nuzzled her jasmine-scented throat. "Has some blight touched your petals?"
Pearl tears streaked Lü Wu's cheeks. "The city hisses with adders' lies. They say your cotton crusade unveiled Shang's destitution—that foreign courts snicker at our Mid-Autumn Literary Banquet as a pauper's masquerade!"
"Let mongrels bark at celestial bargains." Ye Ling kissed away her sorrows. "Did their tongues wag when my golden potatoes fattened their shrivelled bellies? When did textile silver rebuild frontier garrisons?"
"But the Grand Chancellery floods the Vermilion Throne with scrolls!" Her whisper trembled. "Even Chu's snake-eyed envoy threatens to abandon the festival, calling us 'a kingdom peddling beggar's lint'!"
Ye Ling's smile sharpened. "Fools see thrift as frailty. Let them mock cotton—I'll spin their jeers into Shang's triumphal banner."
Beyond latticed windows, autumn winds scattered slanderous leaves like discarded sonnets, oblivious to the poison brewing in a courtesan's tear-stained pillow, where love, betrayal, and a prince's quiet resolve wove destiny's new tapestry.
Celestial Ruse and the Phoenix's Defiance
"Tears for such petty storms?" Ye Ling murmured, catching Lü Wu's tears on his fingertips. "If jackals doubt Shang's splendour, we shall drown their barks in dragonfire."
"Yet the court—"
"Courts are spiderwebs to be swept by autumn gales." His palm cradled her face. "Let them provoke the sleeping tiger—they'll choke on their venom."
Lü Wu trembled. "Miao'er of the Spring Breeze Pavilion implores—Chu's vipers conspire to void the Mid-Autumn Literary Banquet pact at dawn."
"Miao'er?" Ye Ling's lips curled. "Since when does the scorpion offer honeyed warnings?"
"She whispers of... *intimacies* with Chu's delegation." Lü Wu averted her eyes. "Bids you meet where peach blossoms drown moonlight."
Ye Ling's chuckle resonated like distant thunder. "Let the serpent coil—this garden's thorns remain mine to cultivate."
---
**Part II: Throne of Shattered Mirrors**
Morning's gilt fingers revealed Zhao Linger smirking before the Nine-Dragon Throne. "Why hoard festival honours, Emperor, when your realm hawks paupers' lint as treasure?"
Ye Changfeng's performative rage shook jade pendants. "Shang's riches outshine celestial constellations!"
"Do stars weep over cotton fields?" Zhao Linger's fan fluttered like a dying moth. "Your princeling's 'innovation' laid bare your empire's threadbare pride!"
Minister Chen Hui slithered forward. "Prince Qian's follies stain none but his own house!"
"Marvellous!" Ye Ling emerged, smiling like a crescent blade. "Does the Chen clan volunteer their ancestral gold to reclaim lost face?"
"Silence!" Emperor Shang's sceptre cracked like winter ice. "What phantom 'treasure' dares you invoke, whelp?"
Ye Ling knelt, voice silk-wrapped steel. "A wonder so divine, its unveiling demands tribute. Two million taels from these faithless curs—or eternal obeisance to Shang's glory."
The hall inhaled as one.
Zhao Linger's mockery faltered. "More fabrications from a princely beggar!"
"Gaze upon divinity," Ye Ling crooned, "or let six kingdoms witness Chu's cowardice." His eyes met the emperor's. "Unless the Dragon Throne fears its reflection?"
Stillness birthed complicit thunder.
To be continuous…