Chapter 18: Gilded Bluffs and the Phoenix's Oath
"Twenty million taels?" The Chu envoy's laughter dripped venom. "Your audacity doubles even our boldest claims!"
Ye Ling's smile mirrored a predator toying with prey. "If Chu's withered sapling fetched ten million, Shang's celestial wonder warrants twenty. Does the 'mighty' Chu now quail before fair arithmetic?"
Zhao Linger's fan snapped like a whip. "Name your trinket—we'll not barter for more peasant rags!"
"Ah, but rags clothe empires while saplings feed flames." Ye Ling gestured to attendants bearing an obsidian contract chest. "Let history's parchment judge whose treasures shine truer."
"Agreed!" Zhao Linger spat. "But when your fraud unveils itself, Shang forfeits both festival rights *and* ten million taels in recompense!"
Ye Ling dipped a phoenix-feather quill in gold ink. "May Chu's envoys recall this hour as their humiliation's dawn."
---
**Part II: The Dragon's Gambit**
As scribes pressed wax seals, the Chu envoy wheeled toward Emperor Shang. "Does the Dragon Throne sanction this fool's wager? Or must we again endure princely theatrics?"
Titters slithered through the delegation.
"My brother's reckless antics cannot commit the imperial throne!" Ye Changfeng interposed, concern masking glee.
Ye Ling unfurled the scroll, its crimson ribbons pooling like blood. "Ink outlasts memory, honoured guests. Chu's sigil here—" he tapped gilded clauses, "—binds you to honour or infamy."
Zhao Linger's hand trembled momentarily before stamping Chu's seal.
"At tomorrow's zenith", Ye Ling purred, "reality will shatter delusions." His gaze swept the hall. "Pray your silver trains approach with the haste of retreating armies."
In the shadowed gallery, Fu Xianxian's jade hairpin scored tally marks into a pillar—one for each prince's blunder, another for empires teetering on a madman's ploy.
The Sovereign's Wager
Ye Changfeng prostrated himself, his voice quivering with feigned contrition. "Father, this reckless folly stains our dynasty's honour! This failure to restrain Sixth Brother's delusions lies solely upon my unworthy shoulders."
Ye Ling arched an eyebrow. "Must Eldest Brother so freely diagnose madness? Perhaps your affliction of perpetual suspicion clouds clearer judgment."
"Must we endure this theatre?" Ye Changfeng spread his palms in counterfeit despair. "Shang holds no mythical treasures! Must you drag our empire through fresh humiliation?"
Emperor Shang's gaze oscillated between his sons—one grovelling in artful subservience, the other standing unbowed as winter bamboo. The throne hall's air crystallized with anticipation.
*Does this wayward son truly harbour heaven-sent ingenuity? Or does desperation birth dangerous delusions?
"This... carries our mandate," the emperor declared, locking eyes with Ye Ling. The words tasted of ash and honey—betrayal of reason kindled by forbidden hope. * Let this gamble either resurrect Shang's glory or bury us all.
Ye Changfeng's composure fractured. "Father! Were any treasure to exist—"
"Silence!" The imperial sceptre's crash against jade tiles shattered pretence. "Our seal sanctifies this covenant."
As the vermilion seal descended like a comet's kiss upon parchment, Zhao Linger's triumphant murmur pierced the stillness: "Two triumphs secured—wealth and prestige both."
"Should this venture collapse," Minister Chen venomously added, "let Prince Qian's severed head adorn the Hall of Shame!"
Ye Ling merely smiled—the serene expression of a gardener watching blighted weeds choke themselves.
---
**Part II: Phoenix Feathers Amid Ashes**
The emperor's gaze lingered on Ye Ling, resolve hardening like molten gold in a crucible. This gamble wasn't merely about treasure or treaties—it was a monarch's last wager on a fading dynasty's pulse.
Ye Changfeng's protests faded into white noise as the imperial seal's wax cooled. Somewhere beyond the gilded halls, a phoenix might yet rise from cotton ashes—or the empire would burn to cinders, taking its mad prince's dreams with it.
In the shadowed gallery, Fu Xianxian's lips curved as she counted new crescent marks in the cedar pillar—omens of empires trembling on a knife's edge, balanced between a fool's hope and a schemer's despair.
The Phoenix's Ledger and the Viper's Ledger
"Should misfortune descend," Minister Chen's voice oozed through the gilded hall, "let history record the Chen clan's hands remain unstained by princely recklessness."
The subtext coiled like a serpent in lotus robes: *Save your son, Majesty, and watch your treasury bleed.
Emperor Shang's knuckles whitened against the throne's dragon-head armrests. The Chens' hubris had metastasised—their tendrils strangling everything from harem intrigues to fiscal arteries.
"Our son", the emperor's voice resonated with forced calm, "how do you respond?"
"Minister Chen's trepidations are... *poetically* justified." Ye Ling's smile mirrored a scholar admiring calligraphy while plotting its destruction. "Yet this unworthy son puzzles: How does the Chen estate flourish like peonies in spring while the Ministry of Revenue's coffers shrivel like winter reeds?"
"Baseless calumny!" Chen Hui's jade belt ornaments trembled with indignation. "Scour the archives! Discover one anomalous *cash*, and my lineage shall prostrate before the headsman's block!"
Ye Changfeng interposed, the dutiful crown prince. "Sixth Brother insults a statesman who served Grandfather! Your tongue risks severing dynastic loyalty!"
"Loyalty?" Ye Ling tilted his head, innocence perfected. "A curious virtue when treasury mice grow sleek on imperial millet."
---
**Part II: Dance of the Silver-Tongued**
"Compose yourself, venerable minister!" Ye Ling spread supplicant hands. "I merely marvel at your... *Herculean* burdens. To juggle state coffers and private caravans—truly, Atlas himself would stagger!"
Turning to the throne, his demeanour shifted to filial devotion. "Father, should our modest tribute sway the envoys, might we relieve Minister Chen's noble fatigue? Allow fresh saplings to nurture the ministry's roots."
The court exploded in hissed whispers.
Ye Changfeng's composure fissured. "You seek to uproot three reigns' legacy!"
"Legacy?" Ye Ling's eyes widened in mock horror. "I propose respite! Why let Minister Chen endure vulgar gossip that his family's jade towers were built with... *borrowed* mortar?"
Chen Hui's certainty faltered—a crack in lacquered armour.
"Let dawn's revelation arbitrate truth," Ye Ling concluded, kowtowing deeply. "Should celestial winds favour us, Minister Chen may retire to tally his *righteous* fortunes beneath moonlit pavilions."
In the shadowed alcove, Fu Xianxian's silent mirth deepened fresh gouges in vermilion pillars—each mark a dynasty's hourglass shedding grains.
The Dragon's Breath and the Phoenix's Reckoning
"Father—" Ye Changfeng's supplication dissolved as Ye Ling's blade-sharp words sliced the air.
"Father", Ye Ling intoned with saccharine deference, "to preserve Minister Chen's tattered honour and silence wagging tongues, this unworthy son begs Your Majesty to grant him retirement gilded with imperial grace."
Chen Hui's jowls flushed crimson. *Retirement?* The architect of three emperors' fiscal plunder now faced a princeling's dagger at his jugular.
"Our decree stands," Emperor Shang pronounced, detonating silence into chaos.
---
**Part II: Shattered Mirrors of Power**
Chen Hui swayed, a ship unmoored. * Had the throne sundered their century-old covenant?
Ye Ling pressed his blade deeper. "Gratitude, Father! Truly, Minister Chen's *waning vigour* merits moonlit contemplation of his... *legacy."
Ye Changfeng's mask of fraternal piety cracked. "What sorcery justifies displacing three reigns' treasurer?"
"Sorcery?" Ye Ling's mirth sparkled like shattered quartz. "Shang's coffers brim while Chu hawks weeds as orchids!"
Minister Chen's whisper carried venom: "When this illusion shatters, let Prince Qian's bones bleach in the Hall of Disgraced Kin!"
"Your faith in failure moves me," Ye Ling crooned. "Why quake before truth's mirror?"
---
**Part III: Amber Inferno**
Emperor Shang's knuckles whitened. "What demonry is this 'Amber Dragon'?"
As Chu envoys tittered about "rag dragons", the hall's vermilion doors groaned inward.
Master Lu and Fang Ning staggered forth, shadows haunting their eyes yet triumph blazing. "Your Majesty—the Amber Colossus awaits!"
A gasp rippled through the court.
"Amber?" The emperor's pulse quickened. The lost alchemy of Han glassmakers—could it walk again?
Ye Ling spread his arms. "Not amber, Father—*dragon's breath crystallized*."
Beyond the threshold, sunlight fractured through twelve feet of liquid gold—a sinuous leviathan with scales of captured lightning, claws cradling a prism that cast spectral serpents across jade floors. The very air hummed with stolen rainbows.
Zhao Linger's fan splintered against marble.
---
**Part IV: Reckoning at the Rainbow's End**
Chen Hui's knees buckled. The Crystal Dragon's radiance illuminated not just the throne hall but also the rot festering in his decades of ledger-forged lies.
Ye Ling's voice cut through the dazzled silence: "Does Chu's treasury hold twenty million taels? Or shall we discuss forfeiting festival rights?"
In the shadows, Fu Xianxian's nail carved final notches into her pillar—a eulogy for corrupt dynasties and a birth cry for empires reborn in glass and fire.
The Alchemist's Inferno and the Dragon's Awakening
"Centuries-dead arts resurrected?" Whispers slithered through the court like serpents. *Liuli*—that alchemy of fire and sand—had vanished into legend, its secrets entombed with Han Dynasty masters. Now, only brittle relics remained, each shard worth a province's ransom.
Zhao Linger's mockery rang hollow. "*Liuli*? Delusions become you, Prince of Threadbare Glory."
Ye Ling turned to the throne, his voice molten iron cloaked in silk. "Father, amidst mildewed scrolls in forgotten archives, this unworthy son unearthed the Han's pyromantic treatises. For ninety dawns and nights, Master Lu's kilns have roared—rebirthing crystalline majesty for Shang's triumph."
---
**Part II: Crucible of Betrayal**
Ye Changfeng's chuckle dripped venomous honey. "Ancient scrolls? The *liuli* flame perished with its last gasping master!" His gaze raked over Master Lu's soot-stained hands. "Do peasant fantasies now pass for statecraft, Sixth Brother?"
Master Lu stepped forward, furnace scars gleaming. "This *peasant* learnt from masters who served emperors long time. Our kilns breathe dragonfire now—3,000 degrees tempered by bellows of celestial design." His eyes hardened to obsidian. "I serve Shang's soul, not princes' rotting ambitions."
The air crackled. Ye Changfeng's patronage of Lu's lineage was court lore, as were their abrupt demises, lungs blackened by lead vapours.
---
**Part III: Leviathan Unchained**
Beneath autumn's brittle sky, the shrouded colossus loomed. Ye Ling grasped the velvet drape. "Behold—Han glory reforged!"
Fabric cascaded.
Sunlight shattered through twelve feet of liquid amber—a sinuous behemoth with scales of captured sunlight, claws cradling a prism birthing spectral serpents across jade tiles. The crowd stilled, breaths crystallizing in awe.
Zhao Linger's fan clattered like a dying sparrow. "Impossible... Even Song's master glaziers..."
"Couldn't?" Ye Ling's smile mirrored the dragon's molten gaze. "The Han guarded secrets with poisoned wine and dagger but forgot—flames sing truth to those who *dare* listen."
---
**Part IV: Crown of Frozen Fire**
Emperor Shang's hand trembled toward the leviathan. "The Dragon's Tear..."
Within the prism, swirling nebulae of cobalt and cinnabar pulsed—a chromatic miracle even Tang artisans had deemed divine whimsy.
Ye Changfeng's desperation sharpened to a shiv. "Witchcraft! This...this *abomination* reeks of Chu's cheap theatrics!"
"Theatrics?" Master Lu unrolled a charred parchment—Han glyphs dancing beside lead-safe formulae. "What killed my forebears, we've transmuted to jade ash and wisdom."
As the imperial sceptre kissed the dragon's claw, arctic radiance erupted—the hall drowned in hues unseen since the Han lantern festivals' last ghostly glow.
In the shadows, Fu Xianxian's nail carved the pillar's final groove: *Thrones crumble. Phoenixes ignite.*
The Dragon's Awakening and the Phoenix's Ascension
Twenty labourers, sinews straining like overstrung bows, manoeuvred the shrouded leviathan into the throne plaza—a feat requiring pulleys of celestial ingenuity and mortal sweat.
"Father", Ye Ling intoned with reverence sharpened by steel, "Shang's resurrected glory awaits the Dragon Throne's benediction."
Minister Chen's scoff carried winter's bite. "*Liuli*—a dead art's ghost! Unveil this charlatan's puppet show!" His cataract-clouded eyes gleamed, hungry for crystalline flaws to devour.
---
**Part I: The Veil of Imperial Destiny**
Chu envoys cackled like hyenas scenting carrion. "A dragon-scaled *liuli*? Delusions of grandeur! The An Kingdom's plundered tombs yield only palm-sized baubles!" Their mockery echoed through marble colonnades, where sunlight pooled like spilled mercury.
Ye Changfeng advanced, venom cloaked in silk. "Permit this unworthy son to—"
"Silence." Emperor Shang's imperial aura froze the air itself. "A celestial beast's revelation demands Heaven's chosen hand."
The emperor's palm, slick with dynastic dread, clutched the velvet drape. Fabric whispered of glory and ruin intertwined—a monarch's gamble etched in silk threads.
---
**Part II: Leviathan of Frozen Flame**
The curtain fell.
Light detonated through twelve feet of liquid amber—a coiled behemoth astride violet cumuli. Each scale shimmered with stolen sunlight, talons etched finer than a poet's despair. The dragon's gaze, twin black suns of polished onyx, radiated the arrogance of gods condescending to mortals.
Breaths crystallized into diamonds of awe.
"By the Celestial Mandate..." Emperor Shang's whisper fractured the silence. "This... this is alchemy's second birth!"
Ye Ling knelt, humility perfected through fire. "Han Dynasty's extinguished flame rekindled—Master Lu's crucible and Fang Ning's celestial calculations."
---
**Part III: Crown of Purified Ashes**
Minister Chen staggered, his ledger of lies scorched by dragonfire radiance. "Sorcery! No mortal forge could—"
"Mortal?" Master Lu unfurled scrolls blackened by ancestral pyres. "We transmuted lead's poison to jade purity. What murdered my forebears now crowns Shang's renaissance."
Chu envoys' smirks died mid-sneer as the dragon's prismatic aura drenched their silks in chromatic shame. Zhao Linger's fan shattered, its splinters composing an elegy for shattered arrogance.
---
**Part IV: The Phoenix's Gambit**
Emperor Shang traced a claw sharper than betrayal. "This belongs enshrined with imperial ancestors, not bartered to barbarians!"
Ye Ling's smile glinted with phoenix cunning. "Yet consider, Father—Chu's silver rivers diverted to Shang's coffers, their envy immortalized as our tributary."
In the alcove's umbra, Fu Xianxian's nail carved fresh prophecies into bloodwood pillars:
*Thrones fracture.
Dragons ascend.
Phoenix embers cleanse.*
The Dragon's Embrace and the Sparrow's Scorn
Eunuchs processed in a stately procession, garbed in Feiyu Robes—celestial serpent-embroidered silk that rendered their wearers impervious to bureaucratic trivialities or judicial scourges. Emperor Shang's gaze bored into Ye Ling like molten iron. "Innovations such as thine demand recompense beyond mortal reckoning."
Ye Ling inclined his head, a lupine smile sheathed in velvet. "This humble servant draws breath solely to stoke Shang's celestial forge."
---
**Part I: Waltz of Claws and Petals**
The prince prowled toward Zhao Linger, fingertips tracing forbidden cartography across her hip—a map no mortal hand should dare traverse. "Well, Steppe Vixen? Doth our dragon's flame outshine Chu's withered bonsai?"
"You—!" She whirled like a desert djinn, emerald eyes searing with steppe-born wrath. The dragon's fractured gaze mocked her realm's poverty—a kingdom bloated on plunder and brittle hubris.
"Twenty million taels," Ye Ling murmured, pinning her to a pillar etched with copulating dragons. "Or perhaps..." His breath scorched her nape. "...a dowry of living flesh?"
Zhao Linger's dagger flashed, arrested mid-air by his iron grip. "Strike again, and I shall string thy sinews across Chu's battlements!"
"Enthralling." His laughter tinkled like poisoned chimes. "Wed me, and witness thy father's hordes kneel to Shang's ascending phoenix."
---
**Part II: Viper's Cradle**
Ye Changfeng's goblet shattered, wine pooling across jade tiles like regicidal whispers. "Let that barbarian Jezebel clasp Sixth Brother's arm, and the succession crumbles!"
Minister Chen's jowls quivered, eyes darting to Fu Xianxian, the concubine weaving silken snares in shadowed recesses.
Veiled by the dragon's gilded penumbra, Ye Ling traced hairline fractures in its amber scales. "Let adders hiss," he told Fang Ning. "Glass thrones amplify grandeur... and fragility."
---
**Part III: Eclipse of Jackals**
At moonless midnight, Zhao Linger stormed embassy halls, attendants scattering like chaff before a tempest. "Rouse the Dune Striders!" Her jade seal cracked, marble, wolf sigils oozing malice. "That glazed golden dragon *shall* shatter ere dawn—though I dance barefoot upon its shards!"
As assassins slithered through palace drains, the dragon's prism captured starlight, casting crimson runes across slumbering courtyards—warnings in a tongue dead for aeons. Deep within onyx vaults, Ye Ling smiled, a spider counting flies in its web.
The Sparrow's Defiance and the Dragon's Gambit
"Unhand me! I would sooner court death's embrace than suffer your tainted vows!" Zhao Linger writhed like a snared phoenix, her voice carving fury into the hall's gilded hush. The spectre of becoming Shang's political chattel—a sacrificial pawn traded for Chu's survival—coiled about her throat like an executioner's silken noose.
Ye Ling released her with serpentine elegance. "Spare the dramatics, Princess. Cadavers pay no debts." His fingers flicked imaginary motes from his Feiyu Robe's embroidered serpents. "Twenty million taels—a sum etched in your father's honour. Or shall my collectors reduce Chu's palaces to naked stone?"
---
**Part I: Chains of Gold, Ashes of Pride**
The princess froze, her defiance splintering like Song celadon. The colossal sum—equal to a decade of Chu's plundered tributes—had been but a venomous jape in their wager. Now it loomed like celestial pillars over her fracturing dignity.
"Sixth Brother!" Ye Changfeng interjected, his virtue burnished to ancestral altar gleam. "Must you desecrate imperial decorum with this... barbarian pantomime? A princess's honour is no jester's prop!"
Ye Ling's brow arched like a drawn longbow. "Does the Crown Prince prefer such... *delicate transactions* veiled in shadowed alcoves?" His gaze swept the court, lingering on Minister Chen's suddenly pallid jowls. "Or have you already... *sampled* Chu's hospitality in clandestine councils?"
The hall erupted. Neutral ministers like Fang Yan choked on suppressed laughter, while Zhao Linger's cheeks bloomed peony-red—a blossom steeped in venom.
---
**Part II: Loom of Silk and Dagger**
Ye Changfeng's fist clenched, knuckles bleaching to jade. "Cease this vulgar—"
"—Ah, but the Crown Prince's gallantry inspires awe!" Ye Ling pressed a hand to his breast, the epitome of wounded nobility. "Since you champion the princess so fervently... why not liquidate her debt?" His smile was honed to a razor's edge. "Minister Chen's vaults surge like Yangtze floodwaters. Twenty million? A dewdrop!"
Silence descended, denser than temple incense. Even the dragon braziers stifled their spiralling smoke.
---
**Part III: Phoenix's Nocturnal Stratagem**
Zhao Linger observed the fraternal clash through narrowed eyes—a tactician parsing war's geometry. Matrimony to Ye Ling? Become a broodmare for Shang's ascendancy. Refusal? Witness Chu's coffers haemorrhage until her people gnawed on bark.
Yet in Ye Ling's gambit, she spied fissures—Minister Chen's averted gaze, the tremor beneath Ye Changfeng's left eye. *Power*, she realized with glacial precision, *is but alchemy—raw dread transmuted to gilded servitude.
"Enough!" Emperor Shang's voice clove the tension like a war gong. The court knelt as one. "The Glazed Golden Dragon's price stands. Chu's envoys have until dawn's first light to tender payment... or forfeit autumn's grain tribute."
As guards escorted Zhao Linger away, her laughter chimed crystalline—a blade kissed by a whetstone. Ye Ling's smirk wavered. Somewhere in moon-drenched gardens, phoenix talons unsheathed.
The Phoenix's Purse and the Dragon's Taunt
"Absurd calumnies! Minister Chen... Sixth Brother, your tongue drips nothing but venom!" Ye Changfeng thundered, his princely veneer fracturing like overfired celadon.
Ye Ling turned to Zhao Linger with a jackal's grin. "It seems your knight-errant abandons you, Desert Sparrow. The hour of reckoning tolls."
Ye Changfeng's pulse hammered at his temples. Never had he encountered such feral audacity—this mongrel prince snapping at imperial heels before the entire ministerial pantheon.
Fang Ning advanced, his voice a honed blade. "Does Chu's honour evaporate faster than morning dew? The covenant's ink still glistens."
Emperor Shang's gaze descended upon the envoys like a jewelled execution sword. "Should your coffers prove... wanting, Princess, we'll extend our hospitality while taxmen comb Chu's palaces." The edict hung like a silken garrote above foreign necks.
---
**Part I: The Alchemy of Humiliation**
Zhao Linger's eyes darted between her envoys—a trapped falcon gauging escape. The sum, vast enough to ransom kingdoms, loomed like a headsman's crescent blade.
"The Crystal Dragon's glory remains unmatched," murmured an envoy, mesmerized by prismatic scales refracting dawnlight. "A treasure to outshine dynasties."
"But this extortive—"
"—Is survival's price," Zhao Linger hissed through jade-carved teeth. Her spine straightened with steppe-forged resolve. "We accept."
---
**Part II: The Hound's Banquet**
Ye Ling's smile unfurled like a venomous lotus. "Gold bullion or silver draughts, Highness? Our generosity accommodates all currencies."
The princess's hauteur wavered. His obsequious manner—kowtowing while pressing a dagger to her throat—left her fury disoriented. She had braced for clashing steel, not this huckster's barter.
"You..."
"Does the Desert Queen require consultation?" Ye Ling fluttered his sleeves in mock solicitude. "Shall we summon sand-readers to divine your coffers' depth?"
A stifled chortle escaped Emperor Shang—ice thawing beneath a vernal sun. Uncouth as his son's methods were, they mirrored Chu's barbaric grandeur with poetic precision.
---
**Part III: Gilded Vipers' Ball**
As Zhao Linger pressed her seal into wax, the dragon-shaped braziers seemed to sneer. Ye Ling hummed a brothel ditty, fingers dancing through imaginary coin piles.
"Remember this hour, Brother," he whispered to Ye Changfeng. "Even phoenixes prostrate when their pinions bear the weight of empires."
The Crown Prince's silence resonated louder than war gongs—a strategist witnessing his gambits crumble. Beyond vermilion walls, abacus beads chattered like conspiring scorpions.
The Gilded Ledger and the Viper's Reckoning
"Does the mighty Chu Empire tremble before mere coin?" The envoy spat, his pallid fingers clenching like starved talons.
Ye Ling's smirk sharpened—a wolf savouring cornered prey. "History's scrolls recount your realm's parchment promises crumbling to ash."
**Part I: The Alchemy of Shame**
Princess Zhao Linger's carmine lips twisted. "Cease your carrion crow's croaking, Ye Ling! Must Shang's prince debase himself to haggling fishwives?"
"Even celestial phoenixes settle earthly debts," Ye Ling riposted, his gaze skewering Crown Prince Ye Changfeng. "Unless our esteemed Crown Prince wishes to pledge his coffers as surety?"
Ye Changfeng's jade mask fractured. "Sixth Brother cultivates treason with every poisoned breath!" He daubed phantom tears—a crocodile weeping over its slaughter.
**Part II: Coffers Unchained**
The court froze as Ye Ling extended a gauntleted palm. "Gold or gilded lies, Princess? Choose ere your father's honour becomes court jesters' fare."
With a flourish, the Chu envoy launched a lacquered sandalwood chest. Ye Ling snatched it mid-arc, fingers caressing stacks of promissory notes—each bearing the vermilion seals of Shang's mightiest fiscal dynasties.
"Fifty thousand... a hundred thousand..." His murmur etched contempt into onyx tiles. "How quaint—Chu's vaunted honour quantified in parchment scraps."
**Part III: Ashes of Empire**
Zhao Linger's laughter crackled like kindling. "Tally your trinkets, Princeling. Even dung beetles hoard baubles."
"Beetles", Ye Ling crooned, "raise monuments where phoenixes' pyres smoulder." He lifted a note to the gilded light. "Yet counterfeit sigils make poor cornerstones."
The accusation hung—a headsman's blade mid-descent. Minister Chen's sudden coughing fit echoed like temple gongs.
**Part IV: Dragons Ascendant**
As accountants descended like locusts upon the casket, the eldest general's chuckle rumbled—a seismic shift. Decades of Chu's plundered mines, their stolen citadels, crystallized in this inversion of power.
"Inscribe this hour," a censor whispered to his counterpart. "The dragon learns avarice's sweet sting."
The Treasury's Gambit and the Dragon's Defiance
The triumphant exchange of twenty million silver taels from Chu sent waves of exhilaration through the court. "The notes are genuine!" Ye Ling proclaimed, tucking the stack of silver certificates into his robes with a grin that mirrored the sun's gleam on the Glazed Golden Dragon. The artefact's radiance bathed Zhao Linger and her envoys in light, yet their faces remained shadowed with bitter defeat.
These funds, earmarked to establish Chu's trade networks and border outposts—inspired by Zhao Miaoni's lucrative ventures—now vanished like dust in the wind. The princess and her retinue swallowed their anguish, their consoling whispers about the dragon's "immortal value" ringing hollow even to their ears.
---
**Part I: The Serpent's Hollow Triumph**
As the humiliated Chu delegation retreated from the Grand Hall, the air buzzed with Shang's renewed pride. The Glazed Golden Dragon had shattered rumours of the empire's cultural poverty, and Ye Ling's name soared—until Minister Chen's voice sliced through the triumph like a dagger.
"Your Majesty!" The Minister of Revenue stepped forward, his tone honeyed with false piety. "The Glazed Dragon is a national treasure. By selling it, Prince Ye has plundered Shang's spiritual fortune! The proceeds must be surrendered to the Treasury at once!"
His demand hung like a guillotine's blade. To relinquish the silver would grant Chen's faction unchecked power—funds diverted to their coffers under lofty pretences, as his clan had done for generations. The Chens, entrenched in the ministry since antiquity, wielded their hereditary authority like emperors of coin.
---
**Part II: The Dragon's Counterstrike**
Emperor Shang's jaw tightened, the throne room thick with tension. Yet before he could speak, Ye Ling strode forward, his voice crystalline with resolve.
"Father, I invoke the terms of my wager with Minister Chen." The court stilled. "Should I resolve the Chu crisis, he vowed to relinquish his ministry. The debt is settled—*his* debt."
A collective gasp rippled through the hall. Minister Chen's face purpled, his dynasty of greed teetering on the precipice. The emperor's knuckles whitened on the armrests of the dragon throne—a monarch poised between tradition and transformation, his son's audacious gambit a spark in tinder-dry air.
The Phoenix Ascendant and the Viper's Twilight
The court teetered on a blade's edge, every breath laced with the scent of impending upheaval.
**I. The Serpent's Last Stand**
Emperor Shang's decree hung like venomous mist. Minister Chen Huai remained rooted, his refusal to kneel a silent blade drawn against the throne. Around him, Chen loyalists coiled—their fists clenched like scaled serpents, eyes glinting with frost-bound defiance.
"Grand Preceptor to the Crown Prince," the emperor had proclaimed, draping decayed power in gilded robes—a hollow title for a hollowed titan.
Yet Chen Huai's smile curled like a scorpion's tail. For eight generations, his kin had syphoned the realm's lifeblood. Would the emperor dare sever the serpent's head when its venom seeped through every ministry's marrow?
**II. The Dragon's Gambit**
Ye Ling's mirth shattered the silence like shattering jade. "Father! Since Minister Chen retires to tend chrysanthemums, allow me to nominate Chen Yuan as his successor."
The name detonated like black powder.
Chen Yuan—an orphaned heir of the Chen clan's true bloodline, reared in palace shadows as Ye Ling's childhood mirror. Whispers slithered through decades: Chen Huai had orchestrated the boy's parents' "ill-fated" ends to cement his b*st*rd lineage's stolen glory.
"A masterstroke!" Emperor Shang's gaze kindled with dynastic retribution.
**III. Ashes to Ashes**
In the ministerial galleries, Chen kinsmen exchanged glances as sharp as daggers. Chen Yuan's rise threatened to unravel fifty years of artful poisons and "hunting mishaps".
The emperor leaned forward, the dragon throne's claws flexing as if alive. "Let it be writ: Chen Yuan ascends to the Ministry of Revenue. May his tenure honour his noble forebears' *unfinished* legacy."
Chen Huai's jade belt plaques clattered—a death knell for his dynasty of rot.
**IV. The Viper's Epilogue**
As eunuchs escorted the fallen minister away, Ye Ling murmured to his resurrected pawn, "The treasury's ledgers shall sing ballads of vermilion ink, Cousin. Rats leave such... *artful* trails in gilded dust."
Chen Yuan bowed with the poise of vengeance two decades ripened. "This unworthy servant exists to scour shadows clean."
The Phoenix's Retribution and the Viper's Twilight
**I. Bloodline Ascendant**
Chen Yuan stood beneath the dragon-veined arches—a paragon of imperial lineage and unassailable legitimacy. As the Chen clan's trueborn heir, his ascension to Minister of Revenue silenced even the most obstinate traditionalists. Who could contest his claim when the alternative was Chen Huai's profligate son Chen Tong, a wastrel drowning in brothel debts rather than bureaucratic merit?
Yet the court's true tension crackled between Chen Yuan and Chen Huai—a chasm carved by poisoned chalices and a decades-old "hunting mishap" that had orphaned the former. Their locked gazes now clashed like ancestral blades unsheathed after twenty years of feigned oblivion.
**II. Serpents in Flight**
"Your Majesty's wisdom illuminates the realm!" chanted Chen elders, their obeisances rippling through the hall like rats fleeing a sinking galley.
Ye Changfeng's wine cup shattered against jade tiles. "Traitors! After all Chen Huai lavished upon you—"
"We serve the Dragon Throne above all," interjected Chen Yu, Minister of Works, his bow dripping serpentine courtesy. "Does the Crown Prince suggest we prioritize clan over empire?"
Fang Ning's laughter tolled like funeral bells. "How curious—Lord Ye clings to a *feeble* elder. Almost as if... he dreads what ledgers may exhume?"
**III. The Executioner's Smile**
Ye Ling loomed over the kneeling Chen Huai, his boot pinning the disgraced minister's robe to the dais. "Refuse this honour once more," he crooned, "and I'll personally guide your nine clans to the executioner's block. But fret not—I'll beg Father to spare your loyal curs."
Chen Huai's whisper carried a viper's death rattle: "Overreach, Princeling, and your ambition will choke you."
"As you choked my parents?" Chen Yuan's interjection froze the hall. His smile held the frost of vengeful spirits. "The Ministry's archives await my... *meticulous* scrutiny."
**IV. Ashes to Empire**
As guards dragged Chen Huai away, his final curse—"Ye Ling! My blood will nourish your ruin!"—echoed through corridors reeking of political carrion.
The emperor studied his sixth son, the once-drunken fool now honed into a dynastic scalpel. "Let the audit commence," he decreed, the throne's jade inlays glinting like freshly whetted steel. "Every tael. Every tax. Every *anomaly."
In the shadows, Ye Ling met Chen Yuan's gaze—a pact forged in orphaned wrath and shared purpose. The true slaughter, both knew, had only just begun.
The Dragon's Gambit and the Phoenix's Shadow
**I. The Viper's Surrender**
"Sixth Brother's tongue drips venom sharper than scorpion tails," Ye Changfeng hissed through clenched teeth.
Ye Ling's grin widened, savouring his conquest. "Hear that, Minister Chen? Even the Crown Prince implores you to embrace imperial mercy!"
Chen Huai knelt trembling, knees ablaze from Ye Ling's calculated strike. "This unworthy servant... accepts Your Majesty's decree," he rasped, malice seeping through his obeisance.
Emperor Shang gestured languidly, his smile a mask of jade. "Escort Minister Chen to repose—his *infirmity* stirs our compassion." The court murmured assent, blind to the dragon's talons sheathed in silken diplomacy.
**II. The Phoenix's Retribution**
As Chen Huai was ushered out, the court grasped the profundity of Ye Ling's stratagem. Chen Yuan's rise severed Ye Changfeng's fiscal lifeline—the Chen mercantile colossus would soon haemorrhage into loyalist treasuries.
"You've sawn through the branch propping the Crown Prince's roost," Fang Ning murmured to Ye Ling. "But will the tree itself topple?"
Ye Ling's smirk mirrored a fox amidst scattering hens. "Let the audit commence. Every pilfered coin, every diverted tax—Chen Yuan's ledgers shall pen elegies for traitors."
**III. The Dragon's Disquiet**
In the guttering light of dragon-shaped oil lamps, Emperor Shang's golden robes dulled to tarnished brass. "The court murmurs you've bartered Shang's imperial *qi* through that crystal dragon," he intoned, shadows pooling around him like spilled midnight.
Ye Ling faltered, superstition's chill coiling in his veins. "The artifact was merely—"
"A nation's soul crystallized," the emperor interjected. "Now it adorns Chu's shrines while our people doubt Heaven's benediction." His fingers brushed a ledger's spine, its pages heavy with unspoken auguries.
**IV. Twilight of Dynasties**
Beyond vermilion gates, Ye Changfeng crumpled in Consort Chen's chambers—a prince stripped of fiscal fangs. "We're paupers now," he spat, glaring at ancestral tablets suddenly resembling funeral ashes.
Consort Chen's jade hairpin hovered like a poised dagger. "Chen Yuan's veins pulse with that ledger's ink. Let him sip their toxins first."
As night deepened, the imperial city thrummed with silent reckonings. In the Ministry's crypt-like vaults, Chen Yuan unsealed decades of records, his brush poised to rewrite history—or entomb it.
To be continuous…