When Han Zhi was upset, he always liked to go find Zhang Run. He had liked it when Zhang Run’s family was still prosperous and hadn’t fallen into decline, and now that Zhang Run’s family had fallen apart because of him, he still didn’t feel there was anything wrong with it. In his heart, there was no such thing as empathy. Just as if Young Madam Fan and Han Zhengqing died immediately, he would only feel it was perfectly natural—when you’re in power you step on others, when you lose power others step on you. The wheel of heaven turns, and this principle remains constant forever.

But Zhang Run clearly didn’t think so. The resentment in his heart grew day by day, and his desire for Han Zhi’s death became stronger with each passing day. After Han Zhi finished his intimacies and left, he draped on his clothes and silently walked alone into the courtyard, picked up a bucket of well water and poured it over his head from above, threw the bucket far away, beckoned Wei Yanxi to his side, and asked him, “Didn’t he go with them for the spring hunt? Why has he come back at this time?”

They had set out on the twentieth of the fourth month. Now it was only the fourth of the fifth month. Subtracting the travel time, he’d probably only stayed at the hunting grounds for two or three days. What could be accomplished in such a short time? Or had something gone wrong at the hunting grounds?

At first, he thought Han Zhi had discovered his secret attempts to bribe people at the Ministry of Justice to arrange to see his father. But looking at Han Zhi’s behavior now, it didn’t seem like that at all.

Wei Yanxi stood silently for a while, then haltingly told him, “Prince Duan’s side has caused another incident. His principal consort killed a pregnant concubine, and it was said to be a male child… With such a major incident destabilizing his inner residence, and that batch of officials from the Yangzhou embezzlement case all vaguely connected to him…”

Zhang Run lowered his eyes and fell into prolonged silence. Han Zhi wanted to thoroughly crush Prince Duan underfoot with one kick, stamp him down so he’d have no strength to fight back. So he rushed back to the capital to order Zhang Yuan to continue implicating those in Prince Duan’s faction.

Sometimes he often felt bewildered. Han Zhi professed his love over and over, yet could use him, the Zhang family’s only bloodline, to threaten Zhang Yuan, forcing Zhang Yuan to bite off a chunk of flesh from Prince Gong and Prince Duan.

He clearly knew this would only leave Zhang Yuan with no burial place—whether it was the Emperor, Prince Gong and Prince Duan, or even those behind the embezzlement case officials, all would hate Zhang Yuan to the bone. Yet he still did it without hesitation. Then he could turn around without changing expression or heartbeat and say he loved him, just as when his sister hanged herself with a rope, he didn’t even sigh once, as if what died wasn’t a human life at all but an ant.

He felt he was just a tool held in Han Zhi’s hands—could be a pleasure house attendant for venting his desires, could be leverage to threaten Zhang Yuan, could even be his future forbidden possession.

This discovery made him absolutely furious. He carved this humiliation into his bones bit by bit, raised his head to look at Wei Yanxi, eyes reddening, “Yanxi, find a way to deliver a letter to that Miss Song Number Six for me.” Without waiting for Wei Yanxi to speak, he hurriedly continued, “I know the rules during hunts are much more relaxed than usual. In past years, young ladies could even race horses and play cuju with young masters. If you’re careful, you won’t be discovered. Just consider it as me begging you.”

But Han Zhi was actually just a slightly more advanced tool himself. Ye Jingchuan cracked walnuts with stones while picking out the kernels and tossing them into his mouth one by one, not forgetting to sigh with admiration, “Although Han Zhi is like a mean-spirited and vicious dog, for Consort Fan and your younger brother, he’s an extremely loyal dog. Look, he couldn’t wait to rush back to the capital to claim someone’s life.”

Ye Jingchuan felt somewhat displeased in his heart. Of course, he was happy that Song Chuyi wasn’t punished, but thinking that Zhou Weizhao had already guessed one step ahead that Song Chuyi definitely wouldn’t be punished, and had even conspired with Song Chuyi to deal with Prince Duan, he felt somewhat uncomfortable.

He had never been someone who liked to wrong himself. When he was unhappy, others shouldn’t think of being happy either. So even this late, he still dragged Zhou Weizhao along and wouldn’t let him leave—although in the pitch darkness one couldn’t see clearly whether any fish had taken the bait, since Zhou Weizhao liked fishing, he might as well fish to his heart’s content.

Zhou Weizhao’s hands were very steady, completely unaffected by him. With a pull of the line, he hooked up another fat carp.

Consort Fan was a shrewd person of the highest order. Her ability to calculate human hearts was probably even stronger than Song Chuyi’s. Otherwise, she couldn’t have kept Young Madam Fan firmly in her palm even after such events, raised her pair of children to be as close as her own children, while pushing Young Madam Fan, the biological mother, to the back.

Zhou Weizhao had experienced this since childhood, and after returning to the capital, he understood it even more deeply. At this moment, hearing Ye Jingchuan say this, he didn’t even change his expression, “I said you love to worry about ancient people’s affairs, and sure enough you love to worry about ancient people’s affairs. Rather than this, you’d be better off doing your duties properly. The Eastern Ying envoys have suffered such a great setback and been imprisoned. If someone wants to take advantage of this time to create chaos and plot something, it’s the perfect opportunity.”

Ye Jingchuan was nearly startled into falling headfirst from the tree into his fish bucket. After thinking for a while about the particularly grave expressions on Prince Zhennan and Ye Jingkuan’s faces, he asked somewhat stutteringly, “These people’s courage shouldn’t be quite that great, right?”

As for which people these were, naturally he meant Prince Duan who might throw caution to the wind, or Prince Gong who wanted to take the opportunity to finish off both the Crown Prince and Prince Duan. In any case, none of these people were easy to deal with. Even when nothing was happening, they had to stir up trouble, let alone now when things were actually happening.

Ye Jingchuan felt somewhat bored. He tossed a glossy walnut high into the air and sat swinging his feet on the tree branch, “Speaking of which, what do you think will happen to Prince Duan this time when Han Zhi runs back to the capital to dig more information from Zhang Run’s mouth, and when the Inner Cabinet old foxes return and interrogate him?”

Emperor Jianzhang couldn’t bear to kill his sons. Back then, if Prince Tai hadn’t pressed too hard, he probably wouldn’t have killed even Prince Tai, let alone his own biological sons. At most, he would completely disband Prince Duan’s府军护卫 府军护卫 in the future and make him stay in that princely mansion in Zhangzhou for the rest of his life.

Zhou Weizhao threw the fishing rod to Qingfeng behind him, stood up and asked him, “Are you going back or not? If you return any later, I’m afraid your father and brother will be carrying lanterns looking for you.”

Ye Jingchuan lost his temper. He never had much temper in front of his father and elder brother. Reluctantly, he jumped down from the tree. After thinking for a moment, he put his hand on Zhou Weizhao’s shoulder and warned him righteously, “Next time when there’s something going on, don’t leave me out. I want to help too!”