◎Standoff◎

He turned and left, taking with him the last source of light in the sealed space. Zhou Tan had no choice but to lean on Qu You and follow him deeper into the burial chamber.

The two had just stepped into the burial chamber where the eternal lamps burned when they saw Bo Ying reach out and touch some mechanism. The heavy tomb door slowly descended behind them, completely sealing off the way they had come.

The flames could still burn, which meant there was no danger of suffocation here.

The air was filled with the same strange fragrance they had smelled earlier in the passage. Qu You guessed this must be the scent of the preservative spices used on the corpse, now exposed to the air after the coffin had been reopened.

Bo Ying set the lamp down by his feet. Following his gaze, Qu You saw Emperor De’s dark black coffin.

Zhou Tan glanced indifferently at the crude wooden coffin on one side of the chamber. Bo Ying smiled faintly, raised his hand, and lifted the lid of that coffin. Qu You then saw a tattered, bloodstained garment inside.

“This is what I went back to retrieve after he jumped from the city tower,” Bo Ying said, reaching out to smooth the creases of the torn garment, his eyes closed. “That day Lord Yuan told him I wasn’t dead, and he finally understood who I really was—realized that he’d been played like a puppet by me all these years. He must have been furious…”

“He didn’t know, and neither did any of you—that day I stood beneath the city tower, meaning to collect his remains for burial. But then that carriage came out, and he’d left nothing behind. A whole life passed in this fleeting world, and in the end, the noble Crown Prince had only this one bloodstained garment, torn so badly it was almost laughable. I even gathered the flesh and blood caught in the carriage wheel’s grooves, just to piece together this much… He should have been buried in the imperial mausoleum, by rights.”

The two of them said nothing. In the dim lamplight, Bo Ying lifted his head and looked at them with cold indifference.

Then he turned and climbed step by step up the golden stairs beneath the black coffin. Inside it, Emperor De’s body lay dressed in jade burial garments.

The lustrous glow of the night-luminous pearl illuminated his unfamiliar-looking face.

Bo Ying lifted the lamp to shine on it, murmuring softly to himself, “Why did you bother giving birth to me?”

Naturally, no one answered.

“You mistreated A’guli, and it ruined me—this is your retribution, yet it’s I who must suffer for a lifetime… Do you know, I searched for you countless times too, but I was only a commoner. I didn’t even dare believe in my own identity myself—how could I ever hope to see the noble Emperor?”

The burial chamber was damp and cold. Qu You saw Zhou Tan’s face growing paler and paler, and she helped him sit down.

Zhou Tan coughed once, his voice weak: “His Majesty… never knew.”

The corner of Bo Ying’s mouth curled up in a mocking expression. “Did he really love his own son? Shouldn’t it have been ‘the Empress’s own child’ that he loved?”

“Physician Bo,” Qu You called to him, her voice trembling. She still didn’t know how to address him now, so she fell back on the old title. “I know you carry hatred in your heart, but even now… it’s not truly impossible to clear your name. There are still those who knew the truth back then, and Ziqian—”

“Qu You, you don’t need to comfort me with pretty words.” Bo Ying spoke slowly, using her given name for the first time. “From the moment I learned my true identity and set my grand scheme in motion to usurp the throne, there was no turning back. Do you think Ziqian would ever let me live? You and I both know the answer to that.”

“But don’t you have the Li family’s army under your command? Didn’t you and Xishao have old ties as well? At worst, you could flee—run to the ends of the earth and never come back.” Qu You gripped Zhou Tan’s arm tightly, her voice hoarse. “Wouldn’t it be better… to stay alive?”

Bo Ying let out a scornful laugh but didn’t answer her. Instead, he turned to Zhou Tan. “I originally meant to drive a wedge between you and Ziqian, but you two were a step ahead of me—feigning discord from the very moment of his enthronement, fooling me completely. I must say, you truly were my match. Ziqian trusted me so completely back then, and yet you never let slip a single word.”

“So you originally planned to eliminate both me and Little Yan at once, so that with the court thrown into chaos, only Ziqian would be left standing…”

“That’s right,” Bo Ying admitted readily. “A wet-behind-the-ears child—what threat could he possibly pose?”

Qu You, both anxious and furious, said, “He trusted you so much, and you—”

“What’s the point of saying all this? The plan has fallen through anyway,” Bo Ying said, clapping his hands and laughing loudly. “You all calculated so precisely—how could I possibly lead troops away in escape now? All I can do is go down fighting, so I lured you here.”

His laughter faded, and his voice turned sinister. “Zhou Tan, do you know—when you introduced Ai Disheng to me, when I first laid eyes on Song Shixuan—I wanted to kill you right then and there. If not for you, with only Zhou Yan, only Su Chaoci, and those pedantic scholars at court, none of them could have driven me to the state I’m in now.”

Zhou Tan pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m honored.”

Bo Ying drew from his sleeve something like a fuse and said calmly, “But it doesn’t matter now. You, your wife, and Zhou Yan and the little Emperor who’ll be coming to find you soon—you’ll all die here today. Even if I have no chance left in this life to return to the right path, I’ll drag you all down to hell with me.”

The moment he finished speaking, a faint sound came from the wall behind them, growing louder—clearly the sound of many people arriving outside the chamber.

“Ha ha ha ha… they’re here.” Bo Ying narrowed his eyes, sounding thoroughly pleased. “Zhou Tan, you have the ability to turn the world upside down—what can you do now?”

Qu You swept her gaze around the chamber, her heart turning to ice.

Ever since they’d fallen down here, something had felt wrong to her—this strange fragrance was too strong, diluting the pungent smell that should have filled the air.

The shallow waterway running along the outer edge of the chamber, long unused, had taken on an inky black color. She’d assumed it was simply grime, but now she realized—it was likely oil for burning, planted here by Bo Ying in advance!

Back when Li Yuanjun had blown up the main hall of Xiuqing Temple, oil for burning had been buried beforehand in just the same way.

Bo Ying’s talk of “dying together” clearly wasn’t just words. Imperial mausoleums had always been deep and enclosed—with this much oil, even if the explosion didn’t kill them, the smoke would.

She was still racking her brain for a way to escape when she heard Zhou Tan beside her let out a soft laugh. “What can I do, what will I do? The moment you seized my wife and lured me here, I already knew how this would end.”

“Yes, yes,” Bo Ying repeated, gripping the fuse tightly in his hand. “You possess talent beyond compare, riding high on success, your whole life fulfilled—no matter what circumstance you’re in, you can turn the tide. Even lying on a sickbed, with just a few words, you managed to help Song Shixuan successfully persuade the nobles of Jiangnan. Everything I once feared, everything I thought I could never accomplish, you’ve accomplished with ease. And I—I could only resort to something as vile as seizing your wife, just to trap you here. Isn’t that remark of yours mocking me for having no other way?”

Zhou Tan still wore that mocking yet pitying smile, and said nothing in response.

Qu You found herself drifting into thought at an odd moment. Ever since she’d known Zhou Tan, he seemed to have this strange power—everyone around him could always be stirred to strong emotion by just a few of his words. Just now, for instance, a single simple sentence had clearly set Bo Ying off.

When a person grows agitated, they develop weaknesses—even she understood that much.

And Zhou Tan continued on, unhurried: “Do you really think you can kill me today?”

Bo Ying gave a cold laugh, unbothered.

“Aren’t you curious why the Crown Princess Consort acted so abruptly, without your permission?”

Qu You suddenly recalled that when Bo Ying had first seen Li Yuanjun earlier, he’d said something like “you were too impatient.”

“You all weren’t supposed to act so soon, but I couldn’t wait any longer. If I’d given you more time, you would have seen through the plan between me and His Majesty—and that wouldn’t have done. Back then you were willing to believe it precisely because Luo Jiangting was secretly passing you information. If she’d had even half your intelligence, she probably wouldn’t have urged Li Yuanjun to act so hastily—she wanted nothing more than to go on living comfortably as Noble Consort.”

“You were so certain His Majesty would grow suspicious of me—probably because of that piece of information you had planted, wasn’t it?”

At this, Qu You glanced at Zhou Tan in some surprise.

Even she hadn’t known about this piece of information he spoke of.

“You—”

Bo Ying’s expression finally changed drastically. He staggered back two steps as if he could no longer support himself, understanding dawning on him, his voice growing urgent and trembling. “That piece of information—”

Zhou Tan cut in. “That’s right, that piece of information was something I fed to you myself. Did you really think that something no one had managed to uncover in all these years would come to you so easily, if I hadn’t chosen to let it slip?”

“You madman…” Bo Ying flung his sleeves back, spinning in place twice, unable to stop himself from cursing. “How dare you… how dare you…”

“The confession you had someone write out was already switched by me before it ever entered the palace,” Zhou Tan said. “What His Majesty read that night, and burned in front of Luo Jiangting, was nothing but a blank sheet of paper.”

Bo Ying gave a strange, twisted laugh. “So in the end, you were afraid after all.”

“Afraid of what?” Zhou Tan sighed, speaking with utter sincerity. “Didn’t A’Lian already tell you all my plans? I won’t live much longer anyway—why would I still care about any of this?”

He deliberately weighted the word “live,” and Bo Ying caught his meaning, his face turning even paler.

“Fine, fine—you’ve calculated everything down to the last detail. Since that’s the case, then surely you don’t care about dying here today either!”

Zhou Tan laughed heartily, helping Qu You up from the ground. “I have things I still need to do, places I still need to go. When I die is for me alone to decide! You—what can you possibly do to me?”

The moment his words fell, a dark shadow suddenly lunged from the side. Caught completely off guard, his mind in disarray, Bo Ying found himself pinned in a tight grip before he knew it. The two of them tumbled together down the golden stairs from the high platform at the center of the mausoleum.

Zhou Yang seized Bo Ying’s wrist—the one holding the fuse—with one hand, and pressed down on his shoulder with the other, shouting rapidly, “Brother, count eight golden bricks along the right-hand side, and press the center of that one!”

Qu You, quick of eye and hand, didn’t wait for Zhou Tan to move—she counted the bricks herself as instructed and pressed it. Sure enough, the sealed chamber slowly began to open along a ventilation shaft, revealing another long passage beyond.

Seeing the two of them about to escape, Bo Ying flew into a rage of humiliation, abandoning all restraint. He hurled the fuse in his hand to one side, grappling with Zhou Yang as they neared the passage, then yanked the iron hairpin from his own hair and used it to shatter the eternal lamp mounted on the wall.

The oil-fed flame of the eternal lamp burst apart like scattering fireworks, sparks flying in every direction. The fuse caught fire, and along with the oil for burning that soaked the surroundings, a handful of tiny sparks burst into flame in an instant.