Zhou Heshuo had never in his life felt this terrified. He was extremely wary by nature; wherever he went, someone would have already cleared the area in advance, and the guards accompanying him were never fewer than ten. Even when relieving himself, two rows of men would stand outside the door.
But now, confined by imperial decree, the Anhe Palace was nowhere near as grand as the Eastern Palace, and the guards at his disposal numbered only a dozen or so. To prevent word from leaking out, he’d sent even those away to stand watch outside, keeping only two trusted servants close by.
Just these two servants—a moment ago they’d still seemed to be his own people, but looking again now, they were entirely unfamiliar faces.
He should have seen it coming.
Zhou Heshuo struggled to look toward Shen Zhiluo, his eyes full of hatred.
A servant who had once betrayed his master—how could he ever truly be trusted? Back when Yin Ninghuai went to his death, Shen Zhiluo could claim he was simply following the mandate of heaven by switching allegiance to him. Now, naturally, he could just as easily read the wind and betray again.
Only, Zhou Heshuo couldn’t understand—his own situation could still be salvaged, unlike Yin Ninghuai’s dead end. Why would Shen Zhiluo abandon him too?
The two servants’ grip was immense, smothering him nearly to the point of suffocation. Zhou Heshuo struggled in vain, his face flushing crimson, veins bulging at his neck. Just before he passed out, the hands over his mouth and nose suddenly loosened.
Someone held a small, delicate porcelain vial and poured a mouthful of something cold into him.
Choking as he swallowed it down, Zhou Heshuo focused his eyes and saw it was that woman in men’s clothing from before, holding the vial in one hand, the other pinching her sleeve cuff, her posture composed and elegant—not like some phantom of the night at all, but more like the lady of some noble household.
Lady?
His mind wavered for a moment, and Zhou Heshuo suddenly remembered: “The Li family’s Madam Yin.”
Huayue smiled and nodded to him. “This is the third time we’ve met, Your Highness. If there has been any impropriety, I hope you’ll forgive it.”
A strange taste spread through his mouth. Zhou Heshuo’s eyes bulged with fury as he glared at her, coughing out, “I have only my own mercy to blame. The first time we met, I should never have let you go.”
Back then, the trembling little maidservant had been timid and fearful, like a lost little lamb, stirring pity in him. Who could have imagined that this very lamb would now stand before him, watching him with the calm gaze one might give a corpse.
“The imperial house of Great Wei has held ancient teachings since antiquity—never underestimate a daughter of the house.” Pinching her handkerchief, Huayue gently wiped away the medicine residue at the corner of his mouth, then sighed. “Though I am the most useless of the little daughters of the House of Yin, I still carry the blood of the High Ancestor in my veins. The House of Yin never leaves a wrong unavenged. When you killed Yin Ninghuai, Your Highness, you should have known this day would come.”
Yin Ninghuai. Still Yin Ninghuai.
Zhou Heshuo stared at her, trembling, unsure whether he should be more astonished that the House of Yin had survivors left, or more resigned to the fact that he would, in the end, lose to Yin Ninghuai after all.
A tearing pain surged up from his abdomen straight to his heart. He gasped, and still unwilling to accept it, asked, “What is Yin Ninghuai to you?”
The joss paper in the courtyard brazier had burned down to ash, only the last wisp of flame remaining, licking at the fading edges.
Huayue stared at that last flame, and suddenly recalled the time Yin Ninghuai had come to see her before departing for Guanshan.
The two of them had never exchanged kind words when they met, and even then, with the nation about to fall and the enemy army pressing close, Yin Ninghuai had still spoken to her fiercely: “Give me the nameplate. You were never in the House of Yin’s genealogy to begin with. Even if the sky falls, it won’t fall on you.”
“I’m willing to bear it. What’s it to you?” She’d gripped the nameplate tightly, eyes red as she glared at him.
“You can’t bear it.” He’d seized her hand and wrenched the nameplate away, scolding her sternly. “Get as far away as you can. You little bastard, unfit to live in the forbidden palace, unfit to enter the imperial mausoleum in death. Even if I fail to hold Guanshan this time and the enemy comes to settle scores with the House of Yin, you’ll still be nameless, without status.”
With that, he’d pushed her away, put on his armor, tucked his helmet under his arm, and clutched her nameless nameplate as he strode out the hall door without looking back.
So many years had passed, but Huayue still remembered the clanging sound of his armor as he walked away, remembered how the light outside had stretched his shadow long, remembered how the hand gripping the nameplate had trembled uncontrollably.
Back then, she’d actually wanted so badly to call out to him. But she never managed to say it.
“Imperial Brother.”
The wind swept through the courtyard, and the last flicker of flame in the brazier died out with her voice, sending up a wisp of blue smoke that curled and drifted, dissolving into the night sky.
Huayue stood stunned for a moment, then steadied herself and said it again: “He is my imperial brother.”
Zhou Heshuo stared at her, unable to believe it, shaking his head reflexively. “Impossible. Not a single one of you from the House of Yin remains. I had this investigated.”
“Someone was sent to investigate, yes,” Shen Zhiluo said, nodding. “It’s just unfortunate that the man sent for that task wasn’t loyal enough—once tainted by wine, women, and wealth, he cast Your Highness’s orders aside.”
“…” Realizing who had been responsible for the sabotage, Zhou Heshuo glared at him, eyes bloodshot. “I never treated you poorly. Whatever Yin Ninghuai could have given you, I gave you in equal measure. Why would you betray me!”
Shen Zhiluo looked back at him calmly, fingers idly turning his compass, his gaze flicking briefly toward Huayue.
“There is one thing, Your Highness, that you never gave this servant. Only the eldest prince gave it to me.”
“What?”
“Trust.” he said softly. “The eldest prince of the House of Yin was accomplished in both letters and arms, with the whole world in his heart. He doubted no one he trusted, and trusted no one he doubted. He knew I would never betray him—that is why, before his death, he had me switch my allegiance to Great Liang.”
His pupils contracted. Zhou Heshuo shook his head. “Impossible. You were clearly following the mandate of heaven—”
He trailed off, even he found the words foolish now. What mandate of heaven, what fear of death—Shen Zhiluo had planned for revenge from the very beginning, just like all those who had never stopped attempting assassinations against him over the years. Shen Zhiluo, too, had remained loyal to Yin Ninghuai. He could buy a person’s service, but he could never buy their heart.
Rage overtaking him, Zhou Heshuo felt his head spin, his legs unsteady, and he staggered before collapsing into a seated position in the courtyard, bracing his forehead as he gasped for breath.
Huayue crouched down beside him and asked quietly, “Was it you who forced my imperial brother to write that letter of surrender?”
During the chaos between Liang and Wei, Zhou Heshuo, prince of the Liang dynasty, had captured Yin Ninghuai, prince of Great Wei, alive at Guanshan. Yin Ninghuai wrote a letter of surrender, betraying his country and colluding with the enemy, which had allowed the gates of the capital to be thrown open, bringing suffering to its people.
Recalling this, Zhou Heshuo still found it satisfying. “He wrote it himself—who could have forced him? Hahaha, your imperial brother was a traitor to his nation. Even in death, I remain a rightful and dignified Crown Prince, while he is a traitor, one to be cursed by future generations!”
“At the time, he deceived the eldest prince,” Shen Zhiluo suddenly spoke up. “He promised the eldest prince that if he wrote the letter of surrender, not a single hair on the heads of the capital’s people would be touched. The eldest prince believed him, and that was why he wrote it.”
Who could have known this man was a hypocrite through and through—taking that letter of surrender, plastering it all over the capital, and sparing not a single old man, woman, or child.
When the eldest prince died, Shen Zhiluo had been standing right there in the room. Following Yin Ninghuai’s instructions, he hadn’t dared show the slightest trace of grief or reluctance, forced to watch helplessly as Zhou Heshuo did the deed. After the eldest prince’s death, Zhou Heshuo had lavished praise and rewards upon him, commending his act of righteousness in prioritizing duty over personal loyalty—which was why people later said Yin Ninghuai had been killed by a trusted subordinate.
But they both knew—no one from Great Wei could ever bear to lay a hand on the eldest prince.
Huayue listened in silence, then looked up at him. “Did it hurt, when my imperial brother died?”
Shen Zhiluo’s eyes suddenly reddened.
She gazed at him steadily for a moment, then pressed her lips together and nodded, smiling as she turned to Zhou Heshuo. “Does Your Highness know what is most taboo in your Great Liang?”
An inexplicable chill spread through him, mixing with the searing, tearing pain in his abdomen. Zhou Heshuo’s brow furrowed deeply, sweat now soaking his entire head.
“A subject killing his sovereign, a son killing his father,” he said through gritted teeth, glaring at Shen Zhiluo. “This is… a subject killing his sovereign.”
The last few words had barely left his mouth when his vision began to whiten. Zhou Heshuo thrashed unwillingly, refusing to accept that he would die like this—he was the Crown Prince of Great Liang, destined to be its future emperor, with so much left undone, so much gold and silver left unspent. How could it all end here.
Bracing himself with what strength remained, he began crawling desperately toward the door, but he’d barely managed two steps before the pain surged through him like a tide, as though a thousand needles were boring into his flesh, or ten thousand insects gnawing their way out from within his organs.
Watching coldly as the man rolled in the mud, his fine silks soiling, half-mad, Huayue calmly picked up more joss paper, lit it, and placed it into the brazier.
“This is for the people of Great Wei.”
“This is for my imperial brother.”
“This is for my mother the Empress.”
She murmured this as she fed paper into the brazier, the fire roaring higher, twisting and writhing in pain just like the man struggling on the ground.
The joss paper burned for half an hour, and Zhou Heshuo struggled for that same half hour. After half an hour, the fire died down and the man’s breath ceased, wisps of blue smoke mingling with burnt ash drifting out over the walls of Anhe Palace.
The Double Ninth Festival should have been a fine day for climbing heights and gazing into the distance, but the capital was far from peaceful these days. The Emperor had gone out during the day to pay respects at the ancestral tombs, and returning at dusk, encountered an assassination attempt along the way. Though it ended without serious harm, having one’s own life threatened was never a pleasant thing.
Then, back at the palace, the Central Palace suddenly reported that the Crown Prince had been caught red-handed burning joss paper in the Anhe Palace.
Burning paper offerings without proper ceremony was already considered disrespectful to the Emperor—all the more so for someone of the Crown Prince’s status, burning paper on the very day of the Double Ninth Festival. Enraged, the Emperor immediately set out to interrogate him, only to find, upon searching, a spirit tablet inscribed with the Emperor’s birth data, a completed dragon robe and imperial seal, and a cold corpse.
“The Crown Prince was performing a private sacrifice and was discovered by palace attendants. He ordered the two attendants killed to silence them, but the commotion grew too large and drew the attention of the Imperial Guards, who uncovered the arrangement in the courtyard. His Highness the Crown Prince then took poison on the spot, leaving behind only a letter written in blood, pleading for the Emperor to spare the concubines of the Eastern Palace.”
The Empress reported the matter in full, presenting the evidence one by one for the Emperor’s inspection.
A son harboring intentions to kill his father—even taking his own life to escape guilt would surely provoke the Emperor’s wrath.
“Consider it Yin Ninghuai’s return gift to His Highness the Crown Prince,” Huayue said, seated in Shen Zhiluo’s carriage, watching the palace walls recede outside, a faint, ambiguous smile on her face. “Whether Yin Ninghuai was truly a traitor or not, future generations will judge. But a Crown Prince caught red-handed plotting against his own father—surely even in death, he won’t be permitted into the imperial mausoleum.”
“Didn’t my young mistress once say she’d be at odds with the eldest prince for the rest of this life?” Shen Zhiluo raised an eyebrow.
Huayue gave a cold laugh. “Indeed. And look—wasn’t it me who won out in the end? That fool, Yin Ninghuai…”
Her voice trailed off toward the end, and she swallowed the rest of her words, pressing her lips together as she touched the nameplate at her waist.