For that one moment, he was bewildered, and it took quite a while before he reacted. His back suddenly broke out in a cold sweat, and he lowered his head to kneel.
Tie Yan pulled him back up.
The Emperor seemed to have just casually said that sentence, still speaking carelessly: “You old thing, what are you doing? Your knees went soft before you’ve even reached that age? Quickly lower the curtains, I’m tired.”
The eunuch hurriedly tucked in the corners of his bedding, lowered the golden hooks, and tiptoed out.
After leaving the sleeping chamber, he touched the cold sweat on his back. Standing under the eaves, he pondered for a long while but still couldn’t figure out what the Emperor’s attitude had been just now.
He had served by the Emperor’s side for many years. The puppet emperor of the past had one appearance, and the current Emperor didn’t seem to have changed much, but how could someone who had been a puppet for years, suddenly freed and regaining great power with his status and mindset completely overturned, still be the same as before?
He waited for a while, making sure Tie Yan was sound asleep inside, before leaving the palace gates. After turning a corner, someone was waiting for him in the shadows.
The other person was a secretary from the Inner Cabinet, specifically responsible for delivering memorials to His Majesty’s Crown Princess. When His Majesty had inquired about where the memorials went earlier, this secretary had come specifically to explain.
The eunuch stopped and told him everything that had happened earlier in detail, every sentence, every word.
After listening, the secretary said nothing, only silently handed over a money pouch, which the eunuch skillfully accepted.
The eunuch returned to Chongming Palace, and the secretary also returned to the Inner Cabinet duty room. By lamplight, he hastily wrote a letter and gave it to his companion who served in the front court. The companion went to the palace gates, found a familiar night-duty guard, and handed over the letter.
The next morning at dawn, someone entered through the side gate of the Rong residence. Before long, this letter was placed on Rong Luchuan’s study desk.
Withered fingers picked up the letter, casually glanced at it, and casually tossed it into the nearby brazier.
Turning to the advisor beside him, he smiled: “The fish seems to have taken the bait.”
The advisor said: “Congratulations, Master.”
Rong Luchuan smiled and shook his head. The advisor said softly: “Master said this plan could only be used when the Crown Princess had just returned to the palace, and would only be effective at this moment. After that, what does Master plan to do…?”
“Plan? I have no plans.” Rong Luchuan stood up, put on his official hat, and prepared for court.
The advisor looked confused.
“Why must there be plans? The Iron family’s target isn’t me anyway.” Rong Luchuan said indifferently, “The Rong family has always only wanted self-preservation, maintaining our status without decline, ensuring family continuity. Whether the Xiao family falls or not is fine, as long as when they fall, they don’t crush the Rong family’s feet.”
He walked forward, and the advisor carefully moved aside to make way.
Outside the window, the sky was overcast, as if always gathering for snow.
Rong Luchuan stopped at the threshold, didn’t turn back, and said softly: “Remember, court politics is like medicine – observation, listening, inquiry, and palpation come first. All affairs, personnel movements, rumors and gossip, spider silk traces and horse tracks – collect them all in your heart, only then can you glimpse where the root problem lies, whether to nourish the essence, strengthen the foundation, extract poison, or attack directly. What medicine to use, you must first see how severe the illness is.”
The advisor asked: “What if there’s no illness?”
“People eat grains, and politics comes from many sources. How could there be no illness?” Rong Luchuan got into the warm sedan that had been waiting, turned his head with a sneer, “If needed, even when there’s no illness, make it sick. Last night and today, wasn’t that exactly it?”
…
Tie Ci only slept at the ugly hour that night. The next day there was no grand court assembly, but she still couldn’t sleep in, because at the mao hour the Inner Cabinet sent memorials over. Tie Ci thought that her father could sleep in today, and cheerfully accepted the task.
In Chongming Palace, Tie Yan had awakened early, after all, rising early each day to review memorials had become a habit. The palace servants outside the sleeping chamber had already prepared to serve the Emperor’s morning routine, but today Tie Yan didn’t get up quickly. After quietly listening to the sounds of Chongming Palace for a while and confirming there were no urgent footsteps of Inner Cabinet officials delivering memorials as there were every morning, he closed his eyes again.
His personal eunuch quietly walked along the covered corridor, waving his hand to signal everyone to withdraw.
Chongming Palace emerged from the recent bustle and returned to the quietude of two years ago.
The Emperor, who didn’t need to rise early, slept in. After getting up, he also acted contrary to his usual routine and didn’t summon important ministers for discussions. But the movements of the important ministers quickly spread throughout the palace, saying that early in the morning, Chief Minister Rong had entered the palace, bringing the Inner Cabinet’s Grand Secretaries to Ruixiang Hall to meet with the Crown Princess for discussions.
When Tie Yan heard about this, he had just gotten up. Upon hearing this, he stretched lazily and said nothing.
Ciren Palace was also very quiet, and this quietude had begun after Tie Ci’s last return to the capital.
When Tie Ci had just gone to Yannan, there had been a few small disturbances in the palace, but because the Emperor’s and Noble Consort Jing’s palaces were heavily guarded, they hadn’t succeeded. These small actions all vaguely pointed toward Ciren Palace. Since then, Tie Yan simply used the excuse that the Empress Dowager was ill to seal Ciren Palace, not allowing anyone from Ciren Palace to enter or exit. Xiao Liheng naturally protested and requested to visit the Empress Dowager, but now all the scholars in the court and even the entire capital followed He Zi’s lead. He Zi struck first, publicly declaring that the Empress Dowager had fallen ill from anger due to her natal family’s improper conduct, and if the Xiao family still cared even a bit about the Empress Dowager, they shouldn’t disturb her peaceful recovery.
With such a huge hat of filial piety pressed down, the Xiao family could only stop outside the inner palace.
The Empress Dowager was also surprisingly well-behaved. After several failed attempts at probing, she seemed to have given up.
At this moment, she was sitting at her dressing table personally doing her hair, not having called in the hairdressing palace maids. After all, with such long days, trapped in this small acre of Ciren Palace, if she didn’t find something to do herself, she’d grow moldy from boredom.
She combed her long hair stroke by stroke. At her age, she still had hair as black as clouds. After all, in her time, she had been famous throughout the six palaces for being good at maintaining her appearance and dressing well, deeply beloved by the late Emperor. With this skill, she had stubbornly outlasted many concubines younger than herself.
The comb fell from the crown of her head and glided smoothly down. The Empress Dowager looked down at the table surface. Sunlight came through the gaps in the window lattice, divided by the window frame into grid-like sections on the table like prison bars. She knew that when it moved from the first bar to the last bar, this day would be almost over.
This year was almost over too.
She suddenly threw down the comb, stood up, and walked outside.
A layer of faint black hair had fallen on the floor, and her long skirt hem swept over it.
She stood under the covered corridor, looking through layer upon layer of palace gates at the tightly closed main gate of Ciren Palace.
This gate would not open, only a small door at the side gate that a person couldn’t crawl through remained open for passing out miscellaneous items and bringing in meals.
Like a dog hole.
At the dog hole entrance, there was a full squad of the Crown Princess’s Nine Guards standing watch day and night.
Ostensibly to protect the Empress Dowager, but the Empress Dowager knew they even carried crossbows on their backs.
She believed they would shoot and kill anyone or anything that crossed over the walls of Ciren Palace.
Including herself.
These vicious dogs, carrying Tie Ci’s orders in their hearts, and her nominally good granddaughter would never give up any chance to kill her.
When Tie Ci left Yannan, the Crown Princess’s Nine Guards had just seized control of the palace prohibition using the spring examination incident. Initially, they rotated guard duty in the rear palace together with the Baize Guard, and she had infiltrated the Baize Guard over many years – many of them were her people.
At that time, she could still sleep peacefully, but that old dog Xia Houchun, using the Crown Princess’s authority and Di Yiwei’s help, first organized a grand military competition, using the Blood Cavalry and Scorpion Camp elites that Di Yiwei had left in the capital to injure many palace guard leaders belonging to the Xiao family faction. Then he used this opportunity to purge and replace officers under the pretext that the Baize Guard was incompetent, arranging Blood Cavalry and Scorpion Camp elites into the defenses inside and outside the imperial city, occupying important middle-level positions. The Baize Guard was also largely replaced.
After that came scattered reassignments, personnel re-screening and supplementation. After several rounds, there were almost no Xiao family people left among the palace guards.
After changing the guards came changing the servants in each palace. This time it was people from Ruixiang Hall working together with Tie Ci’s childhood friend Gu Xiaoxiao, using various pretexts to replace almost all the palace maids in her Ciren Palace.
Only the people close to her, whom she had brought from her natal family, couldn’t be touched without suitable reasons. Her close attendants could only speak and act cautiously, not even daring to take large steps when walking, fearing that one careless moment would give someone cause to seize upon, and from then on they’d have to leave Ciren Palace.
Although her close attendants were still there, without all those minor pawns, conducting business became extremely inconvenient.
More terrifyingly, even with Tie Ci not in the capital, her eyes were always watching the palace prohibition. She and her dogs never gave up the idea of killing her.
Her food had been poisoned, she had encountered assassins three times – she hadn’t gone anywhere in the palace, yet assassins came running toward her, and the Nine Guards who normally wouldn’t even blink while guarding the gates were nowhere to be found that day.
If not for Sang Tang’s presence, if not for her having every meal sent to Sang Tang first, she probably would have died long ago.
But those days, those sleepless days and nights of fear and terror, still broke her down.
She climbed up Caixing Tower, the highest point in Ciren Palace, holding a torch, crying and making a scene about burning down the palace, finally forcing the Emperor to rush over in haste.
The main gate of Ciren Palace, which had been closed for two months, finally opened. Inside the palace was confinement, outside was freedom.
The Emperor stood on that dividing line. Now, the one with freedom to come and go was him, and the one who had become a puppet was herself.
Before climbing the tower, she had forced herself to stay awake for two solid nights, making herself look utterly haggard, so that when the Emperor saw her, he was beyond shocked.
For the first time, she abandoned her dignity as Empress Dowager, hugged the Emperor’s legs and wept bitterly. She begged him to consider their past nurturing relationship and simply grant her death, rather than leave her to suffer day and night in this hellish Ciren Palace, enduring daily fear and threats of death.
The Emperor couldn’t believe it.
Seeing the Emperor’s expression, she knew that indeed Tie Ci had been doing these things behind the Emperor’s back.
She was a wolf that had lurked for years, with poisonous claws and fangs, striking once to take a life.
She fed the remaining poisoned food to cats and dogs, and a ground full of dead cats and dogs made Tie Yan’s eyes fill with shock.
She showed Tie Yan the palace wall that had been pierced by an assassin’s sword. She knelt at the Emperor’s feet, tearfully recounting the warm moments they had shared as mother and son, remembering how she had protected him when he was bullied by favored concubines, apologizing for being led astray by the Xiao family’s greed, and swearing to be well-behaved from now on.
She told him that in all those previous years, she had indeed done wrong, but she had never thought of taking the lives of the Emperor and Tie Ci, otherwise the father and daughter could not have remained safe until now.
Why must His Majesty insist on matricide, without fearing that history’s brush would be sharp as a knife?
That afternoon of weeping exhausted all her strength and wisdom. In the end, although the Emperor didn’t agree to open Ciren Palace or withdraw the guards, he promised not to harm her life.
After that, indeed, there was no more poisoning, and no more assassins.
Life seemed to return to tranquility, but the fire in her heart kept burning.
She would never forget that day on Caixing Tower, the humiliation of crying and begging for mercy at Tie Yan’s feet.
The Empress Dowager’s gaze slowly fell on the corner of the wall, where there was a water channel. Palace maids were pouring rouge-tinted wash water into it, and the water would swell with a greasy apricot-red color.
She withdrew her gaze. Though there was no movement, cold air pressed from behind.
She knew that Sang Tang had emerged from his ice house.
She turned back into the hall, Sang Tang following behind her, their two shadows long and winding across the threshold.
Behind her, he said in a hoarse voice: “I had another dream last night.”
“I dreamed he was walking in a jungle, surrounded by countless venomous snakes and fierce beasts. He sat in a tree combing his hair, his hair had grown long, like a black river flowing down from the giant tree… I want to go find him, to this place full of trees and poisonous beasts.”
The Empress Dowager whirled around.
For an instant, her eyes were filled with terror.
No, he couldn’t!
Even her voice became shrill: “It’s just a dream, how can you take it seriously!”
Sang Tang said: “But I’ve waited too long. Every time you say you’ve heard news, but every time we can’t find him… He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“How could he be dead?” The Empress Dowager took a breath and said gently, “He was the strongest among you all back then. With his abilities, what force in this world could kill him?”
Sang Tang smiled coldly, pointing to his own heart: “You haven’t seen that kind of thing, so don’t say such words. I’m not much weaker than him, but if not for my heart growing crooked, I would have died long ago.”
“You’re lying to me, aren’t you? You’ve been lying to me all along…” Sang Tang said, “Chi Fengli is dead, Guihai Sheng is dead. They escaped with their lives back then, lived in remote coastal regions, never emerged for their entire lives, spending a lifetime healing their wounds. In the end, they still died. One died by lightning, one hid in fire.”
“No… no… How can the Guihai couple compare to you? They would die, but you didn’t die, so Duanmu definitely won’t die…”
“Even if he doesn’t die, he’s probably like the Guihai couple and me, shrunk in some place unable to move… Then you can’t find him, and I’m shrunk here with you, so how can we meet again in this lifetime? Or even if we do meet, he probably wouldn’t want to see me like this, cowering in a woman’s rear palace, being a woman’s hired muscle to survive, never seeing daylight, living like a dog…”
A trace of weariness appeared between Sang Tang’s brows.
Originally, he had pinned his hopes on this woman who possessed the greatest power in the world to help him find him.
But many years had passed, hope arising again and again, disappointment again and again.
Later, when he saw Pingzong and moved into the ice house she made, he could finally look at the light of this world.
Pingzong would occasionally come to see him, reinforcing his ice house. Sitting inside, he thought for a long time.
He thought of Pingzong saying that before Chi Fengli died, his eyes shone with longing for freedom.
He found it ridiculous.
How did the Three Madmen and Five Emperors who once dominated the world all end up living like dogs, desperately clinging to life?
When disappointment came again, he suddenly thought, let it be so.
Leave this place.
Walk in sunlight, travel through mountains and rivers to find him. If one day he died on the journey, at least he would die under sunlight, in the heavenly wind, die on the road searching for him.
Better than shrinking in a corner for life, never seeing old friends, never seeing sunlight.
“I’m leaving.” Sang Tang said wearily, “Take care of yourself.”
“Don’t!” The Empress Dowager grabbed his sleeve in terror, “Don’t you want your life! Can you even get out!”
Sang Tang raised his hand. Sunlight fell on his nearly transparent fingertips. He said: “What I fear has never been death.”
“But if you leave, you’ll truly never have hope of seeing him again!”
“There was never any hope to begin with, was there?” Sang Tang said indifferently, “Now I hope to die under sunlight.”
His sleeve suddenly slipped from the Empress Dowager’s tightly gripping fingers, and in the next instant he was already floating on the roof like a black cloud.
The Empress Dowager knelt in despair on the cold cloud-patterned brick floor, her fingers clawing tight into the cracks between floor tiles. Her heart beat too urgently, she used too much force, her nails split without her knowing.
She only knew that if she didn’t keep him, she would truly be finished.
The black cloud moved slightly.
“He’s in Yannan! He’s in Yannan!”
The black cloud stopped, but then Sang Tang laughed mockingly, “You’ve said he was in Yannan before, but we didn’t find him. You’ve also said he was in Jiusui, in Yongliang, in Liaodong… You just point to wherever is remote, right!”
“This time it’s true, truly in Yannan!” The Empress Dowager’s nails were about to split, her throat about to split too.
“Fine, then I’ll go to Yannan to find him.” Sang Tang said, “Someone mocked me, saying that a dignified grandmaster still needs help to find people. I think what she said makes perfect sense.”
“You won’t find him!”
Sang Tang’s eyes suddenly turned fierce as they looked down.
“He’s already been secretly murdered by Tie Ci!”
…
**Author’s Note**: Medical diagnostic techniques – observation (looking), listening (hearing sounds), inquiry (asking questions), and palpation (feeling pulse/touching). This refers to the traditional Chinese medicine approach to diagnosis, which Rong Luchuan uses as a metaphor for political intelligence gathering and analysis.