On the night when the five great merchant families of Shengdu completely changed hands, the light snow in Shengdu turned into heavy snow.
A single rider galloped through the snow into the palace, the red flag on the knight’s shoulder like a fiery arrow against the pure white expanse, shooting into the heart of this imperial city and the center of the entire realm.
The Ruixiang Palace had just lit its lamps when Tie Ci unfolded the secret message and let out a long sigh of relief.
The messenger was surprisingly Zhao San. As one of the chief managers of Shengdu’s shops, he had been so busy lately that his eye sockets were deeply sunken and his complexion had turned dark and sickly. Even so, he had come in person.
Since Tie Ci’s last hurried return to Shengdu, she had only caught a brief glimpse and hadn’t paid much attention to Zhao San, only remembering that his complexion wasn’t very good. Looking at him now, she was momentarily stunned and said, “Zhao San, you’ve become even thinner than before.”
Zhao San immediately became awkward, stealing a glance at Chi Xue who was standing below the dais smiling at him, and stammered, “Your Highness, I’m fine…”
Seeing that he was speaking to her but his eyes were fixed on Chi Xue, Tie Ci found it amusing and didn’t let him leave. She continued, “I heard you were released by Prince Da’an and were previously under house arrest in Ruzhou. Did you suffer any hardships?”
Zhao San hesitated, glanced at Chi Xue again, then said, “It wasn’t much… there were some lingering effects from illness, but the Young Master personally helped me resolve them during this period. The Young Master…”
He stopped mid-sentence. With Tie Ci’s keen perception, she immediately asked, “What about Murong Yi?”
Zhao San didn’t dare raise his head and said softly, “Nothing. The Young Master is very concerned about Your Highness and told me to take a good look at Your Highness so I could report back to him properly. He also asked me to tell Your Highness that the Xiao Family is doomed for certain, Your Highness can rest assured and shouldn’t overwork yourself. You must eat well and sleep well. Once he’s finished with this busy period, he’ll come to the palace to see Your Highness.”
Tie Ci stared at him and suddenly realized that during this time, her thoughts had been entirely focused on dealing with the Xiao Family, and she had overlooked Murong Yi’s abnormal behavior.
Although Murong Yi needed to orchestrate the disruption of Shengdu’s entire commercial war and was even busier than her, given his nature of daring to climb palace walls if he didn’t see her for a few hours, why hadn’t he thought to find time to see her during this past month?
In the past, he would bring her meals three times a day. Now she hadn’t eaten any pastries or dishes he made for over a month. Today when Zhao San entered the palace to deliver the message, he hadn’t even brought any food?
“What happened?”
Zhao San continued to keep his head down, shaking his head and resolutely refusing to look up.
Tie Ci knew that Zhao San wasn’t like Mu Si – he feared Murong Yi and didn’t dare disobey his instructions.
She turned to Chi Xue and said, “Oh, I almost forgot. General Qi mentioned to me the other day that he has a distant nephew who was just transferred to Shengdu as a garrison commander. He’s young and capable, and happened to see you once and was quite smitten. He asked me through General Qi for your hand in marriage.”
Zhao San’s head shot up abruptly.
Chi Xue suppressed her laughter and bowed her head, saying, “This servant belongs to Your Highness and will follow whatever Your Highness commands.”
Tie Ci nodded, “Then…”
“Your Highness, the Young Master is ill!”
Tie Ci turned to Zhao San. This fellow’s eyes were wide open, and after shouting this, he looked dejected again, saying, “Your Highness, please don’t tell the Young Master it was me who said this, in case…”
“In case you keep hiding things from me again, Chi Xue will be married off,” Tie Ci said. “How did he get sick? What illness? Is it serious? Isn’t he as strong as an ox? I’ve never seen him ill in all this time.”
“It’s all my fault,” Zhao San said quietly. “When the Great Prince released me, I had been poisoned and left with some lingering effects. While the Young Master had to work day and night dealing with the Xiao Family matters, he also had to help me expel the poison and eliminate the root cause every night… The doctor said it’s not too serious, just excessive depletion that requires proper recuperation.”
Tie Ci frowned.
Although things had indeed been pressing day and night recently, and with the added burden of detoxifying Zhao San, Murong Yi’s internal energy was incredibly profound. For him to be excessively depleted showed that Zhao San’s poison was very troublesome.
“What poison did you get?”
“I don’t know… normally I’m like any ordinary person, but when it flares up, it’s like ten thousand ants devouring my heart. I need to take the medicine the Great Prince sent to get relief. But the Young Master won’t let me take it, saying I can’t depend on the Great Prince’s medicine to live forever, saying the Great Prince’s medicine is unknown stuff but definitely has no good intentions… Actually, I’ve said many times that not removing the poison is fine, living a few years less doesn’t matter. I’m just a lowly life – why should the master damage his body for me? What if he also gets infected with my poison? But the Young Master kicked me out with one foot, saying he’s immune to all poisons and has the vitality of a dragon and tiger. He said he doesn’t want someone around him who acts like a madman when the condition flares up – either let him cure it or get lost.”
“Is it cured now?” Tie Ci seemed somewhat distracted.
Zhao San fell silent for a moment.
He felt he couldn’t explain it. His symptoms were indeed lessening, the intervals between flare-ups were getting longer, but the bone-deep agony when it did flare up remained etched in his memory.
He would go mad begging for that medicine, curling up at Murong Yi’s feet and using methods he could never have imagined before to plead and make a scene, causing such disturbances that when he recalled them afterward, he felt like it wasn’t himself at all.
The medicine was sent by the Great Prince time and again, thrown away by Murong Yi time and again in front of him. He would cry, plead, kowtow, bang his head against walls, go mad, even attempt to kill his master, causing bloodstains everywhere. Murong Yi remained unmoved until he was exhausted from the struggle and passed out. When he woke up, he would always see Murong Yi sitting cross-legged behind him, hand pressed against his back, with surging vital energy flowing like a flood, washing over the cluster of itching sensation coiled in his dantian.
Once he had acted too violently and nearly killed someone. Just then, more medicine arrived from Liaodong. Murong Yi threw the medicine into the pond right in front of him. Regardless of the bitter winter cold, he jumped in to retrieve the medicine. Murong Yi’s ferocity was aroused, and he immediately stuffed the medicine into his own mouth and swallowed it right in front of him.
The despair and shock he felt at that moment remained vivid in his memory.
After that, he endured it and stopped making scenes.
Even when his bones felt like they were being gnawed by ants, even when flames burned from his internal organs to the crown of his head, even when the pain made him want to break every bone in his body and tear out his internal organs and scatter them on the ground, he no longer made scenes.
He would tie himself up, stuff cloth in his mouth, and huddle in a corner enduring those dark nights waiting for dawn.
But in the most painful moments, there was always a surging flood in his body, smoothing the turbulent blood flow, the contracting organs, the churning dantian, through the night until dawn.
He didn’t know how much the Young Master had depleted himself, only knowing that on those nights when he thought he would die, he could always come back to life at daybreak.
Opening his eyes and turning his head, he would always see that increasingly pale face.
Whenever that happened, the guilt in his heart would surge like a tide, threatening to drown him.
He and the Young Master had grown up together since childhood. The Young Master was exceptionally gifted with outstanding intelligence, far beyond what he and Mu Si could compare to. They served as his guards, but actually couldn’t really protect him – they were just clerks and errand boys. In fact, all along, he had been the one protecting them.
In the end, he was still a burden to the Young Master.
When he was imprisoned in the jail in Ruzhou, with jailers coming to inject him with something every few days, he didn’t know what fate awaited him and had thought about dying.
But he couldn’t bear to leave the Young Master, couldn’t bear to leave the person who was now standing in the great hall looking at him with concern. He lived on shamefully, not knowing whether such shameful survival would bring misfortune to others.
Zhao San slowly clenched his fingers, his nails digging into his palms.
So many words churned in his heart, but he couldn’t say a single one.
Murong Yi had guessed he would be interrogated, guessed he couldn’t resist Tie Ci, and had said he was allowed to mention that he himself was ill, but nothing else could be said.
If he dared leak even one sentence, he would kill Chi Xue.
Zhao San knew the Young Master dared to do this.
He had no way to resist either of these two people.
He said, “…It’s already cured.”
Tie Ci hummed in acknowledgment, thinking she would summon all the imperial physicians from the Imperial Medical Academy later.
If it was really troublesome and the Imperial Medical Academy couldn’t handle it, she would bring Rong Pu back, regardless of whether he was willing or not.
The side hall of Ruixiang Palace needed to be cleaned out. It wouldn’t look good to have him openly live in the same room, and he would be unhappy about sneaking around in the middle of the night, so she might as well build a revolving wall for convenience.
The courtyard of Ruixiang Palace only had plum blossoms. Murong Yi didn’t like plum blossoms, saying they were pretentious – what good-looking flowers were there to see in the dead of winter? She should either build a greenhouse or bring some potted flowers from the greenhouse at Dianfang Studio.
She would have Chi Xue go open the storeroom right away and select some items he liked to furnish the side hall. People who were recovering needed to be in good spirits.
The court officials would object, but that was fine – she would let Zhu Yi deal with them. The rare books weren’t given for free.
Father Emperor and Mother Consort would be a bit troublesome. Well, she would just say she wanted to have a child.
No matter how displeased Father Emperor was, he wouldn’t push away a chubby grandson.
She thought through a whole bunch of things, arranging the next few months of life and subsequent reactions, then said to Zhao San, “Alright, you can go back now.”
Zhao San was surprised and puzzled, feeling indignant but not daring to speak. But then Tie Ci instructed Chi Xue, “Take people with you and go with Zhao San to bring Young Master Murong into the palace.”
She also instructed Xiao Chongzi, “Summon the Chief Medical Officer of the Imperial Medical Academy and all the physicians on duty.”
Both received their orders. Zhao San’s face immediately brightened.
Watching several people leave the great hall, Tie Ci suddenly stood up and commanded loudly, “Ladies, get moving!”
“What are Your Highness’s instructions?”
“Your Highness, what has made you so happy!”
Tie Ci waved her hand with the grandeur of mountains and rivers, “First clean out the side hall, light the braziers, change to new bedding, open the storeroom to add furnishings – jade items not porcelain, tianhuang stone not bloodstone, red sandalwood not rosewood. Also have the Ministry of Works immediately send me their best craftsmen to build a revolving wall between my bedchamber and the side hall, with orders to complete it within two days.”
The palace servants: “…Your Highness, what are you planning to do?”
Tie Ci: “I’m going to keep a beauty in a golden house!”
…
Less than an hour later, a carriage stopped in front of the palace gates. Zhao San and Chi Xue sat side by side on the driver’s seat. The palace guards hurried forward to greet them. Chi Xue showed the Crown Princess’s token, and the guards quickly bowed, then said, “Carriages cannot be driven into the palace. The Crown Princess has already given orders to send a palanquin to receive the person.”
The palace gates opened wide, and eight eunuchs carried out the purple and gold palanquin exclusively used by the Crown Princess. This had just been brought out from the storeroom and cleaned. In the past, no matter how large the imperial palace was, Tie Ci always walked on her own legs and didn’t like being carried by others.
Zhao San grinned widely and hurriedly lifted the curtain to help Murong Yi out.
The eight eunuchs were newcomers to the palace. When they looked up and saw the bearing of the person standing before the carriage, they were all momentarily stunned.
They thought no wonder the Crown Princess was so doting, going so far as to dig out this unused palanquin.
The palace guards, however, had seen this person before and sneered coldly at the entranced expressions of those eunuchs.
Some people, they thought, had the appearance of gods but the nature of demons.
Murong Yi got off the carriage and, seeing the palanquin, became even more radiant, his beauty so stunning it was almost impossible to look directly at him.
He sat on the palanquin, crossed his legs, and said smugly to the guards above, “Look, isn’t this an eight-bearer palanquin coming to welcome me?”
It happened that today’s palace guard was the same group from that night, including Captain Tian Wu.
Fat Tiger didn’t come down at all, standing on the steps with his hands tucked in his sleeves, saying to a squad leader beside him, “Too bad the Commander has been circling around Commander Di lately and won’t get to see such a grand spectacle.”
“What kind of grand spectacle is this,” the squad leader scoffed.
“You don’t understand. For Young Master Murong to be carried into Ruixiang Palace today is truly not easy. Setting aside everything else, have you ever seen someone stab themselves? No, right? Our Commander Xiahou just lacks experience. If he watched and learned more from Young Master Murong, Commander Di might have nodded long ago.”
“You little brat, what are you gossiping about me for?” Speaking of the person, Xiahou Chun’s sinister voice came from behind him.
Tian Wu wasn’t intimidated. Turning around and seeing that Di Yiwei had indeed arrived and was standing shoulder to shoulder with Xiahou Chun, he immediately grinned widely and said, “I was saying that the Commander’s sincerity can move metal and stone.”
Xiahou Chun glanced at Di Yiwei.
But Di Yiwei was looking at Murong Yi. Suddenly she walked over and reached out to lift his eyelid.
Her hand was blocked by Murong Yi, who leaned sideways on the palanquin, looked up at Di Yiwei, and smiled, “Commander, men and women should maintain proper distance.”
He seemed to be running a fever, his cheeks slightly flushed, the corners of his eyes moist and slightly red, with a hint of rosy glow sweeping into his dark hair like ice and snow covering a rainbow. This upward gaze from below was beautiful to the point of being startling.
Di Yiwei tilted her head slightly, staring into his eyes, and said slowly, “Murong Yi, did you eat something inappropriate?”