“Why did you kill Princess Yong’an?”
Through Wang Ranxi’s half-mad confession, Li Ying finally slowly unraveled the origin of the bloody case from thirty years ago.
Wang Ranxi, born into the Wang clan of Taiyuan, one of the Five Great Clans and Seven Prominent Families of the Great Zhou, had been proud and competitive since childhood. She had vowed early on that she would marry the best husband in the world. Her husband had to be handsome, talented, gentle in disposition, with kind parents-in-law, of noble birth, immensely wealthy, with limitless prospects. Most importantly, he had to be devoted to her alone, taking only her as his wife for life, so she wouldn’t have to compete with lowly concubines for his affection.
If it were anyone else, they might have been ridiculed for such wishful thinking, but who was Wang Ranxi? The legitimate daughter of the Wang clan of Taiyuan, and she actually found such a husband.
That person was her cousin, Zheng Yun, from the Zheng clan of Xingyang.
Zheng Yun’s mother was her maternal aunt. He was elegant and refined, gentle as jade, meeting all of Wang Ranxi’s requirements. Wang Ranxi was convinced that Zheng Yun was her ideal husband, so she often sought opportunities to interact with him. For a woman to use small tactics to secure a good husband was not blameworthy as long as it didn’t harm others. As a result, the feelings between Zheng Yun and Wang Ranxi deepened day by day, and they swore mountains of oaths and seas of promises, privately pledging to spend their lives together.
If the story had ended there, it would have been just another well-matched young couple in the world—a husband who was cultured and talented, a wife who was beautiful, clever, and socially adept. Under the protection of their families, their life’s journey would have been exceptionally smooth and satisfying. But unfortunately, things rarely go as planned.
Zheng Yun’s aunt, the current Empress Zheng, to please and curry favor with the Emperor, went to great lengths to praise Zheng Yun’s various merits to the Emperor, intending to make Zheng Yun the consort of Princess Yong’an. After the Emperor summoned Zheng Yun several times and was quite satisfied with his character and temperament, he issued an edict appointing Zheng Yun as the Prince Consort.
When Zheng Yun received the imperial edict, it was like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. He never imagined that the Emperor’s several summons and examinations were meant to select a consort for Princess Yong’an. How ridiculous that he had thought the Emperor was going to grant him an official position, and he had tried his best to impress, only to end up being too clever for his good.
But with the imperial edict already issued, could he possibly defy it?
Wang Ranxi couldn’t accept this. She wailed and raged, “You say you didn’t know His Majesty summoned you to choose a consort. Who could believe that?”
Zheng Yun swore vehemently, “I truly didn’t know. The Empress never told me either. Had I known, I would have hidden my talents and appeared mediocre, rather than being selected.”
Wang Ranxi sneered, “You’ve done something unconscionable, of course you would say so! You heartless, unfaithful wretch! I was blind to have misjudged you!”
Zheng Yun grew anxious, “If I truly am heartless and unfaithful, may I die without an intact corpse and my family be destroyed!”
After such a severe oath, Wang Ranxi gradually ceased her crying. She nestled in Zheng Yun’s embrace, filled with confusion about the future and hatred toward Li Ying.
If only… if only Princess Yong’an didn’t exist in this world, how good that would be.
Hearing this, Li Ying felt completely bewildered. She recalled one day when her father had her hide behind a pearl curtain to watch a gentle young man in the courtyard composing poetry and responding with eloquence. She knew her father was considering him as a husband for her. Fearing she might not be pleased, her father had specially arranged for her to observe from behind the curtain.
After the young man left, her father parted the pearl curtain and asked with a smile, “Ming Yuezhu, would this Zheng Yun be suitable as your consort?”
Her cheeks had flushed red, and she lowered her head, saying softly, “If Father has chosen him, then he must be the best husband in the world.”
She had always trusted her father and mother. Moreover, Zheng Yun’s appearance, family background, and talents were indeed impeccable. What more could she be dissatisfied with?
Her mother, however, was somewhat concerned. She and Empress Zheng had never been on good terms, and she worried that Zheng Yun might not treat her well. Her father explained to her, “Lingye, over these years, I have forcefully pushed through new policies and have offended all the prominent families in the empire. This struggle between imperial power and noble families must eventually be decided. If I win, under my protection, the Zheng family would not dare mistreat Ming Yuezhu. If I lose, as Zheng Yun’s principal wife, given Zheng Yun’s upright character and the Zheng family’s concern for their reputation as a great noble house, Ming Yuezhu’s later life would still be peaceful and not suffer because of me.”
A parent’s love for their child involves planning for the distant future. Her father had given much thought before carefully selecting Zheng Yun from thousands of candidates.
But for all her father’s calculations, he never anticipated that Zheng Yun already had someone in his heart and had privately pledged to spend his life with Wang Ranxi.
In the torture chamber, the interrogation continued. Cui Xun said, “Even if Zheng Yun became the Prince Consort, the cause was Empress Zheng’s selfish meddling. What did that have to do with the Princess? If your union with Zheng Yun couldn’t be realized, you could have simply married another worthy man. Why did you have to kill the Princess?”
“I never intended to kill her!” Wang Ranxi laughed and cried, “I am a daughter of the Wang clan of Taiyuan. Even without a husband as good as Zheng Yun, I wouldn’t have worried about finding a match. I couldn’t compete with the Princess; I could only accept my fate!”
“Then why did you kill her?”
“I wanted to give up, but… but…” Wang Ranxi sprawled on the plain patterned floor tiles. The tiles were originally green, but soaked with dark red bloodstains, their original color was no longer visible, leaving only black marks. Wang Ranxi looked at the narrow iron window. She gazed at the lotus-like handsome Cui Xun and, in a daze, seemed to see that delicately beautiful figure beside him. She suddenly burst into laughter, then stumbled to her feet, pointing at that ethereal figure, saying viciously, “But, but, who told Zheng Yun to fall in love with her!”
This sentence was shocking like a stone breaking the sky. Both Li Ying and Cui Xun were astonished. Cui Xun asked incredulously, “You’re saying Zheng Yun liked Princess Yong’an?”
Wang Ranxi giggled, “Princess Yong’an, graceful and delicate, virtuous and refined, her radiance moving the empire. And she was kind-hearted with a gentle temperament. Indeed, who wouldn’t like her? The late Emperor liked her, the Empress Dowager liked her, the ministers liked her, the palace maids liked her, the common people liked her, and even Zheng Yun fell in love with her!”
Her words grew increasingly bitter, “Zheng Yun kept saying he wouldn’t betray me, that he wouldn’t be unfaithful, but how many times had he even met the Princess? He had already fallen for her! This made me, who had shared feelings with him for many years, a complete joke! I had gone to such lengths to win his love, yet his love was so easily transferred to Princess Yong’an! What did that make me? Was I, Wang Ranxi, really so inferior to her, Li Ying?”
Wang Ranxi couldn’t accept it. She truly couldn’t accept it. She had witnessed the change in Zheng Yun’s attitude firsthand, seen how, when he spoke of Li Ying, his initial resentment gradually turned to affection in the corners of his eyes and the arch of his brows. He said, “The matter of selecting a consort has nothing to do with the Princess.”
He also said, “The Princess is the most virtuous person; we shouldn’t resent her.”
Wang Ranxi couldn’t accept it. She could accept Zheng Yun becoming a Prince Consort due to an imperial edict that couldn’t be defied, but she couldn’t accept that the man who had sworn mountains of oaths and seas of promises with her for years could so easily fall in love with another woman. On what grounds?
A woman whose maternal family was mere lowly merchants—on what grounds, exactly?
Zheng Yun still denied it. He denied that he had fallen for Princess Yong’an. Yes, that’s how unfaithful men often are—their hearts have already strayed, yet they still insist they haven’t fallen for someone else. She cried and made scenes endlessly, threatening suicide. This time, Zheng Yun didn’t swear an oath but repeatedly said, “I haven’t fallen for the Princess. It’s you I care for.”
She didn’t believe him and took out the dagger he had given her for self-defense, intending to take her own life. The dagger was seized by him, cutting a deep gash in his palm. “Cousin, what will it take for you to believe me?”
She sneered, “You want me to believe you? Fine. Then go kill Li Ying. Kill her, and I’ll believe you!”
Who could have imagined that the death of the Great Zhou’s most radiant Pearl of the Bright Moon was simply due to a woman’s jealousy?
Cui Xun’s expression turned cold. “Just because Zheng Yun transferred his affections, you wanted to kill the Princess?”
Wang Ranxi laughed bitterly, “You’ve never fallen in love with someone; how could you know the taste of betrayal?”
Li Ying found it impossible to imagine that her death was due to a jealous feud she wasn’t even aware of. She stared blankly at Wang Ranxi. Thirty years had passed, and Wang Ranxi was now approaching fifty, but she had taken good care of herself. Her features still maintained the graceful elegance of a noble family’s daughter, though this elegance was now replaced by distortion and ugliness. This daughter of the Wang clan of Taiyuan had been so consumed by jealousy that she no longer recognized herself. Li Ying was startled by a sudden realization and murmured to Wang Ranxi, “No, you weren’t angry about being betrayed by Zheng Yun; you were angry about being outdone by me.”
But regardless of which it was, how was she to blame?
Wang Ranxi couldn’t hear her words. She just kept muttering, “Zheng Yun’s greatest weakness was his soft heart. After my crying, making scenes, and threatening suicide, he became afraid, felt guilty toward me, and then agreed to my demand. Looking back, we were both too young then—he was seventeen, I was fifteen, an age when we didn’t know our limits. How could we have known that the Emperor’s anger would result in hundreds of thousands of corpses and blood flowing for thousands of miles?”
Cui Xun said coldly, “According to Great Zhou law, harming the royal family is equivalent to treason, punishable by the execution of nine generations of relatives. You were foolish, but was Zheng Yun equally foolish?”
“I said, his greatest weakness was his soft heart,” Wang Ranxi said softly, seeming to see Zheng Yun’s gentle jade-like face before her eyes again. “He was forced by me with no way out. I told him we would make it perfect, and even if discovered, at worst, I would die with him. His family wouldn’t be affected. Hadn’t he heard about His Majesty compiling ‘The Genealogy of Clans’?”
The matter of compiling “The Genealogy of Clans” referred to Emperor Taichang ordering the Minister of Personnel and Vice Minister of Rites to compile a book recording clan genealogies. However, unexpectedly, the officials placed the Five Great Clans and Seven Prominent Families ahead of the imperial Li family. Among them, the Cui clan of Boling ranked first. Emperor Taichang was furious for a long time and ordered a revision, but the officials defied the order, saying that if they revised it to place the imperial Li family before the Cui clan of Boling, the entire empire would be in an uproar, and scholars would consider inclusion in “The Genealogy of Clans” a disgrace. Thus, the matter was left unresolved. From then on, the Cui clan of Boling securely sat as the highest noble house and crown of the scholar-official families, while the Five Great Clans and Seven Prominent Families became increasingly arrogant and self-important. People of the time even said, “Better to marry a daughter of the Five Great Clans than enter the imperial family.”
So Wang Ranxi was convinced that even if Zheng Yun’s killing of Li Ying was exposed, it wouldn’t implicate the Zheng clan of Xingyang.
But unfortunately, she was wrong.