Where was Pei Guanyue going?
Without thinking, Li Ying prepared to rise and follow him, but looking at the old bow on her knees, she hesitated. After a moment’s thought, she summoned a ball of green ghostfire in her palm. The ghostfire rose into the air and instantly disappeared, its ethereal green light permeating the entire bow. Having set the illusion, Li Ying finally felt at ease. She carefully placed the old bow on the stone lion’s base, then hurriedly rose to follow Pei Guanyue.
Pei Guanyue’s carriage traveled unhindered from Xuanyang District to a secluded residence in Pingkang District. After alighting from his carriage, Pei Guanyue entered the residence through the back door, which was then tightly closed by the household servants. But no one saw a beautiful young girl pass through the tightly shut black wooden door, following Pei Guanyue into the rear courtyard.
Once inside, Li Ying heard the faint sound of string and bamboo instruments. She followed Pei Guanyue toward the music. Though the exterior of the residence was unremarkable, the interior was elegantly decorated with bridges over flowing water, peculiar rock formations, and exotic flowers and plants—all the luxuries one could imagine, no less magnificent than the mansions of government officials. Pei Guanyue, clearly familiar with the place, traversed the connecting corridors and arrived at a side chamber.
The side chamber’s vermilion latticed windows were half-open. Through them, Li Ying saw that the room was brilliantly lit, bright as day. Several blue-eyed foreign courtesans with bodies wrapped in gauze-thin clothing that revealed their voluptuous figures were dancing the Hu whirling dance, their faces blooming with smiles as a Hu fiddle accompanied them.
The courtesans’ garments were so thin they barely concealed their snow-white bosoms, causing Li Ying’s face to flush red with embarrassment. This place in Pingkang District, filled with scantily clad foreign courtesans, was a brothel.
But the Great Zhou did not forbid officials from visiting courtesans. From the Grand Chancellor down to the advisors, hardly any official refrained from such visits, even considering it an elegant pastime. So Pei Guanyue’s presence at a brothel was not particularly surprising.
Suppressing her embarrassment, Li Ying continued watching. When she saw the handsome young man reclining on the couch in the middle of the room, she was startled.
That was… her cousin, Shen Que.
Shen Que was watching the performance expressionlessly. Two blue-eyed foreign courtesans knelt beside him—one massaging his legs, the other peeling grapes to feed him—the very picture of a dissolute young noble. Li Ying frowned almost imperceptibly. She disliked this person, even though he was her cousin and shared her bloodline, she disliked him.
When Pei Guanyue entered, he also frowned. Displeased, he said, “General Shen, enjoying yourself, I see.”
Shen Que ate a grape and replied with irritation, “Having failed to slay the vicious dog today, I’m just finding some entertainment. Does Minister Pei need to concern himself with this, too?”
He had always been arrogant, and Pei Guanyue dared not provoke him further. He sat cross-legged on another four-legged low couch and tried to smooth things over: “The failure to slay the vicious dog was entirely due to Cui Songqing’s sudden appearance.”
Shen Que sneered, “What sudden appearance? That old woman probably couldn’t bear to part with her plaything and deliberately sent Cui Songqing.”
As he spoke, his lips curled into a contemptuous arc, his smile full of disdain and mockery, his handsome features emanating an air of natural arrogance. The foreign courtesans couldn’t understand what he was saying, but they all gazed up at him with adoring eyes. Seeing this, Pei Guanyue chuckled, “Madams love money, girls love handsome men—all women are the same, especially a woman whose husband has been dead for twenty years.”
Hearing this, Shen Que snorted derisively, and Pei Guanyue burst into laughter. Li Ying felt deeply uncomfortable but endured it to continue listening. Shen Que said, “If that old woman hadn’t been blinded by lust, Cui Xun would have died six years ago.”
Pei Guanyue also sighed with regret, “Not killing him six years ago has left us with today’s troubles.”
“The blame lies with Minister Pei,” Shen Que glanced at him, bluntly continuing, “When Cui Xun was imprisoned in the Dali Temple, I said he should be killed. But Minister Pei was overly cautious, saying we needed his confession of surrendering to the Tujue to legitimately execute him for treason. You worried that if he died under unclear circumstances in the Dali Temple, that old woman would certainly make an issue of it. And what happened? Cui Xun spent a year in the Dali Temple, endured every torture, but still wouldn’t confess. That old woman showed no sign of wanting to save him. After a year, Minister Pei finally came to your senses and wanted to kill him, but then that old woman inexplicably went to the Dali Temple and saw Cui Xun. Hmph, the Lotus Flower Gentleman, beautiful as a lotus—after that meeting, Cui Xun again escaped death.”
Pei Guanyue smiled awkwardly, “I can’t take all the blame. The Dali Temple magistrate, Wu Lu, shares responsibility. If not for his pedantic insistence on following the Great Zhou legal code stipulating that prisoners couldn’t be tortured continuously but required a twenty-day interval, Cui Xun would have died under severe torture long ago.”
Shen Que scathingly retorted, “Minister Pei, don’t shirk responsibility. Didn’t you later tell him that while the law is rigid, people are flexible? Was there any twenty-day interval afterward? No. You told Wu Lu to let him torture Cui Xun but keep him alive, which is why he was so cautious and allowed Cui Xun to survive.”
Li Ying grew increasingly alarmed as she listened. No wonder Cui Xun couldn’t draw his old bow. No wonder his body was so weak. Anyone who endured severe torture for a year in the Dali Temple would lose half their life if they didn’t die outright, let alone recover to their previous condition.
Moreover, based on what Pei Guanyue and Shen Que were saying, Cui Xun had been severely tortured for a year but still refused to confess. So he probably never surrendered to the Tujue at all.
Li Ying recalled how Yu Fuwei had mocked Cui Xun, saying he couldn’t draw his old bow because he had been intoxicated by Chang’an’s sensual pleasures. She felt increasingly disturbed and looked at Shen Que and Pei Guanyue with growing disgust.
After Shen Que’s repeated sarcastic remarks, even though Pei Guanyue was reluctant to provoke him, he became somewhat annoyed: “General Shen, is this the time to assign blame? Rather than dwelling on that, shouldn’t we consider how to eliminate Cui Xun? Otherwise, once he’s reinstated, what good awaits us?”
“I’m out of ideas,” Shen Que took a cup of grape wine handed by a courtesan and drank it in one gulp. “Minister Pei set such a perfect trap, but still couldn’t kill Cui Xun. I have no solution.”
Pei Guanyue grumbled, “I had hoped to use the damage to Princess Yong’an’s tomb to eliminate Cui Xun, but it was all in vain.”
Hearing this, Li Ying wasn’t particularly surprised. As expected, the damage to her tomb was Pei Guanyue and Shen Que’s idea.
A courtesan handed Shen Que another cup of grape wine. This time, he didn’t drink but swirled the blood-red liquid in the golden cup, lost in thought. “Speaking of which, what did Cui Xun hope to achieve by investigating Princess Yong’an’s death?”
“Who knows? Perhaps he wanted to use it to blackmail the Empress Dowager.”
Shen Que gripped the golden cup, his handsome eyes flashing with ruthlessness: “For the position of Empress, she could kill her daughter, kill her sister, kill her niece—such a venomous woman is unprecedented in history!”
Upon hearing this, Li Ying’s face paled, and she leaned forward slightly, moving closer to the vermilion latticed window, carefully catching every detail of Shen Que and Pei Guanyue’s conversation.
She was unaware that while she was eavesdropping at the residence, Cui Xun had finally emerged from Cui Songqing’s mansion.
As Cui Xun left the mansion, moonlight filtered through the clouds and fell upon his snow-white face. His lips were tightly pressed together, and the fingers tightly clenched beneath his black crane-feather cloak trembled slightly. After he stepped across the threshold, the doorkeeper hastily closed the vermilion main gate, completely separating him from the Cui family mansion.
In the heavy creaking sound of the vermilion wooden door, Cui Xun turned back in a daze. The tightly closed, cold gate seemed to proclaim his uncle’s undisguised rejection of him.
Cui Xun lowered his crow-like eyelashes and wrapped his crane-feather cloak tighter. When he raised his head, his expression had returned to its usual calmness. Then he turned around to look for the slender figure by the stone lion.
But there was nothing beside the stone lion.
Cui Xun’s gaze sharpened. He quickly walked to the stone lion but found only the iron bow emitting a green ghostly fire placed on the stone lion’s base.
Cui Xun reached out to take the iron bow. When his fingers touched it, the green ghostly fire disappeared.
Picking up the bow, Cui Xun discovered that the scattered rust marks had been removed, and the iron bow looked brand new. His slender fingers gently caressed the bow’s body. The new iron surface reflected his pale face, and he saw in his eyes a panic he had never shown before.
At this moment, he had completely forgotten his uncle’s cold words. He gripped the bow tightly, and its cold temperature helped somewhat to steady his emotions. He walked in front of the stone lion and saw fresh mud from carriage wheels on the blue stone brick path ahead.
There were sixteen hoof prints on the blue stone bricks—a four-horse carriage.
In Pingkang District, Li Ying was still listening to Pei Guanyue and Shen Que’s conversation. They were speaking about her mother killing her. She expected them to provide some evidence, but all she heard were insults and mockery toward her mother, without a shred of proof.
So these were merely Pei Guanyue and Shen Que’s speculations.
Li Ying felt slightly relieved. Pei Guanyue continued, “Sometimes I truly don’t understand what the Empress Dowager is thinking. If she cares about Princess Yong’an, why doesn’t she pursue the matter after guessing that we damaged the Princess’s tomb? If she doesn’t care about Princess Yong’an at all, why did she dismiss Jia Fang, Liu Yuan, and the others in succession? These actions seem like venting anger.”
“Mere pretense,” Shen Que said. “How could someone who killed her daughter care about that daughter?”
Pei Guanyue didn’t agree. He sipped the blood-red wine and shook his head, appearing confused.
Shen Que, however, grew impatient with the guessing: “Who cares what that old woman thinks? We’ve spent enough years trying to guess her thoughts. Hmph, soon we won’t need to guess her thoughts anymore.”
Li Ying was startled and was about to lean closer to listen more carefully when she suddenly heard the voices of the doorkeeper and an old man in the corridor: “Daoist Master, General Shen is in the side chamber. Please wait a moment while I announce you.”
A Daoist priest? Was that a Daoist?
Li Ying became frightened. If this Daoist saw her, he would surely try to subdue her as an evil spirit. She glanced at Shen Que and Pei Guanyue through the vermilion latticed window, bit her lip, and quickly turned to leave.
In the darkness, Li Ying fled hurriedly while constantly looking back. Only when she was certain the Daoist wasn’t following did she sigh with relief and stop to rest for a moment.
But just as she stopped, someone firmly grasped her wrist. Before she could cry out in alarm, she was pulled into a small alley.
Li Ying looked up in fear—it was Cui Xun.
She immediately calmed down: “Cui Xun, you scared me to death.”
Cui Xun’s lips were tightly pressed together, his eyes flickering with anger: “Where did you go? Don’t you know how dangerous it is?”
Cui Xun had always kept his emotions hidden, rarely displaying any feelings. Now, even his voice carried traces of irritation. In the moonlight, Li Ying looked up at his eyes. She wasn’t afraid; instead, she suddenly smiled and said, “Cui Xun, were you… Worried about me?”