Zhù Ying looked at Zhù Biao calmly. Zhù Biao hurried to say: “It’s true!”

Even he found it somewhat unbelievable. Having followed Zhù Ying for so long, he had gained a fair amount of experience, yet this was the first time he had ever heard of the Emperor flying into such a rage.

Zhù Ying asked: “And they were actually willing to speak of it?” Ordinarily, when something this significant occurred in a place, those inside would instinctively keep it secret.

Zhù Biao said: “They were reluctant to talk at first. Deputy Minister Mu was there berating people.”

Zhù Ying said: “Understood.”

“Then——”

“Go back.” Yao Zhen had taken a beating from the Emperor. Until the outcome became clear, it was not appropriate to continue pressing the Ministry of Personnel about the matter she wished to handle. If Mu Chengzhou happened to cross her path, there was no telling what trouble might arise.

Zhù Ying instructed Zhù Biao: “Say nothing when you return.”

“Yes.”

Zhù Ying did not panic. After returning to the Ministry of Finance, she continued attending to her own affairs as usual. The matters concerning Lin Feng and Su Zhe required arrangements to be made through both the Ministry of Personnel and the Eastern Palace before anything could proceed. Now that Yao Zhen had stepped forward and stirred things up, neither of those channels was suitable to approach at the moment. Zhù Ying settled her mind and began turning over what had just happened.

She and Yao Zhen were acquaintances — they regularly worked together — but they were not exactly close confidants, and Yao Zhen did not share his private affairs with her. What Yao Zhen had done this time carried an unmistakably unusual quality.

The Crown Prince serving as Regent was an entirely ordinary matter!

A sensible Emperor, upon finding his health failing, ought to take the initiative to have the Crown Prince serve as regent. An ordinary Emperor, setting out on inspection tours or military campaigns, would also leave the Crown Prince to oversee affairs in his absence. Even if the Crown Prince were still a child, trusted senior ministers would be appointed to assist in the regency.

The reigning Emperor bore not the slightest resemblance to the late Emperor in almost every regard — yet this one trait, clinging ferociously to power even while hovering half-dead from illness, proved they were truly father and son.

The late Emperor had done so because his sons were all so useless. As for the current Emperor… surely one could not say he thought nothing of this Crown Prince? The current Eastern Palace was more than adequate to stand alongside him as a “son of the Emperor.”

Zhù Ying thought of Yao Zhen again. That morning, Yao Zhen had already seemed slightly off. So what exactly was behind all of this?

……——

Yao Zhen knelt before the great hall, his expression grave and unyielding.

Du Shi’en stepped forward heavily, bent at the waist, and said: “Minister Yao, you know full well that His Majesty should not be provoked to anger — so why did you agitate him?”

Du Shi’en was furious. He had absolutely no desire to become a second Lan Xing so quickly, to be swept out of the palace this soon. Eunuchs wanted the Emperor to be well more than anyone else. Whoever made things hard for the Emperor was more detested by the eunuchs than by the Emperor himself.

But Yao Zhen was not afraid of him, and only said: “I merely fulfilled my duty as a court official.”

“You——”

Yao Zhen gave a faint, dismissive hum and paid him no further mind, kneeling with perfect composure.

Du Shi’en suppressed his anger and said: “His Majesty has just summoned the imperial physician and does not wish to see you again. Please take your leave, Minister!”

Fine, he would leave!

Yao Zhen rose to his feet without haste.

Du Shi’en grew angrier still and said: “His Majesty has decreed that Yao Zhen has shown no regard for his sovereign. He is to depart the palace immediately. He may not enter again unless summoned!”

Yao Zhen’s expression did shift slightly at that. Du Shi’en felt a flicker of satisfaction and was about to urge him along when Yao Zhen turned and walked away.

Du Shi’en let out a huff and shuffled quickly into the hall in short, rapid steps — the Emperor had been badly angered just now, the imperial physician was still examining him, and he needed to go keep watch at once.

Yao Zhen, having been expelled from the palace, was in no hurry to return to the Ministry of Personnel either. Returning now would serve no great purpose.

Amidst all manner of watching eyes, he gathered his robes and walked on — steadier with every step.

Before long, he was back at his own home. His household staff looked at him in bewilderment: “Why have you returned at this hour?”

It was the hour when all the government offices were conducting their work. In a regional posting, an official who kept lax hours might go days without anyone appearing at the yamen to sign in, but this was the capital. Most offices still managed at least half a day’s work or more of nominal activity, and the departments within the imperial city were more strictly kept — staffed throughout the full day.

The Ministry of Personnel held the most critical position of all. For the Minister of Personnel to return home in the morning was without any reasonable explanation.

Yao Zhen said: “Are you questioning me?”

The servant tucked his neck in, not daring to speak further, and bowed as he led him into the residence.

Madam Yao, having heard the news, stepped out from the rear hall: “What brings you back? Did you forget something?”

Yao Zhen let a trace of irritation show: “Nothing.”

“Then……”

“Of late, have the children conduct themselves with restraint. Keep the servants in line — no stirring up trouble.”

Madam Yao agreed to this, then pressed him further: “What on earth has happened? If you don’t tell me, I won’t know how to instruct them properly!”

Yao Zhen affected a casual air and said: “I presented a suggestion to His Majesty, proposing that the Crown Prince serve as regent.”

Madam Yao saw how rigidly he held himself and knew this matter was not so simple as that. She said: “Were you… certain it would go well?”

Yao Zhen said with irritation: “Is that an interrogation?”

Madam Yao said: “You are in trouble now, and the whole family ought to be united in facing it together. What is the meaning of taking your temper out on your own household for no reason? The Crown Prince serving as regent — that’s not such a momentous thing, is it? Is it really worth all this from you?”

“What would a woman know?”

Madam Yao shot him an exasperated glare and swallowed the rest.

But Yao Zhen found himself unable to hold it in and said: “His Majesty became furious — apparently he has no wish to let the Crown Prince serve as regent. At a time like this, he still… truly!”

“You misjudged what His Majesty was thinking?”

That man’s mind! A clever person simply could not guess it, Yao Zhen grumbled inwardly. Still, the probe had at least yielded something.

“You didn’t consult with anyone before acting so rashly.” Madam Yao helped him take off his official robes to change as she spoke.

Yao Zhen said: “You don’t understand! If it wasn’t raised now, there would be no opportunity later!”

“Why?”

Yao Zhen did not answer his wife. Instead, he turned everything over once more in his own mind.

Ever since Li, the Chancellor, had assumed his post, he had been aggressively interfering in the appointment of officials. At first, the Emperor’s former retainers from his old princely residence had mostly been given ceremonial positions, but now they were beginning to extend their reach toward substantive ones. In the Ministry of Finance, for instance — vacancies had only just opened up due to matters concerning granary storage and the like, and before Zhù Ying had even finished placing her own people, Li the Chancellor had already installed two vice ministers of his own choosing.

The Ministry of Personnel had been affected even more severely. Before, there had only been Mu Chengzhou — who was also his own deputy — and they had wrestled with each other quite enough, though ultimately that man was nothing but an empty vessel.

But now Li was Chancellor proper, and not entirely a hollow figure either. And Li’s position was higher than his own. This made things exceedingly uncomfortable for Yao Zhen.

Yao Zhen had come to serve the current Emperor as something of a late convert — he had originally been the late Emperor’s man. Each reign had its own ministers, and these past few years had been earned through constant maneuvering from all sides. However Zhù Ying had intended it, it was through her help in demonstrating his allegiance to the current Emperor that he had managed to hold on to the post of Minister of Personnel. But Zhù Ying had Zheng Xi standing behind her, and the credit from the Lu Wang rebellion as well. Yao Zhen had neither.

This left him deeply uneasy.

The Ministry of Personnel stood first among the Six Ministries. Looking across history more broadly, any office that held authority over official appointments had always been the most indispensable department of all. Such a place was in his hands, and yet he was not the Emperor’s staunchest loyalist. The Emperor did not place full trust in him, and so he had all the more reason to worry about his own “future.”

Even his connection to the current Emperor was already more distant than his connection to the late Emperor had been. He was merely managing to hold on to the Ministry of Personnel by the skin of his teeth. Once the Crown Prince ascended the throne, the distance would grow even greater. What future would remain for him? Being cast aside was plainly written on the wall.

His ties to the current Emperor could go no further. But with the Crown Prince — that was a relationship with a long road still ahead.

Right now, a magnificent opportunity was laid before him. If he raised the proposal and the Emperor agreed, and the Crown Prince served as regent, he would be the first to advocate it — a proof of loyalty, an entry credential of sorts. If the Emperor disagreed, he had still made his position clear. Would that not earn him goodwill with the Crown Prince? His estimate was that the odds of agreement were higher.

Who could have known that this Emperor — of all the people in the world — would actually disagree!

But it was not a loss, either, Yao Zhen thought. The Crown Prince had already firmly secured his position in the Eastern Palace. Even if he himself faced censure for a time, the Crown Prince would remember the favor in the future.

And in the years to come — being appointed Chancellor and receiving the imperial proclamation of investiture might not be out of reach.

Madam Yao noticed that his eyes had gone glassy and waved her hand in front of his face, but he did not stir. She led him by the hand to a sitting couch, pressed him down onto it, and let him drift off in his daze.

Yao Zhen had not been dazed for long when another imperial decree came chasing after him from the palace — the Emperor had stripped him of his position as Minister of Personnel. Yao Zhen was now an official without a post, free of all encumbrance.

Madam Yao’s vision went dark before her eyes. Yao Zhen, however, managed to maintain a fragile composure. He accepted the decree without uttering a single word of submission, ordered the gates of the residence shut, and nestled into the house to wait for whatever would come next.

……

The dismissal of the Minister of Personnel was no small upheaval, particularly given its connection to the Eastern Palace.

Dou Peng hurried into the Emperor’s presence to plead on his behalf: “Yao Zhen also cares about Your Majesty, hoping that you will rest easy and recuperate……”

The Emperor said coldly: “He had better concern himself less with my family affairs!”

The Emperor did not acknowledge in his own heart that he was making arrangements for what would come after his death, yet his hands had never stopped moving. He was currently weighing his children’s marriages, their formal titles, and the opening of their own residences. And then Yao Zhen had come along and said: you step aside, let the Crown Prince take over.

Was it any wonder he could not stomach it! Back in the day, it had been the ministers who had fought to secure his position as heir apparent, and from that time on the Emperor had shifted from trusting the ministers to being wary of them: “You too would have me hand state affairs over to the Crown Prince?”

Dou Peng naturally was not going to take that bait — the smell coming off that question was all wrong. Dou Peng said: “What is to become of the Ministry of Personnel now? Mu Chengzhou cannot manage it!” This point he pressed with full conviction. As for Li the Chancellor — he was only marginally better than Mu Chengzhou.

The Emperor said: “Simply because one person is gone, nothing can be done anymore?! The rest of the people in the Ministry of Personnel — what have they been doing all this time? If they cannot handle the work, dismiss the lot of them!”

Dou Peng felt a wave of inner exhaustion wash over him and no longer had any great desire to argue logic with the Emperor. He gave a vague assent: “Yes.”

The two of them, sovereign and minister, sat in something of a mutual silence — and then the Empress arrived.

She did not ordinarily involve herself much in matters of the outer court, but this time the affair touched upon the Crown Prince. A young eunuch had witnessed everything and vanished in a flash to the Empress’s side, describing the situation just as it had unfolded, startling her into a cold sweat: “His Majesty said something about the Crown Prince?”

“He did not.”

The Empress was still uneasy and first went to the East Residence, where she communicated the situation quietly to her son.

The Crown Prince, upon hearing the word “regent,” felt his heart leap — then, hearing that the Emperor had erupted in fury, his feeling shifted to worry: “What is to be done about this? Should I go to beg forgiveness in person?”

Yao Zhen’s action had come as a surprise to him as well. From the final years of the late Emperor’s reign onward, no one had maintained a habit of having the Crown Prince serve as regent. The matter belonged to the pages of old records; the Crown Prince himself had simply never contemplated it. And so for how to respond, he had no plan worked out in advance.

The Empress said: “I will go see your father first; you follow after me.”

“Yes — yes, alright.”

At his side, Xian Jing said in a low voice: “What if we seized upon what Minister Yao has raised, and together petitioned His Majesty, requesting that Your Highness serve as regent……”

The Crown Prince said: “Absolutely not! His Majesty has already rejected him. How could I then pressure my own father?”

Xian Jing said: “Your Highness would merely be seeking to relieve your father of burdens. His Majesty’s illness grows heavier by the day — the current state of things does not allow him to rest and recuperate in peace. Should he exhaust himself entirely, would that not be an even graver fault?”

There was logic in that.

The Crown Prince wavered slightly.

The Empress made the decision: “Enough of this useless scheming! I go first; you come afterward to beg forgiveness.”

“This… yes.”

The Empress set out in great haste and arrived before the Emperor: “I just heard they summoned the imperial physician again — what is going on?”

The Emperor said with ill humor: “Your precious son!”

“All my sons are very fine — which one do you mean?” the Empress shot back. “My sons are all perfectly good. The eldest and second sons have married and had children; the third is almost ready to open his own residence. Every one of them is easy on the mind. Whatever temper you’ve worked yourself into, don’t go taking it out on the children.”

She had given birth only to the Crown Prince, but the other imperial princes counted as her sons as well. With that single remark, she left the Emperor speechless. Even back in the days of the Zhao Wang residence, household affairs had always been handled by the Empress. The Emperor sighed: “It’s all Yao Zhen — he’s trying to curry favor with the Crown Prince!”

The Empress asked: “The Crown Prince?”

The Emperor recounted the matter in full, long-winded and short-tempered by turns. The Empress said: “That was his own lack of discernment. You venting your anger at him is only making yourself suffer — and leaving us all worried.”

The Emperor, smothered under her barrage of reproaches, could find no more temper to muster: “And now you’re taking your displeasure out on me……”

Before the words were fully spoken, the Crown Prince arrived to beg forgiveness.

The Crown Prince did not dare to come in plain garments. He had only removed some of his ornaments. He knelt before both his parents, tears streaming freely: “Father! Please, Father — grant me death!”

There was his great grown son, launching into a full performance of weeping, wailing, and carrying on. The Emperor and the Empress both turned to comfort their son.

The Crown Prince simply wept: “I don’t understand what has happened. I just suddenly heard that someone was making use of my name. As a son, how could I bear such talk? From the time I was small, whenever Father and Mother gave a command, I obeyed and did my best. When I did well, a single word of praise from Father would make me happy for days. Back then, it was only for the good of the family — who stopped to make such distinctions? Now it comes to this again, and I might as well have my heart cut open……”

The Empress was greatly alarmed and wept: “You unfilial wretch — what are you saying such things for? Your parents raised you this large — how could you speak so carelessly?”

The Emperor found himself needing to offer comfort to the pair of them instead: “This has nothing to do with either of you — it is entirely Yao Zhen’s fault.”

The Empress added: “Exactly, it is all his fault! Our family was perfectly fine, and there was no need for him to stick his nose in!”

The family of three wept together in each other’s arms. The Empress and the Crown Prince then recalled many warm moments from their days in the Zhao Wang residence — in those years, the two of them, mother and son, had shouldered a great many responsibilities so that the Zhao Wang could live in comfortable ease without a care.

After all those reminiscences, the three of them reclaimed their old warmth for one another. Only Yao Zhen remained, judged by the Emperor to have been “meddlesome” and “calculating.”

……

The Empress and the Crown Prince wept before the Emperor for a while, and the Emperor cried along with them until he was exhausted. The two of them stayed until the Emperor was too tired and fell asleep. Then the Empress said to the Crown Prince: “I will remain here. You may go.”

The Empress resolved then and there to stay constantly at the Emperor’s side for the sake of her son, never leaving.

The Crown Prince, for his part, needed to return to the Eastern Palace, consult with his trusted inner circle, and restrain everyone in the Eastern Palace’s orbit — absolutely no stirring up of trouble was to be permitted at a time like this.

The Crown Prince was deeply anxious. He had previously assumed that his enemies were only his younger brothers, or perhaps his uncles. Only now, in this moment, did it dawn on him — his greatest threat had always been his father!

For who else could cause real harm to the Crown Prince? Only someone more powerful than him. Who was more powerful than the Crown Prince?

The answer was blindingly clear.

A chill settled over the Crown Prince’s heart. He returned to the Eastern Palace and issued an order at once: “No one is to bully others using their position. More importantly, no one is to leave the Eastern Palace freely or communicate with those outside. Those who violate this order will be executed!”

The Crown Prince could not execute anyone freely — except in moments of stern resolve.

Seeing the Crown Prince’s ferocity, everyone in the Eastern Palace gave their obedient assent.

Xian Jing still appeared to have something more to say. The Crown Prince waved a hand at him: “You as well — do not act rashly. Anyone who moves without permission, I will personally petition for their execution!”

The people under Xian Jing had no shortage of flaws. Their greatest flaw was a fondness for acting on their own judgment — every single one of them loved to give direction and instruction, each harboring endless schemes and plans with which to direct the Crown Prince.

Xian Jing dared not overstep and said: “Yes.”

The Crown Prince said: “I can only hope this time passes in peace.”

Xian Jing said: “Your Highness has committed no fault — why should anything go wrong?”

The Crown Prince thought to himself: Who knows whether His Majesty will….

What the Crown Prince had not anticipated was that the Emperor had been temporarily pacified by the Empress. The trouble that erupted was in the outer court — the Emperor had not taken action, but the censors had.

A censor submitted a memorial impeaching Princess Anren for acting without any regard for law and propriety: she had forcibly purchased the freeborn to be made into bondservants, along with various other unlawful acts. Under the pretext of praying for blessings on the Crown Prince’s consort, she had forcibly purchased private residences at reduced prices in order to build a Buddhist temple. Not a single word in the memorial directly mentioned the Eastern Palace, yet every sentence circled back, inescapably, to the Crown Prince’s consort.

A faint restlessness stirred across the court.