The Beauty Within the Gates
Chapter 77
The Emperor had grown sensitive to noise in his old age. The day before, the eunuchs had only just finished clearing the cicadas from the trees, and now, as the Empress finished speaking, not a single sound reached his ears, a silence as still as death.
Liu Kun, standing nearby, did not dare to breathe.
The Emperor’s eyelids twitched twice. He set the porcelain spoon gently down in his bowl, narrowed his eyes, and fixed them on the Empress across from him. His gaze was probing, slowly growing steadily colder. He asked her in a quiet voice, “Jing Wang’s biological father?”
The Empress’s heart was racing with half guilt, half fear. But she had come this far, and there was no road back.
She no longer dared to gamble on how deep the Emperor’s feelings for that adopted son of his might run.
If she went on waiting like this, her son would lose all chance of ever rising again.
Even if the Emperor wished to claim Jing Wang, he was, in the end, only an adopted son, a child of unclear birth who could not even produce a father. What right had he to seize her son’s throne?
The Empress steadied herself. “The man can speak of things from Madam Zhou’s early years in Jingzhou. He knows when Madam Zhou conceived her child…”
Before she could finish, the wooden table before the Emperor was overturned.
The hot broth on the table came down across her face and gown, the boiling congee clinging to her skin. The Empress let out a sharp cry, her hands flying up to shield her face.
The Emperor rose to his feet, standing over her. His face twisted with fury, looking down at her with disgust. “I thought you, Madam Yuan, had realized your mistakes and turned over a new leaf. I never imagined you’d dare scheme against me. Who gave you such audacity? Was it the deposed Crown Prince? Or your Yuan clan?”
In more than twenty years of marriage, most of the time, the Emperor commanded awe without need for anger; he had never erupted with such fury before.
The Empress trembled faintly, terror filled her eyes. She pressed her forehead to the floor and wept. “Your Majesty, what have I done so wrong? Yan’er is not only my son. He is Your Majesty’s son, too. Has Your Majesty forgotten? When he was first born, Your Majesty held him in your arms, smiling, and gave him his name. How dearly you loved him then…”
“Have I treated him poorly? From the moment he was born, I made him Crown Prince. Had he conducted himself with virtue and fulfilled his duties, after I’m gone, the dragon throne would have been his sooner or later. But what has he done? And what have you, Madam Yuan, done? Greed without satisfaction is like a snake trying to swallow an elephant. Did you truly think this empire belonged to him alone, that he could act however he wished? You’re wrong! The empire is not the empire of one man. It is the empire of all under heaven! I gave him chances. For matters to reach this point today, whom can he blame? It is all his own doing. His virtue is unworthy of the position. If this empire were to fall into the hands of someone like him, then I would truly become the eternal sinner of history.”
“Your Majesty…” Hearing the finality in his words, that he did not intend to give her son another chance, the Empress hurriedly crawled over in panic and grabbed at the hem of his robe. “I know I was wrong. Yan’er also knows his mistake. Your Majesty, let us summon him back and teach him properly. He certainly will not disappoint Your Majesty again. Your Majesty, he is your only son.”
Even now, Madam Yuan still did not know how to reflect on her own wrongdoing. Instead, she intended to use this to threaten him. It was simply both stupid and vicious.
“Then you are mistaken!” The Emperor looked down at her, icy cold. “Were you not investigating who Jing Wang’s father is? Then I will tell you who he is.”
The Empress froze.
The Emperor sneered. “It is me! I am Jing Wang’s biological father. Are you happy now? Satisfied?”
The Empress widened her eyes and looked at the Emperor in utter shock. Those eagle-like, sharp eyes of his were covered in gloom with menace, yet he did not seem to be lying.
Such a matter concerned not only his own dignity, but also the entire Great Feng. Besides, as the sovereign of a thousand, why would he need to lie?
Thinking back carefully, all the doubts she had ignored in the past now came surging up.
The surrounding villagers had never seen Madam Zhou have dealings with any man, yet Madam Zhou’s belly had suddenly grown large.
When her three Zhou brothers had learned of it, none of them had gone to seek out the faithless man and demand justice.
Madam Zhou’s eldest brother returned and stayed by her side all the way until she gave birth…
From the moment the child was born, he had carried the Zhou surname.
After Madam Zhou passed away, the Emperor had taken the boy, not yet two years old, to his side without the slightest hesitation, calling himself father from the very beginning…
After ascending the throne, both of the two Zhou brothers had been given titles as kings, and yet, among them, Madam Zhou had never been granted the posthumous title of princess.
The Empress finally understood what Kang Wang had meant by the words he had spoken to her back then.
The two of them, brother and sister…
A chill ran through the Empress’s whole body. The color drained from her face. Looking at it this way, they were not, perhaps, true brother and sister at all.
No wonder…
No wonder he had given Jing Wang the most crucial fiefdom, the Dongzhou. He had treated Jing Wang more dearly than the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince could be deposed with a single word, because the Crown Prince was not his only son. Jing Wang was his eldest.
The Empress suddenly broke into laughter and wept at once, like a madwoman. “And Your Majesty still spoke of leaving the throne to my Yan’er! This grand scheme of yours, deceiving the heavens and crossing the sea, was all so my Yan’er could pave the way for that illegitimate son of yours! Has Your Majesty forgotten? Were it not for my Yuan clan, how could you have planted your feet in the Eastern Capital so swiftly back then?”
“What of it? Does your Yuan clan have other ideas? Will you not bow to the will of heaven? Do you mean to stand against me in the imperial court?” The Emperor laughed coldly, his voice contemptuous. “Then let me ask you this, Madam Lady. Back when Chancellor Xie put forth Elder Yuan as my uncle-in-law, he said Elder Yuan kept faithfully to his duties, that you, Madam Yuan, were gentle and proper, that you and I were well matched. And yet the moment Elder Yuan was gone, your Yuan family turned on him without a shred of gratitude, scheming against him at every turn, opposing him in court, and now, wanting to wipe out his entire family. Minister Xie was wise and clear-sighted his whole life. It seems your Yuan family alone was what cost him his reputation.”
“I will say it once more. The Crown Prince has come to this because his virtue is flawed.” Unwilling to look at her again, he said coldly, “See the Empress back to her room. Without my permission, she is not to set a single foot beyond the palace gates. Reflect on yourself.”
“Your Majesty…”
The Emperor walked out of her bedchamber without turning his head. He had only just stepped outside when he saw Jing Wang standing at the foot of the white jade steps. His face was stiff, unmoving.
The Emperor froze. A sudden tension gripped him, and he glanced over with great care.
A man past forty, a father himself by now, no longer the rebel of his youth nor the hot-blooded of his early manhood. Having witnessed all the bonds and sorrows of human life, even the weightiest matters seemed as if they could be faced with equanimity.
Yet precisely because of that, the words were even harder to speak. The Emperor’s mouth opened. “I…” In the end, he did not know how to go on.
After a long while, it was Jing Wang who spoke first. “Who was she?”
The Emperor answered at once. “Her surname was Xie. Her given name is Nian.”
She was not a member of the Zhou family at all. Before the founding of Great Feng, the wars had run on and on without end, and his three brothers had moved with their parents several times over. In one of those wars, he had come upon a woman gravely wounded.
Before she died, she had pressed her infant daughter, still wrapped in swaddling, into his arms and told him: Her name is Xie Nian.
His parents had taken her in and raised her, treating her as his childhood betrothed.
When she had grown, she had called his parents Father and Mother too, just as he did.
They moved from place to place so often that, gradually, no one remembered who they truly were, nor could anyone recall their past. Everyone took her for the daughter of the Zhou family, and over time, even his parents accepted it. In the end, her name had been written into the Zhou family genealogy.
But in his own heart, he had never once regarded her as a sister.
In the year she turned sixteen, he had given her the choice. He had asked her if there was anyone she had set her heart on. She had stepped forward herself and put her arms around him, and said to him shyly, “I only wish to be my elder brother’s wife.”
In the face of her tenderness, he could not bring himself to refuse her. That very day, the two of them put on their wedding robes, and, bowing before the spirits of his parents, they were wed.
She was his first wife. And Jing Wang, Zhou Zuan, was his firstborn legitimate eldest son.
The woman he had wronged most in this life was the wife of his humble beginnings. She had walked beside him through the hardest of his days. She had walked beside him through the hardest days, yet had not lived to see his success, nor enjoyed a single day of ease.
After ascending the throne, he had not been able to make her his Empress. He had not even given her an identity. He had never feared rumors, but he could not allow their son to be pointed at and criticized by the world. The one thing he had been able to do was to lay her bones in his own imperial mausoleum. When his time came, he would lie beside her there.
If Madam Yuan had not exposed it today, the secret would have gone with him to the grave. He and Jing Wang would have remained adoptive father and adopted son to the end of their days.
But now that Jing Wang had heard it, there was no longer any need to hide the rest. He told him the rest of her story, too. “She was Chancellor Xie Daolin’s own paternal aunt.”
The truth was out, and it all fell into place at last.
Why, after seizing the Eastern Capital, of all the talented men before him, he had chosen Xie Daolin alone and made him the founding Chancellor of the new dynasty.
And why Xie Daolin, at the very height of his glory, had willingly resigned his post, and returned to Fengcheng.
As a child, Jing Wang had not been without doubts. Countless times, he had asked who his true father was, but he never received an answer. Now, the stiffness in his expression slowly faded, replaced by a dim, profound sorrow in his eyes.
The Emperor watched him all the while. Seeing him like this, something twisted in his chest. His voice came out hoarse. “It is I who has wronged you and your mother…”
Jing Wang did not answer. After a moment, he bowed and said, “If Father has nothing else to ask of me, your son will take his leave.”
Knowing the boy could not take it in all at once, the Emperor did not press him. He nodded quickly. “Go. Go home and rest.”
—
The Crown Prince had been hiding in the Eastern Capital, waiting a full day for word, only to be struck down by news like a clear-sky thunderbolt.
Jing Wang was Father’s own flesh and blood. And the eldest, no less.
Then what was he?
The fury in his chest set him alight from end to end. He could not sit, could not stand still. What had once been his by right had been seized from him on the road, and now they were telling him that the father he had revered, the father he had believed loved him alone, had an illegitimate son all along.
From beginning to end, there was only one son his father had ever loved.
His title as Crown Prince was gone. His father was gone, too.
The sudden hollowing-out felt like being cast aside. The terror inside him turned into endless rage, beating against his chest, swallowing his reason.
He understood, better than anyone, that if he did not fight for it now, did not seize it back, he would be left with nothing. His home, his empire, everything he had, even his life, would all vanish.
He steadied himself. He gave his order to the attendant beside him. “Pass my command at once. Send troops into Zhongzhou immediately, by every means at your disposal, slaughter Fengcheng to the last man.”
Wasn’t Jing Wang coming to seize his home? Then let Jing Wang’s family be buried with him first.
As for the Eastern Capital, it was not that he was heartless. It was Father who had disappointed him too deeply.
After slipping out from his hidden post, the Crown Prince lowered the straw hat on his head and led his men through the dark alleys, making his way to Chancellor Yuan’s residence.
Chancellor Yuan had also just received the news. Like the Crown Prince, his heart was filled with shock and panic. Once Jing Wang was established as Crown Prince, it would not only be Zhou Yan and the Empress, but also his entire Yuan clan, who would not escape.
Should he sit and wait for death, or stake everything on one desperate gamble?
If they succeeded, they could ascend to the heavens. But if they failed, it would be a disaster that wiped out the entire clan.
With himself and the Crown Prince together, how great were their chances? Was it enough for him to wager the lives of his entire clan and take this risk?
He was just about to send someone to Nanjing first, to test the Crown Prince’s intentions, when the person had not even left the residence before the gatekeeper came over and quietly passed on a message, “His Highness has arrived.”
—
That evening, the sunset blazed across the sky, burning it a deep blood-red.
Several gates of the Eastern Capital were locked on time before sundown. But by the hour of Hai, the three gates, Xinsong Gate, Gu Gate, and Wei Gate near the bustling marketplace were quietly opened.
Beneath the cold moon, several groups of armored cavalry silently charged through the city gates.
The lively crowds in the streets had not the slightest warning. They were scattered all at once by the charging horses, frightened out of their wits, with no idea at all what was happening.
By the time the city patrol commander received the news, the armored cavalry had already split into two routes. One force charged toward Jing Wang’s residence, while the other reached the inner city gate at the foot of the imperial city.
“Report!!!”
A cry rang out, startling awake the soldiers guarding the city.
At the same time, the inner city gate, sunk in sleep, was also torn from its silence by the thunderous sound of hooves.
The armored cavalry came with ferocious momentum, taking familiar roads straight to the Xinsong Gate. Swiftly, they raised scaling ladders against the walls. Just as they had climbed halfway up, dense clusters of torches suddenly lit up above the dark city gate. The firelight clearly illuminated the stunned expressions of everyone below.
Among them was the Crown Prince’s own face, twisted with savagery.
Before he could even work out where things had gone wrong, a unit of the Cavalry Command’s riders came down from the left and the right with the speed of thunder no ear could outrun and closed in around him.
The sound of fighting and the smell of blood went on until the dead of night before they fell still.
—
Wen Shuse sat beneath the lamplight, waiting half the night. This time, not only had her husband not come home, but even Minzhang hadn’t come back to the residence.
It did not seem as though he was still angry with her. If he were angry, he would not have come home the previous night.
What a pity that she’d missed her chance last night. Knowing she had lost all composure after drinking and had no face to go to him, she had planned to wait for his return today to ask whether he had any thoughts about the approaching Qixi Festival.
She waited until the middle of the night, and there was still no sign of him. Most likely, he wasn’t coming back at all. She had just blown out the lamp and was on the edge of sleep when Aunt Qing’s voice came from outside the door. “Miss…”
Wen Shuse turned over and rose at once. Opening the door, she saw Aunt Qing standing outside with a gauze lantern in her hand, with an anxious expression. “Uncle Wen just came. He says the Crown Prince raised a rebellion tonight. There’s nearly a river of blood at the inner city gate. The Cavalry Command’s men are in it too…” Aunt Qing hadn’t even reached the word Young Master before the color drained clean from Wen Shuse’s face.
She turned back into the room, threw on an outer robe in a rush, and left the rest behind. She got into Uncle Wen’s carriage and went straight to the Cavalry Command.
The Cavalry Command was ablaze with torchlight.
The wounded were being brought in without pause from the inner city gate. As Zhao Huai and Minzhang lifted a man down from his horse, a wet streak of blood dripped down the saddle behind him.
“Quick… call the army physician!”
The two of them carried him into the room. The physician came over at once to examine him. An iron arrowhead had pierced clean through the man’s shoulder blade. He was conscious, but there wasn’t a trace of color in his face. “I’m fine.”
Zhao Huai’s eyelid twitched.
He had served two or three years at the Cavalry Command. He had seen men who didn’t care for their own lives. But he had never yet seen one as reckless as Deputy Commander Xie.
Tonight, on a moment’s call, Xie Shao had summoned every man under him and laid an ambush at the inner city gate, saying only one thing: “Anyone who wants to earn his merit, sharpen up.”
None of them had known what was happening. Not a soul among them had imagined the Crown Prince would actually rebel.
This unit of the Cavalry Command had been every bit as fired up as could be when they saw the rebel troops. Their leader, most of all, gone half-mad with it, charging alone into the thick of the encirclement, taking the Crown Prince alive from beneath the spears and blades of the iron cavalry. Any slower, and the man would surely be dead by now.