Chapter 157

Emperor Renshou had eight sons.

His eldest died at the start of his reign. The second prince was granted a title and sent to distant Lingnan. The third was assassinated in open court. The fourth succumbed to summer heat. The sixth was punished to kneel in the imperial mausoleum. The seventh was timid and incompetent, and the eighth, still young, was innocent and naïve.

What appeared to be a glorious life, admired by all, was in truth marred by estranged kin and treacherous ministers. By the end, when he turned around, he realised that within the vast palace, the only one left remotely useful was Sheng Chengli—the son he had banished to the cold palace since childhood.

Sheng Xuyan had basked in favour during his youth, acted with impunity as a young man, and seized the throne by killing his own brother in middle age. Now, as he entered his later years, he finally began to look around in a daze, unsure what he had truly accomplished in this lifetime.

Sandalwood smoke curled in the air. The monks’ chanting echoed low and clear, like a voice from the ancient past—each syllable striking the heart like a tolling bell.

After a long while, the emperor rose and spoke gently, “Thank you for your efforts, Master.”

He departed the Wentian Tower and once again made his way toward the palace gates. Around him, eunuchs and attendants swarmed… but he was nothing more than a solitary man.

Only after Huimian had finished the scripture did he rise from the mat, walk to the window, and gaze for a while at the towering capital. Then he looked up at the distant sky and murmured, “It’s going to snow.”

The clouds billowed and swelled, as if an auspicious snow were on its way to herald a bountiful year.

—

Because of the treason of Sheng Chengxing and Xia Jingyi, this year’s New Year’s Eve bore little resemblance to the festive atmosphere of previous years.

The imperial palace cancelled all banquets; visits between noble households ceased. Even the common folk, no matter how unobservant, could sense the unrest in the air. One wrong move, and the whole city of Yu could erupt into a brilliant, deadly blaze.

After Wang Xiuyu left the capital, Rong Tang’s position within Duke Ningxuan’s estate grew awkward.

If he so wished, he could have returned for a New Year’s Eve meal without consequence. But the discomfort it would cause Rong Mingyu paled in comparison to how much it would trouble Rong Tang himself.

So he stayed away. He and Su Huaijing went to the outskirts of the capital and shared a reunion dinner with the Eldest Princess. That night, they lodged in a separate villa, watching fireworks from afar as landed gentry celebrated beyond the city’s reach. They passed a peaceful new year, untouched by the turbulence of the court.

But peace was fleeting. Upon returning to the capital, Rong Tang once more stepped into the very heart of political turmoil.

Sheng Chengxing’s rebellion brought about one clear outcome: only Sheng Chengli remained as a viable prince at court.

It might have been the scene Sheng Chengli had long imagined, but the route by which it came was far from what he had intended. So on the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth month, he went to find Su Huaijing and questioned him.

He had never hoped for Sheng Chengxing to succeed. But at the very least, he had expected a drawn-out struggle. One which he could then resolve by stepping in to save the Emperor and reap the greatest benefit.

Instead, almost the moment Xia Jingyi’s personal troops entered the capital, they found themselves ensnared in a trap.

On Su Huaijing’s orders, Shen Feiyi had already mobilised the entire capital’s imperial guards. He had also secretly entered the palace to report anomalies discovered during his patrols of the surrounding countryside. In the end, he stayed by the Emperor’s side without leaving.

The so-called poisoning from alchemy had been no more than a ruse… fabricated by Sheng Xuyan himself to observe who would grow restless and try to seize the throne before their time.

Unsurprisingly, the trap had worked. Sheng Chengxing and Xia Jingyi had revealed themselves with ease.

When Concubine Hui tried to plead for her father and family members, the Emperor cast her into the cold palace.

The Sixth Prince’s so-called destined fate had been falsified at birth by a wandering mystic. In the original novel, it was Sheng Chengli who would eventually expose the truth, revealing to Emperor Renshou how he had been deceived for years by a bogus imperial horoscope.

That would have been a satisfying twist. But now, with Sheng Chengxing dead, the Xia family executed, and Concubine Hui fallen from favour, that “purple aura rising in the east” attributed to Sheng Chengyun was worth less than a blade of grass.

Sheng Xuyan once asked Huimian what he made of the boy’s supposed imperial destiny.

Huimian had answered serenely, “Under Heaven, how could two men possess an emperor’s fate—unless the tides of dynasties were already set to shift?”

Emperor Renshou sat long in silence. At last, he understood: the prophecy had never been a divine omen meant to aid his rise.

If the purple aura belonged to his son, then what did that make the empire he had built? A bridal gown for another man?

From then on, even the sight of Sheng Chengyun grated on him. Not even two months after the new year, the half-year mourning decree in the imperial mausoleum was quietly amended… into a sentence of permanent exile.

Under such circumstances, even Sheng Chengli, however slow-witted, would never claim a fate that was meant to be his.

Overnight, Sheng Xuyan seemed to age. He became deeply suspicious of his remaining sons: the fifth and seventh princes, both still in their youth.

And yet, in a strange turn of sentiment, he began yearning for fatherly affection.

In the span of three months, he personally penned two letters to Prince Rui, Sheng Chengming, asking about the administration of Lingnan. He invited him to return to the capital to mourn his mother and hinted that, being of marriageable age, he might find a suitable match among the many noble daughters of the court…

Tender and sincere, as though he were just another loving father, fussing over his son’s future.

Sheng Chengming, however, whether due to weariness with palace intrigues or having received a warning in advance, replied to each letter with threefold courtesy. First, he expressed gratitude for the Emperor’s grace. Then he explained that governing the fiefdom was taxing, and having lived a carefree life in the shadow of his father, he had never truly known the burdens of statecraft. Though Lingnan was remote, it was still part of Dayu, and since the Emperor held the capital, he would bear his share of duties in the south and serve with humble diligence. He prayed for his father’s health.

He also wrote that his mother had once borne a criminal sentence, and it was only by the Emperor’s kindness that she had been granted a whole corpse. As a son of the imperial house, it would be improper to mourn her in person. And yet, even if his mother had committed wrongs, she had still given him life. So he must honour her memory. Though unable to return to the capital, he would follow ancestral rites and observe three years of mourning in Lingnan. Marriage and romantic attachments were, for now, out of the question.

Perhaps it was because the boy was far away, but Emperor Renshou read these letters over and over again. The son he once deemed reckless had, it seemed, become steady and thoughtful with age.

Compared with him, Sheng Chengxing with his treacherous ambition, Sheng Chengli with his restless gaze, and the dull-witted seventh prince… they all began to seem unbearably loathsome.

In court, the Emperor heaped praise on Lingnan’s administration and sent rewards and envoys time and again to Prince Rui’s fief.

Yet Sheng Chengming remained far from the capital. No matter how dearly the Emperor wished to see him, it was not to be.

Torn between longing for a distant son and tormented by paranoia, Emperor Renshou grew increasingly erratic. Ever since Sheng Chengxing’s final words in court, he had come to see every official as a liar spreading rumours of an illegitimate reign. Each and every one deserving of death.

For a time, the entire court was gripped by fear. Within six months, the Censorate and the Imperial Court of Justice had raided more households than they had in the past three years combined. Officials harboured silent resentment but dared not voice it, and each day new faces took their places in the imperial court.

The Emperor’s mind was ever inscrutable, his most trusted aides changing more than once. In the end, only a few remained: the Deputy Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, the former Right Vanguard General of the imperial guards—now promoted to Chief of the Palace Guards—and several officials who had proven themselves time and again in the wake of the great flood.

Those youthful, headstrong comrades who had once dared challenge the prestige of the capital and followed him northwards. Senior Official Zhang had retired to his hometown; Xia Jingyi was sentenced to death by his own hand; the old circle was scattered, most of them now no more than a handful of earth. In the end, only Rong Mingyu remained at his side.

The tides of court shifted ceaselessly, yet Rong Mingyu sat firm in his position as a non-imperial prince*, second only to the throne, resplendent in glory and widely admired.

(*TN: 异姓王 (yì xìng wáng) meaning he was not born into the imperial family in contrast to 宗室王 (zōng shì wáng), a prince of the blood, who shares the emperor’s surname.)

Then, one day, Emperor Renshou, in a rare mood for familial affection, decided to visit the Eighth Prince at Fengqi Palace. Upon hearing that the Empress had taken the boy to visit the Empress Dowager, he showed no displeasure. In fact, he appeared rather amused, and had his carriage diverted to Shoukang Palace.

He gave no order to announce his arrival, choosing instead to walk directly to the chamber door, hoping to surprise them.

As he approached, he heard laughter ringing from within. The Eighth Prince had begun to toddle and could now string a few words together, delighting both his mother and grandmother.

A soft smile crept across the Emperor’s face. Much of the fatigue from court affairs seemed to melt away. Just as he reached to push open the door, he heard the old nanny inside say, “It’s often said that children take after the ones they spend the most time with. The Eighth Prince is looking more and more like Her Majesty.”

Empress Wang, covering her smile, nonetheless chided gently, “What are you saying in front of the child?”

“Yes, yes, this old servant speaks out of turn,” the nanny replied with a chuckle, the room steeped in light-hearted warmth. Then, offhandedly, she added, “I just think that His Highness’s features don’t much resemble the Second Prince’s. They’re more like Duke Ningxuan’s Shizi when he was little. I can’t quite make sense of it. Perhaps it’s because Your Majesty and the ex-Wang Fei are sisters, and the Eighth Prince was meant to be born to you. That must be why they look so alike.”

The Empress Dowager’s expression shifted slightly. Her brows drew together, and the affectionate gleam in her gaze dulled for an instant as she looked pensively at the Eighth Prince.

Emperor Renshou’s hand froze on the door.

For a long while, no one in the courtyard dared so much as breathe.

Eventually, he lowered his hand and turned away from Shoukang Palace, his expression unreadable.

Later that day, a secret edict was sent from the palace, summoning Su Huaijing.

It was the cusp of summer, late spring waning. Sheng Chengxing had passed away, the flower-picking festival had been left adrift, and yet the capital remained lively and bustling.

Rong Tang sat in the courtyard, his gaze resting on the clouds drifting layer upon layer across the distant sky, some pure white, others gauzy as mist, like tufts of cotton wool filling the broken holes overhead.

He stared skyward for a long time. In the study, the lotus on the Buddha’s pedestal had bloomed nearly in full. In his mind’s eye, half the system space had already emerged, revealing countless vivid, lifelike beings.

Dayu dynasty still flourished. Beneath the surface, rot had set in, yet the people lived in peace and prosperity.

Wave after wave of purges had swept the court under the Emperor’s iron rule. But sharp-eyed observers began to notice that the newcomers were far from being mere placeholders. They were genuine pillars of talent and learning.

Once the idle and ineffectual were stripped of their power, fresh blood took their place, brimming with ambition and purpose.

Dayu was turbulent, and Dayu was thriving.

The darkest, most impenetrable stretch of night before the dawn hid behind drifting clouds.

Rong Tang let out a quiet laugh and murmured softly, “When will you come looking for me?”

With things as they were now, if he didn’t come, then what sort of heaven-defying opportunity would Heavenly Way—or the system’s mainframe—have to bestow upon its favoured protagonist to bring him back to the so-called ‘mainstream path’?

Rong Tang was deeply curious.