Chapter 160

warning: mentions of torture, morbid descriptions of a corpses

Publicly and privately, Rong Tang did not wish for the great Brahma Bell to toll for Emperor Renshou.

Publicly, the death of an emperor would plunge the Dayu into inevitable unrest. His successor would be chosen from the two princes still residing in the capital. The Eighth Prince was still young, and it was uncertain whether word had spread that he was not Sheng Xuyan’s by blood. Even as the Empress’s legitimate son in name, he might not be able to contend with Sheng Chengli.

Privately…

Rong Tang turned his head, his expression unreadable as he glanced at Su Huaijing.

The system mocked him as a saviour. Huimian claimed he was destined for enlightenment. Su Huaijing, however, believed him a celestial being, sent from the heavens to redeem the mortal world.

But he had his own selfish desires. Petty. Base. Cunning.

He wanted Su Huaijing to be happy. To be free. To exact revenge with his own hands.

Be it death by dismemberment, quartering, or parading the condemned like a living corpse through the streets day after day—

Anything would do. Sheng Xuyan could die a hundred times, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

A younger brother who disrespects his elder should be punished.

A prince who neglects the people and conspires with foreign powers deserves death.

A sovereign who spends his days in ignorance, debauchery, and cruelty should be wiped out.

Emperor Renshou was deserving of the harshest punishment this world could offer. If Sheng Chengli was the protagonist of this novel, through whom the plot unfolded, then Sheng Xuyan was its true beginning.

It was he who, step by step, planted the malignant seed twelve years ago. He who nurtured a decaying soil where that seed could take root and fester, until it finally bloomed into a foul flower that swallowed the entire Dayu.

Sheng Xuyan’s death was not a question, but Rong Tang wanted it to be personal.

He wanted Sheng Xuyan to die by Su Huaijing’s hand. To see him avenge himself. To see him pluck from his heart the poisoned thorn that had been lodged there for over a decade.

Emperor Renshou must not—could not—die quietly on some summer day, in a palace where the truth remained buried and power had not yet changed hands.

How unjust would that be for Huaijing?

Perhaps the look on Rong Tang’s face had been too telling, for Su Huaijing stirred from his brief daze and turned to meet his gaze.

Just a moment passed, both silent. Yet somehow, Su Huaijing understood exactly what Tangtang was thinking.

He blinked, a little surprised, and yet unable to hide the quiet, swelling joy and relief in his heart. He asked softly, with a rare, delicate trace of caution:

“Is Tangtang worried I’ll be upset?”

He paused, then added, “Because I didn’t get to avenge myself?”

Above them, the treetops caught the final blaze of sunset. The last embers of summer bled into the sky. Orange giving way to rose, to violet… until night would swallow it all in a sea of stars.

Rong Tang had no reason to lie. Not about this.

He didn’t know who had died. In the original story, none of the masters of the palace were said to pass away at this time. But he could read Su Huaijing’s emotions.

That faint, flickering joy. It didn’t resemble the exhaustion of someone who had clawed their way from a mire, spent over a decade scheming, only to have the object of their vengeance die suddenly and silently before retribution could be served.

So Rong Tang stilled his heart, which always seemed to echo Su Huaijing’s tremors.

He stepped forward, shedding the minor disputes of the past few days, and took Su Huaijing’s hand. Calmly, he admitted:

“Yes.”

“I once said something to you.”

Back in the ninth year of Qingzheng, at the flower-picking festival. Amid a web of conspiracies and tangled encounters, there had been one brief, seemingly trivial moment.

Wukang’s Young Lord had made things difficult for them, and Rong Tang had stepped in to demand justice for Li Panyan.

Su Huaijing hadn’t liked it, instinctively, but he still followed Rong Tang out of Lanyue Pavilion. There, he heard Rong Tang say it was for him.

“There must be retribution in this world. Otherwise, those who do evil dine with friends, while those who do good are buried with no honour. The righteous are shackled, the wicked sit high on their thrones… Huaijing, where’s the justice in that?”

Now, standing beneath the dusk skies of Yu capital, with the great Brahma Bell echoing across the imperial palace for some unnamed noble, Rong Tang lifted his gaze to meet Su Huaijing’s and said, gently:

“Let me add something more. Those who do evil must have their deeds exposed. They should be reviled by thousands, trampled by tens of thousands. Their sins should overflow the record books, their disgrace etched into history, cursed for all time. In life, they should suffer the cruellest of torments. In death, their names should be spat upon forever.”

He spoke the vilest, most chilling words imaginable… in the softest, most measured tone.

“A traitor’s bones should serve as a warning to the people; his blood, an offering to the fallen.”

The Crown Prince and young General Wei weren’t the only ones who died at the northern frontier.

The struggles of the imperial house. What had they to do with the common people? With the soldiers?

Rong Tang still didn’t know what he was. Perhaps he was Heavenly Way. Perhaps not.

But if he was—

He looked up at the sky, where drifting clouds parted to reveal moon and stars.

If he truly was Heavenly Way, then his words should hold power.

If Sheng Chengli could miraculously regain his sight, then surely his curse could come true.

Sheng Chengli and him. Sheng Xuyan and Su Huaijing.

All he wanted now was for Sheng Xuyan to die. By Su Huaijing’s hand. In the most disgraceful, agonising, and humiliating way possible.

Kindness belongs to the kind-hearted. Compassion is for the compassionate.

As for ruthlessness and calculation… they were never incompatible with virtue. They were merely different forms of self-preservation.

Rong Tang brought his gaze back to Su Huaijing, hoping to hear something that would satisfy him…only to be drawn into the bottomless whirlpool of those eyes.

It was the last stretch of summer. The weather turned suddenly. One moment, there had been sunset and layered clouds. Then came thunder and lightning.

No rain fell. Only the wind rose and surged through the courtyard.

Su Huaijing curled his fingers into a fist at his side. His eyes shimmered. In the end, he could hold it back no longer.

He lowered his head and captured Rong Tang’s lips, the tip of his tongue tracing lightly along the edge of his teeth.

Half the sky was clouded over, the other half dark as thunder rumbled across the southern skies. The deep, resonant tolling of the great Brahma Bell echoed unendingly, one strike following another in solemn procession.

Su Huaijing held Rong Tang tightly in his arms, kissing him with a fevered, near-possessive intensity until his balance gave way and Rong Tang nearly fell.

He caught him just in time, steadied his breath, then spoke softly against the sound of Rong Tang’s ragged breathing.

“It wasn’t him.”

He paused, as though searching for the right words. The bells had rung countless times by now, as if summoning the entire realm of Dayu to mourn in unison.

Su Huaijing only furrowed his brow before quietly adding, “It was my grandmother.”

Rong Tang, lips flushed and swollen, looked up at him in surprise.

The tension smoothed from Su Huaijing’s brow. He guided Rong Tang beneath the eaves, settling with him on the beauty’s rest. Together, they watched the clouds shift and scatter across the sky, the bells still sounding in the distance.

“She was my grandfather’s step-empress.”

The grudges that followed were real enough. For Sheng Xuyan to breach the palace so swiftly, Su Huaijing would not believe for a moment that the Empress Dowager had no hand in it.

Yet all that early affection, the bond of kinship within the imperial clan. Those had been real too.

She was the Emperor’s foster mother, the Empress Dowager of Dayu. And yet she had humbled herself to personally embroider a wedding kerchief for her granddaughter’s marriage. When the Emperor punished his son, she had braved the awkwardness of her station and walked out of the palace just to shield her grandson.

—Even though, strictly speaking, not a single drop of blood tied them to her.

Just like Sheng Xuyan, who year after year would return to the capital for the New Year, bringing great chests of the latest Jiangnan trinkets for his nieces and nephews.

Such was the imperial household. Aloof, yet not without warmth; cold, yet deeply entangled.

Su Huaijing had always known whom he wished to take revenge upon. But this one person he had deliberately excluded. The Empress Dowager.

Even when he saw that plump, well-kept Shēnshāng* creature still living comfortably in Shoukang Palace, he’d never once considered taking it back.

(*TN: shen and shang (two stars that never appear in the same sky)—two friends or relatives that have been separated and can never meet again or have become estranged and can irreconcilable.)

He didn’t know how to avenge her. So he simply didn’t dwell on it. But neither would he stop certain things from running their natural course.

He had known she’d been poisoned.

But…

Karma never errs. Retribution is never late. He might not have lifted a hand, but the Empress Dowager’s death had something of him in it nonetheless. Did that count as vengeance?

Su Huaijing wasn’t sure. He said nothing for a long while, leaning against Rong Tang’s shoulder as the persistent peal of bells finally pulled down a curtain of rain from the heavens.

Banana leaves in the courtyard were beaten down by the downpour. Su Huaijing watched raindrops splatter across the flagstones, silent.

He didn’t feel sorrow, still less regret. No guilt clung to him, nor did the kindness shown him in childhood hold any power to sway him now.

He was only thinking. Of Senior Official Zhang, Earl Wukang, Xia Jingyi, Rong Mingyu…

All those who had once risen with Sheng Xuyan in rebellion. One by one, they’d fallen: dead, wounded, buried in foreign soil, or returned home withered by age or illness.

Once, at Linghu Lake, they’d feasted with unmatched pride and bravado. Now, they were scattered, fallen, forgotten.

The cunning hare is dead, and the hunting dog is stewed. Of all of them, only one man still stood atop the peak of power.

Su Huaijing had pursued revenge for so long, held himself taut for so many years. Yet now, in the wake of this rain and these reverberating bells, exhaustion crept in at last.

He let his full weight rest on Rong Tang’s shoulder and slid an arm around his waist. His eyelids drooped of their own accord as he gazed at the blooms of water rising where the raindrops struck the stone.

Autumn was coming to the capital once more.

Su Huaijing closed his eyes. A hand brushed softly along his back. Rain whispered all around them. And then, as though compelled by some ghostly instinct, Su Huaijing spoke the words he should have uttered ten years ago.

“Tangtang… it hurts.”

“My bones ache.”

–

After the storm, the air in the capital turned sharply cool.

Dayu most prosperous domain had fallen unusually quiet. Even the humblest households could sense the capital’s unrest.

The Empress Dowager had passed. The entire realm entered mourning. White mourning streamers adorned every corner of Yu capital.

The Emperor had already been gravely ill. Struck by sudden grief, he collapsed in front of the mourning hall after kneeling too long. The realm praised his filial piety.

On the day of the Empress Dowager’s interment in the imperial mausoleum, dark clouds blanketed the sky. Yellow funeral papers fluttered through the city as the people knelt in rows to see their Empress Dowager off.

But then it happened. No one knew how. One of the lead horses was spooked. It veered violently into the crowd. A pallbearer was kicked squarely in the chest. He stumbled. The coffin slipped.

It landed with a deep, sickening thud. The lid—though it had been firmly nailed—cracked open.

The people scattered in panic. And amidst the chaos, someone caught a glimpse inside. Then another.

Faces froze. Horrified.

The most exalted woman in Dayu, the Empress Dowager. Her corpse was blackened, her lips purple, her eyes bulging wide, staring up at the sky.

—She had not even closed her eyes.

…

The Empress Dowager had died an unnatural death.

Before the people had even finished reeling from the news, another rumour took root in the streets:

It was His Majesty himself who had poisoned her.