Chapter 4
Edward Quan ·
“Your Majesty, from the day I crossed the palace gates, I no longer had a family.”
“If the empress dowager wants to threaten me with these people, let her kill them all. My heart belongs only to you.”
Father stared, speechless. My sister began to cry.
“Sister, could you truly bear to watch us die?”
I gave her a glance.
“Thunder and rain alike are Heaven's grace. Don't you understand that?”
“Merely killing the few of you would hardly satisfy my anger.”
I put on an innocent, wheedling manner and shook Zhao Chengyao's arm.
“But they still owe me half their property. Now they're trying to avoid the debt. Will Your Majesty give me justice?”
He readily agreed, barely able to hide his delight.
In his view, once I turned against every relative, I could cling to him alone.
That very evening, he even gave me the phoenix seal governing the inner palace.
Naturally, I took a firm hold of the power offered to me.
Under the pretext of rooting out the empress dowager's spies, I replaced the guards at the palace gates.
I coaxed Zhao Chengyao into stamping several troop orders with the imperial seal.
He was too busy enjoying the sight of me to ask where the soldiers were going.
First, I transferred away the dowager's trusted men. Then I brought the late emperor's former Imperial Guard officers back into the imperial city.
The last order went to the capital garrison, commanding it to enter the palace on the night of the Longevity Banquet to protect the sovereign.
Those decrees that truly determined life and death were mixed among absurd orders for flower-viewing, lake renovations, and a Star-Picking Terrace for me.
All would take effect on a single night.
...
Late that night, I opened the hidden chamber again.
The locks at Pei Wujiu's wrists had already been loosened.
I crouched to tend his wounds, deliberately teasing him with his own words.
“An old acquaintance who covets power really isn't worth another glance from you.”
He lowered his eyes and admitted his fault at once.
“My wife is quite right.”
Then he returned another cruel remark to me.
“A useless eunuch without a future isn't worth my wife's risking her life either.”
My nose stung. I pinched him hard.
The pain brought a quiet cough. Blood soon seeped into his palm, startlingly red.
I froze, but he quickly hid his hand and straightened the loose hair at my temple.
“Don't be afraid. This time, I'll keep you safe.”
Looking at his ever-thinner frame, I finally asked, “Your illness... what is really happening?”
He avoided my eyes and smiled to soothe me.
“Once we're through this, it will get better.”
While his head was lowered, I slipped an impression of the key hanging around Zhao Chengyao's neck into his palm.
His former followers would cast a key from it.
Once the Longevity Banquet began, this chamber would no longer hold him.
Before closing the door, I silently joined my hands in prayer.
This time, let us both come through safely.
10
The empress's Longevity Banquet arrived in the blink of an eye.
She had always been known for kindness. Despite my many days of arrogance, she still sent an invitation to the Palace of Heavenly Purity.
After long consideration, I went.
Once the birthday gifts had been presented, the empress dowager unexpectedly raised the first cup to me.
I only touched the wine to my lips.
She and Zhao Chengyao drank theirs down.
The moment the emperor collapsed, the hall doors slammed shut.
The men the dowager had stationed rose with drawn blades.
In an instant, every blade turned toward her.
The empress was blindfolded and escorted outside. Only a few of us remained in the vast hall.
Pei Wujiu slowly emerged from behind a screen in dark robes, his true face exposed—identical to Zhao Chengyao's.
Zhao Chengyao stared.
“Brother, so you've come to steal my throne after all.”
Pei Wujiu was calm.
“That position was stolen from me in the first place.”
He threw an antidote onto the ground and watched mother and son scramble for it, as though teasing dogs.
“You've swallowed a poison that will tear through your innards. The antidote on the floor is enough for only one.”
Standing behind him, I felt fierce satisfaction warm my chest.
They had once forced Pei Wujiu to choose between me and the throne.
Now they should taste abandonment by their closest kin.
The empress dowager didn't hesitate. She lunged forward and swallowed the pill, knocking her son's outstretched hand aside in her haste.
Zhao Chengyao went rigid.
After a long moment, he laughed bitterly.
“You always said it was all for me. In the end, you love only yourself!”
Her face was ashen. She still muttered explanations.
“Yao'er, I can't die. Only if I live can I find a way... to save you...”
Pei Wujiu asked calmly, “When you abandoned me, you said it was for the realm. Is abandoning him today for the realm too?”
She defended herself in a trembling voice.
“I must not fall. So long as I remain, Great Zhao will not descend into chaos.”
What she loved most had never been either of her sons.
It was the power in her hands.
Zhao Chengyao closed his eyes, refusing to look at her again.
Only then did Pei Wujiu produce a second pill and order it forced into his brother's mouth.
The poison could be cured. But after the delay, his legs would most likely never support him again.
Yet from the moment his mother failed to choose him, he had ceased to care about his legs.
Nothing remained in him but the despair of rejection.
The empress dowager suddenly screamed and lunged at Pei Wujiu.
“You ill-omened monster! Had I known this day would come, I should have strangled you with my own hands at birth!”
He stood without retreating.
But I couldn't let her hurt him again.
I stepped forward and slapped her hard.
“If Your Majesty dares speak such madness again, the sword in my hand will show no more mercy.”
11
Zhao Chengyao was dragged alive into the chamber that had held his brother, his hands and feet chained to the wall.
When Pei Wujiu and I stood before him, he burst into wild laughter.
“Brother, she's mine now. Inside and out.”
“She climbed into my bed of her own accord for wealth and rank. You still want a woman like that?”
I walked to the bed and threw the bloodstained bridal cloth in his face.
“Your Majesty slept so soundly that night, you must have forgotten you did nothing at all.”
His laughter stopped.
I meant to taunt him further, but Pei Wujiu stepped between us, blocking his gaze, and gently drew my robe closed.
“Quite apart from the fact that she recognized the substitution, what if she hadn't?”
He turned to his brother, his voice still calm.
“You're the one who's filthy. Not my Qinghe.”
Zhao Chengyao yanked at the chains, screaming himself almost hoarse.
“Impossible!”
“I have the same face as you. The same voice, the same manner. How could she know?”
I looked down at him and followed Pei Wujiu's words with another blow.
“Perhaps because... you're too filthy?”
He stared at his elder brother, tears slowly filling his eyes.
“Brother, I'm the one who loves you most.”
“You can't shut me in here.”
“I'm afraid of the dark. You've always known that.”
Pei Wujiu looked at the legs that had already lost all feeling. His smile was bleak.
“I'm afraid of pain too.”
“But when you ordered iron rings driven into my bones, you never told them to stop. I got that injury to my leg taking your punishment. Without Qinghe, I would have died then.”
He paused, then completed his judgment.
“So you should taste every suffering I endured.”
At last, real fear appeared in Zhao Chengyao's face.
“Brother, please kill me.”
Pei Wujiu shook his head.
“A quick death would be too easy. How could you miss the chance to live the days I lived?”
He looked down at his brother with something almost like pity.
“Aren't we brothers by blood?”
“Zhao Chengyao, you said you loved me. Then share a little of my hardship.”
I drew a short blade and stepped forward. Turning my wrist, I cut deep.
Blood spurted. Zhao Chengyao fainted from the pain.
Pei Wujiu smiled, took my hand, and led me from the chamber.
Then he closed the hidden stone door himself.
That face identical to his was finally swallowed by darkness.
The next morning, Pei Wujiu put on the dragon robes and attended court as usual.
No one in the world would discover that the emperor on the throne had already become another man.
12
Pei Wujiu decided to make my reputation as a wicked consort a reality.
From then on, no one dared question that title to my face.
He took me to court. Instead of letting me hide behind a screen or curtain, he sat me beside him on the dragon throne.
Facing the assembled officials, he spoke calmly.
“The Noble Consort saved me from a death trap and helped settle the turmoil.”
“Half this realm is hers already. Why shouldn't she sit here?”
After a long silence, an imperial censor knelt and kowtowed.
“For the inner palace to interfere in government may violate the laws of our ancestors!”
Pei Wujiu didn't grow angry.
He simply took a memorial from the desk and placed it before me.
“Severe flooding in Jiangnan. The dikes are close to breaking. Qinghe, what do you think should be done?”
I paused, then lowered my head and read carefully.
The local officials had filled page after page with complaints of poverty, asking for money and grain.
Not a word about where the displaced people should go.
I considered before answering.
“Open the government granaries along the affected routes immediately and arrange shelter for the refugees. Then investigate the funds allocated for dike repairs in previous years.”
I pointed to the figures.
“The court pays for repairs every year, and every year the dikes break.”
“The cause of this disaster may not lie only in the rivers. It may be hidden in human hearts too.”
Pei Wujiu smiled gently, his approval undisguised.
“The Noble Consort has expressed my own thoughts.”
The censor who had opposed me hurried to speak.
“Her Highness has spent years secluded in the palace. How could she truly understand flood control?”
I looked straight at him.
“Your ancestral home is in Jiangnan. A member of your clan manages river transport.”
I turned to the memorial's final page.
“And this account of poverty happens to have been written by your father's nephew.”
“Are you so anxious to stop us because you fear an inspection of the accounts?”
His face went white.
Pei Wujiu tapped the throne with his knuckles and decided the matter on the spot.
“Do as the Noble Consort says. Open the granaries and save lives immediately. Then examine every account.”
After court, he took my hand back to the bedchamber.
Feeling the cold sweat in my palm, he laughed quietly.
“Were you frightened?”
I shook my head and told the truth.
“Not frightened. I just didn't expect you to hand me the memorial so suddenly.”
He spread records of the officials of the Six Ministries before me.
“This wasn't a passing impulse.”
Their backgrounds, marriage alliances, protégés, and private connections were all clearly recorded.
He pushed a thick stack toward me.
“From today, you'll read every memorial first.”
“If you don't understand something, I'll teach you. If you're uncertain, I'll bear the responsibility.”
He held my fingertips, his voice firm.
“After all our years together, I've long known your abilities. You simply never had a place to use them. Now you have the chance. Go ahead.”
I turned a few pages. An unaccountable unease rose inside me.
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
Pei Wujiu covered his mouth and coughed. When he lowered his hand, he hid the palm in his sleeve.
Pretending nothing had happened, he even raised an eyebrow in a coaxing manner.
“One day, I'd like to rest too.”
“When that time comes, I'll have to trouble my wife to look after the realm for me.”
I angrily stepped on his foot.
He didn't dodge. Instead, he steadied me in my seat.
Much later, he held me, buried his face against my neck, and told me in a subdued voice, “Zhao Chengyao is dead.”
I went still.
...
When Zhao Chengyao breathed his last, the empress dowager was outside the stone door.
But even at death, he refused to see his mother again.
He had feared darkness most since childhood.
As emperor, he kept his bedchamber lit all night, with luminous pearls spread across the floor.
Once imprisoned in the hidden chamber, he saw no light at all.