On the second day after arriving in the capital, Li Ti rose at the third quarter of the Yin hour, around 3:45 a.m., to bathe and change into his formal attire.
The ceremonial court robes befitting a princely heir were made of black silk gauze, embroidered with the four clawed hornless dragon in silver thread. The garment had originally been designed to convey dignified elegance and noble bearing.
Yet when Li Ti put it on now, the shoulder seams slipped nearly half an inch down his arms, while the waist hung loosely around his body, leaving far too much empty space.
Over the past two years, he had lost an alarming amount of weight, leaving his shoulder bones painfully prominent beneath his skin. Even after tightening his jade belt to the very last hole, there was still a conspicuous gap around his waist.
So this was what it meant to be reduced to skin and bones.
At the fourth quarter of the Mao hour, around six o’clock, he arrived at Zichen Hall.
Agarwood incense rose in delicate spirals from the gilded incense burner shaped like a suanni, a mythical beast resembling a lion. Li Ti silently endured the waves of twisting pain in his abdomen as he followed the assembled officials up the jade steps leading to the main hall.
Above the vermilion steps, the emperor sat high upon the Dragon Throne.
A curtain of twelve strings of white jade beads hung before the emperor’s face. The beads were spaced far enough apart to reveal only the vague outline of his upright figure and the hand resting on the armrest, adorned with a white jade thumb ring.
The senior ministers standing at the front were reporting on the reforms to the grain transport system along the Jianghuai waterways. Their speech was slow, lengthy, and tedious.
Li Ti lowered his eyes and stood silently among the officials. Countless gazes surrounded him, curious, mocking, pitying, and gleefully malicious.
They settled densely upon his already overburdened back, making him feel as though countless sharp needles were pricking his skin.
Perhaps the only thing he could consider fortunate was that, after taking his medicine at the imperial post station the previous night, he had managed to enjoy two rare hours of uninterrupted sleep. His internal organs still felt heavy and sluggish today, but at least his condition was not quite as bad as it usually was…
The moment that hopeful thought crossed his mind, a violent wave of pain exploded inside him without the slightest warning!
“Ugh-“
A short, muffled groan escaped Li Ti’s throat. His body lurched violently, and both fists moved instinctively to clutch his lower abdomen, his knuckles turning deathly white one after another.
It was hurting again…
The jade belt securing his court robes suddenly felt as heavy as a thousand jin, pressing mercilessly against his waist and abdomen. His vision darkened in waves. He could barely draw breath, and the metallic sweetness of blood instantly flooded his mouth. In the space of a moment, cold sweat soaked through his inner garments.
But in the emperor’s presence, the slightest loss of composure was unacceptable.
Moreover, he still had to plead on behalf of his family and defend his father and younger brothers against the accusations.
Therefore, even if the pain shattered his consciousness and brought him to the very brink of fainting, he absolutely could not collapse here and now.
“Heir to Prince Jing?”
A clear, resonant voice came from above the vermilion steps, cutting through the buzzing in his ears.
It took Li Ti a long time to wrest a fragment of consciousness away from the bone deep agony. With immense difficulty, he raised his head and looked through the swaying, blurred curtain of jade beads, meeting the gaze of someone seated behind it,
But the distance was too great, and the image too indistinct. He could not make out the other man’s features.
The emperor was very young.
He was less than two years older than the seventeenth prince, Jiang Yunnian, and was even more than a year younger than Li Ti himself.
“Heir,” the emperor’s authoritative voice sounded again, calm and devoid of any discernible emotion. “You do not look well. Are you feeling unwell?”
Li Ti forced himself to draw a breath and clenched his back teeth with all his strength. “This subject… Li Ti… is fine. I pay my respects to Your Majesty… May Your Majesty enjoy ten thousand…”
But the moment he began to bend at the waist, an even more violent wave of cramping pain crashed over him like a raging tide.
It felt as though an icy hand had clamped around his throat, squeezing so tightly that he could no longer force out even a single complete word.
His eyes turned bloodshot. He could no longer support himself.
His knees gave way, and he fell heavily to the floor in a kneeling position.
His forehead struck the cold white jade tiles. All the strength he had left was consumed by his desperate struggle against the abyss of pain gnawing at his abdomen, leaving him unable to rise again. His black hair fell loosely over the jade steps, while his back curved into a fragile, vulnerable arc.
His long, slender fingers could no longer maintain even the slightest semblance of composure. They pressed desperately against his lower abdomen, where the agony continued to churn and twist without mercy.
In his dazed state, he heard the voice behind the jade curtain remain as steady as ever.
“The Southern Border is a long way from the capital, and the journey must have been exhausting. If you are feeling unwell, the heir may speak freely.”
It was not the oppressive display of imperial majesty or the mocking scrutiny he had anticipated.
Yet Li Ti could no longer hear clearly.
The clamorous voices of the officials rang in his ears as the world spun violently around him. In the final moments before consciousness slipped away, he vaguely saw the curtain of jade beads sway. A figure clad in gold descended from the vermilion steps, the wind stirred by the sweep of his robes dispersing a wisp of agarwood incense.
Then nothing remained but endless darkness.
Before this day, Jiang Yunzi had honestly never given much thought to what the heir to Prince Jing of the Southern Border, Li Ti, actually looked like.
He had heard that the man was rather handsome, but he had never paid the matter much attention.
His impression of Li Ti had always been most deeply rooted in those bitter, freezing nights when he was still an unfavored imperial prince, curled up in a secluded side hall of the Cold Palace, struggling to endure the biting chill and the loneliness that surrounded him.
Because, at that time, the name Li Ti represented everything Jiang Yunzi had never possessed: a life of fine clothes and sumptuous food, surrounded by boundless affection and favor.
In the rumors that reached him back then, the heir to Prince Jing of the Southern Border was a figure Jiang Yunzi could only envy.
When Jiang Yunzi was fourteen and suffering under the constant deductions made by the palace eunuchs because his mother’s favor had waned, fifteen year old Li Ti was already riding the finest Ferghana horse in the Southern Border, hunting a snow white spirit fox at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.
When Jiang Yunzi was fifteen and had no choice but to follow the Third Prince with humble deference, only to be cornered in an alley by the Crown Prince’s faction and beaten mercilessly, sixteen year old Li Ti received a birthday gift of an extraordinary red coral from the Eastern Sea. The coral stood two zhang tall, its branches shimmering with flowing iridescence. It was a priceless treasure so rare that even the imperial palace’s own repositories could not produce anything to match it.
When Jiang Yunzi was sixteen and assigned a seat at the very end of the banquet during a palace feast, so insignificant that even the late emperor barely recognized him, seventeen year old Li Ti was already assisting his father in governing the Southern Border. He was managing disaster relief, suppressing rebellions, and overseeing the construction of irrigation works. Everyone under heaven knew how deeply Prince Jing cherished and trusted his heir.
Later, Jiang Yunzi endured countless hardships and finally ascended the imperial throne.
Yet even after becoming emperor, he still found himself obstructed at every turn by the Southern Border, while Li Ti had even dared to compose poetry mocking him…
Under such circumstances, whether for public reasons or personal ones, he could no longer tolerate Li Ti’s existence.
Even if the Southern Border was as solid as an iron wall and the entire Li family stood united, he refused to believe that he could not break through that seemingly impenetrable fortress by striking at its most intimate point.
Thus, after carefully investigating every one of Li Ti’s preferences and interests, Jiang Yunzi summoned his seventeenth younger brother, a notorious playboy whose name was entangled in countless romantic affairs and who was exceptionally skilled at playing whatever role a situation demanded.
“I don’t care how you do it. All I want is for you to seduce Li Ti and ruin him completely, leaving him disgraced and beyond redemption!”
Not long after Jiang Yunnian arrived in the Southern Border, a secret report was sent back to the capital.
According to the letter, Li Ti was nothing special.
“Imperial Brother, that Li Ti is nothing more than an undeservedly celebrated man. His ability to govern is passable, his knowledge of poetry and literature is passable, and his appearance… is merely refined and handsome. He is by no means the peerless, noble minded gentleman of whom the rumors speak.”
His words were filled with casual disdain and contempt.
Yet two years later, when Jiang Yunnian had truly fulfilled his mission and systematically dismantled the Southern Border’s power, returning to the capital with a complete report of victory, his face was ashen, as though he had been struck dead.
Several nights later, he stormed into the imperial study and dropped heavily to his knees. His forehead struck the golden brick floor with a series of loud, resounding thuds.
“Imperial Brother… I beg you… spare Li Ti’s life. I will take him away. We can go to Lingnan, to some pestilential land rife with miasma, or we can drift across the open sea… I am willing to abandon our names and identities and live in obscurity with him from now on. We will never again become an obstacle in your path.”
Jiang Yunzi raised his eyes from the memorials before him, finding the request utterly absurd. “You want to take him away?”
“Yes.” Tears rolled down Jiang Yunnian’s face without warning, leaving him in a wretched state. “Imperial Brother… I… I have feelings for him. I truly cannot bear to part with him.”
Those words genuinely made Jiang Yunzi laugh.
He set down his vermilion writing brush and strolled over to stand before his younger brother, his voice dripping with mockery. “You worthless fool.”
He had set out to manipulate another man’s heart, only to end up ensnaring himself in his own scheme?
They had been born of the same mother. How had this particular brother of his managed to grow up so utterly stupid?
Nevertheless, Jiang Yunzi was not a ruler who delighted in exterminating entire families or treating others with merciless ingratitude.
His seventeenth younger brother had accomplished a major undertaking, and all he was asking for in return was a ruined man. Why should Jiang Yunzi be so stingy?
“Very well.”
“For your sake, I will spare the entire Li family and allow their Prince Jing to retain his empty title. From this day forward, you and Li Ti need only behave yourselves and remain within your proper bounds.”
He thought that would settle the matter.
The Southern Border’s military power had already been reclaimed, and the Li family had suffered a devastating blow. Surely they would never again be capable of stirring up trouble.
Who could have imagined that after Jiang Yunzi had relented, his foolish younger brother would actually expose his own identity as a traitor to Li Ti?
According to the reports, the confrontation had been devastating. Li Ti had vomited blood repeatedly and nearly died on the spot, while Jiang Yunnian had been driven out of the Southern Border in utter disgrace. From then on, he had sunk into despondency, wandering through life like a disembodied ghost.
“…But how could he have exposed himself so easily?”
Jiang Yunzi frowned as he read the secret report.
Back when he had been caught in the struggle for the throne, he had personally manipulated several of his elder brothers, two powerful ministers, the late emperor’s favored consort, and even the chief eunuch who controlled the imperial seal. Yet he had never left behind so much as the slightest trace of evidence against himself.
Whether it was using the Noble Consort to administer a slow acting poison in the Crown Prince’s meals, deliberately and seemingly inadvertently revealing to the Third Prince that the Fifth Prince was behind a particular conspiracy, exploiting the chief eunuch’s greed to collect incriminating evidence, or planting singing girls in the mansions of powerful ministers, he had always known exactly how to make use of people and circumstances.
And when the time was right, he had conveniently led troops to rescue the emperor, then casually framed the military commanders stationed in the northwest. In a single night, he had uprooted those deeply entrenched and intricately connected factions, eliminating them all at once.
He had carried out every one of those schemes, one after another, and not a single person had discovered that he was responsible.
Even now, most of the court still believed that he was merely an honest, unassuming prince who had been fortunate enough to obtain the throne.
Wasn’t that how things were supposed to be done in the imperial family?
Leave no gaps. Never allow a single leaf to cling to one’s clothes.
How, then, had his seventeenth younger brother managed to get caught with his hand in the cookie jar simply by trying to deceive one man?
Jiang Yunzi had originally found his foolish little seventeenth brother somewhat endearing, in a way.
He had never expected that a month later, when his younger brother returned to the capital after being driven out of the Southern Border, looking utterly lost and devastated, he would confront him with bloodshot eyes and a face twisted as though he had gone mad.
“It’s all your fault!”
“If you hadn’t forced me to deceive him, if I hadn’t done it to help you secure your throne, none of this would have happened! You were the one who taught me every word I needed to say to lure him into the trap. You were the one who ordered me to pretend that my feelings were sincere. And you were the one who commanded me to plant that poison in his body, the one that would eat away at his insides and make him suffer unbearable agony! He shouldn’t hate me! It was all your fault from the very beginning!”
Jiang Yunzi developed a headache from sheer frustration at his brother’s stupidity.
The following day, he issued an imperial decree demoting Jiang Yunnian and exiling him to Qiongzhou, a desolate place where not even birds would lay eggs.
Out of sight, out of mind. Someone as foolish as this was simply unsuitable for remaining in the capital.
Another year passed.
Li Ti’s youngest brother caused trouble and accidentally killed an imperial inspector.
This time, the incident truly had nothing to do with Jiang Yunzi.
He had already brought down the Li family and reclaimed their military authority. He had long since cast Li Ti aside and forgotten about him.
After all, he was the Son of Heaven, seated high above the world and burdened with the administration of an entire empire. He had countless affairs to attend to every day, and the memorials piled upon his desk were taller than a person. A defeated opponent was naturally not worth spending any further thought on.
But now that the man had dragged his nearly exhausted, poison ravaged body thousands of miles to the capital to plead for mercy…
The timing was rather convenient. Jiang Yunzi had been in a particularly foul mood lately.
Several veteran ministers who had served three reigns, led by the Minister of Personnel, were relying on their extensive networks of former students, associates, and political allies throughout the court to obstruct him at every turn over the reforms to the state monopolies on salt and iron. They paid lip service to his commands while secretly defying them, banding together to resist his decrees.
He was in need of an opportunity to teach those arrogant old men, who relied on their seniority to act above the law, a proper lesson.
Li Ti would make an excellent example.
He would use the former heir to Prince Jing as his opening move and let every official in the court see with their own eyes how the once glorious heir to Prince Jing had been forced to kneel and beg for mercy beneath the vermilion steps. If even a man like Li Ti could be reduced to such a state, what hope could anyone else possibly have of resisting him?
Jiang Yunzi had never met Li Ti before.
His younger brother had once described Li Ti as “ordinary, more or less acceptable,” while the spies stationed in the Southern Border had reported over the past few years that the man was gravely ill, reduced to a frail skeleton and unlikely to live much longer.
What difference could it make?
Even if Li Ti had once possessed the grace and brilliance of a gentleman who stood above the ordinary world, all that remained now was a miserable, lingering existence.
That was what Jiang Yunzi had believed.
Until the day he finally laid eyes on Li Ti.
Inside Zichen Hall, the morning sunlight streamed through the tall windows, falling obliquely across the man’s figure.
For some inexplicable reason, Jiang Yunzi suddenly found that he could no longer hear the long, tedious report being delivered by the elderly minister below the steps.
The wind outside the hall and even the sound of his own breathing seemed to recede into the distance. His entire field of vision was occupied by that single figure,
Li Ti was so thin that he could barely fill out his black court robes. He swayed unsteadily, resembling a slender bamboo stalk battered and damaged by the frost of late autumn. Its leaves and branches had nearly withered and fallen away, yet that section of its spine remained stubbornly upright, isolated and proud, refusing to bend.
…Such bearing, such appearance.
No wonder.
No wonder even his seventeenth younger brother, who had wandered through countless romantic entanglements and experienced the charms of innumerable beauties, had fallen for him.
The strings of jade beads hanging before the emperor’s face concealed his gaze, which had become far too undisguised.
His eyes roamed over Li Ti without the slightest restraint.
They swept across the vulnerable line of his neck, which had tilted upward slightly as he endured the pain; lingered on his thin, bloodless lips, pressed tightly together; and traced the sharp, prominent veins standing out across the back of his hand beneath his sleeve.
Finally, his gaze settled upon the waist and abdomen tightly bound by the jade belt.
Even though illness had reduced him to little more than skin and bones, his shoulders remained broad, and his legs were long. The traces of his former elegance and vigor could still be discerned beneath his frail appearance.
He had heard that before falling ill, Li Ti possessed a lean, powerful physique, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and exceptional skill in riding and archery.
Now, that waist…
With the jade belt cinched so tightly around it, could it still be encircled by a single pair of hands?
The tips of Jiang Yunzi’s fingers began to itch faintly.
His index finger rested on the armrest of the Dragon Throne, rubbing against it twice without conscious thought.
An inexplicable dryness also rose in his throat.
At last, the elderly minister below the steps concluded his lengthy report.
Meanwhile, Li Ti had already begun to show unmistakable signs that he could no longer endure the strain.
The hand hanging at his side had crept toward his lower abdomen several times, each movement so subtle that it was almost impossible to notice. Yet every time, he had forced himself to release the pressure and lower his hand again.
Now, as he approached step by step, the excessively straight line of his back and the faint trembling of his shoulders revealed even more clearly the kind of torment his body was enduring at that moment.
Even his gaze had become unfocused from the pain.
Jiang Yunzi actually knew the reason behind Li Ti’s condition.
Two years earlier, he had given his seventeenth younger brother a deadly poison that could kill with a single drop of blood, intending for him to use it to finish Li Ti off.
But Jiang Yunnian had not used that poison.
Instead, he had traveled all the way to the Miao frontier in search of another, more sinister kind of gu poison.
According to what Jiang Yunzi had heard, the gu required the heart’s blood of both the caster and the victim as its catalyst. Once implanted, the two would share life and breath, bound together by the same parasitic force. The victim would suffer an attack of excruciating pain at regular intervals each month, an agony that gnawed into the bones and ate away at the body. The only way to alleviate the suffering was for the person who had planted the gu to massage the affected area using a special technique.
At the time, Jiang Yunnian had written in his secret report, “This younger brother believes that killing him may not be necessary. Perhaps this gu could be used to keep him under control, which would prove more effective in the long run.”
Jiang Yunzi had simply written two characters in reply: As you wish.
He had heard that the gu could originally be cured.
After his relationship with Li Ti had completely fallen apart, Jiang Yunnian had even made up his mind to remove it.
Unfortunately, fate had other plans. The elderly Miao gu master who had planted the poison died unexpectedly amid internal strife within his tribe. His exclusive method of removing the gu was lost with him, leaving the poison without a cure and turning it into an inescapable death sentence.
And Li Ti, for all his suffering, possessed a formidable degree of pride.
Once he had seen through the deception and severed all ties with Jiang Yunnian, he would rather endure the pain until it killed him than accept even the slightest touch or comfort from that man ever again.
At that moment, Jiang Yunzi watched with his own eyes as Li Ti’s loose, ill fitting court robes shook around his frail body before he suddenly collapsed to his knees in the grip of unbearable pain.
His entire body trembled violently, yet he gritted his teeth and kept every cry of agony trapped between them, refusing to let a single sound escape.
The hall erupted in an uproar.
Jiang Yunzi descended from the vermilion steps. The hem of his black imperial robe, embroidered with golden dragon patterns, swept across the cold golden brick floor as he passed the assembled officials and palace attendants, then crouched beside Li Ti.
“Don’t touch him.”
The gu recognized its master. If anyone else rashly touched the victim, it would only provoke an even more violent backlash.
He extended his hand.
His palm was warm. Without giving Li Ti any chance to resist, he pried apart the man’s fingers, which had dug so deeply into the fabric over his abdomen that the knuckles had turned white, and then firmly laid his entire palm over the afflicted area.
Through the soaked fabric of Li Ti’s court robes, he could clearly feel the lower abdomen beneath his hand convulsing in wave after wave of desperate, involuntary spasms.
Li Ti was already on the verge of losing consciousness. His eyes were tightly shut, and he was suffering beyond endurance. Yet the moment Jiang Yunzi’s palm settled over his abdomen, a faint, muffled groan escaped his throat. His waist and abdomen lifted slightly of their own accord, and instinctively, he pressed the most painful spot against the warmth of the emperor’s palm.
Perhaps it was because… Jiang Yunzi and Jiang Yunnian had been born of the same mother.
Their blood came from the same source, and their auras were similar.
The gu was a dull witted creature, unable to distinguish the subtle difference between the two brothers. Consequently, Jiang Yunzi could also help Li Ti dispel the pain. At the very least… he could alleviate most of it.
Jiang Yunzi gradually increased the pressure of his palm.
Under his hand, Li Ti’s rigid body truly began to relax, little by little. Like someone who had narrowly escaped death, he let out a faint, unsteady breath.
Jiang Yunzi’s gaze darkened slightly.
Something deep within his blood seemed to awaken quietly, something unfamiliar and surging with an overwhelming force.
That faint itch at his fingertips had returned.
Author’s Note
Jiang Yunzi: Opens the door to a whole new world.