“Chirp-squeak, chirp-squeak!”
Two crickets were locked in a fierce battle upon a stone table in the Li family’s pavilion, closely watched by a pair of young men.
The larger, red-headed cricket gained the upper hand, clamping its jaws around the head of its blue-purple opponent. Its golden wings vibrated fiercely as it clamped down, and before the blue-purple cricket could even mount a counterattack, its head was violently torn clean off.
“Ah, my Golden Lion!” one of the youths cried out in distress. “Jingchen, your Red Beauty is entirely too vicious.”
Reaching down, he picked up the carcass of his cricket and carefully deposited it into the bamboo cylinder he carried at his waist.
The other youth, seemingly anticipating the outcome all along, leaned back lazily with a languid air. His gaze flicked toward the servant boy standing behind him, who instantly caught his meaning and retrieved the victorious cricket still gripping its opponent’s head in its mandibles placing it inside a ceramic tile jar.
Shortly thereafter, two maidservants arrived to clear away the fighting cages and teasing grass from the table, replacing them with a freshly brewed pot of hot tea and two plates of pastries.
The youth who had lost the match picked up a green mung bean pastry from the plate, bit off half, and mumbled indistinctly: “Jingchen, let’s make a deal. Lend me your Red Beauty to play with for two days just two days, and I swear I’ll return it to you safe and sound.”
Li Hanchi replied, “Are you dreaming in broad daylight?”
He knew Gao Jun’s character all too well. The moment Gao Jun got his hands on the Red Beauty, he would parade it through every teahouse in Yecheng, refusing to stop until the poor creature was exhausted to death.
Gao Jun shoved the remainder of the pastry into his mouth, clapped his hands together, and clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction: “If you won’t lend it, you won’t. That Red Beauty of yours is more precious than our bond as brothers.”
In Yecheng, Li Hanchi only found Gao Jun somewhat tolerable as a companion. With his foul temper, very few aristocratic youths could stomach his company.
“Naturally,” Li Hanchi murmured, lowering his head to blow upon the steaming tea.
This Red Beauty was originally intended for the Prince of Yan by a rural cricket-catcher. Knowing of Li Hanchi’s fondness for crickets, his eldest brother had pulled strings and paid five times the asking price to acquire it for him.
Naturally, it was treated as a prized treasure.
The weather in May had grown considerably warmer. Several white willow trees planted outside the pavilion were bursting with fresh buds, swaying gently in the breeze as stray wisps drifted into the pavilion.
Plucking a leaf at random, Gao Jun crushed it into pulp between his palms in sheer boredom. Suddenly recalling something, he snapped his gaze upward toward Li Hanchi: “Jingchen, do you remember that second young master of the Xie family we trampled with our horses the other day?”
Li Hanchi’s hand paused over the teacup. With casual detachment, he said, “I remember. Why bring him up?”
Buoyed by excitement at the topic, Gao Jun stood up, moved from across the table to sit beside Li Hanchi, and held up two fingers with dramatic exaggeration. “That kid was awarded a full twenty heavy staff beatings by the Emperor, administered personally by Lu Bingqiu and he still didn’t die! Would you say his life is stubborn or what?”
“Whether his life is stubborn or not, what business is it of yours?”
Li Hanchi rotated the cup in his palm, watching the concentric ripples stir across the tea’s surface with an expression of absolute indifference.
“It’s none of mine, but it concerns you. Look at how miserably Chengxiao was tormented all because of Xie Zi’an; he hasn’t even been able to step foot outside his estate since. His father and brother never treated him well to begin with, and from now on, it’s bound to grow a hundred times worse.”
Gao Jun abruptly chuckled. “When you asked me to go horseback riding with you to run down Xie Zi’an that day, wasn’t it because you had a fire burning in your belly?”
At those words, Li Hanchi’s expression shifted violently. The force behind the hand gripping his cup suddenly doubled, sloshing half the tea over the rim.
“Stop trying to stoke my flames,” Li Hanchi warned, the threat dripping from every syllable. “Do you think surviving under Lu Bingqiu’s hands is an easy feat? The Empress Dowager intended to spare Xie Zi’an’s life haltingly crippled is still living, and bouncing around is also living. If you were Lu Bingqiu, what would you do?”
Seeing his reaction, Gao Jun deflated slightly, complaining: “Naturally leave him half-paralyzed, satisfying the Emperor’s face while complying with the Dowager’s will.”
“Yet Jingchen, I hear that Xie Zi’an can actually walk around on his own two feet now, and even secured a low-level operative position in the Eastern Depot. He’s living far more comfortably than we ever imagined.”
A staff-beating punishment was an art of nuance. Thirty strokes dealt by some hands meant walking home to recover in three to five days with zero lasting damage; five or six strokes dealt by others resulted in instant death.
For Xie Zi’an to recover enough to walk normally after twenty blows from Lu Bingqiu wasn’t merely a testament to his stubborn constitution it meant Lu Bingqiu had deliberately pulled his punches.
A dark, gloomy shadow gradually gathered within Li Hanchi’s eyes. He said coldly, “If he knows what’s good for him, he should act like a rat hiding its head and tail in Yecheng, and never cross my path again.”
Gao Jun swallowed hard. “And if he doesn’t know what’s good for him?”
Li Hanchi slowly curved the corners of his lips. “Then blood must be spilled.”
Following his flogging, Xie Zi’an had spent over two months bedridden, but he was finally able to get down and walk slowly on his own.
On countless nights, he woke from dreams in agonizing pain, yearning for the moment he would open his eyes and find himself back in his original world. Yet no matter how many times he blinked awake, he remained trapped right here.
He was genuinely stranded within an unfamiliar, cruel world.
Every struggle proved futile; he could neither escape nor alter his surroundings. All that remained for him was the desperate battle to stay alive.
In the wake of his punishment, the Empress Dowager had bestowed upon him a minor post as an operative in the Eastern Depot.
Logically speaking, he ought to have been quartered in the communal dormitories behind the bureau offices. However, considering that Xie Zi’an was still recovering and unable to care for himself, Zhu Yue had him brought back to the Grand Princess’s residence, assigning a ten-year-old child to tend to him.
What an operative in the Eastern Depot actually did remained a mystery to him; based on modern general knowledge, he merely knew the organization functioned as a secret service apparatus.
He suspected the role was likely equivalent to a general errand boy or menial laborer, given that his current physical framework hardly resembled operational material.
The Empress Dowager’s decision to spare him did not equate to approval, nor did it signal that she intended to entrust him with heavy responsibilities.
Right now, he remained nothing more than a gasping, fragile ant anyone could crush the life out of him simply by pressing down a foot.
Without warning, the tightly closed door creaked open. A beam of sunlight poured inward, framing a tiny silhouette standing amidst the blinding illumination.
Xie Zi’an lay face-down on the wooden bed, recognizing from the footsteps alone that it was the child assigned to care for him.
The boy was named Ah Nan. Though young, he possessed a sensitive mind and worked with brisk efficiency. To facilitate nursing Xie Zi’an, he had specifically moved in to share the quarters. After all, they occupied servant lodgings, leaving room for little formality.
Thanks to Ah Nan running back and forth to tend to him over the past few days scrubbing wounds, changing dressings, delivering meals, and feeding him the rotting flesh across his body had slowly begun to heal. Otherwise, who knew how long it would take for his injuries to close?
Today marked another dressing change. Finishing his assigned chores, Ah Nan hurried over without a moment’s rest. Pushing open the door with one foot while carrying a basin of warm water, he smiled and said: “Brother, time to change your bandages.”
“Alright,” Xie Zi’an replied.
Initially, Ah Nan addressed him as “Young Master,” but Xie Zi’an found the title grating and asked him to switch to “Brother.” The honorific “Young Master” sounded far too harsh.
Placing the basin on the floor, Ah Nan helped him peel away the clothing covering his wounds. As he applied the fresh salve, he chattered: “Brother, your injuries look mostly healed now. When do you plan on moving out to the depot quarters?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Nothing much,” Ah Nan murmured. “I’ll just miss you a bit.”
Miss me?
The phrase struck a familiar chord; when he retired, Liliya had expressed that she would miss him too.
He failed to understand why Ah Nan would miss him. Remaining here only doubled the child’s daily workload.
“Why?”
Ah Nan blinked, slightly startled. “Hmm?”
Xie Zi’an: “Why would you miss me?”
Ah Nan: “Living together with Brother every day, taking care of you it feels just like family.”
Hearing the word family, the faces of his father, mother, and eldest brother felt dangerously close to fading from memory. Ever since he was purchased into the Princess’s estate, he had never laid eyes on them again.
Xie Zi’an fell silent. He finally grasped why Zhu Yue had selected such a child to look after him: clean, pure, entirely devoid of worldly malice.
“Mn,” he murmured softly, offering no further response.
He possessed no family, nor would he ever have one.
Whether in the real world or in this one, the truth remained unchanged.