The towering emperor lowered his body, bending to a level he had even never known before. Even the soft groans forced from his throat at the height of passion were rigidly restrained, his emotional surrender betrayed solely by the bulging veins on the arms that gripped the edge of the bed curtains so tightly.
His eyes, struggling to suppress physiological tears, locked obsessively onto his beloved. He watched that cool, detached face flush with carnal desire, watched the cool, slick sweat slide down from a taut abdomen into darker depths, a gaze of all-consuming, suffocating possessiveness.
The bed curtains swayed violently through the night, only coming to an exhausted halt at the break of dawn.
When Chu Xunsheng finally opened his eyes, he was completely refreshed from head to toe, and no trace of anyone else remained by his side.
It was as though last night’s desperate, breathless intimacy had been nothing more than a dream.
Rubbing his temples, Chu Xunsheng rasped out for a eunuch in a hoarse voice and asked, “Has the grand ceremony begun?”
The young eunuch acted as though he saw nothing of the mottled red hickeys scattered across the noble figure before him, bowing respectfully as he replied in a low voice, “Reporting to my lord, the ceremony has already begun.”
Good grief!
Chu Xunsheng hurriedly changed into his formal attire and rushed over to the sacrificial grounds outside the main hall. Fortunately, the entrance was positioned behind the rows of civil and military officials, allowing him to slip in unnoticed.
Looking up, he saw the emperor standing straight and solemn upon the high dais at the head of the officials, showing no outward sign of physical discomfort.
“Lord Chu, Lord Chu, over here!”
The minor official whispered a greeting to him, and several surrounding people cast subtle glances his way.
Chu Xunsheng sauntered over to the prime viewing spot the minor official had saved him for, ideal for zoning out.
The people around were still staring at him, and even the emperor high upon the dais seemed to cast a gaze in his direction.
What are you looking at? Never seen office flattery before?
Chu Xunsheng left his face without a blush or a heartbeat and glared right back.
Perhaps intimidated, the surrounding officials flushed and turned their heads away.
The sacrificial ritual dragged on for an exceptionally long time, filled entirely with tedious, flattering praises. With nothing better to do, Chu Xunsheng lowered his head, tucked his hands into his sleeves, and drifted off into his own world.
The minor official beside him gently tugged at his sleeve and started making small talk.
Finding himself bored anyway, Chu Xunsheng casually answered in half-hearted bursts.
Only, the questions were bizarre to a fault.
At first, things were normal enough, asking how to handle a water flood in Jiaozhou or which tailor in the capital possessed the finest craftsmanship, so Chu Xunsheng answered earnestly. But at some point, the topic shifted to whether his home leaked because the questioner was exceptionally skilled at plugging leaks, or if he needed new clothes because the questioner excelled at tailoring and loved measuring sizes by hand.
Silent, Chu Xunsheng stared at the minor official’s wide-eyed, innocent-looking face before shaking his head with absolute finality.
The minor official pouted, looking utterly crestfallen. Before he could voice another word, a loud crash interrupted him.
“Crash!”
An exquisitely carved, expensive golden goblet, a sacred vessel used for the sacrifice, came hurtling through the air, rolling across the stone floor twice.
“No shouting allowed during the ancestral sacrifice.”
The sovereign stared coldly at the minor official, his voice laced with an icy frost that made one’s skin crawl.
Trembling with fear, the minor official repeatedly nodded and acknowledged the reprimand.
Smiling, Chu Xunsheng looked up, but the man on the dais instantly snapped his gaze away, as though dodging some monstrous flood or wild beast.
Throughout the remainder of the ceremony, the subsequent rituals the following day, and even during the breaks between events, Chu Xunsheng did not exchange a single word with Emperor Ji Yan.
The three-day grand ceremony felt both agonizingly long and fleetingly short, but it eventually drew to a close. The entourage began sluggishly packing their bags to return to the imperial palace.
The carriage procession was neatly lined up, with the emperor’s royal carriage positioned dead center.
Ji Yan raised a hand to lift the carriage curtain, then paused.
The eunuch beside him asked in a low voice, “Does Your Majesty have any instructions?”
Ji Yan replied, “No matter. I shall stand for a moment.”
The emperor remained silent in front of the carriage until he watched that familiar figure squeeze into a modest, cramped carriage alongside that exceedingly annoying minor official, before finally stooping to enter his own luxurious imperial vehicle.
So be it. We agreed to be nothing more than monarch and subject.
The carriage rumbled into motion. While the thin curtains were entirely incapable of blocking out the sound of laughter and chatter from outside, Ji Yan could distinctly pick out the minor official’s cheerful, chirping voice and that man’s brief, yet earnest replies.
A sour, astringent ache bloomed within his chest, as though his heart had been steeped in vinegar, making it difficult to breathe.
Seeking a distraction, he reached out and randomly opened a box. Figures, a fuzzy gourd.
With a sigh, Ji Yan closed the box and subjected himself to self-inflicted torture by listening to their conversation.
As he listened, he began to wonder, if I had not let my mouth run away from me last night, could I at least still be A-Yan by his side? What if, what if I were just A-Yan?
With a pale face, Ji Yan forcefully severed his own train of thought.
I am the Son of Heaven, born to rule the world.
The journey back, which had felt like a fleeting moment on the way there, stretched out endlessly on the return trip.
After what felt like an eternity, the carriages finally rolled to a halt.
It was deep in the night. Permitted by the emperor, the exhausted officials dispersed to their quarters, leaving only the imperial carriage to slowly rattle its way into the depths of the Forbidden City.
The sprawling palace complex was wrapped in a terrifying, heavy silence, as though some dreadful beast lurked within the pitch-black shadows.
This stillness felt entirely different from the usual tension caused by fear of the emperor’s authority, it was a hair-raising, deadened quiet where one could hear nothing save for the sound of their own breathing.
A sound as light as a falling leaf drifted from nearby.
A cold blade flashed with an ominous glint in the darkness, signaling that something was stirring beneath the surface.
Sensing something amiss, Ji Yan slowly straightened his posture and called out to the eunuch nearby, “Immediately summon all the imperial guards in the capital, and fire the distress signal flares.”
As he spoke, he swept open the carriage curtain.
The eunuch moved swiftly. Seizing the moment when everyone’s attention was fixed on the emperor, he slipped away under the cover of the crowd.
Meanwhile, the soldiers accompanying him had already trained themselves into a defensive circle, tightly guarding the imperial carriage in the center. Ji Yan scanned the surroundings, no fireworks, not even a glimmer of light, only,
“Clang!”
He violently ducked to the side to dodge a flying cold arrow, instantly followed by a rain of countless arrows sweeping across the sky like shooting stars, their reflecting glints blindingly bright.
Out from the shadows rushed a sea of black-clad figures, practically blotting out the sky.
“Ambush! Protect His Majesty!” Shouts of anger, the clash of blades, and the wet tearing sound of steel piercing flesh mingled together. The palace, which had been quiet enough to hear a falling leaf moments before, instantly transformed into a chaotic, human purgatory.
Dozens of soldiers raised their shields in unison to form an impenetrable wall around the emperor, slowly retreating under heavy cover toward an empty hall in the rear.
Yet Ji Yan’s men had just endured a grueling long-distance journey, cold, exhausted, and severely outnumbered, they were utterly no match for the fully prepared enemy forces.
Within the hour, the ground outside the hall was drenched in blood. With no paths left for retreat, Ji Yan could only watch helplessly as his men were picked off one by one, while the enemy closed in step by step.
Closer and closer, until monstrous shadows projected across the threshold of the doorway.
“Crash! Crash!” The flimsy doors were kicked and battered repeatedly, and Ji Yan could see the splintering cracks spreading rapidly across the wood.
Even as a sovereign facing the threshold of life and death, his mind inexplicably flashed to a single gaunt silhouette.
Finally, the battered doors collapsed inward with a loud bang, and the leader of the faction stepped into Ji Yan’s view.
It was an unbridled, arrogant face brimming with youthful rebellion. Had it not been for the fresh blood splattered across his gorgeous purple robes, he would have looked like a carefree young master out for a leisurely ride.
A deeply familiar person. A deeply familiar face.
“Ji, Jing.”
The two names were practically gouged out from the depths of Ji Yan’s throat.
In that fleeting instant, a multitude of faces flashed through his mind: corrupt officials whose entire clans he had executed, high-ranking officials he had demoted to commoners, and various individuals he had wronged along the way.
Yet never once had he imagined that the culprit would be this willful, spoiled younger brother who still seemed like a child.
It was at this precise moment that he realized he was not yet a truly cold-hearted monarch. He was still unworthy of occupying that bone-chillingly cold dragon throne, still foolish enough to cling to ridiculous, shameful expectations of familial and romantic love.
The few guards left by his side were slaughtered in an instant. Several black-clad assassins moved with ruthless efficiency, grabbing him by both arms and dragging him toward Ji Jing.
It was a posture of ultimate humiliation, especially for a supreme sovereign. Being dragged across the floor like a dog by his arms was a fate far more agonizing than death itself.
He attempted to struggle, but every movement only made him look more wretched. A heavy, brutal blow slammed against his head, dislodging the tightly secured imperial hair crown.
With a beaming, cheerful smile, Ji Jing watched the formerly high-and-mighty emperor stripped of his dignity and dragged forcefully before him. Raising an eyebrow, he chuckled, “Why is my good imperial brother acting like a dead dog?”
Ji Yan fixed him with a stare as venomous as a viper locking onto its prey.
Such an icy, malicious glare would normally strike terror into anyone’s heart, but Ji Jing clearly did not fall into that category.
“Imperial brother, you ought to kneel. It is a slightly better posture than this.”
Ji Jing smiled as he spoke, his expression still as innocent and romantic as a youth, though the blood smeared across his smiling lips shattered that illusion entirely, making him look like a grim reaper claiming a soul.
Ji Yan let out a cold laugh, spitting a mouthful of bloody phlegm straight at him.
Wiping his face, Ji Jing’s expression finally turned pitch black. He glanced out toward the entrance a few times, confirming that his uncle had not caught up yet, before turning his gaze back.
“It seems imperial brother prefers the hard way?”
The emperor’s golden mask had fallen off at some point, revealing a face entirely at odds with his public persona.
It was an exceptionally handsome visage, fair, delicate, skin like polished jade, and an air of transcendent elegance. He looked more like an immortal untainted by mortal dust than a ruler, which was precisely why the emperor had gone to such exhaustive lengths to keep it hidden away from the world.
With undisguised revulsion, Ji Jing stared at that face.
He remembered the sight of his uncle’s neck covered in love bites when he saw him earlier that day, he remembered witnessing their intimate, passionate embrace, he remembered his uncle’s tearful, whispered plea not to kill him, all of it twisted into an agonizing knot within his chest.
That is my real uncle! Mine!
You have everything else, why must you steal my uncle too?!
Ji Jing kicked out viciously, landing a heavy blow straight against Ji Yan’s kneecap. The impact was so severe that the sickening crunch of cracking bone echoed clearly in the air.
Ji Yan bit down hard on his own teeth to swallow the groan threatening to escape his throat, but Ji Jing showed no intention of stopping after a single kick.
Brutal, heavy kicks rained down mercilessly onto a knee already reduced to a bloody pulp. The excruciating agony radiating from the marrow deep within made one want to drop to their knees and beg for mercy.
It hurts too much!
Relying on his final shred of willpower, Ji Yan forced himself to stay upright, though the intense pain felt like needles driving straight through his flesh and blood. Cold sweat drenched his body as though he had been submerged in water.
His arms were still held aloft like a dog’s, pinned wide apart for his tormentor’s convenience, while his lower leg dangled lifelessly as though the bones had been ground into fine powder, sending waves of excruciating agony rippling through his body.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts so much!
He could barely emit a sound, yet the person before him continued to rain heavy blows down upon him. With the last vestiges of his joints seemingly ground to dust, his knees buckled helplessly, striking the floor with a massive, dull thud.
The exact second his knees hit the stone, his pupils dilated wide. Agony surged across every single nerve ending, as though an enormous heavy vehicle had rolled right over his entire body.
A sea of gray washed over Ji Yan’s vision, hazy crimson staining his eyeballs. The unbearable agony forced him to collapse onto the floor like a dog in a posture far more humiliating than before. Yet, with every ounce of strength left in him, he choked back his moans.
His back remained straight, and his gaze remained unwavering.
This bestowed his bloodied face with a bizarre, mesmerizing beauty, a beauty that filled Ji Jing with a maddening hatred.
Gathering his final breath, Ji Yan forced out the words, “Ji Jing, you treasonous scoundrel who murdered his brother to seize the throne, if your uncle finds out, he will surely…”
His words cut off halfway because he caught sight of a cyan figure walking through the palace doors.
The hall was shrouded in darkness, concealing Ji Yan’s wretched state and hiding Ji Jing’s sudden panic.
A striking, handsome face emerged from the shadows, expression unreadable, accompanied only by a gentle voice as soothing as mountain spring water.
“I know.”
You, know?
Ji Yan’s heart felt as though it had been squeezed into a tight, suffocating fist. The unbearable pain rushed back tenfold at that moment, cutting off his oxygen.
The crushing agony and overwhelming psychological blow caused his consciousness to blur, and he collapsed limply onto the cold gold bricks of the grand hall.
Ji Jing lunged forward in a panic, clutching nervously at Chu Xunsheng’s sleeve.
“Uncle, let us leave quickly!” His voice trembled slightly.
But Chu Xunsheng furrowed his brows in confusion.
Why, is there no sound?
Taking a few steps forward, Chu Xunsheng finally took in the scene before him. His pupils constricted sharply, and his fingertips began to tremble uncontrollably.