"Martial Emperor? That's quite a high appraisal."
Xie Zhao thought of the famous Martial Emperors from his previous life—Emperor Wu of Han, Emperor Guangwu of Han (Liu Xiu), and Emperor Wu of Wei (Cao Cao).
Whether they expanded territories or pacified the realm, all of them were distinguished by remarkable military achievements. For this "tyrant" to be rated as a Martial Emperor? It seemed he was far more than just cruel and violent.
No wonder he ranked first on the list.
Crunch, crunch.
At such a solemn occasion, the sound of someone eating melon seeds suddenly reached Xie Zhao's ears. He turned in disbelief and found the Tenth Prince, who had somehow produced a handful of melon seeds from who knows where, watching the screen while munching away.
The moment their eyes met, the Tenth Prince paused mid-crunch. After a moment of silence, Xie Zhao reached out his hand toward him.
"Give me a handful."
The Tenth Prince readily handed him a handful, then added, "Let me tell you, this stuff is addictive. Especially when you're watching a show—you just can't stop."
"Father and Eldest Brother and Second Brother are all frantic, and you're here watching the show. Is that appropriate?" Xie Zhao said, spitting out two melon seed shells.
The Tenth Prince reached out: "Then give them back."
Xie Zhao leaned back half a step, keeping out of the Tenth Prince's reach.
"Forget it. You can't finish that many anyway—I'll help you share the burden."
The Tenth Prince wasn't really trying to take them back. Having a brother who shared his interests made him happier than anything.
He had been surrounded by these overachieving brothers his whole life. They competed in academics and martial arts, but they were also meticulous about etiquette. Take Little Twelve and Little Thirteen, for instance—they kept their distance even from something as trivial as eating melon seeds, as if they were trying to become true sages.
And that Little Fourteenth—don't think I didn't see it. You just rolled your eyes, didn't you!
It wasn't just the Tenth Prince—even Xie Zhao noticed the Fourteenth Prince's gaze, which was blatant disdain.
"What's with that look of his?"
Xie Zhao thought the Fourteenth Prince had some kind of problem.
The Tenth Prince didn't mind: "Don't worry about him. He's just like that. Who knows where he gets that arrogance—just like Fifth Brother."
Fifth Prince's birth mother, Consort Zhuang, came from the Xue Clan of Yunzhou. The Xue Clan was a millennia-old aristocratic family that had endured four dynasties, with Dayan being the fourth.
Though a thousand years had passed and the clan's glory had long since faded, the reputation alone still commanded a measure of respect.
If anyone were fortunate enough to form a marriage alliance with the Xue Clan, they could boast about it for three days without sleep.
When the realm was still unsettled, the Xue Clan had sent a daughter into the household—though not a legitimate daughter of the main branch, but a legitimate daughter of a cadet branch. Even so, it was enough to send everyone following the Emperor into raptures.
Though the aristocratic families had declined, a starved camel was still bigger than a horse. Gathered together, they remained a considerable force, and the Xue Clan, as the head of these families, choosing to support the Yan Dynasty gave the Emperor and his men tremendous confidence.
With a mother of such noble birth, and in the absence of a legitimate son, the Fifth Prince naturally held himself in high regard, believing that whether compared to the First Prince or the Second Prince, he was the clouds in the sky while they were merely mud on the ground.
The Fifth Prince's arrogance was so blatant that he barely restrained himself even before the Emperor, let alone among the princes.
The Seventh Prince, Ninth Prince, Tenth Prince—those whose maternal families were unremarkable—were all looked down upon by the Fifth Prince as if they were country bumpkins. How could that not make the Tenth Prince resentful?
If the Fifth Prince's arrogance could be excused, the Fourteenth Prince's pride was utterly baffling.
The Fourteenth Prince's birth mother, Consort Min, was merely the daughter of Min Xingye, Vice Minister of Revenue.
When Consort Min first entered the palace, Min Xingye had been nothing more than a minor local official. It was only because his daughter bore a prince that he gradually gained favor with his superiors, and in recent years was promoted to Vice Minister of Revenue.
A third-rank capital official was indeed nothing to scoff at—some people worked their entire lives just to reach the third rank. But that depended on who you compared them to.
Among the current princes in the palace, aside from the Ninth Prince's mother, Concubine An, and Xie Zhao's mother, Beauty Lin, who had both been selected from outside the palace, nearly everyone else was the daughter of nobles. Their maternal grandfathers were either this Duke or that Marquis.
Compared to them, did Min Xingye have any advantage? Did Consort Min have any advantage?
And yet, the Fourteenth Prince still walked around with his nose in the air. If not for the fact that the Fourteenth Prince ranked so low among the brothers—and the princes didn't want the bad reputation of bullying a younger brother—someone would have dealt with him long ago.
So when the Fourteenth Prince looked down on them, the Tenth Prince simply pretended not to see it. After all, aside from rolling his eyes, the Fourteenth Prince couldn't do anything else.
The Tenth Prince gave Xie Zhao another handful of melon seeds.
The two of them might as well focus on eating their melon seeds.
And watch the chaos unfolding in the front rows while they were at it.
The moment the title "Yanwudi" came out, everyone was clearly even more panicked.
Look at the Emperor before us—he came from a military background. In his youth, he was a general of the previous dynasty. Later, when the realm fell into chaos, he led his men from the south to the north, and after founding the nation, he had even subdued the Tartars and Nanzhao. One could say he was abundantly endowed with martial virtue.
Wouldn't honoring him as a Martial Emperor be more than fitting?
Well, the question circled right back around—could it be that His Majesty truly ended up becoming a tyrant?
The nobles exchanged uneasy glances, their eyes darting about as they whispered among themselves.
The Emperor swept his gaze across the room, his tone dangerous. "What are you all muttering about down there?"
The murmuring stopped. Everyone glanced left and right, then unanimously looked toward the quick-witted Duke of Chen. The Duke tried to refuse, but was forced to step forward.
"Your Majesty, well, we were just saying…"
The Duke's mind raced at lightning speed until he finally landed on a good excuse.
"We were saying that among Your Majesty's descendants, there actually appeared a Martial Emperor who revived the glory of our ancestors—truly a blessing for all subjects of Dayan!"
With one sentence, he had stripped the tyrant's title from the Emperor's head, while also praising His Majesty's descendants for being so accomplished. As expected of you, Duke of Chen.
His colleagues secretly gave him a thumbs up, then chimed in one after another.
"That's right, that's right."
"Ha ha, it's all thanks to Your Majesty—even your descendants are so accomplished."
"Indeed, we're not so lucky. Our families are full of useless good-for-nothings."
The flattery was endless.
But the Emperor wasn't buying it.
"Is that so? Being saddled with a tyrant counts as a blessing?"
Duke of Chen: "Well… I believe that since he was posthumously honored as a Martial Emperor, this sovereign must have been a great ruler. It's just that the world is ignorant, and without knowing the full picture, they speculate and force a bad reputation upon him."
"A great ruler? Not necessarily."
The Emperor held no hope whatsoever. "There have been precedents of men who were gluttonous good-for-nothings in life, yet received the posthumous title of Martial Emperor after death. Who knows how this one got his Martial Emperor title."
The Emperor expressed genuine disgust for such fame-seeking trash, and by extension, for this descendant who might also be fame-seeking.
It wasn't hard to see why the Emperor worried—because there really had been such a shameless person before.
That Martial Emperor was ambitious and grandiose, always believing himself to be a sage ruler unmatched in his generation, thinking that with just a slight effort he could recreate the glory of Emperor Wu of Han. He sent his army north to attack the Xiongnu without making any preparations whatsoever.
The result, of course, was a crushing defeat. He nearly lost the capital, leaving the Central Plains in ruins and the people displaced, which indirectly led to the dynasty's downfall.
A man like that—who contributed nothing to the world in his lifetime, only because he had a face-obsessed son—actually received the posthumous title of Martial Emperor after death. Heaven must have been blind!
The Emperor felt that since this descendant of his was judged a tyrant, yet received the title of Martial Emperor, he must be in the same situation as that one from two dynasties ago.
How embarrassing.
"So now, tyranny isn't enough? He's also grandiose and ambitious? And fraudulent to boot?"
The Emperor laughed in anger, a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
He pointed at the princes, speaking unhurriedly: "Listen well. If I find out that any of you, or any of your descendants, is this person, you'll be sent to guard the imperial tombs, never to return to the capital for all eternity."
The Emperor's tone was very calm when he said this, which made all the princes understand that he was serious.
Once this spirit creature revealed which of them was Yanwudi, the Emperor would absolutely not let them off.
Now all the princes who harbored ambitions for the succession tightened their skin, terrified that the executioner's blade would fall on their heads.
But this time, no one dared to make guarantees, lest the awkward situation of the First and Second Princes be repeated on them.
Of course, all the panic belonged to those in the front rows. Xie Zhao and the other princes ranked further down had seats even behind their elder brothers, with several rows separating them from the Emperor—perfectly peaceful and serene.
Xie Zhao even felt a bit of the joy he'd had back in his school days, sitting in the very back row.
He and the Tenth Prince cracked melon seeds and ate crab without a care in the world.
This was Mid-Autumn crab, and tributed to the palace at that—the flavor was incredibly fresh. Xie Zhao was so busy eating he couldn't even lift his head.
In between, he tried to sneak a couple sips of the Tenth Prince's rice wine, but the Tenth Prince smacked his hand with chopsticks.
"Go on, Father doesn't let you drink. I wouldn't dare touch that bad luck."
Xie Zhao refused to give up, lowering his head to complain quietly: "I say, Tenth Brother, you're too rigid. We're so far from Father—if you don't tell and I don't tell, who would know?"
"Besides, who has the mood to look at me right now?"
Aren't they all watching the screen?
Even if he secretly drank a whole catty, no one would notice.
The Tenth Prince took the wine jug away, guarding against Xie Zhao strictly: "Don't even think about it. They might not see you, but if you drink too much, even an idiot could tell!"
And then he'd be dragged down with him.
The Tenth Prince wasn't about to do something so unprofitable.
He pointed at the screen. "Look, something's changing."
The spirit creature on the screen who called herself Mumu had disappeared after saying the words "Yanwudi," replaced by extremely grand and majestic music, along with a few occasional flashes of palace eaves.
The ridge beasts on the eaves seemed to have weathered ages of change, but at least they still stood there. Yet the palace, which should have been heavily guarded and solemn, was completely empty—not even a single guard's shadow could be seen, as if overnight, the palace had become an empty estate.
"What… what's going on here?"
“Where are the people? Where are the guards? Where are the eunuchs?”
“What does this spirit creature mean?”
“Could it be that this spirit creature used sorcery to move everyone in the palace away?”
“Nonsense—isn’t the place we’re in right now Shengping Lou? There are clearly so many people here, yet the Shengping Lou in that screen is empty!”
Indeed, in the brief moment they were discussing this, the sharp-eyed among them had already noticed it—among the scenes was one of Shengping Lou, but it too was completely empty, and it even looked somewhat… dilapidated?
The ruler and his ministers thought they must have seen wrong.
This palace was built when the previous dynasty’s emperor moved the capital, and it was only a little over a hundred years old, maintained with repairs every year—there was no way it could have fallen into such a state of disrepair.
Besides, everyone was sitting right inside Shengping Lou at this very moment. It was, well, quite bright and spacious, decorated with luxury yet not lacking in grandeur, befitting the dignity of the imperial palace—completely different from what was shown on the screen.
So what was going on?
The various dukes truly could not fathom what principle was at work here. Their minds, usually so full of clever strategies on the battlefield, had become as useless as ornaments.
This feeling was decidedly not a good one.
“Because this was recorded by later generations.”
Just as everyone was at a loss, the youth’s clear, bright voice rang out.
Author’s note:
None.