At the very moment he heard Qin Duan’s reply, Xie Zhengming’s eyes grew hot with excitement. Without hesitation, he kissed the person who was his lover in both his past life and this one.
The kiss, sweet yet tinged with bitterness, continued until Qin Duan couldn’t bear it and gasped softly, gently pushing against Xie Zhengming’s chest. Xie Zhengming restrained himself slightly, but in the next heartbeat, he swept the man up into his arms and carried him all the way back to the bedroom.
The news that Prince Ding was to be married spread quickly. Many families from high-ranking households in the capital who had been eagerly waiting to secure this marriage alliance were deeply disappointed. However, upon hearing that the Prince was marrying a man, their shock quickly gave way to relief. Even if they couldn’t marry their eldest daughter into the Prince’s estate as his legal wife, if a secondary daughter could marry into the estate as a concubine to a Prince who would only have one male wife, wouldn’t bearing a child or two yield the same results as being the legal wife?
Among those most shocked by this news were the reigning Emperor Li Chong and the Grand Eunuch Zi Ying in the palace.
Prince Ding’s wedding date was set for the tenth of the third lunar month, just half a month away. Zi Ying naturally received the wedding invitation from Prince Ding.
Zi Ying and Xie Zhengming had been comrades-in-arms. They were both “new nobles” who had gained merit in aiding the Emperor’s ascent to power. However, ever since the Emperor discovered the events of that year and had him castrated and appointed as the Grand Eunuch, he had become despondent, unwilling to maintain contact with his former comrades. Yet, his relationship with Xie Zhengming had always remained good, and perhaps because they shared similar sorrows, he had always paid close attention to Qin Duan as well.
Zi Ying sat on the corridor beside the koi pond in the Floating Light Palace, toying with a jade pendant in his hand. It was the birthday gift given to him by Li Chong, then the heir to the Marquis of Wen-yuan, on his eighteenth birthday, a jade pendant hand-carved by the heir himself, depicting a soaring eagle.
He still remembered clearly how his heart ached when he saw the small and large wounds on the heir’s hands, all caused by carving the jade.
He was the son of Earl Chao-an, a subordinate of the Marquis of Wen-yuan, and had grown up in the Marquis’s estate, serving as a reading companion and playmate to Li Chong. As they grew older, he naturally became his personal bodyguard.
But their relationship went far beyond that; he was also the first person Li Chong had ever been intimate with. He was two years older than the heir. From the moment Li Chong reached the age of understanding, he showed unusual fervor toward him. To get him to relent, Li Chong would beg him almost daily, even resorting to threats of starvation. And he himself, at the time, whether out of fear that the story of the heir’s starvation would reach the Marquis and his wife and bring punishment, or for some other reason, had allowed himself to be bewitched and ultimately gave in.
Li Chong, having tasted the joys of the flesh for the first time, was like a ravenous little beast, obsessively clinging to him day and night without ever feeling satisfied. His own heart, through this long, entangled association, was slowly eroded, captured, and finally doomed.
The possessiveness of a youth is terrifying. At that time, Li Chong protected him fiercely; he couldn’t stand anyone else even casting an extra glance at him. He would often wake from mid-night dreams, worried sick about his and the heir’s future. Yet later, disaster struck far sooner than he had feared. Because of the “events involving the eldest daughter,” the foolish monarch ordered the entire Marquis estate to be executed. He and several attendants fled into the mountains with the noblewoman and the two young sons.
However, they were separated while on the run. When the government soldiers pursued them, amidst the fighting, Li Chong was captured while shielding his young brother and thrown into the Ministry of Justice prison. At that moment, he felt a panic he couldn’t describe. Boundless fear swallowed him whole. He truly wanted to ignore everything and be with the heir; whether they lived or died didn’t matter, so long as he was with him!
But he couldn’t. When the heir was captured, he had shouted with all his might for him to protect Cen’er well. He could only grit his teeth and run with the little master. But his heart felt as though it had shattered at that moment.
He had become separated from the young master and the others, and in those three days, he made the most difficult decision of his life, one that flew in the face of his own conscience. Looking at the eight-year-old young master, Li Cen, his guilt was beyond expression. He knelt down solemnly and knocked his head three times, saying only: He was willing to descend to hell and suffer oil-frying and fire-cooking to atone for his sins, if only the young master could be born into a life of peace and joy in his next life.
Afterward, he knocked Li Cen unconscious and brought him to the Ministry of Justice. After his father, Earl Chao-an, passed away, he had inherited the title by imperial decree, so even though the Marquis estate was gone, it did not implicate him. However, because his father and brothers had all died on the battlefield, the disappearance of the Marquis estate made him a drifting soul. Entering the Ministry of Justice would have been impossible, so he used the Marquis’s youngest son, Li Cen, as a bargaining chip, a stepping stone to gain entry, to wait for an opportunity to rescue Li Chong from the prison.
Originally, according to his plan, after he rescued Li Chong, he should have died to pay for his crimes. But he never expected that incident to occur…
Recalling the past, Zi Ying closed his eyes in pain and tucked the jade pendant back into his robes. Today was his day off, but the Emperor would be coming over in the evening. At this hour, he should be bathing and changing his clothes early.
Emperor Li Chong arrived at the Floating Light Palace in the early evening. He discovered, however, that Zi Ying was not waiting in the bathroom. Zi Ying usually served him personally when he bathed; why was it not so today? Li Chong turned around and walked out of the bathroom. The little eunuchs at the door lowered their heads, trembling. Usually, when the Emperor and the Grand Eunuch were having a tiff, they were the ones who suffered. But the Grand Eunuch had always been kind and unwilling to let innocent people suffer, so after several small disputes, he no longer acted out against the Emperor. However, he had become like a withered flower, devoid of any vitality.
Today, no one knew what was wrong with the Grand Eunuch. He had stayed in his room the whole time and hadn’t come to serve the Emperor in the bath. The Emperor’s complexion looked terrible, and they were afraid they were in for a rough time.
“Where is Grand Eunuch Zi Ying?”
“R-reporting to Your Majesty, Grand Eunuch Zi Ying is in his room. After the Grand Eunuch finished bathing, he went into his room, saying he wanted to take a short nap and did not want to be disturbed.”
Li Chong’s complexion lightened slightly. He thought to himself: Perhaps I am overthinking it. Maybe Zi Ying is just too tired lately and isn’t throwing a tantrum because he found out Xie Zhengming is marrying that sworn brother who has always been by his side.
Li Chong sighed silently in his heart. He and Zi Ying had known each other since their youth. Although they had never formally “sworn brotherhood,” the years they had spent together as youths were worth more than any such bond.
In his youth, he had once thought that one day, he would cast everything aside to marry Zi Ying. But time passed in a rush, and so many changes had occurred in between. He and Zi Ying both had stubborn tempers. In the end, they had reached this stage; even though they were intimate daily, tangled in sheets of passion, they could never return to the past.
He had hated Zi Ying, and he had hurt Zi Ying, both in body and in heart. But now, he was an Emperor; he could no longer act purely on his own whims. On his shoulders rested the entire Daxing Dynasty.
He was destined to fail Zi Ying, and fail his younger self, that youth who had loved until he was senseless.
Yet at this point, he still couldn’t bring himself to let go. He couldn’t let go of Zi Ying, nor could he give Zi Ying any promises or hopes. They could only endure like this, entangled, until death did them part.