“Is seeing blood inauspicious on the day of ancestral worship?” Duan Zufeng stepped out of the ranks, bowing toward Shen Chaoqing. “Your Majesty, this subject believes that precisely because it is the ancestral worship grand ceremony, we must all the more uphold the dignity of ancestral rites and laws. Li Jingchen vomited sacrificial pork in public, showing contempt for the ancestors and desecrating the ritual; such a trend must absolutely not be allowed to grow. If we fail to punish him severely, everyone will follow his example in the future—where then will the ancestors’ majesty reside? Where will the sanctity of the ritual reside? This subject believes he must be punished! Only thus can we make an example of him and deter others!”
Duan Zufeng’s words were ringing and powerful, supported by reason and evidence, directly blocking Li Zecheng’s plea for mercy and elevating the matter to the height of upholding ancestral rites and laws.
Choking with anger, Li Zecheng turned livid, abruptly raising his head to glare fiercely at Duan Zufeng while momentarily finding no words to refute him. Vomiting during the ancestral worship grand ceremony was indeed an act of extreme disrespect, and the hat Duan Zufeng had clapped onto him was one he could not shake off.
Shen Chaoqing glanced at Li Zecheng, denying him any further opportunity to speak. “What the beloved minister says is entirely correct. Drag him out and administer the strokes.”
“Your Majesty, spare my life! Your Majesty! Father! Save me!!” Terrified out of his wits, Li Jingchen struggled and cried out, yet was mercilessly hoisted by the arms by two guards fierce as wolves and tigers, dragging him straight out of the Ancestral Hall.
Within the hall, absolute silence reigned, to the point where a falling needle could be heard. Every official held their breath, not daring to let out a single loud exhalation.
Only the muffled thuds of the staff landing against flesh echoing from the cold wind outside the hall, alongside Li Jingchen’s gradually sharpening, harrowing screams, hammered blow by blow into the heart of every single person present.
Shen Chaoqing listened expressionlessly to the commotion outside, his inner irritability slightly abating, yet replaced by a trace of lingering suspicion. Though Li Jingchen was a profligate dandy, past ancestral worships had never encountered such a blunder—how came he to suddenly vomit publicly today?
His gaze instinctively drifted toward Xiao Huaiyan. Almost the exact moment his gaze shifted, Xiao Huaiyan also happened to look over. Their lines of sight briefly intersected in mid-air.
Xiao Huaiyan’s gaze remained calm and wave-less, resembling a bottomless cold abyss, carrying a perfectly calibrated measure of respectful deference and bewilderment, as though he felt surprised by everything unfolding before his eyes or as though it were entirely unrelated to him.
He even nodded slightly, as if responding to the Emperor’s gaze or merely making a routine posture adjustment, revealing no anomalies whatsoever.
Shen Chaoqing narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing him fixedly for two seconds. Xiao Huaiyan’s expression bore not a single flaw, and apart from stillness, nothing could be read within those eyes.
Slowly withdrawing his gaze, Shen Chaoqing did not fully dispel the suspicions in his heart, though he had no place to pose questions. Picking up his jade chopsticks once more, he retrieved another piece of completely chilled sacrificial pork from the plate, expressionlessly delivering it into his mouth.
Outside the hall, the sound of the staff blows and Li Jingchen’s shrieks gradually grew feeble, eventually vanishing entirely. Presumptively, the twenty strokes had concluded, and the person had been hauled away.
Inside the Ancestral Hall, the incense smoke continued to curl upward, bells and chimes sounded anew, and the ritual proceeded. Yet following this episode, the atmosphere turned even more oppressive and uncanny, with everyone harboring their own secret agendas in their hearts. Lowering his head, Li Zecheng clenched his fists tightly within his sleeves, his fingernails nearly biting into his palms.
As for Xiao Huaiyan, he continued to stand in attendance with lowered eyes like the most silent shadow, as though the storm just moments ago instigated by him bore no connection to him whatsoever. Only he himself knew that within the sleeve where no one could see, his fingertips had very briefly twisted and rolled a thread of colorless, odorless medicinal powder.
That was a trinket used by Liao hunters to temporarily induce nausea and vomiting in disobedient hunting dogs.
With the distribution of the sacrificial pork concluded, the ceremony entered its final and most crucial phase seeing off the spirits and burning the offerings.
Solemn and reverent music rang out once more as officials stood in orderly alignment, holding their breath in concentration. Leading the civil and military officials, Shen Chaoqing faced the sacrificial altar and the spirit tablets of the ancestors, performing the final grand kowtow ritual to respectfully send off the ancestral spirits back to the heavens.
The atmosphere reached the utmost limit of solemnity, tightened to a breaking point.
Lowering his head to stand at the very forefront of the officials, Li Zecheng kept his eyes on his nose and his nose on his heart, appearing devout on the surface, yet beneath those lowered eyelids, his gaze was as venomous as a poisonous snake, chillingly locking onto the back of the young Emperor upon the imperial seat.
Everything had been arranged; he awaited solely the emergence of the “retribution fierce beast” to deliver the fatal strike.
Yet, sweeping his gaze across the standing position of the shadow guards at the Emperor’s side, his heart skipped a beat violently. That spot was vacant, Xiao Huaiyan was gone.
At this most critical juncture of the ancestral worship, where could he have gone? An ominous premonition quietly spread.
At that moment, several young eunuchs were steadily carrying the remaining sacrificial offerings toward the colossal bronze censer situated at the center of the plaza outside the hall.
Everyone’s gaze followed them, waiting for the offerings to be cast in and the flames to surge, completing this final step of “communicating with heaven and earth.”
Smoke began to billow lazily from the censer, carrying the unique scent of burning offerings.
“Awooo!!!”
A ferocious canine bark tore through the solemn music and silence.
An enormous, heavily furred black shadow rushed out fiercely like an arrow released from a bow from the smoke-veiled expanse on one side of the plaza.
It was a ferocious mastiff of extremely robust build, with blood-red eyes and drool dripping from the corners of its mouth.
Its target was unmistakable; ignoring everyone else, it lunged straight toward Shen Chaoqing.
“Protect the Emperor!!”
“There’s a fierce beast!!”
“Heavens! It’s a dog! Your Majesty, look out!”
The officials turned pale with shock as gasps and screams exploded instantly! The scene descended into utter chaos. Several civil officials grew weak-kneed and backed away, while military officers instinctively reached for their side swords, only to discover that for today’s ancestral worship grand ceremony, weapons were prohibited, and swords had long since been confiscated.
It has arrived! Li Zecheng suddenly raised his head, an intensity intertwining ecstasy and malice bursting within his eyes.
Shen Chaoqing heard the commotion behind him and that hair-raising canine bark.
He could sense the fishy wind and the lunging momentum brought by that beast. The icy fear from childhood of being lunged at and torn apart by vicious dogs instantly seized his heart, and his complexion inevitably paled by a fraction; however, he tightly clenched his hands inside his sleeves, his fingernails digging deeply into his palms, using the sharp pain to force himself to steady his posture without moving a single inch.
The mastiff’s massive form was already airborne, its blood-red jaws on the verge of touching the Emperor’s dragon robes when in the split second of a lightning flash!
“Awooo!!!”
Another roar, even more wild and sharper, shot out like a black lightning bolt from the opposite side. Pitch-black in entirety with snow-white paws, Wangcai had somehow broken free from the iron cage, charging forward with astonishing speed and a fearless ferocity to slam violently into the airborne mastiff.
The two beasts crashed heavily onto the ground together, emitting teeth-grunting sounds of tearing and snarling.
Though the wolf cub’s size was vastly inferior to its opponent’s, the wildness and predatory instinct originating from the northern Di wilderness were thoroughly stimulated. It clamped its jaws tightly onto the soft flesh of the mastiff’s neck, its four limbs kicking and scratching frantically while its jade-green wolf eyes burned entirely with bloodthirsty madness.
Suffering pain, the mastiff let out a furious, raging bark, shaking its giant head in an attempt to tear the small wolf apart. Man and beast rolled and tore across the ground together, fur flying as blood instantly stained the accumulated snow on the ground red. The scene was bloody and violent.