Shadow Thirteen took the order and left.
Shang Yinyu got off the couch, walked to the window and pushed it open. A chill struck his face.
The rain outside showed no sign of stopping at all. The wind blew the leaves, and the rainwater on the trees, mixed with the rainwater falling from the sky, was blown slanting together.
With the emperor standing at the window in the inner room, An Dezhong could not very well go down and rest himself. He peered several times from the door curtain, worried that the emperor would catch a cold, yet not daring to step forward and urge him.
At last he heard the sound of someone entering the hall outside. Knowing the person the emperor was waiting for had arrived, An Dezhong hurried down to receive him.
The moment he went out, he saw Nineteen, soaked through, his close-fitting black shadow guard uniform dripping water.
An Dezhong said: “Commander Nineteen, you can’t go in looking like this. Quickly come with this old servant to the side hall and change your clothes.”
Nineteen understood. Not to mention that the water on him would dirty the valuable carpets on the floor tiles of the inner hall, he also did not want his sorry appearance to offend His Majesty’s eyes, so he clasped his hands and said: “Thank you, Eunuch.”
“This way, please.”
Nineteen followed An Dezhong to the side hall to wash and change.
Hearing the sounds outside, Shang Yinyu closed the window and went back to sit on the couch and wait.
Shadow Thirteen came in first to report. Shang Yinyu asked only one sentence: “Was he kneeling in the rain?”
“Yes.”
Hearing the answer he had expected, Shang Yinyu could not say what he felt. Mixed in with his annoyance was something else.
He waved his hand and had Shadow Thirteen go down.
Nineteen was a stubborn one. If he was kneeling in the rain when Shadow Thirteen went, then he had not moved from the spot all along.
If it had been those drama-queen ministers under him, they would probably have been kneeling in the inner hall and, on seeing the emperor send someone to summon them, would go out to get rained on before coming to him so they could put on a show.
How could this man be so stupid? Every day he follows at my side and sees so many ministers put on shows. Can’t he learn a little?
And when did I ever tell him to kneel? He slammed both knees into the ground and kneeled there without moving. Did he ask for my order?
He definitely wants to use this method to pressure me, to make me think he’s already been punished, to make me soften, to make me stop putting the account of Qiao Beiji’s rebellion on his head.
No way!
I won’t let him get away with it. What harm will a martial artist’s body come to from getting rained on? The wine that should be drunk still has to be drunk, and the beating that should be taken still has to be taken.
“Your Majesty, Commander Nineteen has arrived,” An Dezhong said as he came in.
“Let him in,” Shang Yinyu said with a cold face.
“Yes.”
An Dezhong withdrew, and Shang Yinyu watched Nineteen, dressed in white, walk in with his eyes lowered.
He wore an ill-fitting inner garment, with the sleeves and trouser legs a bit short. The trousers were white, the garment was white, even the face was white, a bloodless pallor, and the whole person was as lifeless as a corpse lying in a coffin.
Shang Yinyu suddenly remembered an autumn hunt from the past. At that time he and Nineteen had just gotten together, tasting the flavor and not wanting to be apart for a minute, so he had Nineteen wear an imperial bodyguard’s robe and follow closely at his side.
When he spotted prey, Nineteen and the other guards would ride and drive the prey into a surround, never letting the game he had his eye on leave his shooting range.
When he rode through the mountain forest, Nineteen followed close behind him, from time to time bringing him a few sweet-tasting fruits or small beasts with beautiful fur.
On the second day of the hunt, a band of assassins appeared in the hunting grounds that had been tightly sealed off by the Imperial Guards. The bodyguards protected him and fought the assassins. His horse was hit by an assassin’s hidden weapon and bolted out of control with him.
His horsemanship was not exquisite, and he could not subdue a horse maddened by pain. He could only lie low and hug the horse’s neck tightly as it carried him far away.
He did not know how long the horse had carried him running, until his strength was exhausted and he fell from the horse.
It was Nineteen who flew over to protect him, taking the trampling of the horse’s hooves for him. They rolled down the slope, and again it was Nineteen who shielded him with his body. When he got up from the ground, he had only some scrapes on his legs and feet, but Nineteen’s bodyguard uniform was soaked in a large area of blood red.
Damn it, it started to rain. Nineteen forced himself up and took him to look for a place where they could shelter from the rain for a while and wait for rescue.
They found only a crevice in the mountain. Nineteen spread his own outer garment in the crevice and asked him to rest inside, while he himself sat outside, blocking the wind and rain for him with his badly injured body.
Ignoring Nineteen’s insistence, he pulled him inside and carefully undid Nineteen’s clothes to check the wounds.
Nineteen did not stop him from checking the wounds, but when he tore the cloth of his own inner garment and began to bandage him, Nineteen became very alarmed and refused to let him do it, saying he would do it himself.
He held Nineteen and covered the two of them with his outer garment. They were like two wounded beasts huddled together for warmth, waiting in the crevice from dusk until deep night.
Shang Yinyu had long been used to seeing life and death. To survive the struggle for power, the people he had killed, directly or indirectly, would be enough to fill the palace. He had coldly watched his imperial brothers die or be crippled, watched his imperial father be sent into a coffin, watched his mother settle into seclusion in Shou’an Palace.
At nine he had put on the imperial robe and worn the imperial crown. He had maneuvered with the ministers, restarted the imperial examinations, opened schools, secretly formed the Firearms Battalion, and sent the chancellor, whom his imperial father had feared all his life, home to farm…
Shang Yinyu had thought he had long since forgotten what fear was.
But he felt the body heat of Nineteen in his arms getting higher and higher, and in contrast, by the light of the lightning he saw Nineteen’s face, paler than the paper he had improved the papermaking to produce a few years before, and he was afraid.
Afraid of pain, afraid of cold. Even if it was only the person in his arms suffering these, he would be moved to a trembling heart.
He buried his face in Nineteen’s neck. He also feared loss, something he had not even dared think of and had deliberately avoided.
Now, five years later, Shang Yinyu was seeing a deathly pale Nineteen again, as if once he closed his eyes he would never wake.
“Nineteen pays respects to Your Majesty.” Nineteen knelt before the desk and saluted. His tied-up hair hung down at the side of his face as he bowed his head, black and pale lying against each other, making his face look even more without a trace of human life.
“Come forward,” Shang Yinyu heard himself order in a low voice.
His voice was heavy, but carried a trace of an unsteady tremor.
Hearing this, Nineteen lowered his head and shuffled forward on his knees around the desk to the couch where the emperor was.
Before he could kowtow again, a hand gripped his arm. Nineteen’s body instinctively went tense, but he quickly realized it was His Majesty and immediately went slack, letting himself be pulled up obediently.
Shang Yinyu pulled Nineteen onto the couch, and the chill in the hand that grasped him froze his heart to trembling.
That night in the mountain crevice, Nineteen’s body had been this cold at first too. He had called him “Your Majesty” in a low voice and begged his pardon. Later it was fire-like scorching heat, and no matter how he called, there was no response.
Shang Yinyu pulled over the brocade quilt beside him, wrapped Nineteen in it and held him in his arms. He shivered at the cold of the body in his arms, yet instinctively held the person even tighter.
He should have been angry, angry that Nineteen acted on his own, angry that Nineteen made him think of terrible memories.
But all that fury, when it met Nineteen’s confused, startled and somewhat flustered eyes, stuck in his throat and had nowhere to go.
In the inner hall, besides him and Nineteen, there was only An Dezhong standing to one side.
The moment the emperor’s eyes were on him, An Dezhong’s hair stood on end. He reacted extremely fast and, before the emperor spoke, dropped to his knees with a thud. “Please give your orders, Your Majesty!”
An Dezhong had served him since his time as a prince and was old now, so Shang Yinyu could only suppress the anger in his chest and say two words in a low voice: “Ginger soup. Imperial physician.”
“Yes!” An Dezhong did not want to bear the wrath of the Son of Heaven. He did not dare delay in the slightest, kowtowed hard, and fled the inner hall.
The hall fell silent. Nineteen, wrapped in the quilt, struggled a little in small movements, but Shang Yinyu was holding him together with the quilt, so with this little effort he could not pull away.
“Master, this subordinate’s body is cold.”
A somewhat uneasy voice came from inside the quilt. The shadow guards called him “Master” only when they were alone with him.
Shang Yinyu raised a hand and pressed Nineteen, who was stubbornly refusing to lean against him, back to his chest.
You know you’re cold? When it rained, you didn’t know to take cover? A single-minded blockhead, a wooden head!
The moment his hand pressed on Nineteen’s head, he felt something was off. What his palm touched was icy hair.
Obviously it had only been wiped hastily after the rain. Although it would not drip water again for a short while, tied up this way with wet hair, it certainly could not be comfortable.
Shang Yinyu was both angry and anxious. He reached out and pulled Nineteen’s hair out of the quilt. Nineteen lay stiffly on his chest and did not dare to move.
Shang Yinyu held Nineteen’s wet hair in one hand and tucked the quilt around Nineteen with the other, then turned to the attendants outside and said: “Hair wet and no one knows to dry it. What do I keep you for? All of you, get in here and serve!”
Ganlu Palace suddenly became busy. The lamps that had been put out were all lit again, and palace maids and eunuchs hurried to and fro.
Shang Yinyu handed Nineteen’s hair to a palace maid, and seeing a young eunuch bring in a brazier and set it beneath the couch, he tucked the quilt around Nineteen again and withdrew to one side.
The young eunuch presented hot tea to Shang Yinyu. He took it and drank a mouthful, found it too hot, and put it back. Whether the young eunuch was too nervous and frightened or what, he did not hold it steady.
The teacup fell to the ground, tea soaked the carpet, and instantly a whole room of people knelt with a clatter.
Shang Yinyu saw Nineteen pull the quilt open and also try to go kneel on the floor. He stood up at once and glared at him: “Wrap yourself back up as you were!”
Then, looking at the roomful of kneeling people: “Get up, all of you. Go back to what you were doing.”
Knowing that with him there they could not possibly concentrate on serving, Shang Yinyu turned and went around the screen to sit on the dragon couch inside.
Outside they bustled for a quarter of an hour. An Dezhong brought the ginger soup and called the imperial physician. Shang Yinyu did not go out, and only listened as An Dezhong came to report the diagnosis.
Learning that there was nothing serious and that he only needed good rest, he nodded to An Dezhong and told him to go down and rest.
An Dezhong softly snuffed out most of the candles in the room, and in the dim light led the attendants quietly away.
Shang Yinyu undid his outer robe himself and lay down on the bed. Listening to the rain outside, much quieter now, he turned over in vexation.
He had originally meant to get Nineteen drunk, pry out the matter of the hot spring, probe his thoughts, and then take advantage of the drunkenness to pin him down and beat him to vent his anger.
Nineteen was too good at hitting his weak spot. Before he had done anything, Nineteen had made himself into the very sight he least wanted to see, leaving him without any other thought.
Shang Yinyu turned over again in vexation, facing the screen outside, and suddenly caught a flash of white from the corner of his eye.
Shang Yinyu half propped himself up in puzzlement, and saw Nineteen, in only white inner clothes, silently kneeling and prostrate beside his bed, forehead against the floor.