Yong Dynasty, the second year of Taihe.
The heating brazier in the room burned warmly. Clothes and shoes discarded at random were scattered across the floor. On the brocade quilt embroidered with mandarin ducks, two figures were cast in shadows behind the light gauze curtains.
A forearm, white as a lotus root, slid weakly from between the bedding, tangling with the gauze curtains.
Another pair of hands forcefully interlocked its five fingers with that fair, jade-like hand, refusing to separate for a single moment, as if their flesh and blood had fused together.
“What exactly must I do for you to help me?” Shi Yue’s voice held an imperceptible tremor. His complexion was pale, his thin lips resembling cherry blossoms, now covered in spots of blood from being bitten.
Pei Xuan’s eyes were ruthless; while his movements beneath the sheets did not falter, his hand suddenly tightened, gripping Shi Yue’s fragile neck.
“Ugh.” Shi Yue let out a pained, muffled groan.
“Young Marquis, should I call you innocent or simply foolish?” Pei Xuan leaned close to Shi Yue’s ear, his voice like a venomous snake flicking its tongue, carrying a bone-chilling fear. “Did you think that by crawling into this Prime Minister’s bed, you could rest easy?”
Shi Yue was pressed hard into the bed, his neck firmly gripped. He struggled, prying at those powerful fingers, but it was futile; the hand remained clamped to his neck, pressing with increasing force.
For the first time, he felt the agony of nearing death, feeling as if his internal organs were screaming in pain. His eyes involuntarily welled up with tears, which hung from his dark lashes, yet he stubbornly held them back, unwilling to reveal his vulnerability before the other man.
Pei Xuan noticed his breathing becoming increasingly shallow, and the skin he was prying at felt as cold as winter snow. His heart skipped a beat, and only then, as if out of mercy, did he loosen his grip, changing it to a gentle caress. He lightly brushed the back of his hand against Shi Yue’s warm, delicate cheek.
“If you were a woman and served me comfortably, that would be one thing, but you happen to be a man. Young Marquis, are you satisfied with the feeling of becoming a captive pet? After all, you were the one who personally crawled into this Prime Minister’s bed.”
Shi Yue suddenly gasped, coughing desperately for air. Hearing these words, his complexion turned as pale as the final snowflake of a cold day.
“Shameless.” Shi Yue glared at the face that was no different from his childhood memories. Only desolation remained in his heart, and he turned his face away, unwilling to look at him any longer.
As expected, what is the point of a face looking so similar? In the end, he is different. He will never treat me like that…
“This Prime Minister hates it most when you look at me with that kind of gaze.” The hand that had been lightly stroking Shi Yue’s face suddenly grabbed his chin, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Young Marquis always loves to look at me with that gaze, as if there is more to be said. What? Does this Prime Minister look so much like your lover?”
Shi Yue was forced to raise his head, staring coldly at him. “You are not worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as him. You are just a lunatic.”
“What a pity.” Pei Xuan not only was not angry, but instead began to laugh hideously. “Right now, you can only serve as the bed-warmer for this lunatic, and even your very life is held in my hands, while he can only watch you reduced to a prisoner, unable to do anything.”
“So what if he is?” Shi Yue remained unmoved, his eyes bloodshot and weary.
Pei Xuan looked at the prickly Shi Yue and found him extremely boring. He withdrew his hand from his throat, unbothered by his own nakedness, and stepped down from the bed with poise, picking up his undergarments from the floor and dressing in a leisurely manner.
Shi Yue averted his gaze from that powerful waist, refusing to look at the tall, sturdy frame that all the young ladies in the capital longed to behold.
Pei Xuan put back on his dark purple woven-gold official robes, wrapped in a golden belt, looking noble and dignified—a completely different person from the one on the bed.
“At noon today, the members of the Marquis of Anding’s estate will be beheaded. I will order men to collect their remains for burial. Once the commotion dies down, I will send someone to take you to pay your respects.”
He walked to the door, leaving these words without looking back. Before Shi Yue could react, he stepped out and shut the door.
Outside, he spoke coldly to his guards: “Watch him closely. Don’t let him seek death.”
“Yes, Prime Minister.”
Shi Yue recalled Pei Xuan’s words in disbelief, his entire body trembling slightly.
What does that mean?
Beheaded? Today? My family?
Haven’t they just been imprisoned? Isn’t the chain of evidence incomplete?
Why is the execution scheduled so suddenly today!
Shi Yue collapsed onto the bed, limp, tears finally escaping, rolling down his face, drop by drop.
He wept with a low, choking sound, unable to even make a noise, his grief reaching an extreme.
He had wanted to clear his father’s name; he had begged one person after another, kneeling before house after house, but the officials who once had good relations with his father now avoided them like the plague, not even daring to utter a single word of intercession.
At his wit’s end, Shi Yue had no choice but to beg Pei Xuan, the Prime Minister who stood above ten thousand, second only to the Emperor.
His father had helped Pei Xuan in the court, and since Pei had that face that looked no different from his memories, he had clung to a sliver of final hope and sought him out.
Had he known that the seemingly aloof and distant Prime Minister Pei Xuan was, in fact, an absolute lunatic, he would never have begged him even if he were to die for it.
He had cheapened himself, failed to clear his father’s name, and now faced the outcome of their execution today.
Shi Yue’s father, the Marquis of Anding, held military power, and their family had guarded the borders for three generations without incident. He himself had spent twenty years in the capital as an idle young noble, never expecting such a sudden disaster to befall them.
In the second year of Emperor Jingyi Zhou Jingzhi’s reign, the first thing he did was cast the Marquis of Anding into the imperial prison on the grounds that he had colluded with foreign tribes, causing chaos at the borders.
But Shi Yue knew that their family had loyally served three generations of emperors, heart and soul, to ensure the stability of the Great Yong borders. They had sacrificed countless soldiers and clansmen; it was absolutely impossible for them to commit treason, someone was certainly framing them.
If no one was framing them, then it was the current Emperor, fearing that the Marquis held too much military power and feeling threatened, who had staged this border chaos drama to make his father plead guilty.
Shi Yue truly understood what it meant to fear public opinion, to watch a fire from across the river, and that the Emperor’s heart is unfathomable.
When he learned his father had been imprisoned, he immediately knelt outside the imperial palace, begging the Emperor for mercy and pleading for a thorough investigation of the injustice.
Shi Yue did not know how long he had knelt; his knees had lost all feeling, and he was supported solely by the strength of his conviction.
From sunrise to sunset, the Eunuch Wang beside Zhou Jingzhi finally approached slowly. “Oh, Young Marquis, why must you do this? The evidence is conclusive, and colluding with the enemy and treason is a capital crime.”
“I beg Eunuch Wang to be accommodating and let me seek an audience with the Emperor! The Marquis of Anding’s estate would never collude with the enemy!” Shi Yue knelt on the ground, his voice firm, his back unbending, his lips dry and cracked with beads of blood.
Eunuch Wang looked at the youth who stubbornly refused to leave, shaking his head and sighing. “Young Marquis, the Emperor will not see you.”
Shi Yue did not reply, stubbornly pressing his lips together, like a sapling that refused to wither.
Eunuch Wang had no choice but to take out several papers and hand them to Shi Yue. “Young Marquis, you might as well take a look at these first.”
Seeing these papers, Shi Yue’s pupils constricted, his hands trembling slightly.
“Impossible! This is absolutely a forgery!”
Otherwise, how could these letters of collusion with foreign tribes be in his father’s handwriting!
“Young Marquis, I know this is difficult to accept, but this type of evidence has already been searched out; this handwriting is indeed the Marquis’s.”
Shi Yue did not believe his father would betray the country. He repeated again and again, “Impossible… Impossible…”
Eunuch Wang could do nothing; he sighed as he looked at him and could only leave.
After a while, Pei Xuan arrived, dressed in his first-rank purple official robes, which made his features appear all the more refined.
Shi Yue had not had a drop of water all day and had been under extreme mental stress; now, his vision of Pei Xuan was somewhat blurry, but he still recognized that familiar face.
Under normal circumstances, Shi Yue would never have let himself be so uncomposed, but the running around of these past few days had exhausted him to the limit.
“A’Yao…”
Pei Xuan, who was walking past, stopped, looking down at the pale person kneeling on the ground. “Are you calling me?”
But Pei Xuan heard no reply, as Shi Yue succumbed to a high fever and lost consciousness.
“Prime Minister, this…” the guard Qinglong said.
Pei Xuan stared coldly at the person who had fainted on the floor but whose hands were still tightly gripping his robe, and ordered, “The Marquis of Anding did me a favor; bring him back to the estate first.”
Shi Yue withdrew from his thoughts, shaking his chaotic head.
Beheaded… No, I must go save my father.
Shi Yue hurriedly scrambled out of bed, grabbing the messy clothes on the floor, only to find his garments had been torn in a large gap.
“Lunatic,” Shi Yue cursed.
He gave up and turned to the wardrobe to fetch a new set.
“The Prime Minister’s orders: you are not permitted to leave.”
Shi Yue pulled open the door, only to be met with that statement.
He furrowed his brows and said unhappily, “What right does he have to lock me up?”
“This subordinate does not know, please return to the chambers, Young Marquis.” The two guards stood on either side, heads bowed, speaking respectfully.
The Marquis of Anding was wise and mighty, possessing boundless strength. His military strategies on the battlefield were ingenious, and he wielded his mo-dao (long-handled sword) with such perfection that it left one dazzled.
However, his youngest son had been a weakling since birth, unable to learn martial arts, so the Marquis could only pass on his martial prowess to his eldest son.
Shi Yue knew no martial arts; he was helpless even against these two minor guards.
Shi Yue watched the door slowly close. He remained silent for a moment, then slowly slid down along the wall until he sat on the floor, and then he fiercely slapped himself in the face.
Smack.
With a crisp sound, Shi Yue’s face tilted to one side, a large area swelling red. His gaze was dull, like a piece of wood.
Why has my body been sickly since childhood? Why did I cause my mother to die in childbirth? And now, even my other relatives are to be beheaded.
Because of his health, his whole family had cherished him, never letting him suffer any grievances. His father had been kind to him, and every time he returned from a victory, he would bring back strange little trinkets to find ways to amuse him.
Meanwhile, his elder brother had to shoulder the responsibilities of a general’s descendant alone, following his father to war since childhood. His back was covered with crisscrossing old scars, yet he had no complaints, and even though his younger brother’s life was vastly different from his own, he never harbored any dissatisfaction, instead always carefully accepting any request he had.
Shi Yue recalled the events of the past and regretted everything.
He hated himself for being useless, having received his family’s protection but being unable to help them. Now, trapped in this corner of the world, he could not even achieve freedom, nor could he reach the side of his relatives for their final moments.
Shi Yue felt increasingly cold—his heart was cold, and his body was cold too. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself, desperately trying to draw some warmth.
Cold…
It’s so cold…
Shi Yue felt his consciousness fading, his vision blurring, until the world returned to darkness and silence.
When Shi Yue regained a shred of consciousness, he found himself lying in warm, soft bedding, with the faint scent of incense drifting to his nose.
He hazily felt someone supporting his back, resting against a warm chest, with bitter medicine being fed into his mouth.
“No, bitter.” Shi Yue frowned, his mouth pressed tightly shut, not wanting the tongue-numbing medicine to enter.
But he did not know how it happened; the cold spoon was removed, and instead, a warm, soft vessel pressed against his lips, forcefully pouring the medicine into his mouth.
Shi Yue, whose consciousness was unclear, could not tell what the soft vessel was, and subconsciously wanted to turn his face away to spit it out.
However, a pair of strong hands firmly gripped his jaw; unable to escape, he could only passively swallow the medicine.
Shi Yue felt the medicine was so bitter it was as if it wanted to kill him; his tongue felt as if it were about to break.
But soon, a sweet preserved fruit was stuffed into his mouth, suppressing the annoying bitterness.
In his delirium, a pair of hands slowly stroked him, and inexplicably, Shi Yue felt a gentleness he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Like A’Yao, like the A’Yao I haven’t seen in years.
A’Yao…
Where are you? I’m so tired, can you come and stay with me… I’m so tired.