Chapter 83: He Longed for Respect
Because he had called out “Brother.”
The matriarch punished him. Little Master was forbidden to eat for three consecutive days.
The feeling of an empty stomach was unbearable.
The servants wouldn’t even give him water.
In the sweltering summer heat, Little Master lay in the woodshed, his stomach cramping with hunger, writhing from side to side.
He could feel beads of sweat rolling down his temples. He stuck out his tongue to catch a drop. It was salty. He tried to swallow, but his throat was so dry it felt like swallowing knives.
“Water…”
“Food.”
“I’m so hungry.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“—What did I do wrong???”
Outside the woodshed, the servants turned a deaf ear, letting him roll off the bed and throw a tantrum on the floor.
Little Master cried until he had no strength left…
To a child who had experienced little of life, death was a terror worse than drowning. He curled up under the starry summer sky, enduring each passing second.
Until he heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. It was going to rain.
Raindrops hammered against the roof tiles like beans scattering on the ground.
Little Master bit his lower lip hard. He crawled out of the woodshed, rolling in the mud, trying to reach the eaves where streams of water flowed, a lifeline for his frail little body.
As he opened his mouth, gulping down the rainwater.
The servants taking shelter under the corridor didn’t see him.
When the rain finally stopped, he lay in the puddle, his eyes half-open, breathing faintly. The servants were still talking in low voices, discussing the very reason the matriarch treated him so harshly.
Little Master mustered what little strength he had left, blinking his eyes.
“The Master went to Luoyang to be the chief examiner. The Yellow River broke its banks, countless people died, and the refugees nearly overran the city.”
“The Master, out of the kindness of his heart, saved a refugee who was starving outside the posthouse. Bah! That slut was in the pleasure trade! A wretched thing who escaped from a brothel… After our Master saved her, she insisted on kowtowing to him before she left.”
“And then? What happened then?”
The servant continued, “That bitch was carrying a sleeping draught when she fled. She’d had her eye on the Master for a while, knowing he was kind and seeing he was an official. So she lay in wait outside the posthouse for a long time. The bitch tricked our Master and defiled him, then cried and begged for him to take her with him.”
“Oh my!” the servants exclaimed in unison. “So he brought her back?”
Little Master stared blankly at the patch of sky visible from under the eaves.
“What else could he do? The slut got pregnant that very night! Luckily, she got what she deserved. All her scheming came to nothing. She died in childbirth from a hemorrhage, right here in this woodshed, leaving behind a little bastard.”
“No wonder the matriarch hates them both so much. She’s a lady from a noble family. How could she be expected to call that woman ‘sister’!”
“The family’s pure reputation, ruined in a single day! What is the Master’s status? How could the Vice Minister of Rites associate with a prostitute from a brothel…”
It was then that Yuan Xizai understood. The reason for all the cold treatment.
He was the son of a prostitute, the offspring of a woman who wasn’t even considered a concubine. His mother had repaid kindness with treachery, her schemes meticulously planned. He was despised by his own father.
But, what did any of that have to do with him?
Why couldn’t he be like his older brother?
He wanted that study…
He wanted to be respected, to have good food…
He wasn’t any worse than his brother…
How could he achieve it?
Get closer to him.
Risk death to get closer to him.
Study, practice calligraphy, make others see him through his brother. Have his brother introduce him to more people.
From then on, he would be his brother’s little shadow.
They left the storeroom and crossed a stone bridge.
After descending the bridge, Wei Wanlan saw a series of tall buildings with upturned eaves.
This was the direction of the Central Secretariat. But along both sides of the main path, under the faint, warm orange glow of the palace lanterns, the path was even more thickly carpeted with fallen blossoms.
This place only vaguely resembled the Central Secretariat he knew, completely different from the stern and solemn atmosphere of the one in his memory.
The gates were not closed.
They could walk right in. A palace maid on night duty even curtsied to them, her face heavily powdered.
This was the Leopard House the eunuch had mentioned earlier.
Inside, there were no animal shows at this late hour.
But there were still many enormous cages stacked in the corners on both sides of the Leopard House, covered with crimson satin curtains. Through the curtains, they could faintly hear the heavy, snoring breaths of animals.
Wei Wanlan wrinkled his nose and sniffed. The air was thick with the foul, gamey smell of animals kept in captivity for too long. He frowned.
As they got closer, they could hear the soft tap-tap of an animal’s claws scratching against the steel bars of a cage as it turned over in its sleep.
Wei Wanlan bit his lower lip and clenched his fists inside his sleeves.
“This lion is from the Western Regions! It’s never met its match before this fight! If you don’t place your bets on it now, you’ll be watching me rake it in…”
“Nonsense! How could your scrawny lion be afraid of a fierce tiger from Liaodong? Haha, that tiger was deliberately starved for a day! Your lion is about to be eaten! Place your bets now, no take-backs!”
A clamor came from the depths of the Leopard House.
Wei Wanlan heard it. But from the jumble of voices in the distance, he could only make out the word “bet.” Just as he was about to walk toward the source of the sound, the hand he had clenched in his sleeve was suddenly lifted and held by Fu Jun.
Wei Wanlan’s eyes widened. “?”
His hand slowly unfurled in Fu Jun’s palm. Fu Jun had placed a few mint leaves in his hand, picked from somewhere in the imperial villa.
The leaves lay soft and cool against his palm.
Wei Wanlan didn’t understand the gesture, but his feet had already carried him to the largest, most independent area of the Central Secretariat.
In the Chang’an palace, this was where the Regent worked. No unauthorized personnel were allowed. Even the highest-ranking ministers of the Great Wei, in their purple robes and golden belts, had to line up dutifully outside this door. Not to mention the heavily armored Jinwu Imperial Guard standing watch outside; trespassing was absolutely forbidden.
But here, two smiling eunuchs stood outside, each holding a dog on a leash.
The dogs were vicious, their eyes glinting menacingly, their demeanor far from friendly.
The eunuchs let the dogs sniff at the newcomers. Saliva dripped from their mouths. Goosebumps rose on Wei Wanlan’s back. For the first time, he suppressed the urge to pat a dog’s head, feeling a wave of revulsion that made him want to retreat.
“Honored guests, please enter.”
The doors swung open.
It was as if he had stepped into another world. The roar of voices washed over him like a tidal wave.
A grand and absurd scene unfolded before Wei Wanlan’s eyes. He saw a room full of lavishly dressed guests, forming a circular human wall. From within the circle came the roars of wild beasts and the stench of blood.
The frenzied guests shouted, “Bite him!” “Fight!” Their voices and the smell in the air seemed to stir the darkest, most repressed evils of human nature. These guests, who associated with Yuan Xizai—the sanctimonious wealthy merchants and pillars of the state from outside the Luoyang Imperial Villa—all displayed an uncharacteristic ferocity.
Beast fighting.
Wei Wanlan stood on his tiptoes and peered through a gap in the human wall.
Two wild animals, fed with stimulants, had bloodshot eyes. Patches of their flesh were already torn and bloody, and in some places, white bone was exposed. They were locked in a fight to the death.
These were supposed to be fluffy, innocent animals.
He had once released all the rare beasts from the imperial menagerie back into the wild.
And these people…
His eyes suddenly stung.
Wei Wanlan felt his stomach churn. The little dove of peace couldn’t watch this. He would cry.
But he didn’t want to cry in front of Xiao Ji and Fu Jun. He held the mint leaves to his nose and took a deep breath. A cool sensation seeped into his nostrils and throat. He pressed his dry lips together and retreated to a quiet corner, pouting as he muttered to himself.
“After I find a way to kill Yuan Xizai, I’ll come back and set you free. Just wait a little longer. Sniffle.”
“Young Master.” Xiao Ji followed him, also overwhelmed by the bloody stench of the beast fight. He covered his nose, his voice muffled. “I… I suddenly remembered something.”
“Go on.”
“After Yuan Mingyue’s death, there was no eulogy and no funeral. A sudden death from illness is no excuse for such a lack of propriety. It doesn’t make sense,” Xiao Ji said, still holding the jade coronet. “Besides, the Yuan family once served in the Ministry of Rites. They would never have handled things so quietly.”
“Maybe they didn’t inform you.”
Xiao Ji shook his head, staunchly defending his family’s honor. “Impossible. The Yuan residence would never have bypassed my family when sending out notices. And even though I had no personal relationship with Yuan Mingyue, we were members of the same literary society…”
“Then maybe his death wasn’t worth mentioning,” Wei Wanlan said casually.
But this thoughtless reply sent a jolt of shock through Xiao Ji, making his scalp tingle. Under the warm orange glow of the palace lanterns, his face turned a deathly pale, his expression rigid.
Xiao Ji’s lips parted and closed several times. “Young Master, could you please repeat what you just said?”
Wei Wanlan was confused. “His death wasn’t worth mentioning?”
As if he were the one about to die, Xiao Ji’s face grew even paler.
But after a moment of this hesitant silence, he cupped his hands and bowed to Wei Wanlan in apology.
“I have a theory, just a theory. I have absolutely no intention of offending you, Young Master!”
Because Xiao Ji’s apology was so sincere.
Wei Wanlan, who had been covering his nose and sniffing the mint, felt the gravity of the situation and could no longer treat it lightly. He lowered his hand.
“Speak.”
“Yuan Mingyue’s death is related to the death of the Grand Princess’s husband,” Xiao Ji said. “It’s an unspeakable secret, something not worth mentioning. It could only be a matter of passion, a royal scandal.”
Wei Wanlan took a deep, secret breath—Yuan Mingyue died because of a royal scandal.
The original little emperor’s own brother-in-law, after attending the Yuan family’s coming-of-age ceremony, was announced to have died of a sudden illness.
The Prince Consort and Wei Wanyi were husband and wife. It was impossible for the Prince Consort, while accompanying the princess to a banquet, to have dared to fool around with another woman in the Yuan residence.
The only other possibility was the other way around…
The other way around!
Wei Wanlan’s little head felt like it was about to explode from the conclusion he had reached. His body froze like a statue, not daring to move.
—The princess had a tryst with someone at the legitimate son of the Yuan family’s capping ceremony. The Prince Consort discovered her affair, and so he had to be silenced!
The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.
Wei Wanyi loved all things grand and ostentatious, and she loved practicing martial arts. His older sister had never liked her scholar husband…
But Xiao Ji was so cautious, he would never have spelled it all out.
So Wei Wanlan had to guess the rest: The Grand Princess and her husband had a strained relationship. How did that connect to Yuan Mingyue at the coming-of-age ceremony?
Then it was highly likely that, Wei Wanlan muttered to himself, “The lover the Grand Princess was meeting was none other than Yuan Mingyue.”
A conflict arose when they were caught in the act. After the deed was done, fearing the scandal would be exposed, the royal family killed him to eliminate any future trouble?
If that was the case.
Then, could Yuan Xizai, who was extremely close to Yuan Mingyue, have done something outrageous out of grief for his brother?
Was Yuan Xizai retaliating against the royal family?
“Impossible,” Fu Jun said suddenly.
Wei Wanlan had no idea when Fu Jun had arrived. He hadn’t noticed at all. By the time he heard the cool, indifferent voice, Fu Jun was already standing beside him.
Wei Wanlan looked up at him. “Fu Jun, why is it impossible?”
“Because Yuan Xizai’s initial rise to power was due to the late emperor’s favor. Everyone in the eastern capital knows that it was the Grand Princess who recommended this scoundrel to be the late emperor’s playmate. Do they seem like they have a grudge?”
The master of the Heavenly Sword Villa was a local. Of course, he would know more of the inside story.
Wei Wanlan chose to believe him and answered honestly, “No, that doesn’t sound like a grudge. In fact… it sounds like they have a history.”
“Mm,” Fu Jun took the crumpled leaves from his hand and gave him a fresh one. “Perhaps they do have a history.”
At this point, Xiao Ji collected his thoughts and added, “If we bring Yuan Xizai into this, could it be that Yuan Mingyue discovered that the Prince Consort was about to be harmed? He spoke up to stop it, but was instead framed for assaulting the princess. If Yuan Mingyue was executed, it would also clear the path for the illegitimate son, Yuan Xizai?”
“So the two of them hit it off.”
“But this is all just speculation. How can we prove it?”
Xiao Ji muttered. It seemed to all make sense now, but the past was the past. Besides, even if they now knew that Yuan Xizai had once framed Yuan Mingyue and twisted the truth, it wouldn’t help them capture him.
Their focus should be on finding the corrupt official and his treasure, and leaving the Luoyang Imperial Villa safely. They shouldn’t be lingering on this tangent about the Yuan brothers’ past.
But just as Xiao Ji was thinking this, he felt a sudden lightness in his hands. The weight of the jade coronet was gone. In its place, he saw the back of Wei Wanlan, running away with the coronet in his arms. Xiao Ji quickly gave chase.
Fu Jun sneezed as he ran after them.
“The Regent is a big jerk.”
[Login successful.]
Wei Wanlan was running. The wind rushed past his ears—I can prove what happened in the past.
Because keen observation is an essential quality for an enlightened ruler.
Since I was able to find my way here, I must bring everything to its proper conclusion.
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