Three Three

The first thing that happened in the imperial palace was witchcraft and cursecraft.

The empress had eyes and ears everywhere in the harem, and as soon as the news reached her, she hurried to the palace of the culprit, Consort Li, to demand an explanation before the emperor could issue his sentence.

After the palace doors were shut and the attendants dismissed, the empress struck Consort Li hard across the face.

“Have you gone mad from losing favor, or have you become so stupid you no longer have a brain? How could you think of using cursecraft against the Noble Consort? The evidence has already been placed before His Majesty. I can no longer protect you.”

Consort Li turned her face from the blow and gave a cold laugh. “When have Your Majesty ever protected me?”

The empress had not expected such defiance. She stared at Consort Li in disbelief, as if seeing this collateral cousin for the first time.

“I entered the palace at fifteen. Your Majesty had just given birth to the Crown Prince, and the Zhangsun family sent me in to help secure your favor. I was so foolish then. I truly believed your wealth and honor were my own, and I threw myself into every matter on your behalf, fighting the Noble Consort for your sake.”

“But what did you ever do for me? Now I have no child, no favor, and in every matter I am pressed down by the Noble Consort. Instead of helping me, you tell me to endure it and keep the peace.”

“Yesterday, the Noble Consort urged the emperor to take my heart’s blood as a medicinal ingredient. I went to you in tears, but you were busy arranging a marriage with the Crown Princess for your own son and would not even grant me an audience... Your Majesty, how heartless you are.”

Her desperate accusation ended in a self-mocking laugh.

“You think I wanted to curse the Noble Consort? No. I wanted you to pay for the nine years you kept me trapped, and for deceiving me!”

The more the empress heard, the angrier she became. She raised her hand to strike again, but Consort Li shoved her away and ran toward one of the hall pillars, ramming her head into it.

By the time the servants were summoned in to look, she was already dead.

Consort Li had died by striking the pillar. The empress was supported as she left, her expression dazed; she could not even remember how she had made it back to Phoenix Rest Palace. Consort Li’s final words before taking her own life still echoed in her mind, leaving her uneasy and afraid.

Half an hour later, an imperial eunuch came in person to deliver the decree. Phoenix Rest Palace was locked down, and none within were permitted to leave.

Within the Eastern Palace, the maids and eunuchs exchanged glances, not knowing what had happened outside. Just as the great gates were being closed, several bold guards stepped forward to ask questions, only to be shouted back by the imperial guards stationed beyond.

Yue Zhi looked back at the meal in the main hall, already gone cold, then glanced toward the eastern side hall—

Xiu Yu and Cai Ying had just gone back to their quarters. When the eunuch delivering the edict arrived, neither of them came out; they were likely hiding inside, sleeping their days away.

While everyone was still confused and no one was paying attention to her, she slipped back to the western side hall.

Ever since her foster mother had been driven away, Yue Zhi had grown cautious. She had sewn her hidden gold and silver into her clothes. Now it was late autumn, the time to add layers, and the treasure concealed in the linings would not be noticed.

She had been in the palace for more than five years and had never seen the imperial guards make such a show of force. Instinct told her the Eastern Palace was likely headed for disaster.

The silver she had saved with so much effort could not be left to someone else. Moving quickly, she put her entire fortune on her body.

When she returned to the main hall, she was still dressed as a maid, and no one noticed that she had changed clothes.

After the gate had been shut for half an hour, everyone grew restless and uneasy. The two loafers in the eastern side hall were also called out by a little maid, who begged them to think of a way to seek help from the empress. After all, ninety percent of the people here had been chosen by the empress herself.

Xiu Yu and Cai Ying were both bewildered. After learning what had happened, they walked together to the gate and pleaded through the crack with the imperial guards outside.

“We are the empress’s trusted attendants. Could you help us carry a message to Phoenix Rest Palace?”

The guards did not even look at them. “Hah. The Zhangsun Empress can barely save herself. You think she has time to mind two maids?”

At that, the two women panicked at once. They wanted to ask more, but the flash of a blade through the crack drove them back.

The others gathered around the two to ask for news. Their eyes were empty, their faces wooden as they muttered only that the empress could not even protect herself anymore. There was not a trace left of their usual quickness.

Learning that the empress had fallen, the courtyard descended into chaos.

Suddenly the great gates were pushed open from outside. Imperial guards drew their sabers and stood on either side to prevent anyone from escaping. Then two eunuchs carried someone in on a stretcher, set him down on the ground, and left.

Yue Zhi hurried down the steps. There, lying on the stretcher in a dazed and unconscious state, was the Crown Prince.

The second page

The others in the Eastern Palace also saw the Crown Prince, and for him to be sent back in such a wretched state, with the eunuchs showing him no courtesy at all, made the meaning plain enough.

No one had any mind left to care about the discarded Crown Prince or the fallen empress. Everyone hurriedly took out their valuables, trying to slip out before the gate was fully shut again.

As the crowd pressed toward the entrance, Yue Zhi instead crouched beside the stretcher and lifted the Crown Prince into her arms.

Holding him, she was startled by how weak his body had become. All his pride and vitality seemed to have leaked away; what remained was only an empty shell, exhausted and limp.

Her nose stung with sudden tears, as though she were looking at a green bamboo stalk snapped in two. Her heart ached in a way she could not name.

She carried him into the inner chamber and laid him on the bed.

After a brief examination, she found bruising on his knees from long kneeling, and her face turned icy.

Yue Zhi found cold remedy in the medicine box and fed it to him, then applied ointment to his knees.

She had always thought only servants were punished by kneeling and beatings, never imagining that even a prince as exalted as the Crown Prince could be tormented by his own father to this extent. It was truly a sorrowful thing...

Outside the window, the autumn wind rustled endlessly. Though Yue Zhi was indoors, she felt a chill to the bone.

A little later:

“Because you are my only legitimate son, I chose you as Crown Prince. I did not expect you to be greedy and insatiable like your mother, scheming with your maternal clan at such a tender age!”

“The Zhangsun family truly knows no bottom to its greed. If the Noble Consort had not brought me the evidence, I would never have known that you had incited Consort Li to curse me into an early grave so that your uncle might seat you on this throne and let the Zhangsun family flourish for a hundred years!”

The emperor’s fury knew no end. The young Crown Prince was made to kneel in the cold wind. Whenever he tried to explain himself, it only angered the emperor further, until he ordered the Crown Prince’s personal eunuch dragged out and beaten to death.

Pei Heng wept and begged his father to calm his rage, only to be kicked in the chest. The pain stole his voice.

He had knelt in the draft for more than an hour. At first the cold wind had given him a splitting headache; later even his tears grew cold, until at last he lost consciousness and collapsed.

The emperor’s dignity could not be challenged. The empress, stubborn and single-minded, only sought profit for the Zhangsun clan.

Pei Heng felt like a puppet in someone else’s hands, molded by his father and mother into the shape they wanted, into the shape they needed. No one cared whether he liked it, whether he was sad or hurt. They would not even grant him a chance to defend himself or beg for mercy.

Slowly, he opened his eyes in a haze, only to feel the tears at the corners of his eyes gently wiped away by the person beside him.

Seeing clearly who was tending him, Pei Heng’s eyes reddened. The grievances he had been holding back could no longer be contained, and he cried until his chest hurt.

Yue Zhi sat at the bedside. Seeing how sorrowfully he wept, her own heart ached as well.

She did not know what had happened and could not comfort him with words, so she could only wipe away his tears again and again.

No one knew how long passed before the chaos outside the chamber gradually quieted. The Crown Prince’s sobbing also lessened, and Yue Zhi brought him food to eat, taking a little herself as well.

While they ate, Pei Heng told her how Consort Li had used cursecraft in the palace against the emperor and the two sons of the Noble Consort, and how the matter had dragged in the Zhangsun family and him. The emperor was furious, and this matter was unlikely to end well.

As Yue Zhi listened, she could not help feeling uneasy. “Your Highness has not yet recovered from your cold. Please, eat more.”

As she urged him on, she also ate more herself. At a time like this, she might not get such good food again.

Seeing how earnestly she ate, Pei Heng smiled faintly and said slowly, “Father is angry with everyone connected to the Zhangsun family, but you were not planted here by my mother. As long as you are not kept at my side, you can be taken away and reassigned elsewhere.”

As he had said, people had already come from outside. The servants quieted down at once and waited to be selected, rather than remain here and die alongside the discarded Crown Prince.

Yue Zhi glanced toward the window but said nothing.

Only a few hours earlier, she had already prepared to take her leave from Pei Heng. Now the chance to leave the Eastern Palace was right outside the door, yet she hesitated.

“If I go, what will become of you?”

Now that he had lost the favor of both emperor and empress, and with the blood of the Zhangsun family in his veins, he had become a figure of suspicion to the emperor. No one around him could be trusted. To be confined until death, with no hope left for the rest of his life... how bleak that would be.

Yue Zhi kept her head down, afraid to look at him. She had once feared the empress, and now feared the emperor even more. Though she wanted to stay and care for him, in the end she lacked the courage.

She felt she had failed the Crown Prince’s trust.

Pei Heng comforted her. “I am Father’s son. No matter how angry he may be with me, he will not let me starve or freeze to death. But you, if you keep following me, will only be bullied by others, and you may not even receive your monthly stipend.”

At the mention of having her stipend withheld, Yue Zhi panicked completely.

Pei Heng took in her fear, silently removed the long-life gold lock he was wearing, and placed it in her hand.

“At least if you leave, you can still send me word. There is no need for you to be buried here with me.”

Seeing his resolve, and knowing his words were reasonable, Yue Zhi could only accept the gold lock. After she finished eating with him, she stepped out of the inner chamber and hurried on, not daring to look back at his expression.

Outside, the great gates stood open. The servants were split into two groups, and only those chosen by the managing eunuch were allowed to leave the Eastern Palace.

Yue Zhi quietly took her place at the end of the line. Not long after, the managing eunuch came over to question her.

“What is your name?”

“Yue Zhi.”

“Before you came to the Eastern Palace, where did you serve?”

“I worked in the embroidery room for five years. I only came to the Eastern Palace on the fifteenth of last month.”

The little eunuch beside the manager flipped through the recorded roster and handed it over: clean background, short time in the Eastern Palace, no contact with the empress.

“All right. Go stand over there,” the managing eunuch said with satisfaction, gesturing for Yue Zhi to move to the other group.

That meant she could leave the Eastern Palace, and after receiving a little help from Su Jingyun, she would be able to be transferred to a better place and live out her days in peace until she left the palace.

Her joy lasted only a brief moment before worry and reluctance surged up inside her.

The Crown Prince had said that her leaving would be best for both of them. But he was still ill, and he had even given her the gold lock he wore close to his body. Would those left behind, who had nothing to gain, still take good care of him?

They had only spent one month together. He had never looked down on her for being a maid. He had invited her to eat at the same table, taught her to read poetry and essays, and carefully kept every cloth doll she had sewn, treasuring them all.

As she thought of it, Yue Zhi grew sad.

Since childhood, her parents had sold her away and sent her into the palace as a maid. Over the years, aside from her foster mother and Su Jingyun, only the Crown Prince had ever treated her with genuine kindness.

Leaving the Eastern Palace would simply mean moving from a small cage into a larger one. It was still serving people, still reading faces and bending to them, but at least the Crown Prince had treated her as a person, not as a thing to be commanded at will.

In that moment, Yue Zhi suddenly did not want to leave.

She came to a halt, and from behind her suddenly came an oddly bitter accusation.

Xiu Yu’s face was full of jealousy. “She is also the Crown Prince’s close attendant. Why can she leave while we cannot?”

Cai Ying joined in, speaking humbly and obsequiously. “Sir, please show mercy and leave us a way to live. Let us out as well.”

The managing eunuch glared at them in displeasure. Instantly, a little eunuch stepped forward and slapped each of them once, silencing the commotion.

“By His Majesty’s command, anyone who is one of the Crown Prince’s trusted people may not leave the Eastern Palace,” the managing eunuch repeated, deliberately pointing to Yue Zhi. “Since you are the Crown Prince’s close-attendant maid, you need not go out either. Stay here.”

At those words, Yue Zhi did not feel afraid. Instead, the sorrow that had been pressing on her chest since a moment ago suddenly lifted.