Volume One, Chapter 12: Thunderous Might

Night had deepened.

Within the Eastern Palace study, the lamps still burned brightly.

Li Xuan reclined against the broad grand tutor’s chair, eyes tightly closed, breathing steady, as if deeply asleep. His face, increasingly pale, bore a faint, sickly flush, and beside him sat a bowl of long-cold medicinal broth.

Everything was as usual—so quiet it felt oppressive.

Outside the study, two young eunuchs assigned to the night watch yawned out of sheer boredom. One, named Little Chunzi, rolled his eyes and quietly nudged the other, Little Anzi.

“Hey, has His Highness fallen asleep again?” Little Chunzi whispered.

“Of course,” Little Anzi replied with a grimace. “It’s been like this every day lately. Not even thunder could wake him. I think His Highness’s health is really failing.”

A greedy glint flashed in Little Chunzi’s eyes as he leaned closer. “Tell me… how much do you reckon that ‘Blood Jade Qilin’ paperweight on His Highness’s desk is worth?”

“You’re crazy!” Little Anzi gasped. “That’s a gift from the Emperor himself. How dare you even think about it?”

“Heh heh, fortune favors the bold,” Little Chunzi grinned like a cat stealing fish. “His Highness is so sick and dazed now, we take it quietly, no one will know. Then we exchange it for silver, leave the palace, buy a house, get wives—wouldn’t that be better than waiting on a dying crown prince?”

Little Anzi was tempted but hesitated. “What if… what if we get caught?”

“Afraid of what?” Little Chunzi bared his teeth. “It’s settled then! The Second Prince is pressing us hard to make some kind of ‘noise’ quickly. This paperweight will be our token of allegiance to him!”

Having finalized their secret plan, the two crept to the study door and quietly pushed it open.

Inside, Li Xuan still “slept.”

Little Chunzi, bolder, stepped toward the desk and reached for the blood-red jade paperweight.

At the very moment his fingers were about to touch it, the unexpected happened!

Li Xuan’s eyes snapped open with a fierce sharpness far from illness or weariness—like a starving wolf in the dead of night, cold and piercing!

“Ah!”

Little Chunzi screamed in terror, collapsing onto the floor.

Little Anzi’s legs gave out; he dropped to his knees, bowing his head repeatedly. “Your Highness, have mercy! Please spare us!”

“Mercy?” Li Xuan slowly sat upright, cracking his neck with sharp pops. He toyed with the purple-haired jade pen in his hand and spoke with chilling calm, “I might spare you, but your master behind the scenes? I doubt he will.”

Before he finished speaking, a dozen black-clad guards wielding sharp blades appeared from every corner of the study. These were the Crown Prince’s guards—recruited and trained by Li Xuan himself in recent days using modern methods—each agile and composed. Like phantoms, they swiftly overpowered the two eunuchs, gagging them.

“Your Highness, everyone is here,” Wang Fugui emerged from the shadows, holding a roster, and reported respectfully.

“Good.” Li Xuan nodded, rising to his feet. His gaze swept over the kneeling prisoners and several other captured spies—two whispering palace maids and a seemingly dull-witted guard.

All were ashen-faced and trembling as if shaken to their very core.

“Speak,” Li Xuan said, approaching Little Chunzi and tapping his face gently with the poisoned pen. “How much did the Second Prince pay you to risk your lives spying in my Eastern Palace? To even attempt stealing the Imperial gift and cause chaos?”

Terrified, Little Chunzi spilled everything like water from a bamboo tube: how they met with the steward of the Second Prince’s residence, how messages were passed, and the promises made.

One by one, the others broke down too, wailing and confessing their ties to the eldest prince and the third prince.

In an instant, the small study turned into a gallery of the princes’ crimes.

Standing silently in a corner, observing coldly, was Xiao Ningshuang. Her heart churned.

She watched Li Xuan transform, in a blink, from a “hopelessly ill” man into the masterful arbiter of the room. He neither shouted nor raged but spoke with the calmest voice, uttering words that pierced the hearts of these treacherous servants until they completely unraveled.

Such cunning and method sent a chill through her soul.

After the interrogation, Li Xuan waved his hand. “Take them all away and keep them well guarded. Not a single one is to die.”

“Yes!” The Crown Prince’s guards obeyed, dragging the sobbing captives away.

Silence settled over the study once more.

Li Xuan poured a cup of tea at the desk and sipped slowly, as if nothing had happened.

“Your Highness… is that all?” Wang Fugui asked, puzzled. “Won’t you execute them?”

“Execute?” Li Xuan chuckled. “What good would that do? They’re just servants. What I want isn’t their lives but to use them as bait to catch the masters behind them.”

Turning to Wang Fugui, he instructed, “At dawn, take their confessions and the prisoners themselves to the Court of Judicial Review. Make a grand spectacle of it—drums and gongs. Announce that the Eastern Palace was infiltrated by thieves, caught red-handed. Request the Chief Justice to investigate thoroughly and expose the mastermind. I want an explanation.”

Wang Fugui’s eyes lit up as he grasped Li Xuan’s brilliant stratagem.

This was not merely a report—it was a public slap in the faces of several princes in front of the civil and military officials of the capital!

Delivering the spies and their confessions to the court was the same as laying the evidence on the table. No matter how skilled, the princes could not deny it. They would suffer not only the Emperor’s wrath but also disgrace in the court.

A decisive strike to the root, using others as weapons—a masterstroke!

“Old servant… I shall attend to it at once!” Wang Fugui flushed with excitement and bowed to leave.

Only Li Xuan and Xiao Ningshuang remained in the study.

Li Xuan approached her, picked up the “Soulbreaking Pen” used as bait, twirled it between his fingers, then snapped it in two with a crisp crack.

“The play is over; the props should be destroyed,” he said, casually tossing the broken pen into the brazier. Flames leapt, quickly swallowing it.

Having done all this, he looked at Xiao Ningshuang’s still-shocked, exquisite face and suddenly smiled broadly, revealing white teeth. His tone was light and teasing. “Well, Crown Princess, how was my performance? Not bad, right?”

Xiao Ningshuang gazed at him, at the relaxed smile as if he had just done something trivial, and found herself speechless for a long moment.

Finally, from her crimson lips came two quiet words.

“Boring.”

With that, she turned and walked out of the study with a cool, distant stride.

Yet, at the moment she turned, her cold eyes flickered with a strange light even she had not noticed.

Li Xuan watched her retreating figure, the smile on his lips deepening.

He knew the iceberg was slowly melting.

And through this thunderous purge, he had completely seized control of the Eastern Palace—his fortress.

But he also understood clearly this was only the beginning.

After dawn, the “gift” he sent to the Court of Judicial Review would unleash an unprecedented storm across the entire court.

He eagerly awaited the expressions on the faces of his brothers when they received this “surprise.”