TBR CH154

Chapter 154: A Hundred Blessings of Longevity Painting 

Ji Ying pushed aside the curtain of the sedan chair. With a slight sway, the dark palace sedan passed through the vermillion-lacquered palace gates. The sound of hooves broke the first ray of dawn falling upon the bluestone slabs of the capital.

Today was a day off from court. The area around the palace gates was quiet. Civil and military officials did not need to show themselves. Guards stood sternly with their swords, not glancing sideways as the sedan chair passed. In truth, His Majesty had long since ceased appearing at morning court, citing health reasons.

Ultimately, he didn’t want to suffer under Prime Minister Chu’s sharp scrutiny.

But Ji Ying still keenly sniffed out a pungent odor. In the early summer morning, this smell, mixed with the heavy, fishy scent of sulfur and cinnabar, lingered in his sleeve along with dragon’s saliva incense. He recalled that as he bid farewell to His Majesty, he happened to coincide with the alchemists from the Sangguang Hall’s pill refinement room coming to deliver the elixir.

His Majesty’s body was not as bad as he made it out to be. Those crazed, white-filmed eyes were mostly used to confuse enemies and make them feel disgusted.

But he was indeed advanced in age. To begin taking elixirs when there were no obvious physical problems, one had to say, this was a commonality between him and the late emperor.

“He’s reached the age where he fears death,”

Ji Ying’s inner thought surfaced coldly, merely a statement.

Then he detected a sharp, ridiculous point: the elixir failed to save the late emperor, who died suddenly, yet these alchemists were strangely not punished. Instead, His Majesty kept them in the palace to continue their work, as if that wasn’t a questionable precedent.

The late emperor’s death was abrupt. But during the funeral, aside from his gruesome corpse, what no one could ignore was that the Crown Prince, who supported the coffin and wept before it, already had a few dazzling silver strands in his hair.

Everyone said the late emperor lived long, finally reaching nearly seventy years old.

This was a shadow in the current emperor’s heart.

—As he gradually approached that day.

After the almost imperceptible subtle friction of the sedan curtain and wood, the light was again obscured, and the back seat of the carriage grew dim. The sedan bearers, without glancing sideways, deftly tightened the reins, and the horses obediently followed their will, the slightly deviated path corrected. The back wall of the sedan cabin vaguely reflected Ji Ying’s silhouette.

He pulled out the hairpin from his hair, and his hair melted together, becoming like flowing ink on his shoulders. Ji Ying stared thoughtfully at the hairpin for a moment before calmly speaking, as if asking about the day’s weather:

“His Majesty’s birthday this year, I’m afraid it will have to be celebrated on a grand scale, won’t it?”

Though today was a rest day, some departments of the imperial court were frantically busy, with no time to rest.

Not to mention the Ministry of Rites, which had already begun preparations for next month’s birthday banquet. Chu Huaicun had sent the Ministry of Justice quite a “gift.” Even though Prince Duan had returned to his residence safely under His Majesty’s decree, he almost immediately sensed something amiss in the atmosphere. The butler, who had been waiting at the gate, looked distressed, as if his feet were burning, unable to stand still due to anxiety.

When he saw Prince Duan, he looked both like he had seen a savior and like he had seen Yama, trembling as he said:

“Your Highness, the Prime Minister’s manor has sent people to investigate. They brought the Ministry of Justice’s search warrant. This humble servant is guilty, deserving of ten thousand deaths, but I truly couldn’t stop them, so I had to let them into the Prince’s mansion. Now, now they still haven’t come out—”

At these words, Prince Duan’s face twisted uncontrollably.

When he was forcibly detained at the Prime Minister’s manor, he relied on his status as a Prince. The people in the Prime Minister’s manor couldn’t truly do anything to him, nor could they interrogate those around him. He had thought everything he saw on the way was bad enough, but he didn’t expect Chu Huaicun to take this opportunity to practically overturn his entire nest.

If one were to scrutinize closely, whose residence didn’t have something that couldn’t see the light of day?

He shoved the steward aside and stumbled into the mansion, almost forgetting the dignity of a Prince. Fortunately, he managed to regain a little sanity, not fainting before the wide-open study. He pressed his trembling fingertips, his face ashen, no longer pretending to be refined, driving everyone inside out like a vengeful ghost.

Even so, Prince Duan knew clearly that he was probably a step too late.

He wasn’t so foolish as to display the most crucial information openly, but he wasn’t cautious enough to destroy records of every secret contact with various forces in his own study. He could temporarily use His Majesty’s decree to keep Chu Huaicun’s people out, and he could bribe contacts within the Ministry of Justice. But confronting Chu Huaicun head-on, even Prince Duan, who hated the other to the bone, couldn’t help but shiver at the thought.

Who was harming him? Who wanted to put him to death?

Those around him, fearing his wrath, had quickly retreated, leaving him alone in the study. Prince Duan felt as if his strength had been drained, collapsing into a chair, fumbling for a protrusion under the table.

The desk emitted a deep grinding sound, and then a secret compartment appeared before him.

Inside lay several correspondences.

These correspondences had all been meticulously preserved by him; the earliest one written dated back over a month ago. He had gone from initial suspicion to increasing trust in the other end of the letters. These letters were sent anonymously via carrier pigeon, the sender claiming admiration for Prince Duan, believing he had the greatest chance of success, and wishing to gain a share of the glory in his rise to power.

The letters provided much information, not only about the Crown Prince but also about the Prime Minister’s manor, which he most feared but had no way of dealing with.

Prince Duan had people verify the truthfulness of this information, and it had all proven true. The other party also spared no effort, sending him much valuable intelligence. With the Crown Prince losing power, Prince Duan had made good use of this information to worsen his situation, with better results than expected.

Since the other party was so frank, Prince Duan carefully began to probe their identity, feigning an eagerness for talent. But the other party remained tight-lipped until a few days ago, when they provided him with part of the Prime Minister’s manor’s expenditure accounts, after which they changed their tone, informing Prince Duan that they were actually from the Prime Minister’s manor but had decided to seek a new master.

At these words, Prince Duan believed them by three parts.

After all, if not closely connected to the Prime Minister’s manor, one would not be able to know such information.

He subtly coaxed and finally persuaded the other party to fully join his camp. And to avoid attracting attention, the meeting was arranged for the day of the Prime Minister’s manor’s summer banquet.

Prince Duan hadn’t told anyone about this plan, not even Ji Ying.

If this was a trap, he had already been entangled by invisible chains around his neck. When he was identified as the mastermind, he was even slow to react to everything that had happened, like a goat walking to the edge of a cliff and still wanting to jump down.

He naturally had countless things to argue, such as the person the Seventh Prince saw couldn’t have been him, he had never mentioned the so-called “criminal evidence” to anyone, and he didn’t know when his jade pendant had gone missing. When he arrived at the agreed-upon location, he saw no one; this person seemed to not exist. But—

Prince Duan couldn’t say it for a while.

All the transactions he had had with the letter’s owner, along with these increasingly explicit correspondences in his hands, were absolutely unsuitable to be revealed to outsiders, especially in front of Chu Huaicun.

He anxiously stroked the papers until the ink blurred from the sweat on his fingers. Prince Duan hesitated for a moment, then, gritting his teeth, tore the papers in his hand into countless unrecognizable fragments. He wasn’t stupid yet. At this moment, he had to gamble on one possibility: that it wasn’t Chu Huaicun who was calculating against him.

This information was not false.

He hadn’t yet used much of the exploitable intelligence, saving it to gather and deliver a fatal blow to Chu Huaicun. Even if the papers were torn, the intelligence remained in Prince Duan’s mind. The other party apparently didn’t mind if he actually took action.

If so, the other party would also be unwilling to expose their identity, like him, and reveal their actions to Chu Huaicun.

They had both left too many handles, and had no choice but to remain silent.

He forced himself to calm down. After all, this incident, though not major, wasn’t minor either, but it wasn’t enough to make him panic and lose everything. Moreover, next month was His Majesty’s birthday. In order not to disrupt the increasingly pervasive atmosphere of peace and prosperity, this matter would certainly not be made a big deal. He still had a chance to go all out—

Prince Duan’s expression grew gloomier, and he nervously dug his fingers into the wooden tabletop.

He had lost once to Chu Huaicun, and he could not lose a second time. He was of imperial blood, a son of the phoenix and dragon; no matter what the other said, he was ultimately a minister of the court. He had reached the pinnacle of a subject’s power. Could he still dare to rebel? Moreover, the secrets he held about this matter, if investigated further, might not be unable to shake Chu Huaicun’s foundation.

For example… no one in the court didn’t want to pry into, but failed to uncover even a shred of, those pasts.

Prime Minister Chu’s past.

His Majesty’s birthday was next month.

For a time, it was hard to tell whether the air was filled with joyous celebration or the oppressive calm before a storm. The imperial chefs had already begun practicing the dishes for the grand banquet, and palace maids danced gracefully to the music, not daring to take a single misstep. Various imperial items imprinted with the character “壽” (longevity) were continuously produced.

They also had to be careful not to offend the emperor’s taboos.

For instance, those few golden-scaled carp in the imperial garden now lay cold and motionless on the dry ground. The artisans who had delivered them, with tears in their eyes, were forced to watch as the carp they had meticulously cared for for years, valuing them more than their own lives, thrashed madly a few times on the ground before being mercilessly put to death.

This was His Majesty’s cruel instruction.

As a national birthday, the emperor’s birthday had to be celebrated with great solemnity, especially on special years. But this year was more troublesome than usual. The older His Majesty got, the more he focused on those peculiar taboos. For last year’s milestone birthday, His Majesty specifically ordered that there be no grand celebrations, precisely because of folk beliefs that celebrating a milestone birthday too grandly would alert the King of Hell to claim one’s soul.

His Majesty outwardly claimed to be diligently frugal for the sake of the empire, but in reality, he was concerned about those unwritten rules.

But since His Majesty had already reached sixty, and last year’s birthday had passed quietly, this year’s birthday, by all accounts, had to make up for it, and had to be arranged to be more spectacular than usual.

The several princes with their fiefdoms traveled thousands of miles with gifts, setting off early; Prince Ping, whom Chu Huaicun had mentioned not long ago, also rushed over from Lingnan, dusty from his journey. It was said he brought the freshest and sweetest lychees, baskets of them pressing down enormous blocks of ice.

His two sons would make their first appearance in the capital with their father.

“For this year’s birthday, what does Prime Minister Chu intend to send to the palace?”

The Prime Minister’s manor steward had already made a round in the storeroom in advance and had now drafted a backup gift list, which he was presenting to Chu Huaicun for review. Although it wasn’t the hottest time of summer yet, the Prime Minister’s manor was well-stocked and already had ice, creating an indoor coolness unlike the outside, almost like an ice cave. The steward stood respectfully at the lower seat, his hands clasped, yet from the corner of his eye, he could still see a corner of Chu Huaicun’s white robes.

Liang Kechun spoke before Prime Minister Chu:

“The Crown Prince had someone deliver the gift list yesterday, saying he wanted Prime Minister Chu to decide on his behalf,”

After all this time, he was still a bit nervous in front of Chu Huaicun, but having been taught by Mr. Fang, he was clearly much more composed. Besides, these pieces of information were all things he had investigated himself.

“It’s not appropriate to accept the Crown Prince’s goodwill now, so I wrote a reply and sent it. His Highness Prince Duan’s side is keeping it very secret, but I heard it’s something like calligraphy and paintings from former great masters, priceless, costing a great deal of effort… However, His Majesty has never shown interest in such things. Prince Duan’s intention isn’t for His Majesty, but for the influential figures in the court. As for the Seventh Prince, Prime Minister Chu knows what he sent: a ‘Myriad Blessings and Longevity’ painting that he had been working on for over half a year.”

The Seventh Prince had no family backing, so he couldn’t send extravagant gifts. It was better to find an alternative approach and show some thoughtfulness.

Liang Kechun himself found it a bit absurd as he spoke. Two of the three most influential Princes in court had obediently reported to Chu Huaicun what they intended to send. However, upon second thought, given the man before him’s immense power and extraordinary wealth, which of them didn’t have such things? So he continued with peace of mind:

“The Ministry of Rites’ intention is for the birthday banquet to last for three days and three nights, with His Majesty’s birthday being on the last day. Considering His Majesty’s health, civil and military officials only need to be seated with His Majesty on the last day.”

“Hmm,” Prime Minister Chu nodded. “I understand. Young Master Liang, just pick a suitable item from this gift list I have, and report it. As for the Prime Minister’s manor, there’s no need for so many formalities.”

Liang Kechun respectfully agreed and was about to withdraw when he heard Chu Huaicun’s clear, cold voice again:

“When you go to the storeroom later, also fetch the set of brush, ink, paper, and inkstone that I’ve kept for a long time. Tell the steward; he’ll know which item it is. Once you’ve retrieved it, don’t wrap it; just hand it directly to me. I’ll do it myself.”

These words were so abrupt that Liang Kechun didn’t react immediately, subconsciously asking:

“Is Prime Minister Chu planning to give it to someone? But no lord in court has a birthday recently.”

With so many people in court, a year only had twelve months. Liang Kechun’s meaning was that no one worthy of Prime Minister Chu’s attention had a birthday recently. Moreover, Chu Huaicun evidently intended to prepare the gift personally, suggesting that few people could bear such a gift.

Chu Huaicun, however, showed no reticence, calmly stating, “It’s Lord Ji Ying’s birthday.”

“Lord Ji?”

Liang Kechun couldn’t help but murmur, “Indeed, no one has heard of his birthday. How does Prime Minister Chu know… Ah, it is Liang’s transgression; Prime Minister Chu, please do not blame me.”

Chu Huaicun, hearing this, showed no displeasure.

He sat high in the main hall, dressed in bright, cold snow-white robes, exuding an austere and solemn aura. At this moment, however, his expression softened slightly because of these words, like an ice lake melting under the spring breeze:

“No matter,” he said softly, his tone seeming somewhat different when he spoke that name. “You will know eventually; at that time, no one will be unaware of who he is. I want everyone to remember him. No one will fail to congratulate him on his birthday, including myself.”