Chapter Thirty-Nine: What the Emperor Truly Desires

Pei Xiunian had never held any deep impression of the Fifth Prince of the Great Zhou. His own fifth brother was always the sort of marginal prince who was never considered a contender for the throne, so naturally Pei Xiunian paid him little attention.

Compared to a prince, the Fifth Prince resembled more a dissipated scion. His days were spent drinking with courtesans or summoning the chief entertainers of the music bureau to his residence. Such a prince, idling away his life, should not have drawn anyone’s notice—if fortune favored him, perhaps he might have ended up as a minor prince in some distant fief. If he were to die young, it would most likely be from some unspeakable malady contracted in debauchery.

But whatever one might say, a prince, no matter how useless, was still a prince. The death of a prince was always a grave affair. Amidst the looming storm of the struggle for succession, such an event was like a bucket of cold water poured over one’s head.

Pei Xiunian was not entirely surprised that such a thing had happened; the court was ever a place of shifting variables and sudden turns. He could not possibly foresee every eventuality, just as even the Grand Diviner of the Celestial Observatory could not keep watch over every monster and demon in the realm.

The Celestial Observatory owed its existence to the mandate of the state—its officials held the fate of the dynasty above all else, and would not even trouble themselves over the succession, should the throne change hands. Only acts that devoured the very fortune of the land, such as the feeding of demons at the Cao estate, would arouse their wrath.

Thus, as the texts in the Hall of Letters proclaimed, the officials of the Celestial Observatory were the true practitioners of the art of refining qi, for they walked the path of fate itself...

The carriage wheels rattled on. Pei Xiunian pushed aside these tangled thoughts and simply asked the elegant Empress Dowager seated across from him, “Aunt Meng, do you know how the Fifth Prince died?”

A thin veil of gauze hid the Empress Dowager’s expression; Pei Xiunian did not try to discern her look. She wore it clearly to conceal her appearance, yet in its half-revealing, half-concealing way, she seemed all the more alluring, like a beauty with a pipa half-covering her face.

Then he saw her red lips part gently as she replied in a soft voice, “He died of poisoning. The poison was derived from the zhen bird, and should have been fatal upon contact, yet according to the maidservants by his side, the Fifth Prince drank no tea or wine after returning to the palace last night—he went straight to bed.”

“This morning, when the maid came to wake him, she found him lifeless, but there was not a trace of poison to be found in the room.”

Pei Xiunian did not trouble himself over the method by which this was accomplished. The means of the crime were unimportant; what mattered was why the Fifth Prince had been targeted, and who had acted against him.

Inside the carriage, Pei Xiunian unconsciously rested his elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced, eyes lowered, while countless threads of thought wove through his mind.

It was not the first time a prince had died in Great Zhou; before the Fifth Prince, the First Prince had perished—he had been all but named crown prince, yet died young.

But the Fifth Prince was in no way comparable to the former. His death felt more like a ploy, a lever to check the current situation.

Though he could not say who was behind it, the fact that someone sought to restrain the current power struggle meant they had their own fears.

Pei Xiunian’s first thought was of the succession—such an incident within the palace would effectively slow the factional strife at court. Li Yan, presently in Yangzhou, had motive, and could also use this to suppress the Fourth Prince.

But what if the hand behind this was not one of his so-called “brothers and sisters”?

Pei Xiunian lifted his gaze to the Empress Dowager across the table, asking, “Your Majesty, who do you think might have done this?”

She saw no trace of fear on Pei Xiunian’s face. Open threats could be avoided, but hidden ones, like poison, could not be guarded against with a mere talisman. Yet he remained utterly calm—no wonder he had the nerve to stand in for a prince.

After a moment’s thought, she replied, her analysis much like his own: “The Fifth Prince had no enemies at court—this cannot have been a vendetta. His death most directly benefits those wishing to delay the succession struggle. He visited the Misty Waves Pavilion in Yangzhou recently; Li Yan is a likely suspect. But other factions also have motive.”

Pei Xiunian nodded in agreement. There was a possibility neither of them spoke aloud, a tacit understanding: the Emperor himself.

The Emperor could hardly be a soft-hearted father. If he could feed demons with the fortune of the land, why should he hesitate to sacrifice a wastrel prince to secure his reign?

This would also be a convenient reason to summon all the princes back to court—how lively the Forbidden City would become then.

But this implied a rift between the Emperor and the Prince of Qi… In truth, the Emperor seemed to favor Li Yan, yet he stubbornly refused to name him crown prince and end the struggle.

Even if a crown prince were declared, the three great factions would remain in balance at court. Was the Emperor using Li Yan’s current advantage to pursue some other aim?

As a ruler, the Emperor seemed unperturbed by the recovery of lost lands and showed no desire to quell the turmoil of succession. If neither peace nor stability was his true goal, then what was it?

Moreover, the Fifth Prince’s death had yet to be confirmed. There was the possibility of disguise or feigned death; only upon examining the body in the palace would the truth be known.

These matters, if put to the Empress Dowager, might elicit some insight—but as there was still little trust between them, Pei Xiunian did not speak further.

The carriage slowed; they must be nearing the palace walls.

Pei Xiunian lifted the curtain and looked out. Before him stood the towering, resplendent Forbidden City.

In the sky, snow threatened. From the temples on the mountains behind the capital, thin black smoke curled upward.

Unfamiliar with the scene on that distant peak, Pei Xiunian asked instinctively, “What’s happening up there?”

The Empress Dowager glanced in that direction as well and replied:

“Since the year before last, at the beginning of every few months, His Majesty has gone to the temple on Renhuang Mountain to refine elixirs.”

A sudden unease stirred in Pei Xiunian’s heart. He asked the Empress Dowager again, “Aunt Meng, might you write a letter of permission so I may consult the records in the Hall of Letters?”

She nodded slightly. “Of course—but why do you wish to go there now?”

At this moment, the other princes must be frantically seeking alibis and witnesses. Yet the newly returned Third Prince’s first order of business was to visit the library?

Pei Xiunian replied coolly, “I’ll know after I’ve seen my fifth brother.”

The Empress Dowager, veiled in gauze, found herself unable to read his mind. Though he did not answer directly, she did not press him. Instead, she quietly took out paper and brush to write the necessary letter.

By the time the carriage stopped at the Fifth Prince’s palace, a crowd had already gathered inside—mostly young men and women of an age with Pei Xiunian. Seeing him and the Empress Dowager arrive, they bowed in chorus:

“Greetings, Your Majesty; greetings, Third Brother.”

Pei Xiunian nodded absently, his gaze sweeping over the familiar faces of his siblings, though he did not spot the Fourth Prince, in whom he had a particular interest. No doubt, after this affair, the Fourth Prince had been placed under immediate house arrest…

Pei Xiunian’s eyes fell upon the bed, where a white cloth covered the body. At the head of the bed, purple incense burned, smoke curling in the air.

Through his steady gaze, the outline beneath the shroud—a somewhat bloated form wrapped in rich robes—was revealed. But beneath the body, he saw interlocking gears.

And the face—it was not the Fifth Prince at all, but a puppet draped in the prince’s skin.

Where, then, was the real Fifth Prince?

The substitution of the body meant that he was no longer simply a pawn in the struggle for the throne; none of his siblings, wishing to use him as a tool, would have gone to the trouble of this ruse.

Pei Xiunian raised his eyes to the window. The Fifth Prince’s chamber faced directly toward the black smoke rising from Renhuang Mountain.

A chilling thought blossomed in Pei Xiunian’s mind: what the Emperor truly sought was immortality.

At this realization, Pei Xiunian did not wait for the Emperor to descend from the mountain. He turned and, amid the confused stares of those present, strode out of the bedchamber, heading for the Hall of Letters.