Hu Xiaotian could understand Li Yuncong's feelings. Nostalgia was inevitable at his age; watching the brothers and friends around him leave one after another would naturally leave him with a sense of loss.
"Eunuch Liu and I entered the palace together."
Hu Xiaotian felt a jolt inside, but he saw a faint sadness on Li Yuncong's face. His bringing this up in front of him was probably no coincidence.
Hu Xiaotian said, "Eunuch Liu treated me very well. He had already left the Imperial Palace to live out his retirement elsewhere."
"Once you enter the palace gates, the depths are as vast as the sea. In life, you belong to the palace; in death, you haunt it."
Hu Xiaotian filled the wine bowl in front of Li Yuncong.
Li Yuncong said, "Eunuch Liu claimed he had seen through it all, yet in the end, there were things he could never see past. Otherwise, how could he have met such an end?"
Hu Xiaotian said nothing. Although Liu Yuzhang had died at Ji Feihua's hands, the matter had never been made public. The official story was that Liu Yuzhang had died of a sudden illness. Li Yuncong was an old palace hand who outwardly paid no attention to affairs beyond his window, but after witnessing him in action that day, Hu Xiaotian knew he was an expert who kept his abilities deeply concealed. Besides, he had no idea whose side Li Yuncong was on. Some things could not be spoken plainly.
Li Yuncong said, "Though I rarely leave the Library Pavilion, a few things still reach my ears."
Hu Xiaotian raised his bowl and silently took a sip of wine.
"Before Eunuch Liu met with disaster, he secretly went to see His Majesty and bitterly denounced Ji Feihua for abusing the