Once the four voting slips had been presented, a young eunuch carried the documents into the palace.
The gentlemen in the hall dispersed in all directions.
Fang Qi followed Shen Duan westward, murmuring as they went.
Kou Yuan walked east alone, his hands clasped behind his back.
Only Song Yue remained beneath the corridor. Sunlight shifted across the bricks, half a cup of tea grew cold, and the knot in his chest refused to loosen.
When he finally left the Hall of Literary Depths and rounded a corner of the palace wall, Song Yue abruptly stopped where no one else was about.
"Shen Boyu, Shen Boyu!
I am your father!!"
He shouted the curse at the top of his lungs, then fell silent and quietly turned to look in the direction where the others had disappeared. Only then did he raise his voice again.
"'Fit to employ, unfit to entrust' indeed! 'Defer deliberation' indeed!!"
The clerk accompanying him was startled by the shout and hurried half a step forward. "Grand Secretary..."
"Defer! Defer! Defer!" The more Song Yue spoke, the angrier he became. With a sweep of his sleeve, he simply refused to go any farther. Standing beneath the pagoda tree's shade, he cursed heaven and earth.
"He said Zhou Quan had been pent up for fifteen years, and that if the Tanguts cast out bait, he was bound to swallow the hook.
"Ha! Then let me ask him: when Peng Ding swallowed the hook, who served as the bait? When Peng Ding craved glory, who gave that general free rein?
"The stupid donkey he, Shen Boyu, raised kicked down the fence, and now he blames someone else's horse for being too fierce!"
"Peng Ding's defeat came out of nowhere! He had spent thirty years arranging the pieces on the