Conquest and taming

Vast Sea Hall

In the eyes of others, Emperor Zhou was an autocratic, tyrannical ruler.

Wu Junji embodied all of Emperor Zhou's strengths and flaws to an even greater degree.

Chen Yu had once hated Emperor Zhou. Beneath that hatred, everything Emperor Zhou did was wrong.

Unable to take revenge on Emperor Zhou for the time being, he could only vent his hatred on the emperor's son.

The eight imperial princes were scions of the imperial bloodline, exalted beyond measure. Why would they spare a glance for a nobody like him? The Crown Prince was a mud loach that had leaped through the Dragon Gate: coarse, mercenary, shortsighted, isolated, and abject in his bearing. He was the perfect puppet, or a stepping stone to fame.

With revenge in his heart, he approached the Crown Prince, stripped away his feigned humility, treated him with contempt, crushed him with words, and tamed him with rules, hoping to raise this wild mud loach into a puppet fish in a tank.

Who could have expected the mud loach to grow a dragon's bones? Beneath a skin of rotten stuffing, his bones stood tall and straight.

When Chen Yu realized Wu Junji was no suitable choice for a puppet, he did not immediately give up. A desire to conquer him arose. He wanted to tell him-without me, you are nothing.

The teacher you care about favors me.

The Crown Prince's officials you think are so loyal only serve you out of regard for me.

Your fiancée has only me in her heart, too.

He raised him high, then took everything from him in an instant.

He watched his pain, grief, indignation, and humiliation with mocking amusement.

He regarded himself as a brilliant pearl illuminating the world, reducing the Crown Prince to a lump of filthy mud beside him, and waited for him to wag his tail for pity and beg abjectly for mercy.

Emperor Zhou ordered the Crown Prince to investigate the second prince's head-chopping interest-usury-hoping to leave them both battered, tempering the second prince while warning the Crown Prince.

He seized the opportunity to throw in his lot with the second prince and, through Emperor Zhou's hand, uprooted everything the Crown Prince had built over five years in Chang'an.

The second prince emerged unscathed, but the Crown Prince was thrown into prison. No one harmed his flesh; they simply withheld food. He received only one bowl of water a day, for ten days straight.

On the day he left prison, Chen Yu brought the Crown Prince's former officials to greet him. All they saw was a starving ghost that had crawled out from underground.

Someone deliberately tossed a steamed bun onto the ground. The starving ghost crawled over, picked it up, and desperately stuffed it into his mouth amid a chorus of contempt.

Just as he was about to swallow, he spat it all back out. Like an old ox chewing its cud, he held it in his hands and chewed it to pieces bit by bit before swallowing it into his stomach, sickening the assembled crowd.

But in that moment, Chen Yu's lofty superiority was cleaved down into the filthy mud.

His body was weak, so weak that even a steamed bun could injure his stomach and intestines. He chewed his dignity and self-respect to pieces. He wanted to live.

Even if others treated him as a joke, he still wanted to live.

He would rather crawl all the way back to the Crown Prince's Palace than accept the sedan chair or carriage Chen Yu offered as charity.

He calmly nursed himself back to health and worked hard to find his proper place, becoming a slightly more important chess piece. He used his status as a Crown Prince whom anyone could trample to flatter those people's vanity.

He held a banquet to apologize to those involved in the head-chopping interest scheme. All twenty-seven guests were brought down by poison, and a butcher's knife was hacked until its blade was notched.

Chen Yu would never forget that day. The blood of twenty-seven people weighed on him until he could not lift his head. His vile desire to conquer was like a mouthful of foul-smelling phlegm, and he was the yellow clot of pus within it.

So this was how despicable and shameless he truly was.

In that moment, he felt the world was truly absurd. Out of this foul-smelling world, this foul-smelling mire, a sickly Guanyin had somehow grown.

Those who toyed with feelings were, in the end, toyed with by feelings.

The Crown Prince's ten days in prison ground away Chen Yu's lofty pride.

The burning of the Peaceful People's Encyclopedia seared Chen Yu's conscience.

The Crown Prince's seizure of the emperor and journey north shook Chen Yu to his core.

Three years of quelling unrest with an ailing body made Chen Yu bow his head and swear allegiance.

The three massacres of the "old days" carved out Chen Yu's sky-filling remorse.

Opening his eyes and seeing demons shattered Chen Yu's heart of the Dao.

Five years of pouring out his heart's blood and wearing down his body over paperwork made Chen Yu willingly imprison himself and entrust his faith.

His death with hatred unresolved in the Dragon-Subduing Palace took Chen Yu's soul away as well.

This conquest and taming had succeeded after all. Only, the one who dreamed of conquering another had been conquered instead; the one who sought to tame another had been tamed instead.

Above hatred and familial love stood a faith whose loss felt like having one's soul cut away.

He had become a fish drowned in Wu Junji's net.