One day earlier, in the main hall of Prince Yan's residence in Mingdu.
The plaque outside the hall bore three characters the size of dippers: "Yan Gong Hall." A line of smaller characters followed: "Written and bestowed upon Prince Yan, Xu Jingyu, on such-and-such day, month, and year."
Inside the hall, three men in scarlet python robes patterned with gold coins sat on two rows of ebony and golden-burl nanmu chairs.
Had the people from Shrek been there, they would have been astonished to discover that all three men sitting in this princely residence bore quite a resemblance to Xu Tianran.
"Prince Yan, colluding with imperial in-laws and mobilizing troops without authorization are capital crimes. Our older brother already seized his chance and had Fifth Brother flayed alive, right inside his own residence!"
Just then, one of the men in scarlet, gold-coin-patterned python robes, whose figure had grown somewhat plump, wiped the fine sweat from his forehead and looked nervously toward Prince Yan, the fourth brother, who occupied the seat of honor.
"Of course I know that. Do I need you to remind me?"
At that moment, Prince Yan spoke from the seat of honor, a cold gleam flashing through his eyes. "That is why I only told you to contact those families related to us by marriage first and hold your troops in place. Everything must wait while we watch how the situation develops."
"You only have one Soul Engineer Corps each to mobilize. When the time comes, I will have to mobilize two. If this goes wrong, neither I nor my two uncles will escape. Our fate will only be worse than Prince Zhou's."
The Prince Zhou he mentioned was, naturally, the fifth brother, who had once contemplated assassinating Xu Tianran, only for Xu Tianran to come to