Chapter 27
Xuanzheng Hall.
The Vice Censor-in-Chief presented a memorial.
"A report has arrived from the local authorities. Guan Jiasheng, Prefect of Suzhou, has disappeared from his post, along with his wife, Liao Yunlan, and two manservants."
The memorial insinuated that Guan Jiasheng had neglected his duties. Major crimes had repeatedly occurred in Suzhou's gardens, yet instead of attending to governance, Guan Jiasheng spent his days wandering through gardens, admiring mountains and waters. Unable to solve the cases and fearing punishment, he had fled with his household. His Majesty had entrusted him with a place as prosperous as Suzhou, and the man had utterly betrayed that trust.
"In your opinion, how should this be handled?"
"Strip him of his position as Prefect of Suzhou, arrest him, and hold him accountable."
Chu Huaiyin showed little reaction after hearing this. "The Guan family has been loyal and upright for generations, with an honorable family tradition. Yan Xiang, what do you think?"
Yan Xiang frowned. "I worked with Guan Jiasheng before he left the capital. He was no coward who shied away from trouble. On the contrary, he was deeply devoted and filial. There may well be more to this than we know. Your Majesty might consider sending an imperial commissioner to Suzhou to investigate the truth."
Chu Huaiyin closed the memorial with one hand and abruptly turned on the Vice Censor-in-Chief. "Guan Jiasheng disappeared a month ago. Why has this memorial only arrived now? The bloody incidents in the gardens began occurring frequently three months ago, yet the court received no word at all? As Guan Jiasheng's direct superior, you noticed nothing suspicious?"
The Vice Censor-in-Chief immediately dropped to his knees. "I truly only received this urgent report today. As for the garden murders, when word reached me, Your Majesty had just ascended the throne, and auspicious signs had descended from heaven. To prevent those with ulterior motives from exploiting the matter, I consulted with the Left Chancellor and temporarily suppressed the news, sending people from the Censorate to Suzhou instead."
"You certainly thought far ahead on my behalf." Chu Huaiyin sneered. "I recall that the Left Chancellor's rear garden was modeled after the gardens of Jiangnan. A marvel of craftsmanship, one of the capital's sights. He certainly seems in no hurry."
"Yan Xiang, you will have full responsibility for the Suzhou affair. As for Guan Jiasheng, if my guess is correct, he should already be on his way back to the capital."
Chu Huaiyin dismissed everyone with a wave, then took a strip of cloth from a cylindrical case. It was the belt Meng Zhou had worn when the incident happened. The dagger had been so sharp that it had sliced it clean in two.
He had never been able to stop worrying about Meng Zhou charging ahead. Chu Huaiyin had personally searched the storehouses and found him a dagger that could slice through iron like mud for protection. Who could have known this would become one of Chu Huaiyin's greatest regrets?
Had the dagger been even a little duller, had he been given even one more instant to react, he would never have been so helpless, watching Meng Zhou break free of his grasp.
After Meng Zhou had been drugged, Chu Huaiyin had wondered what he wanted from him. Later, Meng Zhou had declared with righteous conviction that he had chosen Prince Huai because he understood the hardships of the common people. At that moment, for some reason, Chu Huaiyin had instinctively rejected that "righteousness" of his.
The answers to those two questions lay behind a thin veil of mist. Chu Huaiyin could almost glimpse them in their entirety-in that downpour on Qianyang Lake.
There was no point in any of this anymore. Chu Huaiyin had kept forcing himself not to think about it, but today, Guan Jiasheng had reminded him of Meng Zhou again.
He had met Guan Jiasheng.
He had looked very much like Meng Zhou.
His palm tightened. Chu Huaiyin summoned a shadow guard and asked where Jiang Yi was.
Ji Yang was patrolling the eastern gate on His Majesty's orders that day, making arrangements. General Jiang Yi was expected to reach the capital that afternoon, and His Majesty intended to welcome him personally.
Everything went smoothly.
After all, neither their emperor nor their general was some delicate weakling. There was no need to clear the area specially.
Portraits of the adviser who had escaped from the Liu Residence were still posted on the city wall.
Thick eyebrows, small eyes, a pointed mouth, and an ape-like face-the portraits covered the entire wall from left to right. They were such an eyesore that even the wonton stalls had all moved back thirty feet.
The customers all said that looking at the rebel's face ruined their appetites.
Ji Yang was wondering whether he should take them down for now and put them back up after Jiang Yi entered the city.
His sword tip had barely lifted one corner when someone moved faster and tore the notice straight down.
Someone had taken the wanted notice!
Ji Yang excitedly wanted to clasp the fellow's hand. With the true culprit behind Meng Zhou's death still nowhere to be found, His Majesty had been extremely irritable lately, swinging between joy and anger-no, there had been no joy at all.
But when he turned around, his sword clattered to the ground. The soldiers guarding the gate all drew their blades. Who had frightened their Lord Ji like this?
They followed Lord Ji's gaze-
Promotion, noble rank, a thousand taels in reward... Those words flashed through everyone's minds. Their eyes lit up, and they eagerly readied themselves, only to realize with regret that with Lord Ji here, none of them would get a turn.
"Meng-Meng Zhou!" Ji Yang cried out. He was alive?
At the same time, he scrutinized Meng Zhou carefully, making sure he was safe and sound, without so much as a hair missing. Whether from his month-long disappearance or from Ji Yang's sword tip just now, there could not be so much as a pinprick of a wound on him, or His Majesty would surely explode.
Afu had not expected Meng Zhou to be so well known in the capital. Keeping Meng Zhou's instructions firmly in mind, he shoved his sturdy body between the two men. "You have the wrong person. My master's surname is Guan."
Guan? Guan Jiasheng?
Startled, Ji Yang looked him over again. The man was a little taller than Meng Zhou, and on closer inspection, his features differed slightly. Though he looked disheveled and down on his luck, there was a gentleness and steadiness in his bones. His gaze was unfamiliar, unlike that sly Meng Zhou.
"Judging by your uniform, my lord, you must be the commander of the Five-City Military Command. I am Guan Jiasheng. I have important matters to report to His Majesty. The matter is of grave importance, so I ask that you pass word on my behalf."
Even his voice was worlds apart.
In a daze, Ji Yang told Guan Jiasheng to go home and wash up, then wait until he had reported the matter before seeking an audience with His Majesty.
Meng Zhou bowed to Ji Yang with clasped hands. "I shall await your word, my lord."
Ji Yang found this deeply uncomfortable.
Meng Zhou narrowed his eyes, watching Commander Ji's disordered steps, then leaned close to Afu's ear. "Let's return to the Guan Residence before any shadow guards start watching us."
Some rejoiced, while others grieved.
When Old Madam Guan heard that her son had appeared at the city gate, she went to wait at the entrance early, her eyes red as she gazed into the distance in anxious anticipation. By contrast, Guan Jiasheng's father and adopted son stood there listlessly like outsiders. His father at least managed to force up the corners of his mouth; the young master simply looked impatient.
Old Madam Guan glanced at the two of them and said nothing.
Meng Zhou was a little nervous. Old Madam Guan was the person he feared facing most: capable, astute, and devoted to her son. Putting himself in her position, he thought of how Jiang Yao had been swindled out of everything she owned by someone claiming to help her "find her father and brother." Meng Zhou could not bear to deceive another mother in the same way.
"Old Madam." Afraid Meng Zhou would not recognize them, Afu greeted each person in turn.
Meng Zhou felt this only made things more conspicuous. To avoid giving himself away, he stopped a few steps from Old Madam Guan. Tears slowly welled in his eyes, and his lips moved faintly.
After five years apart, he faltered at the threshold of home, a thousand words tangled in his heart until he could not speak.
Old Madam Guan's eyes widened slightly. Five years ago, her son had knelt in the courtyard all night before resolutely leaving the capital, and she had been powerless to stop him. Only last night, she had still been talking about visiting him in Suzhou, yet when she woke, Guan Jiasheng was already in the capital. She reached out a trembling hand to take Meng Zhou's, tears streaming down her aged face. "All that matters is that you're back. All that matters is that you're back..."
Neither Old Madam Guan nor Guan Jiasheng would embrace and weep in the street. They belonged to a prominent family, and appearances mattered more than anything. Matters great and small were handled behind closed doors.
Having cleared this hurdle, Meng Zhou breathed a sigh of relief. He changed clothes, then stopped a servant at random to ask where Old Madam Guan was.
"Old Madam is in the Buddhist shrine." The young maid could not take her eyes off her young master's face. After five years, he seemed hardly changed.
The Buddhist shrine... Meng Zhou repeated silently. He drew a deep breath, took a package from his bundle, and went to knock respectfully at the shrine's door.
Incense smoke curled through the exceptionally quiet shrine. Old Madam Guan knelt on a prayer cushion, her palms pressed together.
When Meng Zhou had passed through Qiong Ridge, he had remembered the osmanthus cakes Guan Jiasheng mentioned and bought a few boxes.
"Old Madam." Meng Zhou did not call her Mother. "I brought some osmanthus cakes from Qiong Ridge..."
Meng Zhou could not go on.
Old Madam Guan opened her eyes, and the tears she had held back for so long fell. What mother in this world would fail to recognize her own son?
She knew he was not Jiasheng, but why was Afu with him? Unless... Having lived so many decades, how could Old Madam Guan fail to see the profound guilt in Meng Zhou's and Afu's eyes?
Meng Zhou's all-too-similar face and voice, along with her trust in Afu, had kept Old Madam Guan from confronting him immediately.
She had been waiting, waiting for Meng Zhou to tell her himself.
When Meng Zhou brought out the osmanthus cakes, Old Madam Guan finally lost control. No one knew of the promise she and her son had made before his departure, yet this man knew.
She understood her son. He would never have confided so deeply in someone he did not trust implicitly, nor would he have entrusted the purchase of the osmanthus cakes to another person unless the situation had been desperate.
"Where is Jiasheng?"
Meng Zhou fell silent.
Old Madam Guan had held up the vast Guan household, her resolve tempered through countless trials, yet the news still shattered her. She watched with open eyes as an entire stick of incense burned away, then said to Meng Zhou, "I want to hear everything, from beginning to end."
Afu closed the door. He already knew all of this, but hearing it again was still cruel.
Before Meng Zhou left, Old Madam Guan asked who he really was.
At his answer, Old Madam Guan froze. After a long while, she murmured to herself, "Meng Fushan's son..."
Old Madam Guan's grief weighed on Meng Zhou's mood so heavily that even his anxiety over meeting Chu Huaiyin faded considerably.
He walked toward the front hall with his head lowered, rounded a lush asparagus fern, and saw Chu Huaiyin sitting in the Guan Residence's main hall, drinking tea!
He had no time to compose his expression. His slightly reddened eyes were laid bare before Chu Huaiyin.
People were always more likely to notice what stood out. When someone raised his head with reddened eyes, those eyes were all one could see, while everything else went unnoticed.
Such as the extra height Meng Zhou had given himself, the altered shape of his eyebrows, and the jawline made more sharply defined with a little shading.
And eyes were the hardest thing to disguise.
The previously composed Chu Huaiyin went blank for an instant. That day at the teahouse, Kitten Meng had worn the very same expression after crying his heart out.
Ji Yang had said he was Guan Jiasheng, yet with that single glance, Chu Huaiyin wavered.