Chapter 30

This was the second time he had heard those same words. This time, Old Madam Guan was not there to smooth things over for him.

Meng Zhou kept a straight face and met Chu Huaiyin's gaze without flinching.

Inside, however, his thoughts were flooding the screen. We only slept together once! How did it cause so much trouble! Keep this up and no one will sleep with you again, you know!

Since transmigrating, Meng Zhou had never paid much attention to this body, unlike in his previous life, when, as an actor, he had taken greater care of his appearance, down to every strand of hair.

In this life, Meng Zhou had thoroughly turned himself into a rough fellow. He was poor and could not afford to be refined. He genuinely did not know whether he had a mole on his left shoulder.

But he knew very well that in his previous life, he had not had a single mole anywhere on his body.

"Your Majesty, permit this subject to step away for a moment."

They stood so close that Chu Huaiyin could even see the fine down on his small earlobe. He showed no intention of moving aside. "Right here will do. Surely you aren't afraid, my dear subject?"

Chu Huaiyin was gambling-gambling that the man before him was Meng Zhou, and that Meng Zhou did not know whether his body had one.

His gamble paid off.

The one time he had slept with Meng Zhou, Meng Zhou's room had been dim and damp, and he had spent the entire time restraining Meng Zhou's claws, without paying attention to the details. Chu Huaiyin felt some regret. He should have carried Kitten Meng straight into Prince Huai's Residence back then and touched him however he pleased.

Meng Zhou suddenly took a step back and asked, "The front of the shoulder or the back?"

"The back." Chu Huaiyin watched Meng Zhou's eyes, but the panic he had imagined was nowhere in them.

From that single reply, Meng Zhou realized that Chu Huaiyin was bluffing.

He had just used the same trick on Sun Yong and had gained some insight into it. When two people faced each other, it was a battle of psychological offense and defense. Chu Huaiyin had watched his eyes the whole time, clearly trying to force him into admitting it. But under normal circumstances, Chu Huaiyin should have glanced at the spot where the mole was when answering.

So Meng Zhou loosened his collar without concern. Barely an inch of his fair neck had appeared before a glaring red mark came into view, running from his collarbone to his shoulder.

The wound had already scabbed over. The dark brown scab looked like the stitches of a clumsy girl just learning needlework, crooked and uneven, broken here and there.

That slash from the little fatty's wooden sword had been quite vicious.

Chu Huaiyin's eyes darkened. He raised a hand to touch it, but when Meng Zhou dodged, he simply withdrew his hand.

He smiled. "I overstepped."

"This subject would not dare say so." Meng Zhou fought his drowsiness, a little moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. In the flickering candlelight, they seemed to hold a trace of warmth.

Chu Huaiyin said, "I came today on another matter of business as well."

The Left and Right Envoys had searched through the records of the emperor's daily life and the court chronicles, discovering that quite a few people had wanted to rebuild Qing Garden in the past. Whenever Emperor Tianyuan revealed an interest in building a temporary palace, several civil officials would step forward and say that Qing Garden was surrounded by mountains and water, a place where the spiritual energy of heaven and earth gathered... Unfortunately, Emperor Tianyuan had no interest whatsoever in Lake Tai stones. He preferred grand, magnificent palaces. After those civil officials nagged him several times, Emperor Tianyuan decreed that anyone who mentioned starting work on Qing Garden again would be sent to toil in the mud.

The Flower and Stone Convoy had been the handiwork of an emperor who lost his country. Emperor Tianyuan could not understand why these civil officials were so enthusiastic about it.

Among the common people, meanwhile, quite a few wastrel sons had wanted to buy the land of Qing Garden because, after seeing the Left Chancellor's rear garden, they wanted to put on a show of refinement themselves. After all their squabbling, the land had finally fallen into the hands of a mysterious merchant from elsewhere.

"In other words, there are no leads?"

"There is no need to rush, my dear subject. Qing Garden is under our watch regardless. The culprit behind it will surface eventually."

Meng Zhou asked in puzzlement, "Qing Garden has been abandoned for a long time, and three months have passed since the first garden murder in Suzhou. Those people transported the Lake Tai stones to the outskirts of the capital. Even if they only brought some of them, why haven't they started construction directly?"

According to Guan Jiasheng's friend, every Lake Tai stone collected for the Flower and Stone Convoy back then had been numbered. Once transported to Qing Garden, they only needed to be put in their designated places.

Although Emperor Tianyuan's casually issued prohibition had not explicitly forbidden it, the people had abandoned the idea once they saw which way the wind was blowing at the top.

But times had changed. Now that Chu Huaiyin had ascended the throne, those Lake Tai stones secretly transported into the capital could appear openly.

People plotting rebellion ought to be in quite a hurry. If they're moving this slowly, some unavoidable obstacle must be holding them up. And where exactly have they hidden the Lake Tai stones?

Meng Zhou and Chu Huaiyin exchanged a look and spoke at the same time.

"Qianyang Lake."

A month ago, Meng Zhou had drowned in Qianyang Lake. In his grief, Chu Huaiyin had sealed off the entire lake, and the search-and-rescue teams had even extended their operations upstream and downstream. Qianyang Lake was not far from Qing Garden. If the rebels had sunk all the Lake Tai stones to the lakebed, then they would have had no opportunity to move them throughout the past month.

Meng Zhou fell silent, heartsick.

Chu Huaiyin's order to seal the lake had caused the price of fish in the capital to rise by fifty percent.

Having seen the vast ocean, lesser waters could no longer compare. After tasting Snow Spot, Meng Zhou had little interest in other fish. Old Madam Guan disliked fish, so none ever appeared at the dining table. He could have meals made separately, but first, Guan Jiasheng followed his mother in not eating fish, and second, fish prices had risen. After buying some a few times using Afu as an excuse, he had found it rather... painful to his wallet.

The Guan household was wealthy, but Meng Zhou was not the real Guan Jiasheng. Having taken someone else's identity, he could hardly spend his family fortune too. He had been scrimping his way through the days, counting down until his salary as Capital Prefect arrived.

Meng Zhou very much wanted to go back and beat to death the version of himself who had once grown tired of Snow Spot. He wanted some now. He wanted it very badly.

Chu Huaiyin had no idea that Meng Zhou's thoughts had already wound through eighteen turns. He gave a faint smile, never having expected the lake closure to have this effect too... Thinking back to when he had first made that decision, it had been to leave Meng Zhou one final measure of peace. That heart-rending pain still lingered, and for a moment, his gaze deepened as he looked at the man before him.

Meng Zhou tactfully suggested that this lake closure had a faint whiff of a foolish ruler about it. Why not abolish it? They could catch plenty of fish that way.

Not just the big fish behind all this.

But the little fish I love, too.

Deep-fried! Charcoal-grilled! Red-braised!

Chu Huaiyin looked straight at him. "Unless that person tells me himself, the ban will never be lifted for as long as I reign."

That's more than just a faint whiff of a foolish ruler, you know.

Meng Zhou chose to shut his mouth.

"It is late. Get some rest, my dear subject." Chu Huaiyin rose and placed his teacup back on the table. As he withdrew his hand, he accidentally caught a painting lying there and pulled it open.

The scroll rolled out, revealing a newly painted portrait of a woman. Every frown and smile had been rendered with care-the woman in the painting was Liao Yunlan, Guan Jiasheng's wife.

After finishing it, Old Madam Guan had brought it for Meng Zhou to look over, asking whether her daughter-in-law still resembled the painting after five years. There had also been one of Guan Jiasheng, which she had already taken back.

Meng Zhou seized the opportunity and picked up the painting. A tear fell without warning, just like a deeply devoted husband seeing a portrait of his deceased wife, so overcome with feeling that he forgot his manners before the emperor.

Chu Huaiyin's expression instantly turned very ugly.

Meng Zhou knelt on the floor to respectfully see His Majesty off to the palace. Watching Chu Huaiyin's dejected departing figure, his shoulders slumped. He touched his lower belly. At over three months, he could already feel the beginnings of a pregnancy bump, rounder even than his belly had been when Chu Huaiyin treated him to a meal at Gathered Fragrance Restaurant and he ate three bowls of rice and two fish in a row.

The floor was ice-cold. Meng Zhou remained kneeling like that for a long time.

"Afu, prepare some hot water."

Soaking in the water, Meng Zhou carefully checked his entire body for any other birthmarks.

This seemed a little perverse, but Meng Zhou had no choice. If Chu Huaiyin bluffed again next time and claimed he had a birthmark on his backside, he would not be able to undo his collar as readily as he had this time. Tomorrow, he would also have to ask the old madam about Guan Jiasheng.

When Chu Huaiyin left the Guan residence, Ji Yang immediately followed him, somewhat curious about the result.

Their emperor had run off to a subject's house in the middle of the night demanding to see his shoulder. It sounded downright perverted.

"He saw through it." With his hands behind his back, Chu Huaiyin gazed into the boundless moonlight. "I am even more suspicious now."

No one in the world could replicate the feeling of being with Meng Zhou.

Seeing His Majesty venture ever farther down the road of no return that was Meng Zhou, Ji Yang could not help trying to reason with him. "If he really is Meng Zhou, why wouldn't he say so? Your Majesty's feelings for him run so deep. Why would he hide his identity?"

Could he have lost his memory?

Chu Huaiyin gave Ji Yang a chilly look. He could not make sense of it either, but he clearly did not want to hear the truth.

Recently, Meng Zhou kept feeling that someone was following him-not secretly watching him, but doing it in a remarkably blatant and clumsy fashion.

The moment he looked up, a figure in the treetops instantly darted out of sight.

Meng Zhou rubbed his temples and said with a headache, "Grand General Jiang."

Seeing that he had been discovered, Jiang Yi calmly appeared atop the boundary wall. He stood very straight and was highly skilled in martial arts.

He had heard that Guan Jiasheng looked extremely similar to his nephew and could not resist coming to have a look. Afraid of frightening the Capital Prefect, he had no choice but to sneak around and look.

His nephew really was handsome!

Definitely one of the Jiang Clan.