Chapter 40

Everything had been too chaotic earlier. Before Meng Zhou could pick up the Buddhist prayer beads, Chu Huaiyin had bundled him into the carriage, and the stray arrows had struck the beads, scattering them across the ground. He picked them up one by one, carefully blowing off the dirt clinging to them with considerable reverence.

Consecrated beads really were different.

Chu Huaiyin added from beside him, "Even if they saved your life, I still won't allow you to become a monk."

Meng Zhou gave him a baffled look. He certainly had no intention of giving birth to a little monk.

Chu Huaiyin rubbed his nose awkwardly. "I can reward the abbot to thank him."

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

Meng Zhou approached to inspect the assassins. Worried, Chu Huaiyin blocked his way, as though afraid the assassins might spit poisoned darts from their mouths.

"They aren't from Great Wei." Meng Zhou frowned.

"They're Northern Di." Having fought the Northern Di for years, Chu Huaiyin knew their facial features all too well. Spies often infiltrated the army camps, and after so much experience, he and Ji Yang could tell whether someone was a Great Wei soldier just by looking at his back.

"Grand General Jiang only returned to court less than a month ago, and the Northern Di are already stirring up trouble again?" Meng Zhou didn't want Jiang Yi or Chu Huaiyin going back to war. Blades had no eyes. Couldn't everyone develop their productive forces together in peace?

"Before Uncle returned to court, he signed an armistice with the Northern Di. I've killed off most of their warmongers over the years, and their new leader favors peace. It's hard to say why Northern Di assassins have appeared in the capital."

Meng Zhou addressed the grand general with scrupulous courtesy, while Chu Huaiyin kept calling him Uncle. Meng Zhou was afraid he would let it slip in front of Jiang Yi.

"Please mind how you address him, Your Majesty," Meng Zhou reminded him.

Chu Huaiyin teased, "I call Meng Zhou's uncle that to show my affection. Minister Guan, aren't you meddling a little too much?"

Meng Zhou: ...

His hand shook as he applied medicine to Chu Huaiyin's wound, pouring out too much wound powder at once.

Chu Huaiyin sucked in a breath. "My dear minister, that hurts."

A pampered young master, too delicate to withstand a breeze.

"Blow on it for me."

Afraid he might lose control and spit into Chu Huaiyin's palm, Meng Zhou kept a straight face and swiftly finished bandaging him.

Why did so many people want him and Chu Huaiyin dead?

Being emperor wasn't easy either.

Meng Zhou frowned and became distracted for a moment, wrapping Chu Huaiyin's hands into two enormous pig's trotters that looked as though they were broken.

Coming back to his senses, Meng Zhou flushed and reached to undo the bandages and start again.

The hidden guards grimaced at the sight. His Majesty was surely the only person who could tolerate Lord Guan's handiwork.

Chu Huaiyin withdrew his hands without making things difficult for Meng Zhou. "Sorry for the trouble, my dear minister. This will do."

Meng Zhou wondered why Chu Huaiyin had suddenly changed his ways.

Yet after he returned to the Guan Residence and had barely sat down for a sip of tea, the eunuch Xiao Jiu rushed in to deliver an imperial decree.

"Bad news, Lord Guan! Your bandaging was so unusual that the imperial physicians can't undo it. His Majesty summons you to the palace."

Remembering Chu Huaiyin's remark about being unable to bathe himself, Meng Zhou suspected a routine.

"Aren't there scissors in the palace?" he asked coldly. "Afu, find a new pair for Eunuch Xiao Jiu to take back."

Xiao Jiu sheepishly accepted the scissors. This was his greatest failure in delivering an imperial decree.

Little did Eunuch Xiao Jiu know that this was only the beginning.

Meng Zhou sat leisurely drinking tea, and sure enough, Chu Huaiyin sent another decree.

"His Majesty refuses to have his dressing changed! He says the imperial physicians hurt him too much, while Lord Guan has a deft touch. Please enter the palace immediately, Lord Guan." Xiao Jiu was out of breath.

Meng Zhou asked, "Is His Majesty refusing to bathe too?"

"Er..." Xiao Jiu scratched the back of his head. His Majesty's verbal instructions had been that if Lord Guan still refused to come, he needn't return to the palace for further orders. He should just make a show of walking around outside the gate, then go back in and deliver another decree. Third time was the charm; Lord Guan would agree.

Did the fact that Lord Guan already knew what was coming count toward those three attempts?

A pleading look appeared in Xiao Jiu's eyes.

It was the look one gave the empress.

He had always thought summoning whoever His Majesty chose to favor that day would be a cushy job. Who knew there would be no perks and it would be so difficult?

Goose bumps rose all over Meng Zhou. Inwardly cursing, Fine, let him stink, he smiled. "Please lead the way, Eunuch."

Chu Huaiyin summoned Jiang Yi to the palace to discuss the Northern Di. An entire afternoon of interrogation had yielded nothing from the assassins. Their languages didn't match; they might as well have been chickens talking to ducks. Jiang Yi questioned them personally. Having spent years undercover among the Northern Di, he had learned several dialects, but unfortunately, these assassins were rare specimens dug out of some unknown backwater. He couldn't understand a single word they said.

"Do you think the Northern Di did this?"

Jiang Yi shook his head uncertainly. "In my opinion, Suomutai might not have the nerve. It's also possible someone wants to provoke a war between our countries and reap the benefits."

The Feng Kingdom, neither particularly large nor small, lay on another flank of Great Wei. Its internal strife had ended just before the new year, and the country was moving toward unity. It and the Northern Di lay on opposite sides of Great Wei, and after taking the throne, Chu Huaiyin had strengthened defenses against the Feng Kingdom. Its current crown prince was renowned for his strategies. If he had a hand in this and caused war to reignite between Great Wei and the Northern Di, facing enemies on two fronts would be trouble.

"Send word to Suomutai by express courier. If he has no guilty conscience, he'll naturally make some gesture."

Chu Huaiyin struggled to draft a letter to Suomutai. Watching him, Jiang Yi hesitated to speak. What sort of imperial physician had bandaged His Majesty's hands into that ghastly state?

In the army, they wouldn't have spared an injury this minor a second thought. His Majesty was tough as iron. When Jiang Yi first began serving under him, he had assumed the pampered eldest prince would struggle with the harsh conditions in camp. Instead, His Majesty had eaten and lived alongside the soldiers without seeking special treatment, earning Jiang Yi's newfound respect.

Jiang Yi's gaze was so direct that Chu Huaiyin couldn't possibly miss it. He raised his hands, deliberately giving Jiang Yi a clear view.

Meng Zhou bandaged these himself.

Even his uncle could only look on in envy.

Meng Zhou happened to encounter Jiang Yi leaving at the palace gates. Xiao Jiu was in a hurry, which had quickened Meng Zhou's steps as well.

Jiang Yi stopped and remarked, "Lord Guan truly is a pillar of the nation, coming to the palace so late at night."

Whether he was a pillar of the nation, Meng Zhou didn't know. All he knew was that he probably wouldn't be getting out tonight.

For a moment, he looked at his uncle with envy.

Could you take your nephew with you?

After exchanging a few words about the assassins, Meng Zhou understood that the matter probably couldn't be rushed. Advising Chu Huaiyin not to leave the palace so readily in the future would be the safer approach.

Meng Zhou earnestly tried to persuade him, but Chu Huaiyin let it go in one ear and out the other. "You never come to the palace of your own accord, my dear minister. I can only go out myself."

"I attend court every day." He had never missed it, except that one time he overslept in the palace. Wasn't that enough?

Chu Huaiyin regretted that there was only morning court, with no afternoon or evening court.

Meng Zhou distinctly remembered tying slipknots, yet every one of them had become a tight knot. He could work out who was responsible with his toes. Picking up the scissors on the desk, he snipped through the gauze.

His ferocity rivaled that of a master in the castration room.

The tender scene Chu Huaiyin had imagined never materialized, so he settled for the next best thing. "The imperial physician said this wound could fester if it gets wet. I still haven't bathed or changed..."

Meng Zhou looked at Xiao Jiu, who wished he could vanish on the spot.

"You're quick and deft, my dear minister. Can't you help me? Look at this pile of memorials. If I don't hurry, I won't finish them tonight."

"No," Meng Zhou said.

Choked by his blunt refusal, Chu Huaiyin simply made it a contest of shamelessness and brazenly announced that he wouldn't wash, then.

It had rained early that morning, leaving his boots covered in black mud. His clothes had been stained with blood during the assassination attempt, and the five-clawed golden dragon on his chest was grimy and far from imposing. He had been busy ever since returning to the palace and hadn't even changed his clothes.

Meng Zhou's heart suddenly softened.

He offered a tactful threat. "It's fortunate Your Majesty has no consorts. Otherwise, they certainly wouldn't want to share your bed."

Chu Huaiyin asked, "What are you implying, my dear minister?"

Meng Zhou met his eyes.

"I'll go wash myself right away."

The old duke's grandson was getting married, and most of the capital's prominent officials had been invited. The extravagance was staggering. The old duke belonged to Chu Huaiyin's maternal grandfather's family; the late empress dowager had been the only daughter of the old duke's elder brother. With the second prince's faction in the capital brought down, Chu Huaiyin was Emperor Tianyuan's only remaining son. The brothers of Emperor Tianyuan's own generation had long since been sent off, thanks to his suspicious nature, to live out their days everywhere from the northern frontier to Jiangnan. And since Chu Huaiyin had yet to take any consorts, few illustrious imperial relatives remained.

The old duke counted among the lucky ones.

"Guan Jiasheng" had only just returned to the capital. At Meng Zhou's insistence, Chu Huaiyin had been forced to keep both their outings and his summons for Meng Zhou to enter the palace discreet. Apart from a handful of people in the know, no one realized how much His Majesty valued him.

Most people still thought Guan Jiasheng had only recently returned to the capital and had shallow roots. Even if the Guan Clan was wealthy and powerful, its glory lay three generations in the past.

Thus, Meng Zhou was seated some distance from the principal tables, right beside a group of wastrel young masters.

Yan Xiang and Jiang Yi invited Meng Zhou to sit with them, but he politely declined on the grounds that he couldn't drink while mourning his wife.

After all, official gatherings inevitably involved social obligations. With his low rank, sitting among them would mean having to drink.

This table was different. At a glance, he held the highest office there. If he said he wasn't drinking, he wasn't drinking.

After Chu Huaiyin's thunderous measures, the capital's wastrels had become much better behaved. Even if their true natures were hard to change, at least they now recited a line or two of "I would never regret it, though my robes grow loose" when visiting brothels. Standards in the service industry had improved enormously.

In a large enough forest, there would always be birds too blind to know better.

The people at the neighboring table whispered among themselves, subtly pointing at Guan Jiasheng as they discussed him. One moment they called him impotent, with red lips and white teeth like a woman; the next they called him a spineless wretch afraid of his wife. Even his mother's private affairs were dragged out for judgment.

A vein throbbed on Meng Zhou's forehead. He immediately recognized three of them as the murderers who had killed Wang Junyang aboard the pleasure boat.

While Meng Zhou was still considering how to teach them a lesson without drawing too much attention and disrupting someone else's wedding, their conversation shifted. They began snickering about Hanlin Academician Ji's pregnant son.

"Tsk, there are just too few of them. Otherwise, we could get one to play with too. You could even carry on the family line. Two birds with one stone."

"His family keeps him under close guard. I've only seen him once from a distance, but his looks are beyond reproach. His skin's even softer than that Xiao Hong you keep at the brothel."

"Have you touched him? How would you know if you haven't? Careful that lord doesn't chop off your hand."

"He's prettier than a woman. What's the point of being a man? That fellow you said was impotent-could he actually bear children too? With that face of his..."

Hanlin Academician Ji was absent on other business. They whispered maliciously, using veiled terms for the people they mentioned, their faces betraying excessive indulgence in lust. Those around them began to wonder whether they were sitting in some den of debauchery.

They had practically stepped on Meng Zhou's left foot, then ground their heels over his right.

He could stand no more.

He tapped the table. A hidden guard approached, and after Meng Zhou gave him some instructions, the guard left to carry them out.

Before long, a squad of Jingzhao Prefecture guards rushed in and surrounded that table.

"I suspect you of involvement in a murder," Meng Zhou said. "Come with me."

The group froze for a moment, feeling guilty and assuming he had overheard them mocking Guan Jiasheng. But with so many ministers around, how could he dare act so outrageously without evidence?

They immediately began shouting, "Does being prefect of Jingzhao mean you can arrest anyone you please?"

Meng Zhou sneered. They really had a death wish. "Over two months ago, the traitor Wang Junyang sneaked back into the capital and contacted you privately. Not only did you conceal this from the court, you also killed him during an argument. Is that true?"

The moment he finished speaking, the three young masters directly involved turned deathly pale. One of the more cowardly ones even collapsed to the ground, losing control of his bowels and bladder.

Author's note:

Meng Zhou: Tsk, terrible prenatal education. If the child grows up to make as much fuss over a bath as Chu Huaiyin, he would definitely press Chu Huaiyin's head against the imperial desk and bang it there.