Chapter 8#
After hearing this, Hua Rong subconsciously swallowed. Without a fan to keep up appearances, he really wasn’t used to it. He couldn’t make any movements either, because his right wrist was tightly held by Han Lang.
Hua Rong could only look up at Han Lang, his eyes shining brightly.
Han Lang took Hua Rong’s pulse and felt that his heartbeat was a little faster, so he leaned closer to Hua Rong and asked softly, “Are you very afraid that I will kill you?”
The force on his hand was constantly increasing, and then increasing again…
Hua Rong nodded weakly. His hand was held, so he still couldn’t use sign language. His wrist was numb with pain.
A drop of water fell from Hua Rong’s forehead, very slowly.
Then a second drop, a third drop.
Han Lang leaned closer to Hua Rong, catching one of the water droplets on Hua Rong’s face with the tip of his tongue and tasting it lightly. It was slightly cool and a little salty—it was sweat.
The winter sun was bright but not dazzling. The light shone from behind Hua Rong, causing the color of his luxurious blue robe to gradually fade outwards, making his figure appear even thinner.
Han Lang continued to apply force gently.
With a “thud.”
Hua Rong’s knees hit the ground, his body fell, and he fainted directly.
After a long time, Han Lang’s sigh came from the room: “He really doesn’t know martial arts. It’s really good to be mute sometimes, it even saves the time for screaming. But he fainted in time. If I had used a little more force, his meridians would have been broken.”
The heating stove in the room crackled.
After resting and entertaining himself, Han Lang sat up straight, ready to continue reading the memorials and marking the key points.
“Master.” With a report, the door was opened. It was Liu Yun.
As soon as Han Lang saw him, he guessed a few things and frowned: “Isn’t he ready yet?”
Liu Yun glanced at the fainted Hua Rong on the ground and replied respectfully: “He still refuses to go back.”
“Master, what about him…” Liu Yun was referring to Hua Rong. Although there was a stove, it was freezing cold.
“Just let him lie there like that,” Han Lang paused in the doorway, “If you don’t mind the trouble, call Hua Gui Ren.”
On the way to see the Emperor, Han Lang had been secretly cursing himself. Once he acted on emotion, all his plans would be messed up. It was always like this!
Taking the Emperor out of the palace was definitely his mistake.
In the past, in the deep palace, the Emperor himself had some scruples and never did anything so excessive.
Now in the Prince’s residence, anyway, if the sky fell, Han Lang would protect him; and he no longer had to deliberately hide his mute identity, so he became more and more lawless day by day.
For example, now—
Before he even entered the room, “objects” flew from the sky above his head. The clothes that should have been taken back to the palace were scattered everywhere in the room.
Before he could speak, the Emperor had already rushed into Han Lang’s arms.
Han Lang just smiled bitterly. Why couldn’t he get angry at the Emperor?
“I’m not going back.” The Emperor’s decisive gesture, a spoiled look.
Han Lang simply didn’t answer. Anyway, it was impossible.
“My wound hasn’t healed yet…” The Emperor gestured with both hands, starting to find reasons for himself.
Han Lang shook his head and had to expose him: “Hua Rong’s injury is much more serious than yours. He used the same kind of wound medicine on the same day as you. He is already full of life, how could you not have improved?”
“He’s a lowly life, you compare him to me?” The Emperor took a step back warily, his eyes rolling. After a slight pause, he began to gesture frantically, “How do you know so clearly? Have you been with him these past two days… haven’t you?”
“Your Majesty…”
“No wonder you want me to go back quickly, so you can be together, right?” The irrational gestures interrupted Han Lang’s approach.
Han Lang stood there without a word, watching the Emperor’s out-of-control movements with a hint of disappointment.
“I’ll just go and die!” The gestures became more and more resolute.
Han Lang’s face was expressionless.
The Emperor retreated to the corner, his eyes showing pain and madness, biting his lip. “If I die, it will be because you, Han Lang, forced me to!”
In an instant—what’s done is done!
Suddenly, the Emperor’s gestures stopped in mid-air, but it was too late.
The arriving Liu Nian and Liu Yun both subconsciously gasped and fell to the ground without a word.
“It’s all… because I forced you…?” Han Lang’s voice trembled slightly, “So that’s how it is.” Speaking of this, Han Lang smiled and closed his eyes tightly.
The Emperor’s mouth was half open. He wanted to reach out, but his body was as heavy as lead and he couldn’t move.
Han Lang opened his eyes again, full of energy: “I will have someone clean up here as soon as possible and force the Emperor to return to the palace in three days.”
After speaking, he turned and left, his back resolute, but also with infinite sighs.
Everything returned to tranquility. The Emperor stood in a daze in the corner, his body sliding down the wall, and he knelt on the ground dejectedly.
A heavy sigh came from the secret room, as ethereal as a ghost.
The Emperor’s hands fell to his sides to support himself, tears falling like rain.
“Your words have broken his heart.” The voice began to speak faintly again.
The Emperor still looked at the ground, his vision becoming more and more blurred.
The voice muttered to itself, as if reminiscing: “Han Lang has no enmity with my family, yet he killed my entire family. Why? Because of Your Majesty. Because my voice is extremely similar to yours before you became mute;
You are in the imperial palace, he gets up earlier than you who should be attending the morning court, forcing me to memorize the decisions that must be made in the court every day;
You come here, he reviews the memorials for you every day, and also makes summaries to let you understand, telling you why he does it. It can be said that he teaches you by hand, word by word, sentence by sentence.” Speaking of this, the voice smiled to itself, “Even someone who hates him as much as I do wants to say a fair word.”
Hearing this, the Emperor slammed the wall resentfully, as if to make the voice stop.
The voice finally fell silent.
The wall was hit rhythmically a few more times. The voice looked out from the small hole. The Emperor gestured to him: “What should I do?”
The voice hesitated for a moment: “If Your Majesty really wants to be carefree with the Prince of Funing, why not follow the Prince’s wishes and recall Han Yan?”
The Emperor hurriedly shook his head in denial.
“Since Han Lang has asked you to do this, he must have his own plans. Why does Your Majesty worry for nothing?” After speaking, the voice no longer pursued the matter, turned around, and walked to the depths of the secret room.
Sitting at the table, still accompanied only by a dim lamp, the voice half-lowered its eyelids and fumbled for a piece of paper.
This paper was originally a wax pill, which he found in his breakfast porridge.
On the paper was written: “If you want to see the light of day again, cooperate. First, find a way to persuade the Emperor to pardon Han Yan.”
The voice thought for a moment and brought the paper close to the fire.
He watched indifferently as the paper gradually turned black, curled up, and burned.
Although the voice didn’t know whether the person who wrote this note was a friend or an enemy.
But he was just a voice now. Since there was a show to watch, he had no reason to refuse.
What’s more, if it really happened, he… would see the light of day again. A great temptation.
And the Emperor’s willfulness earlier was truly a god-sent opportunity.
The voice sneered. It turned out that being forced by Han Lang to memorize all the decisions every day was not entirely useless.
==============
When Hua Rong woke up, he was lying on the bed. He rolled his eyes and recognized that it was his own room.
He stretched and saw Han Lang sitting at the newly bought Eight Immortals table, tasting snacks. He only tasted one bite of each, casually tasting them and throwing them back onto the plate at will.
Hua Gui was serving him in a proper manner. If his mouth wasn’t moving and his expression wasn’t so vicious, he would have looked even more proper.
Seeing Hua Rong wake up, Han Lang calmly beckoned to him: “I was waiting for you. Let’s go to the Yanfeng Male Prostitute Courtyard to have fun together.”
Hua Rong immediately sat up straight. Before he could gesture his answer, Hua Gui interjected arrogantly: “The Prince and his little apprentice have had a falling out. You are just a stand-in. Don’t put too much gold on your face, in case you are discarded like a straw shoe later.”
The number of talkative people in the Prince’s residence was increasing.
Han Lang decided not to bother with it for now and just spread his hands to Hua Rong: “There’s nothing I can do. I don’t have a man, so I can’t sleep.”
Late at night.
A corner of the side gate of the old Prince’s residence.
“What are you doing, sleeping here? The Prince of Funing has long issued a ban. You can’t disturb the Prince. No street vendors are allowed within a three-li radius, let alone you sleeping against the wall of the Prince’s residence. Hey! Get up, get up!”
In fact, the patrolling city guards were muttering and calling out to a plainly dressed scholar, but no one dared to approach him.
The scolded scholar opened his sleepy eyes, his unfocused eyes glanced around, and he yawned, a strong smell of alcohol hitting his face.
The strange thing was that these city guards only woke up the scholar, and no one dared to wake him up abruptly.
Although they were just small guards, there were still many who could read the situation. They always felt that even when the scholar’s eyes were closed, he had a dignified air, and this air was natural and had absolutely nothing to do with his clothes.
Therefore, they could only shout to wake him up and did not dare to offend him easily.
The drunken scholar rubbed his eyes, seeming not to have understood the problem, and looked like he was about to fall down and sleep again.
Before he fell to the ground, his sleeve was pulled by the guards: “Hey! If you sleep again, we’ll take you to the big prison to sleep.”
The scholar blinked, got up helplessly, his attention still seemed to be unfocused, but he seemed to be much more awake.
After dawdling for a long time, he finally swayed and disappeared into the night without even saying goodbye.
The third watch drum sounded.
In the huge bedroom, the thunderous snoring of the fat old Prince echoed.
It sounded, and sounded—and then stopped abruptly. The Prince’s chubby ball-like body shivered, bounced, and he sat up straight abruptly. The peach wood bed frame creaked back and forth several times before it stopped.
The old Prince touched his sore nose suspiciously and looked out of the bed curtains with concentration.
A scholar, in plain clothes with silver-rolled sleeves, his eyes like autumn pools, was faintly visible behind the gauze in the moonlight, not like a mortal.
“Monster!” The old Prince was terrified. His cry was timely muffled by the scholar’s hand, and most of the sound was suppressed.
“Old Prince, don’t you welcome an old acquaintance?” The hand covering the Prince’s mouth, the visitor patted the Prince’s chest, as if to calm him down.
The old Prince said “oh” and blinked, quietly stroking his silver-white beard.
“Who are you? Do you know I’m hungry and are looking for me to eat?”
“Have you forgotten who I am?” The scholar looked at the moonlight outside the window and said regretfully.
The Prince looked displeased after hearing this: “Of course I know you, who said I forgot!”
The wind blew in through the crack in the window, buzzing.
The scholar’s eyes showed joy and he smiled: “It’s good that the old Prince remembers. Then you must also remember the Han family?”
“That’s right.” The old Prince straightened his chest confidently, and his round belly seemed to have grown a bit bigger.
“Then you can take out the antidote for the poison that the Empress gave to Han Lang back then.”
“Who did you hear that I have this from?” The old Prince pulled the quilt to his mouth, bit the corner of the quilt, and said vaguely.
“Didn’t you promise to give it to me?” The scholar seemed a little sad, “Have you really forgotten?”
“I’m old, but I remember it very clearly!” The old Prince patted his chest and argued cunningly, “I was just teasing you for a moment just now.”
“Alright then, the antidote…” The scholar reached out his hand.
“I have already given the antidote to Han Yan.” The old Prince shrank his fat head, the flesh on his cheeks shaking.
“Han Yan…” The scholar seemed very interested in this name and repeated it.
After a long time, the old Prince held the quilt and leaned his head against the bedpost, starting to snore.
“Old Prince, Han Yan, I’m back, but you never gave me the antidote.” The voice in the night was low and hoarse, coming from the half-drunk scholar.