Chapter 24 - 3#

The fat, greasy man wore an expression of frustration — not the look of someone who had learned a lesson, but of someone who was simply annoyed he hadn’t gotten what he wanted.

Those revolting eyes kept sliding over the group as they turned to leave.

Huiping looked away immediately.

Jiang Jinming had led them there, and he led them back — but not directly to the Directorate. He took a longer route, stopping at a quieter, more formal-looking building, where he had them wait outside while he went in alone.

“Chief Eunuch’s quarters,” Yunkui murmured.

Jingzhe nodded, and found his eyes drifting to Huiping.

Huiping had grown considerably calmer compared to before. Apart from the redness around his eyes, nothing showed. He seemed to feel Jingzhe looking and turned his head, then managed a small, weak smile.

It was a good while before Jiang Jinming re-emerged.

He had two young eunuchs with him now, for reasons that weren’t immediately clear.

Jiang Jinming gathered all seven of them and led the way back.

Only then did he let them go their separate ways.

Jingzhe understood now — Jiang Jinming had arranged the return deliberately, with a group, as cover. Without it, the gossip alone could crush a person.

*

Jingzhe and Huiping went back to their room. Yunkui and Shi’en squeezed in after them, pulling the door and window shut. Then all four turned to look at Huiping.

Yunkui wanted to say something and couldn’t, fidgeting with visible agitation.

Shi’en couldn’t stand watching him flounder. “Huiping — are you hurt anywhere? Jingzhe’s got plenty of medicine, just use whatever he has. And if something’s really wrong, don’t hide it. Infections are a nightmare to deal with, I’m just saying—” He was rambling, which was its own sign that he was nervous.

Huiping pressed his lips together, trying to hold himself composed — but Yunkui and Shi’en were so awkward about it that he ended up laughing despite himself.

That laugh loosened something. The misery and fear he’d been holding in dissipated, leaving only a fading, residual dread.

Huiping unconsciously wrapped his arms around himself and shook his head. “I really am alright. Nothing happened to me. You got there in time.”

After all, they were all eunuchs. Whatever Wufu intended, there were limits to what he could actually do. But men like him — the less capable they were, the more they needed to degrade and torment. The cruelty was the whole point.

Wufu’s room was stocked with implements. Huiping had been restrained, which was why he couldn’t fight back. As it was, Jiang Jinming had kicked the door in right at the last moment.

Having the bureau head witness him in that state was mortifying — but he’d come out of it alive. That was what mattered.

Yunkui’s fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were pale. “I should have just rushed in and beaten him senseless right then,” he muttered furiously. “Disgusting piece of filth.”

Jingzhe, face a shade paler than usual, went to his storage chest and took out a small jade-green bottle. He settled beside Huiping.

“Jingzhe, I really wasn’t hurt, you don’t have to—”

Jingzhe took Huiping’s hand. “Your wrists are torn up.” He examined the marks carefully, passed the bottle over, then fetched water from the table. He cleaned away the grime around the wounds before applying the medicine.

Huiping winced but didn’t pull away.

When both wrists were done, Jingzhe looked up at him. “I only just arrived here, so I wouldn’t have known about Wufu. But Huiping — you knew. So how did you end up going?”

Huiping’s face went slightly pale. He looked down.

“…Wufu had already approached me once before, and I refused. Then he said — if I wouldn’t agree, he’d go after Huli instead.”

Huli was Huiping’s friend in the Office of Miscellaneous Purchases.

More than a friend, actually — they were from the same hometown, distantly related by blood.

So in the end, he’d gone anyway.

He’d told himself there was still a chance. Maybe if he reasoned with Wufu, appealed to him — maybe it would be fine. And then…

Shi’en had already broken into a string of curses.

Jingzhe said slowly, “If Wufu’s caused this much outrage, how has he held onto his position?”

Yunkui, barely suppressing his frustration: “He has an older brother, Wude, who works in Qianming Palace as a second-rank eunuch. The Chief Eunuch’s been fed up with Wufu for years, but with that kind of connection overhead, all he can do is rein him in occasionally. He can’t remove him outright.”

Anyone who had survived in Qianming Palace for years was seasoned and sharp. Even a second-rank eunuch from there commanded more deference than many senior eunuchs elsewhere. The Chief Eunuch had no wish to make an enemy of Wude over his brother.

Huiping had no injuries beyond his wrists, but the tension of the day had clearly taken its toll — back in the safety of the Directorate, he was beginning to crash. His eyelids kept drooping.

Jingzhe noticed and signaled Yunkui and Shi’en toward the door.

Shi’en paused on his way out and looked back at Huiping. “I won’t tell anyone. Not even Gusheng.”

Yunkui quickly added, “Same.”

Huiping blinked, then smiled. “Thank you. Both of you.”

After they left, Jingzhe pressed the jade bottle into Huiping’s hands. “Keep it until you’re healed. Return it then.”

Huiping held the bottle with a slightly sheepish air. “I heard it was you who noticed I was missing first… thank you…”

“We’d made plans,” Jingzhe said. “When you didn’t show, something had to be wrong.”

He hesitated.

“And… Huli would be devastated if he knew you’d been hurt because of him.”

Huiping and Huli were close — like brothers.

Huiping’s expression fell. “But Wufu is still head of bureau. As long as he’s there, Huli isn’t safe either.”

Jingzhe’s brow furrowed. Men like Wufu — the physical loss had warped something inside them, left them twisted and fixated. Pressure from the Chief Eunuch hadn’t done much to change that.

“Still — he’s always kept to his own people before. Why come after someone from the Directorate now?”

Jingzhe suspected that threatening Huli had been a pretense all along. Wufu’s real target had always been Huiping.

Huiping was slight and fair-featured. Huli, by contrast, was wiry and dark, a completely different type. There wasn’t much of a comparison to be made.

Huiping’s expression shifted to one of revulsion. “He… seems to only be interested in people who are… untouched.” The ones he’d had for a long time — he’d already grown bored of them. And so he’d started looking outward.

Jingzhe: “…”

What an absolute piece of human garbage.

Huiping caught the fury in Jingzhe’s eyes and sighed. “Don’t think too well of the people on his end, either. Even after what happened, some of them still go to him voluntarily.”

Jingzhe shuddered. “…To curry favor?”

Huiping said flatly, “His methods are cruel, but if you serve him well, the money he lets slip through is significant. And some of them think — since it’s not women involved, it doesn’t matter to them as men… So they go. And there’s no shortage who do.”

Jingzhe rubbed his ear.

Horrifying.

He felt like his ears needed washing after hearing that.

He got up and went to fetch water for Huiping, taking care to mix in enough warm water to make it comfortable before bringing it back.

“Wash up. It’ll help.”

Nothing had happened — but the mind still needed clearing.

Huiping thanked him with a quiet gratitude.

Jingzhe waved it off and slipped outside, giving Huiping his privacy.

He stood in the corridor with his arms folded, thinking about that despicable Wufu. If the man wanted to keep wallowing in filth with his own people, that was one thing — Jingzhe had no interest in it.

But if he went after Huiping again…

Jingzhe’s eyes narrowed. Something needed to be done.

Left unchecked, a man like Wufu would inevitably try again.

While Huiping was still washing up, Jingzhe slipped over to Yunkui’s room.

The two of them immediately saw eye to eye. They put their heads together and talked it through quietly, and by the time Jingzhe wandered back, his hands in his sleeves, things had been arranged.

*

Huiping spent the next several days in a low-grade state of anxiety, dreading the moment Wufu might come looking for him again.

But before that could happen, word got around that Wufu had broken his leg.

Somehow, a puddle of water had appeared outside his door — right where the floor should have been freshly swept and bone dry. Wufu, who had slept in well past noon and emerged bleary-eyed, simply didn’t notice — one step, a slick sound, and then—

The snap of something cracking under a body both heavy and soft came through with a remarkable crispness.

Wufu had broken his leg.

He was a bureau head, so money was no object; he’d managed to get a physician in. But a broken bone takes a hundred days to mend, and Wufu was both obese and in poor constitution — his recovery was going to be far slower and more miserable than most. In the meantime, the man was confined to his room, incapable of his usual outings, and the searing pain left him with no appetite for anything else besides suffering.

For a good long while, he would not be a problem.

When Huiping heard the news, his chopsticks paused mid-air. Then he looked at Yunkui. Then Shi’en. Then Jingzhe, going back and forth, until his gaze settled.

Jingzhe kept his expression blank. “Not hungry?”

Huiping lowered his head, took a bite, and smiled — eyes bright with something close to tears. “Delicious. Of course it’s delicious.”

Gusheng, wedged among them, looked left, then right, utterly lost. “What is going on with all of you? You’ve got some secret going, and I’m not invited?!”

Shi’en said serenely, “You’re just slow.”

He considered himself a person of integrity.

He liked gossip, yes — but he knew perfectly well what could be shared and what couldn’t.

*

In the aftermath of the incident, the Directorate opened an inquiry for a while.

Wufu didn’t believe it was an accident.

The first to come under suspicion, naturally, was Jiang Jinming — the one who’d most recently crossed him — along with the young eunuchs he’d brought along that day.

But no matter how they dug, every single one of those little rats had an alibi. Infuriating, truly.

If not them, then who?

Wufu wracked his brains. He had made so many enemies over the years that narrowing it down proved impossible.

Wude, hearing that his brother had been hurt, came to visit.

He didn’t particularly like his foolish younger brother — but personal feelings aside, he wasn’t about to let anyone harm him. The moment he heard, he came.

Wufu’s bone had broken cleanly, which made it easier to set. The problem was his weight and his poor condition — recovery would be harder and longer than for anyone else.

Wude had a sharp, rather unpleasant face, and his speech matched it. “Tell me everything that happened recently.”

Wufu racked his memory and laid it all out in exhaustive detail.

Wude’s expression, throughout, was one of undisguised contempt. He had never understood Wufu’s particular tastes. Tormenting women — fine, whatever. But what was the appeal in tormenting eunuchs?

Though, as it happened, Wude shared the same inclinations.

The difference was that he had always been able to control himself. He had controlled himself to the point of getting inside Qianming Palace. Even when desire surfaced, he suppressed it — unlike Wufu, who was barely better than an animal in heat.

That said, Wude did keep a few women in the city, and on the occasions he went out on business, he allowed himself certain diversions.

He listened to Wufu’s account and narrowed his eyes. “You said, when Jiang Jinming came, he brought several junior eunuchs with him?”

“Yes, yes, but I already had them investigated — they were all accounted for at the time. It wasn’t them.” Wufu’s fleshy face creased with a pained look as his mind strayed back. If this hadn’t happened to him, that day, among the ones who had come with Jiang Jinming, there had been one who was — fair, fine-featured, considerably better-looking than Huiping—

What a waste. He’d just have to be patient a while longer.

Wude slapped him across the face — not hard enough to hurt, just enough to bring him back. “It was them,” he said flatly.

“But — how? We checked—”

“You’re stupid, and you’re genuinely stupid.” Wude said it without a shred of mercy. “What is the point of checking their movements during the day? Who commits sabotage in broad daylight? They do it at the crack of dawn, before anyone’s about. You’re hopeless.”

If Wude had been handling it himself, he would have traced every detail by now. But several days had passed, and the evidence, if there had been any, was likely long gone.

Wufu stared blankly. “So… we can’t catch them?”

Wude gave a contemptuous little laugh. “I’m here, aren’t I? What do I need evidence for?”

He walked out the door, taking a few of Wufu’s young attendants with him, and set off in the direction of the Directorate of Palace Cleaning.

*

Jingzhe had finally figured out what to give Rong Jiu.

It had taken everything he had to get there. Rong Jiu was the sort of person who appeared to want for nothing, which made gift-giving a particular ordeal. Jingzhe had nearly given himself a headache thinking about it.

Anything precious, anything expensive, anything with the veneer of luxury — Rong Jiu had surely seen a thousand better versions. Whatever Jingzhe could offer on those fronts would be nothing.