Chapter 25 - 1#

The world in front of Jingzhe was entirely dark. Without his sight, his ears sharpened.

He heard the screaming — and beneath it, something wetter. A soft, dense sound, like something yielding being run through by something hard, followed immediately by the heavy, gagging smell of blood. The image arrived in his mind unbidden, and he couldn’t stop himself from picturing it. From worrying.

He took a step toward the sound without thinking. The scrape of his foot against the ground reached him, and he stopped himself, pressing down the anxiety clawing at his chest.

He was terrified it would be Rong Jiu who was hurt… but surely it wouldn’t be Rong Jiu…

Jingzhe pressed his lips together, Wude’s pleading still echoing in his ears.

The fact that Wufu had managed to lord it over the Directorate on the back of his brother’s name — that alone said something about Wude. A man like that wouldn’t beg easily. The way he’d come in with his retinue, all aggression and swagger — it had been obvious he wasn’t someone accustomed to backing down.

And yet a man like that had produced a sound like that when he encountered Rong Jiu. As if Rong Jiu were something terrifying, something monstrous — that whimper had been so saturated with fear… He’d gone to his knees too, from the sound of it…

Jingzhe couldn’t see any of this. But his ears had caught every detail, and the reversal was stark.

He knew that Rong Jiu’s official position was somewhere in the imperial guard.

Which meant he and Wude had occasion to interact.

When Jingzhe had instinctively tried to get Rong Jiu to leave, he had thought of this. But his deeper impulse had been simpler than any calculation — he didn’t want Rong Jiu causing trouble on his behalf.

After all, how would it look?

An imperial guard, with nothing better to do, traveling all the way from Qianming Palace to the Directorate of Palace Cleaning — to visit a minor eunuch?

Jingzhe couldn’t say it aloud. And he didn’t want to put Rong Jiu in an awkward position.

His fingertip found the bitten split in his lip and pressed it lightly before he caught himself doing it. He bit down on it again. The faint taste of blood dissolved into the thick, iron-rich air and was swallowed by it entirely.

…So then — why was Wude so afraid of Rong Jiu?

An imperial guard was an official; a eunuch was a palace servant. Their worlds didn’t overlap much. By any conventional reasoning, Wude shouldn’t have reacted like that…

And he had called himself a servant. A subordinate.

Was he frightened of Rong Jiu’s rank? Or of Rong Jiu himself?

He couldn’t be blamed for letting his thoughts run.

Human beings had always relied on their five senses to understand the world. Losing one of them without warning left him with only his ears to go on, and he couldn’t help seizing on everything they caught.

Since that scream, the eunuchs Wude had brought along seemed to have panicked and fled — he’d heard their sounds of alarm, and then running. But Rong Jiu hadn’t come back for him yet…

Had he gone after them?

So then he was…

Jingzhe reached up toward the cloth over his eyes, gripped it, and hesitated.

Rong Jiu had been quite fierce just now.

Although — he’d been fiercer toward Wude than toward Jingzhe. Jingzhe almost never noticed that kind of difference in treatment, and that made him all the more curious about what had happened to Wude.

He tilted his head and edged out from behind the tree.

Wavering slightly, he shuffled his foot forward. His fingers worked under the edge of the cloth and lifted it, just a fraction—

Just one quick look. That shouldn’t cause any trouble… right?

It caused quite a lot of trouble.

Considerable trouble.

He’d barely cracked it open when the sudden brightness stabbed at his eyes and he snapped them shut again, waiting for the pain to recede. When his eyes had adjusted enough to function, he opened them properly.

And looked directly at a wall.

Jingzhe paused. Looked up slowly.

He was face to face with Rong Jiu’s very serious, very cold expression.

“Oh — Rong Jiu, you’re back — are you hurt?” He let out an awkward laugh, about to explain that he hadn’t seen anything, and then immediately saw the blood on the man’s person.

He lurched forward in alarm and grabbed Rong Jiu’s hand. The sticky blood transferred to Jingzhe’s palm, smearing across his skin.

Rong Jiu said, unhurriedly, “It isn’t mine.”

None of it was.

He didn’t seem at all bothered by Jingzhe’s grip — his attention was on the cloth still hanging from Jingzhe’s eyes. He addressed the hurried inspection in the same calm, unhurried tone.

“Jingzhe. You’ve been disobedient.”

Jingzhe nearly choked. He was halfway through a wounded pout when Rong Jiu held up one finger.

“I’ll keep note of this.”

“…You’re keeping a tally?”

“Every instance.”

Jingzhe felt profoundly aggrieved and was about to argue the point when the smell of blood hit him properly, and he remembered, belatedly, that this was not the moment.

He looked Rong Jiu over again.

Good — that face was unscathed. Not a hair displaced. His clothing was slightly rumpled, though not severely. But the cuffs, the sides, the hem — all spattered with constellations of blood. And the right hand that had held the sword was worse still.

Jingzhe said, quietly: “…You killed them?”

He couldn’t not ask.

Between Wude’s begging, the screaming just now, and the very clear evidence written across Rong Jiu at this moment, there was no other conclusion.

“Yes.” Rong Jiu said it plainly.

Then he stepped aside, and Jingzhe had an unobstructed view of what was behind him.

Wude was on his back, hands clutched to his throat, face turned up — both eyes bulging grotesquely, as if they might roll out, blood everywhere. Jingzhe’s gaze traveled downward and found the source of his nausea before he could stop himself. The gaping wound at his mouth — even the interior of his throat visible, reduced to a bloody ruin—

Even hating Wude as thoroughly as Jingzhe did, this was too much. He bent forward and dry-heaved, one hand clamped hard over his mouth.

His stomach lurched and rolled. Saliva flooded his mouth. He used everything he had to keep from actually vomiting.

He stood there bent over for a long moment before he managed to straighten, hand braced against his knee.

“You…” He heard his own voice come out rough. “At Qianming Palace. He was your… colleague?”

Rong Jiu had been watching the sequence of expressions cross Jingzhe’s face with quiet attention, and something deeply strange — a kind of unwholesome satisfaction — had settled across his features. Unfortunately, Jingzhe’s eyes were still fixed on the scene behind him. He didn’t look back.

“In a manner of speaking.”

Guard and eunuch — emperor and eunuch — yes, one could call it that.

“…Then why was he so afraid of you?”

Jingzhe’s voice came out light and floating, as if the ground underneath him had turned soft. His thoughts felt fragmented.

This was the first time he had ever seen something so graphically violent. He had pulled himself back to composure quickly — he always did — but the sheer visceral shock had left something in him out of sequence. Even the question he’d managed to form came out faint and thin.

Rong Jiu: “He ought to be afraid of me.”

He took Jingzhe’s hand. Blood transferred again — this time to Jingzhe’s wrist, winding in thin trails across pale skin.

It really was remarkably striking.

An impulse rose in Rong Jiu — sudden and unwelcome — to push Jingzhe down into the grass.

To press that brilliant blood-red into the person who’d been panicking so prettily just now. The glaring white and the consuming red tangled together — it would make a stunning picture.

He genuinely wanted to see it again…

That look on Jingzhe’s face. Afraid.

Using that man’s blood, though, would be beneath contempt.

Rong Jiu lowered his gaze and pulled the impulse back inward, burying it cleanly. In his usual detached tone: “I work in the imperial guard. I’ve had occasion to execute people there. He likely knew something of my temperament. Hence the fear.”

“…Is that right?”

Jingzhe was still somewhere slightly unmoored, the grim sight in front of him overlapping with the sounds of the screaming eunuchs who had fled — and he found, dimly, that he didn’t particularly want to know what had become of them.

He had always liked being close to Rong Jiu.

He supposed he had always craved physical contact, in some small way.

Hands, bodies pressed together — it had always felt right to him. Easy and comfortable.

But now, for some reason, the embrace that should have felt like safety — the arms that should have felt like shelter — seemed to open before him like the edge of something vast and dark. A formless warning beat insistently somewhere in the back of his mind, trying to surface. Was there something he’d missed? Something that had been trying to catch his attention for a while now…

You have overlooked something. Yes. You have.

But then an arm came around his waist.

A gentle rhythm against his back, and the low sound of Rong Jiu’s voice — close, almost soft: “Don’t be afraid. No one will hurt you. Jingzhe. Close your eyes. Rest a moment.”

There was something odd in the coaxing quality of it.

Jingzhe’s body went slightly rigid. A moment passed. Then, in silence, he let himself lean against the blood-drenched warmth.

He murmured, “…Is this really alright?”

Is everything really… fine?

Rong Jiu answered: “It is. Nothing will happen.”

His hand found the back of Jingzhe’s neck, and the pressure he applied — precisely calibrated — carried Jingzhe under before the pain had time to register.

He’d been through enough of a shock for one day. Rong Jiu had no intention of actually frightening him beyond repair.

He needed to protect him, after all.

Rong Jiu held the person now limp in his arms, gathered him up horizontally, and turned his gaze, cold and flat, to the figures who had appeared from nowhere and were now kneeling in a row.

Rong Jiu —

Or rather: the face of Hèlián Róng revealed its murderous intent without concealment. “Still waiting for us to tell you what to do?”

The killing intent was naked, and it cut through everyone present like something physical. Hèlián Róng smoothed a hand over the unconscious Jingzhe and smiled — slow, sharp-edged, deeply sinister.

*

Wufu sat in his room with nothing to occupy him, taking out his boredom on the one young attendant left to wait on him.

This one was the smallest and weakest of the lot — no use in a confrontation, so Wude had left him behind to see to Wufu.

Of course the Bureau of General Affairs had more staff than just these few attendants; there were others elsewhere going about their work.

But Wufu had never been anything more than a figurehead in the bureau — not a distinguished one, not a respected one, but a figurehead nonetheless, and every word he spoke, those below him had no choice but to obey.

“What’s taking my brother so long?” Wufu muttered to himself. Surely it didn’t take this much time to get from the Bureau of General Affairs to the Directorate of Palace Cleaning.

He knew his brother’s way of doing things.

Wude was the sort to cut through problems quickly. The moment a threat appeared, he handled it by the fastest means available.

Right now, for instance — he’d gone to the Directorate with his people. So he would, quickly and efficiently, find every person involved and leave them incapacitated, all before Jiang Jinming could intervene.

Kill them?

No, no. Wude would never go that far.

Actually killing someone — even with his connections to Qianming Palace — would not go unpunished.