Chapter 40 - 2#

“Rong Jiu! Jingzhe said it was given to him by his friend Rong Jiu.”

Huiping wasn’t entirely certain the incense was from Rong Jiu — but Rong Jiu was the mysterious friend, and the mysterious friend was the large bundle that showed up every few weeks. The equation still held. There was a very good chance the incense was his.

The palace attendant from the imperial household, who had been regarding them with considerable severity, softened ever so slightly at the name — a thin, reluctant smile. “Ah. Him. If it came from that one, incense like this is hardly surprising.”

With that, the questioning of Huiping ceased, and he was allowed to leave.

Shi’en: “Jingzhe’s friend — that’s some serious backing.”

It was only now, stepping out, that Huiping let the fear show on his face.

He hadn’t been calm at all just now. He’d been rigid with it, terrified his legs would give out.

“By the manner alone, that’s no ordinary person,” Gusheng said, with great conviction.

None of them had ever actually come face to face with Rong Jiu. The closest any of them had come was Huli, and even he had only glimpsed him from a distance — never clearly enough to make anything out.

Huiping’s main concern was that Jingzhe was alright. The rest didn’t occupy him much.

Only Shi’en stayed cautious. He quietly went around listening to what others were saying, and when he found that people were already talking about Jingzhe’s “friend at the imperial court,” he realized Jiang Jinming had deliberately let that information out — and some of the tension he’d been carrying eased.

No deaths in the Directorate of Palace Cleaning. That was good.

But when people were dying everywhere else, standing out like that wasn’t necessarily good either.

Even the Chief Eunuch would be pressuring Jiang Jinming for an explanation.

Everyone was frightened.

And if the scrutiny turned toward the Directorate specifically — how would it look? A minor third-rank eunuch, producing an item of that value? Even if he said it was a gift, who had given it? That would lead to questions about Jingzhe’s past, his history, his associations. Everything would get picked apart.

He’d be caught in the exhausting trap of having to prove his own innocence.

But as it turned out, the imperial household’s own attendant coming to investigate had actually worked in Jingzhe’s favor — it confirmed the existence of “the friend,” provided a form of endorsement, and spared him a great deal of trouble.

Once Huiping knew Jingzhe was safe, he went straight to the imperial kitchens.

The kitchens weren’t far from the Directorate — one in the southeast, one in the southwest — and this time the damage there had been relatively contained, mostly livestock. Mingyu had been anxious about Jingzhe all this time, and Huiping wanted to put his mind at ease.

*

Four days after the incident, Jingzhe finally came back.

The sky had cleared by then, the persistent grey finally giving way. A warm spring wind drifted through the compound, the kind that made your eyes heavy.

The Directorate was enjoying an unusual stretch of quiet. People clustered in small groups with nothing pressing to do, taking their ease.

Shi’en was chatting with someone, working his way through a handful of sunflower seeds — tasteless, slightly stale, the cheap kind — but cheap things had their place among the junior eunuchs, and they were popular regardless. He cracked them with practiced efficiency, barely moving his lips, and had just spat out a hull when he looked up to reach for another and spotted Jingzhe making his unhurried way through the gate.

His face was a shade pale, but otherwise he looked much the same as ever. The only thing out of place was his lips — unusually red, like someone who had been running a heat.

Shi’en launched himself off the bench with enough force to knock the person beside him clean off it, and didn’t spare a backward glance at the resulting thud as he sprinted to the gate.

“Jingzhe! Jingzhe, you’re finally back!” He grabbed his arm and started inspecting him from every angle, visibly relieved and visibly flustered. “Where are you hurt? How long were you unconscious? How does someone even lose their waist token—”

He kept going, one sentence trailing into the next.

Others gathered too — everyone curious about what Jingzhe had been through. A few close friends were genuinely worried about his health; but the thing that most people actually wanted to know about was the friend.

An imperial court connection. A friend there.

That kind of relationship, and you could walk sideways through the Directorate.

Hadn’t Wufu lorded it over them all these years, just because his brother had a post at Qianming Palace? And Jingzhe had apparently been sitting on something far better than that, not a word of it ever leaking out.

Jingzhe smiled ruefully. “We’ve just crossed paths a few times. That’s all it amounts to. It’s not a close friendship — why would I go around mentioning it?”

“If it weren’t close, why would something that valuable just get handed over to you?” someone said immediately, giving voice to what everyone was thinking.

Gu-insect repelling incense.

What a horrible name.

When Rong Jiu had given it to him, he’d called it sleep-aid incense. If it had been called gu-repelling incense from the start, Jingzhe would never have been burning it casually at bedtime.

He kept this thought to himself and kept his expression neutral. “What looks expensive to us doesn’t look the same from where they’re standing.”

He recounted what he’d seen over the past two days — the incense distributed throughout Qianming Palace, everyone carrying a stick.

The revelation that new gu insects had appeared at Qianming Palace brought even more people crowding in, all talking at once.

Jingzhe answered patiently, one question at a time, until Huiping remembered that Jingzhe was supposed to be injured and recovered, and stepped in to disperse the crowd and steer him back to rest.

The others scattered — but Gusheng and Shi’en followed right back in.

Once the door was shut and it was just the four of them, Jingzhe waved off the unasked questions before they could form. “I’m genuinely fine. It rained heavily, the ground was slippery, I hit my head in a fall and passed out. That’s all.”

Saying it with a straight face — that was a trick he’d picked up from Rong Jiu.

In truth, Jingzhe had been able to come back the day before, once the buff had worn off. But there had still been one obstacle that hadn’t resolved itself.

The birds outside refused to leave.

Jingzhe knew that the effects of a buff could linger briefly even after it faded. He had just not anticipated that “briefly lingering” would manifest as a flock of birds camping outside the window with no apparent intention of dispersing.

When Rong Jiu heard they hadn’t left, he simply smiled.

He smiled.

Jingzhe had stared at him.

Infuriating.

He’d come to understand that the buff, for Rong Jiu, seemed to function primarily as the difference between acting on an impulse and refraining from it. Which was to say —

Rong Jiu’s intentions were thoroughly rotten.

Even without the buff, he retained a minimal, barely-there thread of self-restraint, just enough to hold the worst impulses in check.

But “barely enough restraint” still meant getting out had cost Jingzhe considerably.

He looked perfectly intact from the outside. What he did not show was that the underside of his tongue had been swollen for some time — the consequence of repeated and enthusiastic attention —

He’d sacrificed his dignity to earn his release.

He’d had to slip away with Rong Jiu holding something over his head to hide his face from the watching birds, smuggled out like contraband.

Like a thief making an escape!

What no one knew was that, barely a moment before Jingzhe strolled back through the gate of the Directorate, he had been very much still tangled up with that “not particularly close” friend of his.

Though in exchange, Rong Jiu had imparted a useful technique: when telling a lie, look at the spot between a person’s eyebrows. It reads, to them, as perfect sincerity.

Jingzhe was now deploying this with considerable success, while privately wondering whether Rong Jiu had been using the same method on him all along.

*

All in all, aside from everyone in the Directorate now knowing that Jingzhe had a “friend,” life after his return settled back into more or less its usual shape. If anything, it was too quiet.

It was only on the sixth day after the incident that Jiang Jinming informed them they could resume their regular duties.

Jingzhe distributed the newly reorganized area assignments and had a moment of rueful recognition — someone had to clean up after all of this, and that someone was them.

After days of enforced rest, they were plunged into a relentless tide of tasks that barely left time to breathe.

Individual palace quarters could largely manage their own interiors, but places like the imperial garden were another matter entirely. Flowers that had just come into spring bloom were crushed and ruined, petals and branches stripped down to wreckage — and all of it needed clearing. The gardeners responsible for those beds had turned grey at the sight.

As the palace slowly came back to life, speculation about the cause of the infestation spread in all directions.

Some said it was simply a natural plague — a massive, unlucky surge of insects from underground. Others said the whole thing was too strange to be natural, that someone had to be behind it.

Then people noticed how silent Zhongcui Palace had gone, with no one entering or leaving — and the theories grew wilder.

The situation became serious enough that the ailing Noble Consort De had no choice but to step out and manage it herself, working to suppress the more alarming rumors before they spread further.

Which was strange, in its own way. Why was it Noble Consort De managing the situation — and not the woman in Shòukāng Palace?

The unusual quiet from Shòukāng Palace. The complete stillness from Zhongcui Palace. Noble Consort De’s illness. All of it circulated through a court that had almost no capacity for keeping secrets.

Until the news broke that Noble Consort Huang Yijie had attempted to assassinate the Emperor — and the palace erupted.

Noble Consort Huang had been in the palace less than a year.

She was a member of the Huang family and held the rank of Noble Consort — notable enough to attract attention under any circumstances. But attempting to assassinate the Emperor? That was treason.

People loved a sensational story in the abstract. The reality of one unfolding around them was something else entirely.

Gu insects.

The words alone were enough to send people into a panic — something monstrous, something to be kept as far away from as possible.

That the Noble Consort had used such a thing to strike at the Emperor… had the Empress Dowager known? And there were those who couldn’t believe it was Huang Yijie at all — how could someone that delicate, that ornamental, be a gu practitioner?

But whatever the truth of her involvement, people had died in this infestation. The losses were real and not going anywhere.

The Emperor ordered a tribunal under the three judicial offices.

If he hadn’t intended a thorough investigation, there were bodies specifically tasked with handling internal palace affairs. The fact that he sent it to the three offices said something.

And with the matter of Huang Qingtian hanging over everything, there was no shortage of people who wanted Huang Yijie to talk.

Six days after she was moved to the prison, strange creatures began to appear inside — insects of an unusual kind, gathering densely outside her cell. They dispersed after some time.

All that remained, in the place where Huang Yijie had been, was a skeleton, white and bare.

One guard lost his mind. The rest were too shaken to speak in coherent sentences.

Huang Yijie was dead.

And dead in a way that was grotesque beyond measure.

The Minister of Justice nearly lost what was left of his hair over this. He stayed up late conferring with the other two offices, and the next morning delivered the news to the palace with visibly trembling hands.

The Emperor, upon hearing it, turned a quiet and unhurried gaze upon the courtiers who were still attempting to speak in the Huang family’s defense.

Perhaps his patience over the past months had led them to believe the Emperor had mellowed.

The man sitting on the throne said, at his leisure: “We seem to recall that assassination is the highest of treasons. Extermination of nine generations has been considered appropriate for less.”

The cold voice carried just a trace of amusement.

“What do you gentlemen think?”

*

After the meal hour had passed, the imperial kitchens quieted considerably. A few burners still kept medicinal broths simmering, and the air carried a faint medicinal smell throughout the room.

The number of consorts requesting medicinal tonics had been climbing steadily of late.

The most pressing order, of course, was for Shòukāng Palace.

Word had it the patient there was in worse shape than Noble Consort De.

And that the forecourt of Shòukāng Palace had been badly bloodied — it had taken three full days and nights to clean.

All of this had been delivered to Jingzhe in a continuous stream the moment he arrived to visit Mingyu — along with two bowls of broth, with a third reportedly on its way.

Jingzhe held up both hands in desperation. “I genuinely cannot drink any more.” He was fairly sure that if he opened his mouth to speak, the liquid inside him would slosh.

Mingyu relented with visible reluctance. “You’ve lost weight. You need to build yourself back up.”

Jingzhe: “…Whatever weight I put on isn’t there to be eaten.” He studied Mingyu for a moment and put on an expression of deep sorrow.

“You cannot keep gaining weight like this.”

Mingyu had rounded out — visibly, significantly, compared to the last time Jingzhe had seen him.

At this rate, the outcome was not good.

Mingyu looked wounded. “It’s not my fault.”

It was, in fairness, an occupational hazard. The kitchen staff tended toward the broad and sturdy — the women included. You needed the build for it; lifting full pots required actual strength. Since Mingyu’s transfer to the kitchens, he had been quietly developing in that direction, which was unsurprising given that food was one thing this place never ran short of.

“Head Supervisor Zhu isn’t heavy,” Jingzhe pointed out helpfully.

Mingyu: “How could I compare myself to Head Supervisor Zhu? He’s built like that and still stronger than me — last week he lifted a full water vat with one hand. Can I do that?”

He couldn’t even lift an empty one.

“Ahem.”

A flat voice materialized from nowhere, startling them both into spinning around — where, rising from the floor behind the preparation counter, was Zhu Erxi himself.

Mingyu’s mouth twitched. “…Head Supervisor Zhu. What were you doing down there?”

Zhu Erxi: “Sleeping.”

Mingyu stared at the floor, unable to formulate a response. He couldn’t imagine sleeping on something like that. And how had he not checked the room when he brought Jingzhe in?

Jingzhe ran quickly through everything they’d said since arriving and concluded that while some of it was gossip, none of it was genuinely dangerous — just chatter, nothing that should cause trouble. His heartbeat settled.

Zhu Erxi, hands behind his back, did indeed deliver a short reprimand to Mingyu first — the gist being that he talked too much.

Which was actually a little unfair.

Mingyu wasn’t like Shi’en, who gossiped for the pleasure of it. He talked because he worried about Jingzhe.

It was an old habit, built up over years.

When Jingzhe had lived in the North Wing, he had been almost completely cut off from anything happening outside those walls — ask him about events in the palace and he’d know nothing. Even things happening right next to him, he rarely sought out on his own.

That kind of prolonged isolation had made Mingyu nervous for him. He’d developed the practice of feeding Jingzhe information whenever he had it, frightened that one day Jingzhe would walk into something he hadn’t seen coming.