Chapter 54 - 1#
Ning Hongrú had been at the Emperor’s side longer than anyone — ten years at minimum. He was in his thirties now, not young, but not old either. At this age, as long as he didn’t do something to bring ruin on himself, he could serve the Emperor steadily until the end of his days.
He had already risen to the very top of what a palace servant could reach.
Wherever the Emperor went, Ning Hongrú went.
And yet these past few early morning courts had seen someone else beside the Emperor. No Ning Hongrú. That was remarkable enough to draw attention. In his place stood another man.
Had the legendary Chief Eunuch finally fallen out of favor and been killed?
No one knew the reason.
The eunuch now attending the Emperor was a familiar face — Wei Yuanyun, one of Qianming Palace’s senior eunuchs, who had joined the Emperor’s personal service only after his accession. He had less seniority than the others, and yet it was he who had stepped into Ning Hongrú’s place.
People said, privately, that Wei Yuanyun’s luck had finally come in.
As for Wei Yuanyun himself, his feelings were nothing like what people imagined. Standing in that position now, his primary concern was keeping his own head.
Who wouldn’t want to be the person closest to the Emperor?
Power, wealth, standing — it meant almost everything. Having this kind of fortune fall on him should have sent him into a state of delirious happiness.
Except that the more important question was how to survive it.
The Emperor’s temper had been extremely poor of late.
He had never been easy to deal with, but now he was worse than before.
Wei Yuanyun wanted Ning Hongrú’s position — that was true enough. He just had no interest in dying for it.
Heavens above. Where had the Chief Eunuch actually gone?
At least when Ning Hongrú was around, the people in Qianming Palace had a better chance of surviving the day. Whereas now—
Wei Yuanyun’s face went slightly pale.
The reason he had been chosen was not that he excelled at reading the Emperor’s mind. It was that he was the most timid and cautious of the available candidates.
The person who selected him was Shi Lijun.
When she told him he had been chosen, she had said, in a tone of unclear import: “I hope you’ll continue to be as careful as you’ve always been.”
What did that mean?
Wei Yuanyun followed the Emperor in a state of barely contained dread, not allowing himself to think about what had happened to Ning Hongrú.
Had he really been killed?
Wei Yuanyun reconsidered — he was still addressed as Senior Eunuch, not as Chief Eunuch. Which made him reassess.
Ning Hongrú was probably still alive.
He must have done something to offend the Emperor and been punished.
That was the best guess he could manage.
Close to curfew, Qianming Palace settled into silence, like a vast dark creature swallowing all the light that came near it.
Shi Lijun carried a small lantern and walked alone through the blackness of the palace passages, going steadily deeper into the less frequented areas.
Scrape, scrape, scrape—
A rhythmic, monotonous sound of scouring came from somewhere ahead. The smell was unpleasant.
In the shadows between rows of waste buckets and wooden frames, a thin, tall figure sat hunched over, working hard at scrubbing a wooden barrel.
The scrubbing motion had gone from awkward to practiced in a matter of days.
Shi Lijun stopped. The lantern in her hand illuminated only her feet.
“Have you come to your senses?”
Ning Hongrú stopped working. He let out a long sigh.
“Is His Majesty still angry?”
Shi Lijun: “Be grateful he didn’t take your head. You know what His Majesty cannot tolerate.”
Ning Hongrú had altered the Emperor’s orders. That was a cardinal offense.
For anyone else, the Emperor would have had them killed. Being sent to scrub waste buckets was, in its way, a reprieve.
Shi Lijun still couldn’t fully work out what had come over him.
He was usually cautious. Cautious almost to a fault. He never contradicted the Emperor, never offered the kind of advice that was difficult to hear. He understood perfectly well that everything he had came from the Emperor. The Emperor’s goodwill made him the most powerful eunuch in the palace; the Emperor’s displeasure would make him nothing.
Going against the Emperor — where had he found that kind of nerve?
Ning Hongrú straightened. He had done too much today; his back ached terribly. He dropped the brush, picked up a wooden ladle, and poured water over his hands.
“I overstepped.”
He exhaled.
He had known, from the moment the message reached him, that he was in trouble.
It had been a single impulse — a few words added almost as an afterthought, against a one-in-ten-thousand chance, as a precaution. A small measure of caution, nothing more.
What he hadn’t anticipated was that the one-in-ten-thousand chance would actually come to pass.
The capital was enormous. The few people in Jingzhe’s circle who could leave the palace were a small number. The Office of Miscellaneous Purchases didn’t typically operate in the part of the city where Liu-shi and Cen Liang lived.
Against all these improbabilities, Zheng Hong had managed to cross their path. And Zheng Hong had noticed something.
Anyone else in that situation — eliminating them would have been simple.
But Zheng Hong was Jingzhe’s friend. And Ning Hongrú’s instructions had, on a passing instinct, spared him, along with a handful of others.
“Even if that man had died, who would ever know?” Shi Lijun’s voice carried its usual thin coolness. She had no excess of kindness to spare. Someone was always going to die — if not Zheng Hong, then Ning Hongrú. Did Ning Hongrú really think he had so much credit to spend in the Emperor’s eyes?
Ning Hongrú finished rinsing his hands and stood. He turned at the waist a few times, trying to work out the soreness, then exhaled again.
“No one would know,” he admitted. “But once the first one goes, His Majesty won’t hold back anymore.”
He looked back at Shi Lijun, something helpless in his voice.
Shi Lijun understood what he was worried about, and thought he was worrying about nothing.
The Emperor was genuinely fond of Jingzhe — that was true.
But he had never been one to love the people around what he loved.
Fond of Jingzhe — so he would care about the people near Jingzhe?
Impossible. The Emperor would probably take more pleasure in watching them die one by one.
Ning Hongrú’s job was to serve the Emperor’s needs and carry out the Emperor’s wishes. That was his role.
As for Jingzhe—
Shi Lijun didn’t think he had any real chance of finding out.
He was capable, yes. But his sight was limited by his experience, and whatever ability he had — what did it amount to against the weight of imperial power? Once the people who helped him were removed, what room would he have to maneuver?
And besides: Zheng Hong would die outside the palace. How would Jingzhe ever know?
No connection. No thread to follow.
Concealing it would be easy.
Jingzhe couldn’t leave the palace now. He would never be able to leave. How could he possibly know what kind of tragedy was happening beyond the walls?
Ning Hongrú was quiet for a moment. “He has a kind of instinct that goes beyond the ordinary. Someone has been watching Yongning Palace for a long time — if I hadn’t been careful, even we might not have traced it back. And yet Jingzhe walked straight into Kangman.”
Shi Lijun blinked, and looked at him with new attention.
She couldn’t remember every name in the inner palace, but she remembered Kangman.
It had started with several “accidents” connected to him.
Whether they were truly accidents was beside the point. Kangman had survived by managing to keep others from seeing clearly. That was his skill. No one had cause to investigate him particularly.
The reason Qianming Palace kept an eye on him was the person behind him. Noble Consort Kang.
Noble Consort Kang was the one who truly mattered.
But both she and the people connected to Yongning Palace operated with extreme caution.
Jingzhe seemed to have been born walking straight toward danger. Or his instincts had sharpened to a frightening degree.
He had noticed something off about Kangman — and Kangman had immediately turned hostile.
Then, going further, he had begun trying to make contact with Nanny Ming in the north wing.
Reaching further still, he was probing at darker things.
If those reaching antennae of his weren’t cut off, they would eventually find their way to things he was not supposed to know.
Shi Lijun was right that Zheng Hong’s death, handled properly, would be something Jingzhe could never trace. But the moment the first one died, the Emperor would stop holding himself back. He would go through Jingzhe’s circle one by one — everyone who mattered to him. And the first would probably be Mingyu from the imperial kitchens.
“Shi Lijun. Do you honestly think he won’t find out?”
“And what if he does?” Shi Lijun said, indifferent. “The Emperor favors him. That is his fortune. If he’s willing to accept it, he can have all the wealth and comfort the world can offer. This is simply the price.”
“…No.” Ning Hongrú shook his head. “The moment the Emperor kills even one person close to Jingzhe — just one — he will never accept the Emperor again.”
Ning Hongrú had come to know something of Jingzhe.
He hadn’t remembered the name at first. The inner palace had too many people; he couldn’t hold all of them. Only the significant ones stayed with him.
Like Chen An.
He and Chen An had some history between them. After the Emperor’s accession, Chen An had quietly pulled back from the connection, and contact between them became rare.
But the year Jingzhe entered the palace, Ning Hongrú had gone to visit Chen An once.
Chen An was the senior eunuch who oversaw the training of newly arrived palace servants, and he always had a handful of new junior eunuchs underfoot. His courtyard was usually noisy, full of the unreflective energy of the young and newly arrived. That vitality, of course, was something the palace swallowed clean, turning it all to indifference and silence in due time.
Ning Hongrú had gone through the snow to see Chen An that day and found two small eunuchs kneeling outside the door.
Thin figures in the snow — two little snowmen.
He’d glanced at them and looked away, not thinking about it.
But sitting inside over hot tea, the image came back to him, and he asked Chen An what was going on.
Chen An said: “One of them is called Mingyu — he violated a rule, and was due to receive a beating. The other one, called Jingzhe, decided to stick up for him — said he’d take half the punishment himself. So I put them both outside to kneel.”
Ning Hongrú gave Chen An a look and smiled. “You’re soft-hearted, really.”
In weather like that, a beating could have been fatal. Kneeling in the snow was cruel, but it beat the alternative. At least both of them would likely survive. A beating was less certain.
Chen An gave a cold laugh. “A few months in, and they think they’ve actually made friends. Talking about loyalty and brotherhood in this place — isn’t that a joke?”
Ning Hongrú raised an eyebrow at him. “And what does that make me?”
After the Emperor’s accession, their own friendship had drifted apart. Ning Hongrú understood it — Chen An, with his temperament, would naturally find the Emperor’s methods difficult to stomach.
Chen An smiled. “Heavens, no. I’m just teaching them a lesson.”
In this place, having friends wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Even if you had a friend, and wanted to stand by them, you had to ask yourself first whether you had the standing to pull it off.
Of course, Chen An was also talking about himself. He didn’t want his junior eunuchs to be like him — and yet the ones he trained inevitably were.
Ning Hongrú had simply smiled, and as he left, he had looked down out of habit.
And met the eyes of one of the two kneeling figures, who had lifted his head.
Hazy, blurry eyes — startlingly clear for a moment — and then the head dropped back down, leaning against the other small figure beside him.
Ning Hongrú walked on.
Behind him, small voices.
“…You shouldn’t have stood up for me. It wasn’t your problem…”
“No — they set you up, it’s because of them that you — Mingyu, don’t be afraid…”
The voices faded as he walked further. He forgot about it almost immediately.
Until the day he followed the Emperor to Consort Xu’s palace, and saw Jingzhe for the first time — this new object of the Emperor’s interest — and felt that brief, strange sense of familiarity. Something about the brow and the eyes, a sensation like a feather passing lightly across memory, and he had needed a moment before the old recollection surfaced.
It had been growing dark. The Emperor had only brought two people.
Which meant Jingzhe, standing across from them, had no idea that both figures wore Qianming Palace livery.
And so, when the Emperor indulged himself in Consort Xu’s palace that night, Ning Hongrú found his curiosity turning, quietly, toward Jingzhe.
Later, as the Emperor’s interest in Jingzhe intensified, everything about the young man — his past, his background, his connections — arrived quickly before Ning Hongrú.
Chen An’s words rose again in his mind.
Jingzhe was someone who held deep loyalty and felt things deeply.
He had lost too much in the past. What he had now, what he had built — anything he named as important could not be discarded lightly.
Ning Hongrú didn’t believe that someone with Jingzhe’s instincts would remain oblivious as the people around him began disappearing.
Concealment would be pointless.
Because there were times when the Emperor had no particular desire to conceal anything.
Shi Lijun pressed her fingers to her temple. “When did you develop such a sentimental streak?”
Jingzhe couldn’t escape. The Emperor would never release him.
She had rarely seen this particular obsession in the Emperor before. Every interesting plaything in the past had been broken sooner or later — and Jingzhe was the first to have stayed alive this long, vivid and intact.
Ning Hongrú’s worries might not be entirely wrong. But they didn’t need to go this far.
How many heads did he have to gamble with?
If the Emperor had been in a raging fury that day, Ning Hongrú would already be dead.
“His Majesty was born of Empress Dowager Cisheng. And you know what Empress Dowager Cisheng was.” Ning Hongrú met the sudden chill in Shi Lijun’s eyes and held it. “Who’s to say that Jingzhe won’t make His Majesty into a second—”