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Chapter 24 – The Truth
“The Crown Prince loved to eat sweets as a child, and usually kept a few with him all the time,” Ji Zhuo said, shaking his head with a smile. He really started sharing with Lou Jing the Crown Prince’s habits. “The sweet he liked best was a type of milk candy.”
“Milk candy?” Lou Jing’s eyes brightened. Milk candy was made by reducing milk to a paste, and then adding honey into it. Was the sweet milk smell that he smelt from the Crown Prince a result of him secretly eating milk candy?
“Yes, but that was only when he was a child,” the Empress said, looking rather nostalgic. “That child has become more and more reserved in recent years, and even I don’t know what his likes and dislikes are any more.”
Lou Jing made a mental note of this. He would ask Chang En when he got back.
“He isn’t fond of the sound of stringed and woodwind instruments, and he dislikes dancing performances even more. As to his childhood nickname…” Empress Ji searched his memory and hesitated a bit before continuing. “When I first took him into my care, I heard Shu Fei call him Yuan Lang*.”
*T/N: Yuan Lang means “first son”.
The Qinghe river dike incident had laid waste to a lot of arable land, and caused tens of thousands of people to lose their homes. This happened in the eighth month, and since then, the situation had only worsened.
Xiao Chengjun knelt on the floor. The hands hidden in his sleeves clenched slowly into fists as he looked at the mountainous stack of submissions on the table. When he was doing administration for the disaster relief efforts, he had approved the disbursement of silver from the Ministry of Revenue. The Central Plains generally enjoyed mild weather all year round, and there were eight other counties in Qingyang County which were prosperous. As long as the new Magistrate did his job properly, the people affected by the Qinghe flood disaster could be easily resettled.
“Innumerous refugees are gathered outside Qingyang City…”
“The refugees are flooding into the neighbouring counties and creating a ruckus…”
“The refugees broke into Qingyang’s granaries to loot grain, and killed eighty-seven people…”
Before the wedding, Xiao Chengjun had already settled about eighty percent of disaster relief plans. Unless someone was deliberately sabotaging the disaster relief efforts, the situation would not have degenerated into this.
The reports on the refugees’ plight today would form the basis of tomorrow’s submissions to depose the Crown Prince. There was no doubt that there would be a mountain of those submissions tomorrow replacing the mountain of reports on the refugees’ terrible situation.
Xiao Chengjun closed his eyes, feeling a deep sense of weariness that he had never felt before. Even if he had all the brilliance and martial power of all the Emperors that had come before him, he would never be able to save the people with the Imperial Court in this state.
Xiao Chengjun rolled up the scroll in his hands, then slowly lowered his body, kowtowing to the Emperor. “Erchen has assisted Father Emperor in dealing with matters of state since the age of twelve. I have put forward my best efforts, but in the end, I am just of mediocre talent, and I will not be able to make any great contributions to this country. At this point in time, the Qinghe flood disaster’s relief efforts are in disarray, and I am ashamed of the trouble I have caused you. Erchen…” the Crown Prince raised his head before continuing, allowing the Emperor to see his reddened, tear-filled eyes. “Erchen humbly asks Father Emperor to depose him as Crown Prince, and select another to the position.”
The Chunde Emperor froze. It had never crossed his mind that the Crown Prince would make this request. “Deposing the Crown Prince is not a small matter. Go back first and think it over. We’ll discuss this again tomorrow,” he said.
Xiao Chengjun did not say any more. He kowtowed and left, a chill spreading over his heart. If his Father Emperor had not already thought about deposing him, there was no way he would have responded this way.
The road from the Emperor’s study to the Eastern palace was a long one. Xiao Chengjun dismissed his palanquin bearers, and slowly walked that long road back.
The long palace road was empty save for a few passing guards and palace maids, who would stop to bow and wait for him to pass before continuing on their way. People thought that the palace walls were a hundred feet tall, but actually they only came up to his waist. Xiao Chengjun placed a hand atop that thick wall, watching birds fly freely across the sky. The palace was a prison, and someone trapped inside could not escape even if the walls were only three inches high.
“It’ll be past noon soon. Dianxia, why haven’t you gone back yet?” A pair of warm hands encircled the Crown Prince’s waist from behind.
When Lou Jing left Fengyi Palace, he heard that the Crown Prince had not returned to the Eastern Palace yet, so he thought he would pick the Crown Prince up to go and eat. He didn’t expect to see the Crown Prince walking alone, plodding along step by step with one hand on the low palace wall. He felt pained watching the Crown Prince; his husband must have been maligned in the Imperial Court earlier, and he hurriedly went to hug him to try and make it better.
The ice encrusting Xiao Chengjun’s heart melted in Lou Jing’s warm hug. “My eyes are red, and I was afraid people would see,” he said.
“Let me have a look,” Lou Jing said, turning Xiao Chengjun around. The Crown Prince’s beautiful eyes were indeed red – not just his eyes, but the tender skin around his eyes were also flushed pink. So pretty! Lou Jing thought. I really want to kiss them…
Lou Jing decided to just act on his thoughts. He moved closer to Xiao Chengjun, and the latter closed his eyes reflexively. Lou Jing’s lips pressed gently on Xiao Chengjun’s eyes, which still burned from the chilli oil applied to them earlier. Lou Jing’s cool lips produced a very comforting sensation on Xiao Chengjun’s eyes. Xiao Chengjun came to his senses after a few moments and hurriedly pushed Lou Jing away, looking around in a bit of a panic. Thankfully no one was around. An Shun and Le Xian, who were following behind them, pretended to have seen and heard nothing; one was staring determinedly at the sky and the other was examining the ground intently.
“Let’s go,” Xiao Chengjun said, coughing lightly in embarrassment. He led his Consort toward the Eastern Palace. “Why haven’t you gone back?”
Lou Jing let his Crown Prince pull him along. He shuffled his feet and pulled back slightly when he saw that the tips of the Crown Prince’s ears had turned a faint shade of pink. “Father Empress made me spar with him today, so I was delayed,” he said.
“You sparred with Father Empress today?” Xiao Chengjun asked, stopping. He turned to look his Consort up and down worriedly. “Are you hurt?”
“Nope,” Lou Jing said, smiling as he draped himself over his Crown Prince’s shoulders. “I’m just a little tired.”
Xiao Chengjun looked helplessly at the human taffy that had stuck to his back again. “An Shun, get the palanquin here,” he instructed.
The Imperial Court had been in turmoil the past few days, and everything had come to a head today when the Crown Prince returned to Court. In the afternoon, submissions requesting the Emperor to depose the Crown Prince rained down on the Emperor’s desk.
The Chunde Emperor couldn’t help sighing as he looked at the submissions in his hands. “I feel that I have wronged the Crown Prince,” he said.
His Head Eunuch, Huai Zhong, was secretly napping next to a pillar when the Emperor said this, but woke up the moment he heard the Emperor speak.
“Huai Zhong, what do you think of the Crown Prince?” the Chunde Emperor asked. He tossed the submissions to one side.
Huai Zhong broke out in cold sweat. How was he to answer this prickly question? Not answering was not an option, so he racked his brains for an answer. “This servant doesn’t really understand the workings of the Imperial Court, but from what this servant has observed, your Majesty has been much busier than usual in the period immediately after the Crown Prince’s wedding,” he said.
Ordinarily, the Chunde Emperor tossed the boring submissions, like reports and greetings, to the Crown Prince to review. The Chunde Emperor was going to say something more when one of his guards reported, “Your Majesty, the Minister of the Right requests an audience.”
Back in the Eastern Palace, Lou Jing was personally rinsing the Crown Prince’s eyes with clean water. “Chilli oil shouldn’t be left on your eyes for too long. It’s bad for your eyes,” he said.
“This technique of yours was quite useful,” Xiao Chengjun said, smiling faintly. He let Lou Jing wipe off the water on his face. “Do you use this often?”
“Of course not,” Lou Jing laughed. He couldn’t resist planting another kiss on the blushing corners of Xiao Chengjun’s eyes. Xiao Chengjun didn’t stop him since there was no one in the room with them. “If I let my Grandpa see my cry, he would make me stand in the middle of the garden and cry in ten different ways for his amusement.”
“Haha! How can there be ten different ways to cry?” Xiao Chengjun said, unable to hold back his laughter. He couldn’t imagine that a mischievous grandfather like Lou Jing’s actually existed.
“Of course there are,” Lou Jing grinned as he wrapped his arms around his Crown Prince. “In future, if Dianxia bullies me, I’ll go to the Imperial Ancestral Temple and cry in twelve different ways for your Xiao family ancestors to see.”
At this time, someone came in to report that a guard named “Yun” requested an audience.
A guard named “Yun” was likely to be Yun Ba, who had been given an Eastern Palace waist pendant. The two exchanged a look before heading out.
They dismissed all the servants, and a guard wearing the Eastern Palace uniform stepped forward to kowtow in greeting. “This servant, Yun Shiliu, greets the Crown Prince, and also greets his master.”
Yun Shiliu? Xiao Chengjun hurriedly indicated that he should rise. It really was the man they had sent to investigate the Qinghe situation.
Qinghe was not far from the Capital. One could reach it on horseback in a day. Yun Shiliu, however, had taken many more days than that to return.
“There are a group of people strongly preventing information from getting out of Qinghe, and I was also caught by them in the midst of my investigations,” Yun Shiliu said, explaining why he had returned so late. Qinghe was like a tightly sealed steel drum at present – other than the officials from the Ministry of Justice, everyone else had been rounded up by the local ruffians.
Xiao Chengjun frowned. The Qinghe investigations were overseen by Shen Lian, and only he would have the power and guts to do something like this. The Minister of the Right had his own reasons for trying to sabotage him, the Crown Prince, but for Shen Lian to go all out to assist the Minister of the Right this way was very strange. He and Shen Lian had never crossed swords before, and there was no bad blood between them.
“Is there really an Imperial ancestral temple being built in Qinghe County?” Xiao Chengjun asked, enunciating each word slowly and carefully as he sat down.
“Yes, there is,” Yun Shiliu said. “That temple is heavily guarded, and no one is allowed to get close. However, I managed to get in to have a look in the middle of the night, and I found that only a shallow foundation had been dug out there. Other than that, there was just a big pile of wood stacked up. One of the monks sweeping Qingliang Temple told me that the wood had been transported there in the eighth month.”
Lou Jing narrowed his eyes. This clearly was a scheme deliberately set up to sabotage the Crown Prince.
What Yun Shiliu said next indicated that the treachery he uncovered in Qinghe didn’t stop there.
A lot of Qinghe County’s population left after the flood. They had been chased out of town by ruffians who appeared out of nowhere. On their way out of town, many were waylaid by robbers who forcibly took their food and money. The people were in anguish; their livelihoods had been destroyed by the flood and what little they had to start over anew had also been taken from them. Yun Shiliu had hidden amongst the refugees in order to escape from the ruffians who were rounding up the people sent to gather information in Qinghe. That was how he heard about the shocking plight of the Qinghe people.
“That Qinghe County Magistrate started drafting people into forced labour camps since the third month, and he built a very extravagant ancestral hall behind Qinghe Temple,” Yun Shiliu said, his voice serious. “There was a carpenter among the refugees, and he worked on carving the tablets meant for the ancestral hall. That ‘ancestral hall’ isn’t for worshipping ancestors – it’s actually a living worship temple.”
“What?!” Xiao Chengjun’s eyes nearly bugged out of his sockets. A living worship temple was a temple built to worship a living person. Usually persons who had living worship temples dedicated to them were great men and women who had saved the empire from terrible disasters.
“So who is being worshipped in this living worship temple?” Lou Jing asked. The Chunde Emperor was so suspicious of everything and everyone that anyone who had a living worship temple dedicated to them would definitely rub the Emperor the wrong way.
“It’s Shen Lian!” Yun Shiliu said firmly.
Beansprout: I will be moving both The Submissive Emperor and Peach to Chrysanthemum Garden very shortly! Website admin gives me a real headache so it made sense for me to move over. Please continue to read my translations there.