Chapter 272: Pacifying the Crisis

Many people would say that white hair was not necessarily unattractive. By the standards of later generations, a man with white hair could even possess a certain elegance, provided he did not otherwise look ancient and decrepit. There was a strange beauty to it.

Back when Zheng Fan drew comics in his previous life, he had liked using white hair to shape a character’s image. It was a quick and effective way to make someone’s temperament stand out.

And with hair dye becoming so commonplace in later generations, people had grown highly accepting of hair in all sorts of colors.

But the Marquis of Jingnan’s white hair now conveyed only desolation.

It was the sorrow of a heart that had died.

A ruinous bleakness that even late autumn could not reproduce.

Temperament, image, presence—none of those words could describe the shock of seeing him like this.

Zheng Fan felt as though a stone had lodged in his chest, blocking it completely.

For a very long time, whenever Zheng Fan faced Tian Wujing, he had always been carefully “performing” himself.

There was a proper way to act familiar with someone above you.

You could not overstep, but neither could you seem distant.

You joked and traded barbs just enough to make him feel that you were one of his people, while also letting him know that you understood where the boundaries lay.

But this time, Zheng Fan hid nothing.

Whether he was too tired to bother or simply felt there was no need, even he did not know.

He only took a few steps forward and looked past the threshold.

After a moment, he called softly, “Marquis?”

The Marquis answered calmly, “She’s asleep.”

There was no visible grief in Tian Wujing’s eyes.

No disarray.

No hysteria.

He was perfectly calm.

But that calm felt like the stillness before a volcano erupted.

If one ignored the hair that had turned white overnight, he seemed exactly the same as before, as though nothing at all had changed.

But Zheng Fan understood that some people suffered precisely because they were too strong.

Too powerful.

What they wore was no longer a mask.

The mask had already fused with the face beneath it.

The tragedy was that when the day finally came when you wanted to express your grief, you had forgotten how.

All you could do was sit on a threshold like this.

Sit there through the entire night.

Long ago, you had stripped those emotions out of yourself.

You believed you would never need them again in this lifetime.

You thought they were nothing but burdens.

Then, one day, you suddenly discovered that you needed them more desperately than ever before.

They could have told you whether to cry, scream, or rage.

Without them, you were like a child who had only just learned to walk, staring helplessly at the unknown road ahead—lost, frightened, and utterly unsure of what to do.

Even the people around you did not know how to comfort you.

No one dared.

They had long grown accustomed to the fact that you needed no comfort.

They were accustomed to the sight of you standing before ten thousand men.

You had become cut off from the world.

A suffocating kind of isolation.

Tian Wujing raised a hand and beckoned Zheng Fan closer.

Anyone else facing Tian Wujing in this state might already have dropped to his knees in terror or fled in panic.

After all, an enraged lion was not nearly as frightening as a lion hovering at the very edge of rage.

Heaven only knew what it might do once that restraint finally shattered.

Zheng Fan walked over.

Tian Wujing said nothing.

Neither did Zheng Fan.

From where he now stood, Zheng Fan could see a coffin inside the hall.

Tian Wujing remained seated on the threshold.

Zheng Fan hesitated.

In the end, he did not dare step inside.

The atmosphere here had congealed into something almost solid.

At last, Zheng Fan drew a deep breath and slowly lowered himself onto one knee before Tian Wujing.

Tian Wujing turned his head and looked at Zheng Fan kneeling in front of him.

Their eyes met.

A vast pressure came crashing down upon Zheng Fan.

It felt like a scrutiny aimed directly at the soul.

The invisible weight was so overwhelming that even the Demon Child inside Zheng Fan’s chest began trembling faintly.

Fuck it.

Zheng Fan gritted his teeth.

Then he asked directly, “Marquis, I want to know how Madam actually died.”

“She only fell asleep.

“She waited too long for me to come home, so she went to sleep first.”

It was almost impossible to imagine words like these coming from Tian Wujing.

What were you supposed to do with someone in this state?

If he were not Tian Wujing, you could throw a basin of cold water over him.

You could curse him bloody.

You could even walk up and slap him awake.

But precisely because he was Tian Wujing, no one else dared.

And Zheng Fan... did not dare either.

After all, *The Emperor’s New Clothes* only worked when the emperor himself was the one wearing them.

Zheng Fan slowly opened his mouth.

Every sentence he spoke from this point onward might end with Tian Wujing smashing his skull apart with a single punch.

The Demon Child would not be able to stop it.

But Zheng Fan still felt he ought to say something.

He ought to at least try to do something.

Back in the countryside, whenever a family held a funeral banquet, close neighbors and relatives would often arrive a day or two early of their own accord to help with the arrangements.

Was he courting death?

Probably.

He was courting death.

Zheng Fan opened his mouth.

“Marquis... the... the child...”

He could clearly feel his own teeth chattering.

Even his words came out broken.

He was walking a tightrope.

Beneath him lay a bottomless abyss.

It was not the first time he had walked a tightrope.

But before, he had done it in pursuit of some benefit.

This time, he wanted nothing.

He was asking for nothing.

Zheng Fan realized it had been a long time since he had done anything this pure.

Purely... courting death.

Tian Wujing looked at him.

This gaze was different from before.

Whatever Tian Wujing might have felt inside earlier, his eyes had at least remained calm.

Now, however, clear emotion had finally entered them.

He was restraining himself.

He had been restraining himself all along.

A volcano, holding back its eruption again and again.

And unfortunately, Zheng Fan’s words were now on the verge of destroying every last layer of that restraint.

Zheng Fan lowered his head.

But inside, something in him hardened.

Fuck it.

If he was going to court death, then he would court it properly.

Tian Wujing had saved his life several times already.

Worst came to worst, he would simply give that life back!

“Marquis, Madam is gone. Whether this matter is going to be investigated or not, you need to give us a clear answer!

“Or perhaps you already have some idea of what happened. If so, then all the more reason to give us a clear answer!

“If you refuse to investigate...”

“What will you do?”

“I... I’ll fucking investigate it myself!

“I’ve never been a father in any of the lives I’ve lived. I finally had something to look forward to, and now the child is just gone for no damned reason.

“I refuse to accept that!”

At that point, Zheng Fan simply raised his head.

Breathing hard, his voice grew louder and louder until he was almost shouting.

“If someone is suspicious, arrest them and interrogate them!

“If there is a clue, send people to investigate it!

“Search from top to bottom, inside and out. Run the whole damn thing through a sieve!

“If one pass finds nothing, do it twice!

“I refuse to believe something this big could happen without leaving a single clue behind!

“No matter what, you cannot just sit here like this and keep saying Madam is asleep!

“Marquis, you are a man.

“I have always respected you.

“But seeing you like this right now genuinely makes this subordinate look down on you!

“A grown man’s pregnant wife is murdered. If you’re so broken that you want to live or die with her, I can understand that!

“If you want to follow your wife and child into death, I can understand that too!

“But at the very least, avenge them first before you cut your own throat!”

After roaring all of that, Zheng Fan felt wonderful.

Absolutely fucking wonderful.

And once that rush passed, only emptiness remained.

Fine.

If he died, he died.

When Zheng Fan finished speaking, silence descended once more.

Tian Wujing slowly extended a hand.

Zheng Fan’s body trembled.

Tian Wujing’s hand closed around his shoulder.

Zheng Fan waited for the bones to be crushed.

They were not.

Tian Wujing turned his head and glanced at the coffin behind him.

Then he said, “Help me find the child.”

“The child?”

Zheng Fan froze.

“Juanzi was stabbed through the abdomen with a sword.”

“Then...”

“I examined Juanzi’s body.

“There was another incision on her abdomen.

“It had been stitched closed.”

“This...”

“Before Juanzi went up Tianhu Mountain, she gave birth to the child.

“But there is no child in the residence.”

Zheng Fan’s thoughts dissolved into chaos.

No.

Wait.

What the hell had actually happened?

“Marquis, Madam... why did Madam go up Tianhu Mountain?”

The incident had taken place on Tianhu Mountain.

That was the part Zheng Fan had never been able to understand.

Ordinary people might naively believe that a Marquis’s wife had gone up the mountain to pray for her husband while he was away on campaign.

But who was Dujuan?

Was she some ordinary woman who knew only how to burn incense and pray to gods and Buddhas?

Why would she leave the Marquis’s heavily guarded residence and travel to Tianhu Mountain outside Litian City?

And more than that it now seemed very possible that before going up the mountain, she had forcibly delivered the child first.

A woman who had only just given birth.

A woman who had cut open her own abdomen and stitched herself back together.

And yet she had still insisted on climbing the mountain?

Why?

There was no formal discipline of Caesarean delivery in ancient times.

But midwives did indeed have methods for desperate births. When a child could not be delivered and the family chose to save the baby rather than the mother, they might use a knife or scissors to cut open the woman’s abdomen and remove the infant.

Dujuan was no ordinary woman.

She possessed cultivation.

But even so, that kind of pain...

So had she known in advance that she might die?

Was that why she had delivered the child first?

Had she gone up the mountain... seeking death?

“The Grand Eunuch from the palace came.

“He took lodging on Tianhu Mountain.”

The moment Zheng Fan heard those words, his mind exploded with a deafening buzz.

He had heard of the man the palace eunuchs called the Grand Eunuch.

He was a Qi Refiner.

Years ago, he had been gravely injured saving the late Emperor and his family. His body had been left mutilated, and from then onward he had lived deep within the imperial palace, teaching the eunuchs methods of qi cultivation.

Wei Zhonghe was one of his disciples.

Great Yan’s Secret Intelligence Department contained both covert operatives and Qi Refiners.

Nominally, Wei Zhonghe controlled the Secret Intelligence Department.

But in the truest sense, its actual leader was that Grand Eunuch.

Tian Wujing slowly said, “I once believed my heart would never hurt again in this lifetime.

“But I was wrong.”

Zheng Fan, meanwhile, was almost dazed.

“So... so... it was His Majesty...?”

Had the Emperor of Yan gone mad?

To move against the Marquis of Jingnan’s heir at a time like this what in Heaven’s name had he been thinking?

Tian Wujing shook his head.

“I do not know.

“But if the Grand Eunuch had not come here, Juanzi would never have gone up that mountain.

“I am sitting here waiting.

“This Marquis will wait here for one day.

“I will wait for him to come down the mountain.

“I will wait for him to come here.

“I will wait for him... to give this Marquis an explanation.”

“And if... if he does not come down?”

Hearing the question, Tian Wujing answered with perfect calm.

“Then the Jingnan Army... will become the Army of Pacifying the Crisis.”

[End of Chapter 272]