Chapter 622: - The Little Eunuch in Red Robes

The instant he saw what had happened, Marquis Zheng rushed forward and scooped Tian Tian into his arms.

“Are you all right?”

“...” Granny.

At the same time, Hu Bamei froze when she saw Granny’s face covered in blood, then immediately tried to rush over.

Xue San caught her by the wrist.

A married daughter was spilled water, after all. Besides, Bamei had always been missing a screw or two. She struggled once, realized she could not break free, and simply stopped struggling.

On the other side, the moment A’da saw Granny’s blood-covered face, he let out a roar.

He thought Zheng Fan had harmed her and charged straight at him.

Fan Li, who had only just shared flatbread with A’da, cooked mashed potatoes with him, and accompanied him around the city buying food, threw a punch without the slightest hesitation.

His fist slammed directly into A’da’s abdomen.

At this distance, with the attack coming so suddenly, even a powerful expert could be caught off guard.

A’da’s breath was knocked out of him. His body convulsed and folded forward.

Fan Li immediately followed with an elbow, smashing it brutally into A’da’s back.

Bang!

A’da was hammered to the floor.

Finally, Fan Li scratched his head with one hand and gave his usual honest, simple smile.

Then he lifted one foot and planted it on the back of his newly acknowledged good brother.

Fourth Lady, meanwhile, helped Granny upright and first checked her pulse.

It was extremely weak and chaotic.

Fourth Lady drove a silver needle into the back of Granny’s head. A silk thread was attached to the end of the needle, wound around Fourth Lady’s fingertips.

As her fingers trembled faintly, the needle began to quiver as well.

“Haaah...”

Granny, who had been limp and fading, suddenly sucked in a long breath and opened her eyes.

They were filled with terror.

Fourth Lady flicked a pill from her fingertips.

For an ordinary person, the medicine would do almost nothing. But at a critical moment, it could stabilize the foundation. Put differently, if someone was hanging onto one final breath, this pill could keep that breath from breaking.

The pill entered Granny’s stomach.

Fourth Lady barked:

“Still your heart and gather your spirit. Seal your six senses and sleep for three days. Then you’ll be out of danger.”

Granny immediately obeyed.

Her entire body went limp at once.

Fourth Lady withdrew the silver needle and reeled back the silk thread.

Then she called to Xue San:

“Put her in bed. For the next few days, just feed her thin rice porridge and water.”

Only after confirming that Tian Tian was completely unharmed did Marquis Zheng turn back and look at Granny.

Then he asked Fourth Lady:

“What happened?”

Fourth Lady replied:

“Most likely too many powerful people and too many factions have left marks on Tian Tian himself, or on his fate. When the old woman read his face just now, her qi currents effectively tugged on all of those marks at once and provoked reactions from every direction. That threw her own qi currents into chaos. It isn’t too serious. She won’t die.”

Zheng Fan nodded.

A person’s root was the physical body.

The Martial Artist’s path was, in essence, the pursuit of an ever-stronger body.

Beyond the physical body was consciousness. That was the road Qi Refiners and Daoists preferred to walk, pursuing strength of the mind and spirit.

Above that came something even more abstruse: qi currents.

They could exist.

They could also be said not to exist.

Someone capable of sensing them could feel them, but could not place them in another person’s hand and say: Look. Here they are.

Were they useful?

Quite useful.

Were they useless?

That did not sound entirely wrong either.

Years ago, Master Zang had entered Yanjing and severed Great Yan’s dragon vein.

Had there been any immediate, visible effect?

No.

Yet anyone who truly became entangled in such a thing would inevitably be influenced by it somewhere beyond ordinary sight.

The heir of the Prince of Jingnan was an uncertain piece on Great Yan’s political board.

Back then, Dujuan had died on Mount Tianhu, but before climbing the mountain she had cut open her own belly and left Tian Wujing his legitimate son.

Any normal person understood exactly how much influence the existence of that child might one day exert over the Jingnan Army.

And the people watching the child were not limited to Yan.

There were figures in other states and other factions watching him as well.

Because the State of Yan now genuinely possessed the strength to overturn the entire East.

Or perhaps it should be called... momentum.

The old woman had stepped into that web, pulled on it, and suffered the backlash.

Looking back after the fact, it was not difficult to understand.

Xue San lifted Granny onto his back and sighed.

“Ah. We haven’t even held the wedding yet, and we nearly had to hold a funeral first.”

Fan Li, standing nearby, said:

“A happy funeral.”

...

Yanjing.

The Imperial Palace.

A small sedan chair left the palace gates.

Almost immediately, news of this movement began appearing on desks throughout Yanjing.

Disasters might be occurring one after another.

The people might visibly be struggling to survive.

But no one could deny that Great Yan was presently the strongest state in the entire East.

And the emperor of that state held authority more powerful than that of any ruler before him.

But he had grown old.

Old age did not merely mean decay of the body.

It also carried the meaning of an ending.

Ever since the Emperor entered the Rear Garden to recuperate, he had remained, in name and in truth, the supreme sovereign.

His will was still the loudest thunder in the state.

But in the details, in the tiny cracks, gaps had inevitably begun to appear.

When a wise and mighty emperor grew “old,” even ministers and subordinates absolutely loyal to him would instinctively begin looking for the next ship.

And if they themselves remained absolutely loyal, what about the people beneath them?

No one could control or solve that problem.

Not even the Emperor himself.

He could still mobilize one of the garrisons outside Yanjing and order it to wash a minister’s residence in blood.

But he could no longer prevent the various yamen beneath him from beginning to stir.

The little eunuch in red robes was the closed-door disciple the Grand Elder had left behind in the palace before going to Mount Tianhu.

Unlike the Grand Elder, however, this little eunuch had inherited no official position.

He seemed responsible only for keeping the hall where the Grand Elder had once lived exactly as it had been, tending his old belongings, and making the same rice cakes at fixed times each year.

The little eunuch in red robes left the palace and went to the Rear Garden.

In the Eastern Palace, the Crown Prince glanced at the man kneeling before him with the report, then waved him away.

Ji Chengjue, who had just returned from the Ministry of Revenue, was holding his son when he received the note.

He smiled, then tossed it into the nearby candle flame.

Many people learned of the matter.

Almost everyone pretended they had not.

Because there was simply nothing anyone could do with this piece of information by itself.

It was not until well past midnight that the little eunuch in red robes returned to the palace in his sedan chair.

The palace was under curfew, but he carried a token.

The guards opened the gates and allowed him through.

That movement itself already displayed an attitude: there was no fear of being seen.

And yet the surface of Yanjing’s lake had been forcibly kept still for too long by the oppressive atmosphere emanating from the Rear Garden.

After the campaign against Chu, most people’s attention had also returned home.

So now, the slightest movement of wind or grass drew exceptional attention.

Everyone restrained themselves.

First, because His Majesty was still there.

So long as that man could open his eyes, he did not even need to speak.

A single glance was enough to make everyone in Great Yan lower his head.

Second, because it was no longer any secret that the two Princes and the two Marquises had been summoned to Yanjing.

Some people felt helpless about that.

Those were the people around Old Sixth Ji.

Others felt relieved.

Those belonged to the Crown Prince’s faction.

Still more people felt depressed.

The merit of supporting the future sovereign looked dangerous enough, but in truth the apparent choices were only the Crown Prince and the Sixth Prince.

Half and half.

Who did not want to roll up his sleeves and fight for sixty years of wealth and honor for himself and his clan?

But once those two Princes and two Marquises entered Yanjing, everything would probably settle into dust.

The rest of them would have little presence left.

Naturally, that meant little opportunity.

Of course, that was only what appeared on the surface.

In the dark, there was always wind blowing silently.

Wind came without shadow and left without trace.

...

The little eunuch in red robes personally pushed open the doors and returned to the hall.

The interior was very empty.

There was an alchemy furnace that had not been opened in a long time.

A small kitchen.

And beyond that, bookshelves filling the remaining space.

Everything had been preserved exactly as it had been when the Grand Elder still lived here.

The little eunuch first closed his eyes.

He drew in a breath.

Then slowly opened them and looked toward the long rice cake he had steamed before leaving and had not yet sliced, still resting on the cutting board.

The little eunuch shook his head.

“There are many people in this world capable of coming and going without leaving a trace. Some methods can be refined to an extraordinary degree. I left no formation inside this hall. No hidden hairs. No mechanism to tell me whether anyone entered. Before leaving, I steamed a rice cake here. Whether the hall doors were opened, a window moved, or roof tiles lifted, one thing is certain. Someone came inside. Because the fragrance of the rice cake is just a little fainter than it was when I left.”

The instant he finished speaking, a gray shadow appeared in the northwest corner of the hall.

Another appeared in the southeast.

This was a Qi Refiner technique:

Mirror Flower, Water Moon.

A method used to conceal the self.

This was the Imperial Palace.

And the intruders were using Qi Refiner arts.

That meant these two shadows were most likely eunuchs from within the palace.

Judging by the sophistication of their methods, they had to be at least senior red-robed eunuchs.

And although the two seemed not to have come together, they had arrived for the same reason.

The little eunuch did not step forward to break either concealment technique.

He appeared perfectly calm.

He sat cross-legged.

Then reached out and lifted the cutting board.

Beneath it was a hollow.

Inside the hollow, beneath a sheet of oiled hide paper, lay a booklet.

“I won’t ask which household either of you serves. And I won’t ask who stands behind you. But I can roughly guess what you came looking for. Truthfully, I have no need to hide this thing. Especially not from the two of you. Because I understand perfectly well that the people most afraid of this matter being spread throughout the world are the masters standing behind you. You want to see it? You want to know? Or perhaps you want to take it? Then say so. I’m still young. Before entering the palace, perhaps I even called one of you Grandfather or Ancestor. Maybe one of you once patted my head and asked whether my body felt lighter afterward. Heh. If you want to see it, take it.”

The little eunuch tossed the booklet upward.

It fell to the floor and opened.

On that page was only a single short line.

Yet the words were shocking enough to make the heart tighten:

In the spring of Jingzheng Year Five, the southern wind came softly, and the azaleas bloomed.

[End of Chapter 622]