Chapter 12: Vermilion Plots and Phoenix's Vengeance
"All offenders shall perish!" Consort Chen's hiss slithered through the incense-laden air, her jade bangles clattering like serpent scales. The woman who had reigned supreme over the inner court for decades now found her dominion threatened by a weed she once deemed beneath contempt.
***
"Mother, you utter madness!" Ye Changfeng whispered sharply, dismissing attendants with a flick of his embroidered sleeve. When only trusted matrons remained, Consort Chen bared her venomous fangs.
"Summon Matron Chen from the Cold Palace," she decreed, her voice colder than midwinter frost. "Tell her... I hunger for carp stew."
The crown prince stiffened. Matron Chen—the Chen clan's slumbering dagger embedded in palace shadows—had not been awakened since his boyhood.
"Should that wastrel Ye Ling survive," Consort Chen's smile curdled like rancid cream, "that Fu serpent must still die. Clothe assassins in Qian Manor's livery. When her corpse surfaces bloated with disgrace, even Fu Hai will grovel to join our banner."
***
Beyond the vermilion gates, Fu Yuanyuan stumbled into a carriage bearing Qian Manor's lanterns, fleeing the feast's lingering shame. The conveyance jolted through serpentine alleys, diverging sharply from familiar thoroughfares.
"This path leads not to the manor!" She pounded on lacquered wood.
The driver turned—a gap-toothed brute reeking of garlic and vice. "Homecoming, traitorous jade? The prince extends his... farewells."
Fu Yuanyuan recoiled as the ogre lunged inward. "I'll savour this more than that milksop ever did!"
***
Meanwhile, within a jade-curtained palanquin swaying through moonlit avenues, Ye Ling traced Lü Wu's collarbone with earth-stained fingers. "The sprouts prosper," he murmured between nectarous kisses. "Tonight, let us till... fresher fields."
Lü Wu's laughter dissolved into breathless cadence as silken robes pooled like liquid moonlight. Beyond the curtains, the capital slumbered, unaware of twin storms brewing—one of passion's fire, the other of death's frost.
***
In Chunhua Palace's gilded gloom, Consort Chen sipped ginseng broth laced with crushed pearls. "Let the fool prince wallow in carnal folly," she crooned to her mirrored spectre. "By dawn's first light, his vaunted reforms shall choke on blood."
Her lacquered nail tapped a cinnabar box containing Fu Yuanyuan's childhood jade pendant—soon to grace assassins' corpses. The game unfolded like a brocade tapestry, scarlet threads intertwining toward inexorable slaughter.
Vermilion Shadows and Royal Retribution
Fu Yuanyuan, the celestial beauty hailed as the "First Jewel of the Capital", trembled like a caged songbird. The assassin's garlic-laden breath fouled the carriage air as he sneered, "His Highness sends his fondest... *regards."
***
"Did Ye Ling command my execution?" Fu Yuanyuan stalled, her scholar's intellect racing despite limbs numbed by Paralysis Powder—a noxious mist dusting the velvet seats.
The brute's calloused palm struck her cheek with a crack. "Defiled wretch! You'll address His Grace as—"
A dagger's pommel erupted from his throat. Blood arced crimson across Fu Yuanyuan's alabaster skin as the assassin choked, vertebrae severed with anatomical precision.
"Lay hands upon my possessions," Ye Ling's voice sliced through metallic stench, "and you surrender more than life."
***
Within Qian Manor's shadowed halls, the maimed assassin spat crimson defiance. "Your decree, Highness! We obeyed!"
Fu Yuanyuan's laugh dripped vitriol. "How tragically poetic—slaughtering pawns to salvage honour. Did my desecration wound your *pride*"?
The assassin performed his role with moribund fervour. "The men grow frostbitten, watching you discard loyal steel over soiled silk!"
Ye Ling circled the wretch like a stalking panther. "Loyalty?" His boot crushed the assassin's mangled fingers. "Let us assay its purity."
***
Liu Ren entered bearing iron pincers and a smouldering brazier. The assassin's bravado wavered as Ye Ling selected a glowing coal.
"The human tongue", the prince mused, "hosts three thousand taste buds. Let us discover what harmonies yours may yield."
Fu Yuanyuan averted her gaze—whether from the reek of searing flesh or crumbling certainties, even she could not discern.
***
In adjacent corridors, Lü Wu observed in silence. Her lord's mercilessness chilled yet exhilarated—venom essential to their gilded warfare. The assassin's eventual confession would unravel plots, but tonight's pedagogy scorched deeper: Ye Ling's guardianship, however savage, remained absolute.
As dawn's first light gilded the interrogation chamber's cruel instruments, the broken assassin began his aria—a cacophonous ballad of treachery, false banners, and a phoenix's venomous machinations.
Vermilion Confessions and the Phoenix's Folly
The dungeon reverberated with blood-curdling shrieks as gleaming instruments of torment inscribed crimson verses upon the assassin's quivering flesh. Liu Ren orchestrated this macabre symphony with clinical detachment, each incision extracting whimpers that coalesced into damning psalms.
Fu Yuanyuan pressed ink-stained fingers against ears already violated by truth—the assassin's rasping confession unravelled her reality strand by poisoned strand.
***
"Consort Chen's shadow blade..." The wretch gurgled through shattered teeth, "Purged nine-and-thirty... obstacles for Prince Xu... Your missives... became your death warrant..."
Each syllable flayed Fu Yuanyuan's psyche. The tender epistles she'd once clutched to her breast now revealed themselves as venomous lures. Had even her defilement been choreographed? The chamber spun as decades of delusions disintegrated.
Ye Ling observed her unravelling with feral intensity. "Doubt persists?" His fingers seized her jaw with calculated brutality, thumbs imprinting lunar crescents upon jade flesh. "Had death been my design, you'd have choked on osmanthus cakes ere autumn's moon waned."
The prince's grip transmuted into a perverse caress—a conqueror savouring prey's fragility. Fu Yuanyuan's tears anointed his knuckles, their brine mingling with ferrous vapours.
"What sublime idiocy!" Ye Ling released her with theatrical revulsion, cleansing stained digits upon her embroidered handkerchief. "To mistake asps for nightingales—your famed erudition proves thinner than cicada wings."
***
As Liu Ren pressed the gore-smeared confession beneath vermilion seals, Ye Ling paused at the oaken threshold. His valedictory barb hung suspended like a headsman's axe:
"Cherish this pedagogy, *Celestial Pearl*. Only breathing fools merit redemption."
The slamming iron portal resonated with finality. Fu Yuanyuan traced the throbbing warmth lingering on her cheek—a paradox of violation and guardianship branding her soul.
In dawn's creeping light, the broken assassin's whimpers faded into silence. Lü Wu materialized like coalesced shadows, her whisper blade-edged silk:
"The phoenix's talons grasp farther than foreseen."
Ye Ling examined confession scrolls glistening with fresh ink. "Let her reach beyond her wingspan. We'll recast her molten gold into our diadem."
Beyond barred apertures, morning's first rays gilded the capital's pagodas—a realm quivering on the precipice, oblivious to viper and phoenix preparing their terminal waltz.
Vermilion Gambits and the Phoenix's Impotence
Lü Wu rubbed the lingering warmth where his fingers had marked her cheek—a paradoxical blend of vexation and exhilaration simmering beneath her porcelain skin.
***
In the moonlit study, Lü Wu watched wide-eyed as Ye Ling sealed the incendiary confession. "Your Highness intends to gift this to Prince Xu himself?"
"Does the notion unsettle you?" Ye Ling's thumb grazed her lower lip, his touch lingering like aged honey. "The Emperor's indulgence armours them in gold. Yet this..." He tapped the scroll with lethal grace. "...shall fester in their minds like larvae in imperial granaries."
Lü Wu's brow creased. "Would not the Dragon Throne—"
"—Perceive mere sibling squabbles?" Ye Ling's chuckle resonated like distant thunder. "Better to let venom seep through cracks. Tonight, our dear brother shall learn impotence transcends flesh."
His fingers teased the silk cords of her waist sash. "Now, regarding our earlier... interruption..."
***
In the bridal chamber's jasmine-scented gloom, Prince Xu contemplated his unresponsive flesh. Across vermilion satin, Fu Xianxian lay like a forbidden sutra bound in mortal form—her crimson chiffon negligee revealing alabaster contours that might make arhats forsake vows.
"My lord..." Her mellifluous murmur carried aeons of concubine craft. "Shall we practise the bridal scrolls'... diagrams?"
Prince Xu's body remained stubbornly dormant—a betrayal more humiliating than lost battles. Fu Xianxian's gilded toenails traced his thigh, her pout a masterwork of feigned naivety. "Does my lord find this humble vessel unworthy?"
The crown prince retreated to the moonlit balcony, his roar of frustration scattering nightingales. Below, the damning scroll rested atop bridal gifts—Ye Ling's messenger vanished like dawn mist.
***
As auroral rays gilded the capital, twin tableaux unfolded:
In Qian Manor's silk-canopied bedchamber, Lü Wu's laughter cascaded between gasping kisses. "You're... inexhaustible..."
"Blame well-fertilized fields," Ye Ling countered, teeth grazing her collarbone. "Bounteous harvests demand relentless cultivation."
Meanwhile, in Xu Palace's ancestral shrine, Prince Xu glared at the unfolded scroll through bloodshot eyes. Each character pulsed like fresh wounds—Consort Chen's schemes dissected, his complicity etched in cinnabar precision.
Fu Xianxian's approaching footsteps stilled as her groom's enraged howl shattered a Ming dynasty urn. The "Capital's First Siren" smiled—a panther scenting wounded prey.
As temple bells heralded matins, the game's balance shifted. Ye Ling's pawns advanced while the phoenix groomed singed plumage, oblivious to fractures spreading through its gilded cage.
Vermilion Rage and the Phoenix's Midnight Gambit
"Hmm..."
"Retire first..."
Ye Changfeng's evasion lingered like bridal chamber incense, thick with unspoken shame. Though carnal hunger gnawed at his core, his flesh remained treacherously inert. Fu Xianxian's rosewood comb clattered to the floorboards as she stamped silk-slippered feet—a celestial muse reduced to mortal vexation.
"Her Grace lies gravely afflicted—this prince's spirit is besieged," Ye Changfeng lied through clenched jade teeth, retreating from the nuptial suite like a thief absconding with virtue.
***
The scroll arrived as moonlight silvered Xu Manor's rooftiles. Ye Changfeng's fingers trembled like autumn leaves as he deciphered:
*"Felicitations, dear brother, upon your nuptial theatre! As drought withers my fields, might you spare half your bridal gold to nourish humble soil? May your loins prove fertile as monsoon paddies—ten thousand nights of virile conquest!"
"INSOLENT VERMIN!" The crown prince's roar dispersed roosting swallows. His boot ground the parchment into lacquered cinnabar, teeth grinding like millstones. "I'll tan that wastrel's hide for ancestral lanterns!"
***
Midnight's third watch found Ye Changfeng shrouded in night-forged silk, hammering Qian Manor's vermilion portals with feral abandon.
Liu Ren's laughter rumbled like subterranean leviathans. "Well met, Highness! My lord predicted your... *fervent* visitation."
The guard commander's oil lamp unveiled Ye Ling's silhouette draped across moonlit railings—chalice dangling from fingertips, smirk sharper than ceremonial jiandao blades.
"Welcome, Brother! Critique my latest verse: *'Phoenix preens yet fails ascension—'"*
Ye Changfeng's ancestral dagger hissed from its scabbard, moonlight bleeding crimson across the duelling grounds.
Crimson Coffers and the Phoenix's Humiliation
The Dragon Guard escorted Ye Changfeng into the antechamber of the consort's pavilion, where carnal rhythms from adjacent chambers pierced the night like poorly tuned zither strings.
"Your Highness, savour this tribute tea," Liu Ren proffered with mock deference, his smirk widening as the crown prince's pallor deepened.
Ye Changfeng's knuckles blanched around the celadon cup. Each moan beyond the silk partition flayed his pride like bamboo splinters beneath nails.
***
When Ye Ling emerged—robes carelessly fastened, hair tousled as by monsoon winds—he exuded vitality that mocked his brother's inadequacy.
"To what celestial favour do I owe this nocturnal visitation?" Ye Ling's tone dripped poisoned honey. "Should the new princess resent your absence, pray absolve this unworthy sibling of blame."
"Where is the cur?"
"Chilled in the ice vault—preserved like winter melon for your convenience." Ye Ling reclined like a sated leopard. "Though permit candid critique—your Chen-bred assassins lack... fortitude. Scarcely endured the first torture tier before inscribing confessions like tribute scrolls."
Ye Changfeng's gaze burned with contained fury. "State your demand."
"Did my epistle's literary artistry escape your discernment?" Ye Ling feigned astonishment. "Half your nuptial treasury should suffice. Consider it... agrarian philanthropy."
As silence lingered, Ye Ling continued like a silk merchant bartering: "Your coffers overflow with Fu bridal gold and ministerial tributes. My parched estates merely seek... life-giving rains."
"Or", he added, examining jade-adorned fingertips, "I'll fatten your blade on Qian Manor's rice—until his tongue ripens with fresher tales."
The ancestral clepsydra's drip measured Ye Changfeng's degradation. Beyond vermilion walls, nightingales hushed—as though nature itself paused to witness the phoenix's plucked dignity.
Vermilion Ledgers and the Phoenix's Extortion
"The assassin dangles as a celestial sword above your ancestral shrine," Ye Ling mused, swirling wine in a jade chalice. "Will Brother wager with lineage honour?"
Ye Changfeng's jaw tightened like corroded shackles. "Two million taels?" His derision rang hollow. "The nuptial vaults scarcely contain half that measure!"
"Ah, but the Chen coffers surge like monsoon-swollen rivers." Ye Ling's smile mirrored a tiger eyeing lame quarry. "Shall I petition the Fu matriarch for the balance? Or perhaps Her Grace's private chambers hoard sufficient baubles?"
The crown prince's poise unravelled like aged silk. "Viper!"
"Vipers strike when cornered—unlike sanctimonious fools." Ye Ling snapped her fingers, summoning stewards bearing ivory abacuses. "Let us calculate your liabilities: four hundred thousand in bridal gold, six hundred thousand in ministerial tributes..."
***
"Fifty thousand!" Ye Changfeng's counteroffer reeked of desperation.
Ye Ling laughed—a glacier calving. "Brother, conflates this with rash haggling? Two million, or else I'll present Father the assassin's confession bound in phoenix-plume silk."
Silence pooled between them like spilled mercury. Distantly, Lü Wu's laughter entwined with pipa notes—a taunting symphony underscoring princely disgrace.
"Heed celestial arithmetic," Ye Ling pressed. "Each dawn the assassin breathes, his worth compounds. Tomorrow's toll: two million and one."
***
"You revel in cesspit stratagems!" Ye Changfeng hissed.
"While you masquerade as a paragon?" Ye Ling's gaze descended pointedly. "How progress your... *Yue Buqun* aspirations?" The reference baffled the crown prince, yet its sneering tone branded him an impotent fraud.
Dawn's first light gilt the accord as Ye Changfeng stamped his seal into crimson wax—a phoenix consuming its tail.
"Until Fortune's next wheel-turn, Brother." Ye Ling fluttered the drying parchment like a triumphal standard. "May your vigour outmatch your stratagems."
The retreating crown prince's silhouette arched like a shattered bow. In shadowed vaults, Liu Ren chuckled while inventorying silver ingots—their frosty gleam eclipsing bridal gold's warmth.
***
"The southern magistrates' arrears are secured," Ye Ling whispered to the waning night. Yet his gaze stretched westward, where Chu Kingdom's envoys slumbered—another chessboard awakening beneath the crescent moon's sly grin.
Vermilion Vaults and the Phoenix's Defeat
Ye Ling harboured no intention of funnelling trade-earned riches into imperial coffers. Why surrender gold reaped from his fields when extorted silver sufficed?
"To the greenhouse—scrutinise the potato sprouts!" he commanded Liu Ren post-midnight, urgency threading his voice. The seedlings bore revolutionary promise; their imminent fruition tolerated no mishap.
***
In Xu Manor's study, Ye Changfeng's wrath manifested as shattered celadon and splintered sandalwood. "Begone! All of you!" His roar scattered servants like panicked sparrows.
A naïve handmaid chose that moment to knock. "Her Highness sends fortifying broth against nocturnal chills."
The crown prince wrenched open the door, fleeting gentleness sparked by visions of Fu Xianxian's diaphanous silhouette. This evaporated upon recognizing the broth's pungent components—tiger phallus, deer velvet, and other virility enhancers.
"Does that jade consider me a capon?!" Ye Changfeng's kick sent the jade tureen exploding against ancestral portraits. Restraining eunuchs alone prevented bridal-chamber bloodshed.
***
Fu Xianxian huddled beneath vermilion damask, humiliation crystallizing with each temple bell's toll. Her bridal scrolls had prepared her for tempests of passion, not this arctic abandonment.
Dawn's reprieve arrived as Consort Chen summoned her for "matriarchal guidance". The phoenix appraised her newest pawn through kingfisher-feather lashes.
"A Xu consort must cultivate roots deeper than carnal whims," the matriarch intoned, fingers tightening on the younger woman's wrist like ceremonial manacles. "Our familial branches... require judicious pruning."
"This unworthy vessel comprehends." Fu Xianxian's kowtow concealed a scheming glint—the same that had enthralled three provincial governors pre-matrimony.
***
Meanwhile, Ye Ling knelt in his greenhouse, calloused palms cradling a revolutionary tuber. "Soon", he whispered to the nascent growth, "you'll nourish emperors and paupers alike."
Liu Ren marvelled at his lord's duality—the extortionist prince tender as a wet nurse with seedlings. The southern magistrates' salaries paled against this subterranean gambit.
As midday sun gilded the capital, two women sipped poisoned chrysanthemum tea while weaving fresh intrigues, and two brothers—one auditing silver, the other nursing shattered pride—steeled themselves for their endless lethal waltz.
The Price of Loyalty
Consort Chen, sovereign mother of Prince Xu and undisputed matriarch of the imperial harem, commanded cautious deference from all who stood before her.
"You have always been a dutiful child," Consort Chen purred, her jewelled fingers tightening around Fu Xianxian's trembling hands. She wove a tapestry of lamentations—Ye Changfeng's tribulations in quelling famine, the Chen clan's dwindling coffers stretched thin in support, and the mountain of debts her son had accrued—each thread subtly embroidering her true design: the plundering of her daughter-in-law's dowry.
"Mother Consort…?" Fu Xianxian's voice frayed to a whisper, her doe eyes widening in mortification.
To covet a bride's dowry on the morrow of her wedding—even the meanest peasant would deem such avarice grotesque. Yet here stood the empire's foremost consort, her silken words baring teeth sharper than any market hag's.
"Our house withers like autumn leaves," the consort sighed, a single tear tracing the powder on her cheek. "Without your golden heart to sustain him, how shall my Feng'er weather this winter of his fortunes?"
Cornered between filial piety and ruin, Fu Xianxian acquiesced. Her bridal coffers—a staggering two million taels in silver, augmented by treasures meant for her sister Fu Yuanyuan—constituted a dowry of unparalleled opulence in the Great Shang realm. Yet scarcely had this gilded pride taken root before she found herself bleeding coins and casting jewels into her husband's fiscal abyss.
At twilight's blush, Ye Changfeng arrived at Prince Qian's manor, his retinue bearing caskets that clinked with the weight of betrayal. Two million taels' worth of gold ingots, nephrite carvings, and sea-silk banknotes passed from clenched fists to greedy palms.
"The ledger clears this night, Elder Brother," proclaimed Ye Ling, running calloused fingers over a jadeite figurine with a merchant's avaricious glee.
No sooner had the last chest thudded upon marble than Ye Changfeng's blade flashed. Before Ye Ling's amused gaze, he severed the traitorous assassin's head from its shoulders, arterial spray painting the courtyard stones.
"Let this spectacle instruct all who kneel before Prince Xu!" Ye Ling's mockery rang across the ashen-faced guards.
"Cease your mummery, Ye Ling," Ye Changfeng snarled, wiping his blade on the corpse's robes. "This cur's end was mercy."
"Mercy wears many masks," Ye Ling countered, sweeping a magnanimous hand toward the trembling retinue. "The Dragon Guard's gates yawn wide for men who prefer loyalty rewarded in gold rather than blood!" With a showman's flourish, he directed his men to bear the plunder inward, tossing a final barb: "Let the haul be portioned—tonight, even the lowliest porter shall taste silver!"
Alone amidst the settling dust, Ye Changfeng ground his vow between his teeth: "By heaven's wrath, Ye Ling—every tael shall return thricefold!"
The echo of Ye Ling's laughter curled like smoke through the colonnades: "How poverty-stricken your vengeance, Brother. Unlike your delayed theatrics, I collect debts when they're freshest."
The spoils—gold that glowed like captive sunlight, jade that held twilight in its depths, and pearls luminous as moon-drunk tears—stood testament to imperial extravagance. Yet for now, their gleam illuminated only the conqueror's vaults.
Gilded Shadows and Seedling Light
Liu Ren's guffaws ricocheted across the courtyard as he mimicked Prince Xu's stewing rage—"His face turned the hue of funeral ash!"—while Matron Rong clucked approvingly. Fu Yuanyuan stood statue-still, her soul withering under the revelry. Each boast about Ye Ling's triumph hammered nails into her certainty: had she blinded herself to a phoenix while fixating on carrion crows?
Within the treasury's golden gloom, Ye Ling crouched amidst his plunder like a dragon atop hoarded moonlight. His fingers danced over artefacts—a Tang-dynasty mirror swallowing candle flames into its mercury depths and a Mughal dagger crusted with pigeon-blood rubies. "Three generations of imperial taxes couldn't match this," he murmured, breath fogging a jadeite hairpin carved with intertwined carp.
"My lord..." Green Dancer materialized from shadowed archways, her brow furrowed like crumpled silk parchment. "This wealth is poisoned honey. The First Prince's humiliation demands bloodier—"
"—demands we build higher walls!" Ye Ling sprang up, the hairpin catching fire in lamplight as he threaded it through her ebony tresses. "Let Consort Chen's spies report how her stolen jewels now crown my queen."
The opened chest exhaled opulence: cloisonné peacocks preening emerald tail feathers and diamond-studded hair combs mimicking frost patterns. Green Dancer's hands—more familiar with ledger quills than gemstones—hovered uncertainly. These months had unveiled her metamorphosis: the courtesan's sway replaced by a chancellor's cunning. Under her stewardship, crab paste workshops frothed by eastern docks while grapevines conquered northern hillsides, yet she persisted in wearing the same three silver hairpins like a penitent nun.
"Such...excess..." Her protest dissolved as Ye Ling pressed a rosewood casket into her palms. Within nested twelve zodiac hairpins—the Rat's eyes twin black pearls, the Dragon's claws clutching miniature golden orbs.
"Register these beyond the household accounts," he commanded, already drifting toward his rice nursery where embryonic shoots strained toward sunlight. "The remainder—"
A rustle of damask interrupted. Fu Yuanyuan hovered at the threshold, her apricot robes swallowing sunlight like parched earth. The carp hairpin in Green Dancer's hair glinted—*her* carp hairpin, from the dowry abandoned when they'd bundled her into Qian Palace as recompense, not bride.
"Does the Fu jewel seek an audience?" Green Dancer's voice frosted, recalling moonlit screams when this pampered noble had believed assassins' honeyed lies over her lord's inconvenient truths.
"I...came to beg forgiveness..." Fu Yuanyuan's gaze clung to the hairpin's liquid gleam, its dancing fish mocking her reduced state. No bridal songs had heralded her arrival—just two eunuchs dumping her trousseau in mouldering storerooms. Now, even her childhood treasures adorned this upstart concubine.
Beyond latticed windows, Master Lu's apprentices swarmed around grotesque contraptions—a bronze behemoth with rotating blades for rendering tubers into snowdrift starch and twin iron rollers that spat golden noodle strands. Ye Ling's schematics promised revolution: potato crisps to tempt imperial banquets, pickled roots preserved in ceramic urns bound for maritime trade.
But in the amber-lit corridor, two women duelled through the silent language of jewels—one armoured in newfound authority, the other disarmed by unravelling pride. As seedling trays overflowed with green promise and workshops hummed with metallic industry, the true cultivation unfolded in hearts fertilized by resentment and ambition.
Sickle of Illusions
The jade hairpin's glacial shimmer taunted Fu Yuanyuan through Green Dancer's midnight tresses—a stolen relic from her mothballed dowry chest, now gleaming like hoarfrost upon a thief's diadem.
"Preserve your contrition for worthier altars." Green Dancer's mirth cascaded like shattered porcelain, delicate yet cutting. "Last eve's mummery filled our granaries with Prince Xu's penitent gold and your sister's bridal ransom."
Each syllable flayed Fu Yuanyuan's poise like silk beneath razors. The displayed treasures—onyx bracelets carved with phoenix resurrection and moonstone pendants cradling captured starlight—were ancestral vows meant to sanctify *her* nuptial bed, now desecrating a concubine's dressing table.
"How…auspicious…" Fu Yuanyuan's obeisance wavered as she withdrew, her palms blooming crimson crescents where nails breached flesh.
Matron Rong observed the retreating silhouette. "Shall we administer balm to her festering pride, madam?"
"Let humiliation prune her delusions," Green Dancer decreed, tilting a diamond-studded hand to catch prismatic fire. "She covets a phantom throne in Prince Xu's defiled bed? Let reality's scalpel excise such cancerous dreams." A thread of mercy surfaced. "Post sentinels by her moon gate—we'll not entertain another 'tragic' descent into koi ponds."
In the chrysanthemum-scented pavilion where shadows conspired, Consort Chen reclined beneath peonies that devoured light like carmine vampires. "The babbling stream has been dammed?" she enquired, sipping broth steeped with ginseng and fresh malice.
"Fed to Qian Palace's carrion beetles," Ye Changfeng spat, his molars grinding at the memory of clinking tribute. "That cretin guzzles our ancestral silver like swill!"
"Guzzles?" The consort's nail—lacquered the hue of dried blood—traced her cup's crackled glaze. "A drowning man clutches at pearls. Why else strip you bare but to plug Lingnan's haemorrhaging coffers?" Her chuckle slithered through sandalwood smoke. "The fool wove his noose with that agricultural vow. When his 'three-thousand-pound marvels' prove chimeric…"
"You deem his crops mere phantoms?"
"Can chaff impersonate golden grain?" Consort Chen's voice honed to a surgeon's scalpel. "Had he truly coaxed miracles from mud, would he paw through your purse like a starveling cur? Chronicle the days—when his theatrical sprouts fail their solstice debut, we'll stage his deception as lese-majesty."
Her son's sluggish wit drew a terse sigh. These days, even scullery maids dissect plots with keener blades. Beyond cinnabar walls, tender rice shoots quivered in their porcelain cradles—verdant infants oblivious to their conscription in this war of illusions.
Aureate Frailties and Earthbound Verity
The spoon-gilded duo could scarcely conceive that Ye Ling's voracity sprang not from necessity but pure covetousness—a dragon amassing treasure for the primal thrill of possession.
"Your sagacity pierces veils of deception, Imperial Mother," Ye Changfeng murmured, kneading Consort Chen's brocade-swathed limbs with sacerdotal devotion. "We'll etch his perfidy in censorial jade tablets. Let his silver hoard choke on its futility."
The fantasy of three-thousand-*dan* curdled his patrician blood. Such agrarian heresy belonged to mud-stained folktales, not the Son of Heaven's court.
Consort Chen's vermilion-tipped finger circled her son's strained meridians. "Your nuptial chambers accumulate sorrow-dust, Feng'er. The Fu family's gold oils our machinations—shall their gem tarnish through neglect?"
His muscles stiffened. Homecoming meant confronting Fu Xianxian's jasmine-scented overtures—her artless caresses kindling conflagrations his treacherous vessel failed to douse. How justifiable are nights poring over Sun Tzu while bridal quilts lie cold?
"Let the court deem me a filial zealot," he parried, vocal cords taut as zither strings. "Feigned devotion disarms suspicion's blade."
Yet truth coiled between them like incense smoke—the shame of unsullied sheets, of nuptial wine transmuted to gall. Fu Xianxian's recent "slip" during dawn obeisances, her silks pooling like lotus petals, had sent him fleeing to ancestral tablets to beg impotent eunuch spirits for intervention.
"Seasons turn," Consort Chen offered hollowly, "as do... corporal tides." Her gaze skirted his like a swallow avoiding storm clouds.
Beyond scarlet ramparts, rumours fermented like millet wine. Market crones swore to spectral grain transactions; venal stewards perjured themselves with tales of phantom harvests. The capital's atmosphere curdled with falsehoods, each more baroque than the last.
Unaware of gathering thunderheads, Ye Ling crouched in imperial loam—fingers blackened by fertile mire as he measured potato stem intervals. His experimental fields sprawled across the Emperor's private demesnes, guarded by terrain and tiger-masked sentinels. Jadeite waves of foliage rippled toward distant hills, subterranean tubers swelling like clandestine conspiracies.
The summons arrived at zenith hour—a sweat-drenched eunuch disrupting nitrogen calculations. As Ye Ling's carriage jolted toward vermilion gates, he discerned twin omens: Revenue Minister Pei Xiu's grain-regulating smirk and Works Minister Lie Xin's agrarian tool clutched like a sceptre. Their synchronized advance reeked of choreographed indictment.
Within the Hall of Celestial Accord, the Emperor's jade tablet tapped a staccato dirge. Beyond latticed windows, potato blossoms whitened like mourning silk.
Tempest's Harvest
The ministers exchanged perfunctory bows with Ye Ling as they entered the Hall of Celestial Accord, where the Six Ministries and Nine Courts sat arrayed like chess pieces awaiting slaughter. Ye Ling's placement beside Ye Changfeng reeked of orchestrated humiliation—a lamb tethered beside a wolf in scholar's robes.
"Sixth Brother graces us," Ye Changfeng's voice oozed saccharine malice. "Our Imperial Father's visage today mirrors the skies before the typhoon's wrath."
"Perhaps the weight of governance fatigues even dragons," Ye Ling countered mildly, observing how Consort Chen's jackals—Fu Hai's curled lip, Chen Huai's twitching jade thumb ring—had gathered like vultures scenting carrion.
The emperor's protracted silence thickened the air with portent. Beneath ceremonial silks, Ye Ling's palms grew slick. Though his potato and sweet potato stalks had burgeoned under meticulous care, nature's caprice remained—one blight could unravel both agrarian revolution and imperial favour.
"Sons and stewards of the realm", the Emperor's voice finally cleaved the tension like a ceremonial blade, "does wisdom illuminate this convocation's purpose?"
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court struck first: "Does Your Majesty adjudicate the rumours of Qianwang's agricultural deceit?"
"Deceit?" Minister Fu Hai's barked laughter echoed like cracked temple bells. "This purveyor of three-thousand-*dan* fantasies—a wine-soaked mountebank befouling the Dragon Throne!"
Ye Changfeng spread supplicant hands. "I entreat mercy for Sixth Brother's...youthful exuberance in agricultural conjectures."
The chamber buzzed with derisive murmurs until eunuchs staggered in bearing bamboo panniers. Ye Ling's breath caught—the displayed tubers appeared woefully inadequate: egg-sized curiosities dwarfed by sporadic fist-sized anomalies.
"These constitute your celestial harvest?" The Emperor's gold-leafed nails drummed the throne's carved dragons.
"Potatoes to the left, sweet potatoes to the right—as previously exhibited," Ye Ling affirmed, throat parched as summer-baked clay.
Chen Huai's mockery led the cacophony: "Three thousand *dan*? These wouldn't satiate a beggar's hunger!"
As scorn cascaded like monsoon rains, the Chief Eunuch unfurled a silk scroll with funereal gravitas. "By Imperial Mandate—the yield quantification of Prince Ye Ling's experimental cultivation!"
The hall stilled. Ye Changfeng's knuckles whitened on the chair arms, anticipating the sweet snap of vertebrae. Beyond lattice screens, unseen potato blossoms trembled—their ivory petals fluttering like surrender flags...or bridal veils awaiting revelation.
*Historical Note: 1 Chinese *dan* ≈ 60 kilograms in Ming-Qing measurements. The three-thousand-*dan* claim equates to approximately 180 metric tons per hectare—an ambitious but historically plausible yield for optimized New World crop cultivation.*
Culinary Alchemy and Imperial Revelations
"Do these pitiful yields merit such fanfare?" Fu Hai's sneer slithered through the hall like venom.
"Let compassion temper censure—Sixth Brother's intentions, though misguided, sprang from noble soil," Ye Changfeng interposed, his magnanimity as hollow as a ceremonial gong.
Derisive chuckles rippled through the assembly while Ye Ling stared at the baskets, perplexed. His rigorous seed curation should have yielded specimens surpassing these.
The chief eunuch's declaration cleaved the mockery: "Three thousand five hundred *catties* per *mu* for potatoes, three thousand two hundred for sweet potatoes." Attendants swept aside the superficial layer, unveiling subterranean leviathans—each tuber broader than a warrior's shield.
"Three thousand five hundred?"
"Heresy!"
The chamber petrified, officials gaping like beached fish. Fu Hai's jowls quivered. "A scribe's drunken error, surely?"
"Imperial estate ledgers tolerate no fallacy," the eunuch thundered.
"Fortuna's fleeting smile grants no laurels!" Fu Hai spat, though his bluster withered like frost-nipped blossoms.
Ye Changfeng's complexion paled to funerary jade, his facade of fraternal warmth crumbling to reveal serpentine malice. This agrarian sorcery defied celestial order—no earthly crop burgeoned thus!
"Elder Brother's visage suggests...discontent?" Ye Ling enquired, his smile radiating solar brilliance against gathering thunderheads.
Ye Changfeng's breath rasped as though inhaling ground glass.
"But dare we consume these grotesqueries?" Chen Huai seized the pivot.
"Uncharted flora invites mortal peril," a minister echoed, clutching his jade belt pendant like a protective talisman.
The Emperor's voice stilled the tempest. "We convene not merely to witness terrestrial marvels but to feast upon heaven's bounty. Ling'er—unveil your gastronomic wizardry."
"These humble roots bend to fire's kiss and blade's caress—fried golden as phoenix plumes, steamed tender as courtesan's sighs, even transmuted into ambrosial noodles," Ye Ling proclaimed, cradling a potato like a sceptre of sovereignty.
"Mountebank's prattle!" Fu Hai scoffed. "Let acrid reality scour pretence clean."
"Imperial Father—grant this unworthy son the work to conduct an edible symphony!"
The Emperor's nod unleashed bedlam. Ministers trailed Ye Ling to the kitchens like pilgrims pursuing culinary revelation.
The imperial chef kowtowed as nobility invaded his sanctum. "Your Highness...these exalted lords..."
"Arise," Ye Ling commanded, shedding ceremonial robes to reveal forearms corded with unexpected muscle. "Today, these hands shall duel with dough and flame."
"But...Your Highness...culinary arts?" The chef's whisper dissolved as Ye Ling seized a cleaver—its blade catching sunlight like a challenge hurled at cosmic order. Beneath royal fingers, lumpen tubers began their apotheosis from peasant gruel to ambrosia, their sizzle singing a ballad of revolution.
To be continuous…