The instant Feng Xuanyi saw what Nalan Xuan had done, his expression changed. Darkness swept across his face, cold enough that a single glance seemed capable of freezing the air.
“Enough of this nonsense! What are you doing?! Get up!” Feng Xuanyi shouted in a low voice, both fists clenched so tightly that he was plainly struggling to suppress an anger on the verge of erupting.
Nalan Xuan did not move at all. He ignored the command completely, wearing an expression that seemed to say Feng Xuanyi could shout as much as he pleased and it would make no difference to him.
Feng Xuanyi had never tolerated defiance and provocation well. Grinding his teeth, he strode forward and seized one of Nalan Xuan’s arms, trying to drag him bodily to his feet. But Nalan Xuan was equally difficult to force. He responded to gentleness, never coercion, and now that he had already reached his own conclusion, sheer stubbornness kept him rooted where he was despite the obvious difference in their strength. No matter how Feng Xuanyi pulled, Nalan Xuan refused to rise. Worse, the struggling only caused the porcelain shards piercing through his robes and flesh to tear the wounds wider. Cold sweat covered Nalan Xuan from the pain of the fragments embedded in his knees, yet he made no sound and stubbornly remained kneeling.
Realizing that pulling him would only worsen the injuries, Feng Xuanyi abruptly released him and ground out every word through clenched teeth. “What exactly do you want?!”
The question seemed to take Nalan Xuan completely by surprise. He first tilted his head in astonishment, then suddenly burst into helpless laughter. His beautiful phoenix eyes curved into crescents, bright and wet with a strange seductive beauty. “What do I want? I’d like to return that question to Your Majesty exactly as it was given to me! Your Majesty, what exactly do you want? What exactly do you want me to do? You may as well say it plainly. As long as it is something I, Nalan Xuan, can do, even if what you want is this unnecessary, burdensome life of mine, I will not hesitate. Take it. Why go through all these elaborate twists and performances?”
“In front of everyone, you behave as though you indulge my every wish and speak to me with endless tenderness, as though you would gladly hand me everything in the world. Behind my back, you plot to put me to death. Ha… why bother? Your Majesty has countless matters of state to attend to. To waste so much thought on something as insignificant as this is truly using great talent on a trivial matter. If the sovereign wants his subject dead, the subject has no choice but to die. One word from you, and I could spill my blood on the spot without complaint. Why trouble Your Majesty personally, and why drag so many innocent lives into it merely to kill me without revealing your hand?!”
“Enough!” Since the day Feng Xuanyi seized the throne, he had never once truly lost his temper with Nalan Xuan, nor had he spoken so much as a single harsh sentence to him. Now, however, he was furious enough to look as though he wanted to find something and permanently silence that endlessly accusing mouth.
“What? Did I strike the truth, so now Your Majesty is furious from embarrassment?” The reigning emperor’s anger now weighed less than a feather in Nalan Xuan’s eyes. He gave a soft, cold snort. “Then I suppose I should ask Your Majesty—to calm your anger.”
“We forbid you from making wild assumptions!”
“Wild assumptions?!” Nalan Xuan found the words almost laughable. “After everything has reached this point, how much longer does Your Majesty intend to hide it? There is no wall in this world through which the wind cannot pass, and even the most meticulous plan can leave one opening. The man himself is already here in the palace. I have verified everything. What is left for Your Majesty to conceal? Is even the right to understand why I am being killed too extravagant a request?”
Faced with Nalan Xuan’s questions, every word sharp as a blade, Feng Xuanyi merely held his expression rigid. After a long silence, the only thing he finally managed to say had nothing to do with any of them. “You’re tired. Rest properly. We will have the imperial physician examine your injuries.”
“Do you dare say that when you planted Xuan Guang in the army and arranged for him to be transferred to my side, it was not to watch me? Do you dare say that the assassination attempt was simply Xuan Guang acting on his own because he had nothing better to do and had absolutely nothing to do with you? Do you dare say that after the assassination failed, you did not seize the opportunity to suppress the Meng clan until the entire family was destroyed? Do you dare say that because you failed to get rid of me, you did not turn your anger on others and destroy Marquis Dingbei Nalan Jian’s clan—the family your own imperial decree had bound to my honor and disgrace? Do you dare say that none of this was planned long ago? Feng Xuanyi! Do you dare?!” Nalan Xuan no longer cared about rank or propriety. If even his life could be handed over so cheaply, what did it matter if he directly spoke the emperor’s personal name? “Or perhaps… no. It has to be! Everything in Prince Rong’s residence was arranged by you from the very beginning. That was only the first step, because you needed a pawn willing to betray everyone and endure every humiliation for nothing more than the word ‘love,’ someone you could plant beside Feng Xuanzhe to cooperate with you from inside and outside! And I was the first idiot under Heaven shameless enough to walk right up and offer myself for you to manipulate!”
“We’ll have Xiao Dezi come in and clean this up for you. Your injuries are not light either. For the next few days, forget about wandering outside the palace. Stay here and recover. Stop spending every day thinking yourself into dead ends.” Feng Xuanyi seemed unwilling to continue arguing and turned to leave. “Even if you refuse to think of yourself, think about the child in your belly. He is innocent. If you insist on tormenting yourself over imagined conclusions, do not drag him into your suffering as well.”
Those words seemed to shatter the last of Nalan Xuan’s pride and dignity. The strength and oppressive force he had forced himself to maintain collapsed in an instant. He sank weakly onto the floor as though his body could no longer bear its own weight, supporting himself with one hand while covering his eyes with the other and laughing upward in desolation. “Ha… hahaha! The child. What a wonderful child! I am a grown man, yet not only must I bear another man’s child, I must bear the child of a man who wanted me dead. Truly unheard of in all the world! Should I thank the thing in my belly as well? If not for this child, would I even have survived long enough to finish saying these words? What a perfect example of ‘a mother rising in status through her son.’ What ridiculous wishful thinking!”
Elio’s Notes: “A mother rises in status through her son” (母憑子貴) is a traditional expression describing a woman gaining prestige because of her son’s position or importance. Nalan Xuan uses the explicitly maternal phrase bitterly here because his pregnancy has become the very thing protecting his own status and life.
Feng Xuanyi’s departing steps paused for only a moment before continuing.
When the hall doors finally closed, Nalan Xuan felt as though his heart had shut just as tightly as those doors. His disappointment in Feng Xuanyi seemed complete. Yet he did not know that this was only the beginning. True despair was only now approaching in silence, ready to destroy the last of his reason and every boundary he had left, and teach him what despair truly meant.
A commotion rose outside. When Xiao Dezi finally entered under imperial orders to attend him, he found his master sitting silently among the broken porcelain. Blood stained the fabric below his knees and mottled the cuffs of his sleeves. His empty eyes stared through the window. There was no shouting and no furious cursing. He seemed once again like the gentle, composed, breathtakingly beautiful master Xiao Dezi knew. Yet although the beauty remained, there was something inexplicably ashen about him now, as though all vitality had drained away.
“Master, what happened?” Xiao Dezi hurried forward to help him up, but seeing all the scattered blood and having no idea where Nalan Xuan was hurt or how badly, he did not know where he could safely touch him. He could only hover helplessly in panic. “Did Master fall? Are you uncomfortable anywhere? Imperial Physician Liu is waiting outside the hall. This servant will summon him immediately.”
Even Xiao Dezi, accustomed to every kind of palace upheaval, had never encountered a scene like this. The bedchamber was wrecked as though a battle had taken place, and remembering the emperor’s iron-gray expression when he left still made Xiao Dezi’s heart tremble.
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