Mo Yan arrived gasping for breath only to find Prince Yu standing alone outside the palace gates. His hands and feet immediately turned cold with fear. Had he arrived too late? “This servant greets Your Highness. Has Your Highness seen His Majesty?”
“What exactly happened to Imperial Brother?” Feng Xuanzhen’s brows were tightly drawn together. Every expression Feng Xuanyi had worn moments earlier seemed branded into his heart with a red-hot iron.
“Your Highness doesn’t know. Last night… last night, Her Majesty the Empress…” For a moment Mo Yan did not know where to begin. After choking on the words for a long time, he finally went straight to the heart of it. “He took his own life.”
“What?!” Nalan Xuan? How could that possibly be true? The last traces of Feng Xuanzhen’s sleepiness vanished instantly. It felt as though a thunderbolt had struck directly above his head, leaving his vision white and his mind unable to believe what he had heard.
“Last night, Xiao Dezi from Fengyi Palace suddenly requested an audience with His Majesty. His Majesty had selected Noble Attendant Han’s tablet and was staying in Yonghe Palace, but in the middle of the night he hurried away. This servant arrived late, so I do not know exactly what happened between them. I only know that, in the end, Her Majesty the Empress jumped from this palace wall. His Majesty turned around and left without a word. This servant did not dare create a disturbance, so the news has been suppressed until now.” Sweat poured endlessly from Mo Yan’s forehead. Even though he was not speaking before the emperor himself, some of the wording leaving his mouth could easily earn him a charge of grave disrespect. “But morning court is about to begin, and the officials will soon be waiting here, while His Majesty… Your Highness, please think of something. What are we supposed to do?”
What else could they do? Feng Xuanzhen knew perfectly well that Mo Yan spent every day at his imperial brother’s side and understood him almost as well as the man understood himself. To claim Mo Yan knew nothing about the circumstances was impossible. But knowing something and being permitted to say it aloud were two entirely different matters. They could investigate what had happened later. The urgent problem now was morning court.
“Judging by Imperial Brother’s condition just now, there will be no morning court today. Send someone to inform everyone that court is canceled because Imperial Brother is unwell and needs to remain in bed. Also summon an imperial physician so the explanation appears credible. As for any officials already on their way here, you will have to remain here a while longer. If anyone arrives, repeat exactly what I told you and send them home.” Feng Xuanzhen had countless questions and was equally unsettled himself, but he knew that if even he lost control now, the entire court might truly descend into chaos. “I’ll go inside and check on him.”
“But His Majesty isn’t in Yuliu Palace. This servant just came from there and did not encounter him along the way—”
“Imperial Brother naturally won’t be there.” After something this serious, especially when it involved that person, where else could Imperial Brother possibly go now?
Feng Xuanzhen said nothing further. He turned and headed straight for Moon-Embracing Palace.
Moon Lake at Moon-Embracing Palace had always been Nalan Xuan’s favorite place. He had once said the palace had been given a fitting name, that the lake was beautiful, and that the pavilion complemented the scenery perfectly. He had always enjoyed sitting there, even when he did nothing more than sit quietly in the pavilion alone and stare into space. He never seemed to tire of it. At the time, he had been pregnant, and no matter how anyone tried to persuade him, he still insisted on standing there, so Feng Xuanyi had ordered someone to install a swing for him.
Feng Xuanyi ran his fingers along the cold iron chains, tracing every section of their texture. The swing seat had been polished from the finest agarwood. Blood-red hibiscus bloomed and swayed in the wind, while Moon Lake remained perfectly still from shore to shore. The beautiful scenery remained, infinite and unchanged, yet the person who belonged within it was no longer there.
Why…
He wouldn’t leave me…
He wouldn’t!
“Imperial Brother.” As expected, Moon-Embracing Palace was completely deserted, and the interior looked almost as though it had been looted, leaving behind only scattered debris from a hurried departure. By Moon Lake, Feng Xuanzhen found his imperial brother exactly where he had expected. It had not been his imagination. The sorrow and grief surrounding Feng Xuanyi seemed to have burst through a dam and become impossible to contain, while all the dominance that normally surrounded him had vanished in an instant.
“Eighth Brother, why are you here?” When Feng Xuanyi saw Feng Xuanzhen, he seemed surprisingly normal, looking at his worried younger brother with genuine confusion.
“Imperial Brother, the dead cannot return to life—” Feng Xuanzhen had not even finished the sentence before Feng Xuanyi sprang violently to his feet and shouted.
“Insolence! What nonsense are you saying?!” Feng Xuanyi had never dared speak that word aloud himself. It had become a taboo, a curse. As long as he refused to say it, perhaps it did not exist. He knew perfectly well that this was self-deception, yet he could not stop himself from sinking into it.
He seized Feng Xuanzhen by the collar and slammed him against one of the pavilion pillars. His eyes were bloodshot with fury. “What do you mean, ‘the dead cannot return to life’?! Who died? Who are you cursing? Say it again and see what happens! Even if you are my younger brother, I will not tolerate it!”
For Feng Xuanyi and Feng Xuanzhen, whose bond had always been closer than that of many brothers born from the same mother, words like these went far beyond a simple quarrel.
“Imperial Brother…”
Feng Xuanzhen had never seen his imperial brother like this. Before today, had anyone told him that his Fifth Brother would one day become a genuine lovesick fool, he would merely have laughed at how thoroughly that person had been deceived by Feng Xuanyi’s outward reputation for indulgence and romantic affairs. Feng Xuanzhen had known since childhood that his Fifth Brother was different from all their other brothers. Their eldest and second brothers were both exceptional men, yet whenever either stood beside Fifth Brother, they inevitably seemed diminished. To possess ability and make certain the entire world knew of one’s wisdom and decisiveness was only lesser talent. To possess extraordinary ability yet endure obscurity and criticism, bury oneself deep within the mud, and disguise oneself as the exact opposite of what one truly was—that was genuine greatness. His Fifth Brother had always been that kind of man.
Everyone said Fifth Brother had gained the throne through extraordinary luck, merely sitting back while others fought and collecting the benefit at the end, while Feng Xuanzhen himself had supposedly stumbled by accident into supporting the correct person and thereby obtained his present rank and status. Yet Feng Xuanzhen, who had watched everything from nearby, knew the truth. It had not been luck, nor had Feng Xuanyi simply reaped another person’s rewards. It had been an utterly deliberate strategy: advancing secretly by another route while everyone watched the obvious path, like an oriole waiting behind the mantis that was stalking the cicada. Feng Xuanzhen had personally seen what meticulous calculation meant, what it meant to leave no room for failure, what it meant to hold victory firmly in one’s grasp before acting, and what it meant to prepare before danger arrived. Because he had seen it all, he had never doubted that Fifth Brother would eventually obtain the throne. And precisely because he had watched so closely, he had also known that perhaps everyone else in the world possessed feelings, but Fifth Brother did not. Whether by nature or by choice did not matter. Even if emotion ever truly began to grow inside him, Fifth Brother would surely extinguish that tiny spark before it could become a flame. And yet now…
When Feng Xuanzhen ceased resisting, some of the strength in Feng Xuanyi’s hands faded as well. His gaze drifted far away and lost focus, as though he were looking through Feng Xuanzhen toward years that could never return. “Your mother consort died in childbirth. You were raised by Mother Empress from childhood and grew up beside me in the princes’ residence. You and I grew up together, so you know how Mother Empress treated the two of us compared with Eldest Brother. When I was little, I could never understand it. We were both Mother Empress’s children. We were both legitimate sons whom everyone called incomparably noble, so why was there always such an enormous difference? Eldest Brother had everything, while you and I had nothing. Even though I was her biological son, when it came to you… there was hardly any difference between us.”
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