“Wh…” Feng Xuanzhen’s eyes widened in disbelief. Only a single sound escaped him before the rest vanished. He could do nothing but stare in stunned silence at his imperial brother, who had just revealed something earth-shattering with an almost unnaturally calm expression.
A palace secret like this was the kind of thing that, even if true, could only be swallowed in silence along with one’s own broken teeth and blood. Even knowing it meant pretending one did not, much less hearing it directly from one of the people involved. So this was the truth behind why the child Feng Xuanyi had once treasured so intensely had been lost overnight because of an “accident.” It also explained why the imperial physician who had failed to preserve such an important pregnancy had afterward been allowed to retire peacefully and return home completely unharmed. Perhaps it was also the reason Nalan Xuan and Feng Xuanyi, despite the undercurrents constantly moving between them, had managed to remain at peace for so long—only for everything to collapse into something irreparable now.
Yet Feng Xuanyi related such a shocking palace scandal with complete calm. He lowered his head slightly and looked at his empty hands, staring at the faint calluses covering the lines of his palms. A bitter smile touched his lips, carrying a trace of desolation, while grief so dense it seemed impossible to disperse surrounded his entire body.
“Heh… I was the one who pushed him away. Who else is there to blame? It was me…”
That day, inside Moon-Embracing Palace, beside Moon Lake, within the pavilion, the two brothers sat facing one another upon the stone benches and talked for a very, very long time.
Or rather, it was entirely one-sided. Feng Xuanyi poured out everything while Feng Xuanzhen listened, as though all the anger and resentment he had suppressed for so many years finally had to be emptied at once. Feng Xuanyi seemed not to care whether anyone was truly listening, much less who the listener might be. He simply kept asking question after question, then answering every one himself without pause.
Watching him, Feng Xuanzhen grew frightened. For one brief instant, he could not help wondering whether his imperial brother had finally broken beneath Nalan Xuan’s departure—beneath the way Nalan Xuan had chosen death itself to make his resolve unmistakable.
Many things had once gone unspoken because everyone had assumed they understood them anyway. Only now did Feng Xuanzhen realize that this supposed mutual understanding had been nothing more than his own presumption. The twists and causes beneath everything, the schemes layered one upon another and linked ring by ring, were intricate beyond imagination. Feng Xuanyi’s mind had indeed been meticulous—but the phrase “calculated with painstaking intent” was equally true.
Feng Xuanzhen had watched Nalan Xuan along much of his path and could be considered half a confidant to him. Precisely because of that, Feng Xuanzhen had been willing to sincerely befriend someone he had then believed to be nothing more than a lowborn servant, casting aside ordinary prejudice and treating him as a true friend. Feng Xuanzhen had known Nalan Xuan had fallen in love with his Fifth Brother—a man of great talent and ambition who did not understand how to cherish or love another person, a cold-blooded man who weighed everything according to profit and loss. He had pitied Nalan Xuan. He had believed he understood that the road ahead was destined to be bleak, and with Nalan Xuan’s personality, destined to end tragically. Yet before Feng Xuanzhen had ever found the opportunity to warn him, everything had changed abruptly. Without anyone needing to tell him anything, the emperor who supposedly understood nothing of affection had already, at some unknown time and place, become an ordinary “mortal”—a mortal possessed of all seven emotions and six desires yet utterly incapable of expressing them, a mortal who had ultimately left both himself and the person he loved covered in wounds and could now do nothing but regret it.
Feng Xuanzhen did not know how long his imperial brother spoke. Toward the end, perhaps love had turned into grief too deep for words, or perhaps Feng Xuanyi had simply become exhausted. He leaned wearily against the pillar yet stubbornly kept his eyes open, staring toward the palace gates as though waiting for someone who could never return. Finally, he spoke one last sentence, faint as a murmur and almost like a sigh.
“I used to envy you. Or perhaps I should say I was jealous… When he was with you, he could laugh so freely, without holding anything back. He trusted you completely and joked without restraint. But when he was with me… we could never go back to that again…”
The words were spoken evenly, without the slightest rise or fall, yet they sounded more agonizing than any struggle. For a moment, Feng Xuanzhen felt an almost irresistible urge to cry. He hurried to his feet and left without even formally taking his leave, because he was afraid that if he remained another moment, he might actually step forward and comfort that man who had always stood so high above everyone else and permitted no one, at any time, to disrespect or look down upon him.
From beginning to end, Feng Xuanyi had never once used the imperial self-reference reserved for the sovereign. Instead, there had only been the ordinary “I”—the simplest, most commonplace way one person could refer to himself. It was not because he had relaxed his guard before his younger brother or because Feng Xuanzhen had been granted some special privilege. It was because whenever the subject involved Nalan Xuan, whenever it concerned anything connected to him, Feng Xuanyi ceased to be the emperor. All the splendor and majesty fell away, leaving only an ordinary man who had lost the person he loved.
The imperial physician Feng Xuanzhen had hurriedly summoned into the palace had long since been forgotten. Completely bewildered, the man was left waiting in Yuliu Palace to be called into the imperial presence. He remained there for the entire day, and through sheer coincidence his presence became the perfect explanation for why Feng Xuanyi had failed to attend morning court.
For several days afterward, Feng Xuanyi never summoned the physician he himself had not ordered into the palace in the first place. Mo Yan and the others did not dare approach him at a time like this, yet the physician’s continued presence conveniently covered for the cancellation of court during those days. Everyone believed His Majesty was ill. Several important court officials became so anxious they searched everywhere for renowned physicians, yet none were granted an audience. Feng Xuanzhen understood what had truly happened, but could only pretend deafness and blindness. What he had never expected was that Feng Xuanyi’s collapse would last this long—or that a phrase like “utterly defeated” could ever be associated with Feng Xuanyi at all.
When Feng Xuanzhen entered the palace again, he did not even need to think before heading straight for Moon-Embracing Palace. Unsurprisingly, his imperial brother still sat upon the stone bench inside the pavilion beside Moon Lake, exactly as he had when Feng Xuanzhen hurried away several days earlier, as though he had never moved at all. Dark shadows spread beneath his eyes, his entire complexion gray and dull. The dense grief surrounding him had not faded in the slightest; if anything, it had grown heavier. His empty gaze remained fixed upon the swing hanging silently in the air—the swing that would never move again.
“Imperial Brother!” The imperial palace appeared magnificent and dazzling from the outside, but how much filth and corruption lay hidden beneath its beauty was something ordinary people could probably never imagine even a ten-thousandth of. Yet even after growing up in such a place from an early age, Feng Xuanzhen had never seen his imperial brother abandon himself like this. Rather than simple devastation, it looked more like deliberate self-punishment.
“Mo Yan.” Feng Xuanzhen frowned. He had always treated others amiably and had hardly raised his voice at anyone in years, yet even he could not stop himself from directing his anger elsewhere now. “How many days has Imperial Brother been like this?”
“Answering Your Highness, His Majesty has remained like this ever since Your Highness left that day…” Mo Yan was among Feng Xuanyi’s most trusted attendants. Back in Prince Rong’s residence, although he had technically been only a servant, he had long possessed the influence of an uncrowned authority. Everyone knew that Mo Yan’s words represented the prince’s own. There were simply things the prince could say himself and other things inconvenient for him to voice, in which case Mo Yan would speak in his place.
Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps no one beneath heaven other than Feng Xuanyi himself would have dared reprimand Mo Yan. But Feng Xuanzhen no longer cared about such things. His expression changed sharply, and he snapped, “Imperial Brother hasn’t slept or eaten, and you simply let him waste away like this for days? Can none of you distinguish what matters from what doesn’t? You haven’t been serving beside him for only a day or two. What use are any of you?!”
“This servant knows his crime.” Mo Yan immediately knelt. The anxiety on his face was no less intense than Feng Xuanzhen’s. He hesitated, then finally began, “But…”
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