Chapter 57
LIN QINGYU WAS determined to assassinate Xiao Cheng in this lifetime. Back when Gu Fuzhou was Lu Wancheng, they’d attempted that once, only to be met with failure.
Things were different now, though. Back then, they couldn’t even enter the palace, whereas now Gu Fuzhou was the leader of Great Yu’s military officials, and Lin Qingyu was a court physician attending the emperor himself. They’d gotten to know Shen Huaishi too, and the shadow guard would play a key role in their plan.
Lin Qingyu figured that their odds of success and failure were equal. If they succeeded, Lin Qingyu would try to keep the emperor alive until the moment Xiao Cheng died. By then, Gu Fuzhou would have involved Xiao Jie in their ploy. The emperor, distraught over Xiao Cheng’s passing, would no longer direct his energies toward Gu Fuzhou’s marriage. And if he still cared, Lin Qingyu would send him on his way before he could issue an imperial edict about such a marriage, which would leave Xiao Jie the only royal eligible for the throne.
If their plan failed, and both the crown prince and the emperor survived, Gu Fuzhou’s betrothal would be inevitable. Since the general was so reluctant to wed anyone else, Lin Qingyu thought that helping him avoid it…wouldn’t be so bad. Lin Qingyu wouldn’t be discharged from his post—not while the emperor was still sick, unless His Majesty decided he’d had enough of this life. Even if Lin Qingyu married Gu Fuzhou again, he could continue to study and research at the Imperial Academy of Medicine. At any rate, this wouldn’t be the pair’s first time getting married. They could always decide who the bride would be later.
By the time they’d finished hashing out their plan, nearly three hours had passed. Gu Fuzhou sat cross-legged on the bottom bunk, yawning. “It’s already so late, Qingyu—I’m sure the doors of my residence are closed. Can I stay over tonight?”
Lin Qingyu scoffed. “As if they won’t open the doors for you when you get back.”
Gu Fuzhou laughed. “If I want to stay, I have to give you a reason, don’t I?”
“If you want to stay over, you can—but you’re sleeping on the top bunk,” Lin Qingyu replied. He’d slept in that bunk every night back when Lu Wancheng’s health was deteriorating, and climbing up and down had been a hassle.
Gu Fuzhou shot up where he sat and straightened the bedsheets. “Here you go, sir,” he said, then effortlessly vaulted up to the top bunk.
Once they’d gotten into the bunk bed, one above the other, it was like going back to one of the nights they’d spent in the marquess’s residence. They’d passed some of those nights chatting before going to sleep. Lu Wancheng had told Lin Qingyu stories from his hometown and sometimes taught him phrases in its dialect, or they’d put their heads together and made wicked plans. On other nights, when Lu Wancheng was jerked into wakefulness by the poison flowing through his veins, Lin Qingyu climbed down from the top bunk and gently cradled Lu Wancheng in his arms.
After Lu Wancheng’s death, Lin Qingyu had slept alone on the bottom bunk for a long time. He’d always slept fitfully, his heart hollow in his chest. Now that someone was finally sleeping above him, it felt as if his heart had filled to the brim.
They had just finished planning the assassination of their nation’s monarch—an affair of great consequence—yet Lin Qingyu remained strangely calm. Even if they’d be walking a path without a clear end, surrounded by ravenous wolves and risking their lives with the slightest misstep, he had nothing to fear as long as Gu Fuzhou was by his side.
The bed creaked loudly as Gu Fuzhou rolled over to look down at the bottom bunk. “Qingyu, are you asleep?”
Lin Qingyu kept his eyes shut. “I am.”
“Cool.” Gu Fuzhou chuckled. “I just thought of something. Did you and Shen Huaishi see the symbol I left you?”
In the original plot of the novel, Lin Qingyu was made an imperial physician after Lu Wancheng’s death as a reward for concocting a cure for the epidemic. He later ran into Shen Huaishi once in the Imperial Academy of Medicine. But without having Gu Fuzhou’s reminder, the original Lin Qingyu hadn’t paid much attention to Shen Huaishi, which ultimately led to the young imperial physician taking his own life in the Eastern Palace.
“I saw it.” It was thanks to that symbol that Lin Qingyu and Shen Huaishi had gradually gotten to know each other. “I heard that only members of the Tianyu Sect would recognize it.”
“Shen Huaishi only cares about two things: Xiao Cheng and the Tianyu Sect,” Gu Fuzhou said. “The Tianyu Sect’s destruction is his greatest weakness, and the reason Xiao Cheng had to win Shen Huaishi’s heart back.”
Gu Fuzhou had had a purpose in carving the cryptic symbol belonging to the Tianyu Sect on the wooden medicine chest he gave Lin Qingyu. When Shen Huaishi saw the symbol, he would assume that Lin Qingyu was affiliated with the Tianyu Sect and thus keep him from dying in the Eastern Palace.
“Did Xiao Cheng single-handedly cause the Tianyu Sect’s destruction?” Lin Qingyu mused.
Leaning back, his hands behind his head, Gu Fuzhou answered with uncharacteristic seriousness. “The Tianji Guard and the Tianyu Sect were both packs of the emperor’s henchmen, but one was a widely known organization, while the other worked behind the scenes. Under the surface, animosity brewed between the groups. The Tianji Guard had long worked against the Tianyu Sect, to the indignance of its leader—Shen Huaishi’s father.
“The leader of the Tianyu Sect banked everything on Xiao Cheng, who was close friends with Shen Huaishi. He favored Xiao Cheng in secret and helped him accomplish a number of things. All of this was so that Xiao Cheng could take the throne and make the Tianyu Sect the most powerful such group in the nation. Back then, Xiao Cheng hadn’t yet become crown prince.”
The overly close relationship between a sect of shadow guards and a prince was absolutely forbidden. Shen Huaishi’s father, the sect leader, thought that he’d been secretive about the matter, but the Tianji Guard managed to collect proof of his actions, which they submitted to the emperor. The battle for crown prince had almost ended at that point, with Xiao Cheng a hairsbreadth from the position.
The emperor had acknowledged Xiao Cheng’s capabilities and knew for certain that he was the wisest choice for crown prince, but by covertly assisting the crown prince in the battle for the throne, the Tianyu Sect had challenged the emperor’s authority. Thus, Xiao Cheng’s father showed him an imperial edict announcing that the title of crown prince was being bestowed upon him. “I will authorize this imperial edict with my jade seal once the Tianyu Sect is destroyed,” the emperor told him.
“Does that mean Xiao Cheng was behind the Tianyu Sect’s demise?” Lin Qingyu asked.
“Well, to be fair, it was the emperor behind it. Xiao Cheng got cold feet at the last second because of his longtime friendship with Shen Huaishi. Unfortunately, that happened too late. The Tianji Guard didn’t lose any time following the emperor’s orders, and they did what Xiao Cheng couldn’t bear to do. Xiao Cheng was almost kicked out of the running for crown prince over his hesitation as well. When the North King set his sights on Princess Jingchun, Xiao Cheng had to let the love of his life go in order to retain the emperor’s favor. He regretted having shown mercy and blamed everything on Shen Huaishi.” Gu Fuzhou scoffed. “Xiao Cheng lost the love of his life, while Shen Huaishi merely lost everyone in his family—how insignificant in comparison, right?”
“How do you know all this?” Lin Qingyu couldn’t help but ask. “From historical materials in your hometown?”
“Nothing like that,” Gu Fuzhou answered casually. “Everything—from your fate to Xiao Cheng and Shen Huaishi’s tangled love-hate relationship—is written in a novel called Huai’s Revenge on the Monarch. I had the good luck to read that story—a fantastical romance unrivaled in my era—to the end.”
“Huai’s Revenge on the Monarch?” Lin Qingyu repeated, sneering. “No wonder Xiao Cheng and Shen Huaishi were the main characters.”
“Yeah. The events of the book revolve around them.”
After hearing Gu Fuzhou’s lengthy explanation, Lin Qingyu had a question. “If you don’t like men, why would you read a book like that?”
“Now that you’ve brought this up, forget about sleep.” Gu Fuzhou sat up, looking incredulous—as if he’d been deceived. “My cousin recommended the book to me. She told me that it was the story of a shadow guard who got stronger and rose to greatness against the odds. The title sounded pretty cool, so I read the first page—and the rest is history.”
Lin Qingyu was perplexed. “But didn’t something seem wrong when you started to read it? How come you finished it anyway?”
“Something seemed off, true—but Shen Huaishi had it so rough that I wanted to swear a blue streak as I read. I really wanted to get to the day when he became powerful. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t bring myself to,” Gu Fuzhou complained. “Do you know what that feels like? I was lobbing curses every time I flipped a page, but I couldn’t stop reading for a moment. I got to the end before I knew it.”
Lin Qingyu didn’t understand the feeling Gu Fuzhou described. If he had happened across such a novella, he wouldn’t have read past the first page. “How did things end for them in the novel?”
“Shen Huaishi turned heel after learning the truth. I explained what that phrase means before, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“He vowed to avenge his family, but on the verge of success, he hesitated. He didn’t land the final blow, instead escaping the Eastern Palace to roam the land in solitude. Only after he left did Xiao Cheng finally realize that he cared about his shadow guard, and he stopped at nothing to force Shen Huaishi to come back to him—even dismissing his harem and placing the recaptured Shen Huaishi under house arrest.
“One day, Shen Huaishi finally had the chance to take his revenge, only for Xiao Cheng—who had become emperor—to bare his chest to the shadow guard, uttering the classic quote, ‘Kiss me, and I’ll give you both the nation and my life.’ And then…Shen Huaishi was touched, you hear me? Touched! He forgave Xiao Cheng and became Great Yu’s first male empress, and they lived happily ever after.”
Gu Fuzhou still remembered how he felt when he’d finished the book. It was hard to put into words.
After listening to that entire story, Lin Qingyu quickly put the information he had together and reached a conclusion. If he wanted to finish off Xiao Cheng before the emperor could issue an imperial edict on Gu Fuzhou’s marriage, he needed to do two things. First, he had to expose the truth behind the destruction of the Tianyu Sect to Shen Huaishi as soon as possible. Second, he had to ensure that Shen Huaishi wouldn’t show Xiao Cheng last-minute mercy.