Chapter 78:
This Venerable One’s Shizun Has a Nightmare
CHU WANNING AND MO RAN spent the night in the same room. Mo Ran heedlessly fell asleep on the floor in no time. Conversely, Chu Wanning’s thoughts were restless and erratic, and he tossed and turned for a long while before he finally dozed off into fitful slumber.
His eyes were closed, and he could hear the howling of wind by his ears.
Chu Wanning opened his eyes to find himself kneeling in the snow.
A dream? Then why did this moment feel so real, as if he had, at some point, actually lived through it?
It was the middle of winter. The sky was dark and gray and heavy with clouds that covered the land and stretched to the distant horizon. The snow had piled up past his ankles, freezing the very ground itself, and even the thick cloak draped across his shoulders couldn’t stave off the bite of winter.
Looking down, he saw a sky-blue cloak lined with fur, sewn with intricate patterns in silver thread. It looked somehow familiar, but between one moment and the next, that feeling slipped away.
Chu Wanning tried to get up, unsure of why he was having this manner of harrowing dream. But it was as if his body was not his own; he continued to kneel motionless on the ground. Even when snow covered his shoulders and specks of ice stuck to his eyelashes, his body still showed no intention of moving.
The quavering voice of an elderly person came from behind him. “Chu-zongshi, it’s getting dark. His Imperial Majesty surely won’t see you today—let’s go back.”
The Chu Wanning in the dream didn’t turn around even as footsteps approached, crunching through the snow, and an umbrella appeared above him.
Chu Wanning heard himself say, “Thank you, Liu-gong. You’re getting on in age, so please head back to the pavilion. I’ll be all right here.”
“Zongshi…”
The elderly voice seemed to want to continue, but Chu Wanning said, “Go on.”
The feeble voice sighed, and heavy steps walked a few paces away. Then they turned back around, and the umbrella reappeared over his head. “This old one will keep Zongshi company.”
Chu Wanning felt his eyes close in the dream, and nothing else was said.
It all seemed so strange, this ridiculous dream of his. The words they uttered were absurd, incomprehensible. What was all this “His Imperial Majesty” and “Liu-gong” nonsense? These inner palace phrases had no place in the cultivation world Chu Wanning knew.
He tried to take in the scenery of the dream through the lowered lashes of this body. The place looked like Sisheng Peak, but some things were different.
The structures were more or less the same, but they were much more lavishly decorated. The corridors surrounding the courtyard were draped with pale violet veils dotted with embroidered stars, and bells carved into the shape of pearl-holding dragons dangled from the roofs. Clear, crisp jingles danced faintly through the air whenever a gust of wind blew past.
He was kneeling facing the main hall, in front of which a row of guards were stationed, wearing uniforms that he had never seen before. He wondered which sect they were from.
The sky gradually darkened, and a line of palace maids, their hair done up in a traditional style, filed out from a side door to light the standing lamps on either side of the palace gate with fair, slender hands. Each lamp was as tall as a person, with nine layers each, including forty-nine haitang-shaped lamps hanging from slender copper branches. Candles at the center of the haitangs glowed brightly, their light scattering on the ground like the starry sky from above, and illuminated the front of the palace with a dazzling radiance.
Finished with her task, the head maid shot Chu Wanning a glare. “It’s freezing out here tonight,” she said, malice in her voice as she smirked coldly. “Who are you putting on that pitiful act for? His Imperial Majesty and the empress are currently delighting in their revelries. You can kneel there for as long as you like; no one will care.”
How impudent!
All Chu Wanning’s life, no one had ever dared to speak to him like that. He opened his mouth angrily, but although the voice that came out was his own, the words spoken were not. “I do not mean to interrupt his leisure, but I truly have important matters to discuss. Please inform him.”
“Who do you think you are? Why should I play messenger for you?” The head maid sneered. “His Majesty and the empress are quite enjoying themselves. Who would dare disturb them? If you really want to see His Majesty, you can stay right there. Maybe he’ll spare you a glance in the morning, hmph.”
The old servant behind Chu Wanning couldn’t take it anymore, and he spoke up in his wavering voice, “Yes, His Majesty favors your mistress, but shouldn’t you still consider to whom you speak? Take at least some care with your words.”
“To whom I’m speaking? Who here at Sisheng Peak doesn’t know that His Majesty hates him more than anyone? What need is there to be respectful toward him?! Bold of a senile old fool to lecture me!” The head maid’s eyes were wide with rage as she called, “Guards!”
“What do you mean to do?!” The feeble old man, back hunched from age, stepped forward to shield Chu Wanning behind himself.
“Extinguish the fire basins,” the palace maid said coyly as she glared at him.
“Right away!”
The guards immediately went to the basins in the courtyard and put out the fires burning within.
Chu Wanning thought to himself that while the maid had a sharp tongue, she wasn’t dumb. With the temperature this painfully cold, she had no need to argue with them or directly do anything. She only had to put out the fire and the courtyard would be as an icy cavern, too cold for even the hardiest individual to tolerate.
The night grew deeper, and music and song drifted without cease from the warmly lit palace.
Chu Wanning was still kneeling. His legs had gone numb long ago.
“Zongshi…go back…” The old servant sounded like he was about to sob. “Please go back—your body can’t take this. You know how His Majesty is. If you fall sick, he probably won’t even send a physician. You have to take care of yourself.”
“This ruined body is hardly worth anything,” Chu Wanning said softly. “If I can only stop him from attacking Kunlun Taxue Palace, I’m willing to die.”
“Zongshi! Wh-why go to such lengths…”
The Chu Wanning in the dream was already greatly weakened. He coughed a few times, but his eyes were clear and bright. “Everything that he is today, all of it was my fault. I…”
He couldn’t finish speaking before he was overtaken by an alarmingly violent coughing fit. Chu Wanning covered his mouth with his sleeve, tasting iron in his throat. When he pulled his hand away, it was covered in blood, crimson against the snow-white world.
“Chu-zongshi!”
“I…”
Chu Wanning still wanted to say something, but black washed over his vision and he collapsed into the snow, unable to hold on any longer.
There was a confused racket by his ear, a sudden chaos. It also seemed very far away, as if separated by layers of fog, oceans apart, and he could barely hear the commotion around him.
Hazily, he heard the old servant yelling in a panic, but he could only catch a few scattered words.
“Your Imperial Majesty! Your Majesty, please… Chu-zongshi, he can’t hold on much longer. Please grant him an audience! This old one will gladly die—”
The disturbance grew and spread. Footsteps came from all around, lights turned on.
The melody of instruments and the sweet voices of songstresses came to an abrupt halt. The palace gates seemed to be flung open, and there was a gust of warm, fragrant air from inside. Chu Wanning felt himself being picked up and brought into the warmth of the palace hall. A large hand touched his forehead, then flinched away as if stung.
A low, familiar voice bellowed dangerously: “Why was this venerable one not informed?”
No one answered.
The man was infuriated, and there was a loud crashing sound of something heavy being smashed. He continued to roar, voice booming like thunder inside the hall. “Are you trying to defy me? He is the master of the Red Lotus Pavilion, this venerable one’s shizun! And not a single one of you came to notify this venerable one that he was kneeling outside? Why was this venerable one not informed?!”
Someone fell to their knees with a thud, quivering all over. It was the head palace maid who had been flouncing about earlier. “This lowly one deserves death. This lowly one saw that Your Majesty and the empress were in good spirits and dared not disturb you…”
The man paced briskly back and forth a few times, but rather than subsiding, his anger only worsened. His black robes, trimmed with gold, billowed across the floor like a dark cloud before finally stilling, and when he spoke again, his voice was twisted. “His constitution is poor; he can’t take the cold. That you made him wait in the snow without informing me, and even…even put out the fire in
the courtyard…”
His voice shook with rage, and he drew in a deep breath before continuing. The words he spoke next weren’t loud, but his tone carried a murderous aura that chilled those present to the bone.
“You wanted to kill him.”
The maid went pale from fright, her head banging repeatedly against the ground until her entire forehead was blue and purple, voice pitching higher through her trembling lips. “No! No! This lowly one wouldn’t dare! Your Majesty! Please have mercy, Your Majesty!”
“Take her to the Platform of Sin and Virtue for execution.”
“Your Majesty! Your Majesty—”
The shrill voice scratched along the inside of his ears like bloodred nails as the dreamscape began to shake and fall apart amidst her terrified shrieking. The scene scattered and disintegrated like the drift of snowflakes.
“Do you have any idea how much effort it took this venerable one to drag him back from the gates of death? Aside from this venerable one, no one is allowed to harm so much as a hair on his head…”