Chapter 19: The Sovereign's Dilemma and the Dragon's Alchemy
**I. The Dragon's Calculus**
Emperor Shang's thoughts swirled like ink in storm-tossed waters. Shadows clung to his golden robes as he paced the dim study. "The people whisper that the Glazed Dragon's sale drained Shang's imperial *qi*," he murmured, the words heavy as ancestral bronze.
Ye Ling leaned against a lacquered pillar, silver certificates spilling from his sleeves like fallen leaves. "Since when do dragons fear peasants' gossip? A ruler's destiny is forged by his own hands, not bound by glass baubles." His laughter rang sharp, scattering the study's oppressive gloom.
**II. Scales of Gold and Shadow**
"Two million taels," the emperor countered, fingers brushing the stacked notes. "Enough to feed ten provinces through winter. Yet..." His gaze drifted to the empty pedestal where the dragon once coiled. "What price a kingdom's soul?"
Ye Ling's grin turned vulpine. "Souls are for poets and priests. These?" He fanned the silver drapes like a peacock's tail. "These are swords and grain and roads. Let Chu hoard their 'imperial qi' trinkets—we'll tax their caravans carrying it home."
**III. The Alchemist's Gambit**
Dawn's first light crept through lattice windows as Ye Ling unveiled his masterstroke. "Why stop at one dragon? Let's forge a dozen—each 'imbued with celestial mandate'. His fingers sketched imaginary serpents in the air. "Sell them to every border lord and coastal princeling hungry for legitimacy."
The emperor's breath caught—visions of endless silver flowing through Shang's coffers, of rival states bankrupting themselves for gilded illusions. "You'd turn myth into minted coin..."
"Already have." Ye Ling tossed a newly forged dragon figurine onto the desk—its scales catching fire in the rising sun. "The kilns never sleep."
**IV. Phoenix's Counterplay**
Beyond the palace, Zhao Linger paced her embassy chambers, the original dragon's prismatic glare mocking her from its sandalwood crate. "Two million for a lie," she hissed, fingering the manifesto draughted for Chu's court. *"The King of Merchants"—"Shang's Mandate Now Flows to Chu."
Her advisor hesitated. "Princess, if they produce more dragons—"
"Then we buy them all!" She snapped, steppe fury igniting. "Empty their vaults until their 'celestial serpents' choke their own markets!"
As the sun climbed, twin strategies unfolded—one weaving gold from superstition, the other seeking to drown a dragon in its own hoard.
The Dragon's Alchemy and the Sovereign's Gambit
**I. The Sovereign's Calculus**
The Glazed Golden Dragons gleamed under the palace's gilded eaves, their crystalline forms shimmering like captured sunlight. "These treasures shall be **'Great Shang Exclusives',**" Ye Ling declared, his voice edged with mercantile zeal. "Only sovereigns may purchase them. Let the world's kings empty their treasuries for these baubles!"
Emperor Shang's fingers traced the dragon's coiled tail, his earlier trepidation dissolving into amusement. "You've turned superstition into a blade, Sixth Son. Selling 'imperial *qi*' as glass trinkets… audacious, even for you."
Ye Ling's grin widened, silver certificates rustling in his sleeve like autumn leaves. "Why stop at one myth? Let's forge a dozen dragons—each 'imbued with celestial mandate'. We'll sell them to every princeling hungry for legitimacy."
**II. The Alchemist's Gambit**
The emperor's gaze lingered on the ledgers. "Salt, spiced crab, potato goods—profitable, but mere *peasant gold*. This…" He tapped the dragon's glass eye. "This is alchemy. You've transmuted sand into sovereign power."
"Luxury is a bubble," Ye Ling countered, his tone abruptly cynical. "We'll inflate it until kings beggar themselves, then vanish before it bursts. Let fools chase 'divine legitimacy'—we'll reap fortunes."
A wry chuckle escaped the emperor. "Crass, yet cunning. You've the soul of a fishmonger, Sixth Son."
"Profit wears no crown, Father," Ye Ling shot back, eyes glinting. "And **this** profit will fund armies, granaries, roads. Let Chu's envoys squander silver on glass; we'll tax their caravans hauling it home."
**III. The Phoenix's Shadow**
The conversation shifted to Chen Yuan, the newly minted Minister of Revenue. "He's no sycophant," the emperor warned, sliding a dossier across the lacquered table. "Raised in palace shadows, tempered in the Hanlin Academy's fires. A rare blade—don't let loyalty rust it."
Ye Ling's smirk faltered. Memories surfaced: a younger Chen Yuan taking lashes meant for a drunken princeling, whispering *"Restraint is strength"* through bloodied lips. "He'll have his role," the prince conceded. "The Mid-Autumn Convocation needs his ledgers… and his spine."
**IV. Twilight of Thrones**
As dusk painted the vermilion walls, the emperor's decree unfurled: *"Let Prince Ye Ling steward the Convocation of Nations. Let him bind commerce to diplomacy, glass to glory."
Yet shadows lingered. "You tread a cliff's edge," the sovereign murmured. "Chen Huai's faction stirs like scorpions in a burned nest. And foreign envoys… their tongues drip honeyed lies and hidden barbs."
Ye Ling's laughter rang sharp. "Then I'll gift them sweeter lies. Let them marvel at our 'celestial dragons' while we map their realms through drunken boasts. Every envoy's weakness is a lever, Father—and I've brought Archimedes' fulcrum."
Beyond the palace, the Glazed Dragons' replicas cooled in imperial kilns—each bubble in the glass a captured dream of power, each golden scale a mirror for kings' vanity.
The Sovereign's Shadow and the Obsidian Decree
**I. The Dragon's Bargain**
Ye Ling's thoughts drifted to Zhao Miaoni—her whispered overtures in moonlit corridors, her serpentine allure veiled beneath silken courtesies. "Your Majesty need not fret," he declared, fingers grazing the obsidian token still warm from the emperor's breast. "I've secured eyes beyond our borders."
Emperor Shang's gaze lingered on his sixth son, a tempest of pride and foreboding. This prince, a tempest cloaked in brocade, had become his keenest blade and most mercurial flame. "The Obsidian Guard answers to you now," he intoned, the token's crimson xuan character glowing like a blood-sealed oath. "Their shadows permeate every alley and audience hall in the capital."
**II. Twilight Gambits**
The token's heft spoke of more than authority—it reeked of desperation. "Chen Huai's faction circles like carrion crows," the emperor warned, vermilion sleeves billowing as he gestured toward moonlit gardens. "Your Glass empire and the Mid-Autumn Convocation make you a jewelled target."
Ye Ling's laughter sliced through the tension. "Let them hunt. I'll peddle their teeth as ivory trinkets." His jest hardened into gravity as he pocketed the sigil. "Though I wonder… how will Your Majesty mollify the Noble Consort?"
"Begone, impudent cub!" The emperor's roar carried more fondness than fury.
**III. Phoenix's Venom**
In the clove-scented gloom of Chunhua Palace, Noble Consort Chen's jade vial glinted—a venomous dewdrop. "Thrones demand more than machinations," she hissed at Crown Prince Ye Changfeng, whose pallor mirrored the waning moon. "Your seed must quicken before that upstart's ambitions blossom!"
The prince recoiled as if branded. "Mother, the physicians counsel—"
"—empty prattle!" Her lacquered nail scored the sandalwood table. "This elixir from Western sorcerers ensures potency. Drink, and sow your heir ere the autumn moon waxes full."
**IV. Shadowplay**
Beyond vermilion walls, the Obsidian Guard stirred. Their commander, a wraith in black-lacquered armour, studied the prince's retreat. "Three dozen shadows to trail him," he ordered, voice like corroded steel. "Double sentinels on Chen estates. Let the Noble Consort's spies see only what we permit."
As midnight bells knelled, twin cabals unfolded—one clutching jade vials and poisoned vows, the other spinning webs of shade and silver. The autumn zephyr bore whispers of impending reckoning, where crystal dragons and onyx daggers would decree an empire's destiny.
The Phoenix's Scarlet Gambit and the Prince's Affliction
**I. The Prince's Crucible**
Ye Changfeng's fingers quivered as they clasped the porcelain vial, its cool surface burning like winter frost. Had any but his mother, Noble Consort Chen, proffered this *panacea*, he would have deemed it a jester's mockery. "This… *prescription*…" he rasped, voice fraying like aged parchment, "is it not akin to dousing wildfire with a thimble's dew?"
The consort's smile honed to a stiletto's edge, veiled in maternal solicitude. "Physicians mend flesh, not fate," she crooned, tracing the vial's gilded motifs. "This draught is no mere tonic—it is *alchemy's last gambit*. Fifty maidens, one night… let their yin tides rekindle your yang inferno."
**II. The Alchemist's Covenant**
The prince's pride curdled at the arithmetic. *Fifty.* A numeral that jeered at his inadequacy. "Mother, even were I able—"
"—*Able*?" The consort's laughter chimed hollow, wind through a sepulchre. "You bear the dragon's blood! Frailty is a minstrel's fable." Her nail drummed the vial, a metronome of dynastic hunger. "These blossoms shall be plucked from frontier hamlets—no whispers, no witnesses. By dawn, their tongues shall be gilded into silence, and your potency… *reforged."
Yet doubt writhed in Ye Changfeng's belly like a starved asp. He envisioned Ye Ling's insouciant grin, that maddening ease with which his brother dominated court and boudoir alike. *This vial,* he brooded, *is either salvation's chalice or damnation's vial.
**III. The Serpent's Bind**
Memories of Fu Xianxian's derisive mirth hissed through his psyche—her knowing glances, the venomous barbs sheathed in courtly decorum. "That adder nurses her toxins well," the consort seethed, crushing a jade hairpin to powder. "But an heir mutes all slander. Once your seed quickens, her fangs turn to dust."
Ye Changfeng's knuckles bleached white around the vial. To sever Fu Xianxian's blade eternally suspended above his crown… to reclaim sovereignty over his manhood's narrative… The vial's weight transmuted from folly to covenant.
**IV. Twilight's Dirge**
As dusk gilded the palace eaves in funeral gold, mother and son spun fresh intrigues. "Chen Huai's disgrace is but a toppled pawn," the consort murmured, eyes sharp as a shrike's. "The Mid-Autumn Convocation looms. Let Ye Ling prance with his crystal serpents—we'll lace his silken tread with scorpions."
Ye Changfeng inclined his head, the vial now a lodestone in his sleeve. His mother's machinations were twin-edged steel, yet what alternative remained? To reign, one must first endure—and endurance demanded sacrifices stranger than fifty faceless girls.
Beyond the lattice, cicadas keened their vesper elegy. In the gardens, a peacock fanned its iridescent plumes—a spectacle of splendour veiling the brittleness beneath.
The Viper's Defiance and the Prince's Shame
**I. The Consort's Vendetta**
Noble Consort Chen's jade comb splintered in her clenched fist, its fractures mirroring her unravelling poise. "How dare that *Jezebel* parade her paramours while I wither beside an ageing emperor?" she hissed, her reflection contorting in the bronze mirror like a vengeful spirit. To her, Fu Xianxian's debauchery transcended mere impropriety—it was a dagger plunged into the heart of dynastic decorum.
"The Fu clan's influence persists," Ye Changfeng cautioned weakly. "Fu Yun now reigns as Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review. Their tendrils still strangle the Five Great Clans."
The consort's chuckle dripped venom. "Rot sets in when roots are starved of light. Let the harlot play her games—until your new bride's lineage eclipses hers." Her scheme unfurled like a poisoned tapestry: marital alliances woven with silken threats, daggers sheathed in bridal veils.
**II. The Prince's Descent**
Ye Changfeng's carriage jolted toward Xuwang Manor, his fists trembling with the memory of Fu Xianxian's laughter—shrill as shattered celadon. The manor gates groaned open, revealing a courtyard steeped in musk and moral decay. Through moonlit latticework, silhouettes thrashed: lithe forms swathed in gauzy silks, their whispers a symphony of corruption.
"Chase me, Your Highness!" taunted a male voice dripping with mock reverence.
"All in due time, my pet…" Fu Xianxian's reply slithered through paper screens, wine and malice thickening her tone.
The prince stood paralysed, his pulse a war drum. Here lay their grotesque symbiosis: her brazenness chained him more cruelly than vows. To expose her would lay bare his own emasculation.
**III. The Serpent's Triumph**
Within the perfumed chamber, Fu Xianxian's scarred lips twisted beneath a crimson blindfold. Let them deem her broken—this *creature* forged through betrayal's fire. Her new retinue, plucked from brothels and disgraced gentry, served dual purposes: instruments of provocation and flesh-and-blood manifestos of defiance.
"Why cower before a gelded prince?" She purred, tracing a nail down a consort's abdomen. "His blade lies dull, but mine…" The sudden pressure drew a ruby bead matching her lacquered smirk.
**IV. Masquerade of Ruin**
Ye Changfeng's shadow engulfed the depravity. "You dance with oblivion," he spat, the Obsidian Guard's token searing his chest like a brand. Yet even as he spoke, the vial's weight mocked him—its promise of restored virility as hollow as his crumbling authority.
Fu Xianxian tilted her head, the blindfold slipping to reveal ravaged beauty. "Oblivion?" Her laughter echoed through opium-tinged air. "We're already phantoms, husband—you in your inadequacy, I in my scars. Let us haunt each other until this gilded empire crumbles to dust."
Beyond the walls, a nightingale's aria pierced the darkness—a threnody for dynasties built on lies and the women who wield truth as a cleaver.
Scorched Honor and the Alchemy of Vengeance
**I. The Prince's Descent**
A dishevelled paramour scrambled backward, clutching hastily gathered garments like a beggar's shield, as Ye Changfeng breached the chamber's sanctity. Moonlight sculpted the prince's contorted visage into a grotesque theatre mask. "What manner of madness is this?" Fu Xianxian sneered, her scarred lips twisting defiantly beneath the livid imprint blooming across her cheek.
"Madness?" Ye Changfeng's laugh grated like a blade dragged across granite. "You defile my ancestral halls with these maggots, yet dare name *me* mad?" His fist collided with her jawbone, the impact resonating through incense-thick air. "Your Fu clan's rot mirrors your disfigured countenance—festering from within!"
**II. The Viper's Retort**
Fu Xianxian spat a crimson arc onto silk cushions, her laughter hissing like a serpent's warning rattle. "Strike fiercer, *gelded lord*. Your fists wield more fire than your wilted manhood ever could." She gestured toward the fleeing courtesans. "If my gardens are forbidden, I'll harvest nightshade from pleasure houses. What remains for you? Shall I summon your nursemaid to kiss your bruises?"
Dawn fractured their venomous stalemate, the manor's jade walls absorbing their symphony of violence—his thunderous blows, her poisoned barbs. A truce emerged not through words but mutual devastation: she dimmed her debauchery's blaze; he averted his gaze from her scarlet rebellion. As servants scoured bloodstains from ancestral tiles, Fu Xianxian whispered to her maid, "Seek the capital's most exquisite male butterflies. Let their honeyed tongues become my stilettos."
**III. The Phoenix's Strategem**
Chen Yuan materialized in Ye Ling's study like a vengeful phantom, his scholar's robes hanging loosely on a frame gaunt from decades of calculated survival. "Your Grace," he rasped, bowing with the creak of un-oiled hinges, "this unworthy shadow thanks you for resurrecting a corpse."
Ye Ling appraised the newly crowned Minister of Revenue—this walking indictment of Noble Consort Chen's sins. "Your vendetta is now my blade," he declared, proffering ginseng roots glistening with promise. "Rebuild your flesh. We have dynasties to dismantle."
Chen Yuan's laughter dissolved into tubercular coughs. "Flesh? My body is parchment stretched over hatred's bones, but my ledgers…" He unveiled a vellum tome bound in human ambition. "...are forged of tungsten. The Crown Prince hoards silver like a miserly dragon, but *true* riches cascade through brothels' silken curtains and gambling dens' smoky haze." His finger descended on columns of illicit gold. "Shall we syphon the empire's shadow economy, Your Highness?"
**IV. The Ledger's Lure**
Ye Ling's eyes kindled with infernal light. Here was the forbidden alchemy he craved—venal desires transmuted into imperial power. "You suggest we crown ourselves sovereigns of vice?"
"Not sovereigns." Chen Yuan's smile curved like a scimitar moon. "*Architects*. Let lesser men wallow in muck. We'll tax every courtesan's sigh, every dice roll's desperation. While the Crown Prince's coffers haemorrhage, ours shall swell with the people's… *enthusiasms."
As midnight's cloak smothered the capital, strategies unfurled like lotus blossoms laced with arsenic. Beyond latticed windows, cicadas rasped their metallic requiem—a dirge for empires nourished on silk and depravity.
The Alchemist's Mirage and the Courtesan's Ledger
**I. The Roots of Decadence**
Ye Ling's fingers danced across lacquered rosewood, their rhythm mirroring the pulse of his ambition. "Gluttony, lust, avarice—the primal hungers that fester in satiated souls," he mused, observing Chen Yuan unfurl a scroll inked with shadowy transactions. Candle flames contorted the minister's gaunt visage into a living fresco of vengeance.
"Your Highness," Chen Yuan's voice scraped like rusted chains, "do you fathom whose hands steer the capital's grandest pleasure barge?"
A smirk played on Ye Ling's lips. "The Chen clan's grasping fingers, no doubt."
"Your perspicacity pierces veils of night." Chen Yuan's obsequious tone curdled with irony.
*Naturally Chen Huai's dominion,* Ye Ling reflected. Though his reforms had gutted the Chen's salt monopolies and textile caravans, their tendrils still choked the underworld. "A river of silver—ten million taels yearly—flows through Chen Huai's brothels," Chen Yuan hissed, skeletal finger stabbing the ledger. "Not a single coin stains the clan's legitimate ledgers."
**II. The Whispers of Silk**
The minister leaned across the table, his breath reeking of bitter tonics. "In gilded boudoirs, ministers boast of tax evasions into perfumed décolletages. Generals murmur border deployments against silken thighs." His parchment-like skin stretched taut over clenched jaws. "Chen Huai's brothels aren't houses of pleasure—they're armouries of statecraft."
Ye Ling's levity evaporated like morning dew. "Then we must cultivate our own garden of murmuring blossoms."
Chen Yuan recoiled as though branded. "Your Highness! Direct ownership violates imperial decree. Even the Chens hide behind layers of puppetry."
"Ah, but *unlicensed* establishments..." Ye Ling's gaze drifted to moonlit courtyards where his Spring Breeze Pavilion thrived—conspicuously absent from Chen Yuan's scrolls.
**III. The Mirage of Glass**
At Ye Ling's signal, Lü Wu emerged bearing cinnabar-lacquered chests. Unfolded blueprints revealed crystalline menageries—sapphire-feathered phoenixes and amber-winged dragonflies—each priced beyond a provincial governor's annual tribute.
Chen Yuan's wheezing breath caught at the final rendering: a sinuous glass dragon marked *25,000,000 taels*. "Your Highness, this... this transcends commerce. Folk whisper such artefacts pulse with the Mandate of Heaven!"
Ye Ling's laughter shattered the tension like flawed jade. "Mandate? These are but congealed breath and desert's marrow." He traced the dragon's gilded claws. "Let fools purchase their own gallows. We'll sell both noose and blade."
**IV. The Alchemist's Folly**
As Chen Yuan departed clutching forbidden schematics, Ye Ling leaned against vermilion pillars warmed by the dying sun. Beyond the walls, courtesans' laughter wove through clinking wine cups—a symphony of half-truths and whole deceptions.
*Let Chen Huai hoard his whispers,* he mused. *True power lies not in stolen secrets but in crafted desires.* The glass dragon's astronomical price burned in his mind—a sum so ludicrous it became divine. What better testament to an empire's decline than treasures as enduring as morning frost?
The Alchemist's Ledger and the Phoenix's Covenant
**I. The Sovereign's Edict**
Ye Ling's voice rang with the clarity of temple bells, scattering the chamber's shadows. "Destiny is forged by mortal hands, not celestial whims," he proclaimed, gesturing to the crystalline dragon schematic. "This kiln-born artifice bears no more imperial mandate than a beggar's clay bowl. Yet let fools bankrupt kingdoms for the *spectre* of divine favour."
Chen Yuan's ink-stained fingers trembled against his sleeves. "But the court diviners preach—"
"Diviners peddle opium dreams gilded in scripture," Ye Ling interjected, eyes narrowing. "Two million taels could thaw frostbitten villages. Three million might forge swords to shield orphaned frontiers. Tell me, minister – does this glass serpent's 'royal aura' clothe shivering infants or salve soldiers' festering wounds?"
**II. The Phoenix's Awakening**
Decades of bureaucratic jadedness dissolved within Chen Yuan like spring ice beneath noon sun. Before him stood the reviled libertine prince, architecting fiscal sorcery to transmute vanity into virtue. His bow deepened, not from protocol but dawning reverence.
"Your Highness... these allocations..."
"Are inked in the tear-stained cheeks of starving scholars and the calloused palms of widowed farmers," Ye Ling concluded, unfurling a silk scroll mapping grain subsidies. "Every tael from these glass serpents shall flow to irrigation canals and frontier clinics. Let the opulent purchase their gilded fantasies—we'll reap their delusions to seed reality's harvest."
**III. Ledger of Light and Shadow**
As dusk painted the chamber in molten gold, the prince unveiled his mercantile symphony:
1. **Scarcity's Masquerade**: Craft but three dragons yearly, each "blessed" through astrologers' choreographed pantomimes.
2. **Gilded Labyrinth**: Demand 80% tribute upfront, "Jade Circle" status through million-tael tributes, and oaths of national exclusivity.
3. **Ancestral Mirage**: Weave provenance scrolls linking each dragon to mythic emperors' lost diadems.
Chen Yuan's brush hovered above parchment, torn between admiration and disquiet. "But falsifying imperial lineages—"
"—feeds the hollow-eyed and raises floodgates against death's tide," Ye Ling countered, sliding a ledger entry detailing 500,000 taels for plague physicians. "Let pedants quarrel over fables. Our ledgers will inscribe a true legacy."
**IV. The Covenant's Dawn**
When Chen Yuan departed, moonlight transmuted the dragon schematics into spectral sentinels guarding Ye Ling's desk. Beyond vermilion walls, a nightingale's aria intertwined with lepers' whispered prayers—a discordant hymn for an empire dancing between illusion and redemption.
"Wealth baptised in purpose," Ye Ling murmured, his visage warped in the dragon's amber gaze. "Let Chen Huai amass rotting coin. We'll mint currency from conscience."
The first missive arrived at cockcrow—a vassal king pledged 1.5 million taels for the "Celestial Ascendant Dragon", desperate to eclipse his rivals. In ministry vaults, silver began its sacred metamorphosis: from vanity's dross to hope's alchemy.
The Golden Dragon's Gambit and Dayu's Veiled Menace
The luminous Crystal Golden Dragon, procured by the ascendant realm of Chu, ascended beyond mere adornment to emerge as a pulsating beacon of commerce. *"When even Chu's meteoric rise cradles a dragon steeped in regal aura",* the murmurs rippled, *"why should lesser sovereignties dawdle in indecision?"
Zhao Ling'er and Chu's envoys little fathomed how their own fabrication—the fable of the dragon's "monarchic vigour"—would kindle a conflagration of commerce for the Great Shang. By the hour their folly dissolved, Prince Ye Ling had bartered half a score of gilded serpents, accruing a king's ransom in silver!
"Should Your Highness deign to court mercantile pursuits," Chen Yuan breathed, his tone laced with veneration, "the Chen lineage's storied traders would shrivel as parchment beneath summer's glare." Ye Ling's stratagems—woven from threads of daring and genius—left the counsellor both electrified and disquieted. What arcane crucible forged such exquisite ruthlessness?
Ye Ling's laughter cascaded like wind chimes. "Preserve your disquiet. The Chen dynasty's dusk approaches, irrespective of my mercantile flirtations."
With Chen Yuan's departure, the prince contemplated the unravelling of Chen Huai's carnal demesne—until a missive arrived from Miao'er of the Spring Breeze Pavilion, its parchment heavy with intrigue.
She received him not as a silken siren but as a scholar-statesman, her willowy form swathed in ink-stained austerity. With choreographed grace, she orchestrated the tea ritual, each movement a dagger cloaked in jade.
"The constellations align auspiciously, Prince Qian."
As celadon sang against porcelain, two ursine silhouettes emerged from alcoved shadows—Ba Zhong and Ba Yi, titans of the silk routes, their nomenclature echoing the harsh cadence of merchant-drummers.
"Discarding pleasantries", Miao'er's syllables acquired an edge, "these magnates crave perpetual covenant for your celestial textiles—their weave peerless, their cost a beggar's benediction."
"Let it be inscribed in stone." Ye Ling's response shimmered like alpine meltwater—fluid, inexorable.
Obeisances deeper than canyon chasms followed. "Our caravans chant hymns to your name," Ba Zhong's basso profundo reverberated, eyes locking with his sibling's. "Yet ill portents ride the monsoon—intelligence, Your Highness, might prize as the Mid-Autumn luminary swells."
"Enlighten these unworthy ears."
"Dayu's smelters blaze through starless nights," the merchant-prophet intoned. "Shadowed tongues tell of… devices crafted to defile your hallowed festivities."
"Dayu?" Ye Ling's eyebrow arched like a drawn sabre. "That ore-infested desolation?"
Where Shang's dominions burgeoned with amber grain seas and Chu's cavalry painted horizons with hoof-storms, Dayu sprawled as earth's contradiction—a sterile expanse threaded with jade arteries and iron vertebrae. Generations had lusted after its subterranean troves, yet of late, this slumbering leviathan had stirred, its wake littered with vanquished principalities.
"Five crowns now kiss Dayu's standard." Ba Zhong's voice dropped to sepulchral depths. "Their talons now eclipse the nest that bred them."
"Fascinating," Ye Ling parried, nonchalance draped over coiled alertness. "Our bordering peaks have stifled such… aspirations, it seems."
*Yet his dissection of Dayu's transmutation had commenced when these merchants' grandsires suckled at camel-teats.*
Veils of Deception — Yan's Envenomed Roses and the Prince's Dilemma
The Great Shang and Dayu stood divided by a serpentine mountain range, its jagged vertebrae upholding decades of frigid neutrality. Yet what mortal could chart the ambitions coiled beneath such geological truce?
Perhaps Dayu's approaching envoys sought not parley but provocation—to test Shang's mettle, to gauge what insults might be swallowed unchallenged.
"Rumours also seep from Yan's marshes," Ba Yi interposed, his tone sepulchral. "They too conspire to poison the Mid-Autumn celebrations."
Yan—the realm that had razed the kingdom of Li for a single crystalline goblet's theft. At this intelligence, Ye Ling's mind blossomed with visions: *How many such chalices might flood the markets now? What fortunes bloom in others' calamities?
"Though Yan's dominion spans but modest leagues," Zhao Miao'er continued, observing his keenness, "their arts of venomous manipulation eclipse all rivals. Their terrain—a labyrinth of miasmic swamps and unscalable cliffs—repels invaders. Most formidable is their princess, whose mastery of psychotropic poisons bends wills and stops hearts across vast distances. She journeys with their delegation."
"This Yan princess..." Ye Ling's gaze sharpened like honed steel. "Does her visage mirror the moon's splendour?"
Miao'er's jade hairpin trembled imperceptibly.
While existential threats gathered, the prince's curiosity fixated on carnal aesthetics?
"Yan's noblewomen are compared to frost-laden peonies," Ba Zhong intoned. "Petals soft as dawn's blush, roots steeped in nightshade."
"Their marriage oaths endure beyond mortality's veil," Ba Yi added, shadows pooling beneath his eyes. "Infidelity's recompense... let us say their artistry in execution rivals their toxic toxiccraft."
Ye Ling stroked his chin, contemplating the arithmetic of desire. Two consorts already warmed his chambers—yet this venomous blossom might demand... *creative arithmetic.
The merchants unravelled further threads of conspiracy—petty fiefdoms aligning, mercenary hordes mobilizing—until the moon hung like a silver scythe above the pavilion.
"Prince Qian".
As Ye Ling turned to depart, Miao'er's handmaiden materialized, her posture bent in obeisance, trembling fingers knotted in silk.
"My mistress... implores further audience."
Ye Ling's smirk cut through the incense-laden air. *Ah—the true gambit surfaces.
"Audience?" His gaze traced the maid's scarlet earlobes, her lowered lashes—a stark contrast to Miao'er's customary regal disdain. *How becoming, this humility.
"If Your Grace would deign..."
The inner sanctum exhaled sandalwood and intrigue—a courtesan's inner sanctum where statecraft and seduction shared silken sheets.
"Well?" Ye Ling's query danced between mockery and menace. "Does the untouchable Miao'er, breaker of princely hearts, now proffer herself as concubine?"
Her allure eclipsed even Fu Yuanyuan, the capital's fabled treasure. A pity her loyalties nested with Chu's viperous court—else he'd have plucked this orchid, venom glands and all.
Miao'er's laughter tinkled like shattering crystal. "Were I to surrender to your bed's gilded cage... would your Highness consecrate me with more than fleeting whispers?"
Silken Barter and the Orchid's Calculus
Cloaked in impudent security—the Emperor's own edict forbade her Qian Manor entry. Would this prince dare court ruin by flouting heaven's mandate?
"Paternal decrees bar matrimony," Ye Ling lamented, his pantomime of obedience bordering on burlesque. "Yet a hearth-warmer for winter nights? That lies within... flexible interpretation." His exaggerated sigh fluttered like torn theatre curtains.
"Alas, what exquisite deprivation," Zhao Miao'er mourned, her fan's tremolo mimicking a caged nightingale's song.
"Though should devotion outweigh decorum..." The prince let the proposition coil between them like smoke from an opium pipe.
This creature thrived on harvesting advantages while sowing counterfeit reluctance. *Time to blight such cultivated hauteur.
"Your Highness wields humour like a torturer's pincers." Miao'er reeled their verbal dance toward safer currents.
Qian Manor's gates held no allure—yet. First, the citadel of his affections must crumble. Better still, the throne of principal consort—whether willingly bestowed or prised from cold hands—mattered little.
Their mirth wove through the chamber—a tapestry of false camaraderie fraying at the edges.
"This unworthy petitioner..." Miao'er's fan snapped shut with finality. "Craves... collaborative enterprise."
"Enterprise?"
She unfurled her dilemma: as Mid-Autumn's moon swelled, pleasure quarter rivals deployed scarlet sibyls versed in erotic hieroglyphs—"Jade Phoenix Ascending" and "Twin Serpents' Labyrinth"—rites leaving patrons bankrupt yet begging.
Spring Breeze Pavilion's treasure remained inviolate—Miao'er's untouched status a gilded cage. While her zither wept celestial melodies and limbs traced calligraphic dances, men's baser instincts eventually sought baser altars.
"The bawd threatens to stain my purity crimson," Miao'er confessed, fingernails scoring her unbroken seal. "But transplanting roots now? This garden's soil still yields an advantage."
Her stratagem: Ye Ling as lodestar. Not as a paramour, but a luminous marionette.
"You propose I become your gilded marionette?" The prince's grin cut moonlight.
"Merely let Your Grace's shadow grace our humble stage." Her gaze lowered like temple portieres. "Your sporadic attendance would repel uncouth advances—and swell purses. We suggest... seven-tenths to crown coffers and three to sustain our fragile ecosystem."
The offer gleamed like drugged sweetmeats, her beseeching eyes mirroring starved lynx kits beneath autumn's hunter's moon.
Velvet Provocations and the Courtesan's Quandary
"This entreaty", Ye Ling's rebuke fell like a magistrate's seal upon wax, "must remain unheeded."
Neither silver nor subterfuge could tempt him. Behind Zhao Miao'er's gilded pleas lurked abyssal snares—this viper in peony's guise made sport of drowning fools in scented delusions.
Her maidenly distress was puppetry, her urgency rehearsed tragedy. To yield would be to entomb oneself in a sepulchre of one's own lust-carved folly.
Miao'er's posture crumpled like trampled chrysanthemums, the prince's adamant tone quenching hope's final ember.
"Yet..." The royal scion's smile dawned anew, brilliant as phoenix plumes piercing ash clouds. "Regarding patronage—alternative inspirations beckon."
"Inspirations?" Her fan froze mid-arc, suspicion and intrigue duelling beneath painted lashes.
"As a connoisseur of masculine hungers", Ye Ling reclined, fingertips forming a pagoda of contemplation. "I divine precisely what quickens their primal pulse."
Chen Yuan's recent intelligence surfaced—the Chen dynasty's brothel network entwined with espionage, harvesting officials' whispered sins. Now destiny proffered Miao'er as a serendipitous pawn.
"Your Grace suggests...?"
"Beyond choreographed allure", his gaze mapped her contours, resurrecting memories of her waist's hypnotic undulations at the western soirée, "raiment itself may transform into... sacrament."
Miao'er's flesh burned beneath his dissection—a taxidermist assessing prize plumage.
"Must your Highness peruse me so... clinically?" Her blush rivalled poppies drenched in sunrise.
"Merely calibrating proportions for masterworks." His mirth rippled with layered entendre.
What sovereign-blooded lord could resist such sumptuous canvas?
Snatching brush and rice paper, Ye Ling danced ink across parchment—lines coalescing into heretical visions. Contemporary eyes might deem them modest; to Miao'er's gaze, they constituted sacrilege against modesty itself.
"These... habiliments?" Her voice fractured, fingertips grazing renderings of thigh-slits and gossamer bodices limned in carmine ink.
"Vestments to make ascetics recant chastity," Ye Ling's grin cut like a smuggler's dagger. "Men lust for such profane communion—as your memory serves."
Recollection surged—that mortifying costume trial she'd dismissed as petty retribution. Now an epiphany struck: those abbreviated silks had transfixed every lordling's gaze like moths to forbidden flames.
"Unconscionable..." Her demurral quivered with treasonous curiosity.
"The election remains yours." Ye Ling spread palms in counterfeit surrender.
Miao'er's psyche whirled—propriety and avarice clashing like warring cinnabar dragons. "These creations..." She inhaled, parchment whispering like conspirators' vows. "Shall be... deliberated with the matron."
Her departure trailed whispers of impending silk revolutions—and the prince's laughter, thick as poppy resin dripping from golden blades.
To be continuous…