The First Prince had tried to force Xu Zijin into submission, only to be rendered speechless by a few brazen remarks from her. The respected scholars and upright officials throughout the court had abandoned even the pretense of dignity, fleeing through the doors against the swirling snow. The six key advisers present had gone so far as to submit sick notices one after another that very night. The First Prince’s residence was now in utter chaos.
In the study of Prince Jing’s residence, the chief steward kept his head lowered as he poured out every piece of intelligence the informants had just gathered.
When he finished, the chief steward took half a step back and cautiously raised his eyes to gauge his master’s expression.
Xiao Jingyan said nothing.
With his hands clasped behind his back, he stood ramrod straight beside the brazier. After hearing the entire report, he moved stiffly toward the window.
Then he suddenly shoved it open.
The night wind of the twelfth lunar month, carrying a fine spray of ice and snow, poured into the warm study. The stacks of paper on the desk rustled loudly.
Xiao Jingyan stood facing the wind, but before long, his shoulders began to shake.
The chief steward’s heart jolted.
For the past two months, His Highness had been suppressed by the First Prince, and even the officials at the morning court had treated him with cold indifference. Now that he had learned the First Prince had somehow managed to hold a Luming Banquet capable of shaking the entire realm, he must be furious.
“Your Highness, the wind is fierce outside. Please take care not to catch a chill.” The chief steward hurried forward to comfort him. “The First Prince has gone too far in his arrogance. He even dared to mobilize the Five Cities Commandery without authorization. Such an act of usurpation is bound to draw His Majesty’s judgment sooner or later. Please don’t ruin your health over such a foolish deed.”
The cold wind howled as it poured inside.
The chief steward was just about to step forward and close the window when he suddenly stopped.
Hm? Was the Third Prince laughing?
Xiao Jingyan abruptly yanked half of the wooden window shut, sealing away the wind and snow.
When he turned to face the chief steward, the smile that had nearly split his lips had already vanished.
Grinding his back teeth, he drew in a deep breath of air and coughed twice. “Close the door tightly. Add more silverbone charcoal to the brazier. From tonight onward, turn away everyone who comes to visit, whether they’re from the Six Ministries or retainers of the Imperial Clan Court. Tell them… tell them that I’ve caught a slight chill and have already retired for the night.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The chief steward bowed with clasped fists and withdrew from the study.
Xiao Jingyan stood alone before the desk for a full ten breaths.
His heart was pounding heavily and rapidly, as though it were about to leap out of his chest.
After ten breaths, he suddenly strode to the entire row of rosewood bookshelves.
His fingers skimmed rapidly over the densely packed spines before pulling out an old volume Xu Qinghuan had tossed to him half a month earlier, ordering him to study it repeatedly every day—
The Historical Record of Succession Changes in the Former Dynasty.
The edges of the cover had already become frayed from his constant handling.
Xiao Jingyan eagerly opened the book and flipped straight to the page whose corner he had folded down.
A line of inked characters leaped into view:
Emperor Guangwu shut himself away and read for three years. While the princes contended before him, he did not move. Only when the rival powers had exhausted themselves did he quietly seize the realm.
Xiao Jingyan’s breathing grew heavy. His lips moved soundlessly as he read the twenty-three characters over and over.
The First Prince had privately mobilized the city garrison to seal off the tower and force the scholars into submission. Was that not the exact counterpart of the former dynasty’s illegitimate eldest prince raising troops and attempting to force his way into the palace, thereby arousing the resentment of the realm’s common-born scholars and ultimately provoking the great clans and upright families to unite against him?
At the Brightmoon Tower, the court ministers and venerable elders of the great families had abandoned even their walking sticks and swept out together. Was that not proof that the powerful clans had completely lost faith in their ruler and were ready at any moment to change their allegiance?
As for the four key advisers who had claimed illness that very night and refused to set foot inside the First Prince’s residence no matter what, were they not irrefutable evidence that the followers who had once been ready to support him had lost all confidence?
Every detail, every subtle turn in the situation’s development—Xu Qinghuan had predicted it all with effortless ease half a month earlier.
Xiao Jingyan tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
“If the First Prince wants to step onto the stage and lay down the rules, let him go wrestle with the entire realm. He can play the living King of Hell. You keep your head down and conduct yourself properly.”
Conduct yourself properly…
Only now did those four words finally settle into place in Xiao Jingyan’s heart.
He could no longer sit still. He paced back and forth across the center of the study.
The more he compared the current situation with the Historical Record of Succession Changes, the more fiercely his blood surged through his veins.
He stopped, turned, and rushed behind the desk, where he yanked open the bottom drawer secured with a copper lock.
In a fluster, he took out a stack of slips of paper whose edges had begun to yellow.
They were all the instructions Xu Qinghuan had passed to him over the past two months.
Seventeen slips in total, no more and no fewer.
Xiao Jingyan spread the seventeen slips across the desk in the order he had received them, one after another.
The first contained only eight terse characters: “Do not touch wealth. Do not grasp power.”
The middle ones warned him to close his doors to visitors and study the commentaries of the sages.
The most recent contained an oblique question concerning the balance of orthodox teachings and the statutes governing commercial taxation.
When he had first received these slips, he had felt as though he were lost in a fog, barely holding on through sheer, blind faith in Xu Qinghuan’s strategic insight.
But now, with all of them spread beneath the candlelight, an astonishing plan for claiming the realm came clearly into view.
At last, he could not hold himself back.
He raised his right hand and slammed it down hard on the empty space beside the desk.
“What a Xu Qinghuan!”
Xiao Jingyan’s voice was filled with exhilaration, and even the rims of his eyes had reddened slightly.
Unable to stop himself, he remembered how, half a month earlier, after he had finished a bowl of coarse rice porridge in the warm chamber of the Imperial Study, Father Emperor had praised the First Prince as “steady and measured,” while all he had received was the faintly spoken assessment, “The Third Prince is merely filial.”
The resentment and disappointment he had felt then had cut into him like a dull knife.
He remembered how, after court that day, the First Prince had stopped him in the narrow palace passageway and looked down at him condescendingly, mocking him for “wasting time on clever-sounding theories of statecraft.”
The humiliation.
Now, all the hurt and bitterness that had once pressed the breath from his lungs had transformed into a nearly scorching exhilaration that surged straight to his head.
The First Prince’s painstaking preparations had suffered a devastating blow today.
And Xiao Jingyan had done nothing.
He had merely followed Xu Qinghuan’s instructions, sitting in this charcoal-heated study and obediently reading dry old books for two whole months.
Outside the study, the chief steward stood in the cold wind for a full half an hour.
At first, he heard hurried footsteps and the sound of a hand striking the desk from within. Later, when the noise gradually subsided, he finally gathered the courage to carry in a freshly replenished brazier and carefully push open the door.
The moment the chief steward entered, his gaze swept across the desk, and he froze.
His Highness had not, as he expected, been smashing things around the room to vent his anger.
Instead, Xiao Jingyan was sitting upright and proper. Before him lay only a single open book: The New Meaning of the Rites of Zhou.
The seventeen slips of paper had disappeared without a trace.
What shocked the chief steward most was the expression on his master’s face.
The hostility and restlessness that had occupied his features for months had vanished completely.
At that moment, the chief steward suddenly realized that although he had followed the Third Prince for many years, he had never once seen this master display such composure and certainty.
It was the bearing of a man who had truly seen through the game and was holding victory firmly in his hands.
The Chief Secretary could not help but feel his eyes redden. In his heart, he silently murmured, “If Her Highness’s mother were watching from heaven, she would surely be pleased to see this!”
Hearing footsteps, Xiao Jingyan finally lifted his head from his book.
Not only was he not angry, but—quite unexpectedly—he smiled at the Chief Secretary. His tone was so gentle that it was almost unbelievable.
“It’s cold outside. Don’t trouble yourself with all that charcoal. Go to the kitchens and have them heat a bowl of porridge for me. Remember to add plenty of minced meat.”
The Chief Secretary swallowed and hurriedly replied, “This subordinate will see to it at once.”
A quarter of an hour later.
The Chief Secretary returned to the study carrying a red-lacquered tray. On it sat a bowl of steaming white porridge, along with two small dishes of the most ordinary shredded pickles.
Xiao Jingyan picked up the bamboo chopsticks, lifted the bowl, and began eating in large mouthfuls.
For some inexplicable reason, he suddenly remembered the taste of that bowl of coarse-rice porridge.
Xiao Jingyan’s chopsticks paused in midair.
Pure filial devotion.
“So that’s how it is.”
Xiao Jingyan gently set down his chopsticks and murmured the words to himself.
The Chief Secretary was standing nearby, trimming the candlewick. He had not heard clearly and turned to ask, “Your Highness, what did you just say?”
Xiao Jingyan shook his head, a smile in his eyes, and did not answer.
The night deepened, and the snow outside began to fall even harder.
At a quarter past four in the morning.
A note was delivered to the residence.
Not long afterward, Xiao Jingyan unfolded the casually folded letter.
It contained only twelve characters:
“How is your reading? It’s time to hand in your assignment.”
Xiao Jingyan stared at the words, written in a style carrying a hint of languid teasing, for a full five breaths.
After those five breaths, he suddenly threw back his head and burst into loud laughter.
“Hahahahaha!”
When his laughter finally subsided, Xiao Jingyan composed himself.
He carefully placed the sheet of Xue Tao paper beneath a paperweight. Then he rose and personally went to the right side of his desk, where he spread out a fresh sheet of yellow memorial paper, faintly scented with sandalwood.
He picked up a fine Huizhou ink stick and slowly ground it against the inkstone.
His movements were unhurried, his mind calm and steady as still water.
The ink grew rich and dark.
He raised a purple-hair brush, saturated it with ink, and lowered it to the paper with an exceptionally steady hand.
He began drafting a memorial of greetings to Emperor Tiansheng.
The memorial did not contain a single word about the Deer-Crying Banquet, which had caused such a commotion outside.
As for offering even half an opinion on Xu Zijin’s dispute between the New Learning and the Imperial Academy’s Old Learning? No, no, absolutely not!
And as for condemning the First Prince’s overstepping in privately mobilizing the Military Commandery’s forces and kicking him while he was down? Unthinkable, unthinkable!
Xiao Jingyan felt that, after all, there was nothing wrong with being a bookworm who truly shut his ears to everything happening beyond his window.
In the memorial, he merely stated that he had followed his imperial father’s instruction, spending the past two months refusing visitors and devoting himself to studying the teachings of the sages and the histories.
He then turned his brush and devoted a considerable portion of the memorial to notes from his reading of the histories of previous dynasties—notes concerning the repair of riverworks and the relief efforts for drought-stricken regions in the north.
Those notes were clear and methodical. Not only did they cite the classics, they even listed detailed and verifiable figures for grain losses during disaster relief efforts under successive dynasties, as well as the accumulation of silt in the canals.
These were practical insights he had worked out himself, drawing on Xu Qinghuan’s earlier guidance.
When he reached the final line, Xiao Jingyan’s wrist paused. He drew in a quiet breath, thought for a moment, and then solemnly wrote:
“Your son is dull-witted and cannot match the First Prince’s great talents. I only pray that Imperial Father enjoys good health and peace from year to year.
This is the greatest lesson your son has gained from two months of studying behind closed doors.”
After writing the final character, he set down the purple-hair brush, picked up the memorial, and blew lightly over the still-damp ink with undisguised delight.
