Chapter 93
No matter how modestly the emperor travels, he cannot do without a considerable retinue.
Though the East Side Gate was wide enough for a carriage to pass through, the emperor's six-horse carriage, along with the tall steeds ridden by Qian He and the imperial bodyguards, could never all fit in the courtyard. The entire procession ended up blocked right outside the gate.
The Cui family's main residence often received palace eunuchs in the past, and Qian He, in his position as head of the Imperial Household Service, had visited several times already. At first, the neighboring households did not think much of the commotion.
But when they caught sight of the six-horse carriage — for only the Son of Heaven was entitled to ride a six-horse carriage, a privilege no one else dared to usurp — they realized to their shock that the emperor himself had arrived.
It was the hour when all officials with official duties had returned home. Upon hearing that the emperor had come to the Cui family's main residence, none of them could stay still. Though they did not dare poke their heads out openly, they all pressed against their door cracks and wall gaps to peek in the direction of the Cui manor.
They whispered guesses about what could possibly bring the emperor to the Cui family's main residence at such a time. No matter the reason, it was obvious that thanks to Second Miss Cui, the Cui family's main residence enjoyed imperial favor no other household could match. Even the Yao clan, the emperor's own maternal relatives by birth, had never received the honor of a personal imperial visit — a privilege the Cui family had now claimed first.
Dressed in a jade-colored casual robe, the emperor stepped out of the carriage. Facing the entire Cui family who had come out to greet him, Qian He and the other attendants at the emperor's side stepped forward first to stop the Cui family from bowing in salute, as if the emperor was nothing more than an ordinary relative dropping by for a visit.
Those who had never seen the emperor behave this way might not have been surprised, but several of the nearby residents were fifth-rank officials who saw the emperor at morning court every day. At court, the emperor never even bothered to spare them a glance. No one could recall him ever being so approachable.
Inside the courtyard, Cui Sheng bowed slightly to lead the emperor toward the front hall. Lady Jiang and Cui Lanzhi, mindful that female relatives were not supposed to follow along on such an occasion, slowed their steps a little, planning to see the emperor off to the front hall before turning back to the inner quarters.
The emperor slowed his pace slightly, and Buyan darted over to support Lady Jiang. "Why have Madam and the eldest young lady stopped?"
Though Buyan had visited their residence often before, he was a close attendant of the emperor, and Lady Jiang would never dare trouble him to help her walk.
"I can manage on my own," Lady Jiang whispered, politely declining his offer. "Go attend to His Majesty."
"His Majesty instructed me to look after Madam more closely," Buyan insisted, holding her arm steady as the whole group made their way into the reception hall where Cui Sheng received guests.
Cui Sheng bowed and invited the emperor to take the main seat, but the emperor stepped back. "Please, Lord Cui and Madam, take the honored seats."
The entire Cui family was growing more confused by the minute. The emperor had already refused to let them pay their respects, which had left them thoroughly uneasy, and now he was offering them the main seats? Both Cui Sheng and Cui Su had met the emperor several times before, and he had never been this warm and cordial.
Father and son both turned to look at Qian He, hoping he could give them some hint or signal.
Qian He was in a difficult spot. He and Cui Sheng had long called each other brothers, and their families were as close as old friends could be, but with the emperor standing right there, any word he said now would be overstepping and undermining the emperor's intentions.
Fortunately, the emperor spoke up. "Qian He, help Lord Cui and Madam to the high seats."
Qian He had no choice but to step forward, even if he felt awkward about it, and steer Cui Sheng toward the central main seat. "Today, the two of you simply must sit here. Don't ask questions for now — once you are seated, His Majesty can proceed with what he has come to do."
He then helped Lady Jiang take the seat to the left of the low table. The whole family trusted Qian He, so the couple had to sit down, leaning forward slightly without resting their full weight on the cushions.
The emperor walked up to stand right in front of them. He paused for a moment, then bowed deeply in a full formal salute. Cui Sheng and Lady Jiang were so startled their souls nearly flew out of their bodies. They tried to leap up from their seats to return the gesture, but Qian He and Buyan, who had been watching for exactly this reaction, stepped in from both sides to hold them steady and keep them seated.
The emperor raised a hand, and Gufeng at his side pulled a wooden ruler from his waist and held it out to the emperor. The emperor took the ruler with both hands, then presented it respectfully to Cui Sheng. "I have come here to beg for forgiveness. I hope Lord Cui will not show me any leniency."
Cui Sheng was never good at socializing with others, but he was by no means slow-witted or out of touch with the world. On the contrary, he could quickly figure out most matters once he paid them any mind, and right now, he could already tell that something was off.
Thinking about Cui Lanyin, who had not sent any news for all this time, and then the emperor suddenly showing up unannounced, putting on no imperial airs at all, every little thing reeked of abnormality.
Cui Sheng did not take the ruler that was offered to him, and instead asked, "I beg Your Majesty to make clear what this matter is. Did something go wrong with Yin?"
Lady Jiang immediately assumed that Cui Lanyin had complications after a miscarriage, and her voice trembled with anxiety. "Is Yin alright?"
Cui Lanzhi, Cui Su and Cui Jian also stepped forward boldly, all of them looking utterly panicked and worried.
The emperor passed the ruler in his hand to Qian He, then bowed again before he said, "Yin is with child. I am the father of this child."
His words were like a clap of thunder that exploded right over their heads. After the whole family stared at each other in bewilderment and finally processed the meaning of what the emperor had just said, these honest, straightforward people burst with fury.
"You've wronged my daughter! Even if you're the emperor, I'll still hit you!" Cui Sheng snatched the ruler right out of Qian He's hands and made to lunge at the emperor to lash him, only for Lady Jiang to wrap her arms tightly around his waist to hold him back. "He's the emperor! If you hit him, all of us will be executed! We still need to bring Yin back home safe."
Over on the other side, Cui Su cracked his knuckles until they made loud popping sounds. "Father, you don't have enough strength. Let me do it."
He strode forward, but then dropped to his knees with a heavy thud right in front of the emperor. "My second elder sister is second only to my parents in this world to me. If she has been wronged, I would dare to die a thousand deaths to make things right for her. But all the martial arts skills I have were granted to me by Your Majesty's grace. So this is what I shall do: after I offend and strike Your Majesty, you can banish me to the frontier, and I will use every bit of this skill to fight the barbarian hordes until I die on the battlefield. That way, at least my years of training won't have gone to waste."
The second he finished speaking, he clenched his fists, his whole body radiating with seething anger, and moved to land a blow on the emperor, who did not dodge or evade at all, just standing there waiting to take it.
Hong Ji threw herself at Cui Su the way Lady Jiang had done to Cui Sheng, and clung to him so tightly he could not move. "Wait, just wait a second!"
Cui Lanzhi and Cui Jian then both rushed over to drag Hong Ji away, asking her angrily, "Why are you siding with that outsider!"
Hong Ji held on for dear life, straining to get her words out. "What if Yin and him are truly in love with each other? If we beat him up first, how are we ever going to face Yin later? Let's get the full story out first."
Her words managed to halt the chaos that had broken out in the room for the time being. Qian He, who had not even had time to wipe the beads of sweat off his forehead, nodded in rapid agreement. "Finally someone who's being reasonable! If His Majesty goes back all beaten and bruised, Yin is resting and caring for her pregnancy right now, how could she bear to see something like that?"
Before the emperor had left the palace, he had already given strict orders that he wanted to let the people of the Cui family's main branch vent their anger by beating him, and no one was to step in to stop them.
But when he met the emperor's disapproving look, Qian He spoke to him in all earnestness. "Your Majesty, if you go back all injured, Yin will surely feel terribly awkward and ill at ease around you."
Qian He then called over Buyan. "Buyan, what was Second Miss Cui's attitude like before we left the Cui residence?"
Buyan, who was also starting to think that the emperor's earlier plan was not very well thought out, quickly answered, "Before we left, Second Miss Cui picked and picked for a very long time, before she finally decided on the clothes His Majesty is wearing right now. She also told me to do everything I could to make His Majesty look as good as possible."
The emperor had never been very good at understanding the common worldly customs and social graces, and now even he was starting to feel unsure. "When a son-in-law comes to apologize to his future in-laws, shouldn't he show the greatest sincerity possible?"
In the emperor's mind, letting the Cui family beat him to let off all their anger was the greatest show of sincerity he could possibly offer.
"Your Majesty, my dear Emperor, that is not how this works at all," Qian He said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "When you arrange a wedding, everything is supposed to be joyful and celebratory. If you get into a fight and hurt each other, that's a terrible omen! How are you all going to be a happy, harmonious family from then on?"
Buyan hesitated for a moment, then whispered a reminder to the Emperor, "I think Second Miss Cui will make Your Majesty keep sleeping in the outer room..."
The whole family finally caught on. Cui Sheng turned to Qian He and asked, "The two of them are acting entirely of their own free will?"
Qian He nodded. "I asked Yin about this long ago, and she said yes..." As he thought back to what Cui Lanyin had said, he faltered, unsure how to put it into the right words.
The Emperor did not make things difficult for him, and spoke up himself. "Yin wants to leave the palace after a year, so we've kept this hidden from everyone."
The Emperor's tone made it perfectly clear that keeping this secret was not something he had wanted to do. Anyone could see that Cui Lanyin came and went freely between the palace and the Cui family home, that she could stay as she pleased in the Emperor's former princely mansion, that a sixth-rank long-serving administrator was still stationed in the old estate to attend to her errands, and that even a true imperial noble like Princess Yongjia had to come to her for favors. There was no sign at all that she was being forced against her will.
Now the whole family felt terribly guilty. They invited the Emperor to take the seat of honor, but he firmly refused. In the end, Cui Sheng and Lady Jiang took the main seats, and the Emperor sat on the east side.
Cui Sheng and Lady Jiang thought of the soft, adorable little Hong Fen, and now there was another grandchild on the way, born to Cui Lanyin who they had long assumed could not bear children. For the main branch of the Cui family, this was nothing less than a double blessing. It was just that the child's father was the Emperor, a fact they still found hard to wrap their heads around.
They had always treated the Emperor as a beloved cousin-uncle to Cui Lanyin, and never once let their thoughts wander to a romantic connection between the two. Now that they were not only together but expecting a child, it was truly difficult for them to adjust to the new reality.
Cui Sheng noticed that while the Emperor was far more talkative than he had been during their previous audiences, he was still not exactly a chatterbox. If it had not been for people like Qian He stepping in to explain things, with the Emperor tending to say only half of what he meant, and the whole Cui family being so straightforward and slow to catch on, they would probably still be tangled up in misunderstandings to this day.
Cui Lanyin, by contrast, was outgoing and loved to laugh and chat. The whole family could not for the life of them figure out how two people with such wildly different temperaments had grown so close.
The Emperor had been referring to himself as their son-in-law, fully intent on upholding all the proper rites due to a daughter's husband. But to Cui Sheng and Lady Jiang, he felt like a towering, imposing mountain standing right in front of them, and they could not find it in themselves to act calmly in his presence.
Cui Sheng suddenly remembered something. "The imperial house has long forbidden marriages between those of different generations. What is the plan for this?"
The Emperor gave a longer answer this time. "Today I have come first and foremost to ask for your forgiveness, my father-in-law and mother-in-law. Soon after this, I will formally send matchmakers to call on your household, and every single required ritual and ceremony will be carried out to completion."
Afraid that they had misheard him, Cui Sheng and Lady Jiang hesitated, not daring to voice the question lingering on their minds.
Qian He smiled. "His Majesty has already given the empress's phoenix seal to Yin. He intends to welcome Yin into the palace as his empress."
Their emotions had been swinging wildly from shock to delight this whole time. Lady Jiang felt that if she had to go through one more twist of this magnitude, she would collapse onto the bed. "Yin is going to be empress?"
Since when did becoming empress become such a simple matter? Was it not a position that required endless rounds of selection, and fierce, exhausting disputes among the court officials and palace ladies before a final decision could be reached? If Lady Jiang, who knew almost nothing about court affairs, was aware of that, then Cui Sheng naturally had even more doubts. "A marriage between two people of different generations... the court officials will never agree to it..."
The Emperor replied, "Father-in-law, set your mind at ease. I have all the arrangements well in hand."
The Emperor truly could do what no one else could. He had already started calling them his father-in-law and mother-in-law, and he did not show a single trace of the awkward, nervous behavior of a new suitor meeting his future in-laws. Thinking back to how flustered and clumsy he had been when he first met his own in-laws, Hong Ji could not help but admire him.
Faced with an Emperor who had even stopped referring to himself as "I, the Emperor", Lady Jiang found that the more she looked at him, the more a mother-in-law's fondness for her daughter's husband grew. Before long, she had decided that even if the Emperor was a little older than their daughter and a man of few words, he and their second girl were still quite well suited to each other.
The emperor soon noticed this subtle change. He said to Lady Jiang, "Our wedding with Yin cannot do without your brother. Before long, your entire brother's family will arrive in Yingcheng."
Lady Jiang's elder brother had served as the assistant prefect in Wuzhou, Guangxi, for eight years. Due to the tight financial straits both families had faced over those years, the siblings had not met even once in all that time.
Now that their lives had grown more comfortable, Lady Jiang had been planning to find an opportunity the following year to travel to Wuzhou and visit her relatives. She had never expected that the emperor would arrange to bring her brother's whole family back to Yingcheng.
Overcome with joy, Lady Jiang wept and said, "By Your Majesty's grace, my brother and I will finally be reunited."
After that, the emperor explained a series of arrangements to the family. At first, they did not fully grasp all the details, but Hong Ji clarified things for them, and once they realized the emperor had already made thorough preparations, they felt far more at ease.
Before the emperor left, he invited the whole family to come to the palace a few days later to keep Cui Lanyin company and chat. As he walked past Hong Ji, the emperor said, "I am waiting for Lianfang to achieve excellent results in the imperial examination next year."
Even when night fell, Hong Ji was still too excited to calm down. He kept pulling Cui Lanzhi's hand, saying over and over, "His Majesty's words carry the weight of golden law. I might actually pass the imperial examination next year!" "I have become the emperor's brother-in-law!" "His Majesty even knows my courtesy name."
Cui Mian and Lady Chang had also rushed over as soon as they heard the news. When they arrived and learned the emperor had already left, they were so overcome with regret that they lost their usual composure. Cui Lanzhi could completely understand their reaction, for she herself was equally restless. She had never sought to cling to powerful connections, but even she could not stop her mind from wandering far as she thought about what it meant that her own younger sister had become the empress.
After a while, Hong Ji calmed down a little. He held Cui Lanzhi's hand firmly and said, "Father and Cui Su alone are not enough to support our family. From now on, I will redouble my efforts in my studies. I will also make sure Cui Jian works hard too. Our whole family must get established as soon as possible to stand as a solid backing for Yin. Being an empress is never an easy role."
Cui Lanzhi squeezed his hand back and replied, "You can focus on your studies and guide Cui Jian in his lessons. I will help Mother manage the household and raise Hong Fen well."
News that the emperor had paid a visit to the main branch of the Cui family that evening spread quickly among the neighbors, and before the night was over, nearly every household in the area had heard the story.
Everyone was speculating that perhaps the emperor felt he had not taken good enough care of Second Miss Cui, who had been staying under his care, especially now that she was carrying his child, so he had made the special trip to the Cui family to explain himself.
They also remembered that Grand Secretary Feng had once referred to Second Miss Cui's child as an "illegitimate child", for which the emperor had ordered him to be given twenty strokes of the cane and sent home, and no one was even sure if he would be able to keep his official position.
No one could quite wrap their heads around why the emperor doted on Second Miss Cui so deeply.
One overly familiar and meddlesome woman even went to the Yao family to ask about the matter, and Fourth Madam Yao accidentally let slip a secret. "Back in April, my children went with Second Miss Cui and her brothers and sisters to Tianfu Temple to admire the cherry blossoms. That day, the Eldest Miss Cui prayed for a fortune slip for Second Miss Cui, and it turned out to be a top-tier one. It was said the slip foretold a marriage to an extremely noble husband. When the children came back and described it to me, it sounded more like a sign of a fate befitting a phoenix... Oh dear, my loose tongue, I should not have said more, I will stop now."
The speaker had not meant to reveal anything, but the listeners took the words to heart. After leaving the Yao residence, that woman spread the story to everyone she met, and soon a crowd of people headed to Tianfu Temple to ask about the fortune slip. To their surprise, the monk who interpreted the slips clearly remembered the incident. "It has been many years since the era of Empress Cao of Taizong that this particular slip had ever been drawn, until that day. After it was picked, Master Kongji specifically asked about the person who drew it. Not long after, it seemed the imperial... His Majesty sent people to look for Master Kongji. What happened after that is not something us lowly monks are allowed to know."
Turns out Second Miss Cui got a phoenix-fated fortune slip! Not long after, the Emperor even sent people to look for Master Kongji. Now that Second Miss Cui is pregnant, the Emperor flies into a rage the second anyone dares to utter the words "illegitimate child" — who would have thought that a man who never even took an extra step around the palace would go out of his way to pay a visit to the main branch of the Cui family? Good heavens, that child can't possibly be the Emperor's, can it?
Here we come [wicked grin]
