Chương 123: Chapter 121 Interlude 21

Sun Hao crosses the threshold of the room that has been prepared for him to rest and, as soon as the door closes behind him muffling the distant murmur of the court, he lets out a sigh of relief and allows himself to relax. The room is small, but it is arranged with the meticulous care reserved for the brief respites of the Emperor between the two acts of his own celebration.

Sun Hao advances unhurriedly to the divan of lacquered wood that occupies the center of the chamber, a low and elongated piece, sober in its carving but finished with cushions embroidered in gold thread, and settles into it with a contained sigh, silently grateful for the truce that protocol grants him before the next ceremonial torture, that is, the banquet in which, due to the particularities of his rank, he is only permitted to watch and not participate.

He has barely reclined against the cushions when a couple of handmaidens of his private staff approach in silence, with that discretion of one who has learned to move around the Emperor without disturbing his rest, and deposit before him a tray with tea and a selection of light refreshments, small morsels delicately arranged that only someone who has known the tastes of the Son of Heaven for years would bring him without asking first.

Sun Hao takes one of the pastries and, while he tastes it without true hunger, his mind returns, irremediably, to his daughter and her gift. Not to the book itself, but to her words, to that grandiloquent affirmation, pronounced before the whole court with the serene firmness of one who recites an evident truth, that that machine of hers was capable of reproducing dozens of copies of the same book in a single day.

And Sun Hao, who receives regular reports on the progress of the printing press through Guifei Xiang, knows perfectly well that the reality is rather more modest, since the machine they are using barely manages to turn out a couple of books in that time. He smiles to himself with the indulgence of a father, because he knows that his daughter has exaggerated and has done so knowingly.

A couple of books a day is, without a doubt, a feat that leaves far behind any scribe, but it still remains at an abysmal distance from those dozens with which his daughter has dazzled the salon.

And, nevertheless, the Emperor cannot help his smile widening barely a millimeter, because he is also conscious of a detail that none of the courtiers who today have murmured behind his daughter's back has managed to see, which is that the machine that is functioning right now is the first of its kind, an initial and crude version, and from experience he knows that almost nothing begins being what it will come to be.

With time, with each correction and each improvement, that design will go on being polished, and perhaps, only perhaps, it will come to be as efficient as his daughter has had the audacity to promise out loud. He takes another sip of his tea, letting the hot liquid go down his throat, and prepares himself mentally to don once more the mask of the Emperor when the moment of the banquet arrives. But that moment does not arrive because the door of the room opens.

Sun Hao turns his head toward the entrance with his brow already furrowing at the interruption, and what he sees does not contribute to lightening it, since the one who crosses the threshold with his serene slowness and that air of courteous tedium is the Elder Feng, with his hands clasped behind his back and the emblem of the Celestial Sun shining softly over the blue silk of his chest.

The Emperor leaves the cup on the tray with a deliberate care and composes on his face a cordiality that aims to be amiable, although someone who truly knows him would have no trouble detecting the edge hidden beneath it.

"Elder Feng", says Sun Hao with a measured tone.

"To what do I owe the honor of your having come to seek me out precisely now, in the middle of my own birthday?" The Elder Feng stops a few paces from the divan and looks at him from above, with those small and dark eyes that seem to measure and catalog everything that crosses their path.

"You have a good daughter, Sun Hao", says the old man, and the given name falls from his lips with the naturalness of one addressing a subordinate.

"A mind that, despite having been squandered up to now on insignificant trinkets, can come to be useful. That is why I have already communicated to her that, sooner or later, she will be called by the Sect to serve it." Sun Hao rises to his feet after hearing the Elder Feng, and he does not do it with haste, but with that dense and deliberate slowness that in an Emperor turns out to be more threatening than any outburst, to confront him while he looks him in the eyes without a single blink.

"By what right have you decided the future of a member of my family?" he upbraids him with a contained voice.

"The agreement with the Sect has always been clear on this point. The destiny of the members of the imperial family, except in the selection, is decided by the Emperor and no one else." The Elder Feng arches an eyebrow, as if Sun Hao's indignation were, above all, a small impertinence deserving to be corrected with patience.

"That agreement, Sun Hao, also includes a clause by which, if someone turns out to be interesting enough for the Sect, they can be recruited", the old man replies without altering his tone.

"It is true that that clause has always been used for those with cultivation talent sufficient to make them desirable, but the letter is the letter. And I, with the authority that the Sect has granted me, have decided that your daughter's capacity to develop new things is, in itself, interesting enough to recruit her."

Sun Hao does not reply, he only clenches his teeth until the muscles of his jaw mark themselves beneath the skin and his hands, which he keeps at his sides, slowly close into two fists as he contemplates the old man without saying a word. The Elder Feng holds that gaze an instant and then sighs, a long sigh laden with a pity that turns out to be more insulting than any contempt.

"I always told you so", begins the old man, and his voice adopts the patient cadence of one who repeats for the umpteenth time a lesson his disciple refuses to learn.

"You are too soft, which is reflected in your children. Your father exaggerated, perhaps, but at least he knew how a future emperor is raised, through competition, through the edge, through confrontation. You, on the other hand, have pampered them all until turning them into a band of incompetents. All of them, perhaps, save the second." He makes a brief pause, sweeping the Emperor's face with that distracted attention of his, and then delivers the final blow.

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"When you came to the throne, being the youngest of your brothers and bathed in their blood, I thought you would be a better emperor than you have ended up being", he says finally. A brief silence settles in the room, and in that silence, something is decided within Sun Hao. Because the Emperor of the Tianjing Empire is, simply, fed up.

Fed up with this arrogant old man who has belittled him during practically all of his reign, who pronounces his name as if he were a servant, who disposes of his daughter like someone buying a slave and who, to top it off, permits himself to long out loud for the bloodthirsty emperor that his father insisted on forging. And Sun Hao, who knows perfectly well how much of his reign remains before the Sect chooses his successor, decides that this day, as a personal gift, he is going to indulge himself.

Without warning, without a change in his expression that betrays his intention, Sun Hao employs a movement technique and plants himself in front of the Elder Feng in the blink of an eye, so quickly that the old man barely has time to open his eyes in surprise, and before that surprise finishes coalescing on his face, the Emperor's fist, wrapped in a flame that roars as it condenses, impacts squarely against the face of the Elder Feng.

The explosion that follows is heard throughout the palace as the Elder Feng is hurled through the wall, which crumbles with a crash, raising a cloud of dust and rubble while, in the distance, the first cries of alarm begin to rise along the corridors. Among the debris, the old man sits up with his breathing labored.

"Have you gone mad?" he spits, and for the first time his voice has lost the tone of condescending tedium.

"Are you perhaps thinking of the consequences……?" But those words never manage to finish being pronounced, because upon contemplating Sun Hao, the Elder Feng sees how the Emperor's aura begins to grow, expanding through the room like a tide of heat that makes the air tremble.

"If you miss so much the emperor who had to kill all his brothers in order to survive because of his father, I will be more than delighted to show him to you this very day", says Sun Hao as his aura keeps rising.

The Elder Feng puts himself on guard and, with a quick gesture of his hands, deploys around himself some kind of technique that crystallizes into a translucent barrier, a faint dome that ripples in the air like suspended water, but he only has time to finish raising it before Sun Hao, moving again with an impossible speed, brings down his flame-wrapped fist against it.

The barrier collapses with the explosion subsequent to the blow, and the Elder Feng is again propelled backward, crashing against another wall with such force that he spits out a mouthful of blood upon impact. The old man sits up laboriously as he again weaves his translucent barrier, but now his face no longer shows contempt or patience, but a raw incredulity.

"You should have informed the elders that you had Harmonized your Fire Core", he upbraids him with a hoarse voice, wiping the blood from the corner of his lips. Sun Hao smiles at the Elder Feng's words.

"I did", replies the Emperor as he smiles.

"My father knew, but it seems he decided not to tell the rest of the elders in order to hide the small detail that, right after I told him, I gave him a beating." And after those words, Sun Hao hurls himself again against the Elder Feng.

This time the old man is more on guard and, between his barrier and the experience of countless years, he manages to briefly contain the Emperor's charge while the clash between the two of them extends the destruction around them, knocking down furniture, cracking columns and making the cries of alarm of the imperial guard draw closer and closer. But Sun Hao's advantage becomes evident in each exchange.

Because having Harmonized his Fire Core not only grants him a finer control over the fire Qi, but the capacity to gather it at a speed that the Elder Feng, stagnant as he is in the final stage of the Condensation, simply cannot match.

And Sun Hao takes advantage of it without mercy, interrupting each attempt of the old man to gather enough Qi for a single offensive technique, smothering each technique before it manages to be born while he wraps his fists in flames again and again thanks to the mastery that the Harmonization grants him, striking without rest until turning the combat into a one-way punishment.

However, in the middle of the exchange, Sun Hao perceives something, which is that the fire Qi of the surroundings is running out, consumed by the voracity of his technique, so he decides not to prolong the combat any further.

Gathering all the fire Qi that still remains in the surroundings, condensing it until the air itself seems to burn, the Emperor unleashes the final blow of his technique in a devastating punch that breaks the Elder Feng's shield as if it were paper, strikes him squarely and makes him pass through another three walls, one after another, until throwing him back into the salon where, until recently, the reception of the gifts had been celebrated.

There, where the imperial guard is already evacuating the room because of the cries of alarm, the Elder Feng falls to the floor among the debris, spitting blood before the astonished gaze of the courtiers who have not yet finished leaving. And through the hole that the old man's own body has opened in the wall, with the serene dignity demanded of an Emperor, appears Sun Hao.

He stops in front of the court, in front of the fallen body of the Elder Feng, and speaks with a voice that does not need to be raised to fill the entire salon.

"You are weak", the Emperor tells him.

"Just like my father, you have basked for so long in the benefits of your office that you have neglected your own cultivation." The Elder Feng sits up halfway, leaning on a trembling arm, and again coughs up a bit of blood before replying.

"The Sect will not let this affront pass", he gasps. Sun Hao contemplates him from his height, without abandoning even for an instant the imperial composure.

"And what do you think is more probable, old man?" he replies with the calm of one who already knows the answer.

"That the Sect should back an old man who, due to his indulgent way of life, has stagnated in the stage of the Harmonization of the Elemental Cores and is at the end of his life, one who, when someone like the envoy of the Tower of the Five Dragons appears, runs to hide like a dog? Or that it should back a future Elder who has already finished Harmonizing a Core and who, due to his age, still has the capacity to reach much further?"

The Elder Feng does not respond, he limits himself to staying there looking at the Emperor with a pure and silent hatred, but Sun Hao has already discarded him from his attention, because he diverts his gaze toward the rest of those present, toward that tide of nobles and functionaries who contemplate him paralyzed without daring to breathe.

"Despite this small interruption, the banquet will be held just as it was planned", announces the Emperor with perfect naturalness, after which he directs his gaze toward the Shangshu. The Shangshu, who has witnessed the entire scene with his face pale but without entirely losing the composure proper to his office, swallows and raises his voice to fill the silence.

"The Emperor has ordered that the banquet continue!" he proclaims with all the solemnity he is capable of gathering.

"May the imperial guard lead those present to the salon where it will be held!" Instantly the imperial guard, instead of the usual handmaidens, begins to guide the multitude toward the banquet hall, and the entire court sets itself in motion amid nervous whispers and half-contained exclamations, casting furtive glances toward the hole in the wall, toward the fallen old man and, above all, toward the serene figure of the Emperor.

Sun Hao observes how the multitude moves away and, among all the heads that file toward the exit, his gaze stops for an instant on a small figure seated in a wheelchair that is pushed with care by her mother. His daughter does not take her eyes off him, and although the Emperor does not allow his face to reflect it, something inside him eases upon seeing her there. Then he looks again at the Elder Feng, who has not moved from the spot and who keeps contemplating him with that mute hatred, but Sun Hao ignores him.

He turns about and, with the dignity of an Emperor enveloping him like a mantle, crosses again the hole through which he arrived at the reception salon, leaving behind the debris, the whispers and the fallen old man without granting him a single further look, since if because of the confrontation he had not been able to listen to his daughter's concert, he might really have killed him.