Chương 48: Chapter 46

I watch as the darkness in the room begins to fade, driven away by the light of dawn streaming through the window, since I haven't slept a wink all night, when I hear the barely audible sound of the door opening very carefully and turn my head to check. When I look, I see Lianhua entering silently, gliding like a shadow in full ninja mode. For a moment, I wonder if I might be able to surprise her, but I quickly dismiss the idea, knowing she's surely already realized I'm awake.

As she approaches the bed, her lips part, but I stop her before she can say anything.

"Grab my clothes and let's go to another room", I whisper as quietly as I can.

"Xia just fell asleep." I see her eyes briefly glance toward the side of the bed where Xia sleeps in the fetal position, before she looks back at me and nods without a word. After that, she moves silently and with great efficiency, gathering my folded clothes, then leaning over me and lifting me into her arms with the ease of someone who has done this hundreds of times.

"Leave the chair for now", I murmur in the softest voice I can manage.

"It'll be more discreet for what we have to do." She nods again and, needing no further explanation, quickly crosses the threshold, after which I reach out a hand to help close the door behind us as gently as I can. In the hallway, everything is silent. Only the faint creak of the wood beneath Lianhua's feet accompanies the sound of my breathing.

"Lianhua", I murmur softly as we begin to make our way down the hallway in search of a secluded room to hide in.

"Why did you want Xia to find out about her brother that way? It's clear that with your senses, you must have realized when she woke up and pretended to be asleep just to spy on us." She doesn't answer right away. Her pace doesn't falter, but I notice a tension rising in her arms, and then, to my surprise and for the first time, a bitter grimace crosses her face like a dark cloud.

"I would have preferred that you hadn't noticed, Zhāohuán Wen", she finally tells me in a low voice, tinged with unexpected bitterness.

"But if you want to know why I did it, it was because if we had told her directly, she probably would have gone into denial and surely would have accused us of lying and of wanting to separate her from her brother." As she speaks, she stops in front of a closed door, carefully kicks it open, and goes inside.

"But since she overheard us, and we were talking about it after she'd gone to sleep", she continues as she kicks the door shut behind us.

"She thought we were keeping it from her so as not to worry her, so she believed us right away." Hearing Lianhua's reply and the tone of her voice, I wonder if there's more to her answer than meets the eye, something in her past that Xia's situation has brought back too vividly, but I decide not to probe a possible wound.

"Aren't you afraid that Xia, beyond the issue with her brother, might say something about the other topics we discussed last night?" I ask, seeing that we're far from prying ears, while Lianhua sits me down in a chair and begins to change my clothes. Lianhua looks at me briefly before answering, without stopping her work.

"You underestimate how attached Ling Xia is to you", she tells me without hesitation as she adjusts my clothes with precision.

"And you also underestimate the upbringing she must have received as the daughter of a prominent family. Even at her age, she must have already learned what it means to remain loyal to her family, or those she considers family, and to keep their secrets."

Her words bring back to my memory both the texts and the endless lectures from Jinshi Wenxue on loyalty, duty and obedience to elders, lectures that at the time seemed tedious to me and to which I didn't pay much attention, but which now return with precision and clarity thanks to my blessing.

"Now that you mention it", I murmur in a barely audible whisper.

"I remember receiving some lessons on that." Lianhua sighs softly and says nothing more, but the sound carries with it a whole world of resignation. And wisely, I decide to change the subject by saying "Since I couldn't sleep last night, a story came to mind, but I want to ask you something before I develop it."

"Whatever you wish, Zhāohuán Wen", she replies as she finishes adjusting the last piece of my outfit.

"That formation room, the one you found in the building", I ask her.

"If someone went to the trouble of demolishing a solid stone staircase to hide it, is it important enough that someone would kill to monopolize it?" Lianhua pauses for a moment as she watches the way the silk falls over my legs, and, seeming satisfied with the result, takes a seat in a chair right next to me.

"I think I know where your story is going, Zhāohuán Wen", she says slowly.

"And yes. A family that could monopolize a formation of that size and those characteristics, even if only for a few days a year, would have a huge advantage. And not just that." She leaned forward slightly, and her expression grew more serious than ever as she told me "If they could study it at their leisure, they might even try to replicate it elsewhere. And if they succeeded, that could completely shift the balance of the empire."

Her words echo like muffled thunder in the closed room, and with them, I feel the story that has been taking shape in my mind for hours come together and even gain momentum.

"Okay, I'm going to tell you what I've come up with so you can tell my mother", I say, breaking the brief silence that had settled between us.

"And I hope that between the two of us we can come up with something believable because we don't have time for anything else." Her gaze meets mine instantly, and without interrupting me, she nods.

"The beginning will be the same", I begin in a controlled tone, since I've already rehearsed it in my head a hundred times.

"That you found the pyramid-shaped building, that you went inside, that you discovered the second floor with the formation room and that later you found the staircase to the third floor and went up to investigate." I pause briefly to make sure Lianhua is still paying attention, and she is, since she hasn't blinked once. I sit up a little straighter, just enough to project seriousness in every word as I tell her "But that's where the story starts to change."

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"When you returned to the second floor, you heard the sound of a fight. So you decided to hide and not intervene immediately", I tell Lianhua.

"You wanted to find out what was happening without drawing attention to yourself, so you cautiously crawled through the hole you'd made in the wall to the hidden staircase leading to the third floor and followed the sound of the fight." Lianhua nods barely perceptibly, and I continue the story.

"The noise was coming from the training hall. When you arrived, you found a group of people in the midst of a fight", I tell Lianhua.

"And aside from those who were fighting and shouting at each other, there were already several dead bodies on the floor. And among them, to your dismay, was the corpse of the Fifteenth Imperial Prince, Sun Chao."

"That last part is the most important", I tell her solemnly.

"If he was already dead when you arrived, no one can ask you why you didn't help him, and therefore any charges of dereliction of imperial duty are dismissed." She holds my gaze for a few seconds, and finally nods.

"A wise decision", she murmurs.

"And a necessary one in the current climate." I take a deep breath, grateful for her approval, and then pick up the thread of the story.

"After that, you stayed hidden to see if you could figure out what had happened", I continue telling Lianhua.

"And from what the fighters were shouting, you could easily deduce what happened, that seeing the layout of the hall, their greed got the better of them."

"First they decided to get rid of the prince and his most loyal men so the imperial family wouldn't discover what they'd found, but as soon as they did, they turned on each other over the monopoly", here I pause briefly in the story before continuing, wishing I had something to wet my whistle.

"And right in the middle of that carnage is when you arrived", I continue the story.

"And you waited patiently, like the oriole hunting the mantis that thinks it has already caught the cicada. And when in the end only two remained, probably from the same family, you ambushed them, eliminating them for the crime of having murdered my brother." When I finish, I let the silence envelop us with the echo of a completely made-up story with which I'm trying to cover up a totally different crime.

Lianhua remains silent and pensive as she seems to ponder the story I've just told her and, I suppose, look for flaws and errors, something I imagine she was trained to do at the Yushitai.

"The story itself is perfectly believable", she says at last.

"But it needs a couple of tweaks. Minor details, but important ones. If you'll give me a few moments to think them through, Zhāohuán Wen."

"As long as you need", I say with a wave of my hand. Silence returns, but as time passes, I start to get more and more nervous. I begin to hear muffled footsteps in the hallway and the whispering of the maids as they go about their morning chores. The day has begun, and it won't be long before my mother emerges from her chambers.

And I don't know when my brother's escort will start to find out about what happened at the Celestial Fragment, but at the very least they'll learn of the orders he gave regarding Lianhua, so they'll start demanding explanations, and before that happens, my mother needs a credible account from us. Lianhua, as if sensing my unease, lifts her head and says to me with complete calm "It's settled. I think that with what I'll tell your mother, no one will suspect a thing. Do you want me to tell you?"

"There's no time", I reply instantly.

"Pick me up and let's go quickly. We have to get to her room before she comes out." Lianhua picks me up with her usual efficiency and heads for the door, and I, suddenly remembering a small detail, stop her with a single word.

"Wait", I say, and she stops immediately despite my having told her just a moment ago that time is against us.

"One last thing before we go", I murmur.

"Now that I think about it, I'm a minor. And you, even though you're my Fei Yi, are under my mother's supervision, aren't you?" Lianhua shows no surprise and merely tilts her head slightly, acknowledging the reason for the question.

"Yes, Zhāohuán Wen", she replies calmly.

"But that supervision is limited to certain aspects. Guifei Xiang can impose restrictions on me, such as the ones she's placed on discussing cultivation with you, but beyond that, I'm only expected to act with discretion and my own judgment." She pauses for a moment, as if carefully considering her next words.

"She won't like what I've done, of course", she adds.

"But she won't be able to do anything about it, at least not without a formal reason." I nod slowly as I take in her words. It makes sense, since in a structure as hierarchical as this one, everything must have a framework, including the restrictions. But even so, an idea begins to take shape in my mind.

"All right", I say.

"Let's keep going before the tiger catches us." We cross the threshold of the room and begin to walk down the hallways as the first maids, whispering at the far ends of the corridors, watch us pass with curiosity as they open the windows and the palace begins to wake up. And as we approach my mother's chambers, the seed planted by my earlier doubt blossoms. Lianhua has proven her loyalty to me time and time again. Right now, she's doing it. But I can't forget that, in the end, she has too many superiors.

And as a member of the Yushitai, she answers to a hierarchy that neither I nor my mother can fully trust. Here, in the ass of the empire, that's not a problem, but as soon as we return to court, it could become one, since surely in such a large institution there are individuals with their own agendas, and sooner or later they'll try to use Lianhua for something.

But I let a villainous smile creep onto my lips, since I think I have the solution to that and I just have to ask my mother if it's possible, and I plan to do so by taking advantage of this visit and the problem we're going to present to her, and if at all possible, I plan to snatch Lianhua right from under their noses. But I push my villainous thoughts aside when we reach the door to my mother's chambers and Lianhua knocks. We wait a moment, but seeing that no one answers, she knocks a little harder.

Suddenly, Lingxi's annoyed voice comes from the other side as she asks "Who's bothering Guifei Xiang so early?"

"It's me", I reply firmly "and I need to speak with my mother urgently." A brief silence follows my words, but soon the door opens, revealing Lingxi's face, slightly contorted with surprise, and her eyes widen even more when she sees me in Lianhua's arms instead of in my wheelchair.

"Come in", she says simply, stepping aside.

"She's in her inner room, she hasn't gotten dressed yet." We step into the rooms as I hear my mother's voice coming from inside, tinged with obvious morning grogginess as she asks "Who is it so early?"

"It's me, Mother", I reply, not letting Lingxi speak for me.

"I need to talk to you, and it's urgent." There is a second of silence, and then her voice, this time with a mix of surprise, authority, and perhaps a touch of resignation, tells us "Come in." Lianhua leads me into the inner room, and upon entering we see my mother, still in her nightgown, standing in front of a screen where, judging by the arrangement of several robes, it seems she was choosing what to wear today.

When she sees us, she sighs, as if she already knows this isn't just any ordinary visit, and then sits down with an air of resignation in a nearby chair.

"I suppose you've come to tell me what you know about the cause of the unrest in the city", she tells us bluntly, in a firm voice that leaves no doubt that she is convinced of what she is telling us. When I hear her words, I go blank for a few seconds as I try to process what she's said.

"How am I supposed to know the reason for the riots?" I finally reply, as a wave of tension runs down my spine. Although, to be honest with myself, I have a pretty clear idea of the reason, though I won't be the one to tell her. She looks at me with a raised eyebrow as she says "If you're here this early, it must be something urgent. And the only urgent thing I can think of right now is the riots."

Her words make me exhale the breath I didn't realize I was holding, since that means she hasn't been told about my half-brother's disappearance yet.

"Mother, I'm sorry to tell you that the riots are of no consequence and are the least of the problems we're going to face", I say. Her reaction is immediate, and she sits up abruptly in her chair as her expression grows serious.

"What do you mean by that?" she asks, looking at me sternly.

"What do you mean they're insignificant? Sun Wen, what on earth have you done now!" I ignore her question for now and point to a nearby chair for Lianhua, saying "Sit me down there." She obeys immediately and sits me down in the chair, after which she carefully settles me in while my mother watches us with a look as if she wants to force the answers out of us by any means necessary.

"Mother", I say with the solemnity the situation demands after sitting down.

"Lianhua has prepared a report on what happened at the Celestial Fragment of the Sands. And I think it's best if you hear it directly from her." My mother watches us in silence for a few seconds, her eyes narrowed, but finally sighs and sits back down as she says "Then let her begin."