SEHE Chapter 158.2

Main Story Conclusion (2)

Even the slightest wind from above was a catastrophic blow to ordinary people below — the kind that shattered homes and destroyed lives.

Pei Yanci did not sleep that night.

He lay on the bed, listening quietly to the sounds outside.

The third-watch drum had already sounded. Still, there was nothing.

A stray cat let out one sharp, thin cry, then rustled away.

He turned his head. In the lampless room, a tall, powerful silhouette sat on the low couch beneath the window. Tangxi Zhui’s legs were crossed, one hand braced behind him, the other gently stroking a small skull resting against his leg as though soothing a sleeping child.

His posture was unhurried and languid, and he looked at him with a smile.

The blood-soaked robes from when they had fought side by side had long since been exchanged for an exquisite deep-red chang pao. His waist-length hair hung loose over his shoulders and back like a cascade, swaying lightly in the breeze.

He was a phoenix in full, seductive bloom upon a bleached white bone — bizarre, decadent, resplendent.

If one listened closely, beneath the musk-and-orchid scent carried on the wind came also a faint trace of blood — as though he had just returned from a hunt, languidly flaunting his spoils.

“You’ve hurt yourself again?” Pei Yanci sat up from the bed and drew the bed curtains over to their hanging hook.

“Does your heart ache for me?” Tangxi Zhui asked.

“No — you don’t believe that either.” He immediately answered his own question. “You only think it’s troublesome. That’s why you’ve had to condescend and come here to coax me.”

The figure seated before the bed did not say a word.

Tangxi Zhui gave a self-mocking smile.

“You saw right through me. You don’t even want to bother coaxing me anymore.”

“Were those vassal princes summoned here by you?”

“Mm.”

“Why?”

“To help you eliminate them.” Tangxi Zhui tilted his head slightly. In the soft, hazy moonlight, he seemed like a gift bestowed by the Creator itself — a new bride of spirits and gods.

“Even if you ascend the throne, those vassal princes would seize on your unstable foundations to trip you up. Better to use their blood to wash a broad road open for you.”

“You hid things from me and acted on your own again.” A faint current of displeasure surfaced in Pei Yanci’s eyes.

He truly despised people who made decisions without telling him.

“This is the last time.” Tangxi Zhui pushed aside the small skull that had been leaning against his leg and rose to his feet. “Jiang Yi will arrive in Anjing City tomorrow. He will bring five hundred thousand soldiers — more than enough to crush the combined forces of all the vassal princes.”

“But do not be too quick to rejoice. A month ago, I had the Elu Bureau deliver a message to Jiang Yi.” A sly, teasing smile played at the corners of his lips. “Telling him everything you have done in Anjing City — including killing the emperor, manipulating power, and bathing the court in blood.”

“He is rigid in his thinking and loyal to his bones. Before, you beguiled and misled him — he believed you were good, and so he obeyed. Tomorrow — that may no longer be certain.”

“What exactly are you trying to do?”

Tangxi Zhui sensed his anger rising — felt that Pei Yanci was growing impatient with him — and began walking toward him one step at a time.

“Do you remember this little skull?”

Pei Yanci’s gaze moved to the skull that had toppled against the side of the couch. In the moonlight it looked all the more ghastly and pale.

“I have never coveted that throne. On the contrary — there has not been a single moment when I have not been thinking of how to use blood to make offerings to the souls of those who died in humiliation and injustice upon this land.”

“Those people were unworthy to be husbands, wives, fathers, mothers — lords or ministers.”

“But after meeting you,” Tangxi Zhui stopped one pace away from him, as though drawing any closer would reduce him to cinders.

“I have come to believe that you have the capacity to govern this country well.”

He drew a beautifully crafted dagger from his sleeve.

Pei Yanci’s pupils contracted sharply. He instinctively moved to step back — his hand half raised — then he saw Tangxi Zhui press the blade’s edge against his own throat.

“How is it that you expected me to turn it on you.” He laughed, self-deprecating.

How could he bear to.

That person was the most radiant beam of light in his life.

“Tangxi…” Pei Yanci said helplessly. “Put the dagger down.”

Tangxi Zhui shook his head, and in an instant a line of blood appeared across his throat.

He explained, “You may not yet be fully aware of the situation outside. Tomorrow you must join forces with Jiang Yi — only then can you crush the vassal princes, resolve the matter of Gu Yuejian, and emerge as the meritorious subject who ended Great Yu’s internal strife, the loyal minister who preserved it from fracturing into pieces, winning the approval of heaven and the hearts of the people — and ascend the throne.”

“But your reputation has been tainted by the association with me. You carry the name of having killed the Gu brothers. Even if you rise again in the future, you will be remembered as a villain who acted in concert with a power-drunk eunuch to slaughter the court’s officials. The throne will be hard to take, and harder still to hold with righteousness — no official of true integrity will ever swear loyalty to you, and the histories will make certain to inscribe your shames in large strokes alongside whatever merit you achieve.”

Tangxi Zhui’s voice trembled. Those eyes, always bright and alluring at their corners, now drooped wearily, and a mocking smile crossed his face.

“I am your stain.”

“If I die by your hand, all the sins fall on me to bear — and every problem resolves itself at a stroke, does it not?”

Jiang Yi would arrive tomorrow. Everything was within reach.

The sacrifice of a single Tangxi Zhui in exchange for the greatest possible gain — right before his eyes.

“I have one question for you.”

Tangxi Zhui raised his gaze and looked at him deeply.

“Do you choose the world — or do you choose me?”

His eyes had gone red at the rims, the outer corners flushed the color of begonia blossoms, that intoxicating crimson seeping all the way into his lids. His black lashes were wet, clumped into small clusters, adorned with trembling teardrops — and yet they kept lifting, stubbornly, trying to read every last expression on Pei Yanci’s face with clarity.

All the feigned composure and practiced indifference of past years had stripped away entirely. In those violet-tinted pupils was an endless, wretched, pleading need.

“Tangxi — I thought you understood me.” After a long silence, Pei Yanci spoke at last, his voice more difficult and strained than even he had expected.

Tangxi Zhui went cold and rigid all over. He pulled at the corner of his mouth, and in the end managed only a releasing smile. His lips trembled. “Yes. I do understand you.”

I understand you — understand the things you left half-said in these fleeting moments, understand your ambitions burning bright.

His Xiao Pei’er was the sun in the sky above — how could he allow himself to be held back by a dim and fading star?

To say nothing of this damp, rotting creeper that could not abide the light.

The hand gripping the dagger shook.

He did not want to dirty Pei Yanci’s hands.

A drop of scalding tears — at last — fell from the corner of his eye, tracing a wet line down a face pale as chalk, drained of all living color.

“May I ask you one thing — in your heart, was there ever a single moment, even once, where you genuinely, sincerely… had feelings of like for me?”

Pei Yanci closed his eyes briefly, then called out with quiet exasperation, “Tangxi.”

“I understand now.”

He had overstepped. He should always have known his place — should he not?

Tangxi Zhui had not finished speaking when the figure sitting at the bedside rose, and in one motion knocked the dagger out of his hand.

The next instant, Pei Yanci pulled him into an embrace.

“I like you.” He said softly into Tangxi Zhui’s ear.

“I always have.”

“Perhaps from the very first glance — to this very moment.”

Tangxi Zhui stood rooted to the spot, his entire body rigid.

Time seemed to slow.

Everything felt like the dying fantasies of a man gasping out his last breath.

“Can you stop wearing that utterly blank expression?” Pei Yanci propped his head up from within the embrace, leaning back just slightly. “I detest fools — having one Wuli already gives me enough of a headache.”

The tears Tangxi Zhui had been holding in at last broke free, pouring down his face.

Pei Yanci let him hold on, patting him on the back from time to time, coaxing him softly.

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

He had wrestled with this feeling before — troubled by it, frustrated by it, worn down by it — and had searched for a way through. But he had never once thought of letting it go.

Only at this moment did he know for certain: this was love.

“You never told me.” Nine-Thousand-Years was aggrieved.

“That’s my failing — I hadn’t been able to see clearly into my own heart until now.”

“All you ever cared about was your own political future.”

“From now on, I’ll have time to care about you.”

“I always thought you were using my feelings to climb higher.”

“Perhaps that was part of it before — but now that the great undertaking is nearly complete, why don’t you use me going forward instead? The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Tangxi Zhui’s quiet sobbing stopped abruptly. He pushed Pei Yanci out of his embrace.

“So if I don’t die…”

“Rest easy.” Pei Yanci said. “I told you — I never allow myself to be maneuvered into that kind of impossible dilemma.”

Tangxi Zhui had created the whole disaster outside to force out this answer.

Pei Yanci let out a yawn. “Nine-Thousand-Years — is it possible to receive your attendance now? It doesn’t look like anyone out there is going to start fighting tonight.”

Tangxi Zhui stripped off his outer robe and squeezed onto the bed, wrapping his arms tightly around him.

Pei Yanci adjusted himself into a comfortable position. The restless, sleepless tension that had coiled in him for so long finally released, and he began to drift.

Without realizing when it had happened, he had long since grown accustomed to the days with Tangxi Zhui by his side — had learned to want to rely on him, to rest against him.

“Stop tormenting yourself. I’m here for everything.” He patted Tangxi Zhui on the chest. “I am going to be Emperor, after all.”

The face filled with guilt and self-reproach broke into a smile. An ice-cold kiss fell upon his brow.

“Yes.”

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