AEDBE CHAPTER 12.1

A Eunuch’s Dream of Being Emperor by Li Ximin

CHAPTER 12:  THE SECRET CHAMBER AND THE DUNGEON

The Secret Chamber and the Imperial Delusion

Chapter 12 Part 1

The setup within the secret chamber was stark and spare. Hanging on one wall was a portrait of a pompous, ostentatious matriarch draped in formal court attire, laden with gold and silver. Beneath the opposite wall stood a wooden ancestral shrine, upon which sat a ceramic jar sealed with crimson cloth. Before the jar rested a small incense burner, wisps of sandalwood curling up into the air.

Grandpa Li, attired in full imperial eunuch regalia, knelt upon the rush mat beneath the portrait, weeping bitterly. His wails were piercingly shrill and agonizingly sorrowful, as though mourning a deeply cherished blood relative.

Weeping as he spoke, Grandpa Li choked out, "Old Buddha, this humble slave has failed you, this humble slave deserves a thousand deaths! I can no longer wait upon your august person!"

With that, Grandpa Li fell abruptly silent, his weeping snapping off mid-sob.

A moment later, Grandpa Li suddenly hoisted himself upright. There was not a single trace of moisture in his eyes; after weeping with such theatrical anguish for so long, not a single tear had actually been shed.

His gaze turned malevolent and resentful. Curling his fingers into a theatrical, affected orchid gesture, he pointed straight at the resplendently dressed old woman in the portrait, his tone dripping with the bitterness of a scorned, vengeful wife: "You old hag, this old master waited on you hand and foot all these years. When you were in a pleasant mood, you tossed me a sweetmeat; when you were displeased, you threw raging, violent tantrums, treating me no better than a stray cur! Old hag, open your blind eyes and look at me now: this old master is an emperor now too! What on earth can you possibly do to me?!"

With that, Grandpa Li ripped off his court eunuch vestments, hurling them onto the ground with vicious contempt. Then, reaching into the shrine's drawer, he extracted a long imperial-yellow robe, shaking it out with a crisp, rustling whoosh before pulling it over his shoulders. Both the front and back of the yellow robe were embroidered with writhing, clawing five-clawed dragons. Strutting back and forth across the secret chamber in his dragon robes, looking utterly deranged yet self-important, Grandpa Li babbled incessantly: "Old hag, this old master is an emperor now too, what can you do to me?! From this day forth, this old master refuses to serve you ever again—never again! You must be dying of pure, unadulterated rage right now, aren't you?! This old master is going to drive you to your grave with fury, anger you straight to death—"

As he raved, Grandpa Li tore the portrait of the grandly dressed old woman down from the wall, cast it to the floor, and ground his boots ruthlessly over the face of the old woman in the painting.

He muttered deliriously, "I am not a eunuch! Not a eunuch! I am an emperor now too! Old hag, this old master will never cower or scrape before you ever again! Old hag, beg me! Beg me and perhaps I'll grant you mercy; otherwise, this old master will keep you crushed beneath his heels for eternity, never allowing you to rise from the ashes! Old hag, beg me, beg me—"

Suddenly, Grandpa Li's entire frame convulsed violently.

His eyes darted about in wild, frantic panic.

It was as though he had been possessed by a malevolent specter.

He collapsed instantly to his knees, throwing himself at the base of the portrait's frame, beating his head against the ground in rapid, ceaseless kowtows.

Weeping abjectly, he cried, "Old Buddha, this humble slave deserves to die! This humble slave had no right to offend your venerable self, this humble slave deserves death, this humble slave is willing to serve you for all eternity, this humble slave will lick your feet, this humble slave will be a beast of burden for you to ride, this humble slave is nothing more than a dog beneath your feet..."

Watching Grandpa Li's grotesque performance unfold within the secret chamber, Dongzi felt a creeping, deep-seated chill curdle through his marrow.

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He had no inkling of who the richly adorned old woman in the portrait might be, only that Grandpa Li’s behavior was profoundly skin-crawling and grotesque.

Dongzi could stomach watching no longer, gripped by a sudden terror of being discovered by Grandpa Li in the midst of his clandestine spying. This was Grandpa Li’s ultimate, darkest secret; surely he would never permit a living soul to witness it. Dongzi dared not fathom what fate would await him should Grandpa Li unmask him—such a living creature was infinitely more terrifying than any phantom of the underworld.

Dongzi hastily retreated.

Back in his own quarters, Dongzi lay staring up at the ceiling, his heart still hammering wildly against his ribs.

What other unspeakable, buried horrors did Grandpa Li harbor?

And where, precisely, did that alternative subterranean tunnel lead?

With the turn of the lunar year fast approaching, Tang Town buzzed with a tense, claustrophobic vitality. Every day, streams of people trickled into Tang Town from the surrounding agrarian hamlets, carrying local produce to hawk on the town streets in exchange for essential holiday provisions to celebrate the impending New Year. The town gates were unlocked at early dawn and bolted shut at dusk—a rigid routine that left many feeling ill at ease. Yet, the denizens of Tang Town ultimately found a grim comfort in the ironclad security, sleeping far more soundly than in years past. In bygone winters, ruthless out-of-town bandits would invariably breach the darkness of night, pillaging goods to haul back to their mountain fastnesses for the holidays; those cutthroats were utterly cold-blooded, frequently leaving corpses in the wake of their plunder. The rural hamlets neighboring Tang Town now universally threw their allegiance behind Grandpa Li as their sovereign, raising earthen defensive stockade walls around every village and organizing local civilian defense militias composed entirely of Li Cilin's loyal enforcers. This forged an airtight joint-defense grid, cowing the bandits into uncharacteristic restraint.

Even so, wandering itinerant traders continued to slip into Tang Town to harvest local mountain goods, intending to flip their acquisitions in distant markets; nearly all of them took lodging at the Yulai Inn. The grotesque anomaly, however, was that these successive waves of outsiders checking into the Yulai Inn never seemed to walk out through its front doors again.

Hu Xilai observed this eerie phenomenon with acute clarity. Without fail, whenever out-of-town travelers checked into the Yulai Inn, they would patronize his modest eatery for their evening meal, eating and drinking their fill before shuffling back to their inn chambers to sleep. Hu Xilai was utterly baffled by the fact that they never reappeared, vanishing as cleanly and soundlessly as morning mist under the blaze of the sun.

Hu Xilai pressed Yu Cheng directly: "Where have all those lodgers vanished to?"

Yu Cheng replied deadpan, "Did anyone actually stay at my inn?"

Hu Xilai insisted earnestly, "Of course they did! They were eating their supper right here at my shop just last night."

Yu Cheng chuckled coldly, "Then perhaps it was hungry ghosts dining at your establishment! In any case, not a single soul has stayed at my inn."

Yu Cheng's cryptic stonewalling left Hu Xilai entirely bewildered, completely at a loss to make heads or tails of the madness.

Everyone in Tang Town knew that the first day of the New Year was an intensely auspicious day, marked for Grandpa Li’s grand imperial ascension ceremony. With the overlapping festivities of the New Year and a coronation, the town was guaranteed an irrepressible frenzy of noise and spectacle. The townsfolk yearned for it eagerly, having never laid eyes on an emperor’s coronation; not even their ancestors, nor their ancestors' forebears, had ever lived through an event of such monumental magnitude. Furthermore, many anticipated grand theatrical troupes; on a day of such supreme gravity, Grandpa Li was bound to commission grand opera performances for the populace. Such a night deserved no loneliness—it demanded jubilation across the realm.

Shangguan Wenqing, however, remained utterly indifferent to Grandpa Li’s grand ascension ceremony.

His entire soul was consumed by a singular fixation: Li Hongtang.

Li Hongtang had been gone for days, yet showed no sign of returning. He had initially harbored hopes of seeking baptism from the foreign missionary named John, praying that the Western God might bestow fortune and grace upon both himself and Li Hongtang, but overnight, the self-proclaimed divine emissary of healing had vanished into thin air.

Shangguan Wenqing wondered morbidly if the missionary had ascended bodily to Heaven to search for God.

He found himself plagued by further questions: What, precisely, did God look like? Could God gaze down upon him? Could the divine entity perceive the agonizing sorrows and tender devotion locked deep within his chest?

Shangguan Wenqing suffered a profound, desolate melancholy. The signature, polite smile had completely vanished from his features, and worse still, his physical frame was shrinking day by day—shrinking in tandem with his skull.

Every infinitesimal contraction of his head and torso brought with it a wave of agony so exquisite it felt like a flaying. The torments would drive him to writhe and shriek upon the dirt, utterly beyond mortal succor—not even from his deeply devoted mother! Once the paroxysm subsided and his body temporarily settled, he would collapse against the earth, drenched in sweat, his eyes glazed and his breath heaving like an exhausted draft ox.

Why on earth was his physical form contracting?

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His body was already stunted enough as it was!

Before crossing paths with Li Hongtang, he had seemingly never known sickness, nor experienced a single pang of physical torment.

He understood his own grotesque nature with crystalline clarity: no one could ever genuinely love or pity him, nor did he crave cheap charity. He knew that in this bitter existence, one could only manufacture one's own fleeting joy; all grief and agony were utterly futile, powerless ever to transform him into a normal, whole human being. He was privy to countless hidden scandals and surface currents running through Tang Town, yet he invariably observed them all through a detached, smiling veil, as though he were an ethereal outsider whose mortal breath had no tether to Tang Town—he was merely an abandoned child of the soil.

He longed to scream his questions up to an unreachable Heaven: Was this bodily wasting a punishment for daring to harbor mortal lust, for allowing his flesh to warp and his soul to burn like oil in a frying pan because he had dared to love? Was he inherently cursed, forbidden from ever touching or holding anything pure and beautiful?

Failing to locate John, he had no recourse save to shuffle toward the local Earth God shrine, dropping to his knees to burn joss paper and plead for the safe return of Li Hongtang—and her missing mother. By afternoon, he would post himself sentinel outside the eastern city gate, staring endlessly down the snowy mountain track, hungrily praying for Li Hongtang's lithe silhouette to materialize within his field of vision. Passersby frequently ignored him entirely, treating him as a non-existent phantom; others cast cold, callous glances of absolute disdain, viewing him as a superfluous blight—a creature born entirely redundant to the world.

Shangguan Wenqing was hardly alone in his misery; young Abao shared an equally profound desolation. Ever since the freezing, near-fatal night Dongzi had been dragged inside the towering gates of the Li family compound, Abao had grown sullen, withdrawn, and taciturn.

At times, he would linger before Dongzi’s shuttered doorway, staring dumbly at the heavy iron padlock, hallucinating the click of the latch and imagining Dongzi throwing the door wide with a radiant smile to welcome him inside. On other occasions, he would wander in utter solitude beyond the West City Gate, crunching through the deep drifts of snow until he reached the banks of the roaring Tang Creek, watching the frigid, crystal waters churn past while tears blurred his vision, half-convinced that Dongzi’s laughter was piercing the winter fog to ring directly in his ears. Sometimes, his feet would lead him compulsively toward Xinglong Alley, halting in the empty square before the forecourt of the Li family estate, listening to the delicate, resonant strains of operatic singing drifting over the walls while his youthful heart sank irretrievably into an abyss of unnamed grief.

No one spared a thought for his heartache; no one gave heed to his crushing isolation—not even his own parents. Zhang Faqiang remained hunched over his workbench day and night, hammering away at timber to scrape together a lavish New Year's eve feast; his mother was perpetually occupied hawking her husband’s woodwork on the commercial street, remaining utterly blind and indifferent to her son’s startling psychological unraveling.

Wang Haihua, conversely, radiated giddy triumph from dawn till dusk. This formerly unremarkable, downtrodden woman now swaggered down the cobblestone alley with an exaggerated, rolling gait, and acquaintances she encountered on the lane felt compelled to toss her obsequious, smiling greetings. She would frequently halt her stride to gossip with neighboring housewives, dropping smug, theatrical boasts at the slightest provocation: "My Sao Gu..."

Li Saogu had commissioned a brand-new set of garments for her, and she could not even contain herself until New Year's Day before parading them through the streets to flaunt her status. Everyone understood that her insufferable arrogance stemmed entirely from having a husband who had climbed the political ladder, so they merely exchanged knowing, cynical grins behind her back while offering hollow flattery.

On this particular day, Wang Haihua crossed paths with Shen Zhuniang, who was manning a roadside vegetable stall.

Because Li Saogu had never once deigned to summon or notice her, Shen Zhuniang harbored a festering well of bitter resentment.

Wang Haihua strutted past with deliberate, ostentatious swagger.

Shen Zhuniang spat a venomous curse under her breath: "What absolute trash, acting as though her family's scrawny hen morphed into a golden phoenix! Nothing special about the bitch!"

Shen Zhuniang refused to grant her so much as a veneer of a polite smile.

Wang Haihua caught the murderous glare instantly.

Halting right before Shen Zhuniang’s stall, she dropped into a saccharine, mocking tone: "My, oh my, Shen Zhuniang, did your precious Yu Gouzi drop his shirt at the gambling dens last night? You look positively sour."

Shen Zhuniang sneered frostily, "Whether Yu Gouzi wins or rots is any of your damn business? And whether this lady chooses to smile has fuck-all to do with you! Let me spell it out for you: even if your precious Li Saogu struts around like a grand potentate, you'll never sit on the dragon throne as Empress! At absolute best, Li Saogu drills you an extra two rounds a night, and you think you’ve ascended to heaven. Why don't you squat over a puddle and check your own reflection to see what kind of cheap whore's goods you are? Trying to police my face!"

Bystanders overhearing the verbal flaying clapped hands over their mouths to stifle malicious snickers.

Wang Haihua’s prestige was pulverized into dust; her face scorched crimson and she stood struck utterly dumb. She was never a particularly sharp-tongued woman to begin with, having ventured out merely to bask in superficial vanity; she had never anticipated running into a shameless harpy like Shen Zhuniang, whose vicious strike found the most vulnerable chink in her armor, leaving Wang Haihua with zero ground to stand on. Burning with blistering humiliation and bitter regret for picking a fight she couldn't finish, she realized that lingering to bicker on the public thoroughfare would only sink her deeper into a laughingstock's grave, forcing her to beat a hasty, scuttling retreat.

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Having thoroughly vented her spleen, Shen Zhuniang shouted loud enough to rattle the eaves at Wang Haihua’s retreating spine: "Make sure Li Saogu pounds you twice extra tonight so you've got enough feathers to strut around shaking tomorrow!"

With that, she burst into a cackling, triumphant laugh.

A passerby shook their head, warning her quietly, "Watch your mouth, Shen Zhuniang, or someone’s going to come along and smash your teeth in."

Shen Zhuniang jeered, "Let them smash 'em! It ain't like I ain't tasted a fist or two before!"

The man shook his head in disgust and walked away.

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Deep in the dead of night, Li Saogu slipped back into his dwelling like a phantom. Without even bothering to strip off his mud-caked shoes, he slithered onto the sleeping platform, instantly pawing greedily at Wang Haihua’s undergarments. Wang Haihua clamped her hands over her waistband, fiercely resisting his groping.

Inflamed by raw lust, Li Saogu hissed with frantic impatience, "Wife, what in hell's name is wrong with you tonight?"

Wang Haihua choked back a sob, whimpering, "I was publicly humiliated on the street today, I have zero appetite for this."

Li Saogu cursed furiously, "Mother’s cunt! Who dared lay a finger on you, did they swallow a leopard’s gall?"

Weeping brokenly, Wang Haihua snapped, "It was that big-mouthed shrew Shen Zhuniang! Not content with cursing me to my face, she even had the gall to say that you—"

Li Saogu’s meaty hand instantly clamped brutally over his wife’s sagging breast: "What did she say about me?"

Wang Haihua wailed, "She said you were a completely useless piece of trash!"

Li Saogu froze for a fractional second, then let out a dry, mirthless chuckle. "She says I'm useless, and you believe her? Whether I'm useful or not, you ought to know better than anyone!"

Wang Haihua pouted with indignant coyness, "You can still laugh! Are you even a man?!"

Brushing aside her protests, Li Saogu ripped her underpants down, heaved his weight over her body, and panted heavily, "Fine, fine, wife, tomorrow I'll go slice that bitch's tongue right out of her skull so she learns to keep her trap shut!"

Wang Haihua blinked her tears away, a twisted grin breaking through her misery, "That's more like it... though instead of cutting her tongue, just smash her teeth out so she can't talk shit."

Li Saogu began driving his hips with violent, mechanical rhythm, while soft, high-pitched moans of simulated ecstasy escaped Wang Haihua’s lips.

Mid-thrust, Li Saogu suddenly bellowed out a totally different woman's name: "Hongyan! Hongyan—"

Wang Haihua’s moans slammed to a dead halt. Staring at him in bewildered shock, she demanded, "Who the hell is Hongyan?"

Realizing his catastrophic slip of the tongue, Li Saogu scrambled to cover his tracks, stammering frantically, "You... you misheard! I was screaming your name—Haihua! Hua—"

Only then did Wang Haihua reluctantly resume her performance, though the mechanical rhythm had lost all semblance of passion. At that exact instant, a sharp, glacial, mocking giggle drifted in from the freezing windowpane outside. Li Saogu’s entire skeleton jerked with a violent tremor, and the member beneath him instantly withered into limp uselessness as a wave of bleak despair crushed his chest: Why won’t you ever grant me peace!

At dusk on the very evening Li Hongtang drifted back into Tang Town, the dying crimson sun bled across the snow-laden roofs like fresh gore.

When her forlorn, hunched silhouette finally materialized in the distance along the mountain trail, Shangguan Wenqing, frozen in perpetual vigil at the edge of town, murmured involuntarily, "Praise the Earth God... praise the Lord..."

He made to lunge forward to greet her, but his legs felt welded to the earth by blocks of solid lead, refusing to yield an inch.

As he planted his boots there in desperate struggle, he felt the sickening, familiar wrench of his body contracting once more.

His skull and bones compressed viciously under an invisible, crushing press; every joint in his skeleton popped with a dry, splintering crack, his muscles snapping taut like bowstrings on the verge of shattering.

Pain—unmitigated, paralyzing agony.

He collapsed face-first into the filth, rolling uncontrollably across the ice while shrieking in primal torment.

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He prayed with every dying neuron that Li Hongtang would not witness him reduced to such a pathetic spectacle; what would she think if she laid eyes on him now?

At long last, the agonizing wave receded.

He had dropped another half-head in height, his frame shriveling another full tier.

He could physically chart the terrifying degradation of his own flesh.

Terrified of confronting Li Hongtang in such a monstrous state, Shangguan Wenqing dragged his leaden limbs through the city gates the moment he heard her footsteps draw near, ducking into a dark alleyway to curl into a hollow. He refused to let her gaze upon his daily accelerating decay, nor did he wish to subject her to public mortification; should gossiping tongues link them together, Li Hongtang would suffer unbearable shame—she was, after all, a seventeen-year-old maiden.

In truth, Li Hongtang had perceived his presence long before.

She could acutely sense Shangguan Wenqing's suffocating anxiety and desperate devotion.

She desperately wished to reach out and catch the love he offered, but—

Had Shangguan Wenqing not slinked away into hiding, she would have lacked the courage to face this wretched, tragic man either. He was perhaps the sole soul in Tang Town endowed with genuine empathy; how many such men existed in this cursed place?

Li Hongtang felt a crushing weight of guilt pressing down on her chest.

She stepped through the gloomy archway of the town gate.

At that moment, the sun finally swallowed itself behind the western ridges, and glacial, biting gales began to howl through the alleyways of Tang Town.

The militia sentries stationed at the gate pinned their sharp, needle-like stares directly upon her.

Pricked by their invasive scrutiny, Li Hongtang quickened her desperate pace.

From his hidden nook, Shangguan Wenqing tracked her every movement, his heart hammering in rhythm with her stumbling boots.

You Sisi still had not returned alongside Li Hongtang, filling Shangguan Wenqing's throat with an indescribable, metallic acid taste.

A sudden, violent squall whipped down the narrow street.

The blue calico cloth wrapped around Li Hongtang’s head and face was snatched away entirely by the gale.

The stark, snow-white locks of hair and the withered, mummified ruin of her face were instantly blasted open to the cruel twilight. Under the stunned, merciless glare of the gathered onlookers, Li Hongtang felt every drop of blood drain from her body. Instantly, with primal instinct, she threw her hands up to shield her face, then frantically clawed at her exposed white hair, her eyes swimming with helpless, humiliated tears. The bystanders stood paralyzed, slack-jawed in sheer disbelief; they could never have fathomed that the once-radiant Li Hongtang could morph into this hideous crone. To the horrified eyes of the townspeople, she was no longer Li Hongtang at all—she was a terrifying, unrecognizable stranger!

Shangguan Wenqing let out a heartrending shriek of despair within his chest, darting out from his hiding place with absolute recklessness to chase the fluttering blue cloth scraps blown down the lane. By the time he snatched the fabric out of the dirt and turned back, gasping for air, hoping to restore it to her, she had already bolted blindly toward her homestead. Determined to return the cloth, Shangguan Wenqing hurried after her. As he neared her hovel, the venomous whispers of the street-side gossips washed over him; cruel tongues wagged that Li Hongtang was possessed by a vengeful fox demon and would surely rot away before the week was out.

Shangguan Wenqing's heart felt as though it were being slowly minced by a dull blade.

His body was shrinking inch by inch each dawn, while Li Hongtang’s youth withered away into premature decay; they were both victims of a grotesque, supernatural plague defying all human remedy—the absolute most wretched pariahs of Tang Town. Shangguan Wenqing could find no rational rhyme or reason for his curse, though his mind drifted darkly to that night in the rotting, pestilent mire of the Black Forest. He could not verify the connection, choosing instead to romanticize his affliction as the physical toll of unrequited yearning, as though his soul had been ripped bodily away by Li Hongtang, causing his mortal envelope to shrivel in sympathetic pain. And what of Li Hongtang? He deduced that her horror stemmed entirely from spiritual grief; ever since her mother vanished into the ether, she had not known a single genuine smile.

Sorrow was undeniably the most lethal poison bred under heaven!

Arriving before her shuttered threshold, Shangguan Wenqing pressed his palms against the warped timber, his voice trembling: "Hongtang... open the door. I've brought your blue cloth back."

Passersby shot him grotesque, sidelong sideways glances, yet gave him a wide berth, treating both Shangguan Wenqing and Li Hongtang like infectious lepers during the plague season, terrified that a wisp of their bad karma might rub off. Only young Abao lingered faithfully behind Shangguan Wenqing, sharing his silent, crushing grief.

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Shangguan Wenqing rapped his knuckles gently against the panels: "Hongtang, I know the agony eating at your soul... please, unbar the door. I’ll leave the cloth right here and depart immediately, I swear I won't burden you with a single trouble."

Li Hongtang’s mournful, thread-thin voice drifted through the grain: "Wenqing... you are a good, kind man. Please, go away. I have no use for the blue cloth anymore—truly, I don't. Hurry back before dark; if you stay out past nightfall, your mother will fret herself sick. Go home, leave me to my misery. I don't want to lay eyes on a living soul."

Shangguan Wenqing scrubbed the moisture from his cheeks, clutching the crumpled fabric tightly to his chest as he emitted a desolate, rattling sigh. He understood Li Hongtang’s stubborn temperament all too well; if she swore off opening the door, nothing short of death would move her. Defeated, he turned away, casting agonizing backward glances with every step, half-praying she might suddenly throw the panels wide.

Once Shangguan Wenqing's footsteps faded, Abao crept forward and whispered to the gap in the timber: "Elder Sister... Elder Sister—"

Li Hongtang cracked the door an inch, murmuring softly, "Abao, you should head home too. Elder Sister is quite all right, don't fret over me."

Abao's voice cracked with tears: "Elder Sister, I... I need to tell you what happened to Dongzi."

Li Hongtang’s tone pitched into sudden terror: "Abao, speak quickly! Where has Dongzi gone? What has happened?!"

Abao broke down, sobbing uncontrollably.

Li Hongtang yanked the door open wide, hauled Abao into the shadows, and slammed the heavy bolt shut. Reaching out with trembling fingers, she wiped the tears from the boy's cheeks, demanding frantically, "Abao, stop weeping! Tell me—what on earth has become of Dongzi?!"

Abao gasped between sobs, "Dongzi... Dongzi has gone to live inside the imperial palace! They carried him away in a grand four-bearer sedan chair. He's not allowed to play with me anymore, and he's never coming home. Everyone in town says Dongzi has become an imperial grandson... he's going to live a life of endless wealth and luxury."

Li Hongtang froze as though struck by lightning. She had never heard any whisper of her younger brother being hauled away into the sprawling Li estate to play the part of some fake imperial scion, severed from her world entirely. She cared nothing for wealth and glory; she wanted only to cling to her blood kin for mutual survival.

Abao peered up anxiously, "Elder Sister... will you move into the imperial palace too? They say there are grand theatrical plays performed there every night."

Swallowing the jagged lump of grief wedged in her throat, Li Hongtang whispered, "I am going nowhere. This is our home... I stay right here."

Abao reached out, his small fingers brushing across the deeply wrinkled, prematurely aged skin of Li Hongtang's cheek, a dark shadow crossing his eyes: "Elder Sister... what has happened to you?"

Abao forced a tragic, bitter smile, "Abao, your elder sister has grown hideously old... aren't you afraid of me?"

Abao shook his head vigorously, "Elder Sister, I'm not scared! How could I ever be afraid of you? You are the best elder sister in the whole world! You aren't ugly at all... anyone who says otherwise isn't even human!"

Li Hongtang let out a long, shuddering sigh.

Abao sniffled, "Elder Sister, don't sigh. I'm going right now to find Dongzi and tell him you're back!"

Without waiting for a reply, Abao darted out into the freezing night.

Left alone within the drafty, dilapidated shell of her home, Li Hongtang was consumed by an infinite, bone-chilling desolation.

When Abao scurried out onto the lane, pitch-black night had completely swallowed the town. Instead of turning toward his own hearth, he plunged into the gloom, making straight for Xinglong Alley. Festive crimson lanterns swung dismally from the massive lintel of the Li family estate. The main gates stood ajar, flanked by two armed militia enforcers who glared with hostile, predatory vigilance at the small boy standing at the foot of the stone steps.

One enforcer sneered, "Ah, the brat's back again. Almost turned into a frozen corpse that night!"

The other guard barked menacingly, "You little bastard, what business do you have crawling back here? Piss off home before I skin you!"

Abao stammered bravely, "I... I'm here to find Dongzi."

The guard let out a harsh, mocking bark of laughter: "Who the hell do you think you are? Is the name of our young imperial grandson something a beggar brat like you can holler out? Hilarious! Do you actually think you can waltz into the imperial palace? Get lost before I haul you down into the dark dungeons and let you rot!"

The second guard hissed nervously, "Hey, brother, watch your fucking mouth. What did Commander Li order us? We aren't supposed to acknowledge there's a black dungeon inside the palace grounds! If Commander Li catches wind of this slip, the one rotting in irons down there will be you!"

The first guard turned ashen, his voice dropping an octave as he hissed, "You better not rat me out, brother!"

"I won't rat you out... but it'll cost you."

"Name it, no problem!"

"Another day of drinks at the tavern."

"A single round of drinks?"

"Drinks plus a string of copper cash, how's that?"

"You're a blood-sucking demon! That's highway robbery!"

Abao looked at the two armed thugs with absolute revulsion. He thought to himself: even if they butchered him on the spot, he had to get word to Dongzi that his sister had returned. Drawing a deep breath, Abao bellowed at the top of his lungs: "Dongzi! Elder Sister is home! Come out and see her—"

Before he could scream a second time, both guards lunged forward, tackling him to the stone steps and clamping heavy hands over his mouth.

"Let go of me! Let go!" Abao thrashed furiously, continuing to shriek, "Dongzi! Elder Sister is home, come home to her—"

At that exact second, Li Cilin strode out into the forecourt, his face carved from cold granite.

He roared a command: "You two incompetent bastards! Unhand the boy at once!"

The guards jerked their hands back, scrambling to their feet in wide-eyed panic; Li Cilin’s ruthlessness commanded absolute terror. Striding directly to Abao, Li Cilin crouched down, his voice dropping into a deceptive, low murmur: "Abao... what were you shouting about out here?"

Abao’s eyes welled with hot tears: "Uncle Cilin... I came to tell Dongzi that Elder Sister is back. He needs to come home and see her right now... Elder Sister is in a terrible state!"

Li Cilin’s eyelid twitched violently: "Abao, what did you just say? What's wrong with Hongtang?"

Tears spilled over Abao's lashes: "Elder Sister is sick... terribly, deathly sick."

Li Cilin’s expression twisted through a rapid sequence of micro-expressions, his eyelids fluttering as though stung by grit. After a heavy silence, he said quietly, "Abao... thank you for bringing us word about Hongtang. Run along home now, your parents will be waiting for your supper."

Abao nodded miserably: "Uncle Cilin... don't forget to tell Dongzi. Elder Sister misses him so much... she's so pitiable!"

Li Cilin gave a heavy, grim nod.

Abao turned and trudged away, his small shoulders shaking.

Watching the boy's retreating spine, Li Cilin clenched his jaw so hard his teeth groaned.

A heavy, rattled sigh escaped his chest.

His knees buckled slightly, a sudden wave of vertigo swimming through his brain.

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Vibe check:

​Hey besties, lowkey had to slice this chapter right down the middle into two parts because my poor wrist and brain are literally screaming and crying in the club rn 😭💀 Honestly, my carpal tunnel is acting up, my last two brain cells are fighting for their lives, and my fingers are ready to file for severance.

​Show some love and pour one out for my joints, but hey, at least you got part one! Don't ghost me, more coming soon—stay tuned! 😘✨

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