Chapter 1
At first, I was delighted to find myself in another world.
Heaven must have favored me. Knowing I had died of illness before fulfilling my ambitions, it had bestowed a healthy body upon me so that I could rule again and carry out my grand designs.
The realm was no longer my old realm, but I was still its emperor. That was enough.
My delight did not last.
This world, I discovered, was absurd.
After spending an entire day sorting out affairs of state, I wanted to meet my predecessor’s crown prince.
The man I sent returned to say the prince was out. He had gone to the House of Red Delights.
Ah. This world was rather less straitlaced than my old one.
Calling a library the House of Red Delights! Did they not worry that people would find the name garish?
The eunuch’s voice shook. “Your Majesty, the House of Red Delights is n-not a library. It is… it is the largest brothel in the capital.”
I understood. Not a library, then. A brothel.
Wait.
A brothel?!
The crown prince had gone to a brothel?
I spat out my tea.
I could not fathom how those two things belonged in the same sentence.
He was the crown prince. What woman could he possibly want and not have?
Why behave like a fool and hand the censors an opportunity to impeach him?
Or did he feel so secure in his position that he wanted a little rebellion to liven things up?
When I was crown prince, I had planned every step with the utmost caution, terrified that the slightest mistake would let one of my brothers, all eyeing my position hungrily, drag me down.
This prince, on the other hand!
Not only had he gone to a brothel.
He had quarreled with the crown princess before a crowd of commoners, then abandoned the carriage and headed straight there!
So brazen.
So utterly reckless!
“Tell the crown prince to get back here!”
I tried to hold my temper. I failed.
Crown Prince Ji Xingguang was not my predecessor’s own flesh and blood. Having reached forty without a son, my predecessor had adopted him from a collateral branch of the imperial clan.
Ji Xingguang was already fifteen when he was adopted.
Fatherhood was difficult in the imperial family, doubly so when father and son had come together halfway through life. His relationship with my predecessor had never been more than outwardly harmonious.
I had worried that I would have to wait for the empress to conceive and bear a first son before I could strip him of his position.
Now there was no need.
He had personally handed me an excellent excuse!
As I sharpened my knives for the crown prince, I suddenly remembered Lady Liu, the crown princess my predecessor had chosen for him.
She was the daughter of a disgraced official.
My predecessor’s relationship with the prince had veered between warmth and hostility. When he arranged the marriage to Lady Liu, he had genuinely admired the young woman’s virtue and hoped the couple would help each other advance.
But when he later ordered the seizure of the Liu family’s property, he had also meant to spite the prince and deprive him of a powerful ally.
Despite being publicly humiliated by her husband, the young woman had neither argued nor made a scene. For someone of her rank to endure that, her life must have been difficult.
I had already decided to depose Ji Xingguang. She could hardly remain crown princess after that.
Yet her family had been exiled to Lingnan. She had lost even her last refuge.
My predecessor had caused this misery, after all.
Being a merciful emperor, I thought I ought to meet Lady Liu before deciding what to do.
“…Aren’t you afraid the crown prince will catch us, Lord Xie?”
“I rather hope he does, and soon. Then he will know—”
“That Your Highness’s exquisite body already carries my scent.”
I stopped, wondering whether something had gone wrong with my ears.
The Eastern Palace maid beside me had turned deathly pale and fallen to her knees.
Trembling, she tried to speak. One look from me silenced her.
Behind layer upon layer of gauze curtains, the sounds in the pavilion continued.
A man’s heavy breathing mingled with a woman’s soft moans, conjuring spring in the depths of winter.
I began to doubt my predecessor’s judgment.
Was this adulterous Lady Liu really the sensitive, intelligent, virtuous crown princess he had admired?
And this Lord Xie—unless I was mistaken, he was Xie Chi, the imperial tutor my predecessor had personally appointed to instruct the crown prince.
The prince’s own teacher, sleeping with the crown princess in the Eastern Palace, as if nothing else in the world mattered.
Ha.
Had his entire extended family grown tired of living?
I laughed in sheer fury.
The sounds in the pavilion abruptly ceased. Then a woman demanded, “Who’s there?”
I closed my eyes. “Your emperor.”
By the time Lady Liu and Xie Chi had dressed and knelt before me, their faces were white as paper and their eyes full of terror.
How curious. “So you do know fear?”
“I thought you had long since forgotten you even had an emperor.”
“Your Majesty!”
Xie Chi shuffled forward on his knees and bowed low. “Your subject trembles before you.”
“I see no trembling. All I see is outrageous audacity!”
I glimpsed half a red mark above his collar and nearly blacked out again. “Xie Chi, do you remember why I sent you to the Eastern Palace?”
“Yes. Your Majesty appointed me imperial tutor to teach the crown prince how to rule.”
“And what have you done?”
“You taught him to rule so well that he abandoned his wife in the street and went to a brothel. Meanwhile, you took advantage of your proximity to climb into the crown princess’s bed!”
Of course I knew Xie Chi alone could not be blamed for Ji Xingguang’s behavior.
But my predecessor was dead, and Ji Xingguang was not in front of me. Xie Chi was the only person available to berate.
Besides, I was not wrong. He was the prince’s tutor. He bore the chief responsibility for what the prince had become!
At the height of my anger, I grew calm instead. “Lord Xie, why don’t you teach me how you and all nine branches of your extended family might survive the night?”
“Your Majesty!”
Xie Chi looked up in shock.
But the light in his eyes soon flickered out. His already bloodless face took on the gray pallor of despair.
My predecessor had been so benevolent an emperor that it bordered on weakness.
How benevolent?
After an official had pointed at his nose and berated him during a court audience, he would swallow his pride and coax the man with gentle words.
I might have scorned my predecessor, but such scenes of ruler and minister getting along could earn him a reputation as a good emperor, receptive to criticism and generous to his subjects.
Yet even the best emperor could never tolerate the imperial tutor cuckolding his son.
Ji Xingguang might not have been his biological son, but as crown prince he represented the imperial house.
Xie Chi’s actions were tantamount to trampling the dignity of the entire Ji dynasty.
And now he was dealing with me.
However audacious he might be, Xie Chi could not fail to grasp that.
He bowed again, his forehead striking the floor with a dull thud.
“…The fault is mine alone. I am willing to bear it all. I beg Your Majesty to spare my family.”
I heard the resentment and unwillingness in his voice and felt rather sorry for the Xie relatives I had never met.
“Did you think of your family when you committed this outrage in the Eastern Palace?”
I sighed and said evenly, “Take him away and execute him here. Exile the Xie family to Lingnan.”