chapter 1
chapter 1
Chuncao pinned Buzhen down, but the switch in Little Kangzi’s hand refused to fall.
“If word gets out that Your Highness used such a harsh private punishment, people will criticize you.”
At first hearing, he sounded like a loyal servant protecting his mistress.
Unfortunately, the floating comments told me the truth:
[Little Kangzi has adored Zhenzhen for more than ten years. Even after becoming the Princess of Qishan’s servant, he never betrayed her. I’m so moved!]
[What a shame her gentle boy-next-door grew up to be a eunuch. He isn’t worthy of Zhenzhen anymore.]
I smiled. “This is my bedchamber, and every attendant here is one of my trusted people. Who would spread the news? Name them, and I shall reward you handsomely.”
Little Kangzi dropped to his knees with a thud. “This servant would never dare!”
Still unwilling to give up, he added, “It’s only that this musician’s hands are so delicate. This servant fears damaging them.”
Chuncao could not understand why her mild and clever colleague would do something so foolish. She kept shooting Little Kangzi meaningful looks.
I glanced coolly at her.
Chuncao immediately straightened. “Trespassing in the princess’s bedchamber, offending the princess’s dignity, and disrupting the rites—taken together, those crimes are enough to send her to the Office of Disciplinary Punishments! A few strokes to the palms already show Her Highness’s mercy.”
That was the last chance I gave Little Kangzi.
He did not take it. He stubbornly refused to carry out the sentence.
Chuncao stopped helping him, her face turning cold.
I thought with a sneer: with devotion this deep, how could he possibly be unworthy of Buzhen?
“I shall honor your wish to protect her and spare her this punishment,” I said.
Little Kangzi sighed in relief.
I continued, “I shall also bestow her upon you as your wife.”
Buzhen shrieked, “I may be a musician, but I am still a respectable maiden! How can the princess let a rootless thing defile my chastity?”
Little Kangzi had been about to beg me to withdraw the decree. At Buzhen’s words, he froze. After a beat, he said slowly, “The princess has misunderstood.”
Chuncao slapped Buzhen. “You wretched little hussy! How dare you disrespect the princess?”
“I misunderstood?” I said. “Then let the musician choose for herself: thirty strokes, or a loving marriage with you?”
Buzhen chose the beating without hesitation.
Pain filled Little Kangzi’s eyes as he raised the switch.
“Chuncao, you do it.”
Chuncao snatched the switch away and brought it down hard and true, again and again.
[Chuncao really is the Princess of Qishan’s faithful attack dog.]
[Being buried alive is too good for Chuncao!]
Little Kangzi was crowded into a corner, his face deathly pale.
After Buzhen screamed several times, a eunuch stuffed a filthy, reeking rag into her mouth. She gagged and wept around it.
By the end of the thirty strokes, her palms were swollen and seeping blood.
She struggled until she spat out the rag, then began to sob out her grievance.
“I accept the punishment, but the ritual music requires accompaniment on the wuqin, and I am the only one who can play it. Now that my hands have been ruined, there is no one to replace me.”
[Stunned now, aren’t you? Where is the Princess of Qishan supposed to find another musician who can play the wuqin in this desolate traveling palace?]
[This is where her scumbag father starts hating her. Once the male lead delivers his killing blow, the Princess of Qishan will lose her title and be imprisoned. Then come exile and the flogging of her corpse. Hahaha!]
Chuncao flared up. “You still mean to pin this on the princess?”
Buzhen said pitifully, “It was the princess who ordered my palms beaten. What can I do?”
I smiled. “Kill yourself in atonement, then. At the Hour of the Goat, you shall be beaten to death.”
If I called outright for Buzhen’s death, could the male lead still hide in the shadows?
Father and Mother had always treated each other with perfect respect. My title came from the first and greatest of our dynasty’s famous mountains, and no daughter had ever enjoyed higher favor.
I could hardly wait to discover who possessed the ability to reduce me to exile and a flogged corpse.
Buzhen’s delicate alarm gave way to naked terror.
[The Princess of Qishan deserves to die!]
[The more gleefully the vicious supporting villainess struts now, the worse her death will be!]
After Buzhen was dragged away, Chuncao lowered her voice.
“As expected of my princess—decisive as thunder. But if we really beat her to death, we will turn ourselves from the party in the right into the party in the wrong.
“This servant thinks we should imprison her first, then summon the Director of Imperial Music at once to discuss a solution.”
Chuncao, you truly were my faithful attack dog too… No, my loyal servant and dear friend.
How could I let you be buried alive?
I lowered my own voice.
“I know. Go prepare a…
“Think. Who helped her sneak in here so that I would catch her wearing a princess’s ceremonial robes?
“Who made her irreplaceable, with no one able to take her place, and laid this trap for me?
“Who is trying to brand me arrogant, willful, and contemptuous of the rites?”
Understanding flashed across Chuncao’s face. “This servant will secure every gate and investigate everyone on duty today.”
As the Hour of the Goat approached, Buzhen’s helper had no choice but to seek reinforcements.
He was caught and forced to name his accomplices.
Besides Little Kangzi, there were three guards.
The last guard to be exposed suddenly killed his comrades, then himself.
Little Kangzi tried to kill himself as well. I said mildly, “If all of you die, who will protect your child bride? Help from afar cannot solve an immediate crisis.”
His face turned ashen. “Your Highness even knows that. So you were prepared all along.”
Wrong. I had only just learned it from the comments.
The comments also said that I was the vicious supporting villainess, Mother a jealous homewrecker, and Father a blind scumbag.
Buzhen was the innocent heroine whom the entire world had wronged—and a lost princess besides.
The male lead secretly loved her. He had been helping her from the shadows and would send me to hell to atone for my sins.
The comments mocked me for overestimating myself.
Absurd.
Mother came from a distinguished clan filled with loyal martyrs. Father was a wise sovereign praised by all his people. I, too, was learned and knew right from wrong.
If defending our rank and dignity made us ignorant fools, why was Buzhen and the male lead’s conspiracy to seize the throne celebrated as a refusal to accept mediocrity?
History was written by the victor.
As long as I remained alive, they would never succeed.
I smiled at Little Kangzi. “How does it feel to hear her call you a rootless thing?”
I still remembered how, ten years earlier, a bruised Little Kangzi had thrown himself at my feet. He had begged the princess to show mercy and rescue him from an older eunuch’s sexual abuse, swearing to become the princess’s most obedient dog.
He smiled bitterly. “The happiness Zhen’er gave me in childhood is enough to savor for a lifetime. When she says I have no roots, she does not understand. She is my root.”
Chuncao cursed him. “You’ve certainly done right by her. But how have you done right by the princess?”
His face was calm. “The princess is cherished by her parents and lives in peerless luxury. How could she understand Zhen’er’s suffering?”
Then he bowed deeply. “This servant will repay the princess in his next life.”
He dashed his head against a pillar and died. Chuncao could not stop him, though she caught the tearful words he left behind.
“Princess… beware those closest to you!”
We had rooted out every traitor among the eunuchs.
Who remained close to me but the imperial family?
Little Kangzi was ruled by emotion and unfit for important work. His ties to the mastermind might not have run deep.
But those three guards had all been assigned to me by Mother.
A servant came to report.
“Your Highness, the messages those men sent out were bound for Her Majesty the Empress’s Palace of Earthly Tranquility.”