Chapter 5
The scandal was enormous.
The relationship between the Xie household and the Empress Dowager’s faction had barely begun to thaw before it froze harder than ever.
Xie Zheng flew into a rage unlike anything his daughter had seen.
He was unfamiliar and terrifying. Xie Yao’s face drained white. She huddled behind Xu Sixing as they knelt in the ancestral hall, awaiting family punishment.
Seventy lashes.
Xu Sixing did not understand the gravity of his offense.
He believed that if he endured, daylight would follow. With the whole capital watching, Lord Xie and the princess would eventually hold their noses and accept him as a son-in-law, just as the Empress Dowager had once accepted Xie Zheng.
So he continued to perform. He no longer knew how much of his devotion was real and how much was false.
The bamboo lash bit into his skin.
Each stroke tore away a strip of flesh.
His thin undergarment turned scarlet. At first, he stuffed his hand into his mouth to suppress every sound and display a man’s courage. Soon his hand was mangled by his own teeth and blood seemed to pour from his entire body. His screams finally escaped.
He was not without resolve. Even while wishing for death, he preserved enough reason to call toward Xie Yao.
“Yao’er, don’t be afraid… It will be over soon.”
I knelt beside Xie Yao.
I supported her limp body, knowing better than anyone that this would not end soon.
It had only begun.
Princess Zhaohua arrived as the seventieth lash fell.
The bloody shape writhing on the ground no longer looked human, but that did nothing to soften her rage. She had just returned from the Empress Dowager’s palace, where barbed remarks had rained on her for hours—the deepest humiliation she had suffered in years.
All that stored fury broke free.
“Why have you stopped? Beat this bastard who seduced the young mistress to death. Throw his corpse to the dogs.”
She meant it.
“No! Don’t!”
Two cries sounded together.
Xu Sixing’s was too weak and vanished beneath Xie Yao’s struggles.
Only I heard him whisper, “I regret it.”
Too late, wasn’t it?
Before I sent the letters, I gave him a chance.
The niece of a sixth-rank official had fallen for his handsome face and sent rice cakes she made herself.
Her family was not illustrious, but she was pretty and respectable. By any measure, she was more than a match for an orphan who had come to the capital to live on distant relatives.
Yet luxury had spoiled Xu Sixing’s appetite. After sheltering beneath the Xie name for too long, he imagined himself a dragon among men. I delivered the cakes personally. He stepped back and failed to fully hide his disgust, though he maintained the posture of a gentleman.
“Tell Miss Li that flowing water feels no love. Spring is lovely; may she bloom on another branch.”
The carefully made cakes ended in the pond.
Fish swarmed and devoured them.
Xu Sixing had chosen this road.
He once said he would gladly die for wealth and honor. Now he had received his wish.
“Mother, no! Make them stop!”
Xie Yao crawled forward and clung to the princess’s skirt. When that failed, she tried to throw herself over Xu Sixing. She still believed she was the cherished jewel who could do anything. Surely her tears would move her parents.
They did not.
A club smashed Xu Sixing’s skull before her eyes.
Red and white matter sprayed across her clothes, still steaming. She screamed and fainted. Her father was no longer the father she knew. He personally poured cold water over her, forcing her awake and denying her the refuge of unconsciousness.
The pressure of a man long accustomed to power filled the hall.
Xie Zheng lowered his eyes like a wrathful judge.
“When did this begin? How did you hide it from everyone? How far did you go? Speak!”
His questions crushed her.
Xie Yao suddenly remembered that her father had served in the Court of Judicial Review and was known as the Jade-Faced King of Hell. Fear swallowed the small resentment in her heart. Like a trapped animal, she looked around and silently begged her mother for help.
Zhaohua turned away.
Xie Zheng stepped closer, lifted his daughter’s chin, and spoke without expression.
“You refuse to answer? Yao’er, do you want the lash as well?”
The gruesome sight from moments earlier surged before her eyes. She nearly vomited.
When Xie Zheng truly raised the blood-soaked whip and cracked it through the air, she curled into herself and screamed.
“Lanhua! It was all Lanhua. She delivered the letters. She lured the servants away. She told me to run.”
I let shock and bewilderment fill my face.
I was about to kneel and defend myself. Then my eyes met Xie Yao’s tearful gaze, and the words froze in my throat.
At last, I said, “It was me.”
As I was dragged toward the private prison and passed my mistress, I whispered so only she could hear.
“Young Mistress, blame everything on me. I will die before I betray you. But a long night breeds danger. Those letters in your room—burn them while no one is watching.”
She could not meet my eyes.
So she did not see the faint curve of my lips.
You must burn those letters, Young Mistress.
They carried an incense of my own creation. Ordinarily, it refreshed the mind. When touched by flame, it revealed an entirely different nature, feeding every dark emotion in the heart and magnifying it for months.
Things were about to become interesting.