Chapter 7

The festive air of the approaching New Year grew thicker by the day. A few days later, the Empress personally visited Qingning Palace, bringing soups and tonics for Kangxi. The end of the year was always the busiest season, and though Kangxi looked sturdy enough, in Hesheli’s eyes he had grown noticeably thinner. Kangxi treated Hesheli differently from the rest, receiving her alone, and it was not until late afternoon that Liang Jiugong personally saw her out, which of course stirred fresh undercurrents of jealousy among the women of the inner palace.

Wei Tong, however, knew that the palace’s current population was nothing compared to what it would one day become. After all, while posterity would remember Kangxi as a great man, he was also a man of scattered affections, only not yet as blatant as his grandson Qianlong, who made pilgrimages to Jiangnan in pursuit of romance.

“Wei, what exactly are you implying…” In the dreamscape, Xuan’s voice carried a trace of hesitation, and Wei Tong nodded. “I don’t know what kind of enemy you’re facing, but since his rank or position is lower than yours, then no matter how great his achievements, he is naturally outranked by you. That much, you can use.”

Xuan fell silent for a while, then gave a low laugh. His strength was indeed still lacking, but Wei Tong’s words had truly pushed open a window before his eyes. However closely that man pressed in, until he actually dared to make a move, he was still his master, and certain orders he would have no choice but to obey.

Hearing Xuan’s voice return to normal, Wei Tong quietly breathed a sigh of relief. When he had first entered, he had sensed Xuan’s subdued, heavy aura, as if a raging fury were being forcibly suppressed, and he had no idea how the man had managed to fall asleep in such a state. Only after Wei Tong spoke with him, careful never to sound like he was prying, did he come to understand why Xuan had been so furious.

Xuan’s father had died early. Though his mother still lived and he himself had all but grown to manhood, the retainers of the household repeatedly overstepped. A while back, over some matter, one of them had killed a servant without authorization, then driven another retainer to his death. But from what Xuan had said, Wei Tong could sense he already had a plan; it was simply too momentous, and he feared any misstep. So Wei Tong offered only a few gentle words of comfort, and once Xuan had worked past the worst of it, things improved considerably.

“Heh. Wei, you always claim you’re no good with words, but today you’ve truly opened my eyes.” With his worries set down, Xuan laughed heartily. Wei Tong merely smiled. He said nothing, but he knew Xuan would not take offense.

If Xuan had his headaches, Wei Tong had no shortage of his own. Not long ago he had been worrying that someone might come pick a fight with him, and that vague, unreadable sense of impending trouble was the most maddening thing of all. Yet when trouble actually came knocking, he found himself oddly calm. Ever since the Zhao Hexiang affair, the atmosphere in the palace had been solemn for quite a while, and no one dared stir up trouble at a time like that. That search had not stopped at Qingning Palace; every corner of the palace, high and low, had been combed, and word was that Kangxi had acted on the Grand Empress Dowager’s decree.

After a stretch of quiet, trouble found Wei Tong, which was rare indeed. It was not that being targeted was any great surprise, but the fact that the person being targeted was Wei Tong, that was what astonished everyone. In the eyes of outsiders, Wei Tong was the very picture of diligence and obedience, quiet, hardworking, never courting trouble. That wasn’t who he was inside, but it was certainly who he appeared to be, so the turn of events left jaws dropping.

By the time the Imperial Kitchen had picked at him a third time, Zhang Jiu had pulled people into the room for a talk, and Fugui and Wenxi had deliberately stayed in rather than go out. With the three of them standing around him, Wei Tong could only reassure them. “Don’t take this to heart. Give it a couple of days and it’ll blow over.” Zhang Jiu frowned. “How could it? I made inquiries. That Liu Yu is the one whose position you took. How could he just let it go?”

Wei Tong glanced at Zhang Jiu. Zhang Jiu enjoyed far more favor now than before; a piece of intel like this would have been beyond him in the old days. But seeing the genuine worry on his face, Wei Tong felt a warmth in his chest. “Liu Yu came to see me once. He proposed a bet: if he wins, he stops pestering me; if he loses, I get on my knees and beg his forgiveness.”

He said it lightly, but Zhang Jiu ground his teeth at the words. “That punk really dares to open his mouth! What exactly did you two bet on? You’ve never gambled on anything like this.” He looked terribly anxious, and even Wenxi disapproved. “If you actually lose, this won’t be any laughing matter.” And how could the three of them believe it was really so simple?

Wei Tong pressed his lips together and shook his head, clearly not planning to tell them.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them. But once he learned who stood behind Liu Yu, Wei Tong had no intention of dragging the people around him into it.

Liu Yu was Liu Cheng’s nephew. Not by blood, exactly, but kin all the same.

In other words, Liu Yu belonged to Oboi’s faction. He really was the one whose place Wei Tong had taken, but his picking fights was only the surface of things, a screen for the series of moves to come.

Liu Yu was a spy planted in the Imperial Kitchen, originally meant to ride this very opportunity into a transfer to Qingning Palace, but by sheer bad luck Wei Tong had snatched the slot right out from under him. Liu Yu was furious; Liu Cheng, on the other hand, thought it worked out nicely.

“Uncle, how could you just let Wei Tong and Liu Jinzhong off like that? Liu Jinzhong flat-out humiliated you!” In Liu Cheng’s room, Liu Yu spoke with unreconciled resentment.

At first glance, Liu Cheng’s quarters were the height of luxury. On the table sat a gold-inlaid exotic beast pattern censer, trailing a faint, elegant fragrance that was, remarkably, precious aloeswood. Every furnishing the eye fell upon was exquisite. Liu Cheng unhurriedly lifted his tea lid, took a slow sip, and let out a long sigh; then the cup in his hand suddenly smashed into Liu Yu, scalding him into a yelp that he instantly strangled. With a thud, he trembled to his knees at Liu Cheng’s side.

“And you. After all I’ve taught you, did absolutely nothing stick?” Liu Cheng bent down to look at him. The softer his voice grew, the harder Liu Yu shook.

“The way you are now, you couldn’t outlast that punk Wei Tong groveling before me.” At those words, frightened as he was, defiance welled up in Liu Yu’s heart.

“Uncle, granted I may have my faults, but what is there worth praising in that Wei Tong? Silent and taciturn, and after all this time he’s still nothing but a culinary eunuch who can’t dig up a single scrap of news. Besides, with you here in Qingning Palace, who needs a Wei Tong?” The flattery landed sweetly, and Liu Cheng’s expression eased a little.

“Do you know that before he even entered the palace, Wei Tong already knew who had been chosen to enter?”

“Impossible!” The words burst out of Liu Yu, and realizing his slip, he went deathly pale, but Liu Cheng seemed sunk in his own thoughts and paid him no heed.

Liu Yu too had come out of that place as a child, and life had only turned bearable later, once he discovered some distant kinship with Liu Cheng. But no matter how you looked at it, that place… how could a penniless, powerless little orphan like Wei Tong possibly have known something so secret!

“Then naturally, someone told him.” Liu Cheng’s eyes narrowed.

Even he hadn’t expected it. Such a tiny little thing, quietly cleaving open a crack among those cold, heartless people.

“And that’s why, later, you had his sister brought into the palace as well.” Liu Yu spoke suddenly, as if remembering something. People of their origins remembered every anomaly with perfect clarity.

Liu Cheng’s voice turned gloomy and cold, enough to chill the bone.

“With someone like Wei Tong, leaving his sister outside the palace would be the greatest waste. Keep her under your own eyes, and she becomes the weight that stays his hand.”

Someone with such ability, how could he not be put to use? Though Liu Cheng was outwardly the Empress Dowager’s man, Kangxi trusted the group around him led by Liang Jiugong far more. As for everyone outside that circle, no matter how many were slipped in, they were fished out one by one. Given that, better to nurture someone with no roots, no labels, whose loyalty couldn’t even be fully confirmed, and send him over. That way was far better than the old methods.

So while Liu Yu had openly made trouble for Wei Tong several times, in truth he had been assigning him work all along. Wei Tong was astonished, first by Liu Yu’s identity, and second because he had assumed Liu Cheng… But even if Wei Tong guessed Liu Cheng’s intent, he had no choice but to jump in himself, because in his own plans he, too, needed to draw closer to Kangxi step by step. Liu Cheng’s scheme dovetailed perfectly with his own.

Though Wei Tong had drifted off for only a moment, Xuan had already noticed. He walked up to the folding screen. “Wei, what’s wrong?” Even through the screen, both were exceptionally quick to sense each other’s moods.

Wei Tong shook his head with a smile. “I was just thinking about recent events. I thought trouble was coming, and it turned out someone gave me a leg up instead. I’m fine.”

Come to think of it, in the dreamscape Wei Tong would laugh out loud, banter and bicker, speak his mind bluntly, like a different man entirely from the taciturn one in reality. Even he had once said to Xuan, “If not for this folding screen, there’s no way I could ever be this open and at ease. If you ever did cross paths with the real me, I’m afraid we’d brush past like strangers.”

Back then, Wei Tong was, after all, nothing more than Wei Tong the servant.