Chapter 69

Shen Xinian insisted on returning to the inner chamber. He straightened and properly redressed his clothes before emerging from the room alongside Pei Du.

Pei Du carried a bamboo-ribbed lantern. He walked with steady steps, the lantern’s warm glow enveloping both him and Shen Xinian in a stable halo of light.

The ancestral hall lay on the northeast side of Pei Mansion. The estate was sparsely populated to begin with, and the Pei family seemed to have deliberately downplayed the hall’s prominence. Apart from a brief visit when he had first arrived and familiarized himself with the courtyards, Shen Xinian had never come here since.

“Careful—the steps are slippery.”

Pei Du halted and turned sideways, gently clasping Shen Xinian’s wrist. The lantern’s light fell directly into his eyes.

The faint anxiety in Shen Xinian’s heart steadied at Pei Du’s touch.

Pei Du regarded him, then suddenly smiled. “Afraid?”

Shen Xinian shook his head and spoke truthfully. “No.”

Truth be told, he had never set foot inside an ancestral hall.

Ever since he could remember, back at the Zhenguo Marquis Mansion, his frail constitution and ill fortune had kept him away. Shen Mingqian always cited the child’s youth and fear of offending the ancestors as excuses, barring Shen Xinian from joining the family during festivals and ancestral rites.

Later, after returning to Jinling with Xie Jingtang, the hall’s chilling remoteness had genuinely concerned her for his health. She had allowed him only to offer incense and kowtow from outside.

Thus, this was Shen Xinian’s first true entry into an ancestral hall—one belonging to a great house like the National Duke Mansion.

Yet he truly felt no fear.

They rounded the covered walkway, and under the moonlight, the Pei Clan Ancestral Hall came into full view.

The four gilded characters “Pei Clan Ancestral Hall” at the main entrance struck Shen Xinian’s sight directly.

A pair of dark red wooden couplets hung from the flanking pillars. The upper read: “Generations uphold loyalty and chastity, passed down through the family for ages.” The lower: “Successive generations revere filial piety and brotherhood, continuing eternally.” The strokes were bold and vigorous, the ink deep and rich, steeped in a century of time.

Pei Du paused as well, lifting his gaze to these two calligraphic treasures bestowed by the Great Zhou Founding Emperor.

Shen Xinian’s eyes shifted unconsciously from the plaque to Pei Du, where he caught a glint of mocking yet exhilarating amusement in their depths.

Pei Du sensed his gaze and turned, letting that smile bloom openly before Shen Xinian—unveiled and unashamed.

Shen Xinian shook his head and gripped Pei Du’s fingers in return. “Let’s go in.”

Pei Du’s smile faded as he regarded him quietly.

Shen Xinian glanced once more at the inscription emblematic of the National Duke Mansion’s glory and history. His fingers tightened, clasping Pei Du’s hand firmly.

“Pei Du, I want to hear the rest of the story.”

The doors swung open with a soft creak from the hinges.

Eternal lamps flickered within the hall. The central nanmu offering table gleamed spotless.

Dozens of vermilion spirit tablets stood in neat rows upon it, each fronted by a white porcelain incense burner containing faint traces of ash. The subtle scent of sandalwood mingled with the aroma of aged timber, drifting lazily through the air.

Behind the table loomed a wall of pitch-black shadow.

“That very night the Late Emperor entrusted him with the empire, black-clad assassins burst into the mansion. Their strikes were vicious, aimed straight at my father, who clutched the Imperial Decree.”

“I knew they were Prince Wu’s men.”

Pei Du selected a bundle of incense sticks from nearby and held them pinched between his fingers.

“I trained the Dark Guards and mustered private troops not to cower helplessly within these walls, at the mercy of so-called imperial authority’s whims—its bullying and slaughter.”

“Prince Wu already harbored thoughts of rebellion. What harm in giving him a nudge?”

“Patricide and fratricide—what a magnificent drama.”

“Yet Prince Wu was fated never to claim that throne. Forever, he would fall just one step short.”

“He would thank me for it. Dread me. And in time… fear me.”

Pei Du drew near the eternal lamp, watching the flame lick at the incense tips and flare brighter for an instant.

Shen Xinian’s gaze swept over the tier upon tier, row upon row of tablets, settling silently at last on the foremost one: that of Pei Du’s parents.

He mimicked Pei Du’s motion, taking up incense of his own but holding it unlit before him, his heart attuned to the words yet to come.

“He should never have returned.”

“With the Imperial Decree in hand, he was the regent wielding ultimate power. He ought to have remained in the palace, listening to the tolling bells, awaiting the dawn when he would face the court dignitaries and proclaim the Late Emperor’s final edict.”

“Not come back here to this forsaken son in a cold, empty National Duke Mansion.”

Whoever’s name graced the Imperial Decree would ascend the throne.

Duke Pei had been safest within the palace walls. But Pei Du, here in the mansion, was exposed—vulnerable prey.

“The assassin’s blade pierced his left shoulder—a mere scratch, one that golden wound salve would have mended swiftly.”

“Yet he dragged me into the study.”

“He never questioned my hand in the Late Emperor’s death, nor the pact I’d struck with Prince Wu, nor why the spared imperial princes had met such untimely ends, one after another.”

“Weary to his core, he simply sat there, his trembling hand caressing my cheek, and asked—”

“Fuguang, does it hurt?”

It was the first time Shen Xinian had heard the name “Fuguang” from Pei Du’s lips—and in such a moment, amid such words.

“Of course it hurt.”

Pei Du let out a low, soft chuckle. He waved a hand to snuff the incense’s flame, watching the thin wisp of smoke curl upward.

“The torment of Qianji Poison. The agony of the gu insects. The grief of losing my mother.”

“Every day. Every night. Every instant—a ceaseless ache.”

“And him? Seeing him hurt the worst.”

The depth of Pei Du’s former reverence for that father, the harmonious love he had witnessed between his parents—all of it fueled an equal measure of hatred, an equal depth of pain.

“He had grown old. His temples streaked with white, his eyes clouded.”

“He could not stop me.”

“So he struck a bargain with me.”

Shen Xinian’s head snapped up to meet Pei Du’s gaze, disbelief flooding his eyes.

Duke Pei, in the midst of such peril, had thought to… bargain with his sole remaining son?

“He poured every last strand of his internal force into me, sparing me the torment of my withering meridians. He gripped my wrist like a vice and made me clasp the private seal Mother had left behind—the Fuguang seal—swearing on my life never to rebel.”

“He warned that should power one day corrupt me, should I dare raise arms in treason, his soul as a father would find no peace. It would writhe eternally in the fires of hell, denied rebirth forevermore.”

“The Pei family’s prodigy child.”

“Great Zhou’s Pei Fuguang.”

“Even in death, those were the notions that haunted him.”

“I still remember it. Back then, his head was tilted against the back of the chair, his eyes still open, as if to confirm whether I had truly memorized the oath. Only when I held his body did I realize his hand had already gone cold.”

“But in the end, he underestimated me. And he overestimated Zheng Shi, who had served him loyally his entire life.”

“Of course I won’t rebel.”

Pei Du gently inserted the long stick of incense into the censer. He brushed the ash from his fingertips and gazed at Duke Pei’s memorial tablet for a long moment, his voice soft, his eyes cold and distant.

“Doing nothing at all is enough.”

“Zheng Shi cannot hold steady the reins of this kingdom.”

Moonlight from outside the window finally slipped through a crack into the hall. The beam stretched long across the chill marble floor tiles, illuminating the shadows behind the nanmu offering table.

It illuminated the plaque that had once hung high outside the National Duke Mansion—the emblem of boundless honors.

A long sword was driven deep into the plaque, its blade cleaving the characters for “National Duke” in two. A savage crack rent the past asunder, trapping all the love and hatred, the struggles and strife, forever in the shadows behind the ancestral hall’s memorial tablets.

Shen Xinian saw it. Naturally, Pei Du did too.

But Pei Du simply watched Shen Xinian in silence.

After a long while, Shen Xinian finally stirred.

He lit the incense at the eternal flame and extinguished the tip. Then he bowed three times in deep respect before his mother’s memorial tablet before stepping forward to place the incense in the censer.

Pei Du said nothing. He simply took Shen Xinian’s hand and led him slowly from the ancestral hall.

Shen Xinian glanced back over his shoulder.

In this day and age, no one knew what Duke Pei had truly been thinking on the night he chose to return to the mansion. Nor did anyone know why his eyes had remained open to the end.

The Pei family’s qilin prodigy.

Great Zhou’s Pei Fuguang.

These days, when Pei Du uttered those phrases, his eyes held nothing but mockery and indifference.

Yet before all these tangled knots had formed, that was exactly who he had been meant to be.

Clad in splendid robes astride a fiery steed, a dashing youth full of flair.

Bright and unclouded as a clear sky after rain, standing proud and unyielding as a pine.

He had immersed himself in books and martial training from boyhood, studying the arts of practical governance and the ways to aid the people and bring peace to the realm.

He had once brimmed with hopes for his nation and the world at large, yearning to do something for the common folk—to reshape the age into one of universal tranquility, with calm seas and clear rivers the world over.

And so Pei Du had played the role of the scheming minister, stirring tempests in the court while turning a blind eye to the realm’s internal rot. Yet even then, he had done everything in his power to steady the government and secure the borderlands, sparing the innocent from slaughter.

He wanted to tear down the National Duke Mansion to which his father had clung for a lifetime. Yet his hatred was never pure—every word dripped with the resentment born of love.

He longed to become a villain driven by nothing but selfish gain, yet he could never steel his heart to the task.

He was born for the light, yet he found himself mired deep in the muck, unable to break free.