Chapter 67: My Love and Fear for the Chancellor Part 3

Gu Huaiyu acted as if he didn’t understand. He tilted his head and squinted at the Prince.

Prince Xian stared at the lake, his voice heavy with a repressed gravity. “Everything you do has indeed prolonged Great Chen’s existence. but have you considered that this crumbling, broken body might not need its life extended—”

“But rather, to be completely torn down and rebuilt?”

Gu Huaiyu’s eyes remained untroubled. “What does Your Highness mean by that?”

With his back to the light, Prince Xian spoke slowly. “Since ancient times, every dynasty lasts no more than two hundred years. This is the Mandate of Heaven. There has never been an exception.”

“And Great Chen—”

He counted them off one by one. “Internal strife, power-hungry consorts, the favoring of civil service over the military, a succession of incompetent rulers, rampant extravagance… with Eastern Liao as a powerful enemy outside and endless disasters within. It lacks not a single sign of a dying nation.”

As a member of those “power-hungry consorts” families, Gu Huaiyu’s brow furrowed in displeasure.

Prince Xian’s gaze turned icy as he stared Gu Huaiyu down. “But you? You insist on defying the heavens, dragging this country that should already be in the ground out of its coffin to force-feed it a bowl of life-extending medicine.”

“You think you are saving the people, but you are the true disaster!”

His voice suddenly spiked. “Because there is only one Gu Huaiyu! After you die, Great Chen will fall anyway, and its end will be far more complete, far more tragic!”

Prince Xian’s eyes were filled with obsession as he muttered rapidly. “Great Chen is destined to be swallowed by Eastern Liao. Eastern Liao is destined to be replaced by the next dynasty. Prosperity and ruin, cycles without end—this is the Way of Heaven!”

At this point, his voice dropped to a whisper, sounding like a prophecy. “Why must you defy the heavens?”

As if realizing the truth too late, Gu Huaiyu’s expression changed drastically. He stumbled back a few steps. “Was it you who tried to assassinate me?”

His finger trembled as he pointed at Prince Xian, looking as though he had been frightened out of his wits.

Pei Jingyi’s mouth twitched.

This acting…

Gu Huaiyu’s gaze swept toward him. Pei Jingyi’s anger “exploded” instantly. He roared, “You dog! You dare plot against the Chancellor and then speak such flowery nonsense!”

With that, he lunged toward Prince Xian. The boatman indeed rushed out from the bottom of the cabin to intervene, but he was met with a clean, sharp elbow strike from Pei Jingyi.

With a sickening crunch, the boatman’s massive frame slammed into the deck. He coughed up blood that stained the wood.

The boat rocked violently.

Prince Xian remained calm. He looked at Gu Huaiyu and sighed with regret. “I truly am loath to kill you. I am so very loath.”

“Because of that, I shall give you a dignified end.”

He suddenly raised his hand and clapped. “Drown in the river.”

The sound of the clap echoed over the water.

The surface of the lake rippled, and the boat swayed, but no figures burst from the depths.

Silence.

One breath.

Two.

Three.

Dark red suddenly bloomed beneath the boat, spreading like vermilion ink in water.

One by one, corpses dressed in black floated to the surface, their throats pierced by the sleeve arrows of the Iron Eagle Guard.

Prince Xian’s hand remained suspended in the air, his fingers twitching as if in a spasm. He stared at the bloody water, his eyes becoming vacant, confused, and filled with disbelief.

Gu Huaiyu stopped acting. He slowly smoothed his sleeves and sat down, every movement of his robes elegant. He rested his chin on his hand and sighed. “You can only blame those two words: ‘Chengtian.'”

“If not for those two words, I truly would have fallen for your trap today.”

Pei Jingyi strolled over to Prince Xian’s side, cracking his knuckles. “I find swords and blades annoying; the blood gets everywhere. But something like this—”

His arm suddenly clamped around Prince Xian’s neck like an iron vise. Just as he began to apply pressure, Gu Huaiyu called out, “Pei Du.”

Pei Jingyi loosened his grip slightly.

Gu Huaiyu looked at the red-faced, choking Prince Xian and sighed again. “You really are a muddled man. I don’t have the spare time to worry about some ‘eternal foundation’ or the ‘masses of the world.'”

“I only care that the border soldiers receive their full pay this year, and that the poorest people don’t have to sell their children just to get a bite to eat. That is enough for me.”

As those words fell, Pei Jingyi’s arm suddenly twisted with a sharp crack!

Prince Xian slumped to the floor like a pile of mud, hearing Gu Huaiyu’s smiling verdict from above: “As for what happens in a hundred years?”

“What the hell does that have to do with me?”

Gu Huaiyu had given Prince Xian a “dignified” death. He looked down at the Prince’s corpse, his finger tapping his chin in thought.

A Prince of the Imperial Family had become a dog of Eastern Liao. If this news got out, the court and the commoners would be thrown into a panic. If even the Imperial relatives could betray the country, was Great Chen truly finished?

Thinking of this, he looked up. “Pei Du.”

Pei Jingyi was dragging Prince Xian’s body into the cabin. He raised an eyebrow. “Your orders, Chancellor?”

Gu Huaiyu had made up his mind. “Find a dignified crime. Say he intended to rebel and was executed by me.”

Rebellion sounded better than collusion with the enemy.

Pei Jingyi reacted quickly, immediately thinking of the hardest part of the situation. “What about the little Emperor?”

Prince Xian was Yuan Zhuo’s biological uncle, after all, and they shared a close relationship. If he died at Gu Huaiyu’s hands like this, would Yuan Zhuo let it go?

At the thought of this, Gu Huaiyu felt a dull ache in his temples. He raised a hand to rub them gently. “I will go and tell him personally.”

Pei Jingyi threw Prince Xian and the boatman into the cabin and casually brushed the dust from his sleeves. “You’re taking me with you.”

Gu Huaiyu gave him a lazy side-glance. “What could be unsafe about seeing His Majesty in the palace?”

Pei Jingyi let out a cold laugh in his heart. It’s exactly because you’re “seeing His Majesty” that I have to be there.