A large company must travel with a great deal of gear; it was three days before the company of imperial guardsmen arrived at the hunting grounds in full. In the meantime, Deputy Commander Jing had identified everyone with a connection to the assassins. Those seventy-eight men had infiltrated the hunting grounds by traveling in the parties of lower ranked officials. These officials all proclaimed their innocence, explaining that they had absolutely nothing to do with the assassins, who had wormed their way into their traveling parties by killing their original guards. They had been completely ignorant.

Even if this was true, Emperor Jingren couldn’t simply take it on faith. But he didn’t have these officials interrogated straight away at the hunting grounds; instead, the officials, their retinues, and the guards responsible for the hunting grounds were all locked up separately, to be questioned upon their return to the palace.

While they were locked up, rather than torture them, Jing Xixian adopted a psychological angle of attack. These people were kept apart, unable to deliberate among themselves, and constant hints were made that the first to come clean would be shown mercy; and in fact some people had come clean, but because they knew very little, there was still a chance.

Emperor Jingren approved of these tactics. Jing Xixian had a somber cast to his countenance; it was plain at a glance he wasn’t a nice person. Yan Xu, on the other hand, had rugged features and an air of righteousness that made it easy to trust him.

But having seen the two of them in action, Emperor Jingren found Jing Xixian better suited to his tastes. Jing Xixian would stop at nothing; he was utterly ruthless. If he were the commander of the Embroidered Guard, his subordinates would all get their hides tanned. Yan Xu, meanwhile, was a kind-hearted person who very rarely employed torture. The torture implements in the Embroidered Guard’s prison had begun to rust during his tenure as commander.

Reasonably speaking, a benevolent emperor ought to prefer a person like Yan Xu, but while Emperor Jingren might be lenient, that only meant he would pardon those who had done no wrong or had committed only minor offenses. Benevolence toward those scheming against him, Emperor Jingren knew, would only hasten his own death. Jing Xixian was a knife. A good knife did damage; but it was up to the person wielding the knife to determine how it was used.

Emperor Jingren thought that he needed a ruthless commander for the Embroidered Guard.

When the large company of imperial guardsmen arrived, the officials being held in the temporary residence were at last able to return home. Those who weren’t implicated in the assassination attempt were sent back under escort by Emperor Jingren, while those who were implicated were taken directly to the Embroidered Guard’s prison. This included Su Huailing.

But while the others were tortured, Su Huailing only watched.

Emperor Jingren had originally meant to get some people from the Ministry of Justice to teach her judicial law. Later, watching Jing Xixian at work, he had changed his mind. Any amount of serious lecturing couldn’t measure up to seeing with your own eyes. So he made Su Huailing see for herself how guilt by association worked.

He wasn’t concerned about Su Huailing running off. Emperor Jingren had passed on a message to Su Huailing through the Embroidered Guard: Her foster brother was still in the palace. If she escaped, for every two hours she was gone, one of her foster brother’s fingers would be cut off. If she didn’t come back, they would cut off all his limbs, plant him in the ground, and see how long he lived.

Of course, Emperor Jingren’s original message hadn’t been so savage. All he’d meant was that she should consider her foster brother’s fate before she ran off. But because Emperor Jingren had hinted that the message could become a little stronger in the telling, the guard passing it along had added some details.

Su Huailing behaved, following Jing Xixian to the Embroidered Guard prison. Emperor Jingren, meanwhile, as if he hadn’t just experienced an attempt on his life, calmly returned to the palace and went to court as usual, behaving just as he had before.

Naturally there were people to fill the vacancies left by the officials who had been implicated, and Emperor Jingren removed Yan Xu from the position of commander of the Embroidered Guard, assigning it to Jing Xixian. Though Yan Xu was still commander of the Imperial Guard, his rank and salary unchanged, everyone knew that Yan Xu had lost imperial favor. The Embroidered Guard were the emperor’s eyes and ears, and their commander had to be a person he trusted to the utmost. Before, this had been Yan Xu, and now, it was someone else. He remained commander of the Imperial Guard only because Emperor Jingren preferred not to strip him of all his titles at once. In time, once there was a reason, he would lose that as well.

“The empress’s methods are impressive!” The consorts and concubines were having a small get together at the virtuous consort’s place. The honest consort’s face was contorted, its usual gentle and refined demeanor gone. She continued, “She’s gotten rid of everyone we have. There’s nothing left for us to do in the palace. At least before there was Yan Xu to find out what the emperor was doing. Now Yan Xu’s also about to be out of the running!”

Eunuch Lian was listening, keeping himself to himself, not saying a word—just listening in silence.

“Who cares about Yan Xu?” The virtuous consort snorted. “What’s impressive is getting Su Huailing sent to the Embroidered Guard’s prison. You know, normally, His Majesty ought to be quite fond of Su Huailing by now. He ought to have made the woman who saved his life into Imperial Concubine Su. But now our imperial concubine is in prison, and not only did she not manage to save the emperor, she was implicated in the assassination attempt. This kind of result is beyond the ordinary person.”

“Eunuch Lian,” said the worthy consort, frowning, “you were there at the time. Do you know what actually happened? I heard that the Imperial Guard only arrived on the scene after the attack. His Majesty had only one guard with him, yet they held out till the Imperial Guard got there. What the hell happened?”

This was a direct question. Eunuch Lian couldn’t keep silent. He came forward and answered, “When I got there, the assassins had already been defeated, and Su Huailing was in the middle of a pile of bodies. As for how that happened, I can’t say for sure.”

Eunuch Lian wasn’t actually lying, but he also hadn’t said how many people had been present when he had arrived, nor how many it had taken to defeat the assassins. This vague response gave the consorts and concubines the wrong impression.

“It seems that the empress picked a number of especially skilled imperial guardsmen to protect His Majesty in advance, and they repelled the attack,” the virtuous consort concluded. “Are we supposed to sit here and wait while the empress picks us off one by one?”

“You can all sit there and wait to die. I don’t want that.” The pure consort, who had been silent all along, suddenly spoke. “I’ve realized that I’ll never get anywhere hanging out with you losers. I’m better off thinking of something myself.”

“What are you going to do?” asked the worthy consort, who had a bad feeling.

“Hmph,” the pure consort snorted. “However favored the empress may be, he’s a man crossdressing as a woman. Would he dare to sleep with His Majesty? The reason I always used incense before was that I thought we didn’t need to sleep with the mission objective. But now I’ve thought about it, and, well, this isn’t my body. It isn’t even a real body. So what if I just act like it’s a dream? Emperor Jingren is handsome enough, anyway. All of you say I’m all boobs and no brain, but that’s what that man is into!”

Then she stood and left, arching her lovely white neck, paying no further attention to the women behind her.

The honest consort took a deep breath. “She’s really desperate,” she said, feelingly.

“With her looks, even if she can’t dance, she might still…” Instead of finishing her sentence, the worthy consort squeezed the handkerchief in her hands.

All the women bowed their heads in thought, but Eunuch Lian remained silent and kept his eyes open.

And when they had all gone their separate ways, Eunuch Lian ordered a trusted subordinate to deliver a note to the empress.

“The pure consort…” The empress dropped the note onto an inkstone and watched as the soft paper soaked up the ink and turned black, eradicating all signs of the writing.

He was the master of the harem, but now that Imperial Physician Ning had examined Emperor Jingren and indicated that there was no further need for him to abstain from sex, the empress had no way to stop Emperor Jingren from visiting the other palaces. He was a man. Owing to the protection of his position, everyone was very convinced that he was a woman, but this conviction would vanish the moment he took off his clothes. So he had his own incense. If he really wanted to go to bed with Emperor Jingren, he would have to use incense. But he didn’t want to, and he had never done it before. In the past he had only sent Emperor Jingren off to one of the other palaces, but now he didn’t want that either.

And thanks to that moron Lin Boyuan, Emperor Jingren had already found out what was wrong with the incense, so he couldn’t even return the pure consort’s incense to her, or else Emperor Jingren would grow suspicious.

He was in a fix.

The empress sat in silence until Emperor Jingren returned from court. When he saw that the young emperor hadn’t gone elsewhere but had come back to Qifeng Hall, he finally smiled very slightly. Since hitting his head, Emperor Jingren had been staying at Qifeng Hall, and the two of them had been living like an ordinary husband and wife. Emperor Jingren no longer cared for any of the consorts or concubines. The empress was convinced that Emperor Jingren had changed a little after hitting his head. Thinking of his own particular mission, he had given Emperor Jingren the pendant. But it had turned out that Emperor Jingren wasn’t the mission objective, and he had lost an important item; he had really outwitted himself.

Despite these thoughts, when he saw Emperor Jingren return, the empress still couldn’t help standing up, helping Emperor Jingren take off his outer layer, and taking the somewhat unhappy looking young emperor into his room to rest.

“Your Majesty looks a little weary,” the empress said in concern.

Emperor Jingren wasn’t weary; his face was ashen. After dismissing all the servants, he finally gave up concealing his emotions before the empress. He brought his palm down on a table and said angrily, “The mastermind behind the attempt on our life is Prince Huainan, our own full blood younger brother!”