Chapter 32
The secret letter was delivered to Qingzhou at top speed, and with it came news that the new emperor would change the reign title to Rengqing on the first day of the third lunar month.
Prince Ping, Qi Junyou, had been kept under watch ever since leaving the capital—stripped of even basic freedoms. When he heard the news, he gave a cold, mirthless sneer, let out a few grunts, and then shuffled back to his room—which was completely surrounded by imperial guards.
Yang Jinglei saw that Qi Junyou was behaving himself, and only then did his anxious heart settle down.
With everyone distracted by the assassination attempt on Qi Junzhuo, no one was keeping round-the-clock watch on Qi Junyou anymore. Yang Jinglei had half expected Qi Junyou to take the chance to contact the Zhou family in Qingzhou, but to his surprise, the prince had kept his head down.
Aside from tearing off his usual mask of gentle refinement and scholarly grace—occasionally hurling sarcastic barbs at everyone, including Qi Junzhuo, and letting out those chilly little laughs—Qi Junyou spent the rest of his time holed up in his room, letting Yang Jinglei and his men act in his name.
It wasn't that Qi Junyou didn't want to be the gentleman anymore—it was that Qi Junzhuo had driven him to it. Anyone subjected to that kind of relentless staring from Qi Junzhuo would suffer immense psychological damage; not losing one's mind entirely was a sign of formidable inner strength. Expecting a man in that state to keep up pleasantries was simply asking too much.
Yang Jinglei understood this perfectly well, so as long as Qi Junyou didn't cause trouble, he had nothing to say.
Yang Jinglei looked away from Qi Junyou's courtyard and turned his gaze toward where Qi Junzhuo was positioned.
As the Left Commander of the Imperial Guard, he was the person closest to the Emperor, and he knew well what Qi Junzhuo meant to the Emperor. That was precisely why, amid this assassination business, he was genuinely worried that Prince Jin might fail the emperor's trust and expectations.
If the Emperor began to suspect Qi Junzhuo because of this, then no matter what Prince Jin did afterward to salvage his standing in the Emperor's eyes, it would all be in vain. Once imperial suspicion reached a certain point, Qi Junzhuo would not have a good end.
Since ancient times, countless imperial relatives and generals had perished due to a sovereign's suspicions—how many had ever escaped that fate?
Perhaps both Qi Junzhuo and Qi Junyou knew what was going through Yang Jinglei's mind. Or perhaps neither did.
Lying idle in his room, Qi Junyou suddenly let out two derisive snorts. No matter how tightly the guards watched him, he'd still had opportunities to contact the Zhou family—yet he had not moved a finger.
He had allowed Qi Junmu's scheme to succeed, letting the disaster in Qingzhou be contained with minimal losses.
Sometimes Qi Junyou wondered: why did he do it? What were these people's lives to him? He could have used the deaths and blood of Qingzhou's people to buy himself a good reputation.
One day, he told himself, he would give Qingzhou back its prosperity.
But these thoughts only crossed his mind when he was feeling restless—he had never actually acted on them. If he were to spend his whole life in the capital, perhaps he really could have turned a blind eye to the suffering of Qingzhou's common people.
But he was here now, in Qingzhou—a long, long way from the capital.
Along the journey, they had encountered so many people and so many things that he had never seen in the capital. Especially after arriving in Qingzhou: some people couldn't afford a single steamed bun because of the snow disaster and eventually froze to death, while others feasted on meat and wine without a care.
Before his arrival, grain prices in Qingzhou had already soared beyond imagination. Many families couldn't even buy coarse grain—prices were several times what they'd been in peacetime.
Qi Junyou still remembered the first time he arrived in Qingzhou and saw a young girl in thin clothes standing outside a grain shop, money in hand. She was cold and poor. The money that would usually buy a dou of grain could now barely get her a sheng—yet she kept sobbing and pleading with the shopkeeper to give her just a bit more coarse grain.
[1 斗 (dǒu) = 10 升 (shēng) ≈ 10 liters]
Her family's house had collapsed in the snow disaster; her father had broken a leg and couldn't work, and her mother, who used to earn a living washing clothes for others, could no longer find anyone to hire her. The family was now huddled in a makeshift straw shed. In the end, the shop assistant shoved her out, telling her to come back with more money if she wanted grain.
When she bumped into their procession, the girl fell to her knees, looked up with tear-filled eyes, and asked if they needed a maidservant. She wanted to sell herself—for just two taels of silver.
It was the first time Qi Junyou had ever seen someone trying to sell themselves. He had never witnessed such a thing before.
The capital was a place of splendor. He lived in the Prince Ping's mansion, feasting every day on the finest delicacies—even during the period of official mourning, what he ate, drank, and used was all top-quality. Yet here, still within the borders of Da Qi, people lived an entirely different life.
Looking at that girl, Qi Junyou suddenly thought of his mother, his consort, and his own daughters.
He had never bothered much with inner-courtyard affairs, but he remembered that the gifts his mother and his wife casually bestowed upon servants were worth more than two taels.
Here in Qingzhou, two taels could now buy a human life.
Over the next few days, he saw many similar scenes. By the end, he was numb to it all—except that every night, when he closed his eyes to sleep, the girl's face would appear before him.
She had said, in her clear, young voice: "Do you need servants? Two taels of silver. I want to sell myself."
Sometimes Qi Junyou wondered—was Qi Junmu, sitting on that dragon throne, doing this on purpose?
Was he making him see with his own eyes what Qingzhou looked like under the Zhou family's control, so that he would willingly let himself be used?
He gnashed his teeth at the thought of Qi Junmu—yet even after the disaster had been brought under control and Qingzhou was running like clockwork, he still made no move.
Still, his scheming brother Qi Junmu ought to pay some price. Even as emperor, he couldn't have all the good fortune fall into his lap. The human heart was the most complicated thing—but also the easiest to manipulate.
Yang Jinglei had softened considerably toward him, no longer as openly hostile as before. Qi Junyou could take this chance to win over this key commander of Qi Junmu's.
Who knew what unexpected advantages that might bring?
And then there was that utterly detestable Qi Junzhuo. If he played his cards right with the assassination attempt, he could make his fourth brother pay dearly for all those days of surveillance and coercion.
Right now, this fourth brother of his was the beloved younger brother in Qi Junmu's eyes—but what about later?
He refused to believe that there wasn't a single crack of suspicion between a sovereign and his subject, that their trust was absolute.
Since his own mask had already been ripped off, let them all speak with their true faces.
This was the wildest idea Qi Junyou had hatched while cooped up in that room.
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