Consort Ning’s screams tore through the room and sent everything into chaos. Qi Hanzhou shielded Ying Fusheng and pulled him back, and in a passing glance caught those eyes, calm beneath their frantic disguise. He watched Consort Ning’s breakdown with cold detachment. Where others recoiled in fear, he stood apart, observing her madness the way one watches someone walk step by step toward the edge of a cliff.

Then Ying Fusheng looked up at him. His lips were pale, and the gaze he turned on Qi Hanzhou carried a trace of cold. His hand rested lightly on Qi Hanzhou’s arm, and then he slipped past him and moved toward Consort Ning.

Inside the warm hall, several palace attendants pinned Consort Ning down and finally stilled her struggling.

Her hair was in disarray. Her eyes were shot through with red.

“Madwoman…”

Someone said the word, and Consort Ning seemed to come back from the edge of her frenzy. The hands holding her were strong. She lifted her head in a daze and looked around. Every eye in the room regarded her the way one regards a madwoman.

She had become a madwoman in everyone’s eyes?

Who is the madwoman? I am not mad. It’s that demon that crawled out of the water!

Consort Ning realized in a panic that she had walked into some kind of trap. She forced herself to calm down and tried to explain herself. “I’m not mad. Please believe me. I’m not mad…”

Then a voice spoke from beside her. “Mother…”

Everyone had been watching Consort Ning. No one had expected the Sixth Prince to break free from the Embroidered Guard and throw himself down at her side.

“Your Highness!”

Ying Fusheng drew close to Consort Ning, and their eyes met as she went suddenly still. He knelt on one knee, gently taking her hand. “None of this is real, is it? You care for me…”

Consort Ning snapped her gaze to him. The red in her eyes deepened. Those words drove into her like splinters. She stared at Ying Fusheng’s hand, and the sensation of his fingertips pressing into the back of her hand sent a chill crawling through her.

“Get away from me! Get away!” The words hit her like a blade. She threw off his hand.

Ying Fusheng fell back onto the floor. The guards nearby rushed forward at once, placing themselves between the Sixth Prince and Consort Ning.

The Sixth Prince looked bewildered when she pushed him away, seemingly unable to understand why.

Qi Hanzhou stepped forward, his gaze pausing briefly. When Consort Ning had called him a demon, Ying Fusheng’s emotions had been still as deep water.

Toward Consort Ning, he seemed to have anticipated everything, to have known long before any of this happened.

Qi Hanzhou lowered his eyes and glanced at Ying Fusheng, positioning himself to block the surrounding stares.

Aunt Yu hurried over from the Empress Dowager’s side and drew Ying Fusheng back a little, soothing him from time to time.

Consort Ning was still muttering about demons, her eyes fixed on Ying Fusheng with nothing but revulsion and fear.

“Consort Ning!”

She startled and looked back. The eyes around her pressed in from every direction.

dskblossoms | translated by adeline

The Emperor’s gaze held open contempt. Empress Xu’s expression was cold and distant. The Empress Dowager’s face was iron-dark with fury. Even Bizhu, who had stood at her side through everything, now looked at her with panic and dread.

“I’m not crazy. That is a demon. That is not Ying Fusheng. The way he looked at me after he came out of the water was exactly like this!” Consort Ning’s words tumbled over each other. “He wants to harm me. He wants to harm me!”

The onlookers looked toward the Sixth Prince. He was still trying to pull away from Aunt Yu to go to her. When the incident at the Wangyue Pavilion happened, the Sixth Prince had dragged his sick body there to plead for Consort Ning. Later, when Consort Ning was confined, he had not yet fully recovered and had still gone from the Cining Palace to the Weiyang Palace to be at her side. And in Consort Ning’s eyes, all of that was harm?

No amount of explanation could undo what her madness had already shown.

No one was listening to her. Her behavior before everyone present had already marked her, unmistakably, as someone who had lost her mind.

“This condition… has likely persisted for many years,” Physician Chu said. He had examined her pulse earlier and found signs of deep-seated emotional suppression, as well as the kind of agitation that came from rage turned inward. Yet Consort Ning had always appeared mild-mannered and gentle. Such a contradiction made the internal stagnation difficult to explain, which was why he had suspected an external substance. “I fear it may be hysteria.”

Hysteria. What kind of hysteria?

“The medical texts record such cases. It has been documented that a woman, after carrying a child for ten months under great suffering and inadequate care, may develop deep emotional suppression, and thereafter…” The physician hesitated.

“Thereafter what?” the Emperor asked.

“Thereafter develop an aversion to her own child, and over time, an impulse to harm the child. When this condition manifests, causing harm becomes a means of releasing her own distress. It may improve at times and worsen at others.” Physician Chu looked at Consort Ning. Her condition did not resemble a sudden onset. It looked more like something long-standing. “If this is truly hysteria, Consort Ning’s acts of harm against the Sixth Prince may have been ongoing for several years.”

Several years?

Silence fell over the room. No explanation from Consort Ning was needed. Everyone suddenly recalled that all of Consort Ning’s strange behavior, from the previous year until now, seemed to have begun around the time the Sixth Prince was taken to the Cining Palace. If Consort Ning had truly developed hysteria, and harming him had been her outlet for years, what had she been doing during all the time he was not with her? What kind of mother screams “demon” at her own child in front of a crowd?

Ying Fusheng stood within the ring of the Embroidered Guard’s protection, his face exceptionally pale. When the physician delivered his diagnosis, he swayed slightly. Consort Ning paid him no attention at all, throwing herself instead into frantic explanations to the people around her. He watched her unravel, watched her logic collapse as she tried to speak, and the more she fumbled for words, the more desperately she insisted she was not mad, the more thoroughly mad she appeared in the eyes of everyone present.

What madwoman has ever admitted she was mad?

The Emperor looked at Consort Ning with cold indifference, his gaze moving over her disheveled state. She bore no resemblance now to a consort of the inner palace. Her desperate explanations and her wild, uncontrolled manner had played out in full view of everyone.

“Harming your own child? Listen to what you’re saying,” the Emperor said, his fury barely contained.

Consort Ning fell silent. Her gaze went straight past Empress Xu to her son. The Crown Prince was watching her, his eyes full of revulsion and the urge to look away.

It was a knife through her heart. How could she prove she was not mad? Was she to tell everyone that the Sixth Prince was not her son? That was impossible. If that came to light, her fate would be far worse than madness. From the moment the Suihongzi was exposed, she had realized there was no way to explain herself.

“Take Consort Ning away!” The Emperor looked at the attendants. “Search every person in the Weiyang Palace. Find out where this Suihongzi came from!”

Consort Ning struggled as she was dragged away, and in her panic she found Ying Fusheng.

He stood quietly, looking as though he had been frightened, yet still trying to move toward her. He murmured, “Mother, what the physician said isn’t true…”

Everyone turned eyes full of pity on the prince his own mother had harmed. But Consort Ning saw the mockery in those calm eyes. The demon that had crawled out of the water on that winter night seemed to be laughing at her. She had no choice but to go mad. She screamed, “It’s you! It’s you!”

He knew. He knew everything.

The thought flashed through her mind.

But before she could do anything, she was dragged away.

“Poor child…” “Consort Ning was this kind of person all along. How could she bring herself to do it?” “Harming her own child. Has the Sixth Prince been ill all these years because of Ning Jiejie?”

The whispers spread through the room. The physicians closed in around Ying Fusheng to check on him. Qi Hanzhou stepped back. The people beside him were still reeling from the shock, their eyes following Consort Ning as she was taken away.

Everyone who had witnessed Consort Ning’s breakdown was left shaken.

Ying Fusheng moved to follow, but a hand stopped him.

The Emperor said nothing. He simply drew Ying Fusheng close with a reassuring gesture.

“Qi Hanzhou,” the Emperor said, his voice cold. “Find out how an object from the previous dynasty came to be inside this palace.”

Qi Hanzhou glanced briefly at Ying Fusheng, then said, “This subordinate accepts the order.”

The Embroidered Guard received the imperial command. The murmuring around them died at once. Ying Fusheng lowered his eyes, watching coldly as Consort Ning was dragged away, the filial devotion he had shown moments ago entirely gone. The people around him assumed the shock of Consort Ning’s behavior had left him dazed. The physicians hurried over to check his pulse. The Empress Dowager saw that the child had been in the water and had not rested since. “Aunt Yu.” duskblossoms | translated by adeline

Inside the warm hall, the Empress Dowager had Aunt Yu take the Sixth Prince away to rest. The Emperor proceeded to the Cining Palace. The consorts, seeing Consort Ning taken away, had no reason to linger and dispersed. Noble Consort Yun watched Ying Fusheng being led away by the physicians and the Cining Palace attendants with a thoughtful expression, then turned her gaze to Empress Xu nearby. Her face remained unreadable, but Noble Consort Yun understood that Consort Ning’s sudden breakdown had not been within anyone’s calculations.

Empress Xu gave instructions to the attendants behind her, telling them to follow the Embroidered Guard and ensure a thorough investigation of everything at the Weiyang Palace. The presence of Suihongzi in the inner palace was an anomaly in itself. She was still giving her instructions when her gaze flickered with a brief hesitation. The palace maids from the Weiyang Palace had already been taken away. “Keep a close eye on Consort Ning’s personal attendants.”

The attendants accepted the order and left. Empress Xu took a few steps back, then suddenly noticed the Crown Prince standing in place, his gaze seemingly fixed on the direction Consort Ning had been taken, his face slightly pale.

“My son?” Empress Xu held the frightened Eighth Prince’s hand, her worried gaze settling on the Crown Prince.

The Crown Prince came back to himself and met Empress Xu’s concerned eyes. He managed a faint smile. “…It’s nothing. I simply didn’t expect Consort Ning to be this kind of person. Did she truly poison Sixth Brother to this extent?”

He finished asking and then went still. Empress Xu’s gaze turned cold in a way it never had before.

The Crown Prince seemed to catch what lay in her eyes and startled slightly. Empress Xu appeared to notice her own expression and patted the Crown Prince’s shoulder in reassurance. “Don’t be afraid. Your mother will protect you.”

The Crown Prince said yes. The hand hidden in his sleeve had gone ice cold.

* * *

The warm hall in the Imperial Garden had been thrown into complete chaos that day. The Emperor’s fury sent Consort Ning away under guard, and the Embroidered Guard’s investigation found traces of Suihongzi in every medicinal preparation sent from the Weiyang Palace to the Cining Palace for the Sixth Prince’s recovery. Consort Ning’s various strange behaviors since the previous year seemed to find their explanation at last. Hysteria, flaring up in the Sixth Prince’s absence, had driven her behavior to increasingly extreme ends. The court physicians formally diagnosed her with hysteria.

The inner palace had never seen anything like it. A birth mother poisoning her own child, and having long since lost her mind.

Such a thing, and no one had noticed sooner. If not for Consort Ning’s breakdown today, how much longer would the Sixth Prince have suffered?

The Weiyang Palace was sealed off. Every eunuch and palace maid connected to the matter was taken away. The Embroidered Guard pressed them hard, and some broke on the spot, giving up details. These attendants had long enjoyed Consort Ning’s favor and had treated the withdrawn and sickly Sixth Prince with indifference. Under severe questioning, everything came out: the attendants’ neglect of the Sixth Prince, Consort Ning’s habitual disregard for him, the negligence during his illnesses, and more. All of it stood in complete contradiction to the image Consort Ning had always presented.

When the testimonies reached the Qianqing Palace, the Emperor’s fury erupted. Consort Ning had neglected a prince’s upbringing and had harmed the imperial line while in the grip of illness. This was no minor offense. She was placed under confinement in her quarters to await judgment.

The matter of the Suihongzi touched on too many secrets. The Emperor handed it to the Embroidered Guard, while Empress Xu conducted a thorough investigation of the inner palace.

The Cining Palace was unusually busy in the days that followed.

A copy of the Weiyang Palace attendants’ testimonies was also presented to the Empress Dowager. She read them and sat in silence for a long time. She had known Consort Ning was not suited to raising a child, and she had known her temperament that day. But Little Six had always been attached to her. Before the garden outing, she had been considering letting him return to the Weiyang Palace for a while, to see how Consort Ning managed. Now, thinking back on it, if she had truly sent Little Six back, there was no telling whether the child would have lived to grow up. “Have the physicians keep watch. I will go and speak with His Majesty.”

Because of this matter, the physicians from the Imperial Medical Office came and went constantly, examining the Sixth Prince’s body. The purple line that had appeared in the basin that day had sent a chill through every physician who saw it. Once Suihongzi was confirmed, Physician Chu drew on ancient formulas to conduct a full examination.

The Suihongzi poison had been in the Sixth Prince’s body for years, long since taking root as a deep-seated ailment. A complete cure was no longer possible. Only slow, careful treatment could draw it out over time.

The matter could not be contained. When word reached the court, it sent shockwaves through the assembled officials. Vice Minister Ning was so frightened that he entered the palace that very day to seek an audience with the Emperor, only to be turned away before he even reached the Qianqing Palace.

The Emperor had no wish to see anyone from the Ning family. Harming the imperial line was an offense that not even a prince’s birth mother could escape. The Ning family had been elevated to prominence in recent times, and only days ago officials had been saying Vice Minister Ning was next in line for the position of Minister of Rites. But before the current Minister of Rites had even stepped down, the Ning family had brought catastrophe upon themselves.

The more imposing Vice Minister Ning had been at court, the more enemies he had made. With the Ministry of Rites already mired in trouble, Consort Ning’s disgrace gave those enemies an opening. A clear target had been set up for them. Setting aside the Sixth Prince’s situation for the moment, there was no shortage of people eager to pile on Vice Minister Ning, while many others watched to see how the Emperor would respond.

“How could she do something like this?” Vice Minister Ning could not comprehend it. This was no small matter. The entire Ning family could be dragged down by what Consort Ning had done.

The messenger had warned him that his daughter’s state of mind had seemed off. Vice Minister Ning had told himself that his daughter had endured so much over so many years, and that she would not make a mistake now of all times. Instead, when she finally made a mistake, it was one of this magnitude. He had known she had been giving the Sixth Prince something to keep him under control, but he had never imagined it was a secret poison from a fallen dynasty, administered over years.

“My lord, what do we do now?” his subordinate asked. “Not a single attendant from the Weiyang Palace is left. We have no way to reach anyone inside the palace.”

Vice Minister Ning had not expected a well-placed move to go so badly wrong. He understood that his daughter was beyond saving now, but he had to find a way to protect the Ning family. The key, he decided, lay with the Sixth Prince. “Send word into the palace for me. Tell them I wish to see the Sixth Prince.”

The Emperor had not yet dealt with Consort Ning publicly, and that was out of consideration for the Sixth Prince.

Consort Ning was still the Sixth Prince’s birth mother, after all. The Sixth Prince was old enough to understand. If he were younger, the Emperor would have had no reason to hold back. But the Sixth Prince had been present, and had always shown Consort Ning great filial devotion. To now hear with his own ears that his mother had been harming him was something even an ordinary person would struggle to accept, let alone the Sixth Prince.

“If an audience cannot be arranged, then at least get a letter to him.”

……

The Cining Palace was thick with the smell of medicine in those days, physicians coming and going constantly.

Ying Fusheng had not left his quarters since returning that day. The Empress Dowager had given orders for the Sixth Prince to be watched at all times. Aunt Yu stayed in the side hall every day, entrusted by the Empress Dowager to look after him.

The Sixth Prince was cooperative. He took his medicine as prescribed, and apart from being quieter than usual, he seemed no different from before. After returning from the warm hall that day, he had slept for two days before waking. Part of it was the chill from the water. The other part was likely Consort Ning.

When he woke, the Sixth Prince asked after Consort Ning and said he wanted to see her.

Aunt Yu told him what she could, choosing the easier parts. Consort Ning had lost her mind and kept insisting every day that she had not. Who would believe her?

Song’an watched his master finish the medicine and sit quietly, in good spirits.

These past days, no news had leaked out of the Cining Palace, but Song’an had passed everything from outside to the prince: news about Consort Ning, the Weiyang Palace, even the court. When Shen Yunfei found out, he had nearly come to the Cining Palace to pay a visit, and Song’an had stopped him in time. Of everyone, only Song’an had known all along about Consort Ning harming the Sixth Prince. No one else had any idea.

“The physicians found nothing?” Ying Fusheng asked.

Song’an had connections among the Weiyang Palace attendants. Several of them owed him a debt from this incident and had been passing him information. “Consort Ning keeps insisting she’s not mad. But nothing suspicious has turned up in the Weiyang Palace… everything points to hysteria.”

Better that she stay mad. How else could she watch all of this unfold with her own eyes?

Ying Fusheng stirred the medicinal broth in front of him. After the incident, Aunt Yu had carefully reviewed everything he ate, drank, and used. Even the calming incense in his quarters had been removed and replaced with a milder medicinal fragrance.

Consort Ning believed the calming incense had been his way of harming her. She was not entirely wrong. Consort Ning had her schemes and could hold herself together, so he needed to add something to the fire.

He had known her for years. He understood exactly how little it took for her composure to crack. To protect her reputation, she had always been pleasant in public, and all the rage she swallowed went back to the Weiyang Palace or into the medicine she slipped him. To keep herself steady, she had long made a habit of drinking a calming tea, a heavy-handed formula from an outside physician, folk medicine, the kind that kept her emotions from boiling over.

Because she had something to hide, almost no one knew about this particular calming tea.

One of the ingredients in the calming incense happened to clash with the tea’s properties. Together, they made the mind dwell on its obsessions by day and dream of them by night.

On anyone else, this combination would have done little harm. But Consort Ning had been suppressing her resentments for years. His leaving the Weiyang Palace, the Crown Prince’s punishment, the Crown Prince’s faction taking a blow… these things would have kept a guilty conscience churning. The more she tried to calm herself, the more tea she drank, and the more her obsessions were amplified.

She had already slipped up in front of others more than once. The clashing properties had been affecting her behavior for some time. All that remained was one final push.

No maneuvering was needed. Once the spark was lit, the fire would spread on its own.

“Consort Ning wants to explain herself. There have been some murmurs lately…” Song’an said carefully. Ever since Consort Ning’s hysteria diagnosis, every unflattering rumor about her had come crawling out: how she had neglected the Sixth Prince in the past, how she had gone to admire flowers while he lay ill. Some of the rumors were true, some were not, but they sprouted up one after another like mushrooms after rain.

Ying Fusheng listened and smiled faintly. “So the Ning family had to be a target.”

If the Ning family had not risen so high, the other consorts would never have paid them much attention. There had already been resentment among some of them over the Sixth Prince staying at the Cining Palace. Now that Consort Ning had fallen, they would not let the opportunity pass.

The Ministry of Rites was a coveted post. The First Prince’s faction was desperate for someone to fill the Minister’s seat. The Crown Prince’s faction wanted to place their own person there. And other forces at court were circling as well. With a chance to push the Ning family down, some people would move faster than others.

Letting Consort Ning die easily would be far too kind. Better to let her stay lucid and watch herself be declared mad. When everyone says you have lost your mind, who still remembers that you were sane?

“No rush. One at a time.” Ying Fusheng set down the medicinal broth. “My dear grandfather should be making his move by now.”

Song’an paused. “Your Highness means Vice Minister Ning?”

Ying Fusheng’s voice softened. “He’s been savoring his high position. The Minister’s seat was almost within his reach, and now it’s slipping away. What do you think he’ll do?”

At that moment, a palace attendant came to the door. “Your Highness, a medical apprentice from the Imperial Medical Office has come.”

The physicians had been visiting frequently of late, and medical apprentices came by often.

Ying Fusheng gave a small nod. Song’an went over at once. “What is it?”

The apprentice was unfamiliar. He drew Song’an aside and quietly passed him a letter. “This servant was entrusted by Lord Ning to deliver a letter from the family.”

Song’an’s expression shifted slightly. Just as his master had said. He looked back. Ying Fusheng was still seated, his expression unchanged, but he glanced over as Song’an turned, and without a word, already understood.

Vice Minister Ning had tried to enter the palace and been refused. Lady Ning had sent calling cards to the Empress Dowager in recent days, all of them intercepted by the Cining Palace. Consort Ning’s actions had struck at the imperial family’s most sensitive nerve.

Vice Minister Ning’s letter had wound its way through the Imperial Medical Office, slipping past the Empress Dowager’s notice, and arrived at last before Ying Fusheng after considerable effort.

The medical apprentice left as soon as the letter was delivered. Ying Fusheng skimmed the contents. “He really cannot sit still.”

Song’an did not know what the Highness intended. “Then, Your Highness…”

Ying Fusheng’s eyes darkened. He sat still for a long moment, his gaze resting on the letter with a trace of mockery.

He let out a slow breath, and something like pleasure seemed to pass through him. The corner of his mouth moved faintly.

……

Inside the Qianqing Palace, memorials concerning the Ministry of Rites and the Ning family were piling up, and countless officials were watching to see how the Emperor would respond. Eunuch Rong slipped quietly into the hall and placed a transcribed copy of a letter before the Emperor.

“A letter from the Ning family to the Sixth Prince,” Eunuch Rong said.

The moment the Sixth Prince’s incident occurred, the Embroidered Guard had already positioned themselves at the Cining Palace. An unfamiliar medical apprentice appearing there naturally drew their attention. When the letter reached Ying Fusheng, a copy was placed before the Emperor as well. The Emperor scanned the contents. Vice Minister Ning had written at length about all the ways Consort Ning had cared for Ying Fusheng over the years, his words measured and earnest, every line carefully crafted to rekindle the boy’s attachment to his mother.

For a young prince, a letter like this, steered so deliberately, would have a predictable effect. The Emperor saw through it at a glance.

He finished reading and let out a cold laugh. “He has gone to quite some trouble.”

Eunuch Rong sensed the Emperor’s displeasure and said quietly, “If the Sixth Prince reads this letter, he may well come to feel sympathy for Consort Ning.”

The Emperor’s expression sharpened. After a moment’s thought, he said, “I will go and see the Sixth Prince.”