xymnovel Chapter 1015 Dragon and Phoenix in Harmony Within the Palace
Chapter 1015 Dragon and Phoenix in Harmony Within the Palace
"Third Princess, watch your step."
Gongsun Ba's Flaming Prison Fangs sparked as they struck the ruins, while Yan Tengji's mane brushed against Si Luoying's hand, burning her fingertips.
She looked down and saw half a gilded saddle sticking out of a crack in the blue bricks; it was the very same saddle she had fallen off during the autumn hunt a few years ago.
Suddenly, the sound of metal clashing rang out from within the Xuanhuang army formation. Si Luoying turned around sharply and saw two Crimson Phoenix mechanical birds taking off from the grain carts.
Gongsun Ba followed her gaze and saw that on the square of Qian Yuan Hall, hundreds of Imperial Guards were using meteorite iron swords to pry open the paving stones, revealing the densely patterned dragon paving stones underneath—the "Nine Dragons Gathering Qi Array" designed by the founding emperor of the Great Qian Dynasty.
Si Luoying remained silent, simply riding his horse through the Qiantian Gate.
As her dark cloak swept across the doorway, she suddenly looked up—of the four gilded characters "承天之运" (Cheng Tian Zhi Yun) on the lintel, only the three characters "天之运" (Tian Zhi Yun) remained, swaying in the wind, much like the precarious state of the Great Qian Dynasty.
"Your Highness, the Lord is waiting for you."
Shi Jingsi appeared at the street corner at some unknown time, the dew on his silver armor still wet.
"General Xuanwu is leading the Chongyan Guard to repair the palace gates, saying... saying that he wants to make room for the Xuanhuang Army to park their mechanical beasts."
Si Luoying chuckled upon hearing this, her fingertips brushing against the sword at her waist.
This "Jinghong" sword was a token of love given to her by Su Ye when they were in Hengzhou. The jade dragon-patterned buckle on the sword tassel is a matching one with the one Su Ye wears at his waist.
The hilt of the sword was slightly cool at that moment, as if it were fitting in response to her suddenly accelerated heartbeat.
As Si Luoying walked through the main street and headed straight for the palace, she suddenly stopped. She saw half of a charred plaque floating on the surface of the moat, with the words "Minister of Rites' Residence" faintly visible.
She suddenly remembered that ten years ago, she was standing right here, watching her father put silver armor on Gu Changqing.
"The Grand Tutor once said he would carve out a path to survival for the Great Qian Dynasty, but now that path has been completely cleaved in two..."
She bent down to pick up a piece of broken tile, her fingertips tracing the raised dragon pattern. .
Just as Gongsun Ba was about to reply, he suddenly saw a wisp of green smoke rising from inside the palace walls in the distance. Si Luoying, however, seemed to have anticipated this and quickened his pace.
She knew this scent all too well—it was Su Ye's favorite agarwood, mixed with the burnt smell of burning cinnabar.
Sure enough, as soon as they stepped into the square in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, they saw Su Ye squatting in front of the steps, his white robe covered with incense ash.
Twelve bronze lamps were placed beside him, their wicks burning with eerie, ghostly blue flames, as if the many jade seals in the hall were being used as candlesticks.
"Luo Ying has arrived just in time."
"Wipe my hands for me. This cinnabar is mixed with realgar, and it makes my skin very itchy."
Su Ye tossed a handkerchief over without turning her head.
Si Luoying took the handkerchief and saw that half a lotus flower was embroidered on the corner, which was the same handkerchief she had left in Su Ye's tent the day before.
"The Duke of Zhenguo is in high spirits; he dares to use the imperial seal to light lamps!"
Her ears turned slightly red, and she deliberately flicked the handkerchief at Su Ye's face.
"The Imperial Seal?"
"If I hadn't ordered my men to retrieve these imperial seals, they would have been burned to ashes by Meng Zhang by now."
Su Ye chuckled softly, his fingertips brushing against the lamp closest to him. The four golden characters "By Mandate of Heaven" on the lamp base were blackened by the flames.
As he spoke, he suddenly turned around, and the scent of agarwood wafted towards him.
Si Luoying then noticed that he was not wearing armor today; he was only wearing a plain gauze robe over his moon-white deep robe, and the pearls on the jade belt at his waist complemented the jade on her sword tassel.
"Does Luo Ying know what Meng Zhang left in the palace cellar before his departure?"
He suddenly pointed his fingers together to form a sword and carved the character "Luo" on the bluestone slab.
"Besides the Imperial Seal of the State, there is also this."
Si Luoying followed his fingertip and saw a piece of tattered dragon scale armor embedded in the crack of the bluestone—the very piece that her father had personally tied to her battle robe the year she came of age.
"Meng Zhang said that if the Third Princess sees this item, she will know that the fate of the Great Qian Dynasty is sealed."
"He's so thoughtful; he even moved the bronze tripod from the Imperial Ancestral Temple to the palace gate for me."
Su Ye suddenly leaned down, the scent of agarwood and the smell of blood intertwining into a net.
Si Luoying was shocked. How could she not know Meng Zhang's deeper meaning?
That bronze cauldron weighed a thousand jin (a unit of weight), and was originally used to cook sacrificial animals during the Great Qian Dynasty's sacrifices. Now, it was carelessly thrown in front of the palace gate by the Yellow Turban Army, clearly mocking the Great Qian Dynasty for being reduced to fish on a chopping block.
She raised her hand to brush away the dust accumulated on the dragon pillar, her fingertip stained with half a patch of faded vermilion lacquer. In a daze, it felt as if she were touching the cinnabar that her father had personally applied to her forehead at her coming-of-age ceremony ten years ago.
"The painted decorations on this ceiling were painted when I was twelve years old, while I was watching the artist do it."
She looked up at the mottled flying apsaras pattern on the dome, her dark cloak slipping off her shoulders to reveal the butterfly and flower pattern embroidered on her moon-white inner garment—the fabric for her wedding dress, which the embroiderer had rushed to make for three months before her marriage. Now, wearing it seemed like an irony to the devastation she was in.
Su Ye leaned against the golden-lacquered steps with the dragon motif, his Chun Jun sword casually stuck in the crack of the white marble steps. The pearl tassel on the sword gently tapped the jade steps in the morning breeze, the tinkling sound mixed with the distant clattering of earth from the Chongyan Guard repairing the palace walls.
He watched Si Luoying's retreating figure amidst the ruins and suddenly recalled that last Mid-Autumn Festival on the Hengzhou city tower, she had also been gazing at the drifting clouds in the sky, except that the tassel of her Jinghong sword at her waist was adorned with jade dragon patterns, not the string of pearls from the same source as his jade pendant.
"The glazed tiles of the Qiankun Hall were supervised by those old stubborn men from the Ministry of Works."
Si Luoying suddenly stopped, kicked aside half of the charred rafter with her toe, revealing the faint inscription "Made in the thirteenth year of Yonghui" underneath.
"Back then, my father argued with the Censorate for three months over whether to use peacock blue or ochre for the roof tiles. In the end, Grand Tutor Gu brought out the 'Building Standards' and said that ochre was more durable..."
Her words came to an abrupt halt. The morning breeze, carrying the smell of burning, swept past her ears, and Si Luoying suddenly felt a tightness in her throat.
Those court debates, those disputes within the Imperial Workshops, those candlelight hours spent by her father reviewing memorials until the wee hours of the morning—all of these have now become like bookworms in a pile of rubble, gnawing away at the Great Qian Dynasty in her memory.
Su Ye appeared behind her without her noticing. The scent of agarwood mixed with morning dew wafted over, startling her fingertips.
When he reached out and supported her arm, the warmth of his palm seeped through her cool black armor, like holding a piece of warm jade in the dead of winter.
Si Luoying's throat tightened, and her gaze went over Su Ye's shoulder to the Dan Chi. Twelve bronze lamps glowed with a faint blue light in the morning light, and the jade seal was casually turned upside down as a candlestick. The candle tears congealed into a dark red scab-like substance on the four golden characters "By Mandate of Heaven".
"You actually planned this all along, didn't you?"
"From the day you raised your army in Hengzhou, from the day you sent twin lotus blossoms to my camp, have you been waiting for this day?"
She suddenly turned around, her black cloak sweeping across the incense ash scattered on the ground.
Instead of retreating, Su Ye advanced, enveloping her in the scent of agarwood mixed with morning dew.
"Does Luo Ying know why I love agarwood so much?"
He reached out and brushed the broken tile from her hair, his fingertips brushing against the wrinkles between her brows, sending a tingling sensation through him.
"This incense needs to be kept in honey water and sealed in a ceramic jar for eighty-one days. If it is cloudy or rainy on the day the jar is opened, the fragrance will be three parts less."
Before she could answer, he began to speak to himself.
"Like a peony kept deep in the palace, it has to go through a rainstorm to know if it can survive."
He suddenly lowered his eyes, his eyelashes casting a fan-shaped shadow under his eyes.
Si Luoying's heart skipped a beat. She knew what Su Ye was talking about. This peony in Daqian, which had been growing in a greenhouse, should have been moved out into the open to experience the wind and rain long ago.
But when she witnessed her father's favorite eighteen scholars, Peony, being trampled into mud by warhorses, and saw the bronze tripod in the Imperial Ancestral Temple reduced to a prisoner, all those grand principles suddenly became a joke.
"Look at the weeds growing in the cracks between the bricks. A few years ago they were only an inch or so, but now they're almost knee-high."
Su Ye suddenly squatted down, completely unconcerned that his white robe was soaked in incense ash.
"Isn't it strange? This grass just happened to sprout out of the dragon pattern."
He casually plucked a plant, its roots still covered with fragments of a dragon-patterned floor tile.
Si Luoying looked at the new green shoot in his palm, and her eyes suddenly welled up with tears.
She recalled that when she was a child, by the Taiye Pond, Gu Changqing taught her to distinguish between reeds and water lilies, saying, "Governing a country is like cultivating seedlings; you can't rush it or be impatient."
Now, where the reeds once thrived, only scorched earth remains. Those who nurtured the seedlings have turned to dust, allowing the wild grasses to take the lead.
"Luo Ying, I know you actually resent me."
Su Ye suddenly looked up, and the fragrance of agarwood rippled outwards with her movement.
"But ask yourself honestly, if you could do it all over again, would you really want to see Grand Tutor Gu leading his remaining troops to defend the city until it falls? Would you want to see those civilians chained up like lambs in prison carts?"
His fingertips unconsciously traced the tassel of the Chun Jun sword, the jade dragon-patterned buckle shimmering in the morning light.
Si Luoying dug her nails into her palms. Three days ago, when she received the news of Gu Changqing's death in battle, she was studying the defenses of the eight passes of Qianzhou on a map. Her wolf-hair brush broke on the last stroke of the character "Gu," and the ink that spread resembled the hideous wound on the Grand Tutor's chest.
She looked up at the flickering firelight in Su Ye's eyes and suddenly remembered the strange phenomenon she had seen on the city wall the night before.
The eastern side, where flames were raging, was filled with ornate buildings and painted beams, while the western market, where people lived, had all their thatched huts intact. The scene of the Imperial Guards fighting the fire side by side with the people was just like the "destiny" described in folk tales.
"Will you... treat them well?"
"Those old ministers, those... former subordinates of the Great Qian Dynasty..."
She heard her own voice tremble, like the last fluttering sycamore leaf in late autumn.
Su Ye's fingertips traced the wrinkles between her brows, and the fragrance of agarwood grew stronger with each movement. Si Luoying stared at him blankly, the morning light gilding his features, and his peach blossom eyes, which always carried a hint of playfulness, were now filled with the morning light, reflecting a tenderness she had never seen before.
"I will keep them safe."
"As long as they are not obsessed with the dream of restoring the old order, I will allow them to write books, open schools and teach students, and even... accuse me of having wolfish ambitions!"
He suddenly took her hand and pressed it to his heart, the jade dragon pattern on the tassel of the Chun Jun sword resting against her wrist.
Si Luoying felt his heartbeat with her fingertips and suddenly burst into laughter through her tears. The laughter came so unexpectedly, like a forsythia blooming in the cold winter, that even she was stunned.
Su Ye seemed to have expected this, reaching out to wipe away the tears from the corners of her eyes, the water droplets on his fingertips shattering into rainbows in the morning light.
"Your smile is so captivating; I was even thinking of having you lead those old subordinates of the Great Qian Dynasty in the future!"
He suddenly leaned down, and the scent of agarwood mixed with the smell of blood enveloped her.
"There's only one condition—you have to keep an eye on those old fogies for me, and make sure they don't do any more pointless things... okay?"
He suddenly lowered his voice, his warm breath brushing against her earlobe.
Si Luoying finally laughed out loud. She suddenly reached out and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her black cloak and moon-white robe fluttered like butterflies in the morning breeze. The bronze lamps in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony swayed, casting their intertwined figures onto the mottled palace wall, like a phoenix and a dragon dancing together.
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