Chapter 17: Glazed Illusion Part 4

In the Chess Pavilion, Zhou Kong scattered the unfinished game, unhurriedly lifting her celadon teacup as she listened to the reports from below, the gathered intelligence of the past days from every scout in her service.

The moment a certain signal reached her ears, Zhou Kong set down the cup.

She looked at the figure in black kneeling at attention before her and frowned. “Is the intelligence reliable?”

“…If Her Highness asks whether Ye Qingzhou will attend the Midsummer Banquet, the answer is undetermined. But if Her Highness asks whether Ye Qingzhou accepted the Eldest Princess’s Manor’s Invitation… then it is absolutely certain.”

Year in and year out, the Imperial Family held a dozen-odd banquets, and at every single one, every faction presented invitations to Ye Qingzhou of the Wind Grace Sect. And every single time, those invitations were sent back. Without exception.

Zhou Kong: “You’re certain it was Ye Qingzhou herself? Not Tang Yi or Ruan Yu or any of the others accepting on her behalf?”

The figure in black said, “Certain. It was her own hand.”

Zhou Kong asked again, “And the invitations from the others?”

“Returned unopened, as always.”

Zhou Kong lowered her eyes and watched the tea leaves drift and settle in her cup. The finest celadon teacup never stained with the color of tea, and its fragrance drifted up even as the bottom of the cup reflected back a pair of wavering eyes.

Everyone knew that the Wind Grace Sect as an institution, and Ye Qingzhou of the Wind Grace Sect, were two things that could not be spoken of in the same breath.

True, the Wind Grace Sect was a renowned sect of the world, masterly in cultivation and in teaching, producing generation after generation of brilliant, orchid-and-jade talents.

But from the standpoint of factional maneuvering and the halls of court, it was also a craft reader of the winds and a steersman of the helm, and it could never remain entirely unstained by worldly color. At root, then, the Wind Grace Sect differed little from Lanjie Prefecture or Dragon Chant Island.

Ye Qingzhou of the Changsheng Sword, her blade as famed as her name, was courted by thousands upon thousands across the Nine Provinces. Yet all who spent vast energy, wealth, resources, and manpower circling her, searching for a way in, came away with nothing but a bruised nose.

Ye Qingzhou, to put it kindly, stood apart from the world. To put it bluntly, she acknowledged no one.

If one day she flipped the very roof off the Wind Grace Sect, the sect that sheltered her, few would be surprised.

And yet now… Zhou Kong thought. Have I truly become this one ‘exception’?

After a long silence, Zhou Kong finally raised her eyes again. “Who else knows about this?”

The figure in black was briefly taken aback.

If Ye Qingzhou really did attend the banquet carrying the Eldest Princess’s Manor’s invitation, it would tell everyone that she had loosened her stance in the contest between factions.

The master of the Changsheng Sword was about to choose a side.

For a matter this large, it was impossible that not a whisper would leak.

So the figure in black only said, “No one. For now.”

Zhou Kong turned her head, eyeing the scattered black and white stones on the board, and understood.

“Where there is even one chance in ten thousand, one must prepare for all ten thousand.”

After the figure in black departed, the Eldest Princess’s two little maids were summoned to the pavilion.

One wore her hair in twin ram’s-horn braids, unmistakably the same little maid who had slipped Luo Jiao a prayer mat during her interrogation at the magistrate’s office in Jinguan City a month prior. Yu Wang. The other wore two little braided pigtails and looked no more than eleven or twelve, the very picture of innocent girlhood.

Little Pigtails was grumbling under her breath. “We’re replacing all the orchids on the terrace with lotuses? Aiya, and even pulling the Late Empress’s beloved white epiphyllums to make do as accents? Isn’t that a bit…”

While Little Pigtails was still rattling on, Yu Wang beside her tugged her sleeve and hauled her back a step. “Quit fussing. Just hand it all over to the Garden staff and be done with it.”

Little Pigtails huffed. “Don’t you trust my work?” Then she wrinkled her nose. “I’m just afraid all those old fossils will start clucking their tongues about it.”

“They won’t,” Zhou Kong said mildly. “If she truly comes, no one will dare say a word. The older people get, the more they cherish their lives.” She lowered her eyes and blew thoughtfully on her tea, though whom the barb was meant for, none could say.

Yu Wang caught the word at once. “She? That… person again?”

“I know!” Little Pigtails’s quick wits beat her to it. “It’s that white-haired big sister Her Highness met once! The one who went whooshing around trailing immortal mist!”

A year ago, when Zhou Kong learned of Ye Qingzhou’s whereabouts, she had waited by the stump for the rabbit and met her face to face. At the time, these two maids had stood on either side behind the Eldest Princess, so they too had laid eyes on her once.

“Is it because that sister likes lotuses?” Little Pigtails asked loudly.

Zhou Kong neither confirmed nor denied.

Little Pigtails prattled on to herself anyway. “She really does look like a clear lotus! Haha!”

Yu Wang, of course, had also caught on to whom they were speaking.

She smiled. “She’s not like a lotus at all. More like the clear chrysanthemum: ‘When the ninth month comes and my flower blooms, all other flowers die.'”

Little Pigtails giggled. “Or the lone plum. ‘From afar you know it isn’t snow…'”

The two little maids carried on like a comedy duo, one line apiece, until Zhou Kong’s brows knitted tight. “Enough, enough, both of you, quiet. You’re giving me a headache.”

Little Pigtails was plainly bewildered. “Eh? Why is Her Highness upset? Shouldn’t you be happy?”

Zhou Kong looked at her expressionlessly. “Ranchun. Ask one more question and you’ll be sent straight back to the Imperial Kitchen.”

But Little Pigtails just grinned. “Her Highness says that every time. And then she never actually…”

“All right, all right.” Yu Wang cut her off, yanked her firmly back to her side, then turned and bowed in farewell. “With Your Highness’s leave, your servants withdraw.”

Zhou Kong waved a hand.

Yu Wang and Ranchun withdrew from the pavilion garden together.

And so the Chess Pavilion settled back into stillness.

Zhou Kong rubbed her brow as if beset by a headache, then turned back around.

The unfinished black-and-white game before her was, in truth, the game being played at court between Prince Ning of Zhou and Zhou Zhaoyue.

It was a dead position. No one could win.

But back then, Zhou Kong had seen a thread of possibility and had been about to step in and speak, only to be blocked by Prince Ning’s Red Leaf Fan and slapped with the label of “troublemaker.”

“One who watches a game does not speak,” Prince Ning had told her, his smile not quite a smile.

Then he’d glanced sideways at Zhou Zhaoyue. “A Vice Minister, and yet so utterly without standing? Were it I, my Princess Consort Ning… forget stepping in to interfere, merely standing by and watching would earn her a few blows. Vice Minister Zhou, a man who leans on his woman… is a worthless thing indeed.”

There was naked mockery in Prince Ning’s eyes as he said it.

The barb was aimed squarely at the both of them.

Zhou Zhaoyue had smiled along, smoothly deflected the topic, and seen Prince Ning off. But Zhou Kong’s hand had curled into a silent fist:

When the tide of power finally turned, she, Zhou Kong, would be the very first to castrate this Prince Ning of Zhou!

That Prince Ning of Zhou was sexually violent and abusive toward his wife, his concubines, and his maids was no secret at court.

It was more than no secret. It had even become a “joke” on certain lips.

True, some found it distasteful. But in the end, no one had ever had the courage to say a word against it.

Most felt it was no concern of theirs, none of their business. A smaller number understood perfectly well that even if the matter were dragged into the open, it would come to nothing.

What power Prince Ning of Zhou wielded. His father’s line was born of Imperial Family blood, and his mother’s line was tied to the Imperial Merchants, both once the most dazzling figures in all of Qingdu.

As for Prince Ning’s principal wife, though born of a distinguished house, she enjoyed not the slightest favor from her own family. And those concubines and maids were mostly orphaned girls bought and sold like chattel. What power or influence could they possibly command?

If anyone truly tried to make an issue of it, in the end Prince Ning would strike back viciously from the shadows. The loss would outweigh the gain.

The loss would outweigh the gain.

Where in this world were right and wrong, justice and propriety, truly written? In the end it was all a game of profit and loss, a game of power.

Those who stood high could only look upward.

Counting the pieces in her hand, Zhou Kong felt countless strands of anger coiling in her chest.

Whether what had carried her this far was hatred for those men, or love for every woman in the world, she could not say.

But she knew this: the key to breaking this deadlocked game bore three characters, written plain.

Ye Qingzhou.

So as Zhou Kong’s hands replayed the game, her mind drifted back to Ranchun’s words.

‘Ye Qingzhou really does look like a clear lotus.’

In truth, Ranchun hadn’t been wrong.

Legend held that a century ago, Ye Qingzhou of the Changsheng Sword was the world’s acknowledged paragon of openness and light, a true woman of wind and moonlit clarity. No flower suited her better than the lotus.

But now…

To liken her to any flower or leaf no longer fit.

If a comparison were absolutely required, the mad Elder Ye of the Wind Grace Sect was far more like the autumn wind. Bleak, withering, an autumn wind that took lives without form or sound.

As for the reason for the change from lotus to autumn wind, the world had always speculated endlessly.

But no one truly knew the cause.

Ye Qingzhou was a person wrapped in many riddles. And Zhou Kong had never liked such people.

Hard to read. Harder still to control.

But she was Ye Qingzhou.

And so Zhou Kong would yield.

Because Ye Qingzhou was the single most important move on her board. Played well, she stood one step from the dawn. Played wrong, the whole game would collapse, and there would be no coming back.

And all of it, every piece, was for one righteous and unimpeachable cause.

***

[T/N]:

I recently added this to Chapter 1 because I changed the names of the swords to their pinyin.

I’m adding it here as well so that anyone who read the chapter before I made these changes can see the updates, along with the meanings of the sword names.

Sword Names:

• Bujue (不觉): Means “unaware” or “without noticing”. It is also an intentional homophone for 不绝 (bùjué), meaning “unceasing” or “endless”.

• Changsheng (长生): Means “immortality” or “longevity”.

Luo Jiao vs. Luo Bujue:
Luo Jiao is her birth/given name, while Luo Bujue is her martial/Daoist name (daohao), which shares its moniker with her weapon, the Bujue Sword.