Chapter 8: The Spectacle of Vermilion Accusations
"Come—let us parley with these phantoms of calumny!" Ye Ling proclaimed, striding toward the palace gates where a tempest of humanity seethed.
By the third bell of dawn, the mob had coalesced into an implacable maelstrom of wrath.
"Behold the Venomous Prince!"
"Let the salt-sorcerer burn!"
Rotten eggs hurtled through the air like plague-ridden comets. Ye Ling danced through the putrid barrage, his Dragon Guard weaving a carapace of glinting steel around him.
"Your alchemical poison stole my father's final breath!" screeched a cadaverous elder, talons snagging Ye Ling's golden-threaded robe.
"My son's organs liquefied from your cursed crystals!" shrieked a mother cradling an empty swaddling cloth.
The throng's howls swelled into a primaeval roar—a thousand pointing fingers etching Ye Ling as Death's own emissary.
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**Theatre of the Damned**
"These deaths you lay at my salt's altar," Ye Ling's voice cleaved the bedlam like a honed dao blade, "where blooms your evidence?"
The skeletal elder collapsed in a pantomime of grief, nails scoring bloodied trails on cobblestones. "The very heavens bleed for our defilement!" His theatrics ignited fresh frenzy.
"Prince Ling grinds bones for his salt!"
"Let crows feast on his blackened heart!"
From the periphery, Ye Changfeng observed through serpent-slitted eyes. A flick of his wrist sent the Minister of War's soldiers surging forth—not to quell, but to stoke.
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**Labyrinth of Lies**
"Silence these defamers!" Ye Changfeng commanded, benevolence thin as gilded rice paper. Soldiers gagged the loudest voices with rancid hemp, their "rescue" fanning the mob's fury to infernal heights.
A censor emerged from the roil, ink-stained fingers quivering with manufactured outrage: "Does His Highness seek to muzzle Truth's own tongue?"
The stage was set:
- **Centre**: Ye Ling framed a tyrant by his "saviours".
- **Wings**: Vermilion-clad guards parting the sea of rage for the Emperor's approach
- **Shadows**: Chen Huai's whispers coiling around Ye Changfeng's ear like asps.
As the gagged elder's muffled wails pierced the chaos, Ye Ling's gaze ensnared the censor—a man whose indigo-stained cuticles betrayed nightly dictations in Chen scriptoria.
The Salt Conspiracy
"Since when do peasants dare oppose nobility, much less confront His Highness the Humble Prince?"
Sinister conjectures slithered through the crowd like venomous serpents.
"Are your eyes ornamental?" Ye Ling sneered with withering contempt at the censor, his lip curling like parchment scorched by flame. "Observe clearly—'twas your liege Lord Xu who sought to muzzle this elder, spouting venom about consigning him to the imperial dungeons!"
"Liege? You soil your tongue with baseless calumny, Prince Qian!" The censor's complexion ripened to a fermented beetroot hue, his entire being trembling with the outrage of a man whose ancestral honour had been defiled.
"Mark me well, rabble!" Ye Ling's theatrical stride carried him behind Lord Xu, where he delivered a comradely shoulder slap dripping with mockery. "No edict of arrest bears my seal. This compassionate fraternal gesture comes solely from Prince Xu's overflowing concern for your welfare."
"Curiously", his voice crescendoed to a ringing indictment, "among ten thousand salt patrons, why do only you provincial wretches perish? More curiously still—why does Prince Xu gallop hither not as inquisitor but as executioner?"
Ye Changfeng's machinations to tarnish his sibling's honour would not go unchallenged. Every villainous stroke here bore Lord Xu's fingerprints—while Ye Ling stood as virtue's beleaguered guardian.
"Conspirators in crime, these princes?"
"Two sides of a forged coin—the Butcher-Prince demanding crimson tribute while his meek sibling pockets the gold."
"Why else silence tongues unless secrets fester?"
"Lord Xu?" A voice thick with Jizhou brogue rose above the murmur. "The Bloody Duke of Jizhou! His pact with Magistrate Chen Wang drowned that prefecture in orphans' tears!"
"Aye! His blood-drenched legend chills every tavern from Hebei to Hubei!"
Ye Ling's verbal alchemy transmuted outrage into redirected fury. Liu Ren's operatives among the mob fanned the flames until all accusations crystallized on Lord Xu. Weaving falsehoods came as naturally as breathing to him.
Observing the shifting winds, Ye Changfeng's composure fractured. His carefully constructed calumny against Ye Ling crumbled like sun-baked adobe.
"Sixth Brother!" he declaimed with actorly projection, sensing the imperial entourage's approach. "When vipers threaten our house, must you bare your throat? I come as a protector, yet you brandish fangs against kin!"
He sculpted his countenance into the martyred visage of a saintly patriarch—noble brow furrowed with fraternal anguish, every muscle taut with wounded benevolence.
But Ye Ling's laughter rang out, sharp as shattered porcelain. "Protector? Or puppet master dangling poisoned marionettes?" His voice soared above the square, a hawk's cry challenging thunder. "How fortuitous these 'starvelings' arrived precisely when my salt monopoly galls your ambitions!"
In the arena of slander, Ye Ling reigned as undisputed champion.
"Ye Ling!" Lord Xu's counterfeit grief dissolved into spluttering rage. "You dare vilify salvation itself?"
As the imperial phoenix banners breached the crowd's horizon, the Phoenix Guard parted the throng like wheat before a scythe.
"Make way! The Son of Heaven approaches!"
A wave of prostration swept the square as all mortal pride bowed before divine sovereignty.
"What theatre of discord is this?" The Emperor's gaze, colder than midwinter stars, surveyed the tableau of corpses and supplicants.
"Sovereign of Ten Thousand Years," Ye Ling intoned with honeyed irony, "these petitioners allege my humble salt tribute conceals mortal venom. Yet if this were truth, would not your imperial physicians—those masters of ten thousand herbs—have long since raised alarm?" His eyes glittered as they swept over the "refugees". "Stranger still—Prince Xu's zeal to bury evidence outstrips even my curiosity."
The unspoken truth vibrated in the air: the Dragon Throne itself had consumed this supposedly lethal salt daily.
A susurrus of realization rustled through the crowd. The refugees' threadbare tale now hung as tattered as beggars' rags.
Ye Changfeng's pallor mirrored bleached silk. What madman would present "toxic" salt to the Celestial Throne? This imbecile had turned poison into imperial ambrosia!
Alchemical Betrayals
Could this demented princeling truly believe the dragon's viscera would remain unscathed by toxins brewed from cursed mineral veins?
That cretin Ye Ling! Ye Changfeng's molars ground silent curses into powder.
Behind the Celestial Presence, Revenue Minister Chen Huai's fingers flickered in clandestine semaphore to his puppets.
"O... Omniscient Son of Heaven!" A hoary-bearded elder prostrated himself with tragic grandeur, his performative sobs echoing through the marble colonnades. "This humble one's lineage ends with a son slain by gilded poison! Let Heaven's justice pierce this veil of lies!"
"Your progeny succumbed to my alchemy?" Ye Ling circled the mourner like a panther toying with wounded prey. "Marvellous alchemy indeed—that slays strapping youths yet spares withered ancients!" His lacquered nail traced the elder's rubicund jowls. "Behold this miracle of selective toxicity—sparing patriarchs to orchestrate farces!"
The crowd's murmurs swelled to a tidal rumble. The elder's vigorous frame and hale breath mocked his claims of shared poison.
"Does His Highness demand ancestral bones for his trophy hall?" The elder pressed liver-spotted hands to dry eyes. "Shall silence entomb all truth?"
"The truth lies buried with his victims!" croaked a cadaverous confederate.
"Truth?" Ye Ling's blade severed burial linens with a silk scream. "Imperial Sire, Tianqu's true poison victims expire verdant as jade idols, bowels purged in death's final rebellion. These charlatans?" He gestured contemptuously at greyish corpses. "Not even counterfeiters could botch death's palette so grossly!"
"You refined the ore's chromatic sins to crystalline deceit!" The elder's counterstroke rang with rehearsed precision. "Bleached its venom to imperial white! As for my survival..." His hands clutched entrails in mock torment. "...daily I pay Agony's tribute!"
A cacophonous intestinal symphony erupted—followed by olfactory horrors that sent courtiers stumbling back like drunken moths.
"The venom... it tears at my vitals!"
"Mercy! Death's grip tightens!"
The "victims" writhed in choreographed anguish, their emissions transmuting the imperial square into a noxious geyser field. Minister Chen emerged through the retching officials like a carrion crow descending upon a plague-stricken battlefield.
"What rebuttal can possibly withstand this living testament to your lethal alchemy, Prince Qian?" Chen Huai's voice sliced through miasmal air.
"Minister's memory falters," Fang Yan interposed through a perfumed kerchief. "The inaugural salt tribute graced His Majesty's own celestial palate!"
"Unless..." Chen's smile curdled like month-old cream. "...that tribute flowed not from Tianqu's cursed veins, but some... alternative provenance."
The insinuation hung like gallows rope—a royal sleight of hand poisoning peasants while preserving the Dragon's immunity.
Threads of Treachery
"Should Prince Qian have sourced untainted salt through clandestine channels for the Dragon Throne's consumption, this deception transcends mere fraud—it becomes sacrilege against Heaven's mandate!"
Chen Huai's indictment coiled through the square like a serpent seeking fatal purchase, its venomous intent leaving no avenue for mercy.
"Why linger like statues?" Ye Ling's glacial composure commanded the Phoenix Guard. "Remove these thespians from celestial sight and summon the imperial physiognomists. Let their silver needles divine whether these colics spring from common purgatives... or my alchemical marvels."
The prince waved aside the treason charge like dispersing incense smoke. Until celestial judgement itself descended, a bureaucrat's posturing held less weight than sparrow's chatter.
At the mention of royal diagnosticians, the "afflicted" froze mid-convulsion, their counterfeit agonies evaporating like dawn mist before truth's sun.
"Hear this edict carved in bone." Ye Ling's voice resonated with the ancestral executioner's timbre as he trod among the paralyzed conspirators. "Forging calumnies against imperial lineage demands eradication of three ancestral branches. Your progeny's cradle songs shall be silenced by the same blade that severs your treasonous tongues."
His boot's steel cap tilted a patriarch's quivering chin. "Tianqu's veins bleed a thousand catties daily—Jizhou's very lifeblood flows with my salt. Were it tainted, the empire's mourning banners would eclipse the sun. These?" A dismissive gesture towards the cadavers. "Shall be flayed layer by layer under coroner's scrutiny until their falsehoods peel raw."
"Name your puppet master now," the prince's whisper slithered like silk over daggers, "and your bloodline's roots may yet escape the burning."
The conspirators' eyes darted like panicked minnows between Ye Ling's pitiless gaze and Chen Huai's twitching jade belt.
"Does His Highness presume to cow truth-speakers beneath Heaven's unblinking eye?" Chen interposed with urgent sophistry. "Unburden your grievances, good souls! The morrow's light may never grace honest tongues!"
His honeyed threat dripped with subtext darker than midnight ink.
"Silence!" The Emperor's murmur crystallized the air. "Any prevarication shall be answered with death by ten thousand cuts, your ancestral tablets ground to dust."
A dark stain bloomed across one impostor's robes as another babbled, "W-we... swallowed silver tongues to vilify the prince... never tasted salt's curse..."
"Vipers in human guise!" Ye Changfeng's blade hissed from its scabbard. "Imperial Father, let justice flow crimson upon these defilers!"
"Why such alacrity, dear brother?" Ye Ling's smile glinted like frost on poisoned steel. "Does their impending testimony chill your noble blood?"
"Must fraternal bonds wither beneath suspicion's blight?" The elder prince pressed jewelled fingers to his breastplate in martyred pantomime.
"Not alacrity—thoroughness." Ye Ling's gaze transfixed Chen Huai, whose forehead now glistened like monsoon-struck marble. "Confession precedes execution. Not the reverse."
All eyes tracked the trembling elder's outstretched finger as it swung inexorably toward...
"O... Omniscient One..." The accuser's palsied hand quivered like a compass needle finding true north. "That... that viper in vermilion robes...!"
The square became a frozen tableau—a drawn bow awaiting the archer's final breath.
Masks of the Damned
Like autumn leaves swept by accusatory winds, all gazes converged upon Chen Huai—a vermilion-clad statue crumbling beneath scrutiny's avalanche.
"That scarlet serpent! Our chieftain led us to his shadowed chambers at the moon's zenith!"
"Truth! His potions of purgatory scorched our throats ere dawn's first blush!"
"Divine Majesty... we... mere reeds bending to tyrant's gale..."
The conspirators' performative lamentations drenched the square in farcical pathos. Mandarins' eyes became daggers piercing Chen and Prince Xu's alliance—this uncle-nephew cabal's marionette theatre now exposed to celestial judgement.
"O Dragon Throne's Eternal Brilliance!" Vice-Minister Li Han's forehead struck marble in rhythmic self-flagellation, each kowtow birthing carnelian blossoms upon stone. "This worm's putrid mind alone conceived this mummery! When Minister Chen graced my... preparations... these clodpates mistook celestial visitation for conspiracy!"
His penitential percussion echoed through frozen colonnades. "All corruption festers within my cankered soul! The minister's virtue shines unsullied!"
"To slander imperial blood demands nine generations' obliteration!" Chen clutched his brocaded chest with actorly precision. "What demon possessed your feeble mind?"
"For our empire's celestial harmony!" Li raised his ruinous visage—a martyr's death mask. "Tianqu's blighted veins spit in Heaven's eye! Prince Qian's alchemical defiance summons celestial retribution!"
"Verily!" Grand Tutor Fu Hai emerged like a vulture scenting carrion. "To pluck fruits from forbidden groves invites heaven's lightning! This dust beneath Your Majesty's feet implores—heed the auguries!"
Fu's rheumy eyes noted imperial restraint—Chen's clan still nestled within the Dragon's protective shadow, and by extension, Prince Xu's faction retained its claws. With his daughter's impending nuptials to Xu's household, Fu's allegiance remained chained to ambition's chariot.
"Since when do celestial beings thirst for mortal anguish?" Ye Ling's mirthless laughter shattered the tension like jade hitting marble. "My salt banishes hunger's spectre—what deity would curse such mercy? Unless..." His gaze dissected Chen's facade. "...earthbound devils masquerade as heaven's voice."
"Minister Chen," the prince's syllables dripped poisoned honey, "having danced with these pawns yestereve, how came dawn to bleach their visages from your memory? Such selective oblivion fascinates."
"Cleanse this unworthy servant's blindness, Celestial Radiance!" Chen's prostration spread like an inkblot across stone. "These clouded eyes betray, but my heart beats loyal crimson!"
"Imperial Father!" Ye Changfeng joined the grovelling chorus, his jewelled guan clinking against stone. "Minister Chen's decades..."
"Still your tongues." The Emperor's murmur petrified the air. "The Tianqu rabble shall taste bamboo's kiss fiftyfold. Vice-Minister Li Han—his ranks stripped like autumn leaves, face branded with treason's mark, banished beyond civilisation's pale. Eternal exile."
The unspoken verdict hung heavier than the executioner's blade: Chen's blood remained sacrosanct. Ye Ling's jade-ringed fingers curled into phoenix claws—this skirmish ended not in conquest, but in an ominous ceasefire.
When Stars Fall to Pincers
"Chen Huai, Chancellor of the Imperial Treasury, having failed in stewardship over his ministry, shall relinquish twelve moons' emoluments."
The Emperor's decree draped across the court like brocaded smoke—opaque yet insubstantial. By offering Li Han as a sacrificial lamb and administering this ceremonial rebuke, the Dragon Throne reconfirmed the Chen clan's status as the empire's golden arteries—too vital to sever.
"Your celestial servant prostrates before infinite wisdom." Chen's forehead kissed cold marble, volcanic rage simmering beneath courtly submission. Months of intricate scheming had cost him a prized lieutenant while leaving Ye Ling's reputation unblemished—an insult festering like cursed mercury in his veins.
As vermilion-armoured guards hauled the wailing conspirators away, their bamboo rods composing crimson symphonies on flesh, the Chief Astrologer sprang forth like a jackal scenting weakness.
"Omnipotent Sovereign!" The stargazer's voice trembled with apocalyptic theatrics. "For three lunar cycles, bloody auras corrupt the Heart Chamber constellation flanking the Purple Palace! This celestial malignancy devours its astral brethren—a portent demanding Prince Qian's immediate demotion and Tianqu's cursed mines sealed beneath earth's bones!"
Ripples of unease disturbed the ministerial ranks. Ye Ling's lips quirked—this celestial melodrama reeked of desperation's musk.
"The Heart Chamber governs imperial progeny's celestial mandate," the astrologer pressed, skeletal finger stabbing stormy heavens. "Since this prince's ascendance, drought's breath has parched our lands, monstrous deluges have drowned our cities, and now..." His voice dropped to a sepulchral whisper. "...*abominations from the deep*!"
With trembling hands, he unveiled a silk scroll depicting chitinous horrors—multi-limbed demons clad in articulated armour, scythe-claws capable of stripping entire harvests to skeletal stalks. Mandarins recoiled as if the painted terrors might scuttle from parchment.
"Pincers, you say?" Ye Ling's eyes glinted with predatory amusement. "Might this humble prince sample such celestial delicacies?"
The Emperor's jade sceptre struck marble like celestial judgement. "Cease this farcical—"
"Behold, heaven's wrath made flesh!" From voluminous sleeves, the astrologer produced a bamboo cage rattling with armoured fury. The creature within snapped serrated claws with metallic clicks, its alien chittering freezing blood in veins.
As courtiers shrieked, Ye Ling's nostrils flared—the briny tang of river estuaries. His laughter rang clear as temple bells. "Your Majesty! This 'hellspawn' requires but ginger and scallions to become ambrosia!"
Snatching the cage, the prince deftly dismembered the creature with a courtier's fruit knife. The crack of chitin echoed like shattered porcelain as he popped morsels into his mouth. "A touch oversalted from heavenly brine, but palatable."
Thus unfolded history's most surreal tribunal—where astral omens crumbled before gastronomic revelation, and an empire's destiny pivoted on the flavour of freshwater crustaceans.
When Celestial Wrath Wears a Shell
"Prince Qian, swaddled in palace silks, remains blissfully ignorant of the people's plight!" The Chief Astrologer spat, his ceremonial robes quivering with manufactured indignation.
Moments later, bailiffs bearing the stench of river mud deposited a bamboo crate before the throne. Its lid lifted to reveal clattering horrors—armoured crustaceans the size of newborn pups, their pincers snapping like executioners' shears.
"Behold the incarnate fury of affronted heavens!" The astrologer's trembling finger traced the creatures' alien contours. "These chitinous fiends ravage our waterways, mutilate peasants, and reduce golden rice paddies to barren wastes!"
Ye Ling's laughter cascaded like shattered crystal. "You name these ambrosial treasures *vermin*?" He lifted a specimen whose carapace glowed like burnished bronze, its weight promising succulent riches beneath. "This is Gaia's generosity incarnate—not celestial chastisement!"
"Your levity profanes both throne and tiller!" Grand Tutor Fu Hai interposed, his jade-inset headdress trembling with performative concern. "Hamlets lie abandoned where these 'treasures' swarm! Their claws sever infants' fingers; their multitudes strip fields to skeletal remains!"
"Precisely!" The astrologer's voice soared to a prophetic timbre. "These aberrations manifest divine wrath against Prince Qian's salt-mine sacrilege and fraudulent benevolence! Strip his titles, August Majesty, before heaven's fury consumes us all!"
Ye Ling rotated the crab with a connoisseur's appreciation. "What if I alchemize this 'plague' into imperial delicacies? Roasted with sichuan peppercorns, steamed with Shaoxing wine"—
"More princely buffoonery!" A junior star-reader sneered. "Shall courtly gluttony quell cosmic retribution?"
"Since my culinary arts offend," Ye Ling's tone sharpened to a razor edge, "what remedies do your astral charts prescribe? Drown bureaucrats as crustacean bait? Or perhaps"—his gaze swept the sneering mandarins—"teach peasants to hawk these 'terrors' at twenty taels per bushel?"
The chief astrologer's parchment complexion yellowed. "Sacrilege! These hellspawn—"
"—are delectable." The prince bisected a claw with a ceremonial dagger, its crack echoing through the petrified court. "Your 'divine scourge' pairs exquisitely with aged vinegar."
"Silence!" The Emperor's murmur crystallized the air. "Should stripping Prince Qian's titles fail to placate these 'heavenly omens'—" his obsidian eyes impaled the astrologer, "—must I next surrender the Vermilion Seal? Or perhaps you covet the Nine-Dragon Throne itself?"
The astrologer collapsed like a marionette with severed strings. "This unworthy stargazer merely—"
"—exploits celestial theatre for political assassination." Ye Ling licked crab fat from his fingers. "But rejoice—I'll dispatch master chefs to teach riverfolk trapping and broth-crafting. Within two moon cycles, these 'demons' shall become... taxable luxuries."
As courtiers' whispers swelled to scandalized cacophony, the Emperor's beard concealed a twitching smile. The crab in Ye Ling's grip continued its posthumous dance—armoured legs twitching in final defiance, a crustacean Icarus challenging celestial dogma.
When Armor Meets Ambition
"Such impertinent notions never graced your servants' unworthy thoughts!" The Chief Astrologer and his acolytes prostrated themselves, their foreheads imprinting frost patterns upon the marble in frantic disavowal.
"Imperial Sire," Ye Ling's voice sliced through the grovelling chorus, "since these celestial charlatans insist these 'aberrations' spring from my endeavours, let us cast cosmic dice—within one lunar cycle, I shall transmute this 'divine scourge' into imperial coffers. Should I falter, I surrender my titles. Should I prevail..." His gaze honed to Damascus steel upon the quivering astrologer. "...this celestial fraudster forfeits position and privilege for eternity."
"Let Heaven bear witness!" The astrologer rose with counterfeit fortitude. "No mortal alchemist can purge these chitinous legions ere thirty dawns!"
Whispers undulated through the court like serpents through sacred groves.
"Hubris cloaked in silk!"
"Does he fancy himself the Dragon King of waterways?"
"These armored hordes multiply like bamboo shoots after spring rains—"
Ye Changfeng concealed a victorious smile behind his phoenix feather fan. This gambit would finally consign his vexing sibling to political oblivion.
"Let the celestial ledgers record this covenant." The Emperor's edict resonated with unanticipated warmth. "We name Prince Qian as Heaven's Arbiter, vested with full mandate over this... 'cosmic trial'."
Where once he perceived only a profligate heir, the emperor now glimpsed an enigma—an intellect that spun catastrophe into golden thread, divine wrath into taxable commodities. Ancestral pride swelled beneath his nine-dragon embroidery.
"Your unworthy servant embraces Heaven's charge!" Ye Ling's obeisance flowed like ceremonial ink across parchment.
As mandarins dispersed like startled cranes, venomous murmurs pursued the Chief Astrologer: "We'll witness the wastrel prince grovelling for clemency ere seven dawns!"
"Plant our eyes in every shadow," Ye Changfeng instructed Chen Huai, jade rings clinking like war-chimes. "No more surprises from this alchemist-prince."
At Humble Prince Manor, Lü Wu descended upon her returning lord like an autumn storm upon a persimmon grove.
"Celestial Highness! The riotous masses—?"
"Transmuted into docile petitioners", Ye Ling tweaked her nose with alchemist's whimsy. "Now—shall we conjure gastronomic magic?"
The maid's bewilderment curdled to horror as servants hauled bamboo cages into the moonlit courtyard.
"By the Eighteen Layers of Diyu!" Lü Wu recoiled, her peony-petal complexion blanching to winter plum as she sought refuge behind her lord's brocaded shoulders. "What... what armoured nightmares haunt our halls?!"
Ye Ling hefted a particularly vigorous specimen, its claws snapping like duelling dao blades near his grinning visage. "Behold our new culinary constellation, fair Lü Wu. Tonight, we feast like oceanic deities!"
The crab's indignant clatter composed a sonata of crustacean defiance—its armoured legs conducting invisible orchestras against culinary destiny's relentless tide.
The Alchemy of Appetite
"Arachnid horrors? These are *crustacean treasures*!" Ye Ling laughed, brandishing a specimen toward Lü Wu with the flourish of a seasoned showman. "To the kitchens—your culinary tutelage awaits!"
Crustaceans? Culinary endeavours? Lü Wu stood transfixed as her prince swept past, trailed by Liu Ren bearing bamboo cages that clattered with armoured inhabitants.
"What alchemical madness is this?" she whispered to the guard.
"The mob's fury was quelled," Liu Ren murmured, adjusting his grip on the writhing cargo, "yet Prince Xu's cabal conjured fresh malice. Now His Highness combats calumny with... these riverborne enigmas."
In the steamy kitchens, Head Chef Han Li kowtowed until his forehead kissed soot-stained tiles.
"Your Celestial Highness! Has this unworthy one's humble fare offended—?"
"By the Eight Trigrams!" A scullion recoiled from the bamboo crates. "Those armoured nightmares—!"
"Not nightmares—*gastronomic revelations*," Liu Ren corrected, echoing his lord's pedagogical tone.
Ye Ling selected a particularly vigorous specimen, dismissing the chef's trepidations with a wave.
"Mark well the alchemist's art," he proclaimed, scrubbing the carapace with the precision of a jade carver before immersing it in briny baptism. The creature's subsequent expulsion of sediment drew reverent gasps.
"Now—stoke the dragon's breath! Summon the golden nectar!"
The kitchen erupted into orchestrated pandemonium. Iron woks roared as peanut oil shimmered into liquid sunlight.
"Sibilant whispers... golden crackles... aromatic crescendos..."
Transmutation unfolded—chitinous armour blushing vermilion under culinary alchemy. Garlic cloves pirouetted with ginger root in fragrant clouds as Ye Ling's cleaver flashed like a poet's quill.
When the final masterpiece emerged—a Himalayan peak of glazed crustaceans shimmering with chilli-laced ambrosia—Lü Wu's composure teetered between repulsion and fascination.
"Partake, fair Lü Wu!" Ye Ling cracked a claw with the ceremony of breaking imperial seals, golden ichor dripping like liquid topaz.
The maid's throat convulsed. "Your Celestial Highness... perhaps a food-taster should—"
Liu Ren required no royal decree. His inaugural bite of garlic-buttered carapace elicited a groan worthy of temple ecstatics. "By the Vermilion Bird's plumage! This... this is celestial manna!"
Soon the courtyard resonated with the symphony of cracking exoskeletons and satiated sighs. Even Chef Han Li, initially trembling like winter reeds, now suckled crab roe from his fingertips with Bacchanalian abandon.
Ye Ling reclined like a contented dragon, observing his culinary insurrection. The crabs' once-terrifying chelae lay dismantled like fallen citadels—their martial grandeur reduced to succulent jewels glimmering under moonlight.
As Lü Wu tentatively sampled a chilli-kissed morsel, her eyes widened in gustatory revelation. The "river phantoms" had become... divine.
The night air thickened with capsaicin-tinged mirth—a symposium where political barbs transformed into epicurean triumphs, and armoured adversaries knelt conquered before the throne of appetite.
Banquets of Temptation
Ye Ling savoured another morsel of chilli-infused crab, the piquant heat and savoury richness blooming across his palate like wildfire across autumn plains. "Pests? These are ambrosial treasures eclipsing all celestial feasts!"
Emboldened by Liu Ren's enthusiastic demolition of carapaces, Lü Wu tentatively selected a caramelised claw. The sauce—an alchemy of Sichuan pepper's numbing kiss and honey's golden embrace—wrung a gasp from lips accustomed to courtly restraint. Even her refined palate knelt conquered before this gustatory sorcery.
"Does my culinary alchemy meet with approval?" Ye Ling preened, flicking briny droplets toward Chef Han Li.
"Every technique is engraved upon this unworthy mind!" The chef prostrated himself amidst the carnage of shells.
As Ye Ling's gaze settled on Lü Wu, the chamber emptied with suspect haste—servants recalled nonexistent errands, and guards developed sudden fascination with courtyard topiary.
"My lord's hands craft divine delicacies," Lü Wu murmured, retreating from the prince's lingering touch.
"But imagine..." Ye Ling's smile turned lupine as he cornered her against the low dining platform, "...if these hands pursued endeavours beyond the culinary."
Her retreat met unyielding hardwood. A misstep sent her tumbling across Ye Ling's lap, her cheek grazing against a predicament more perilous than crab pincers. Carnation hues bloomed across jade features as the prince's arm became an inescapable shackle.
"I require your talents," Ye Ling decreed, crunching a crispy leg with theatrical relish. "Host a symposium showcasing these 'river terrors'—let aristocracy witness their metamorphosis into delicacies."
Lü Wu's whispered assent drowned in the thunder of her pulse. Beneath her, the prince's thigh shifted—a tectonic movement heralding monsoons of desire that reshape landscapes.
"Your ears blush like lotus petals at dawn," Ye Ling observed, tracing the incandescent curve with a brine-stained finger.
"Celestial Highness..." The protest died as he tilted her chin, his gaze inventorying her features like a connoisseur appraising Ming porcelain—the tremulous lips, the collarbone's fragile architecture, the waist slender enough to snap a sage's resolve.
When Ye Ling hoisted her over his shoulder with the casual authority of a warlord claiming spoils, Lü Wu's gasp tangled with involuntary mirth. The privacy screen's embroidered cranes bore witness to muffled percussion—a hairpin's surrender, a sash's sigh, and the creaking protest of a daybed never meant for dual occupation.
Dawn found Lü Wu marshalling servants with martial precision, jade combs struggling to contain storm-tossed tresses. By midday, the manor brimmed with curious nobility—ministers' wives sniffing for scandal, maidens eyeing the prince's dishevelled robes, all disarmed by the forbidden thrill of consuming "divine wrath".
As the final garlic-laced morsel vanished, Ye Ling surveyed his conquest: satiated aristocrats licking fingers with unseemly relish, marriage negotiations kindled over shared claw crackers, and Lü Wu's sidelong glare promising nocturnal retribution. The revolution advanced—one decadent bite at a time.
Crustacean Court and Silken Thorns
The chrysanthemum-adorned banquet hall erupted in gasps as Fu Xianxian recoiled from the lacquered platters. "Is this the hospitality befitting a princely house?" Her shrill voice sliced through murmurs, jade ornaments quivering with outrage. The betrothed of Prince Xu seized her moment—Ling Ye's prior humiliations demanded recompense.
Consort Lü Wu's composure remained unbroken as iridescent crab shells glimmered beneath autumnal light. "His Highness's new culinary endeavour west of the capital seeks refined palates for appraisal," she demurred, jade bangles chiming like temple bells. Across vermilion tables, Madame Fang's delighted exclamation shattered tensions—"Sublime! The chilli oil clings to the roe like molten garnets!"
Soon, the feast descended into gastronomic revelry. Mandarins' consorts abandoned decorum, fingertips glistening with *mala* crustacean broth. Lü Wu's laughter pirouetted above the carnage: "Cousin Fu's alabaster complexion might suffer from such…rustic indulgences."
Fu's lip curled even as her chopsticks pillaged wine-marinated crab. "Peasant theatrics for vulgar appetites," she sneered, though three ravaged carapaces betrayed her.
Retribution arrived with parting gifts—each lacquered box cradling not mere leftovers, but gilded invitations to Ling's "Moonlit Pavilion". By night's fall, the crab delirium had seized half the capital's kitchens. Eunuchs sprinted between estates bearing urgent demands, only to confront vermilion gates sealed—"Revealed in three dawns!" the chef's scroll proclaimed, fanning noble anticipation to frenzy.
Within the Forbidden City's shadowed corridors, Ling Ye knelt before the Dragon Throne, a cinnabar box exuding briny steam. "Your Celestial Majesty's humble servant brings sustenance for imperial contemplation."
Emperor Shang's jade sceptre cracked thunder. "While spectres haunt our borders, you peddle crustaceans?"
"The royal tasters discerned no venom," Ling murmured, lashes veiling gleaming eyes. "Merely…potentialities."
Behind crimson pillars, the imperial physician's trembling digit grazed orange roe—a rebellion cloaked as supper.
Imperial Palates and Crustacean Gambits
"Such theatrics over mere sustenance?" Emperor Shang intoned, jade sceptre drumming an impatient rhythm as briny fragrances coiled through the throne room like serpentine temptations.
Ling Ye maintained hierophantic poise. "A celestial ambrosia transcending mortal realms, Your August Majesty." The lacquered casket exhaled vapours whispering of riverbed conquests—armoured leviathans transmuted to vermilion-gilded morsels.
When the ashen-faced eunuch's terror dissolved into rapturous mastication, the Son of Heaven's imperial resolve fractured. His inaugural bite of chilli-glazed crab claw unleashed astral pyrotechnics—Sichuan peppercorn infernos duelling roe unguents across the royal palate.
"Nectar of Xiwangmu's orchards!" The proclamation reverberated through the cinnabar pillars. "River demons alchemised into divine comestibles!"
Seizing the celestial moment, Ling Ye prostrated with calibrated humility. "This unworthy worm entreats Your Majesty's dragon-brush calligraphy to sanctify our humble 'Gilded Crustacean Pagoda'."
Dawn's first rays gilded imperial scribes transcribing the monarch's wine-fuelled brushstrokes—three characters shimmering with chilli oil residue. Yet when vermilion doors parted three lunar cycles later, the capital's denizens recoiled.
"Banqueting on flood demons? Heresy!"
"These beasts sheared Master Liu's arm during autumn deluges!"
From latticework shadows, Ling Ye observed the murmuring throng, his half-brother Ye Changfeng's provocateurs weaving through the crowd like venomous adders. "Dear cousin," came the poisoned honeyed tones, "not even imperial decree can transmute serpents into suppers."
Within the pagoda's bronze cauldrons, aromatic broths bubbled into emptiness, their steam curling around vacant lacquer tables. River guardians turned gastronomic marvels cool untouched, while in the Forbidden City's innermost sanctum, Emperor Shang's ivory chopsticks clattered against a vacant platter, his fifth royal courier already spurring a lathered stallion toward the marketplace with urgent decree.
Carapace Conquests and Phoenix Plumes
"Hasty verdicts betray limited vision," Ling Ye riposted with vulpine serenity, surveying the churning marketplace.
Ye Changfeng's jade fan cracked like winter ice. "Must you court annihilation? These river fiends blight innards and honour!" His sibilant whisper carried venomous silkiness. "Yield now—forfeit trifling titles ere you lose funeral incense-bearers."
A sonorous boom shattered the tirade: "Our ministerial feast awaits!" The provincial governor's arrival heralded crimson-robed hierarchs ascending to curtained alcoves. Within the Golden Crustacean's lattice shadows, ministers' sleeves billowed in chilli-oil baptism while censors s*ck*d marrow from dismembered claws with sacrilegious fervour.
"Witchcraft..." Ye Changfeng's Adam's apple bobbed impotently as plebeians pressed against colonnades, nostrils flaring at briny zephyrs.
"While maggot-ridden militias starve, princes banquet on armoured hellspawn!" A fishwife's curse transmuted into silver ingots clattering on counters. "Double portions—honeyed garlic and the Son of Heaven's private blend!"
Ling Ye reclined against vermilion pillars, savouring his brother's ashen pallor. "Imperial palates sanctify rustic fare, dear sibling. Shall provincial prudes taste forbidden nectar?" The barb struck deeper than a scorpion's sting.
Ye Changfeng's retreat unfolded as orchestrated disgrace. Beyond crimson lanterns, gasps rippled through the hoi polloi—above the threshold shimmered the Emperor's gilt calligraphy, lacquered strokes radiating celestial mandate.
"The Dragon Throne itself sanctifies this revelry!" Elder Prince Ji's tremulous veneration pierced the cacophony.
In kitchen infernos, chefs anointed fresh river guardians in sacred oils. Ling Ye's murmur entwined with smoke tendrils: "Dine heartily, my chitinous legion—your carapaces shall fracture dynasties."
Final tableau: stewards bearing vermilion caskets toward the Forbidden City—twice-daily oblations sustaining imperial craving through chilli-perfumed tribute.
To be continuous…