Chapter 6: The Alchemist's Machinations and the Princelings' Dance
Were this truth, had he then beheld the bride-elect of Ye Changfeng himself? Perilous! Audacious! Exquisitely provocative!
"Near certainty," Grand Tutor Lu intoned, tracing lineages on silk parchment. "Among the Five August Houses, the Fu stands second only to the Chen. Yet the imperial Chen line lacks daughters ripe for Xiang's plucking." His scholar's nail tapped vermilion ink. "Though Your Grace claimed Fu Yuanyuan, barring Xiang from wedding another Fu maiden proves improbable."
He mistook the prince's glittering gaze for political calculation.
"Oh?" Ye Ling's smile acquired a serrated edge. "How delectably ironic."
Visions of Fu Xianxian's unravelling danced behind his eyelids. Would Ye Changfeng's bridal chamber composure survive knowing his consort's secrets lay bare to his rival? The notion kindled dark amusement.
"Ironic?" Lu's brush hovered mid-stroke.
"Mere metaphysical ponderings." Ye Ling's dismissal fluttered like a caged phoenix. These venomous fantasies were not for mortal consumption.
"To Tianqu's crucible," he redirected. "I mean to harness its cursed salt veins."
"Those blighted deposits?" Lu's jade teacup clattered. "Their essence brings death, not sustenance!"
"Let alchemy's flame purify poison." Ye Ling unfurled diagrams resembling da Vinci's fever dreams. "Fabricate these vessels ere we depart."
The sage stroked his wispy beard, perplexed by spiralled copper and labyrinthine pipes. "These… alchemical stills?"
"Precisely." Ye Ling signalled Lü Wu, who produced gold ingots glowing like dragon's tears.
"Such expenditure exceeds—"
"Forge the devices *and* secure mineral specimens," Ye Ling overrode. "Establish our Tianqu redoubt with discretion."
Lu kowtowed, comprehending the unspoken mandate: this was no mere provincial task but the opening move in celestial chess.
Two dawns later, Ye Ling selected two scions from the Imperial Archives—Ming Cheng and Xie Chuan. Their pedigrees, vetted by the Dragon Throne itself, gleamed untainted by factional tarnish.
Departure dawned with poetic contrast: Ye Changfeng's grain-laden caravan snaking across plains like an imperial dragon, while Ye Ling's modest retinue resembled wandering poets—armed with scrolls, not swords.
"Does Sixth Brother court ascetic enlightenment?" Ye Changfeng mocked, eyeing the twenty guards and provisionless carts. His maternal clan's granaries overflowed—enough rice to smother rebellion beneath charitable largesse.
"Wisdom travels light," Ye Ling countered.
"Should Tianqu's tempest overwhelm your… *philosophical* approach," Ye Changfeng's concern dripped serpent's honey, "this unworthy brother stands ready to assist."
"Since Elder Brother insists—" Ye Ling's grin turned vulpine. "My coffers bleed silver."
The demand hung between them like unsheathed dao blades—a challenge veiled in courtly etiquette. Beyond the gates, crows cawed omens of coming storms.
The Serpent's Tithe and the Midas Mirage
When presented with feigned munificence, Ye Ling embraced it as a ravenous serpent—what fool spurned silver to preserve hollow honour? His creed: exsanguinate adversaries, for humiliation's nectar was the sweetest venom.
"Ha! Sixth Brother's humour sparkles with courtly wit." Ye Changfeng's laughter strained against volcanic fury. Enriching a rival? Only imbeciles nourished asps at their bosom.
"Three hundred thousand taels—this unworthy sibling kneels before Elder Brother's magnanimity." Ye Ling advanced, a wolf swathed in lamb's supplication.
"Such quantities demand consultation…" Ye Changfeng's smile petrified into a jade-carved facade. Three hundred thousand? Better cast coins into forge fires!
"Thus my appeal to Your Grace's boundless grace!" Ye Ling's grin sharpened. "Unless I petition the Phoenix Terrace itself—though Your Majesty vowed patronage…"
*When had such oaths been sworn?* Ye Changfeng's molars ground silently. Yet refusal would fracture his beatific masquerade before the watchful mandarinate.
"Eminence", an advisor murmured, "indulge this mummery. In Jizhou's domains, we shall reclaim centupled through granary sovereignties."
Ye Changfeng's wrath crystallized into arctic stratagem. Let the fool clasp gilded vipers—soon they'd metastasise through his ambitions.
"Fetch the silver scrip," he commanded through clenched jaws.
Ye Ling received the sheaf with ritual solemnity. "This fraternal servant shall wield Your Eminence's largesse to salve Tianqu's afflictions!"
*Your argument is fuelling the dagger at your jugular.* The subtext perfumed the air, cloying as oleander blossoms.
As Ye Changfeng's retinue retreated, his valedictory glare promised vengeance keener than lingchi blades. Ye Ling merely arched a brow, flicking the notes to Lü Wu.
"Transmute these ere Jizhou's gates. Let fools' Midas touch become our Excalibur."
The handmaiden cradled the fortune like hydra hatchlings. "As the stars decree."
Arriving in Tianqu beneath unmarked banners, they discovered Grand Tutor Lu awaiting in a cypher's abode.
"Your Celestial's ordained mechanisms." Lu proffered an iron coffer with tremulous reverence—within coiled argent serpents and alabaster phoenixes, an alchemist's delirium made flesh.
"Opportune as monsoon's first breath," Ye Ling intoned, fingertips caressing labyrinthine piping. Beyond courtyard walls, unseen tempests gathered like armies of the apocalypse.
The Alchemist's Forge and the Monarch's Ambrosia
Ye Ling raised the vermilion-lacquered lid, unveiling jagged stones veined with spectral translucence—their fractured surfaces marbled with obsidian impurities like frozen lightning.
"Your Eminence, what arcana is this?" Liu Ren's whisper trembled as Ye Ling pulverised the stones with a mortar's rhythmic cadence, crystalline shards singing like shattered frost.
"Tianqu's damned treasure—saltstone." Ye Ling stirred the turbid brine, his gaze sharper than a jade-carved blade. The minister's ignorance amused him; did these earthbound minds truly miss poison's latent promise?
"Death-cursed ore!" Lü Wu recoiled, her alabaster complexion blanching. "These emerald-veined crystals slaughtered entire hamlets—"
"—merely betrayed by crude refinement," Ye Ling interjected, observing swirling patinas in the solution. Ancestral methods had doomed past endeavours, condemning peasants to imbibe leaden death with their sustenance.
Liu Ren's bewilderment deepened. "Metallic infusion? Your Celestial risks—"
"Pulverize. Liquefy. Purify." Ye Ling pressed the agate stirrer into his vassal's palm. "Fourfold alchemy: dissolution's baptism, filtration's penance, evaporation's ascension, crystallization's apotheosis. Enact them."
As dusk draped its cloak, the courtyard morphed into a mystic atelier. Bronze alembics serpentined above roaring kilns, their coiled forms mirroring celestial dragons. Lü Wu patrolled shadowed perimeters while sulphurous vapours coiled skyward like rebellious spirits.
"Xiang stockpiles wheat like a miser," Liu Ren grumbled, churning the seething cauldron, "while we chase alchemical phantoms?"
Ye Ling's laughter rang crystalline. "Let him clutch chaff. We transmute empires."
Through Nocturne's watch, the compound thrummed with cryptic industry. Guards turned curious villagers away as retorts hissed alchemical secrets. At dawn's first blush, a celadon urn gleamed with hoarfrost purity—salt crystals shimmering like celestial snowdrift.
"Witness", Ye Ling trailed fingers through the crystalline trove, "necessity's transcendent craft."
Liu Ren gaped at the purified venom. "But the verdant blight—"
"—flows here." Ye Ling gestured to an onyx vessel where metallic poisons coalesced into malachite sludge—a toxic elixir destined for rivals' golden chalices.
Beyond vermilion walls, cicadas shrilled omens. The salt urn's glacial radiance eclipsed Ye Changfeng's grain silos, its immaculate whiteness a silent war edict inscribed in alchemy's eternal tongue.
The Sovereign's Nectar and the Transmutation of Damnation
Ye Ling cupped a cascade of crystalline salt—each grain a fragment of winter's purest dawn, shimmering with unblemished luminescence. "Epiphany ascends!"
"Your Celestial, stay your hand!" Liu Ren interposed as Ye Ling brought the alchemical snow toward his lips. "Venom's ghost lingers!"
The minister's visions of gilded twilight crumbled like salt effigies in monsoon rains.
"Can corruption wear such virgin raiment?" Ye Ling rebuked. The lethal metals now lay imprisoned in malachite sediments, their toxic reign severed by alchemical inquisition.
"Let your lowest servant taste first," Lü Wu entreated, her amethyst pins refracting the nascent sun.
"Consort of Phoenix Rank, it's forbidden—"
"Enough pantomime!" Ye Ling cast the salt upon his tongue, preempting protest. A chorus of suspended breaths filled the courtyard.
"Son of Heaven!"
"Prince of Alchemy!"
The assembly became statues as their lord savoured communion with his creation. "Naught but salt-unadulterated and pure."
He extended the violet-glazed urn to Lü Wu. "Appraise its virtue."
The consort received it as a sacred chalice. Her tentative taste kindled revelation. "Your Grace... this transcends mortal savour!"
"Elaborate."
"Brine's soul without Acheron's bite—ambrosia reserved for celestial princes." Her enamelled nail grazed the urn's lip. "Only phoenix-tier kitchens harbour such rarities."
Ye Ling's gaze ignited with the dragon's greed. "Then its price matches imperial jade!"
"Surpasses it," Liu Ren breathed, daring a grain between trembling fingers. Awe transformed his weathered features—this crystalline marvel bore no kinship to the green death. Its perfection rivalled the Vermilion Palace's most jealously guarded reserves.
"Your Majesty has spun damnation to divinity!" The minister's voice cracked like parched earth gifted rain. Mockers who'd labelled Ye Ling a wastrel now stood as jesters in history's court.
Lü Wu studied her sovereign through half-lowered lids. The libertine prince who'd once wallowed in wine-soaked oblivion now stood transfigured—a philosopher-king forging new cosmic laws. Beyond vermilion walls, the first supplicants gathered, drawn by whispers of alchemical resurrection amidst sulphurous vapours.
Ye Ling contemplated salt-crusted palms—no longer royal cypher, but Prometheus of this gilded age. Let Xiang amass earthly chaff; he traded in ambrosial currency signed by gods.
The Serpent's Defiance and the Alchemist's Gambit
Ye Ling's meteoric rise from prison-bound pariah to sovereign alchemist left even Lü Wu questioning the fabric of reality. Had this erstwhile wastrel cloaked brilliance beneath a mantle of calculated mediocrity?
"What value might this vessel command?" Ye Ling enquired, his fingertips tracing the sinuous curve of Lü Wu's waist through diaphanous silk.
"Ten golden ingots per *sheng* for the celestial salt gracing imperial tables," she murmured, her breath catching as his touch ventured beyond propriety. "This urn's measure surpasses a hundred—a treasure beyond mortal markets."
The bitter dregs peddled to commoners paled against the palace's ambrosial crystals—a luxury even crowned heads rationed. Yet here lay a king's ransom distilled from Tianqu's accursed veins.
"A century in gold..." Ye Ling's smile acquired a blade's edge. His alchemy had birthed not mere seasoning but the currency of thrones.
Before Tianqu's yamen gates, royal banners hung limp in the mocking stillness. No magistrates knelt in obeisance, no guards stood at attention—only dust phantoms waltzed across desolate steps.
"Did our heralds' missives vanish into the void?" Ye Ling purred from his palanquin, lips grazing Lü Wu's pearl-adorned earlobe.
"Proclamation was made at dawn's first light," Liu Ren snarled, storming toward the sealed portal. "Vermin dare scorn the dragon's scion?"
"This realm beats to the Chen clan's drum," Lü Wu whispered, arching like a sapling in Ye Ling's possessive embrace. "From lowly scribes to provincial overlords—all dance to their puppet strings."
"My nightingale gathers secrets amidst thorns," Ye Ling chuckled, fingers charting the cartography of her spine. Though her form lacked Fu Xianxian's cultivated opulence, it promised landscapes more intriguing to conquer.
"Your Celestial—the people's eyes—"
"Let them behold their prince's vitality."
Their dalliance stretched until Magistrate Chen Wang slouched into view, flanked by yawning sycophants.
"Tianqu's humble servant Chen Wang greets the Alchemist Prince." The bow barely creased his officious robes before he straightened.
Liu Ren's blade hissed from its lacquered scabbard. "Jackal! Who grants you leave?"
"My people perish while princes toy with alchemical whims!" Chen Wang spread empty palms, his smile a viper's coiled threat. "If spilling this unworthy blood appeases Heaven's wrath, let steel sate its thirst."
The gauntlet thrown echoed with ancestral arrogance, the Chen clan's shadow stretching from these cracked earth fields to the Vermilion Throne itself.
Ye Ling emerged from the palanquin, salt crystals glittering in his palm like captured constellations. "Fetch your foulest brine, magistrate. Let us... *renew* your comprehension."
The match commenced—not with clashing steel, but through alchemy's silent coup. Beyond the gates, the first refugees gathered, drawn by whispers of miracles wrought in smoke and salt.
The Serpent's Venom and the Monarch's Reckoning
"Immediate demands for provisions?" Ye Ling's laughter carried frost's crystalline bite as he descended the palanquin, Lü Wu's willowy form anchored against him. "Such *noble* solicitude masks viper's guile."
Chen Wang's gaze slithered across Lü Wu's silhouette—a famished hyena appraising a moonlit gazelle. *This princeling curates exquisite ornaments*, he mused, envisioning the consort's jade-smooth skin yielding to his claws.
Crack!
Liu Ren's gauntleted hand shattered the magistrate's reverie, the impact resonating like shattered celadon. "Dare sully royalty's aura with your pestilence?"
"Misapprehension!" Chen Wang cradled his blooming cheek, venom swathed in saccharine tones. "This lowly servant merely contemplated lodgings worthy of Your Eminence's... *entourage."
Ye Ling's gaze sharpened to obsidian precision. "Itemise Tianqu's starving multitudes—their count, whereabouts, and sustenance's expiration."
"Our granaries exhaled their final breath three dawns past," Chen Wang simpered, theatrical despair oozing like tainted honey. "Recent broth flowed from magnates' *charity*—redeemable upon Your Celestial's advent."
"Thus, I inherit obligations ere dispensing mercy?" Ye Ling's smile glacialized the courtyard.
"Who presumes to tax Heaven's scion?" The magistrate spread empty palms. "Let merchants gnaw this unworthy carcass!"
Liu Ren's blade hissed from its pearl-inlaid scabbard, moonlight rippling along Damascus steel. "Such carrion merits vultures."
Undaunted, Chen Wang prostrated—a coiled asp in counterfeit submission. "Without silver or grain, these wretches perish by cockcrow. Slay me, and let imperial courts adjudicate your failure."
Ye Ling advanced, salt crystals cascading through his fingers like captured stardust. "You conflate destitution with impotence, magistrate. Tianqu's redemption flows not from granaries..."
A finger-snap summoned guards bearing iron-strapped coffers. Within shimmered alchemical salt—dunes of adamantine purity, eclipsing imperial reserves.
"...but from alchemy's rebirth." Ye Ling's voice resonated with a celestial timbre. "Let usurers clamour for repayment. Their coffers shall haemorrhage gold to those resurrecting this blighted earth."
Chen Wang's smirk petrified as refugees materialized from shadows, drawn by the salt's numinous glow. The magistrate's meticulously woven snare unravelled—not by blade's edge, but through alchemy's inexorable revelation.
Lü Wu observed, transfixed, as Ye Ling addressed the gathering throng. The profligate prince had morphed into a sovereign-alchemist, transmuting venom to ambrosia beneath Tianqu's ashen skies.
The Arrogant Magistrate's Demise
"Such impertinence! Who dares address His Royal Highness in this manner?" Liu Ren thundered, his glacial gaze summoning two Longwu Guards. The armoured sentinels swiftly immobilised Magistrate Zhao Wang in a vice-like grip.
Local bailiffs stirred to intervene, yet Liu Ren's stentorian rebuke petrified them mid-step. "Prince Qian bears the Emperor's sacred mandate! Would you vermin dare defy celestial authority?"
The rasp of unsheathed steel pierced the noon air as blades caught the sun's merciless glare. Trembling yamen functionaries retreated like shadows along the walls, abandoning their disgraced superior to the imperial retinue.
The county clerk and scribes prostrated themselves behind Zhao Wang, their defiance extinguished like embers beneath winter frost.
"By imperial appointment", Prince Ye Ling declared, his voice honed to the edge of his drawn sword, "a magistrate's duty lies in shepherding the Emperor's flock through calamity. Yet you dare bleat of empty coffers and barren granaries while your people perish?"
The prince angled his blade before Zhao Wang's pallid countenance, polished steel reflecting the magistrate's mottled visage. "Your insolence betrays a lifetime of tyranny. Shall such corruption defile the Emperor's grace? Shall I face our sovereign with this shame? Shall Tianqu's ghosts haunt my conscience?"
A silver crescent arced downward, severing Zhao Wang's official headpiece in one fluid stroke.
"Mercy!" The magistrate collapsed, his soiled trousers bearing witness to mortal terror. For one suspended heartbeat, he had glimpsed the executioner's shadow.
"Divest him of his vestments!" Ye Ling commanded. "Adorn Xie Chuan in the raiment of office! Henceforth, let Tianqu know its true magistrate!"
As guards stripped Zhao Wang bare, mocking gasps rippled through the crowd – beneath his ceremonial robes glimmered a courtesan's cerise chemise, testament to interrupted debauchery.
"You transgress celestial law!" Zhao Wang howled, his naked torso writhing. "I am Duke Xu's sworn man! A seventh-rank official! The Ministry of Appointments shall—"
"By the Emperor's golden edict", Ye Ling's voice cleaved the air like a scourge, "I wield sovereignty over life and death in this blighted realm. Your carcass rots upon the throne of office." The prince's blade pointed like an accusatory finger. "Cast this carrion to the oubliette!"
The former magistrate's fading wails echoed through stone corridors, swallowed at last by ironbound darkness.
Salt and Sovereignty
Ye Ling harboured no illusions—magisterial appointments demanded imperial sanction. Yet this provisional measure served as a strategic necessity. Zhao Wang's allegiance to Ye Changfeng threatened catastrophe: exposure of the salt enterprise during relief efforts' infancy would unravel all. Conversely, triumphant execution would transform this magisterial substitution into a mere bureaucratic afterthought, effortlessly ratified by Emperor Shang's retrospective decree.
"Let Tianqu bear witness," Ye Ling proclaimed before the assembled yamen hierarchy, "Xie Chuan now governs as provisional magistrate. Achieve flawless implementation, and I shall crown your efforts with a permanent appointment." His obsidian gaze impaled dissenters. "Resistance constitutes lèse-majesté against the Dragon Throne."
At Liu Ren's nod, the severed black silk guan was reverently presented. Ye Ling ensconced it upon Xie Chuan's brow—a coronation through decapitation's symbolism. Commands flowed like strategic ink:
1. **Harvest of Desolation**
Ming Cheng partnered with trembling clerks to inventory granary remnants and plague-ridden refugee hordes—each emaciated frame potential kindling for epidemic conflagration.
2. **Convocation of Vultures**
Xie Chuan, newly minted in authority, summoned grain moguls. Their silk-clad paunches preceded them into the magistrate's sanctum, jewelled fingers clutching abacus beads like talismans.
3. **Surgical Eradication**
Liu Ren's purge excised Zhao Wang's adherents—some entombed in dungeons, others under gimlet-eyed surveillance. Even Master Lu received whispered warnings; the city's malignant gaze multiplied through hidden lattices.
As dusk embroidered the yamen's eaves with copper threads, Lü Wu materialized beside Ye Ling's seat of power. "The Chen consortium demands five hundred wen per catty," her murmur carried clove-scented peril, "tenfold lawful famine prices. Lesser merchants ape this predation, trembling before the Chen hydra."
Her intelligence unfolded like a lotus of deceit—petals revealing nested deceptions. Ye Ling's knuckle traced her jawline, equal parts caress and appraisal. "Does my jade phoenix outsoar the vermilion bird's spies?"
Lü Wu lowered her lashes in perfected modesty, silver filigree hairpins catching lamplight. Her past as a cultivated companion in the Hall of Drifting Delights now served statecraft—every adjusted sleeve and lingering glance harvesting secrets from unwary tongues.
When the merchants kowtowed—foreheads drumming stone in synchronised obeisance—Ye Ling's smile mirrored moonlight on dagger blades. The impending parley concerned not mere grain but dominion over Tianqu's vital essence: salt routes concealed beneath destitute labourers and silver tributaries disguised as imperial benevolence.
Beyond latticed windows, constellations emerged like unrefined salt spilled across celestial silk.
The Masque of Mercenaries
"Arise and partake of our beneficence."
When chrysanthemum tea had steeped its golden silence, Ye Ling permitted anticipation to curdle before addressing the assembly. "Let us dispense with ornamental discourse. This convocation concerns provisioning celestial mercy—what sustenance lies dormant in your granaries?"
Chen San ascended with deliberate ceremony, nephrite rings catching candlelight. "Your Celestial Highness graces humble merchants. Modest reserves endure, yet..." His pause weighted the air like hanging swords. "These cataclysmic days elevate grain beyond mortal commerce."
"Thirty wen per catty in times of fecundity," Ye Ling traced the rim of his moon-pale teacup, feigning provincial innocence. Forty during scarcity. Shall sixty suffice as equitable compassion?"
Zhao Si's mirth erupted like broken glass. "Does the Azure Dragon descend to haggle with market crones? Six hundred wen!" The proclamation struck like a gavel. "Not a single copper less!"
The prince's cup tumbled—porcelain fracturing into a constellation of despair, oolong tears pooling across stone.
Merchants communed through sidelong glances, their triumph silken and smug. Here knelt no celestial prince, but a trembling boy overwhelmed by mercantile reality.
"But... such avarice..." Ye Ling's whisper fluttered like a wounded sparrow. "Shall Tianqu's children sup on groundstone while your coffers swell?"
"Alas, Noble Phoenix!" Zhao San extended palms in counterfeit piety. "Bandits haunt every li of distant grain roads. Our caravans bleed silver for guards, while Prince Xu's investments..." His voice dipped to saccharine conspiracy, "...demand celestial returns."
Ye Ling wilted against his throne, the epitome of princely impotence. "The Vermilion Treasury exhales dust. My relief workers wander... So many gaping mouths..."
Zhao Si's vulpine grin widened. "Six hundred wen constitutes sacred economy—charity priced in golden piety." His compatriots bowed in oiled unison, silk sleeves whispering of prearranged triumph.
Behind quivering lashes, the prince's spirit soared. Let these jackals gorge on imagined conquest—their gluttony would grease the trap's spring.
As merchants retreated through vermilion pillars, their smirks etched verdicts in the air: Here cowered no thunder-wielding dragon but a wine-besotted princeling flinching at commerce's tempest. None perceived the silken cord being threaded through their jade girdles.
The Gilded Snare
"Six hundred wen per catty..." Ye Ling's arithmetic whispered through the hall like wind through dead reeds. "Two million catties transmute to twelve myriad silver taels... One hundred twenty thousand gold dragons..."
Merchants concealed grins behind ivory fans. "Behold the imperial wastrel computing peasant sums!"
"Let the fool enumerate imaginary riches."
"To imagine this quivering whelp rivals Prince Xu!"
Their mirth swelled as the prince scrawled figures across mulberry paper—a pantomime of fiscal anguish. What divine fortune to pluck golden feathers from this princely pheasant! Their coffers would brim with dual harvests: grain extortion and contraband salt fortunes.
"Six million catties required," the prince declared, "manifesting as thirty-six thousand gold dragons."
Zhao San's teacup chimed against jade thumb guards. "Would Your Celestial Highness tender...auric settlement?" His oiled tone barely veiled suspicion. Could this reputed pauper-prince conceal Vermilion Treasury secrets?
"Our celestial allotment lacks such munificence," Ye Ling sighed, posture collapsing like a deflated moneybag.
Relieved titters rustled through silk robes. Naturally.
"Yet since our arrival", the prince continued, motioning to Dragon Guards bearing moonstone urns, "we discerned imperial salt commands outrageous reverence here." He cascaded crystalline grains through pale fingers—winter's first snowfall captured in mineral form. "Ten gold dragons per sheng, so proclaimed? Thus, one does value the celestial hundreds."
The chamber froze mid-breath.
"Phoenix-feather purity!"
"Fit for the Jade Emperor's table!"
"Unblemished as virgin frost!"
Merchants leaned like starving hounds, tongues covertly testing the salt's metallic tang. This was no mere seasoning—it was solidified moonlight, alchemised ambrosia. Twenty dragons? Fifty? The rabble would sell children for a pinch!
Zhao San's carotid pulsed. "Your Augustness proposes...halic barter?"
"A pittance from our cache." Ye Ling flicked her wrist in regal indifference. "Further caskets slumber in capital vaults."
"Six million grain catties demand three thousand six hundred salt dou," Zhao San countered, greed cracking his composure. "Sufficient to brine imperial kitchens through three dynasties!"
The prince shrugged with princely nonchalance. "We shall syphon celestial pantries gradually—none shall mark absent jars amidst ten thousand delicacies." His seal ring blazed as he unrolled vermilion contracts. "Shall we covenant? Our dragon seal consecrates this compact."
Merchants strained silken girdles, suppressing glee. What sublime idiocy! They'd reap golden harvests from grain and salt alike while this fool prince smuggled himself into the headsman's embrace.
As molten seal wax embraced parchment, none noted Ye Ling's shadowed smile—the silent snick of a snare closing about plump thrushes.
The Salt Gambit
By what celestial oversight did such a cretin attain princely rank? Was the grave dust of his departed mother truly so potent?
The grain merchants concealed sneers behind silk sleeves, shoulders trembling with suppressed mirth at Ye Ling's pronouncements.
"Does Your Highness solemnly pledge to affix Prince Qian's golden seal upon our covenant?" Zhao San interposed, slicing through the levity with mercantile precision.
A royal-sealed contract transcended mere parchment—it embodied the Mandate's unassailable honor. Should the princeling default, not only would the treasury bleed silver in recompense, but the throne itself might claim his worthless head. Profit and annihilation, entwined as lovers.
"By my ancestral tablets!" Ye Ling boomed with blustering bravado, "The imperial salt vaults overflow like winter geese! Six million *catties* of grain shall be repaid thrice-fold in argent purity—3,600 *dou* within the moon's cycle!"
*Brainless whelp!* The merchants' eyes glittered like knife-edges, volition passing through shared glances.
"We are but humble subjects trusting in Heaven's justice," Zhao San bowed with serpentine grace. "Let the contract be written."
Six million measures of golden grain for salt that would never materialize—a trifling cost to unseat a prince. The vermin's throne would become his execution block.
"Your commercial acumen does credit to your ancestors," Ye Ling applauded, clapping Zhao San's shoulder like a tavern drunkard. "The Son of Heaven's salt cellars yawn deeper than the Eastern Sea!"
At his summons, Lü Wu emerged—a vision of willow-grace that stilled the chamber. The merchants' breaths hitched as she bore the golden seal, her hips describing arcane geometries beneath diaphanous silk. *To parade such a concubine while famine stalks the land—this profligate princeling* deserves *ruin.
"May Your Highness' virtue shine as the noonday sun," Zhao San simpered, brushing dancing across rice paper with viperous speed.
When Wax accepted the seal's cruciform imprint, the merchants departed with predatory haste. Let Prince Xu know of this imbecile's "salt stores"—let the Forbidden City's spies scent treason in the air. Within thirty dawns, the court's wrath would descend like autumn frost.
—
"Guard these papers as you would your chastity, temptress," Ye Ling purred, enfolding Lü Wu in a cloud of sandalwood scent. His fingers traced the cartography of her spine, reveling in the silk of her form. When had this sapling blossomed into such lethal beauty?
"My lord—the sun still reigns!" she demurred, retreating with practiced coquetry.
"Then let dusk be our conspirator," he murmured, teeth grazing an earlobe.
*Governing leaves scant time for life's nectar—a criminal oversight.
With grain carts rumbling into county granaries, Ye Ling directed Magistrate Xie to erect gruel kitchens along plague roads. Let the starving masses become his unwitting army.
As vermilion proclamations bloomed on city gates, their message thrummed through hovel and field: *Labor in service to the crown shall guarantee sustenance.*
The Salted Ruse
By the third toll of the noon bell, the gruel station seethed with a wretched tapestry of humanity—tattered robes fluttering like moth-eaten banners, matted hair framing faces hollowed by despair. The Dragon Guard moved through the throng with leopardine precision, their armoured presence quelling nascent turbulence before it could blossom into revolt.
"Labour faithfully beneath the Vermilion Seal," Ye Ling proclaimed from his dais of splintered planks, "and no child of this land shall know hunger's bite." His voice carried the timbre of forged steel, cleaving through the crowd's restless susurrus.
Cauldrons exhaled ghostly vapours, their milky contents whispering promises to shrunken bellies. Yet as wooden ladles dipped toward cracked clay bowls, serpents hissed through the ranks:
"Since when do celestial edicts demand sweat as tribute?"
"While neighbouring prefectures rain golden grain, must we lick gruel from this pretender's palm?"
"Viper in brocade! He gorges on silver meant for our shrivelled guts!"
Like fire racing through dry reeds, malice spread. A wraith-like crone clawed at the heavens: "Better to perish beneath Heaven's gaze than bend like oxen!" The mob's roar crescendoed—"No chains! No chains!"—as shadowed provocateurs poured venom into open wounds.
Captain Liu Ren's hand tightened on his sword hilt, hawk-eyed, hunting phantom agitators. But the poisoners danced like will-o'-wisps—a single cry here, a vanished silhouette there—leaving only the intoxicating heresy: *why bow to the plough when empty hands might feast?
"Let their throats be greased before their tongues are loosened," Ye Ling murmured, the ghost of a smile playing about his lips.
Bowls clinked like funeral bells as guards served porridge seasoned with betrayal—generous handfuls of salt dissolving in the steaming gruel. The starving masses gulped the briny draught, their parched throats too desperate to question this mockery of mercy.
At Ye Ling's imperceptible nod, the trap sprang.
Dragon Guards descended like raptors, talons closing on "refugees" whose grime-caked collars hid lily-white necks. Beneath artful smears of charcoal, plump jowls quivered—well-fed infiltrators marring the famine's grim canvas.
"Blood-drinking tyrants!" howled a captured provocateur, thrashing against iron grips. But the multitude remained transfixed, scrabbling for second helpings like rats in a granary.
A porcine impostor grovelled before the princeling's boots, Liu Ren's heel grinding his spine into the dust-choked earth.
"Name your master," Ye Ling commanded, frost crystallizing each syllable.
The spy's lips peeled back in a rictus grin: "May your ancestors spit upon your grave, salt-poisoner."
Ye Ling's smile bloomed full. The brine had flushed rats from their holes—soon, the nest itself would burn.
Of Flesh and Falsehood
"By what perversion of justice are we branded imposters?" The bloated infiltrator bellowed, quivering jowls dislodging artful smears of ash. "'Tis you who gorges on imperial alms while shackling starving men to labour!"
Ye Ling's mirth crystallized like hoarfrost. "True children of famine would gnaw tree bark without complaint. Why recoil from salted charity?"
The man's porcine eyes darted between the blade and the crowd. "I... I'll not be poisoned by princely tricks!"
"Tricks?" The prince's sword whispered from its scabbard, cold steel caressing the spy's grime-caked collar. "Observe how authentic suffering wears its skin."
With viper-strike swiftness, the blade rent ragged cloth. Rolls of pampered flesh cascaded outward—a grotesque cataract of privilege.
The captive voided his bladder in terror. This was no feckless royal but Death's scribe tallying mortal debts.
Clangour!
Dragon Guards struck bronze gongs until the very air trembled. "Gaze upon these carrion crows preening as sparrows!" Ye Ling thundered.
Blades danced. Costumes fell. Moon-pale bellies glistened—living parchment inscribed with treason.
The multitude's breath hitched as revelation dawned:
"Jade merchants masquerading as mud!"
"Not even magistrates' concubines boast such unweathered hands!"
"Blood-sucking ticks in paupers' rags!"
Ye Ling raised arms like a priest summoning celestial witness. Behind closed lids, he saw ancestral frescoes shift—gaunt mothers proffering skeletal infants to uncaring heavens. "The old compact breeds vultures. Arrive at cockcrow; your children eat. Linger past noon; your elders perish. But labour..."
He let the wind carry starving voices:
"Five dawns since the last broth..."
"Swaddled my babe in hunger's shroud..."
"Traded three days' breath for one handful of millet..."
The prince's voice sliced through lamentations: "Inscribe your names in vermilion ledgers. Two catties daily, per arm that toils. Nourish crones and sucklings alike without ration's cruel arithmetic."
A wraith clutching an infant's shrunken form croaked, "And when the last granary rats are devoured?"
Ye Ling's gaze pierced the horizon where locust swarms blotted the sun—a living omen. "Then we raised dykes against the Yellow Dragon's wrath. Forge ploughs to cleave drought-baked earth. Carve futures where fullness springs not from imperial pity—"
His fist struck a grain cart, thunderous as war drums.
"—but from the sacred alchemy of sweat and soil!"
Alchemy of Dust and Dominion
"Arid winds shall falter. Heaven's tears shall drench cracked earth once more," Ye Ling intoned, his voice a bronze bell tolling through the desiccated square. "When green shoots pierce blighted soil, you shall straddle two harvests—your ancestral fields *and* these salt-forged coffers. Hoard grain like a dragon's treasure. Let sweat, not celestial whim, sculpt your posterity!"
A ripple passed through the multitude—sun-cured hands clutching empty bowls now trembling not with hunger, but the terrible fragility of hope.
"Gaze upon these carrion-fed jackals," the prince continued, sweeping his arm toward the exposed infiltrators. Their oiled flesh glistened like butchered pork beneath the pitiless sun. "They would chain you to despair's wheel! But we—" His blade flashed, severing a captive's hemp bonds. "—carve fate with salt-crusted palms!"
A skeletal farmer emerged, his voice cracked as drought soil: "Two catties... each dawn... sworn by Heaven's seal?"
Ye Ling pressed his signet ring into the grain cart's flank, the vermilion wax imprint blooming like a blood poppy. "By the Dragon Throne's eternal mandate: Toil's due shall fill your larders!"
Liu Ren's barked laughter scattered crows from nearby eaves. "Question celestial vows? Heretics!"
The dam ruptured. A roar surged—"Plow! Hammer! For granaries! For bloodline!" —as living spectres scrambled to etch names on bamboo slats, their calloused fingers staining the registers with dust and desperate faith.
---
At the saltworks, Master Lu's mechanical symphony unfolded—a crescendo of grinding millstones and hissing brine. His factory sprawled like some alchemical beast: quartz veins mined by pickaxe choirs, evaporation ponds mirroring cloudless skies, and brick furnaces vomiting crystalline offerings. Refugees became anonymous acolytes in this temple of industry, each ignorant of the grand rite they performed.
"Three hundred thousand catties refined," Lu murmured, adjusting his wire-framed spectacles. "Enough to salt the wounds of ten rebellions."
Ye Ling's smile held the edge of a whetstone. Let carrion birds circle their imagined spoils. This month's reprieve had birthed more than salt—it forged loyalty in kiln-fired hearts, roads where only goat paths dared climb, and a people resurrected from famine's ash.
---
In the magistrate's inner sanctum, Lü Wu's gasp fluttered like silk against skin. "Mercy, my tiger..." Her plea dissolved into breathless laughter as jade hairpins clattered to rosewood floors.
Beyond scarlet-lacquered doors, guards studied swirling dust devils with monastic focus. Let princes wage wars of flesh and policy—some battles raged most fiercely in scented chambers.
---
At the appointed hour, three thousand catties glittered like frost-kissed diamonds. Ye Ling's brush danced across the imperial scroll: *The Son returns bearing salt and salvation—twin currencies of thrones.
---
In the gilded cage of the capital, Prince Xu's chalice exploded against a mural of conquering ancestors. "Three hundred thousand?! From beggars and sand?!"
His spy prostrated himself, forehead kissing cold jade. "Master Lu's... machines... they say..."
"Machines?" Xu's sword hissed from its scabbard, its tip carving a furrow through the spy's scalp. "That cretin licks imperial vaults clean! I'll have his hands for thieving!" Behind him, ledgers sprawled like massacre victims—columns of silver haemorrhaged to feed Shanyang's endless hunger, all to outshine a "wastrel" who conjured salt from air.
Chen Huai materialised from shadowed alcoves, his voice a viper's rustle. "Your brother seasons more than meat with those crystals. He preserves... ambitions."
Xu's laughter now rang with the clarity of shattered glass. Let the fool stockpile his white gold. Salt preserved corpses, too—and imperial heirs made splendid cadavers.
To be continuous…