From CEO to Concubine-Chapter 134: Ruin
Tw: Mentions of non-con
It was not difficult to love a man like General Pan.
He had so much propensity for goodness, for greatness, that even though Shen Xi did not have the chance to see him as regularly as he might have had as a free man, he cherished every moment of General Pan’s company. These were far and few in-between; despite returning to the capital after the battle, it was unseemly for the crown prince’s study companion, now a powerful general with political clout and an army to command behind him, to continue spending all his time after morning court in the eastern palace. This would only arouse the suspicion of the emperor and cause unnecessary trouble for them all.
Or so Liu Zhuo had said and Shen Xi was gullible enough then to listen to him. As such, he would not know until much later about all the instances in which General Pan had asked after him, had tried to no avail to get the crown prince to bring him along on their meetings outside of the palace.
But because it was not difficult to love a man like General Pan, Shen Xi’s heart, which had never been immovable for Big Brother in the first place, soon fluttered weakly like the wings of a baby bird, yearning with an inexplicable longing for the skies even though it still couldn’t fathom out why or how. Bumping into General Pan coincidentally when cutting through the imperial gardens or meeting his gaze as he exited the crown prince’s study, each moment, lasting no longer than the fragment of time it took for an incense stick to burn completely, lingered on like tendrils of smoke in Shen Xi’s dreams at night.
Months of quiet solace spent delighting in each other’s unspoken feelings turned into an undeniable gentle affection, just as Big Brother Pan had morphed into Pan Yuze. Their time spent together was tinged with the faint wistfulness of knowing just how transient their happiness was, how unattainable a lifetime together would be. At this point, there was no bachelor in the capital—perhaps even the kingdom—more sought after than Pan Yuze. His father and mother might no longer be around but there were still elders in the Pan Family, whose opinions on his marriage would take precedence over his own choices.
And Shen Xi was nothing more than a powerless eunuch, only surviving in the harsh world of the inner palace by the grace of the crown prince’s protection.
They weren’t meant to be. No matter how many kisses they stole behind the stone sculptures by the man-made lakes or how many sweet nothings they whispered to each other in the fleeting moments they crossed paths, it was never going to last.
Knowing this didn’t make the inevitable any easier to bear. And it should never have happened the way it did, with betrayal, with lies.
It began with Emperor Wenchun’s ascension to the throne. With the shift into Qianqing Palace also came a shift in the ranks of the eunuchs that tended to Liu Zhuo when he had been crown prince. Shen Xi had initially hoped that he would form Liu Zhuo’s main entourage; certainly, as Liu Zhuo’s personal eunuch, one that he doted upon almost unconditionally, no one would have said that he was overreaching.
But Liu Zhuo left him in Qianqing Palace. And just like that, his chances of his general were greatly diminished.
"Don’t be sad, my Ah Xi," Pan Yuze comforted when he made his distress known. "His Majesty does not wish to involve you in more politics than necessary, we all wish an easy, comfortable life for you."
If an easy comfortable life means a life without you, Shen Xi wanted to say, then I choose to forego it. But it was not his place to question the kindness shown to him; living under the new emperor’s shelter meant that he had long ago lost the right to make these decisions for himself.
"But who knows when we’ll next meet again?" Shen Xi mumbled, tucking his face into Pan Yuze’s chest and dreading the day when they would be parted indefinitely, where he would be robbed of the safe embrace he currently resided in. It would be just like those years he’d spent as a new servant in the inner palace, praying for his Big Brother Pan’s safe return from the frontier. But at least he could comfort himself with the thought that as long as they were both in the capital, there would always be chances for them to meet. General Pan was an estimable member of His Majesty’s court and such a close confidante that surely he would be able to frequent the inner palace.
Shen Xi did get to see him on occasion.
But so did someone else.
The day that Princess Royal (1) Yuanzhu first returned to the capital, she laid eyes upon the dashing General Pan and decided that she would marry no other but him. Much in the cavalier manner of the powerful, she made up her mind on the spot. She had previously been accompanying her mother in a mountainous retreat to copy the scriptures as the empress dowager’s health had taken a turn for the ill upon the passing of her husband. But Princess Royal Yuanzhu was already of marriageable age and it would not be decorous for her to delay any longer.
Thus, she’d been sent back for her brother to pass an edict to the most worthy suitor. She already had it all planned out; her royal brother would narrow down a list of appropriate young gentlemen and she would inform him that General Pan had caught her eye. There was no reason for her brother to deny her this; General Pan was handsome, educated, and brave. He had countless merits from his accomplishments at war and more importantly, politically, the Pan Family had held one half of the tiger seal for too long, their sway over the Northern Army a growing concern on her brother’s mind.
If she married over, the Pan Family’s power would be limited; traditionally, Fumas (2) were banned from participating in court matters as they were regarded as semi-royalty now, much in the fashion of how consorts or concubines were once they married into the imperial family. However, Fumas were men, often from influential families, and to allow them to continue performing their duties raised the danger of furthering any personal interests their clans might have through their newly attained status.
Princess Royal Yuanzhu was smart. She knew just what to say to pull her brother onto her side. It was possible, even, that she had heard the rumours, the ones that Shen Xi hadn’t known about back then and only discovered when it was too late.
Rumours that the emperor and his closest study companion had started having disagreements. About what exactly, no one knew, because these arguments often took place in the privacy of His Majesty’s study, where all the servants would be dismissed, their ears pricked up for any hint of fresh gossip, a gratifying task on the occasions where Emperor Wenchun lost his temper so badly that he broke a vase or two, the noise startling the eavesdroppers out of their skins.
Back then, Shen Xi didn’t realise just what a precarious position his Pan Yuze was in. He was but a merchant’s son, not versed in the tricky ways of the political world in the manner a nobleman’s son or a prince might be. He didn’t recognise what Princess Royal Yuanzhu did at a glance, that General Pan was too useful a subject to keep tethered to the capital when unrest still lingered in the northern borders but too dangerous a wild horse to leave unbridled.
"With a wife and children that would remain in the capital due to their imperial ranks," she said persuasively to her royal brother, "a good man like General Pan would have no choice but to remain subservient to the wishes of his liege, no matter what they were."
Confident, arrogant, selfish Princess Royal Yuanzhu. She’d considered all aspects of her nuptials except for one; the groom’s willingness to be manipulated.
Sequestered in Qianqing Palace and thinking longingly of his lover, Shen Xi didn’t know that any of this was going on. Perhaps Liu Zhuo had warned the other servants to keep him in the dark but he learnt nothing of Liu Zhuo’s attempt to sanction a marriage between his ’most loyal’ of generals and ’favourite’ of sisters or that General Pan had fallen upon his knees before hundreds of officials, trembling with a rage that was barely concealed, declaring that he would take none for his bride other than Eunuch Shen Xi of Qianqing Palace, and begging His Majesty to bestow a marriage upon them instead.
The uproar in morning court that day ever reached Shen Xi’s ears, even as it foreshadowed the tarnishing of his reputation that was to come.
Who was this Shen Xi that ruined the most admirable liege-subject relationship in the realm? The ministers went home that evening and pulled their strings to try and find out more about this elusive character but to no avail.
There was, after all, no ’Shen Xi’ in the inner palace. He resided solely in Pan Yuze’s heart. And even this last little flame of his old self was snuffed out cruelly the night Liu Zhuo summoned him to the side chambers of Qianqing Palace and forced him to watch as Princess Royal Yuanzhu divested herself of her elaborate robes before climbing on top of a drugged, confused Pan Yuze.
"Ah Xi," he heard Pan Yuze mumble and the tears that spilt from his eyes were not just from the pain of Liu Zhuo’s bruising grip on his wrist.
He would not be allowed to return to the eunuch’s quarters again. Just as his lover was tied up and at the mercy of a woman he did not love, he was pinned beneath the relentless weight of a man he’d trusted so blindly he had no one to blame but himself.
"Ah Su," he heard Liu Zhuo murmur repeatedly in his ear over and over again, as though through doing so he could erase the last traces of Shen Xi and stake ownership over what was left behind. "Forget about him, Ah Su, this sovereign will take good care of you—"
Liu Suzhi didn’t deign to reply. He didn’t cry again, he didn’t bother to plead. The hurt inflicted upon his body felt trivial compared to what he knew Pan Yuze was suffering; his pride had been robbed from him the day he’d entered the palace as a eunuch but Pan Yuze was the youngest general in the kingdom, the hero whose name was like a prayer on the lips of the hapless inhabitants of the border towns in the north.
This was not how he should have been treated. Their ending, never destined to be a harmonious one, shouldn’t have been delivered to them like this.
How dare you, he thought. How dare you do this to him.
One day, Your Majesty, I’ll ruin you.
Not that day itself because Liu Suzhi was still weak, still shocked from the backlash of having his world crumble in on itself to do much more than let Liu Zhuo hold him down but in the days that were to come, as the screaming in his head faded out into a startling clarity, he began to plan.
He waited. He endured. He moved into Wushan Palace when directed to, accepted his promotion to Supervisor Liu when prompted to, performed the duties of the Department of Ceremonies by overseeing his lover’s wedding to the princess when required to fulfil his role.
He learnt patience. He learnt apathy. He learnt how to regard Liu Zhuo with a bored disdain even as he spread his legs and let Liu Zhuo fuck him, too lazy to even put up token resistance, not wanting to give Liu Zhuo the satisfaction of a hard conquest. His callousness was so incendiary that Liu Zhuo would retaliate with hatefulness, regaling Liu Suzhi with spiteful accounts of how the Princess Royal Yuanzhu’s belly swelled with fruit after that fateful night, how the war had returned to the north so General Pan had been ordered back to defend the country, never to return to the capital again until further orders.
Liu Zhuo wanted a reaction. But he didn’t realise that to Liu Suzhi, nothing mattered anymore except revenge. Ten years was a long time to lie in wait but it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be, anything else to do but lounge around languidly in the flimsy robes Liu Zhuo had commissioned especially for him, manoeuvring the traps the empress and other jealous concubines set for him while sharpening his teeth and claws until he grew into the predator of those that had once preyed upon him.
And even after he became ’Nine Thousand Years’, powerful enough to destroy his enemies even as he’d rejected Liu Zhuo’s offer to dabble in the politics of the morning court, even after the chaos that his ’seductive wiles’ had caused in the inner palace reached the officials and memorial after memorial denouncing him landed on the emperor’s table, he waited some more, like a tiger in grass, for the opportune moment to pounce.
Eventually, it came and when it did, it took the form of Liu Zhuo’s oldest son.
"Help me," the crown prince said, the blood of his beloved still bright red on his hands, almost as bright as the blaze of fury in his eyes that threatened to consume him from within. He had lost all of his composure, all of his famed gallantry. In their place was a wounded animal, desperate for a way out of captivity. "I know you hate him too, hate them, hate this damnable place. Help me."
Help me and I’ll help you.
Liu Suzhi smiled. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎
"As Your Highness wishes," he said.
The easiest way to freedom was to kill one’s captor. Liu Yao grew up within the turmoil of the inner palace of a licentious man with more concubines than he knew what to do with; he knew what he was asking Liu Suzhi to do. And Liu Suzhi could deliver. He could throw all caution to the wind, assassinate Liu Zhuo now and saunter on happily towards a future of being beheaded and fed to dogs.
But Liu Yao was Pan Yuze’s protege. He was the pride and joy of the great general, who had taken the boy prince under his wing when he’d first set foot in the northern encampment. Liu Suzhi might be a bitter husk of his former self but he would not spoil a cherished treasure of Pan Yuze’s.
It was time, but they had to do this slowly, insidiously. Play the game that Liu Suzhi had become a master at, stealing Liu Zhuo’s life from his body one tortuous day at a time while the young crown prince solidified his hold over the morning court. Liu Zhuo couldn’t fall, not yet, not until Liu Yao was ready to rise.
But when he did, it would be glorious. And Liu Suzhi was going to be present for that very last breath.
