From CEO to Concubine-Chapter 195: Guilty

Mere months ago, General Guo Quan had stood in Weiyang Hall watching as Grand Protector Li was stripped of his title and dragged to the imperial dungeons, serving as a warning signal to the nobles that the young man they’d thought they controlled in the palm of their hands had grown into a voracious dragon, guarding its pearl (1) within its ferocious maw jealously.

Guo Quan was no stranger to the concept of death. He could deal it to others on the battlefield, he’d seen his soldiers cut down before his very eyes.

But he was starting to realise just how much he feared for his own life.

It was long past the time of commencement for morning court but the winter sun had yet to break over the horizon. A layer of frost had since formed over the red awning outside of Weiyang Hall, where the court officials knelt in tandem to try and force their liege to meet them. The bitter cold bit at their faces and made elderly joints ache with a deep throbbing pain but no one dared to complain.

Right in front of the right and left prime minister stood Head Eunuch Cao, the polite smile on his face never once faltering even as he asked for the countless time if the older gentlemen would prefer to return to their residences because His Majesty was dealing with urgent matters in the inner palace and not ready to hold morning court yet.

Right Prime Minister Ren ignored him in favour of kowtowing once again.

"This old subject sincerely begs His Majesty to hold court!"

"These subjects sincerely beg His Majesty to hold court!"

The howling northwest wind (2) competed against their sonorous echo.

Chaos, Guo Quan thought. The initial intention had been to stir up discord within the imperial city and prove to the civilians that their emperor was not a fit ruler. The decision they’d put forth to His Majesty was supposed to be simple; be a willing puppet and let them clean up the mess for him or be dragged down from his pedestal by the very commoners he professed to love.

When that useless Wu Shengqi had come up to Guo Quan with his plan to reenact history by painting a picture of a ’demon consort’ for the masses to fear, Guo Quan had been sceptical. But his loyalty to the fourth prince had moved his hand in the end and he’d participated thoroughly, going so far as to pull the strings he had within the capital’s guard to ensure that the patrols always ’conveniently’ avoided the sedans transporting the dead bodies around.

He’d been apprehensive at first; too many people were involved and not all of them Guo Quan trusted. The foolish Minister of Revenue, for instance, had been a prime example of a disaster waiting to happen.

And happen it did. The fourth prince himself had vouched for this idiot’s loyalty but no one had thought to address the matter of his stupid greed.

One thing led to another. The arrests of the Wu Family and half the Ministry of Revenue, the closure of the imperial city and the morning court, and now this discomforting silence from the emperor even as the brocade guard and the two depots reminded everyone of what they were capable of.

It was punishment. That illustrious young prince, who had grown up so promising the ministers had been wary of him even before he’d ascended the throne, was proving time and again that he dared to retaliate.

Guo Quan was terrified. He’d already lost a beloved daughter, soon to be executed with the rest of the Wu Family. Even though the Guo Family was yet to follow in their footsteps, who was to say they wouldn’t meet a similarly terrible fate?

Perhaps, all along, this had been the emperor’s way of eliminating the nobles one by one. Maybe he was in cahoots with the right prime minister, who had been unusually passive after being told off at the last morning court just after the deaths of the Wu son and daughter. That old knave Ren Hao, perched comfortably on his prime minister’s seat, had been unusually quiet once all hell had broken loose. Guo Quan had a suspicion that he was involved somehow but had no way of proving it. Now that Wu Shengqi had gotten himself thrown into jail and His Highness the fourth prince was ignoring all correspondence in favour of being a turtle with its head hiding in its shell (3), he had no means of discussing his worries and planning his next move with either of them.

The right prime minister had suddenly summoned them to gather here and beg the emperor let them return to working for the good of the country. Not everyone had responded though; Grand Preceptor Du and Grand Tutor Lu we’re conspicuously missing, as were the two Princes of the First Rank.

Guo Quan didn’t want to be here either, had deliberated on whether to give Ren Hao face and show up. But he couldn’t resist the urge to see the emperor for himself, to try and guess whether the dragon’s wrath would fall upon him. But now, he had been kneeling for a shichen with neither hide nor hair of the emperor in sight. His body trembled; having only led an army in the southwest, he never once had to brave the cold of the north and was not impervious to winters in the capital. But more so than that, his soul trembled too, with the dread of knowing that what he’d been up to in the southwest was unforgivable.

How much did that dratted Wu Shengqi know? How about his daughter? Would they succumb to the unthinkable horrors subjected upon them by the brocade guard and reveal his illicit dealings with the warlord he was supposed to be fighting against?

Ever since his daughter’s wedding, Guo Quan had yet to receive permission to return to the warfront. This, more than anything, was an indication that the emperor was loathed to entrust military matters to him anymore. If it was only out of wariness for the allegiance between the Guo and Wu Families, Guo Quan still wouldn’t be as worried. He could delude himself back then into believing that he’d been cautious enough to outsmart a greenhorn, who was young enough to be his son. After all, the sky was high and the emperor was far (4). Out in the southwest, where the Guo Family had spent generations laying down a foundation, what could one little upstart on the throne do to influence them?

A lot, as it turned out.

"General Guo, please have a cup of tea."

The faultless mannerisms of the youthful eunuch presenting him with a cup rubbed him the wrong way. In a time such as this, who cared about drinking tea?! Was this the emperor’s way of mocking them?

In a fit of pique, he knocked the tea cup out of the eunuch’s hand with a loud harrumph, uncaring that the hot liquid within would have splattered on the eunuch’s face should he not have raised his arms up in time to cover it.

"This servant deserves death! This servant—"

"General Guo."

The ruckus had attracted the attention of the right prime minister. The old knave Ren didn’t bother turning to look Guo Quan’s way, the solemn inflection of his voice weighing heavily on all his listeners like the blade their accursed liege now held above their necks.

"Are we here to throw a temper tantrum?" Right Prime Minister Ren asked. "We are here to beg for forgiveness for falling prey to an evil fox spirit’s malicious powers and very nearly allowing her to turn us against our rightful ruler!"

"Oh?" Head Eunuch Cao made an amused noise at the back of his throat. When they turned in tandem to regard him, he inclined his head apologetically, that infuriating pleasant smile of his widening as he tucked his whisk over his arm and said, "As expected of Lord Right Prime Minister. You know what His Majesty likes to hear."

Guo Quan gritted his teeth. Was begging what His Majesty liked to hear from the shrivelled farts of his morning court?! Even if so, who gave that shrewd old fox the right to decide on behalf of all of them?! Old Knave Ren had kept them all in the dark of his plans and judging by the barely restrained emotions on the faces of their colleagues, few others knew what his true intentions were.

In response to Head Eunuch Cap’s barbed jibe, Right Prime Minister Ren pressed his forehead to the back of his hands with an audible thud as he folded back onto the ground. An elderly gentleman revered by the scholars for his literary and political influences, he made a moving sight as the first snow of the day began to fall around them.

"This old subject is guilty!" he pronounced. "This old subject allowed himself to be blinded by the wiles of a cunning fox spirit and unwittingly accused Imperial Noble Consort Yue of a crime he didn’t commit! This old subject pleads with His Majesty not to fall for this fox’s plan to turn liege and vessel against one another!"

Guo Quan heard this sentiment chorused around him by Right Prime Minister Ren’s faction. He had no choice but to do the same, hating that he was being jerked about by another official—and a literary one at that—but unable to find a way around it. Only a fool in as precarious a situation as he was now would stick his neck out as though the emperor wasn’t waiting for the perfect excuse to swing an axe at it.

"Does this sovereign’s ears deceive? Did someone admit to being guilty of falsely accusing the highest-ranked consort in this sovereign’s harem?"

There was no heralding from the door eunuchs of Weiyang Hall, no fanfare to announce the arrival of the imperial sedan.

The main doors swung open, pushed from within by a pair of strong arms clad in the black and gold imperial court robes of the emperor. Guo Quan’s eyes flitted to the tall figure striding out onto the long carpet that led from the stairs to the entrance of the hall but dropped back down to the ground before the pair of dark eyes half-hidden behind the twelve-bead mianguan (5) could meet his.

Cold sweat trickled down Guo Quan’s back. In the freezing wind, it made him feel like his skin had turned to ice.

He was finally ready to admit that the emperor was beyond their control. He only wished he’d learnt this lesson sooner.

"Long live Your Majesty!" As if possessed, Guo Quan went through the motions of greeting the emperor and listened with a distant buzzing in his ears as Right Prime Minister Ren took the reins from the rest of them.

"Your Majesty, Director Chen of the Astronomical Bureau foresaw in a reading last night that the evil fox spirit had finally forsaken her corporeal form and fled the mortal realm! He pleaded with this old subject to bring word to Your Majesty!" Right Prime Minister Ren shook his head with a despair so genuine Guo Quan couldn’t help but be in awe of his acting. "Only now did I know that we have all been misled! When word of Imperial Concubine Hui—no, Fox Demon Hui’s death spread this evening, that was when we realised what a heinous mistake we were on the cusp of making!"

Director Chen Jiaran of the imperial astronomical bureau nodded fervently, shuffling forward on his knees from his nondescript corner to kowtow to the emperor. "It is as Right Prime Minister says! This malicious demon committed the gruesome murders of young men to keep the human body she’d possessed from rotting and then at the same time, chose to try and pin the deaths upon the Tianfu Star to bring disharmony to the kingdom!"

The empress star?! Was Old Knave Ren insane?!

Guo Quan couldn’t stomach the thought. He wasn’t sure what leverage the emperor had against Right Prime Minister Ren such that he would allow an ex-slave to fly to a branch that only the noblest of nobles deserved to perch upon, just to save his hide.

Luckily for him, the emperor was quick to provide some clarity.

"Information passes very easily through the walls of the inner palace, it seems," he said while taking a sip of the hot tea Head Eunuch Cao provided him, "just like intruders."

Right Prime Minister Ren bowed. "This old subject doesn’t dare—"

The shattering of porcelain stunned them all into silence. Tea seeped from the ground into the sleeves of Right Prime Minister Ren’s robes.

"You don’t dare?" the emperor said softly, his voice dangerously smooth. "Tell this sovereign, Beloved Subject Ren, what don’t you dare?"

"Your Majesty—"

"This sovereign believes that there is nothing in this world you daren’t do! Recall your old friend Minister Yuan? He tells this sovereign that your hands have dabbled in the murders in the capital. What else have they done, mm? Where else have you gone? Into this sovereign’s inner palace? Head Eunuch Cao, tell them what this sovereign has spent all night doing."

Head Eunuch Cao bowed. "As Your Majesty commands." He turned to regard the ministers loftily. "My lords, His Majesty spent the evening weeding out traitors to the throne and searching for the means by which intruders could enter and commit a

bold assassination of a member of the imperial harem."

"A secret passage, my beloved subjects, and this sovereign has good reason to believe more than one of you here are aware of its existence." The emperor smiled thinly. "Should this sovereign be relieved I haven’t had my throat slit in my sleep?"

Guo Quan gulped. Secret passages? The imperial concubine that Right Prime Minister Ren was scapegoating had been killed by an outsider?

Why did the minister of revenue implicate the right prime minister? Was this part of the fourth prince’s clever ploy or was there more to it than he knew?

Guo Quan felt kept in the dark. But this time, he had no one else to ask for help.