The officials’ minds were all very active. Ling Zhang and Yuwen Tong, who’d been observing all their reactions, found this scene fairly amusing.
This was Ling Zhang’s first time sitting in a seat like this. If truth be told, he was seeing a lot of things he couldn’t see previously. This feeling struck him as quite new and interesting.
His and Yuwen Tong’s hands under the table were clasped tightly together all along. Yuwen Tong stroked or tickled Ling Zhang’s palm from time to time. After a few unsuccessful attempts to stop him, Ling Zhang became resigned and just let him do what he wanted.
“Are you bored?”
Ling Zhang, whose palm was tickled again, slightly moved his fingers and replied, “No. It’s pretty interesting.”
Yuwen Tong gave a chuckle and gently wrapped his palm around Ling Zhang’s restless fingers once again. Feeling the faintly numb and itchy sensation caused by Ling Zhang’s fingers which were furtively tickling his palm, he had an urge to hold Ling Zhang’s hand to his lips and kiss it. Unfortunately for him, if he really did that in the presence of so many people, Ling Zhang would no doubt go berserk and probably wouldn’t let him get close to the bed tonight.
“Your surname is very rare, Childe Ji. May I ask where you come from?”
Someone suddenly spoke aloud, mentioning the surname Ji. Ling Zhang’s attention was instantly attracted. When he looked in that direction, he found that Mu Rongfeng had stood up with a wine cup in his hand and was now gazing at Ji Yanlai, who, naturally, was the one he was asking.
As he asked that question, everybody else’s eyes were drawn to the two of them, because Ji Yanlai’s and the other two’s identities were indeed too mysterious.
On this day, Ji Yanlai was still wearing high priest’s robes of the Millennium Pavilion, but priest’s robes of the Millennium Pavilion were mainly white, and the few patterns seemed to be merely ornamental, so nobody had associated his robes with the priesthood so far, but because of his rather special, luxurious and flashy attire, he had a quite imposing air about him, and nobody dared look down upon him. Previously some people had speculated that Ji Yanlai and Ji Yin were from a Jianghu sect, but given that Ji Yanlai’s and Ji Yin’s demeanor bore no similarity whatsoever to that of members of a Jianghu sect and they seemed more confident than members of an aristocratic family, this speculation sounded somewhat ungrounded.
Furthermore, as Ji Yanlai’s appearance was very obtrusive, nobody could overlook him, though he cared about nothing but food and drink.
Sitting beside Ji Yanlai was Ji Xiaocong, beside whom sat Ling Maomao. The two little boys were seated at the same table. Noticing that everybody’s eyes suddenly flashed in their direction, the two of them stopped eating and looked at Mu Rongfeng, very confused.
Ji Yanlai had originally been drinking, but Mu Rongfeng’s sudden question had spoiled his enjoyment, so the expression in his eyes became faintly apathetic and impatient. In a bland voice, he replied, “Just a common Jianghu sect.”
“A common Jianghu sect? Tell us more about it and see if anyone here has ever heard of it,” Mu Rongfeng immediately said.
“There’s nothing about it that’s worth mentioning.” Ji Yanlai flicked him a glance and then couldn’t be bothered to even lift his eyes. He probably wouldn’t have bothered answering him if it weren’t for the fact that Mu Rongfeng’s voice was very loud and had drawn too many people’s attention to the two of them.
Ji Yanlai’s attitude indicated that he refused to save Mu Rongfeng’s face. A flicker of displeasure flashed across Mu Rongfeng’s eyes and with that he persisted, “Well, you don’t know if it’s worth mentioning until you tell us. Even if none of us has ever heard of its name, we won’t laugh at you.”
These words were rather rude. Ling Zhang narrowed his eyes which aggressively flashed in that direction. He was just about to say something when he heard Ji Yanlai asked, “You want a fight?”
“What?” Mu Rongfeng was uncertain about what he’d just heard.
“If you want a fight, you may make your move directly. There’s no need to beat around the bush or waste any time. I don’t have that much leisure for your little game,” said Ji Yanlai, putting down his wine cup, looking wintrily at Mu Rongfeng, radiating an almost palpable sense of power which instantly enveloped Mu Rongfeng, who involuntarily gave a muffled grunt of misery, feeling as though the air around him had suddenly become thinner. Not only was he abruptly weighed down by something, he was also having difficulty breathing, the look on his face becoming ugly.
“Your Highness!” exclaimed an envoy of the Luohai Kingdom in alarm at the sight of the abnormal expression on Mu Rongfeng’s face.
Others in the imperial garden were also taken aback, unaware of what was happening. How come Mu Rongfeng suddenly appeared to be on the verge of suffocation?
Having trouble breathing, Mu Rongfeng reflexively threw out his chest and began to gasp for air, beads of sweat welling up on him constantly, panic-stricken.
Mu Rongfeng had started reacting this way without notice. Although a few moments before he’d been talking with Ji Yanlai, and the latter’s tone had been somewhat hostile, the two of them’s seats were pretty far away from each other, and Ji Yanlai was still sitting in his chair doing nothing in particular, so this matter seemed to have nothing to do with Ji Yanlai at all, but this scene still gave the others present the willies. Although Ji Yanlai seemed to have done nothing, everybody had a hunch that this was Ji Yanlai’s doing, as though it was some kind of… witchcraft.
“Your Highness! Your Highness!” The envoy of the Luohai Kingdom paled visibly from fear, for the look on Mu Rongfeng’s face was growing increasingly uglier and veins were throbbing horribly in his temples. If nobody did anything about it, he would undoubtedly end up dead.
“Your Majesty, please save our prince!” The envoy turned to Yuwen Tong for help.
Yuwen Tong, who was a master of internal energy, naturally could tell at a glance what was happening to Mu Rongfeng, and he knew that Ji Yanlai wouldn’t really take Mu Rongfeng’s life, so his face had been calm all along. However, there might be trouble if anybody of the Luohai diplomatic corps saw through it, so he affected an air of concern and asked, “What’s going on? He was fine only a moment ago.”
“We don’t know either. His Highness began acting like this without warning. Please send for a court physician, Your Majesty!” responded the envoy, flustered.
Mu Rongfeng’s horrified eyes widened so dramatically that they nearly popped out of his head. He started to wave his arms around frantically, clutching at straws, but breathing was getting more and more difficult and he was in deep fright, his vision blurring. “Help…Help me…”
Right at this moment, Ji Yanlai withdrew his flinty eyes which had been fixed on Mu Rongfeng, took up the wine cup on the table and resumed drinking. Meanwhile, the pressure weighing Mu Rongfeng down disappeared and he could finally breathe again, his breath coming in short, loud pants. Unable to keep his footing, he directly sat down onto the ground, gasping madly for air, casting aside all considerations of face. The couple of members of the Luohai diplomatic corps clustered around him. It was after seeing he was finally breathing normally and his face softened that they heaved a sigh of relief and then examined him one after another.
“How do you feel, Your Highness? What happened to you just now?”
The envoys around Mu Rongfeng nervously asked him how he felt and at the same time tensely kept a weather eye on everybody nearby, as though all those people could do them harm at any moment.
Bored by this scene, Yuwen Tong said, “It seems that you’re okay now, but I think it’s best if I have a court physician perform a medical examination on you. I don’t want you to suffer any more miseries on this festive day.”
“Tha–That won’t be necessary.” Mu Rongfeng managed to make a reply, his voice uneven from the effort of subduing something. With the help of the envoys, he rose to his feet. Due to the oxygen deprivation he’d been subjected to just now, he still felt faintly dizzy, his vision somewhat blurry. “It’s nothing serious. I just suddenly had difficulty breathing. I think it’s probably because the climate here doesn’t agree with me. I’ll be fine after having some rest in the courier hostel.”
In an apparently casual way, Mu Rongfeng looked at Ji Yanlai sitting behind a table diagonally opposite, a sinister and highly wary expression in his eyes. He knew very well that he was not ill at all, and he was certainly not unaccustomed to the climate. It’d been the man opposite him who had done that to him. Just now that pressure had been put on him by that person surnamed Ji! If it were somebody else who’d done it, Mu Rongfeng would’ve flied into rage and had them beheaded some time before, but that gaze of Ji Yanlai’s had struck fear into the depths of his heart. Those eyes had not only put heavy pressure on him, making the hair on his scalp prickle and rendering him unable to breathe, but also seemed to bore into him, leaving him nowhere to flee to. Anyway, Mu Rongfeng found Ji Yanlai to be a very formidable opponent. He didn’t want to fight Ji Yanlai at this point in time, because if he put up a fight, he wouldn’t be able to get the better of it and might end up falling prey to some trick of Yuwen Tong’s. As a result, Mu Rongfeng chose to keep his mouth shut.
Mu Rongfeng had wisely decided to shut his mouth, and the others present were not stupid either. Although it didn’t seem to be Ji Yanlai’s doing at all, all the others became wary of him. Ji Yanlai, a man surnamed Ji, who had come out of nowhere, along with that middle-aged man beside him, were both Ling Zhang’s mother’s relatives. People only knew that their surname was Ji, but they were unaware of either of their given names, or where they were from. They were too mysterious! The two of them also possessed some long-lost manuscripts of martial formations, and had provided Ling Zhang with a trousseau of shockingly high value, and now Ji Yanlai seemed to be capable of some kind of horrific witchcraft… Where were the two of them exactly?! They were by no means from some common Jianghu sect! If even a common Jianghu sect had such skills at their command, the world would long since have been turned upside down!
Also, the officials could deduce a lot from the emperor’s take on the incident. It was evident that the emperor knew who the two of them were.
The officials’ minds were racing, and they forgot completely that they were along for the ride. At the same time they once again labeled Ling Zhang’s background as mysterious.
After this day, many people kept an eye out for any information that might be connected with anybody surnamed Ji in Jianghu, and began to look into the identities of Ji Yanlai and those around him. However, when Ji Yanlai and the others had left the capital city, all inquiries seemed to reach a dead end. Not only were they unable to make any progress, they couldn’t even erase the traces they left behind, and certainly their plans to track down Ji Yanlai and his men were consigned to the scrap heap. Nobody ever found anything. Also, after that, the expressions in the eyes of people in the capital city became faintly more searching whenever they saw Ling Zhang, and the shroud of secrecy cloaking Ling Zhang’s family background grew thicker.
Of course, all those things happened after Ji Yanlai and his men left the capital city. At this moment, owing to this interlude of Mu Rongfeng, nobody dared to accost Ji Yanlai again. By tacit agreement, this incident was never mentioned again at the banquet.
Ling Zhang felt a slight sense of relief and meanwhile found that being of a higher status had indeed enabled him to see things in a much different way, as though many things had been given very different meanings. Take this farce that had just happened for example. Were he not in this position, he would definitely have seen only a small part of it, but because he was now in a high position sitting beside Yuwen Tong, he had felt very differently. From this angle, he could see everybody’s reaction distinctly, including their micro-expressions such as how far their eyes roved sideways, and he could hear their whispers too, which they themselves believed nobody could hear.
This kind of feeling was really very peculiar and amazing. He believed that no common person would feel it so deeply as he did when they were seated in this position, because his five senses were far more acute than common people’s. He could see everything within his sight and hear every sound within earshot of him very clearly.
Yuwen Tong also had the same feeling, and he probably could see and feel more, given that his internal energy was far more powerful.
So this was how it felt to be at the top of the hierarchy?
As though having sensed the question in Ling Zhang’s mind, Yuwen Tong twisted his head aside to look at him. After seeing the hidden inquisitiveness in Ling Zhang’s eyes, he took Ling Zhang’s hand again, fingering it. “It’s quite interesting, isn’t it? Do you like it?”
This was the scenery that he and Ling Zhang from now on would be seeing standing shoulder to shoulder at the top of the hierarchy. It was unique, accessible to the two of them only.
Ling Zhang caught on to the undertone contained in Yuwen Tong’s words said in an amused tone. At this moment, he suddenly felt in an exceptionally distinct way what Yuwen Tong had meant by “standing shoulder to shoulder”, and he also had a deeper perception of their marriage – he would be seeing what Yuwen Tong saw, and this scenery belonged as much to Yuwen Tong as it did to him. This was the true meaning of being a married couple.
“I do.”
Ling Zhang suddenly relaxed every muscle in his body and put his hand completely in Yuwen Tong’s, allowing himself to trust and rely on Yuwen Tong once again, whom he had placed all his trust in already. Yuwen Tong, who could sense every change of Ling Zhang’s emotion, stopped fingering Ling Zhang’s hand and solemnly wrapped his own hand around it, along with Ling Zhang’s trust and affection, as though he were wrapping Ling Zhang in his palm which would be the only world that Ling Zhang was going to live in.
BOOM!
Fireworks were set off not far away. They shot into the night sky in succession before exploding into numerous flowers of sparks, making a spectacular sight of breathtaking beauty.
“The fireworks show is on,” said Yuwen Tong, standing up and pulling Ling Zhang to his feet. The two of them stood side by side, enjoying the fireworks show specially scheduled for this night.
The moment they rose from their seats, all the guests followed suit. A fireworks show of this scale was appealing enough to arrest anybody’s attention.
Meanwhile, excitement of the common folk in the capital city was also ignited. The cheers from them were making the welkin ring, and even people in the imperial palace could feel the sound wave.
It was at this moment that the boisterous mood of the banquet reached its height. Everybody was immersed in the joyous spirit of the imperial wedding.
Ling Zhang didn’t know when, but Yuwen Tong had stepped behind him. He put his arms around Ling Zhang, who gave a smile and, ignoring whether or not anybody was watching, leaned himself against Yuwen Tong’s chest and raised his head to watch the fireworks shooting into the sky perpetually with Yuwen Tong.
Yuwen Tong said in his ear, “From this day on we are one. Together we’ll see countless times this kind of fireworks and those things we saw just now. Be it the imperial court or the world, we’ll be having exactly the same view.”
“Um,” said Ling Zhang. “No matter what it is we’ll have to face up to in the future, I’ll be by your side. You have your ambitions, and I have mine. Now that we’ve gone this far, we need to make our efforts count.”
Yuwen Tong chuckled and gave him a kiss. “You’re right.”
More booms were heard as a myriad of beautiful glaring fireworks exploded into and against the night sky, adding to the celebratory mood of the imperial wedding.
