Scroll 13: The elder 's decision
The great palace was shaped like a serpent, crouching on the very top of the Jade Serpent Plateau, its high towers lost in the clouds as the fangs of dragons biting the clouds. Within, the warmth oozed out of lanterns that hung lazily in carved wooden brackets, and the air was scented with jasmine tea and old paper and sandalwood incense--the type that was supposed to ease frayed nerves but in fact only served to remind the visitor how little control he actually had.
In one of the secret apartments of the palace two persons sat together, the curtains of the room were of thick silk, dyed in imperial crimson, and fringed with gold thread, which sparkled in the light with obstinate persistence. They jingled in their robes, fine brocade against fine brocade, secrets and thin fingers were clasped about hot porcelain cups.
One was the Emperor, Zhou Fenglan, a man whose years were dead years, whose silver hair was gathered in a knot that was a tight knot, and in some way made his sharp eyes sharper. At his side was a man in robes as good a make, but gentler of face, and there was something about the face that you could not tell whether he was friend or lover or only a relic too stubborn to die decently in the shade.
Their fingers were almost in contact with the rim of their cups, and it was an electric touch which neither of them noticed, but which gave the room a low, charged atmosphere. Was it youth-and-secrets, or power-and-weakness, the game? Even the walls of the palace, with its history in them, were afraid to say anything on that question.
It was a silent room save that a carved jade water clock was dripping out the seconds in soft plinks like far raindrops.
Then the sky answered with a thunderclap, loud and brutal enough to shake the stained glass in the chamber's windows, spilling fractured light across the embroidered floor mats. The elders both startled, eyes snapping open sharp enough to cut glass.
Zhou Fenglan's expression twisted, a shadow darkening his usually calm face. He rose from his seat with the slow grace of a predator disturbed, every muscle tensed under his silken robes.
The elder beside him closed his eyes briefly, drawing a deep breath that seemed to pull in more than just air. His divine consciousness stretched outward, flowing out from his mind like ink dissolving in water, sweeping through valleys cloaked in ancient forests, crossing rivers that glittered with spirit energy, and climbing over jagged peaks blanketed in snow.
It was a sweeping, precise motion, a searchlight of power slicing through the world until it fixed on a small figure no taller than a sapling a three-year-old boy whose body hummed with a violent, unnatural Qi.
Xie Longyuan.
The name slipped through the elder's mind like a blade sliding free from its sheath. His eyes snapped open, cold and sharp as the winter's first frost. Talent like that in one so young was a wildfire waiting to burn down the forest if left unchecked.
Every instinct screamed that the boy could not be allowed to live. Not with that dangerous, radiant power.
Without hesitation, the elder summoned a pool of covert energy dark, silent, and cruel as if the night itself had taken shape in his palms.
His target was clear. The Xie estate, a sprawling manor nestled among rolling hills and ancient trees, a place humming with secrets but vulnerable if hit in the right spot.
His will settled on the women's bathhouse, a modest building with its tiled roof curling like the wings of a resting phoenix, steam rising gently from hot pools inside. It was a place of vulnerability, where guards were relaxed and eyes less sharp.
Moments before, the two men had shared a moment that felt out of place for such an austere court lounging on a couch with a closeness that whispered of forbidden affection, fingers tracing the outlines of weathered faces, murmuring strange and unsettling words that might have been prayers or curses, or some private language older than memory itself.
To any outsider, it would have looked like a stolen moment between lovers caught by time's stubborn hand.
Then came the thunderclap, ripping them apart like a husband catching a mistress mid-kiss, shattering the fragile illusion.
The elder rose abruptly, robes swirling like dark smoke. His eyes narrowed with lethal intent, the image of Xie Longyuan burning hotter than any fire in his mind's eye.
He cast aside even the ancient codes that had bound their kind for generations. Principles, ancestry, honor none of it mattered when faced with such a threat.
The boy must be struck down today.
The elder's gaze hardened as it fixed on the bathhouse, his expression a mask of calm concealing a tempest of deadly calculation.
Murderous intent hid beneath the veneer of careful pretense, waiting to strike like a serpent coiled in the grass.