The ritual of floating wine cups along a winding stream on the Shangsi Festival was an elegant custom from ancient times. People would sit on both sides of a flowing river, drinking wine and composing poetry, a truly beautiful affair. Later in this dynasty, the Shangsi Festival gradually faded away, but scholars were unwilling to let such elegance disappear, so it became a casual pastime for everyday banquets instead.
The Zhou residence had an artificially dug waterway, with green bamboo and peach trees planted along both sides, beautiful in every season. Especially in spring, the peach blossoms and green bamboo complemented each other, making the scenery especially breathtaking.
Someone like Shu Changyu would naturally not be excluded from Zhou Third Young Master’s banquet. However, in his previous life, after Shu Changyu gained power, scholars and literati treated him with great caution. Zhou Third Young Master even disdained associating with him. At every gathering, they would deliberately keep their meetings away from his ears and eyes, making it even more impossible to invite him.
He had even heard that those scholars used the floating wine-cup gatherings to write poems mocking him. A perfectly elegant literary gathering had turned into a collective denunciation session against him, the “great villainous official.”
At that time, after hearing this, Shu Changyu merely smiled faintly and abolished all private gatherings in the capital. From then on, for several years, the capital never again saw the elegant custom of floating wine cups along streams.
Now, returning here, more than ten years had passed in front of Shu Changyu’s eyes. Looking at the brilliant peach blossoms blooming beside the bamboo, he could not help but feel a rare sense of ease and delight.
He thought to himself that although Heaven was blind, it had indeed treated him quite generously.
At that moment, a loud, full-bodied voice came from nearby: “Jingchen, come over here!”
The voice was entirely out of place in this refined setting. Shu Changyu turned and saw Dai Wenliang sitting by the river with one leg bent, sprawled in a broad and unrestrained manner, smiling at him.
Dai Wenliang, like Shu Changyu’s second brother Shu Changche, had grown up learning martial arts and barely managed to recognize the thousand-character classic, never having fully studied the Four Books and Five Classics. His presence here was entirely because of the Zhou family’s young lady.
Their Dai family and the Zhou family were old acquaintances. In his previous life, after Shu Changyu returned from the south, he ended up marrying a young lady from the Zhou family. At the time, both families said the two had grown up together and were already betrothed.
Shu Changyu, however, had never seen any signs of affection between them before their marriage in either his previous life or this one. Still, since both families said so, he assumed they had concealed it well and had not paid attention.
He smiled at Dai Wenliang and sat down beside him.
Shu Changyu always carried himself like a noble young master. Even when sitting by the river, he remained upright and proper, kneeling in an elegant posture. Sitting next to Dai Wenliang made the martial man appear even more rough and unrefined by contrast.
Dai Wenliang did not mind at all. Shu Changyu had grown up playing with him; later, Shu Changche went to the frontier, and Shu Changhe was gone, so he had come to treat this weak and delicate young man as his own younger brother.
As soon as Shu Changyu sat down, he hooked an arm around him and complained, “I hate these pretentious, overly literary gatherings, especially the Zhou family! But my father and that old Zhou man made a pact and forced me to come endure this. If you weren’t here too, I’d really be suffering to death!”
Shu Changyu had long been used to this rough-handed treatment from martial men. He smiled and teased him meaningfully, “Your father told you to come to the Zhou residence, but he didn’t chain you to the riverside. If you really can’t sit still, you could go play somewhere else later.”
Dai Wenliang clicked his tongue, full of disdain. “Every Zhou child is just like their father. I don’t know anyone here. Where am I supposed to go play?”
Shu Changyu thought to himself, this kid is still pretending.
He smiled and bumped Dai Wenliang with his shoulder. “Then what about the Zhou young lady?”
“Ha? What Zhou young lady?” Dai Wenliang was stunned. “There’s a Zhou young lady?”
Shu Changyu folded his arms, expression unchanged, and casually made up a story. “Don’t pretend with me. I heard a few days ago that you and the Zhou young lady have quite the connection. People even say you might be engaged in the future.”
Unexpectedly, Dai Wenliang’s face changed dramatically. He grabbed Shu Changyu and lowered his voice urgently, “Who told you such nonsense?! If that reaches the ears of the Second Miss of the Xie family, I won’t have any good days left!”
Shu Changyu froze slightly. “Second Miss of the Xie family…? Which Xie?”
Dai Wenliang immediately realized he had slipped up. His ears turned red as he hastily changed the subject. “No such Second Miss of the Xie family! Tell me who said that nonsense to you! I don’t even know if that old Zhou sour scholar has a daughter!”
Shu Changyu spoke calmly, “Maybe I misheard—you know how idle things are in the Ministry of Works. People just gossip. True or false, it’s all idle talk.”
Dai Wenliang was still uneasy, rubbing his rough hands together. “Think carefully—who said it? I’ll go ask him at his door with a spear!”
Shu Changyu thought to himself: that would be me.
But of course, he could not say that. He smiled as if he had not heard. “Then tell me first, which Xie young lady is it?”
Dai Wenliang pressed his lips together and said nothing.
“Which Xie? Then I’ll guess.” Shu Changyu smiled faintly, sitting beside him. “The Minister of Justice is surnamed Xie, but he has no daughter, so it cannot be his. In our Ministry of Works, there is a Deputy Minister Xie, but he is only in his early thirties, so he cannot possibly have a daughter of that age. Then—”
“Alright, alright! Stop, stop!” Dai Wenliang interrupted impatiently. “My head is spinning just listening to you. I always say the court is a place that supports idle people, and my father scolds me for it. Look at you, Shu Third Young Master—after only a few days in office, you’re already so gossipy, just like those women in the Six Ministries!”
Shu Changyu simply closed his mouth and smiled at him.
“She’s not from some high-ranking official family,” Dai Wenliang said awkwardly, turning his gaze away. “Her father is a censor, a fellow examinee of yours. He used to be a merchant in the capital and only passed the exams this year. His name is Xie Xinggui.”
At that, Shu Changyu went blank.
“…Xie Xinggui?” he asked after a long pause, his voice stiff.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Dai Wenliang snapped. “I know she’s not from a great noble family, but I, Dai Wenliang, don’t need my wife’s family as my support! Since I met her at the Lantern Festival last year, I’ve already decided—I will marry no one but her in this life…”
But Shu Changyu suddenly stood up. Because he moved too quickly, he staggered slightly.
“I’ll take my leave for a moment.” With that, he walked toward the nearby building.
“Hey—?” Dai Wenliang did not manage to stop him. Watching Shu Changyu’s back, as if fleeing in panic, he frowned and muttered to himself, “Why is he just like those old-fashioned pedants…”
Shu Changyu hurried to the back of the building. Behind it was an empty courtyard with no people passing through. The moment he turned in, his legs gave way slightly and he leaned against the wall.
Xie Xinggui… how could it be Xie Xinggui…
In his previous life, after he first became Chancellor, he had seized all power into his own hands. At that time, there was an obscure censor who repeatedly impeached him and even publicly cursed him in court. Back then, overwhelmed by hatred and newly intoxicated by power, he fabricated charges and broke the long-standing rule of not executing officials—wiping out that censor’s entire clan.
Not a single member of the family survived.
That censor was named Xie Xinggui.
He had never expected that, in his previous life, his act of venting anger had killed the beloved of Dai Wenliang.
No wonder that in his previous life, when Dai Wenliang returned from military service, he was suddenly arranged into a marriage by his family. No wonder that when he left court service, the look he gave him was so cold and unfamiliar.
He… in his previous life… had truly been a demon of unforgivable evil.
Back then, he had even mocked him, saying he did not understand what blood feuds were. But he did understand. That blood feud… was with him.
Shu Changyu’s fingertips were icy cold, clenched tightly into fists. His legs trembled, his lips pale and pressed tightly together.
He tilted his head slightly, and above him stretched a clear, blue sky. Why did Heaven not simply let him die? He had committed countless evils and betrayed every kindness—why spare him?
Was this second life meant to force him into redemption?
“Shu Third Young Master.”
At that moment, a clear, smiling voice sounded beside him.
Shu Changyu turned his head and saw a familiar face.
In his previous life, it was this very face that stood outside his prison cell on the day of Jing Mu’s coronation, smiling like this. It was also this same clear, cheerful voice that said:
“I’ve long heard that Jingchen is extraordinarily clever. After this year, it turns out you truly helped me rise step by step. Now that a new emperor has ascended and all evil men have met their rightful end, Jingchen should be at ease now, shouldn’t you?” He smiled. “If you are at ease, then you may die with a smile.”
That day, if not for Jing Mu’s guards arriving in time, he would already have been strangled to death in prison with a white silk cord at this man’s command.
To this day, Shu Changyu still remembered it. When the noose tightened around his throat, his breath weakened and consciousness faded, this man had spoken gently: “Jingchen’s legs—were my doing. Do you like them? I was worried the prison door might not hold you, so I had to break your legs to feel at ease.”
These words had come from the mouth of the one he had once called a lifelong confidant.
If not for this man, Shu Changyu—despite his disability, imprisonment, and the loss of all his family—would still have been that radiant and noble Shu Changyu. But this man had been the only light in his darkest two years. In those two years, aside from regret and pain, he had spent every day and night planning for this man—or rather, for both of them.
Together, one in the open and one in the shadows, they had treated the world like a chessboard and played it to victory.
But in those same two years, this man had also treated him as nothing more than a chess piece. Once he was used up, he was to be discarded and destroyed.
At that time, when Shu Changyu awoke again, he was in Jing Mu’s palace. But the surroundings of gold and jade looked to him like the underworld itself—gray and lifeless.
To him, he was already a dead man.
And a dead man should descend into hell. In hell, he must become a demon.
Author’s Note: Shu Changyu in his past life really wasn’t a good person… though he was truly wronged, when everyone is corrupt, it is still difficult to keep one’s integrity and not become the same.
Still, it’s easy to say, but very hard to maintain one’s original heart when it falls upon oneself.
No one is perfect—hope everyone still likes Chancellor Shu!