The night in the imperial capital was deep and silent. The celebrations for the impending banquet had ceased, and the palace was plunged into a stillness that only true authority can command. In his private study, Emperor Wei Zheng was alone. The candles flickered, casting his long, distorted shadow against the walls adorned with the calligraphy of ancient sages. The air smelled of expensive ink and the loneliness of unquestioned power.
But for the first time in twenty years, the Emperor was questioning that power.
He paced back and forth across the luxurious rug depicting a celestial dragon, but his steps lacked their usual authority. They were the steps of a lost man. He stopped before a window, gazing at the full moon that hung in the sky like an indifferent silver eye.
How?
The question was not one of rage, like the one he'd felt in the council. It was a deep, corrosive doubt that gnawed at his soul.
I have renounced the world. I have renounced pleasure. I have renounced affection. I have purged every worldly desire, every superfluous emotion, to follow the arduous and solitary path of Martial Indifference. I became an ascetic, a monarch of the spirit, all to touch the face of the Dao without distraction.
His hand rested on the cold glass of the window.
And she... she has lived. She has raised a daughter. She has managed this nest of vipers that is the court. She has fulfilled her duties, has lived fully in the world... and she has touched the Dao. She has reached me. She... simply has.
The idea was a heresy that shook the very foundations of his existence.
I have sacrificed the warmth of a wife, the joy of a family, the simple comfort of a conversation... for what? To reach the same summit she has reached, apparently, in a single night of inspiration. Is it possible that my path... my Decree... is wrong? Is it possible that my brother's path, that path of decadence, of wine, of pleasure... is, in some twisted way, more efficient?
The thought made him nauseous. If that was true, then his entire life—his two decades of sacrifice and self-denial—had not been an act of devotion. It had been a joke. A monumental, pathetic waste of time.
He turned away from the window, his face a mask of confusion and pain. The image of Shuyin in the council that morning returned to his mind. Her calm. Her power. The way the very air around her seemed to bow to her. She was not the same woman with whom he had shared a palace in silence for twenty years. She was… something more.
And in the midst of his crisis of faith, a new and strange idea took root. An idea born not from the duty of an Emperor, but from the desperation of a man.
Perhaps... perhaps the answer is not in ancient texts or solitary meditation. Perhaps the answer... lies with her.
He made a decision. For the first time in twenty years, he would not act as an Emperor demanding respect. He would not act as a Sovereign giving orders. He would try, clumsily, desperately, to act as a husband.
He decided to go see Shuyin. Not to give her orders. Not to argue about alliances or politics. Simply… to talk.
When Emperor Wei Zheng arrived at the Empress's chambers, he was not announced. The guards at the door, upon seeing their lord, simply prostrated themselves on the ground, allowing him to pass without a word.
He found her seated on a divan by the flickering light of a brazier, reading a book. The room was filled with a powerful calm, the manifestation of her new Domain. The air was serene, peaceful. He felt like an intruder, a storm of doubt entering a tranquil lake.
She looked up from her book as he entered. There was no surprise in her golden eyes. Nor was there warmth. Only a quiet, distant observation.
He stopped in the middle of the room, feeling strangely clumsy, out of place. The crown on his head felt heavy; his imperial robes, restrictive.
"Shuyin," he began, his voice sounding strange and hoarse in the silence. "I... I saw you in the council today. Your power... it is magnificent. Truly worthy of the Wei lineage."
She did not answer. She simply watched him, waiting.
He took a deep breath, fighting the habit of giving orders. "I was wondering if... after so many years... if we could... talk." He paused, the words feeling foreign in his mouth. "As husband and wife."
Wei Shuyin slowly closed her book, the soft sound of the pages marking the end of something. She set the book aside and looked at him. Her gaze was not cruel. It was worse. It was filled with a cold, distant pity, the kind shown to someone who has arrived too late to a battle that has already ended.
"I appreciate the sentiment, Your Majesty," she said, her voice calm and clear. "But you are twenty years late." She looked at him directly, unblinking. "My heart is no longer territory available for conquest."
The confusion hit him with the force of a physical blow. He stared at her, his brain trying to process the finality of her words. Twenty years late? Territory not available?
"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice betraying his bewilderment. "I am your husband. The Emperor."
"You are the Emperor," she conceded with a nod. "And I am your Empress. We have fulfilled our agreement. I gave you an heir. The rest... was not included in the contract."
He took a step toward her, a desperation he didn't understand beginning to surface. "I'm not talking about contracts, Shuyin. I'm talking about us. You say your heart isn't available... Does that mean... there is another?"
The question was absurd the moment he asked it. Who in the entire empire would dare?
Wei Shuyin looked at him, and for the first time, an emotion crossed her face. It was not fear, nor shame. It was a shadow of pride, a quiet, terrifying certainty. "There has always been," she said.
The Emperor felt as if the floor had opened up beneath his feet. "Who?"
"I already have the man I have chosen," she replied, her gaze direct, unwavering. "Wei Feng."
The name struck him like lightning. He took a step back, his mind refusing to accept, to process the blasphemy.
"Feng?" he repeated, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. "My brother...? That useless trash? Impossible! You despise him! You have always despised him! Your disdain for his decadence is known throughout the court!"
"I despise his theater," she corrected coldly. "Not the man behind it."
The realization began to form in his mind, a monstrous, twisted truth. The way she defended him indirectly. The scandal from twenty years ago... He had allowed it, seen it as a distasteful but necessary arrangement to secure the bloodline. A closed chapter. But the way she spoke of Feng, the pride in her voice... The monstrous truth wasn't the act of the past, which he already knew and had ignored. It was the continuation in the present. For her, it was never an agreement. It was a love story that had never ended.
"You..." he began, his voice a choked, stupefied whisper. "...you and him... in secret?" The implication was so vast he could barely form the next question. "Did you... Did you sleep with him again? With that... drunkard?"
Wei Shuyin rose to her feet. Her movement was fluid, her bearing that of a queen who answers to no one. There was no longer a trace of the submissive wife or the obedient empress. There was only a woman at the pinnacle of her power, owner of her truth.
"The man you call 'trash'," she said, her voice quiet but sharp, "is the only man my body and soul have known in this life." She paused, letting the truth hit him with its full force. "And yes. I slept with him. Last night. And I will do so again tonight if he asks, and tomorrow night, and every night he honors me with his presence. Do you remember our marriage agreement, Your Majesty? It was very clear. I would give you an heir to secure the bloodline. I did."
She looked him up and down, her disdain now palpable. "The rest of my life... was mine to live."
Broken.
That was the only word to describe Emperor Wei Zheng at that moment. His understanding of the world, his perception of his own life, of his family, of his power... all of it had been shattered in the span of a few minutes. His mind reeled, desperately searching for something to hold on to, a reason, a logic that could explain this madness. He tried to appeal to her reason, to her pride as an Empress, painting his brother as the worst of choices.
"Don't be naive, Shuyin!" he exclaimed, his voice trembling with a mixture of anger and desperation. "Open your eyes! He's a womanizer! A drunkard! A parasite who lives off the glory of the empire I rule! He's only using you! For the pleasure of the flesh, for the thrill of transgression! He will discard you when he gets bored and finds a new toy or a new bottle of wine! You cannot give your heart to a man who doesn't have one!"
His words, meant to "save" her, only served to offend her deeply. The cold pity on her face transformed into an icy contempt.
"You speak of hearts?" she asked, her voice so low and lethal it chilled his blood. "You dare to speak of hearts? You, who have spent two decades trying to freeze your own, treating it like a weakness, a disease to be purged?"
She took a step toward him, and for the first time, the Emperor felt the pressure of her new Sovereign's Domain directed squarely at him. It was suffocating.
"He, in all his so-called 'decadence'," she continued, "feels more in a single sip of wine than you have felt in your entire miserable, lonely life. He finds joy in a pastry, passion in a sunset, and poetry in a bottle. And you? What do you find on your empty throne, other than more power and more loneliness?" She looked at him, her judgment final and irrevocable. "I loved the genius he was, the brilliant prince this empire lost. And I have longed for the man he became for twenty long, lonely years. A man who is, at least, honest in his pleasures, unlike you, who are dishonest in your virtue."
Desperate, utterly defeated, he made one last mistake. He stepped forward and tried to take her hand, a clumsy gesture, that of a wise man trying to guide a wayward woman back to the right path.
She snatched her hand away as if his touch burned, her face contorted in disgust.
"Don't touch me," she hissed, the command resonating with the power of a Sovereign. She looked him up and down, her disdain absolute, final. "After twenty years sharing a palace, you still don't understand? To me, you are still the same stranger I was forced to marry. You were never my husband. You were only... his brother."
She turned, giving him her back, a gesture of dismissal more profound than any words.
"You have your path of indifference, Wei Zheng. Leave me to mine."
The Emperor remained alone in the room, standing in the midst of the luxurious silence, his world not just shattered, but utterly annihilated.