Chapter 758: Forbidden City Journal (4)

The circle of officials kneeling in front of the Southern Three Halls was varied to an almost ridiculous degree.

Even after you skimmed off the small fry, there were still several ultra-high officials left—full second-rank and full third-rank men who were, for all intents and purposes, the foremost powers of the current reign.

From the Ministry of Personnel, the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Works, each of the Six Ministries had one Minister, and beneath him one Left Vice Minister and one Right Vice Minister.

On top of that, there were the six policy-and-budget Bureaus—Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, Works—each with its seventh-rank Registrar of Documents and junior seventh-rank Drafting Secretary. Their nominal grade was miserably low, but because they held veto power over their Ministry’s policy drafts and the authority to draw up the budget, in practice they were treated like full and junior third-rank grandees.

Of course, not every last one of these people had turned out today. At a glance, some of the pro-Emperor faction were obviously missing—especially that group of the extremely intimate, the ones who were so close they dared to style themselves His Majesty’s personal confidants.

Naturally so. For that lot, having a Crown Princess enter and raise imperial authority was a welcome development.

Even so, more than half of the pro-Emperor faction had come out and clearly declared their opposition.

Even within the so-called pro-Emperor faction, most of them feared the growth of imperial power; or they were men who wanted to fasten their own daughters to the Crown Prince; or they had already sent their daughters into the Son of Heaven’s harem and therefore regarded the appearance of a Crown Princess with deep wariness...

Only—it was not easy.

How could lying facedown on bare stone with no shade at the height of summer possibly be an easy thing?

How many high officials had already collapsed from heatstroke and been carried away?

In the middle of this, the Crown Prince had neither said this nor that, had not so much as deigned to respond to them, which only showed how unshakable his resolve was.

The Minister of Personnel, Yu Uyeong, let out a long sigh.

“Haah... It seems His Highness has truly been bewitched. Up to now he kept women at arm’s length; isn’t there a saying that late-blooming lust is the most frightening of all? What... what are we to do about this...”

“At times like this we must make our own intent all the clearer to him. His Highness is a man of bright discernment and virtue, is he not?”

The one who took up the words was the Minister of Justice, Oh Chunghyeong.

They were not all out here purely for political ends. Oh Chunghyeong was the prime example of that.

Whether a man’s wife was First Wife or Lesser Wife or concubine, the favor enjoyed by the first one in the door was never an ordinary thing.

If this were some commoner’s household, that would be one thing. But how could you possibly hand the supreme one’s favor to a martial-world person?

Ordinarily, when conflicts arose between people, you were supposed to weigh right and wrong clearly against the laws and principles of the realm and against the rites, and then both sides had to compromise according to their circumstances.

But martial-world people, when a conflict arose, took it as honorable to draw their blades and cut the other party down, and thought settling things pleasantly with words was shameful.

“On top of that, Her Majesty the Empress opposes this as well. Surely His Highness will in the end withdraw his intent, will he not?”

Saying this, Oh Chunghyeong glanced off to one side.

Along that corner strip of shade that barely touched the edge of the vast front courtyard, a row of women were kneeling.

The one at the very front was Beauty Seo—“Beauty” being the title of the woman who led the female officials inside the Forbidden City.

And the work of those female officials, those women whom everyone informally called the Inner Palace Office, had for generations been work the Empress personally oversaw.

So the fact that they were kneeling here meant that Her Majesty the Empress too had made it known that she opposed this present outrage of the Crown Prince’s.

Which, of course, was only natural. Even if you left aside all the other obvious harms, what mother on earth wanted to take a martial-world person as her daughter-in-law?

It was then.

“Oh no, His Highness is returning.”

The Crown Prince, who had just walked out of the Southern Three Halls, was now coming back, and without any need for a shouted command, everyone took the hint on their own, one by one—

“Your Highness! Please, hear us!”

And each faction began to submit the memorial they had prepared in advance.

“Your Highness! A royal marriage is a matter of state, a matter of the utmost gravity. We beg you to set it aside for now and entrust the discussion to us!”

“How can you allow a woman who has not yet been married to remain in the main bedchamber! This too is a grave stain upon that woman’s reputation!”

The Crown Prince felt like his insides were bursting.

Why, in this damned swelter, as they dry up like jerky, do they insist on scratching at someone else’s guts like this? I’m telling you, I don’t like that kind of woman either!

His expression crumpled all at once.

Meanwhile, when the officials behind him caught sight of Lady Deokseong following in the Crown Prince’s wake, their expressions froze in horror.

“Your Highness!!”

“How can you bring the Lady— surely, no, Your Highness must not!!”

“Ghhhaaak!! Hear us! You absolutely must hear us!!”

Their voices rose yet another pitch.

Lady Deokseong was hardly some ordinary person.

She had nursed the Empress’s children; her affection for them was no different from that of a mother and her children; and the Empress herself said publicly that she cherished Lady Deokseong even more than her own sisters.

Why else would His Majesty have granted her a palace and sent her away in a kind of exile-that-wasn’t-exile?

The Crown Prince was the one who would ascend as the next Son of Heaven. His nurse, by sheer existence alone, became a powerful relative capable of influencing the realm’s governance.

Lady Deokseong knew this as well, and so she almost never stepped outside Suan Palace. On the rare occasions she did, it was only to enjoy tea with the Empress.

In truth, Lady Deokseong should long since have achieved the super-elite “exit the palace” retirement.

In Qing’s homeland idiom, it would have felt like this:

※※ LADY DEOKSEONG ☆RETIREMENT☆ EVENT ※※

Upon leaving the palace ## Hero-rank workers << One hundred granted as bonus ※ Ultra★Giant Manor ※ Granted free of charge ◎◎ Instant Retirement: To Guangdong / Guangxi / Guizhou / Sichuan / Fujian / anywhere at all, as long as it’s some remote ☆frontier☆ far from the capital ※※

It was both a gesture of appreciation for her years of labor and, in a sense, a form of exile—the proper procedure for expelling someone from the imperial palace.

But she had clung on in tears, saying that when the Princess finally married and left the palace, how could they send her alone to some land at the far end of the world; that she would follow then and serve her. And so she had forcibly remained, in the half-exiled state of living in Suan Palace as she did now.

Of course, because it was not an official exile, even if Lady Deokseong stepped outside Suan Palace, it was not considered a breach of the law of the land.

And this was precisely the sort of person whom the Crown Prince had now dragged into the middle of this.

If he had something to say, he could have just chatted with her in Suan Palace and been done with it. Why on earth had he gone to the trouble of bringing the Lady back here?

To ask her to stay at his side and attend upon his intended bride.

In other words, His Highness the Crown Prince had fully made up his mind.

He had resolved, outright, to bring Heavenly Flower Sword in as his Crown Princess.

“How can you bring a martial-world person—urk, gurgle...!”

The supremely loyal Oh Chunghyeong could not withstand the shock. Having been forcing himself to hold out, he now went into delayed collapse, foamed at the mouth, and toppled over.

“Hey! Minister Oh! Minister of Justice! Get a hold of yourself! Get a hold of yourself, man!”

“Attendants! Quickly, carry him—escort him out with all ceremonial propriety! Hurry!”

As the front courtyard exploded into a commotion, the Crown Prince’s teeth ground together as he walked past.

Not one of them knows what’s going on with me. Not a single bastard bothers to measure what lies in another man’s heart. Honestly, I feel like dying...

His one small consolation was the pitying look that reached him from Lady Deokseong.

Lady Deokseong, who had now realized that the Crown Prince was not captured by lust for women, but was trapped in the grip of a mad delusion.

Thanks to that, her eyes held an excess of compassion, which did nothing to improve the Crown Prince’s mood.

“Lady, then... I’ll leave this in your hands.”

“Set your worries aside, Your Highness. And... you needn’t pay too much mind to the ministers’ opposition. In time, all these misunderstandings will naturally be cleared up, will they not?”

“...All right. Then, I’ll trouble you.”

With that, the Crown Prince turned away in disgust and slipped straight back into his quarters.

Lady Deokseong watched his retreating back until the end, then quietly circled around the main hall and headed toward Hilbang Hall, which adjoined it.

It had been a very long time since she had last come to Hilbang Hall.

Once, it had been the place where the young imperial grandsons played.

The young Crown Prince would be on the verge of tears, grabbing at her robe hem and tattling on someone, while the young Princess would awkwardly avert her gaze, sweat beading and trickling down.

Yes.

Children grew up in cruelly heartless fashion, and who could possibly stop it?

The child who had been so little had now grown into a dignified young man and learned to put on airs; and the young Princess had now become a fully grown lady for whom modest decorum was only natural.

Her Ladyship the Empress had approved of the Crown Prince’s growth while saying the Princess had “changed into another person.” Perhaps now, at last, she had realized and was trying to draw close to her again.

Perhaps because Yeonsul had been so terribly sick, Her Ladyship had thought the girl would forever remain in her arms...

Resolve flickered across Lady Deokseong’s face.

Perhaps this would be the end of this strange bewitchment.

Whether Heavenly Flower Sword was a vile go-between who had pried into that gap or merely a pitiful girl who had been swept up in it, she did not know.

Either way, if she seized the initiative and pressed down with her presence, then probed for the woman’s true heart, she would learn the truth.

So first—

Lady Deokseong laid her hand on Hilbang Hall’s door.

Ordinarily a maid would ask the mistress’s wishes before opening the door, but it was hardly difficult to demonstrate that she herself was no mere ordinary maid and to show which of them stood above the other.

Without sending word ahead, Lady Deokseong SLIDE—

—pulled the door open.

*****

The introductory lessons of the Classic of Love, in a way, had a tendency very similar to martial arts.

Chakra. Qing clenched a fist at Gabiya’s native-India pronunciation of ryunhyeol—chakra. Oh, oh, chakra! Although... wasn’t that from Japan? Ninjas, nine-tailed foxes? Whatever.

But contrary to what Qing had assumed, chakra was not the energy itself.

If anything, chakra was the concept that corresponded to the Central Plains’ dantian, while the spiritual power Qing had been thinking of as chakra was something else entirely—prana, India’s own qi.

In any case, the Indian-style dantian, the chakras, existed as seven points from the base of the pelvis up to the crown of the head.

Regrettably, they were not something you opened stage by stage from the bottom up.

First Gate, open! Second Gate, open! It wasn’t that kind of thing...

If you trained one chakra, the remaining six also grew along with it.

However, the ones higher up were the higher chakras.

So if you trained the ones above, the ones below grew quickly and your achievement was fast, while if you trained the ones below, everything was inevitably slower.

In other words, they were seven interlinked gears.

The closer to the head, the larger the gear; the lower you went, the smaller the gears became.

Large gears were hard to turn, but if you turned them even a little, the small gears connected to them spun at incredible speed.

Small gears were easy to turn, but to turn a large gear one full rotation, a small gear had to spin dozens—depending on diameter, hundreds or thousands—of times.

“Then wouldn’t training the Thousand-Petaled Crown Chakra be the fastest way?”

“Heehee. Your Ladyship. The Thousand-Petaled Crown Chakra is the chakra that communes with the universe and, in that communion, realizes the true self and reaches Nirvana. If someone could train it directly, that person would not be human but a Buddha—a Buddha among Buddhas, permitted to touch the complete universe.”

“Mm.”

“Even Shakyamuni, the most exalted among human beings, stopped at training the Insight Chakra—the Ajna Chakra, the sixth level. Even that much authority is something impossible for ordinary mortals.”

“I see.”

Qing felt distinctly underwhelmed.

This isn’t what I signed up for.

Why am I suddenly sitting through something that’s basically martial arts? Should I be calling this Indian-style martial arts? Why am I in this lecture?

But Insight Chakra... mm. Insight... I want ribs...

At Qing’s lukewarm reaction, Gabiya chuckled softly and turned deadly alluring again.

“That is why we ordinary mortals train the second chakra, the Bliss Chakra—Svadhisthana.”

“Bliss Chakra.”

Qing’s eyes lit back up.

Bliss Chakra? Just from the name, this sounded promising.

The body’s second chakra, the Bliss Chakra, was located at the genitals, the sexual center.

“In other words, we train the chakras through pleasure. And this pleasure is not only of the body but also of mind and soul, so it touches not only on my own joy but on the rapture gained by granting joy to the other as well.”

“Oooh. It’s kind of weird for you to suddenly pivot to pleasure here, but somehow it’s very persuasive.”

“Heehee. Thus the teachings of the Classic of Love record postures for men and women to share their union in the greatest delight. If Your Ladyship were to learn such positions, heehee, surely you understand what I am saying...?”

Positions, finally! Yes, this was the Kama-sutra.

Qing’s eyes were sparkling outright.

If she had ever studied with this kind of attitude in her past life, she probably wouldn’t have gotten struck by lightning while playing video games.

“Then, how about the positions? Is there a book?”

“Heehee. Your Ladyship is refreshingly bold, unlike most women. Is it because you are a woman of the martial world? Still, a woman’s shyness is also a great charm, so... I will pass that part on to you later.”

Gabiya’s smile deepened.

For her, the fact that Her Ladyship was so eager to learn and felt no reluctance was a delightful stroke of luck.

Her mission did not end at winning the Crown Princess’s favor and becoming her close confidante.

The Classic of Love was a discipline of attaining and bestowing immense pleasure.

Under the name of “instruction,” she was to grant the Crown Princess bliss of paradise and addict her to pleasure, to the point that the woman could not live without Gabiya, would beg and crave her touch—

To make her a complete prisoner of bliss and hold her fast.

Yet even in India, the order that studied the Classic of Love was treated as an endlessly wicked coven of witches. In the Central Plains, how much worse would it be?

That was why Qing’s unhesitating scholarly zeal could only be welcome.

Otherwise, Gabiya would have had to keep coaxing her for a long time with talk of the Crown Prince’s favor and the miserable reality of consorts who failed to win that favor.

“Heehee. Your Ladyship, then... for today, shall I introduce the basic eleven positions first?”

“You can introduce more if you want.”

“Heehee. Do not be so hasty. Your Ladyship, may this humble girl dare trespass upon the bed?”

“Sure.”

At that, Gabiya rolled up the quilt, then unfastened a cord from somewhere and tied it tightly around the bundle.

“Now, think of this as the man. I will be explaining with a focus on the woman’s movements. This first one is called the Bridge Pose.”

Gabiya lay back on the bed, bent her knees, and spread her legs.

Maybe because it was the first one, it was... honestly, a bit tame.

For people from Qing’s homeland, how many of them had not seen that posture beyond the glass of some screen?

Then came talk of angles and this-or-that about the pelvis, and that if you had enough pillows you could use them this way and that for an even more enjoyable coupling, and so on and so forth...

“Ohh, and then move the legs like that?”

“Heehee. It does require a bit of training. But since Your Ladyship is a martial artist, you should manage it easily, should you not?”

Student enthusiasm fired Gabiya’s own mood.

So she grabbed the quilt and started bouncing, saying that you had to accompany it with appropriate moans, demonstrating what a convincing love-cry should sound like.

“Haah... haaah... Your Ladyship, at this point, if the man becomes desperate and increases his speed, then you match him by snapping your hips in time, and with your mouth right beside his ear you give great cries to match, so that in the listener’s ear it sounds like a thunderous climax, like this—hyaa, haaah, haah, haaah...!”

Gabiya deftly manipulated the quilt in the role of the man, and... oh, it was surprisingly convincing.

Pinned beneath the quilt as it bucked desperately, Gabiya let out breathless moans, her voice thick with panting and wetness—

“Hyat, hff, ngh, ugh, haaah...!”

And that was when it happened.

SLIDE.

As if possessed by some automatic door spirit, the door suddenly, abruptly, slid open.