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Chapter 12: Of Imperial Hangovers and Roaring Lions
🕑 Added 2025-07-09 00:33:07 +0000 UTCThe afternoon calm did not extend to all wings of the palace. Wei Yao was in the midst of her own meditation when the door to her chambers was thrown open with an urgency that bordered on disrespect. A eunuch from the Emperor's personal service prostrated himself on the floor, his voice trembling.
"Your Imperial Highness... the Emperor... His Majesty summons you to his private study. Immediately."
Wei Yao opened her eyes, her calm golden gaze showing no surprise.
"Understood. You may leave."
The eunuch practically fled. Wei Yao took her time. She rose, smoothed her robes, and walked toward her father's study with deliberate calm, each step silent and measured. Her mind was not clouded by fear, but sharpened by strategic preparation.
"He's going to roar," she thought. "Good. Let him roar. A dragon that roars is a dragon showing its weaknesses. A dragon that must shout to affirm its power is a dragon that has already lost it."
She found her father, Emperor Wei Zheng, exactly as she had anticipated: pacing like a caged beast in his opulent study. His face was florid, a reddish hue that clashed with his golden robes. The air was charged with the electricity of his contained rage.
Seeing her enter, he stopped and glared at her.
"INSUBORDINATION!" he roared, his voice making a delicate teacup vibrate on his desk. "That's what it was! An act of rebellion in my own court! You've turned a vital alliance into a circus act for your own ego!"
Wei Yao performed a perfect bow, her back straight, her head tilted at the precise angle of filial respect. But when she spoke, her voice was as cold as steel.
"Father."
"Don't call me 'Father' in that tone!" he shouted, resuming his furious pacing. "You have humiliated the Golden Sword Sect! You have jeopardized decades of careful diplomacy! And you have humiliated me, your Emperor, in front of the entire kingdom!"
"With all due respect, Your Majesty," Wei Yao replied, her calm voice cutting through his fury like a blade of ice, "what I did was transform a transaction of weakness into a demonstration of strength."
"A demonstration of strength?" he scoffed. "Challenging your fiancé to a duel? That is a spoiled child's madness!"
"Was he my fiancé at that moment, Father? No, he was a suitor. One who tried to publicly claim me with a gift, as if I were a prize mare to be bought at market. Had I meekly accepted, the message sent to the world would have been clear: the Great Wei Empire is so desperate for an alliance that it sells its heiress for a necklace."
The Emperor stopped, his breathing ragged.
"The necklace was a treasure! A token of his sincerity!"
"It was a diamond leash, Father. And I am no one's pet," Wei Yao retorted, her voice still calm but with an unmistakable edge. "Now, the message is different. Now the entire kingdom will know that the heiress to the Dragon Throne is not a prize to be bought, but a power to be matched. They will know that our lineage does not bow to wealth, but demands a show of true strength."
"You've put Jin Tian in an impossible position!" the Emperor snapped, changing tactics. "He couldn't refuse without looking like a coward!"
"Exactly," Wei Yao confirmed. "And if he had looked like a coward, would that be the man you'd want as your heiress's consort? A man who fears a woman? A man who backs down from a challenge? My test doesn't just measure his strength, Father; it measures his character. His mettle."
The Emperor stared at her, his eyes bloodshot.
"And what of your own mettle! What happens if you lose? Not only will you be engaged, but you will be so from a position of weakness! The empire will look weak!"
"I will not lose," Wei Yao said. It was not bravado. It was a simple statement of fact. Her confidence was so absolute, so serene, that it left her father speechless for a moment. "And if I were to," she continued, her flawless logic building a wall around her, "the empire would not look weak. It would look as though we keep our word. That we respect honor and martial traditions above all else. That even in defeat, we have integrity. Both options, Father, are a political victory. The only defeat would have been submission."
Wei Zheng opened his mouth to shout again, but no words came out. He was trapped. Frustrated. He could feel the truth in her cold logic, and that only infuriated him more. He couldn't refute her arguments without seeming like a weak, emotional tyrant—the very traits he hated in himself because they were a pale reflection of his brother's indifference.
"Get out," he finally managed to say, his voice a choked croak. "GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!"
He dismissed her with a sharp wave of his hand, turning his back so he wouldn't have to look at her. Defeated.
Wei Yao performed another perfect bow.
"As you command, Your Imperial Majesty."
She withdrew from the study with the same deliberate calm with which she had entered, having won the confrontation without once raising her voice. Her steel-like mettle, forged in years of neglect and polished by her uncle's guidance, had been tested. And it had not bent.
Far from the tension of the imperial study, in the chaotic chambers of Prince Wei Feng, the atmosphere was decidedly less regal. Empty wine bottles lay on their sides like fallen soldiers. Half-eaten scraps of food adorned various surfaces. And in the middle of it all, Wei Feng was sprawled on a divan with a cold compress on his forehead, complaining dramatically.
"My head..." he moaned, his voice full of theatrical suffering. "I think it's trying to split in two. This is the end. The Dao has finally come to claim me for my sins."
Sitting in a chair across from him, Fatty Meng popped a grape into his mouth and let out a laugh that shook the floor.
"Ha, ha, ha! By all the treasures, my friend Feng, that was a work of art! A symphony of chaos! Young Master Jin's face looked like a rotten tomato someone had stepped on!"
"Don't shout, Meng," Wei Feng complained, adjusting the compress. "The walls of my skull are fragile at the moment. My poor, delicate constitution is not made for such... emotions."
"Emotions? It was a masterpiece!" Meng continued, laughing again. "And the Emperor! For a moment I thought a vein was going to pop in his forehead! Magnificent! Absolutely magnificent!"
"A shame they threw me out," Wei Feng sighed with feigned sadness. "I missed the best part of the banquet. Tell me, did they serve the Eight Treasures Lacquered Duck? The crispy skin, the juicy meat... I missed it all defending my niece's honor. An uncle's sacrifice knows no bounds..."
Fatty Meng nearly choked on a grape from laughing.
"Honor? My friend, you stole her engagement necklace in front of the entire court! It was the most glorious, brazen act of piracy I've ever seen! Bards will sing songs about it!"
"Details, details," Wei Feng said, waving a dismissive hand. "It was an act of fashion critique. The blue of those gems clashed with her golden eyes. An aesthetic crime. I simply rectified the situation." He paused. "So... was there duck?"
"No, there was no duck," Meng said, finally calming his laughter. "The mood soured a bit after you were dragged out." He leaned forward, his expression growing more serious, though his eyes still twinkled with amusement. "But let's forget the peacocks and angry emperors. Let's talk about important matters: the wine."
Wei Feng's eyes, previously dull from his "headache," instantly lit up with pure greed. He sat up, forgetting his compress, which fell to the floor.
"You have news?"
"My network is efficient," Meng said proudly. "I've confirmed the details. It's three jars from the Forgotten Era, sealed with stasis talismans that not even the academy scholars can decipher. Preliminary analysis suggests the liquor inside is not only a thousand years old, but was brewed with Celestial Peak Ice Flowers, a plant believed to be extinct since the Fall of the Sorcerer Emperor."
Wei Feng listened with the attention of a devotee in a temple. His mouth watered.
"Ice Flowers..." he whispered with reverence. "The nectar of the immortals. Meng, my friend, my brother... we must acquire that wine."
"That's the plan," Meng nodded. "But it won't be easy. I've heard the Black Cauldron Sect and the mysterious Pavilion of Shadows have also shown interest. Not for the taste, of course; those brutes wouldn't appreciate the complexity. They think it holds some kind of cultivation secret."
"Idiots," Wei Feng declared. "Who needs cultivation secrets when you can taste history in a cup?" He leaned back again, his mind already working. "Now for the most important question. Once we have it... how do we drink it? Chilled, to preserve the essence of the Ice Flowers? Or at room temperature, to allow the complex aromas of a thousand years of aging to fully open up?"
"Chilled, of course!" Meng declared. "Anything else would be heresy!"
"You're insane!" Wei Feng retorted, sitting up again. "The cold would kill the nuances! Only a barbarian would chill such a wine!"
The imperial tension had been replaced by a much more important debate.
While the two hedonists argued about the ideal wine temperature, the will of the empire was being made public. In the capital's central square, before the Temple of the Ascendant Dragon, an imperial herald in an embroidered robe and with a powerful voice unrolled a scroll sealed with red wax.
A crowd of merchants, artisans, children, and cultivators quickly gathered, the buzz of their conversations silenced by the beating of a drum.
"BY EDICT OF HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY, THE DRAGON EMPEROR WEI ZHENG!" the herald thundered, his voice amplified by Qi. "LET IT BE KNOWN IN ALL CORNERS OF THE REALM!"
He paused, ensuring he had everyone's attention.
"To strengthen the bonds of friendship and martial respect between the Great Wei Empire and the honorable Golden Sword Sect, an exchange of wisdom and power has been agreed upon. Hereby is announced the Duel of Three Moves."
An excited murmur rippled through the crowd.
"Her Imperial Highness, Princess Wei Yao, the Jade Phoenix of the Empire, and Young Master Jin Tian, the Golden Sword of the North, will face each other in an honorable martial exchange to demonstrate the excellence of their respective paths of cultivation."
"A duel!" a merchant shouted in the crowd. "I'm going to make a fortune on the betting!"
"The princess is powerful, but Jin Tian is a genius of a generation," an scholar debated with his companion. "The political implications are immense."
The herald continued, his voice cutting through the murmurs:
"The duel will take place in the Imperial Arena in exactly one month, on the day of the Full Moon Festival. The conditions are as follows: three exchanges. If Young Master Jin manages to force Her Imperial Highness back a single step, or if she fails to disturb his composure, victory will be declared for the Golden Sword Sect, and talks for a sacred engagement will begin immediately."
The crowd erupted. The duel was no longer a private court affair. It was the biggest, most anticipated event of the year.
The herald finished reading, rolled up the scroll, and with a solemn motion, nailed it to a large edict post in the center of the square. The Imperial Dragon's Seal, carved into the wood, glowed with a golden light in the sunset, sealing the fate of the princess and the suitor in a public, inescapable challenge the entire kingdom would watch.
