Chapter 21: Silken Resurrections and the Phoenix's Rekindled Flame
"Let the music surge! Let the dance persist! None shall falter!"
Ye Changfeng contemplated his enervated reflection in mercury-polished mirrors, humiliation fermenting beneath imperial silks. The courtyard's carnal symphony—zithers plucking at voided passions, dancers undulating for spectatorial phantoms—mocked his sovereign inadequacy.
"Celestial Majesty!" Bodyguard Yu Er breached vermilion portals, bearing a damask-swaddled enigma. "This unworthy hound proffers... rejuvenation!"
The seraglio dispersed like moon-startled herons, peach-blossom veils clinging to jade-limbed nymphs as they sought sanctuary behind painted landscapes. Yu Er's gaze lingered on quivering silhouettes—fifty carnal muses now trembling lotus petals in autumn's first chill.
"Cease your garrulous bleating!" Changfeng's fist sundered sandalwood armrests.
"Witness the capital's carnal apotheosis!" Yu Er unveiled his trove with a thaumaturgic flourish.
Arachnean artisans had spun their witchcraft—bodices of moonlit cobwebs beaded with dewdrop pearls, gowns where negative space sculpted more than fabric concealed. Changfeng's gorge rose as revelation struck: Ye Ling's infernal contrivances now defiled his sanctum.
"These... profanities..."
"Acquired through sanguinary auction!" Yu Er persisted, oblivious to his liege's gathering storm. "Merchants duel with daggers drawn for such treasures!"
Changfeng's censure withered. Daylight's treasonous flicker haunted him—that momentary frisson when Spring Breeze Pavilion's silken heresies had first seared his retinas. His fingers carved crescents into armrests as painted screens whispered of veiled resurrections.
"Adorn them." The edict slithered through clenched jade teeth.
Tremulous hands sheathed nudity in strategic revelation. The concubines emerged as metamorphosed lepidoptera—rosebud nipples peering through pearl-strung trellises, thighs sheathed in arachnidian silk. Their mortification burned brighter than ceremonial pyres.
"Approach."
As jasmine-scented forms converged, Changfeng drained a phoenix-etched ampoule—the dowager's ambiguous elixir coursing through meridians like liquid starlight. The courtyard's pipa strings quickened their cadence as silk embraced flesh, painted landscapes rippling to rhythms exiled from memory.
Beyond the cinnabar gates, Yu Er pressed an ear to lacquered panels, grinning at the primaeval symphony within. Let Ye Ling peddle his tinselled novelties—true dominion thrived in the eternal waltz of conqueror and conquered.
Dawn's gilded fingers discovered Changfeng's chamber strewn with rent lingerie and shattered alchemical vessels. His laughter reverberated through marble colonnades—equal parts triumph and mania. The game's axis had shifted. Let Ye Ling deluge the capital with silken contagion; a phoenix need but sip from poisoned streams to transmute them into nectar.
In shadowed counting houses, Lü Wu's brush trembled over ledgers logging "mystery patron" expenditures. The chessboard's jade pieces shifted unseen, argent threads of desire weaving dual empires as princes duelled through silk-clad proxies.
Vermilion Coronets and the Blighted Phoenix
"Consort Fu, His Celestial Highness decrees—none may trespass!" Yu Er's blade barred Fu Xianxian's passage at the moon gate, his voice glazed with hoarfrost.
The dissonant clangour of silk-strung zithers and carnal mirth seeped through vermilion fretwork. Fu Xianxian's cicatrix-riddled lips contorted. "How... animated," she hissed, the keloid ridges marring her cheekbones undulating like venomous serpents. What revelry could a sterile husk of royalty muster? Visions of Ye Changfeng salivating over his seraglio provoked only nauseated contempt.
Yu Er's gaze flayed her ravaged countenance—once the capital's peony sovereign, now a blighted chrysanthemum. "These affairs surpass your purview, *Consort*," he venomously stressed the hollow title.
"Purview?" Her laughter grated like rusted scimitars. "This marred visage still bears the phoenix diadem! I remain sovereign of these cinnabar halls!" The courtyard sentries averted their eyes as she retreated, her tattered silks billowing like funerary pennants.
"Senile harridan", a guardsman muttered. "When the new consort arrives—"
Fu Xianxian petrified. Lunar luminescence crystallized the atmosphere around her. *New consort*. The phrase slithered through her meridians, colder than the steel that had sculpted her beauty into grotesquerie.
By dawn's first blush, her web of spies quivered with poison-tipped revelations. Red prostrated herself before moonlit rice-paper screens, trembling. "The Prince's... virility has undergone resurrection. Last nocturne, fifty concubines clad in Vermilion Phoenix Pavilion's newest silken heresie"s—
Fu Xianxian's jade-adorned fingernail snapped. Across the courtyard, artisans unloaded betrothal coffers swathed in imperial yellow—the hue of dynastic usurpation.
Venomous Alliances and the Serpent's Pact
"Her Majesty's concubine concocted such elixirs? How... inventive of the Chen lineage." Fu Xianxian's scar-contorted lips twisted in derision, though disquiet slithered beneath her jade-brocaded sleeves. Changfeng's resurrected virility evaporated her leverage like morning dew beneath midsummer glare—exposing her as vulnerably as winter-stripped boughs.
The mortal strike arrived crimson-veiled. Crimson Adornment prostrated herself, voice quivering. "Consort Chen has negotiated... a transboundary matrimony."
"Which house dares contest the Quintessential Five Clans?" Xianxian's jade-carved nails engraved lunar crescents into rosewood. "Surely not the Chens, flailing like decapitated poultry after Huai's downfall—"
"Not of Great Shang's soil," the maid's whisper oozed like tainted syrup. "Yan's imperial princess."
Glacial rime crystallized within Xianxian's meridians. Yan's royal scions—architects of flesh-devouring lepidoptera, enforcers of eternal conjugal exclusivity. Their nuptial oaths demanded sanguine pacts: *until death's severance—often expedited.
"Desperation midwives grotesque unions," Xianxian spat. That Changfeng would chain himself to Yan's asp-queen illuminated much—Chen's influence dwindled like guttering tallow, Ye Ling's umbra stretching inexorably.
Moonbeams mercury-plated her path to Spring Breeze Pavilion's clandestine alcoves. Erstwhile nemesis became reluctant confederate as she sought parley with the architect of her marital ruin.
"Yan's arachnid princess?" Ye Ling's porcelain cup was arrested mid-sip, steam coiling like inquisitorial incense. "You allege my brother's... *resurgence* enables this mummery?"
"Chen's alchemical adepts perform thaumaturgy," Xianxian riposted, her ravaged visage a jade death-mask. "Yet Yan's dowry includes scorpionicae stilettos and widow's-weave silks. Should this alliance blossom..."
She permitted the implication to dangle—Yan's matriarchal toxins would first purge the harem's garden, then target rival scions.
Dawn's first blush witnessed their silken collusion—Xianxian's palace-intelligence cobweb enmeshed with Ye Ling's mercantile hydra. As a parting gambit, she tendered a lacquered coffer containing Chen's "panacea"—a desiccated hippocampus stuffed with quicksilver and belladonna petals.
"Let us observe," Ye Ling murmured to Lü Wu as Xianxian's palanquin dissolved into pearlescent mist, "whether phoenixes truly resurrect from pyres... or merely immolate in gilded futility."
Beyond the vermilion ramparts, Yan's emissaries unpacked nuptial caskets—hairpins channelling serpent venoms, bridal silks steeped in pheromonal miasmas. The weiqi board's edges smouldered, awaiting the first foolhardy stone cast into destiny's flames.
Regal Wagers and the Silken Conquest
"Does my august sister-in-law not dread obsolescence?" Ye Ling enquired with viperous cordiality, observing Fu Xianxian's feigned detachment. Should Princess Murong Wan of Yan ascend to the vermilion dais, this marred phoenix would be the first to plummet from the marital perch.
"Your proposed stratagem?" Xianxian's jade-carved fingertips drummed an impatient cadence.
"Why, induct Yan's jewel into my seraglio, of course," Ye Ling drawled, reclining against brocaded divans. "They murmur of Murong Wan's beauty eclipsing moonlit lotuses—such rarities belong beneath my silken aegis."
"Your aegis already harbours serpents and jackals!" Xianxian's cicatrix-riddled lips contorted. "Yan's draconian princess tolerates no consorts—would Prince Ling discard his entire menagerie?"
The barb struck true. The prospect of Fu Yuanyuan's expulsion—Xianxian's lifelong tormentor—nearly justified this folly. Nearly.
"Shall we hazard a wager?" Ye Ling's gaze glinted like whetted steel. "Should Murong Wan tread upon Shang's soil, I shall pluck this Yan magnolia from my brother's grasp ere its roots take purchase."
Murong Wan—Yan's living artefact. Blood sister to the warrior-emperor who subdued eight principalities ere thirty winters. A woman whose rejection of Yan's most luminous scholars birthed ballads: *the princess covets no consort's diadem—solely an empress' crown.
Xianxian's mirth grated like rusted manacles. "You overvalue your allure, Prince Ling. This is no simpering concubine beguiled by honeyed lies—Murong Wan devours pretenders as autumn gales strip foliage."
"Ah, but foliage regenerates each vernal rebirth," Ye Ling twirled a jade hairpin—spoils from Zhao Linger's conquest. "The Princess of Chu now graces my chambers. The 'Unparalleled Luminary of Shang' Fu Yuanyuan anticipates nocturnal summons. What distinguishes this Yan blossom?"
"Ambition." Xianxian ascended, her shadow elongating like a funerary pall. "Whilst you pursue silken skirts, Murong Wan masters statecraft. Whilst you enumerate concubines, she commands legions. Whilst you—"
"—Whilst I," Ye Ling interjected, clasping her scarred wrist, "control the cypher to her apotheosis. No empress reigns sans imperial sanction." His thumb traced keloid mountain ranges, a pantomime of tenderness. "Shall we witness whose silken snare entangles this lepidoptera?"
As Xianxian retreated through clandestine passageways, Lü Wu materialized from shadowed alcoves. "The princess approaches with five hundred Yan blade-weavers and nine caskets of widow's vestments."
"Exquisite." Ye Ling's smile broadened. "Ensure our 'welcoming symposium' surpasses even Spring Breeze Pavilion's grandeur. Let us demonstrate to Yan's gem how Shang's princes amalgamate... hospitality with aspiration."
Beyond the cinnabar ramparts, Murong Wan's caravan halted. Her onyx gaze dissected the capital's silhouette—not as a nuptial prize,ut as a sovereign claimant. The xiangqi board's ivory pieces quivered, anticipating the inaugural manoeuvre in this lethal courtship ritual.
Monarchal Wagers and the Silken Intrigue
"Prince Ling may revel in transient triumphs, yet his tarnished renown..." Fu Xianxian's acerbic words dangled like venom-tipped quills. Her unvoiced terror festered: Murong Wan's advent would annihilate her precarious palace standing. Yet she shrouded dread in contempt, clinging to the acrid consolation that even Ye Ling—a disgraced non-heir—stood a negligible chance of beguiling Yan's imperious princess.
"Witness and be enlightened," Ye Ling riposted, his fingertips caressing scandalous lingerie blueprints. The diagrams' licentious geometries mocked Xianxian's prudish admonitions. "Your solicitude for my matrimonial prospects proves... endearing. Shall we hazard five million taels upon my conquest?"
The sum mirrored Xianxian's residual dowry—celadon heirlooms, ancestral acreages, and the final fragments of her erstwhile splendour. Her cicatrix-marred visage spasmed. "You invite ridicule."
"And you court destitution." Ye Ling's grin was honed to a razor's edge. Murong Wan's fabled exactitude signified naught—every woman harboured vulnerabilities, even warrior-aristocrats. He'd breached Zhao Linger's glacial reserve and unravelled Fu Yuanyuan's hauteur. What challenge posed one more conquest?
Xianxian's jade bangles clashed discordantly as she ascended. "Amass your bullion, Prince Ling. When Murong Wan rebuffs your gauche overtures, even Spring Breeze Pavilion's vaults shall haemorrhage."
As her footsteps dissipated, Lü Wu materialized from shadowed recesses. "The princess's retinue approaches with three hundred Yan toxophilites and sixteen caskets of viperine chrysalides."
"Exquisite." Ye Ling's brush resumed its choreography across vellum—a novel design featuring ophidian lace and concealed apertures. "Our 'welcoming symposium' shall showcase dancers in these habiliments. Let us assay whether Yan's glacial sovereign resists... calculated revelations."
Beyond the cinnabar battlements, Murong Wan's onyx litter paused at a crossroads. Her ancestral blade—relic of the Eight Banners Campaign—gleamed beneath lunar radiance. "Chronicle the prince's latest impertinence," she commanded her intelligence master.
"The Humble Prince stakes five million on seducing Your Highness within a lunar cycle."
A rictus of amusement graced Murong Wan's lips—the inaugural in a decade. "Triple sentries upon our venenum reserves. This fool's species shall finance Yan's boreal conquests."
The nocturnal ether thickened with tacit machinations. In clandestine ateliers, Xianxian's agents murmured of jade coiffure pins laced with wolfsbane. Ye Ling's couturiers stitched pheromonal satins into carmine cheongsams. Murong Wan's alchemists distilled novel toxins from xeric blossoms.
As auroral gilding kissed palace eaves, three architects of this lethal pas de trois smiled—each convinced of imminent ascendancy. The chessboard stood arrayed, the ivory combatants poised. Let the silken gambit commence.
Silken Stratagems and the Princely Ploy
Fu Xianxian's dishevelled retreat intersected with Zhao Miao'er's calculated advance, the latter's willow-grace silhouette undulating through Spring Breeze Pavilion's sandalwood-hazed halls. Miao'er's decorous curtsey met only with Xianxian's marred visage pivoting away—a rebuff as frigid as midwinter's inaugural frost.
"Your Grace's diversions never cease to beguile," Miao'er murmured mellifluously, her lotus-footed glide halting before Ye Ling's desk strewn with salacious blueprints. The Prince of Humility scarcely glanced upward from his latest innovation—a corset design reimagining modesty's frontiers through gossamer silks and strategic apertures.
"Preliminary renderings for the semifinal exhibition," Ye Ling proclaimed, sliding parchment across lacquered rosewood. The illustrations unveiled courtesans in nebulous chiffons accentuating every contour—a symposium of calculated revelation. Miao'er's jade pallor flushed carmine despite years of demimonde composure.
"Can such... provocative vestments truly grace public spectacle?" Her fan trembled like a caged sparrow.
"Dissimulation ill suits you, Princess of Chu," Ye Ling retorted, his quill hovering mid-stroke. "Your establishment trades in flesh beneath sonnet's pretence. These creations merely refine the commerce."
Miao'er's breath caught as his fingertip traced a décolletage defying propriety. "Yet our patrons—"
"—shall bankrupt treasuries for this artistry." Ye Ling's chuckle rippled through crystal bead curtains. "Only geldings and my... enfeebled sibling would scorn such allure."
The barbed allusion to Crown Prince Changfeng's rumoured incapacity lingered like tainted nectar. Miao'er's polished smile wavered, memories surfacing of her sister Zhao Linger's ill-fated pact with the infirm heir.
"Your designs could tempt ascetics," she conceded, retreating behind peony-stitched sleeves.
Ye Ling's gaze honed to a dagger's edge. "And do they tempt *you*, Miao'er of Chu?" His palm alighted upon the crescent of her spine, kindling forbidden pathways beneath brocade. "Shall we assay these prototypes?"
The princess-turned-madame stood transfixed—ensnared between dynastic obligation and this silk-clad maelstrom's primal pull. Ye Ling's lips grazed her jade ear as he pressed folded damask into quivering hands. "Consider this your... inaugural couture trial."
Beyond the partition, Xianxian's spies transcribed every murmur for clandestine couriers. In the armoury, Lü Wu scrutinised Yan's latest toxin-laden coiffure pins. Within the palace kitchens, aphrodisiac brews simmered—their vapours coiling like the ambitions suffusing this lethal sartorial theatre.
The players assembled. Let the silken insurrection commence.
Silken Machinations and the Princess' Gambit
"These gossamer textiles were wrought to celebrate your... *bounteous charms*," Ye Ling intoned, suspending the audacious raiment before Zhao Miao'er. The fabric glimmered with lunar luminescence, its artful apertures vowing revelation beyond mere veiling.
Miao'er's vermilion-tipped fingers etched crescents into her jade-adorned fan. "Should I... acquiesce," she ventured, her Chu-inflected timbre quivering with orchestrated fragility, "might Your Eminence deign to bestow this lowly blossom a favour?"
Ye Ling's mirth crystallized the chamber's atmosphere. "Stipulations? How prosaically mercantile." His ink-besmirched digits discarded the garment like obsolete decrees. "I abhor parleying with women who conflate chambers of repose with mercantile exchanges."
The censure pierced deeper than Jian blades. Miao'er's meticulously woven fantasy—of ascending as Humble Consort to avenge her mother's poisoning, of dismantling Zhao Linger through nuptial supremacy—disintegrated like withered lotus petals under autumn's breath.
"You... you insufferable—!"
"—Pragmatist?" Ye Ling completed it, reclining with felid elegance. "Scrutinize your mirror image, Princess. What worth does a pawn hold for a grandmaster?"
The verity hung icier than midwinter's inaugural frost. Despite damask robes and fenghuang coiffure, Miao'er remained perpetually bound—a regal hostage camouflaged as a courtesan, her imperial lineage diluted by decades of exile.
As she fled through corridors thick with opium's soporific shroud, Ye Ling's valedictory barb pursued like a vengeful wraith: *"Remorse is an indulgence reserved for consequential souls."
Dawn discovered Miao'er upon Spring Breeze Pavilion's zenith balcony, her tears vaporizing in the acrid smoke spiralling from the capital's indigent quarters. Below, Yan's standard-bearers pierced the morning's silver veil—Murong Wan's retinue advancing like ink permeating rice paper.
"Third Imperial Sibling", the Yan princess murmured, her onyx gaze dissecting the metropolis' paradoxes, "your intelligencers chronicled famine and discord. Yet these thoroughfares teem with silk magnates and spice moguls."
Prince Murong Wei adjusted his falconer's vambrace, smile honed to scalpel precision. "A gilded aviary persists as confinement, dear sister. The more strident the songbirds' trills..."
"...the tighter the serpent's constriction," Wan concluded, fingertips grazing the vial of midnight orchid venom at her obi. Somewhere within this saccharine viper's den, a prince awaited her—armed with five million taels and delusions of conquest.
The game's axioms transmuted. Let the silken conflicts unfurl their banners.
Gilded Facades and the Viper's Gaze
"Discernment must transcend idle hearsay," Murong Wei retorted, his falcon-like gaze dissecting the bustling thoroughfares. "Great Shang's heartland nurtures fertile soil and unfathomable prosperity. Their resilience in the face of trials remains unparalleled—this year's salt revenues alone could revive tripledrowned prefectures."
"Elder Brother sang a different tune beyond the Nephrite Gate." Murong Wan inclined her head, silver tassels cascading like celestial trails over alabaster brows. "Did you not denounce Great Shang as a gilded phantom, its glittering exterior masking worm-eaten timbers?"
The Yan prince's silence reverberated like thunder. Their convoy's covert mission—to plant Miaojiang's mind-consuming *gu* larvae during the Mid-Autumn poetry symposium—now wavered before Shang's undeniable vitality.
"Behold these streets," Wei gestured to spice magnates haggling over saffron stigmas priced by their golden weight. "Does this resemble a dying realm? The crystalline dragon effigy sold for twenty million taels—even Dayu commissioned its twin. Our previous intelligence reeks of calculated deceit."
Wan's silver bell pendants chimed as she furrowed her brow. "Then our *gu* strategy..."
"Delayed until Dayu's machinations come to light." Wei adjusted his adder-skin vambrace, his mind ablaze with new calculations. The imperial letter from Shang's first prince proposing marriage to Wan now seemed less absurd—especially if the supposedly incompetent heir apparent faltered.
As their carriage passed a gem-encrusted palanquin, Wan's jade-handled fan froze. The curtain parted—revealing Ye Ling's smouldering scrutiny.
Time stood still.
Ling's breath hitched at the vision—onyx eyes framed by a silver phoenix coronet, lips like bruised pomegranate seeds. This was no simpering concubine but a ruler forged from winter's primal frost and summer's molten core.
"Your Highness, that procession bears Yan's standard," Counsellor Liu Ren murmured, noting his lord's unusual silence. "The vanguard's lady is Princess Murong Wan."
"Prepare the Lunar Contemplation Pavilion," Ling decreed, fingers tightening aroundround the pheromone-infused parchment scroll. "We shall entertain Yan's envoys with... unprecedented opulence."
Across the lane, Wan's porcelain composure cracked—a blush staining her cheeks as Ling's palanquin vanished in a cloud of sandalwood incense. Her fingers instinctively brushed the death's-head moth resting at her collarbone.
"Interesting," Wei observed his sister's uncharacteristic discomposure. "It seems Shang's scions possess unexpected... charms."
The procession advanced, its shadow stretching like a serpent tasting the wind. In treasury chambers, Lü Wu counted emergency funds for "cultural exchange symposia". In pleasure domes, Zhao Miao'er requisitioned hidden reserves of Yan's precious snow lotus wine.
The Mid-Autumn moon swelled silver, its light gilding countless whispered conspiracies. Let the poetry contest begin—its verses will carve the fates of dynasties.
Silken Seductions and the Viper's Gaze
"Yan's princesses command gu arts as instinctively as respiration—Your Eminence must temper curiosity with caution..." Advisor Liu Ren's admonition dissipated into the sultry afternoon haze as Ye Ling's gaze remained anchored to Murong Wan's receding silhouette.
"Murong Wan... thus the celestial vision bears the asp's nomenclature," Ye Ling mused, fingertips grazing the spectral impression of her argent-wrought veil. "How exquisitely destiny braids its cords."
Liu Ren exhaled wearily, discerning the patina of fixation glazing his liege's eyes. The prince absorbed naught beyond the princess's appellation, his intellect already spinning arachnid webs to entrap Yan's most lethal blossom.
Across the metropolis, Murong Wan's jade comb fractured mid-arc. "Third Imperial Sibling", she ventured, carmine blossoming beneath her lunar-pallid complexion, "might comely countenances of divine craftsmanship truly exist?"
"Beauty withers swifter than vernal cherry blooms," Murong Wei reproved, adjusting his ophidian-scale vambrace. "Solely martial puissance withstands chronology's abrasions." Yet his thoughts accelerated—Shang's first prince, Ye Changfeng, thought to be impotent, possessed the delicate mien Yan's warriors inherently lacked.
Wan's argent carillons pealed a defiant cadence. "A comely visage kindles appetite—three rice bowls would vanish where two sufficed! Must pulchritude and vigour exist in mutual exclusion?" Her insurrection against Yan's orthodoxy—that monstrous physiognomies signified combative might—coiled like a dormant gu chrysalis.
As the Mid-Autumn orb swelled gilt-edged, the capital throbbed with dual frenzies. The Silken Enigma Tournament's apotheosis loomed, its finalists sheathed exclusively in Ye Ling's revolutionary contrivances—translucent bodices accruing auric fortunes whilst channelling wealth back to the Humble Prince's coffers.
Spring Breeze Pavilion burgeoned like opium-nurtured papaveraceae, its "Lycanthe Charades" and "Scripted Homicides" draining aristocratic coffers as efficaciously as courtesans depleted patrons' vitality. Concurrently, Chen's pleasure domes crumbled—their erstwhile celebrated "Chromatique Saule" courtesans defecting to Ye Ling's silken insurrection, their pallid qipaos supplanted by lace-hemmed provocations.
In shadowed alcoves, Zhao Miao'er's intelligencers chronicled each desertion. Within Yan's compound, alchemists distilled novel toxins from xeric-flora nectars. In the palace's crypt-like vaults, Lü Wu tallied tainted bullion—five million taels of Xianxian's dowry now financing the machinations poised to annihilate her.
The proscenium radiated ersatz selenic glare as Ye Ling's tailors sutured their magnum opus—a raiment spun from araneid silk and vaulting ambition, its décolletage plunging like a stiletto's trajectory toward a cardiac core. Beyond cinnabar portals, Murong Wan's digits brushed an ampoule containing Midnight Orchid's Caress—venom or philter, contingent upon the brewer's design.
Let the Mid-Autumn stanzas commence. Let silken filaments intertwine with toxic yearning. The authentic poesy shall be inscribed in sanguine currents and auric pigments.
Silken Delusions and the Viper's Pursuit
"Third Imperial Sibling, Contestant Nine's raiment—how resplendent!" Murong Wan leaned precariously over the lacquered balcony in her borrowed Shang merchant's disguise, eyes gleaming like a magpie coveting pilfered moonstones. Below, the model's soul-ensnaring ensemble clung to curves that defied both terrestrial physics and Confucian propriety.
Murong Wei's knuckles blanched against the rosewood balustrade. "Indubitably," he gritted through molars clenched against primal yearnings. The garment transcended mere attire—it was psychological warfare waged through araneid silk and calculated revelation.
When Contestant Seventeen materialized in latticework stockings and mercury-gilded stilettos, Wan's gasp fogged the crystal pane. "Such artistry! When I take consort, he shall be enrobed in these silken..." Her rhapsody dissolved into breathless admiration as male models showcased abdominal topography that could carve jade seals.
"These are salaried paramours," Wei rumbled, perspiration beading beneath his starched collar. "Observe through ocular faculties alone—cerebral and tactile engagements strictly prohibited."
Wan's mood evaporated as her gaze snared distant silhouettes—Ye Ling's retreating form consumed by Spring Breeze Pavilion's opulent umbra, while Ye Changfeng lingered beneath peony-carpeted archways.
"Third Sibling! The comely vision from our vehicular encounter!" Her digits fluttered like captive orioles.
"Denizens of pleasure quarters reek of moral turpitude," Wei snapped, misattributing her fascination to Changfeng's consumptive elegance. "That wraith's rumoured half-eunuch—hardly martial pedigree."
"We trespass identical dens of iniquity," Wan riposted dulcetly, her lethal naïveté honed through decades of gu cultivation.
Wei's scrutiny narrowed on Changfeng's pearl-encrusted obi. "Passably comely, yet..." His censure faltered as the crown prince coughed sanguine fluid into a silk kerchief—frailty masquerading as poetic pallor.
Unobserved, Ye Ling surveilled from shadowed alcoves. His pièce de résistance—a masculine corset accentuating every striated muscle—adorned the model currently transfixing Wan. The pheromonic silk exuded strategic fragrances: nocturnal cereus for arousal and alabaster sandalwood for hypnosis.
"Infuse the jasmine elixir," Ling murmured to a prostrate attendant. "Our Yan blossom requires... hydration."
As Wei reluctantly draughted nuptial overtures to Changfeng, Wan's fingers brushed a concealed compartment housing Golden Cicada's Exhalation—a tincture guaranteed to liquefy resistance. Her gaze lingered where Ling's shadow had dematerialized.
Let simpletons pursue paper felines. True predators prowl in silken stillness.
The Mid-Autumn orb attained its zenith, argent luminescence gilding myriad tacit cabals. In demimonde pavilions, Zhao Miao'er pulverized another celadon teacup. Within palace crypts, Lü Wu chronicled another Chen brothel's insolvency. Upon the competition dais, the ultimate model emerged—attired solely in strategically positioned verse.
The authentic contest had merely commenced.
Silken Insurrections and the Viper's Escapade
"Such affairs demand scrupulous deliberation," Murong Wei intoned through clenched molars, his talon-like grip blanching the lacquered armrest. The spectre of Murong Wan's fascination with Ye Changfeng now loomed as a geopolitical chess move and personal peril—Yan's imperial gemstone could ill afford whimsical nuptials.
Murong Wan's mirth cascaded like argent carillons, her gaze ensorcelled by the catwalk's silk-wrapped phantoms. "Third Imperial Sibling, these vestments are numinous! We must acquire them for northern palatinates!" Her rapture blinded her to the political maelstrom her caprices might conjure, this anomalous blossom whose celestial pulchritude defied Yan's martial orthodoxy.
"Preposterous!" Wei's censure fractured like glacial shards. "You are imperial nephrite, not some brocaded courtesan to flaunt such..." His rhetoric faltered before avant-garde designs—gossamer under-robes charting stellar cartographies upon flesh, waist-constricting qiyao transmuting sinews into living statuary.
"I shall don them solely for my future consort's ocular pleasure," Wan riposted, her vulpine smirk belying the lethal gu ampoules concealed within her sleeves. As Wei turned to summon chrysanthemum infusion, she dissolved into moonlit corridors—a quicksilver lepidopteran drawn to Spring Breeze Pavilion's forbidden pyre.
The expiring diurnal blaze gilded Wan's countenance as she emerged onto the thoroughfare, her borrowed scholar's raiment failing to cloak the predator within. The serpentine queue before "Vernal Rapture" intrigued her—a hydra-headed mass of mercantile aspirants and libertines murmuring of philteric elixirs and lingerie promising "draconian vitality".
"What mercantile alchemy transpires herein?" Her query hung amidst jasmine-perfumed zephyrs, met by a merchant's sneer: "Stripling, these wares would splinter your sparrow's physique. Retreat to your scholastic scrolls."
Unobserved, Ye Ling surveilled from a cinnabar-lacquered gallery. His magnum opus—a masculine corselet woven with pheromonic bombyx fibres—graced the emporium's vitrine. Surveillance networks had long chronicled Wan's aesthetic insurrections; now they thrummed with latent potential. "Prepare the Lunar Lepidoptera Collection," he murmured to a prostrate attendant. "Our Yan phoenix requires... nest-weaving materials."
As Wei's guards flailed in pursuit, Wan's digits caressed a concealed niche—her "Psyche-Syphon" pulsating in anticipation. The night thrummed with latent possibilities, its cadence syncing with her carotid rhythm. Let princes manoeuvre their pawns. True puissance resided in silken insurrections and desire's alchemical crucible.
Beyond the crenellated walls, Zhao Miao'er pulverized another scrying talisman. Within palatial crypts, Lü Wu chronicled another Chen demesne's fiscal collapse. Upon Spring Breeze Pavilion's zenith, a solitary silk gauntlet fluttered like capitulated heraldry—its proprietor already immersed in the labyrinth where statecraft and concupiscence converged.
The jeu had transcended mere textiles. Now dynastic tapestries hung suspended by silken filaments.
Silken Derision and the Viper's Deliverance
Peals of scornful mirth erupted around Murong Wan as hulking patrons appraised her willowy silhouette with lubricious scrutiny. Their vulgar jests painted her alabaster complexion and diminutive stature as emblems of deficiency—martial impotence and carnal inadequacy rendered in flesh.
"Verily! These raiments squander silver on fledgling sparrows!" a heckler jeered, his gaze dissecting Wan's scholar's disguise. Another jibed: "Suckling youths best avoid ladies' affairs!"
Amidst the ridicule, Wan deciphered truth within crudity—"Vernal Rapture" trafficked not in mere lingerie but artillery of seduction for masculine conquests. Her pupils dilated with epiphany: *This emporium provisions Spring Breeze Pavilion's scandalous arsenal!
"Patrons of distinction!" A shopkeeper's clarion call cleaved the cacophony. "Today's curated collection transcends queues—Golden Crest affiliates prioritised!"
Wan surged forward, oblivious to petrified onlookers. "No queues? Marvellous!"
The attendant barred her advance with practised courtesy. "Your Golden Crest sigil, young sir?"
"Sigil?" Wan's porcelain brow creased.
"Twenty thousand taels' patronage confers preferential access." The clerk's smile curdled upon discerning her naïveté. "No credentials? Cease impeding legitimate patrons!"
Tears gemmed Wan's lashes—a cornered leveret facing a wolfpack. Yet ere humiliation could congeal, an obsidian voice intervened: "Her accreditation... We shall vouchsafe."
Ye Ling materialized like ink bleeding through vellum, scattering banknotes like ginkgo leaves in autumn. The attendant blanched, knees striking flagstones in prostration. "This drudge failed to recognize Your Eminence's..."
"Commerce flourishes not through myopic disdain," Ling admonished, though his gaze lingered on Wan's tremulous lips. To the quivering clerk: "To serpents, unsheathe fangs; to nightingales, proffer ambrosia."
As the attendant grovelled, Ling's fingertips grazed Wan's sleeve—a spectral touch awakening dormant gu phials. "Shall we survey these... *instructive* vestments together, celestial stranger?" His smile mirrored an arachnid welcoming prey to its sanctum.
Beyond carmine draperies, mannequins bore revolution: corselets threaded with pheromonic bombyx filaments, hose imbued with hypnotic nectars. The atmosphere itself congealed with intrigue—Zhao Miao'er's spies chronicled each glance exchanged, while Lü Wu's ledgers bloated with tarnished bullion.
Let dullards mock silken insurrection. This nocturne, dynasties would unravel stitch by calculated stitch.
Silken Whispers and the Viper's Waltz
"Must I inscribe directives upon your cretinous cranium?" Ye Ling's admonition crackled like hoarfrost, galvanizing the quaking attendant into motion. Murong Wan ascended the sandalwood staircase in Yan's ceremonial pattens—their staccato *tok-tok* cadence mirroring her fluttering pulse—as Ling's gaze dissected each microexpression flitting across her countenance.
"Have our paths... previously converged?" Wan ventured, fingertips skimming chrysanthemum-carved balustrades. Her auroral blush betrayed aristocratic lineage no scholar's guise could occlude. "That morning by the jade market..."
The confession aborted mid-utterance, severed by her own gasp. *Imbecile!* To nearly unveil her masquerade!
"Ephemeral debts merit no consternation," Ling demurred, veiling triumph. This serpent princess disarmed more delectably than espionage dossiers suggested—a huntress feigning prey. "Appellations cloak truths. Address me as Elder Brother Ye."
Wan's trachea constricted. "Elder Brother Ye..." The honorific dripped from her lips like poisoned nectar, alien yet intoxicating.
"Such karmic intersections demand libations!" Ling gestured toward constellations of lingerie adorning jade mannequins. "Let these silken galaxies be my tribute—harbingers of nuptial euphoria."
Wan's alabaster neck mottled crimson. "These... these would adorn my..." Lexical failure ensued as her psyche conjured illicit tableaux—Ling's digits unravelling pheromone-saturated corsetry.
"Alack," Ling sighed with theatrical melancholy, fingers caressing an obsidian bodice, "*gentlemen* cannot plight troth. Unless..." His smile honed to a dagger's edge. "...your sister might model these for *her* designated paramour."
Wan's resolve liquefied beneath dual onslaughts of scandalous textiles and Ling's velvet baritone expounding on tactile silks and anatomical contouring. "Elder Brother's erudition transcends sartorial arts!"
"Erudition manifests multitudinously." Ling closed the distance, their shadows coalescing. "Behold—" He lifted a gossamer drape revealing décolletage-enhancing brassieres. "—how strategically positioned tassels might divert empires' torrents."
Unseen, Lü Wu chronicled each shared breath through concealed latticework. In adjacent chambers, Zhao Miao'er reduced jadeite seals to particulate. Beneath vermilion rafters, Murong Wei's spies cursed linguistic chasms reducing surveillance to farcical pantomime.
The jeu escalated as Ling demonstrated a "necklace" of tension-sensitive ribbons. "Witness its fulcrum points—tug thusly, and..." The silk unfurled to reveal anatomical cartography banned across three realms.
Wan's laughter cascaded—unfeigned yet layered with disquieted exhilaration. Somewhere between lingerie pedagogy and veiled overtures, princess and prince neglected their adversarial roles.
The lunar orb ascended, argent luminescence presiding over silken cabals. In derelict Chen pleasure-domes, vermin nested within defaulted ledgers. Upon Spring Breeze Pavilion's proscenium, final "Lycanthe" gambits unfolded—thespians unwittingly reenacting power struggles transpiring mere paces away.
The nocturne remained in its infancy, silken warfare eternal.
Silken Beguilements and the Viper's Triumph
"What esoteric arts might you yet command?" Murong Wan queried with artless wonder, her ingenuous mien belied the venomous gu phials nestled in silken sleeves.
Ye Ling's smile honed to razor keenness. "The arcana I harbour, fair *Brother*, shall unveil themselves in karmic tempo." His lupine resolve crystallized—this naïf princess would become silken quarry in his web, her innocence transmuted to willing capitulation.
The "tribute" parcels concealed more than lace and chiffon. Each ensemble secreted pheromonic elixirs attuned to Ling's essence, every stitch a calculated seduction. Wan, misapprehending these as mere sartorial wonders, envisioned dispersing them among Yan's aristocracy as exotic curios.
"Profound gratitude, Elder Brother Ye!" Wan's argent carillons chimed as she shouldered the perfidious trove.
"Our trajectories shall inevitably reconverge," Ling vowed, imprinting a Golden Crest sigil into her palm—its occult glyph enabling surveillance through all subsequent acquisitions.
As Wan dissolved into the thronging masses, Ling's mirth reverberated through "Vernal Rapture's" umbral recesses. The Mid-Autumn competition's denouement arrived as cosmic irony: Zhao Miao'er coronated paramount courtesan, her pheromone-suffused "Siren's Entanglement" raiment fetching five hundred thousand taels at auction.
Within Spring Breeze Pavilion's gilded loge, Crown Prince Changfeng pulverized a celadon goblet. "How dare that castoff mongrel profit from the harlot's frippery!"
Adjacent, Chen Tong's envy putrefied into malice. "Miao'er's ascension derides my every stratagem!" His digits annihilated a surveillance scroll chronicling Vernal Rapture's astral profits.
Subterranean to the revelry, Lü Wu tallied lucre with abacus clicks echoing execution tympani. In adjacent corridors, Zhao Miao'er received her coronet—a diadem threaded with paralytic venoms against potential betrayal.
As the witching hour loomed, Ling surveyed his silken demesne from a nephrite-inlaid vantage. The capital's luminaires shimmered like captive constellations, each scintilla representing a soul enmeshed in his web. Murong Wan's silhouette persisted in his psyche—a viperine princess awaiting metamorphosis through calculated debauchery.
Let dullards fulminate against silken insurrections. True puissance flows through occult stitches and pheromonic susurrations. The jeu's subsequent phase would unfold in boudoirs and chancelleries alike, dynasties reshaped by lace and concupiscent alchemy.
The lunar orb, now gravid with judgement, cast a verdict upon carousers below. In Yan's enclave, Murong Wei draughted exigent missives regarding Shang's inexplicable prosperity. Within the palace's stygian vaults, five million tainted taels awaited their eschatological purpose—tainted bullion financing a silken Armageddon.
The danse macabre had commenced. Let silken conflagrations rage sempiternal.
Silken Downfall and the Viper's Dirge
Emerging from convalescence, Ye Changfeng's once-moderate appetites metastasized into ravenous excess. Nightly, his courtyard resonated with concubines' lamentations—victims of his retaliatory fervour, a carnal onslaught defying all remonstrance.
"That gutter-dwelling mongrel!" Chen Tong seethed, observing patrons flock to Ye Ling's avant-garde emporiums—"Jubensha" enigma chambers, "Langrensha" cabals of intrigue, and KTV alcoves throbbing with illicit harmonies. "He pilfers our patronage with vulgar thaumaturgy!"
Ye Changfeng's lip contorted, patrician features honed by disdain. "Must I spoon-feed stratagems to atrophied intellects? Or has your cognition petrified alongside your sire's discredited honour?"
Chen Tong's mandible tightened. The squandered sacrifices of deposed Minister Chen Huai—drained coffers, sacrificed then silenced beauties—now exuded futility's stench. Yet before his rebuttal could coalesce, a vermilion-lacquered token arrested discourse: the Crimson Phoenix sigil of Great Yan's imperial lineage.
"His Celestial Highness awaits," intoned a guardsman whose bearing disdained mercantile humility.
Changfeng's pallor ignited cerise. "As propriety dictates." His ascent up cinnabar stairs acquired regal buoyancy, abandoning Chen Tong to ferment amidst opium-suffused penumbrae.
"Snivelling sycophant!" Chen Tong hissed, discerning the token's provenance. The Yan princess's preposterous "singular heart, sole consort" fantasies had ensnared even Changfeng's serpentine pragmatism. To discard Chen Tong's clandestine succour for regal nuptials? An indignity beyond absolution.
Eventide draped its sable mantle over the pleasure quarter. Within Spring Breeze Pavilion's gilded loge, Murong Wei veiled revulsion as Changfeng's courtly masquerade unfolded—a strutting peacock before its reflection.
"Your sister's… *proclivities* necessitate judicious stewardship," Murong Wei observed, sipping toxin-laced nectar. Yan's intelligence scrolls chronicled Changfeng's seraglio atrocities, yet Princess Wan's infatuation mandated these grotesque theatrics.
Subterranean to the revelry, Lü Wu's ledger-stylus pirouetted—transcribing each chalice's chime, each vacuous vow. In adjacent passageways, Zhao Miao'er adjusted pheromonic veils, her newly coronated courtesan's smile whetted to a dagger's edge.
Let the viper prince savour his silken charade. This nocturne's betrothal compact bore invisible codicils: Yan's arachnids already spun webs within Shang's bedchambers.
As the witching hour carillon tolled, Chen Tong's egress crushed discarded "Vernal Rapture" broadsheets beneath carriage wheels—their gilt edges deriding his obsolescence. In northern wastes, Murong Wan rehearsed gratitudes for a betrothed whose barbarity eclipsed mythos.
The jeu's pieces transmuted. Let silken conflagrations blaze sempiternal.
To be continuous…