Grand Princess’s Estate, Inner Palace.

The hall was deathly silent. The attendants all stood against the walls with panicked expressions. The parrot on the perch, usually the most talkative creature, had been holding it in for an entire evening. Just as it opened its beak, a maid nearby hurriedly shushed it and waved her hand. The parrot, seemingly possessing human-like understanding, actually swallowed its cry; it hooked a claw, grabbed half a peanut from its food jar, and pelted the maid with it.

Zhuang Xu sat at a desk by the window, his face dark, practicing calligraphy.

Head Eunuch Xia placed a cup of hot tea by his hand, the wrinkles on his face deepening with worry.

The Prince was “stoking his anger” again. If Young Master Ye didn’t return tonight, he would surely build up enough rage by tomorrow morning to strike the roof of Bihua Pavilion like a thunderbolt…

Just as Head Eunuch Xia was thinking this, he heard a commotion approaching from the distance: “The Young Master is back—”

Ye Mian, his robes damp with night dew, stepped into the room surrounded by a crowd.

Seeing him enter, the attendants in the room swarmed forward to serve him—removing his pouches and jade pendants, taking off his hat, pouring water, and bringing copper basins for him to wash his hands. With a dozen people bustling around him, the room was filled with the sounds of hurried footsteps and the tinkling of jade ornaments.

The corridor outside the courtyard also came to life. Gilded palace lanterns were lit, bathing the entire courtyard in a shimmering, golden glow. Servants were sent to the kitchen for refreshments and called for the stove-side staff to prepare water; the whole place was in a flurry of activity.

Head Eunuch Xia sighed while standing behind Zhuang Xu. The room, which had been silent as death moments ago, had sprung to life the instant this “little ancestor” swept in like a breeze. Even the parrot on the perch became boisterous, shaking its silver chain and chirping melodiously.

With their master back, the attendants in the room dared to laugh and speak in soft tones again. Ye Mian joked with them a few times, pretending not to notice that Zhuang Xu was sulking. As he wiped his hands, he asked with a smile, “Why are you still busy so late?”

Zhuang Xu continued writing, “There are still a few official reports from the estate to review.”

“Why not take a break?”

“These are extremely important reports.”

“That important?”

“Mm.”

Ye Mian finished wiping his hands and turned to walk out. “Come keep me company while I bathe.”

Zhuang Xu set down his brush. “Let’s go, then.”

Head Eunuch Xia: “…”

After they finished bathing and returned to the sleeping quarters, Ye Mian sprawled comfortably against the large pillows on the arhat couch.

Eunuch Hu sat on a small embroidered stool in front of the couch, holding a blue-and-white bowl, coaxing him to eat in a soft, gentle voice.

Ye Mian shook his head and pushed it away.

Eunuch Hu stirred the spoon and enticed him, “Young Master, have a bite. This fish is a huang fish that the Third Prince just sent back from the Northern Frontier. It was over a zhang (approx. 3 meters) long and weighed several hundred catties when it arrived. This bowl contains the ‘dragon tendon’ from its back—others haven’t even seen such a thing.”

Ye Mian still shook his head. He had polished off two bowls of rice at Bihua Pavilion and was stuffed; he couldn’t stand the smell of the fishiness right now.

Eunuch Hu said patiently, “Young Master, you don’t know, but this dragon tendon is a top-tier delicacy. It takes years to grow on such a large fish. Since it’s dry spring weather, eating it to nourish your fluids is exactly what you need. Our Prince paid three thousand taels of silver to the Third Prince for this fish.”

Head Eunuch Xia, who was serving Zhuang Xu tea on the other side, nearly dropped the cup upon hearing this. “Three thousand taels?! Did the fish grow gold scales and jade fins? How dare he ask for three thousand taels!”

Zhuang Xu frowned and said to Eunuch Hu, “If he doesn’t want to eat, then stop forcing him to eat such precious things. If you ruin his appetite, he won’t be able to eat properly tomorrow.”

Eunuch Hu got up helplessly and hurried toward the kitchen with the bowl. “I’m going to the kitchen to settle accounts with those black-hearted lambs! I told them to braise it in sauce, but they insisted on steaming it. How is the Young Master supposed to eat something so fishy?”

Head Eunuch Xia advised earnestly, “You two ancestors, you’re just going to let three thousand taels worth of fish tendon go to waste? Even when the Grand Princess was a girl in the palace, if she had squandered things like this, she would have inevitably been scolded by the Empress Dowager.”

Zhuang Xu gave a light, mocking laugh. “It was never worth three thousand taels. The Third Prince knew I was sourcing this fish for Ye Mian and deliberately hiked the price. I know he needs money for various things in the Northern Frontier, so I was just giving him a hand.”

Only then did Head Eunuch Xia set his mind at ease. He sat down on the stool in front of Ye Mian and, while helping him dry his hair, whispered, “Good child, we aren’t the type to have frivolous hearts. To be wealthy without being arrogant, and noble without being extravagant—that is what shows our stature as a distinguished family.”

Before Head Eunuch Xia went to Jiangnan with the Grand Princess, he was a veteran of the palace. He had seen every display of luxury imaginable and held nothing but contempt for the sons of salt merchants in the south who only knew how to flaunt their wealth and squander money.

“With their nouveau riche, city-market airs, those of us who followed from the palace call them ‘Salt Upstarts’ behind their backs. Paving roads with copper coins, steaming pigs fed on human milk, scattering gold leaf across the river—there is no absurdity they won’t commit. It is simply foolish beyond compare!”

Zhuang Xu impatiently cut him off. “Stop nagging him about that; he just got lectured by Ye Jing about this very thing before he came here.”

“Ah, and how did the Young Master provoke Lord Ye?” Head Eunuch Xia asked softly.

Munching on a piece of fruit, Ye Mian replied, “He scolded me for being extravagant at the Princess’s Estate.”

Head Eunuch Xia raised his voice to a shrill pitch, “Oh! We are extravagant?! We are the most frugal household around!”

Ye Mian: “…”

Head Eunuch Xia, feeling indignant, stood up and left the room.

An attendant entered with a bowl of calming soup and whispered to Ye Mian, “I just came from the kitchen; Old Master Hu is there jumping with rage, cursing them with words that never repeat. The faces of those big shots in the kitchen have all turned green.”

The attendants surrounding Ye Mian all covered their mouths and laughed.

Even Zhuang Xu shook his head.

This Eunuch Hu was someone Zhuang Xu had specifically found in the palace to serve Ye Mian.

Though eunuchs are not naturally submissive, because they are alone in the world—lacking wives, children, or clan ties—as long as you can provide enough of the “benefits” they desire, they can be fiercely loyal to their master. This is why princes’ estates outside the palace are particularly fond of employing eunuchs.

By regulation, a Commandery Prince’s estate could employ thirty eunuchs, and since he was elevated to a full Prince last year, it increased to forty. However, his entire estate, counting guards and farmers, had over a thousand people.

There were old veterans from his mother’s Princess Estate, family-born servants from his father’s Zhuang family in the south, and new ones bestowed by the imperial palace. Each of them came with their own connections and backgrounds. If he didn’t install eunuchs in key positions, he feared he would be fooled by them himself.

Zhuang Xu was afraid that because Ye Mian was young, he would be bullied as a “tender guest” by the servants. He thought of finding an old eunuch from the palace to hold the fort for him. Eunuch Hu had been recommended by Head Eunuch Xia, and Zhuang Xu had written a letter to his mother to request him from the palace.

Since Head Eunuch Xia dared to recommend him, it meant he understood Eunuch Hu well enough. He knew exactly where Eunuch Hu’s “door to benefit” lay—hitting a snake seven inches from its head.

Eunuchs are all poor wretches who entered the palace at a young age. If they gained a master’s favor while young, they were glorious, but their later years were another story. Once their health failed, they were pushed aside by their masters, and the new generation of scoundrels would take delight in tormenting them. If they managed to survive until retirement, there was nothing but bitterness waiting for them outside.

Many eunuchs searched for their ancestral families, only to be rejected. The families considered them unlucky and forbade them from entering the ancestral graves after death. Therefore, most eunuchs who returned to their hometowns would eventually return to the capital in despair, living in ruined temples near the imperial city.

Their bodies were not like those of “whole” men, and they had no qualifications to buy land or property. They could only survive by begging during the day and staring at the direction of the imperial palace at night. That palace, which had ruined their entire lives, ended up feeling more like “home” to them.

Eunuch Hu was the same. He had turned to Buddhism while in the palace. One reason, like other eunuchs, was to use his Buddhist karma to hopefully be reborn into a better life in the next reincarnation. The other was to donate incense money to the temple early so that after he left the palace, he might be looked after by the temple abbot.

He wanted to be buried in a thin coffin after he died, rather than being wrapped in straw mats and thrown into a mass grave like his miserable master. When he had gone to look for his master’s burial site, the hill was filled with bare bones gnawed by wild dogs—a sight that chilled Eunuch Hu to the bone every night.

Head Eunuch Xia had relayed the Prince of Rongnan’s words to Eunuch Hu, promising him that if he served faithfully, he would find a place for him to be buried in the master’s cemetery.

Head Eunuch Xia still remembered when Eunuch Hu arrived at the Princess’s Estate carrying two bundles. It was a summer noon, and Ye Mian was sleeping in the inner room.

Head Eunuch Xia told Eunuch Hu to go tidy himself up first and come to kowtow once the master woke up.

But Eunuch Hu insisted on taking a look first. Seeing his persistence, and knowing he was an old acquaintance, Head Eunuch Xia did not refuse, only allowing him to stand in the outer room and peek through the pearl curtain.

Eunuch Hu squinted hard as he looked through the curtain. He could only vaguely see a youth wrapped in a jade-green summer quilt. The quilt half-covered his head, revealing only the dark crown of his hair.

Eunuch Hu dropped his two bundles, knelt on the ground, and kowtowed three solid times. When he straightened his back, he was shaking uncontrollably like a sieve, his face covered in tears and snot.

Head Eunuch Xia frowned and clicked his tongue—such an unsightly way of crying was a taboo, and he was an old man of the palace, too…

Head Eunuch Xia wanted to have someone pull him away, but after thinking it over, he just let out a heavy sigh and turned his head away.

Eunuch Hu knelt there, streaming with tears, unable to bear leaving.

The child lying inside could give him a handful of soil. He would no longer have to fear becoming a stray, unwanted old dog like his master, nor would he fear having no one to offer sacrifices after his death, or becoming a starving ghost in the underworld, drifting in eternal misery…

At night, Ye Mian tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He had been severely scolded by his brother earlier in the day, and it still weighed on his mind.

Zhuang Xu gently pulled him close, letting Ye Mian lay on top of him. He wrapped an arm around his waist, his warm palm stroking Ye Mian’s back slowly, coaxing him to sleep.

Ye Mian buried his face in the crook of his neck, feeling stifled, not making a sound.

Zhuang Xu was burning with resentment inside. That damned brother-in-law!

Ye Mian was a member of the Princess’s Estate; for him to snatch the boy away and berate him without even a word to the estate was to show absolutely no respect for him!

Calling him “extravagant and lustful”—when had their estate ever been extravagant? It was clearly because he was dissatisfied that Ye Mian hadn’t returned to the Ye residence for several days and had just found a pretext to vent his temper on his younger brother.

Zhuang Xu had never heard of such an annoying brother-in-law in this world. He meddled in everything, controlling everything—he even dared to stick his hands into their private affairs!

Did he not know that for men to be intimate, one should wait until their bones were fully developed, reaching manhood, so as not to harm their health? It was one thing for Ye Jing to nag Ye Mian like a Buddhist sutra daily, but to run to the Princess’s Estate, override his authority, and point fingers, speaking beyond his place—it was an act of presumption!

That day, Zhuang Xu had pulled the sword hanging on the wall; had it not been for the guards desperately stopping him, he would have pierced the man through.

Now he had to consider Ye Mian; he couldn’t do anything to Ye Jing yet… Zhuang Xu secretly swore a vicious vow: that old thing would walk before them sooner or later. When that day came, he would have people dig up his bones and throw them all into a sewage ditch!