ITVCFITB CHAPTER 76

Chapter 76 – Embarrassing Tales

Snow meant nowhere to go.

That morning, Li Mingjin only worked through a set of punches indoors. Outside, the snowfall thickened until the ground lay under a heavy quilt. When it finally stopped, there’d be shoveling and shoveling snow was no small chore.

Bored in the afternoon, Mingjin tossed two sweet potatoes into the brazier and sat with Luo Shuyu to chat.

Shuyu cracked the last of a handful of pumpkin seeds, then abruptly straightened. “Your Highness, what exactly is Mister Chen’s background?”

Mingjin prodded the sweet potatoes with an iron stick; he’d suddenly decided Shuyu should taste his roasted yams. “Hm? Why ask now?”

“It’s odd,” Shuyu said. “He sought us out, specifically you. And his surname is Chen. I can’t help wondering if he’s connected to my mother’s family. Maybe I’m overthinking.”

Mingjin paused. The thought was unsettling. Chen Rong’s identity had been checked and cleared… but still.

“You’re not wrong to wonder,” he said. “Though the Chen family he comes from doesn’t seem tied to your mother’s Chen clan.”

“Then let’s just ask him,” Shuyu said. “We’re idle anyway.”

“Ask,” Mingjin agreed. “I don’t like unclear loyalties around me.”

They were men of action. A servant fetched Chen Rong, who arrived grumbling, book still in hand. “In this snow you dragged me out, just for roasted yams?”

At that moment, Mingjin’s batch was done. He was peeling the charred skins for Shuyu; his fingers were smudged black, and Shuyu insisted the golden, blistered edges tasted best left on.

Some royal couple, Chen thought, half amused. Very… domestic.

“Want one? Roast it yourself,” Mingjin said, nodding at a little basket by the brazier.

Chen ignored the yams and sat, happily accepting the fine tea, one of the capital luxuries that made their way north.

Shuyu opened gently. “Mister Chen, Doctor Lin said you weren’t feeling well a few days ago. Better now?”

“My senior fusses,” Chen said. “It was only a cough.”

They shared a yam, rinsed their hands, and the three men sipped tea in a brief, comfortable silence.

Then Mingjin cut to it. “Mister Chen, the Fourth Prince’s people are reopening an old case, likely touching the Yan clan. I think you’ll be interested.”

“I am,” Chen said simply. “What case?”

“Fifteen years ago,” Mingjin said, watching him closely, “when General Wei still held Gucheng, there was the great embezzlement of northern provisions. The scandal shook the court; even the Vice Minister of Revenue was dragged in.”

Shuyu kept quiet but watched. At the mention, the smile on Chen’s face froze, only for an instant.

Chen read the room and exhaled. “So you summoned me to discuss that case?”

Mingjin shook his head. “What do you think?”

“Your Highness,” Chen said, “speak plainly.”

“All right. When you entered my service, we vetted your past. It’s ‘clean.’ Perhaps too clean. A past that simple doesn’t forge this kind of resolve. I want the truth from you.”

Chen’s mouth quirked. “So you’ve suspected me all along.”

He had. But he’d never pressed until now, when the old case resurfaced. Better to hear it from Chen.

“I don’t want secondhand answers,” Mingjin said.

Chen turned to Shuyu and, for once, skipped the honorific. “And you?”

“My thoughts match his,” Shuyu replied.

Chen took a slow sip of tea. “Yes. I’m tied to the Chen clan, deeply tied.”

Shuyu felt his heart tighten. He could tell the words to come wouldn’t be easy.

“If the Chen family had returned home safely,” he thought, “why would Chen Rong be living under another Chen household’s roof?”

He steadied himself. “How deeply?”

“In terms of generation,” Chen said softly, “I’m your cousin.”

Shuyu hadn’t expected kinship to arrive so abruptly.

“And proof?” Mingjin asked at once. “Saying it doesn’t make it true.”

“Give me a moment,” Chen said. “I’ll have something brought. I’ve wanted to tell you, just never found the right time.”

He sent his attendant to fetch a box.

While they waited, he began.

“The Gucheng provisions case wasn’t as simple as it seemed. My father left me a notebook before he died, detailing the case. He and the others were framed. The grain itself vanished; the pay silver from that batch, if anyone spends it now, they’re linked. I went to the capital to investigate in secret, but the trails were buried. I still found a few people… and some ties to the Yan clan. Four years ago, I was nearly exposed. That’s when I entered Your Highness’s service.”

“To lie low?” Mingjin asked, brows lifting.

“At first, yes,” Chen admitted. “Your manor drew less attention, and I could work in the shadows. I didn’t expect His Majesty to grant your marriage. After that… my plans shifted.”

“You knew we were kin and said nothing,” Shuyu murmured, stung and not sure why.

“I couldn’t,” Chen said, grief flashing in his eyes. “On the way home, Grandfather was killed. I survived by being hidden in the reeds. An elderly Chen couple, mourning their own son, took me in as their own. Only the dead keep secrets forever and never try to overturn old wrongs.”

Shuyu’s hands shook. “Grandfather… was killed on the road back?”

Chen nodded. “Father, Mother… our whole family, everyone but me. If you suspect me now because of the surname ‘Chen,’ I’m glad. It means the truth isn’t entirely dead.”

“I didn’t know,” Shuyu whispered. “After Mother died, I assumed Grandfather drifted away because Father remarried.”

Mingjin passed him a handkerchief. “This is the truth, then?”

“It is,” Chen said. “I went to the capital to avenge them.”

“Why did no one hear of your family’s massacre?” Mingjin asked, frowning.

“Because someone kept forging signs that we still lived,” Chen said. “Not perfectly, but well enough. And we bore a stain. No one looked closely. Even if they noticed something odd, they’d shrug: ‘They’re disgraced.’ Like the Third Prince Consort, distance and bereavement turned into silence.”

Shuyu remembered the letter he’d found. “Before he left the capital, Grandfather wrote to Mother. Did he already foresee his end?”

“Yes,” Chen said. “Just not that it would be so fast.”

Just then, the attendant returned with a small sandalwood chest. Chen opened it and produced a jade pendant.

“This is our family’s heirloom,” he said, passing it to Shuyu. “Every Chen descendant has one. You have yours.”

Shuyu turned the cool, luminous piece over in his palm and nodded. “Mother left me mine.”

“There’s also a notebook and account book,” Chen said. “My grandfather shoved them at me as he hid me. I suspect that notebook is the reason none of us were meant to survive.”

Shuyu wiped his eyes. “Then… did my mother’s death tie back to this?”

She had died suddenly of poison not long after the Chen calamity.

“Wasn’t your stepmother behind it?” Mingjin asked.

“Forgive me,” Shuyu said, voice low. “I’ve always believed Father knew and shielded her. Later, when he suddenly sided with me, it felt like he’d found her useful as a scapegoat. We should ask her at the nunnery if she left anything unsaid.”

Mingjin hesitated. “Shuyu… there’s something I never told you.”

Shuyu stared. “You hid something from me, too?”

“I’m sorry. I thought it kinder to let it lie,” Mingjin said. “It’s about Madam Liu. Your father didn’t send her to a ‘good’ nunnery. He used a condemned prisoner as a stand-in and sent the real Liu back to your ancestral town. Bandits struck on the road. She… died.”

“Liu is dead?” Shuyu breathed.

From Mingjin’s perspective, there’d been no need to burden Shuyu with it sooner.

“I’m not angry,” Shuyu said after a beat. “But then Mother’s death…”

“I’ve found things that touch your father,” Chen cut in gently. “I don’t know how they bear on your mother’s murder.”

“What did you find?” Shuyu asked.

“Luo Renshou has dealings with the Yan clan,” Chen said. “I stumbled on it. He’s slippery and careful, hard to pin.”

Mingjin and Shuyu both absorbed the blow. They already treated Chen as one of their own; the confession only made it clearer.

“If that’s true,” Mingjin said, “then he’s not clean of your mother’s death.”

Ice slid through Shuyu’s chest. In his last life, he had clung to hope for that father. The deeper they dug, the darker it got. How many ugly secrets did Luo Renshou hide?

With the proof presented, Chen looked lighter; Shuyu, far paler.

Both the Luo and Chen families were a tangle of blood and mud.

“I’ve thought this, too,” Shuyu said slowly. “Liu may have poisoned Mother but not fatally. Someone who knew about that poison made sure she died. Only Luo Renshou could know and move like that.”

“You have no proof,” Chen warned.

“There won’t be proof,” Shuyu said. “Look at Liu’s brother and that maid, they were left behind on purpose, to point to Liu. The one behind the curtain walks free.”

Only Luo Renshou could orchestrate it so cleanly.

If he was a Yan man, then he and the Chens were enemies from the start.

Had Shuyu not been reborn, all of it would have stayed buried.

“Enough,” Mingjin said, gripping Shuyu’s cold hand. “We’ll dig carefully. If the Luo clan is in league with the Yans, I won’t spare them.”

“The Yan web runs deeper than we thought,” Chen said. “Since the Fourth is already reopening the Gucheng case, let me guide that investigation, quietly.”

“No,” Shuyu blurted. “You can’t risk yourself!”

“I won’t,” Chen soothed. “I’ve just reunited with my cousin; I’m not gambling my life. I’ll send someone else to contact the Fourth. He, too, is a victim of this case. If we map all the threads that tie back to the Yans, we’ll have a wedge to crack them open.”

Toppling Lin had been fast because Lin lacked depth. The Yan clan was different. Without a fatal handle, they wouldn’t fall.

While the emperor still lived, he could hold the line. If he died, the Yans would seat the Crown Prince at once and turning the tide would be far harder.

Given how long Chen had hunted this truth, Mingjin and Shuyu deferred to him. He knew the details; his resolve was iron.

Chen left with his pendant. On the table, the roasted yams had gone cold. Shuyu broke off a piece and put it in his mouth.

“The sweetness’s gone,” he said.

Mingjin thumbed away his remaining tears. “I’ll roast another.”

“Okay,” Shuyu whispered.

—

That night, the turmoil returned in dreams, Mingjin drenched in blood; Luo Renshou raising a blade; his mother bleeding from the seven apertures.

Mingjin shook him awake. “Shuyu. Wake up, you were dreaming.”

Blinking, Shuyu clutched him. “Don’t die. If you die, what will I do?”

“I won’t,” Mingjin murmured. “As long as you live, I live.”

Sleep wouldn’t come back. Voice hoarse and thick with tears, Shuyu said, “Tell me something embarrassing. Make me laugh.”

Mingjin pressed his lips together. “I don’t have any.”

“Liar.”

“Truly none.”

“Liar.”

“…Mother made me wear little girls’ clothes once. Does that count?”

“It counts.”

They rambled on like that until nearly dawn, and when Shuyu woke the next day, his mood had steadied.

Snow again. Mingjin went to his study. After lunch, Shuyu set out to find him.

Crossing the courtyard, he spotted An San skimming over the roofline. “You there—come down. I have a question.”

The shadow guard dropped lightly before him. “What do you require, my lord?”

“You’ve followed His Highness for years,” Shuyu said. “Any… embarrassing stories?”

An San hesitated. “If it’s a good one… might I get a raise?”

Shuyu laughed. “Try me.”

“His Highness’s leg injury last time,” An San said. “It wasn’t from a cliff.”

Shuyu blinked. “Our wedding trip?”

An San nodded vigorously. “Yes. He sprained it jumping your wall for a secret visit.”

Expression perfectly calm, Shuyu turned toward the study.

Mingjin had just opened the window. Seeing Shuyu approach, he vaulted out and reached to take his hand. “Shuyu, shall we have roasted yams again today?”

Shuyu lowered his gaze and stared at his feet instead of answering.

From the corner of his eye, Mingjin caught An San tiptoeing away like a guilty cat and felt a cold thump in his chest.

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Author’s Note:
Third Prince: Wife, today we’re doing realism.
Luo Shuyu: Oh?
Third Prince: I’m a doctor. You’re my patient, seeing me for men’s issues. During the checkup, you fall for me at first sight and fling yourself into my arms!
Luo Shuyu: Sure. In reality, you’re just a stand-in for my one true love…
Third Prince: What? How can you have a white moonlight?
Luo Shuyu: I don’t.
Third Prince: Unacceptable! You’re not allowed one.
Luo Shuyu: Fine. Reset the scene.

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