Chapter 148 — Interrogation

Song Cen's gaze was cold as thousand-year ice: "Wretched creature! After all the fine things you have done, you still dare ask me why!"

"Why?" Song Yan asked his father.

His gaze turned to the birdcage under the eaves.

The little jar for food and water was carved from white jade; his father had given it to him when he was five.

He looked toward the pomegranate tree in the corner of the yard.

That tree he had planted with his father's own hands when he was eight.

He looked toward the swing swaying faintly in the cold wind.

That swing his father had made together with him for his little brother when the boy was three.

"Why?" Song Yan asked his father, and tears fell from his eyes beyond his control.

Beside the camphor tree lay the ball he had once played with and had since given to his brother; on the grape trellis there still remained the red cords he had tied to train the vines...

"Why?" he demanded of his father, agitated, his voice loud.

His father only watched him coldly.

Song Yan looked at his father. Yet his consciousness and his vision both began slowly to blur, and time seemed so long as to be unbearable, and yet so brief it seemed but an instant had passed.

His father's stern voice drifted faintly to his ears: "Drag him into the inner chamber and keep a close watch on him."

The staves falling on his body stopped, but his father's words struck his heart more painfully than any staff: "Lu Zheng, go and invite the First Master, the Third Master, and the Fourth Master here. Tell them Song Yan has failed in virtue, and I mean to open the ancestral hall!"

Open the ancestral hall!

Song Yan lay limply over the spring bench, as though every bone in his body had been broken; the agony of it made his consciousness begin to drift.

Open the ancestral hall, would he?

And what came next?

First petition the throne to strip him of his position as heir? Or drive him from the family?

The tears in his eyes had long since dried. Song Yan still struggled to lift his head, stubbornly asking, "Why?"

White light, green shadows. Glaring red, dusky brown, overlapping into a bizarre tangle of light and shade.

"My body, hair, and skin I received from my parents—if you want them, then take them. But why must you do this?" He could not see the person he sought. "I only want to ask one thing: why?"

No one answered him.

With a crack, he was flung down onto the stone floor of the inner chamber, where the underfloor heating burned.

The sweet fragrance of benzoin floated in the warm air, making one drowsy.

Song Yan bit the tip of his tongue, struggling to gather his thoughts.

He could not sleep! If he slept, he might never wake again.

He was not afraid to die.

Everyone dies sooner or later.

Some deaths weigh heavier than Mount Tai, some lighter than a goose feather.

Though his death now would be lighter than a goose feather... still, he did not want to die!

Since no one else would tell him why, then he would find the answer himself.

Song Yan struggled to rise.

But the moment he moved, hot, rank blood welled up in his mouth.

He had suffered internal injury!

So it was true: his father really did want him dead!

Song Dan.

He dragged himself forward, inch by inch.

Ahead lay the large kang by the window.

Even if he died, he would not die on his knees, groveling!

Wherever Song Yan passed, he left a deep trail of blood.

He was thinking of Yu Jian, of Chen Tao.

They had most likely met their end.

Had he known it would come to this, he should have sent Yu Jian back with the rest of the guards.

At least then one life would not have been thrown away for nothing.

Thank goodness Chen He had not come along.

The wet nurse had only the two brothers; with Chen Tao gone, Chen He could still see her through her old age and bury her when the time came.

Yet a commotion of such proportions in the main house had drawn no one at all—plainly his father had arranged things in advance.

He had to find some way to warn them.

If they could escape, they should flee!

Song Yan gasped for breath and slumped against the large kang by the window.

On the tea table across from him, two white hibiscus blooms stood in a cloisonne flower vessel, blooming in all their vivid glory.

But he knew that flowers raised in a vessel, however splendid their bloom, would wither in a few days' time.

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Brothers, sisters, I simply must write one more chapter.

Clenched fist!

ps: making up for the April 1 update.

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