CH 11

The next morning, sonorous chimes from the belltower near Zhanghua Pavilion woke the soundly sleeping princes up. The thin stick of incense lighted by the High Priest the previous day had long since burnt out. Little dust motes sparkled as they passed through the tiny rays of sunlight streaming in from the door’s carved orifices.

Chen Ziqi opened his eyes and patted his chest.

“Tweet?” The soft, fluffy little chick was still in dreamland, and tweeted unhappily when he was unceremoniously pressed down through the fabric of Chen Ziqi’s clothes.

The chick was still there!

“Creak—-” The heavy carved door was pushed open, and bright sunlight poured into the temple.

Chen Ziqi squinted, looking at the people who walked in. The Zhenlong Emperor walked at their head.

“Your Majesty, this official* should be the one to check on God’s Decision…” the High Priest in a controlled voice, as if he were repressing a strong emotion. He followed closely behind the Emperor as he said this.

*T/N: The High Priest is respectfully referring to himself as chen (臣).

“I believe I should observe something as important as this,” the Emperor said, paying no heed to the High Priest’s words. He strode into the temple, and a detachment of Jinwu Guards followed behind him.

The princes were all awake now, and they got to their feet in unison when the Emperor arrived. Chen Ziqi looked up at the guards. They were all dressed in silk outfits with a golden leaf motif and had swords in snakeskin sheaths at their waist. These were the legendary Jinwu Guards. Every guard was a highly skilled martial artist. Ostensibly, they were the Emperor’s honour guard, but in truth, they functioned more like his personal army.

Di Yeqing, the guard who had escorted them to the palace, was one of the Jinwu Guards. He stood at attention in a position nearest to the Emperor, looking straight ahead with a hand resting on his sword hilt. This was the first time Chen Ziqi had seen him after entering the palace.

“Your Majesty, bringing the Jinwu Guards into the temple will cause disturbance to God,” the High Priest said, his face cold as he stood in the centre of the temple hall. He had foregone the elaborate robe with the long train of the previous day in favour of a simpler but no less elegant robe whose hem just brushed the floor. A silver hair ornament adorned with pearls held his hair at the top of his head. The pearls were arranged like the crown feathers on a peacock’s head, each pearl forming the end of the crown feather and attached to the main body of the ornament by a thin wire of silver.

Chen Ziqi noticed the High Priest’s face for the first time. He was a tall man who looked to be twenty or younger. He was fair-skinned and had an aloofly handsome face. His eyes were shrewd and perceptive, and ordinarily he gave off an ascetic air. At this moment, however, the High Priest looked to be rather incensed.

The Emperor had brought along a few of his Imperial ministers in addition to the Jinwu Guards. At the side, a servant girl held a tray bearing the apricot-orange robes and jade belt that made up a Crown Prince’s attire. A dragon was embroidered on the apricot coloured robes in gold silk thread.

Dan Yi peeked out from Chen Ziqi’s clothes and narrowed his eyes when he saw the scene in the temple.

“High Priest, perhaps you’d like to begin?” the Zhenlong Emperor said with a meaningful smile, taking hold of the High Priest’s wrist. He tightened his grip on that slender wrist threateningly.

The High Priest looked evenly at the Emperor for a moment, then forcefully pulled his wrist back from the Emperor’s grasp. “Your Highnesses, please check if the cherry in your mouth is still there,” he said. His gaze swept across the eleven princes and came to rest on Chen Ziqi.

A fluffy red bird head poked out from Chen Ziqi’s sky blue robes. The colour contrast made the little bird’s presence even more conspicuous.

“Mine is gone!” the eldest prince cried out, making a show of being surprised.

“It looks to me that God has chosen the eldest prince as the Crown Prince,” one of the Imperial ministers said immediately.

“The eldest prince has integrity and is talented in politics. It’s only natural that God would favour him,” the other ministers supplied.

Losing your cherry meant that you were selected by God to be the Crown Prince?!

Chen Ziqi’s heart thudded in his chest. He bent his head to look at the fluffball peeking out from his robes, then looked at the High Priest standing in front of the dragon-phoenix sculpture. His eyes met the High Priest’s, who had coincidentally also turned to look at him.

The High Priest shook his head imperceptibly.

“Could my eldest brother have swallowed the cherry by mistake in his sleep?” the Third Prince asked with a chilly laugh. He bit down on his own cherry and swallowed it in one bite. “High Priest, it may be prudent to check if any other princes have lost their cherries as well.”

The Crown Prince had actually been pre-selected much earlier in consultation with the Sword Alliance and the Qi Confederate. The Third Prince knew this, but he found the First Prince annoying and just wanted to make some trouble for him.

The princes all spat out the cherries and placed them on their hands.

“My cherry is missing,” Ah Mu said, raising his hand innocently.

Everyone’s eyes immediately turned to Ah Mu, and the Jinwu Guards moved forward to check. The High Priest, who should have been the one to do this, was restrained at the side.

The Jinwu Guards examined Ah Mu’s mouth carefully. “Reporting to the Emperor, the Eleventh Prince has some remnants of cherry in his mouth. It’s likely that he ate the cherry,” a guard said.

“Little Seventh’s is also missing,” the Third Prince said loudly.

The Jinwu guards strode over immediately. Their thick-soled boots clacked on the hard temple floor, and the sound echoed in the silent temple. Chen Ziqi stole a look at the snakeskin sheathed swords in the Jinwu Guards’ hands, and suddenly felt a chill around his neck, as if someone had pressed the cold metal of a sword next there.

“Perhaps I ate it by accident while I was deep in sleep,” Chen Ziqi said. He squatted down and picked up the cherry seed that the little red bird had thrown away, holding it up for everyone to see.

The Zhenlong Emperor was very pleased with this result. “God has made his intentions clear, and there shall be no further debate. Pass my Imperial decree – from this day forth, the First Prince, Chen Ziyuan, shall be appointed as the Crown Prince, and a date will be set for the appointment ceremony,” he declared in resonant tones.

The servant girl holding the Crown Prince’s robes came forward and dressed the First Prince in them. Now clothed in apricot orange, the First Prince felt a sense of deep satisfaction as he knelt to give thanks.

Those clothes were coincidentally made to fit a sixteen-year-old prince.

The red bird’s little claws gripped the folds of Chen Ziqi’s clothes, his feathers standing up in rage.

The High Priest said nothing. He stood in front of the dragon-phoenix sculpture and chanted softly with his eyes closed. He didn’t seem to have any intention of congratulating the newly appointed Crown Prince, and in fact appeared to be asking God for forgiveness.

The Imperial ministers looked at each other, but chose to keep silent. They followed the princes out of Zhanghua Pavilion.

“High Priest, who was the prince selected by God?” Everyone had left by this time, leaving only the Zhenlong Emperor and the High Priest. The former had waited an hour to speak with the High Priest, who had been chanting all this while, and finally couldn’t take it any more.

“This is irrelevant, since your Majesty has no intention of honouring God’s Choice,” the High Priest said evenly, opening his eyes. He looked up at the phoenix in flight depicted on the dragon-phoenix statue.

“Zhen wants to know what’s so special about the prince chosen by God,” the Zhenlong Emperor said, raising a hand to caress the dragon in the sculpture.

“Defying Heaven’s will is detrimental to the country,” the High Priest warned, not answering his question. “Your Majesty, you should be careful.”

“Be careful? Huh, you should go ask those ministers which one of them is satisfied to have our Crown Prince picked by sleeping in a temple with a cherry in his mouth?” the Zhenlong Emperor said, snorting derisively. “Ever since Zhen’s grandfather’s time, no one has successfully mastered the Dragon’s Howl! God has obviously abandoned our Imperial family, and we can’t rely on Him any more. It is the great founding families that form the backbone of the country!”

The High Priest stood up. He regarded the Emperor silently with pity in his eyes.

“Stop looking at me like that.” The High Priest’s gaze made him feel uncomfortable, and just a little guilty.

The High Priest retracted the pity in his eyes. He poured the incense into a silk bag and fastened it, then left with a flourish of his sleeves.

Because Ah Mu’s cherry had also been eaten, Chen Ziqi’s missing cherry didn’t seem particularly out of the ordinary, and no one investigated further into this matter. He returned safely to Qingyun Palace with the chick hidden in his clothes.

Dan Yi’s feathers were still sticking straight out from his body as he paced angrily around the table on his two little feet.

Chen Ziqi was slumped on the table watching the little chick. The High Priest clearly knew about the chick’s existence. If he wasn’t mistaken, when the High Priest shook his head today, he had been telling him not to say anything about the chick. Chen Ziqi wasn’t sure about the reasoning behind this, but he instinctively knew that if he had said the little red bird ate his cherry, a snakeskin-sheathed sword would have immediately taken his life.

“You’re the God that the High Priest talks about, right?” Chen Ziqi said, extending a fair-skinned little finger to poke at the chick’s backside.

The little bird stopped on hearing this, and raised its tiny head proudly.

“The Divine Protector of our country is actually a chicken?” Chen Ziqi found this very hard to believe, and poked the chick’s behind again.

Dan Yi fell face-first onto the table with a plop. He flapped his wings angrily. I’ve already said I’m God, why are you still calling me a chicken?

Chen Ziqi picked up the little bird and put him in his palm, his actions gentler than they had ever been before. “Since God takes the form of a chicken, if you were to be my stud rooster, wouldn’t you be able to father thousands of divine chickens?”

Dan Yi’s eyelids drooped in resignation. He refused to engage with Chen Ziqi any further.

“I’m gonna be rich!” Chen Ziqi hugged the little chick and rolled on the bed. He kissed the little chick’s fluffy head exuberantly, flattening the two crown feathers. “Hahaha, yours truly is actually God’s chosen one!”

“Pop!” The light red feathers immediately turned a bright scarlet. Dan Yi raised his small wings and brushed the top of his head, returning the crown feathers to their original position.

“I won’t call you Chao Tian any more – I’ll call you the Divine Chicken!”

“Tweet!”

“O Divine Chicken, can you do any magic tricks?”

“Tweet tweet!”

“What can you conjure up? How about ten thousand gold bars?”

“……”

“You don’t seem to be able to do anything special. How are you different from a regular chick? Do you just have a slower growth rate?”

……

Chen Ziqi was overcome with joy at the knowledge that he was the owner of a divine chicken. In contrast, he felt nothing about losing his Crown Prince position to the First Prince. After all, he had been a starving country bumpkin just half a month ago, and survival was still his first priority. Political positions didn’t really mean anything to him.

Chunxi Hall gave the princes a day’s holiday to let them rest after the Midsummer Ritual, and Chen Ziqi spent the holiday playing with the little red bird in the Qingyun Palace gardens.

As cherries were a necessary part of the Midsummer Ritual, many of the vassal states had sent cherries as tribute, and the palace was flush with the fruit. Now that the Ritual was over, the remaining cherries could be eaten freely. In the afternoon, the Zhenlong Emperor decided to visit Chang Er out of the blue and gave her a big basket of cherries.

The next day, Chen Ziqi grabbed the still sleeping red bird before he left for Chunxi Hall, and stuffed him into his clothes. He also got Fuxi to bring along a bunch of cherries, the better to “pay his respects to God” during the day. The little red bird seemed to like cherries very much, and the big plate of cherries that Fuxi had washed the day before had all ended up in the bird’s tummy. He had no idea how that tiny stomach could hold so many cherries.

Now that the First Prince was the officially appointed Crown Prince, the atmosphere in Chunxi Hall was very different. All the princes went up to congratulate him, save the Third Prince.

The Third Prince stood next to the Second Prince, his gaze frosty as he watched the other princes. “What’s there to be proud about? Does he really think he was chosen because of his so-called ‘political talent’? In both the literary and martial arts disciplines, he can’t hold a candle to you.”

The Second Prince was the Empress’ son, and the First Prince was the Guifei’s son. He was technically superior to the First Prince by reason of his birth, and should have been first in line to be appointed as Crown Prince.

The Second Prince smiled blandly. “This was the decision reached by the Sword Alliance and the Qi Confederation. If this hadn’t been the case, I wouldn’t have started learning swordsmanship from my mother’s side. I know where I stand,” he said.

The Imperial family were only allowed to learn the Dragon’s Howl martial arts. All other martial arts were forbidden. By choosing to learn swordsmanship from one of the Sword Alliance sects, the Second Prince had effectively given up his right to be chosen as Crown Prince. The Dragon’s Howl was the most powerful martial art in the world, but the Imperial family had been unable to master it for three generations. In this world where martial arts reigned supreme, this failure was damning, and it was hard to say if their family would continue to head the country in future. In the circumstances, the Second Prince had cut his losses; to him, it was better to give up the chance to be the next Emperor in exchange for learning other martial arts.

The Crown Prince was surrounded by a group of people, and his chest was sticking out in pride. He turned to squint at Chen Ziqi and Ah Mu. “Little Seventh, I heard that our father Emperor gave your mother a big basket of cherries – was that because he knows that you like to eat cherries on the sly?” he sneered.

These two person’s cherries had also gone missing during the Ritual. Did they do it deliberately to give him trouble? Or worse, had they already allied themselves with the Second Prince?

Chen Ziqi jumped. He hadn’t expected the Crown Prince to single him out. His eyes met the Crown Prince’s, which were filled with unconcealed animosity.

“Hmpf, he’s just a lowborn imp. He doesn’t deserve to eat those cherries,” the Fourth Prince said immediately, a derisive look on this face. He meant that the Ritual cherries should only be eaten by a true royal, which he did not consider Chen Ziqi to be.

Chen Ziqi blinked innocently. “I didn’t eat it. I fed it to the chicken.”

Author’s note: Mini-theater

Birdie Gong: I’ll say this again, I’m not a chicken!

Qiqi: Yes, you’re not just any chicken, you’re a divine chicken

Birdie Gong: I’m also not a divine chicken!

Qiqi: Then what are you?

Birdie Gong: I’m your Laogong!

Qiqi: Oh~ So your job is to service the chicken?

Birdie Gong: ……

Beansprout: Pwahahaha he called Dan Yi a “Divine Chicken”! Gotta love LYQH’s sense of humour XD