MTLNOVEL Chapter 167: Showing His Hand
By the time the fourth day of the imperial hunt dawned, the forest stank of sweat, wine, and desperation.
The early morning mist hadn't even burned off yet, and already, nobles were bragging about kills they hadn't made and swinging swords they didn't know how to draw. Servants scurried through the underbrush with carts of preserved meats and pastries, just to keep up appearances. Every arrow, every slash, every staged 'victory' was being written down, painted in gold leaf on scrolls meant for palace records. History, after all, was only a lie written neatly.
I watched it unfold from my position near the edge of the hunting grounds, sitting cross-legged on a low bench beneath a silk canopy. Shi Yaozu stood behind me, as he always did—silent and still, a shadow with eyes.
The sun was warm, the air sticky, and the display nauseating.
One by one, the princes of Baiguang and the nobles of Daiyu returned with their 'kills.' Wild pheasants with necks wrung like laundry. A boar that clearly hadn't been wild in years. Even a fox—its fur too clean, its body too light. Poisoned, no doubt, to keep it from bleeding or ruining its fur.
And then came the grand finale.
Zhu Lianhua, His High and Mighty Third Prince.
I knew it before they even called his name.
The horns blew—short and sharp—and the gathered court turned toward the east trail. There, swaggering through the trees like some kind of painted god of war, came the Third Prince.
His robes were pristine. Not a speck of mud on them. Not a scratch on his skin. But slung over the back of his horse, bound and displayed like a conquered trophy, was a stag.
A massive one. Its antlers gleamed like polished bone, and blood stained its flank—just enough to be dramatic, not enough to be real. The creature's eyes were still open. Still glassy.
He dismounted with a theatrical grace, tugging the reins and allowing his attendants to haul the animal forward on a lacquered sled.
"Oh, for the love of—" I muttered under my breath, shaking my head at the sheer stupidity of the man.
Yaozu's silence behind me deepened, like he agreed without needing to speak.
Court scribes rushed forward, the ministers leaned in, and the Emperor, seated at the head of the clearing in a carved wooden chair draped with furs, let out a low chuckle.
"Well now," he said, stroking his beard as he stood. "That's something worth celebrating. The Third Prince managed to capture the biggest game of the hunt."
Zhu Lianhua bowed deeply, his smile just wide enough to show restraint. "It was nothing, Father," he said humbly. "The beast wandered too close. I was simply… prepared."
Liar.
The wound on the stag's chest was too clean. A single strike through the heart—too sharp, too precise. Not the kind of kill a pampered prince could make while trotting on a jeweled horse with his eyes closed.
It wasn't his arrow. I'd bet my last ounce of mist on it.
But none of that mattered.
The Emperor stood and clapped slowly. "Ah, Lianhua," he said with a dry smile. "Maybe we'll find you a better wife after all. Or should we just speed up the wedding between you and the Left Prime Minister's daughter?"
The court laughed on cue. It was the kind of laugh that was required. Polished. Polite. Empty.
But Zhu Lianhua didn't look at them.
He was looking at me instead. "I'm afraid that my big brother already got the only daughter of the Left Prime Minister worthy of marrying. How about instead of marrying Zhao Meiling, you absolve me of the wedding?"
I met his eyes from across the clearing even as the ministers around him started whispering. That one statement was enough to kill Meiling a hundred times over. Now her virginity was gone, and the man who took it has just stated that she isn't worthy of being his concubine, let alone his wife.
Daddy dearest wasn't going to like that.
Shaking my head, it was in that moment, with blood on the grass and nobles pretending this was sport, I saw it… that smile.
It was the one the Third Prince always wore when he thought he'd won. When he was two steps into a game only he knew the rules to. It stretched across his face like silk pulled too tight. It didn't touch his eyes. It never had.
There was no warmth in it. Just teeth.
And calculation.
I didn't blink. Didn't flinch. I just tilted my head and offered him a single nod—slow and deliberate. It wasn't polite. It wasn't respectful.
It was a promise.
Because if he thought I hadn't noticed the lie behind that trophy, then he was dumber than I gave him credit for.
To my left, Zhu Mingyu leaned forward slightly. I didn't turn to look, but I felt the shift in his posture. The stillness in his breathing.
"Too clean," he murmured, voice low enough for only me to hear. "The blood didn't spray."
I smiled faintly. "You noticed too."
"Everyone noticed," he replied. "They're just pretending not to. That's the real sport out here."
I reached for the cup beside me and took a slow sip, the jasmine tea now lukewarm. Still sweet. Still bitter.
Crown Princess Yuyan sat across the clearing, her hands folded tightly in her lap. Today's gown was pale gold, gauzy and embroidered, like she wanted to be seen but not remembered. Her eyes darted from Lianhua to Mingyu, to me.
When Mingyu didn't react to the Third Prince's showboating, she frowned.
Again.
I'd almost started a tally in my head.
More nobles returned. A pair of cousins bickered over who'd speared a rabbit first. One of the ministers' sons nearly shot his own foot. Somewhere in the distance, a group of ladies squealed over a butterfly and called it a sign of fortune.
The hunt, in all its pathetic glory.
But apparently, the show that Zhu Lianhua was putting on wasn't done yet.
He circled the stag like a prized sculpture, speaking to the gathered court with ease, letting them drink it in. Occasionally, he nodded toward the stag's flank and made some grand statement about wind patterns and trajectory.
I looked at his hands briefly. There wasn't a single callus on his palm, no bowstring marks on his fingers and not a single bruise from where the string would have hit his forearm.
He caught me looking. And again—he smiled. Only this time, he lifted his hand in a small wave.
I raised my cup in return, then tilted it slightly, letting a single drop of tea spill onto the ground. A silent insult, but it was enough for his eyes to narrow on me with a silent promise.
"Do you want me to say something?" Zhu Mingyu asked under his breath.
"No," I replied. "Let him play. The longer the stage, the harder the fall."
He didn't respond right away. "He's going to try something soon," he said at last and I nodded. "Let him."
Because the thing about people like Zhu Lianhua was that they were always building towers. Towers of silk and gold and illusion. And the higher they built them, the more satisfying it would be when they crashed.
A loud sound of cheering brought me back to the present as the Emperor declared Zhu Lianhua's stag the best catch of the day, and officials rushed to write it into the record. Someone suggested carving the antlers into ceremonial wine cups. Someone else offered to compose a poem.
And just like that, the moment passed.
The prince stepped back, his attendants dragging the stag away, and the rest of the court resumed its theater.
But I kept watching. Zhu Lianhua might have thought he'd won today, but he tipped his hand a bit too much.
Now, the only question was…
Was I going to act in his little play and let him hang himself, or stop it before it even started.