The Duke of Chu stood in the crowd, a cold smile on his face. These officials had no idea that the heavens of An were about to change.
"Li Shun also once falsely accused me of murdering the Empress!" Ren Ruyi scoffed at their empty threats. "That was a capital crime! If I wasn't afraid five years ago, why would I be afraid now?"
The ministers panicked. If even such threats were useless, they were truly helpless. The Duke of Chu, on the other hand, was enjoying the show. He had long been dissatisfied with the brutal tyrant An Emperor and felt a sense of vindication.
"Ren Xin! You are cornered, you have no escape!" The An Emperor sighed inwardly, but forced himself to maintain a facade of composure. "But if you repent now, and retreat from the precipice..."
Before he could finish, Ren Ruyi's sword moved, leaving a bloody gash on his neck. The pain made the Emperor close his mouth immediately, a look of agony on his face. His legs trembled uncontrollably. If he weren't gripping the railing of the city tower, he would have collapsed.
"Ren Xin, no!" Deng Hui cried out in alarm. But he and the surrounding Zhu Yiwei guards were helpless, as Ren Ruyi's action proved her resolve once more. They dared not gamble. The ministers below cried out in fear, many of them collapsing to the ground.
"Li Shun!" Ren Ruyi sneered at the Emperor's cowardice. "I want you to tell the Royal Historian and all the ministers here, what was the real reason for the death of Empress Zhaojie!"
Her words sent a shockwave through the crowd. No one had expected that she was making this spectacle for the sake of the late Empress.
The An Emperor wanted to refuse, but a single look into Ren Ruyi's eyes told him she would not hesitate to kill him if he disobeyed.
"The Empress... perished in a fire!" When the An Emperor's voice boomed out, the ministers were stunned. This was completely different from what they had been told. The official story was that Empress Zhaojie had gone mad and was deposed before taking her own life by self-immolation. "Perishing in a fire" was not the same as self-immolation. Was there a dark secret behind the Empress's death?
"There was a conspiracy behind the Empress's death?"
"What really happened?"
The ministers whispered to each other, desperate for answers. Many stared at the An Emperor with disbelief.
"Do you all think His Majesty is being forced to say this?" Ren Ruyi had anticipated the Emperor's attempt to spin the narrative, so she cut off his escape route. She pulled out a stack of documents and tossed them down.
"Look closely!" she shouted as the ministers scrambled to pick them up. "These are the original court records and the coroner's report for the Empress's death!"
"They clearly state: the Empress perished from smoke inhalation, not fire!"
Even the Duke of Chu, who had come for the spectacle, widened his eyes in surprise. He now understood that the An Emperor had played a very dishonorable role. He looked at the Emperor with a flicker of anger. Many other ministers had the same reaction, and the Emperor's carefully cultivated image crumbled in that instant.
"Li Shun knew the true cause of the Empress's death!" Ren Ruyi continued, seeing the effect she had. "So why did he pin the blame on me for assassinating her?"
The ministers were all shrewd politicians. Though they didn't know the exact details, they knew a foul play was involved.
"Don't pretend to be surprised!" Ren Ruyi continued. "He secretly colluded with the Beipan barbarians, and when the Empress discovered it, he set fire to her quarters to silence her! I refuse to believe no one in this court knew the truth!"
"The Empress chose death because she was disgusted by his collusion with an enemy. She was unwilling to be his Empress, ashamed to be his wife to such a shameless man!"
At her words, several ministers looked ashamed, glancing away from the tower. These were the very ministers the An Emperor had trusted most. The Duke of Chu understood. Ren Ruyi was right. The Emperor was heavily involved in the Empress's death. And more importantly, he had kept these palace secrets from him, proving that he was always guarding against the West Shazhou, despite their supposedly good relations.
"Do you think I'm doing all this just to clear my name?" Ren Ruyi sneered at the varied expressions of the officials below. "You are wrong!"
She kicked a wooden box she had prepared off the tower. It crashed to the ground, and the ministers surrounded it in astonishment.
"What is this?" They were now convinced that Ren Ruyi's actions would not stop.
"Li Shun not only altered historical records to hide the truth of his wife's murder," Ren Ruyi said slowly, seeing the crowd around the box. "He also erased the meritorious deeds of the Zhu Yiwei from all historical records over the years!"
"The documents in this box detail the achievements of the Zhu Yiwei, earned with their blood and lives over generations!"
"These deeds have been locked away in the Zhu Yiwei archives, never to see the light of day!"
The ministers were not the only ones in shock. Even the Zhu Yiwei guards surrounding Ren Ruyi looked at each other, their eyes filled with doubt.
The An Emperor, realizing Ren Ruyi was exposing all his dirty secrets, turned deathly pale. He glared at Deng Hui, his eyes burning with fury.
"Deng Hui!" the Emperor's voice was a low growl.
"Your servant never colluded with Ren Xin!" Deng Hui was terrified, but he had no choice but to defend himself.
"Why would His Majesty kill a Zhu Yiwei guard at the palace gates, but refuse to publicize their great deeds?" Ren Ruyi saw the growing suspicion between the Emperor and his minister. Her goal was nearly achieved. She had to add more fuel to the fire. "Because ever since the late Emperor, the Zhu Yiwei have been treated as expendable slaves!"
"Even when the Zhu Yiwei risked their lives to expose Prince Xun's rebellion, losing a hundred and sixty men to crush the Jiannan army!"
"Even when they assassinated the military governors of three enemy states!"
"Even when they eliminated the Prince of Nanping and Empress Dowager Yuan!"
"They were deemed unworthy of a single mention in the annals of history!"
"Just because the Zhu Yiwei did the dirty work, does that mean they don't deserve merit for serving the Great An?"
"Did you know any of this?"
As Ren Ruyi recounted the Zhu Yiwei's incredible achievements, the crowd was astonished. They had heard of many of these events, but never knew the Zhu Yiwei were behind them. If Ren Ruyi was telling the truth, the Zhu Yiwei were the pillars of the An Kingdom. Yet, as she said, they were completely unknown.
Hidden in a blind spot on the city tower, Wei Tingyu watched, a cold smile on his face. He wouldn't let Ren Ruyi face this danger alone. Her wish to avenge the Empress and clear the Zhu Yiwei's name was a personal mission, so he was there simply to protect her.
But listening to her words, Wei Tingyu's anger flared. The An Emperor and his predecessors were truly heartless. The Zhu Yiwei, a covert intelligence and assassination organization similar to the Six Realms of Wu, were treated completely differently. While the Six Realms were motivated by military honors and titles, the Zhu Yiwei were controlled by poison and threats to their families. And after all their service, they were discarded like trash. It was a shame that such talented people had to serve such a master.
Wei Tingyu wasn't the only one with these thoughts. The ministers below, seeing the Emperor's silence, also began to understand. "The Emperor's heart is the most ruthless," they knew this ancient saying, but they never imagined the An Emperor was this cold-blooded. Even an ordinary person would have some affection for a dog they had raised for ten years. But the Emperor seemed devoid of any human emotion. In that moment, many felt disillusioned with the An court. Especially the Zhu Yiwei surrounding Ren Ruyi. All of them, save for the loyal Deng Hui, were now filled with doubt.
"He could treat the Zhu Yiwei this way, so what's to say he won't do the same to you one day?!" Ren Ruyi's final question resonated with everyone. Regardless of their faction, the truth of her words was undeniable.
"Enough!" The An Emperor, Li Shun, seeing that he had lost control of the situation and his true face was exposed, stopped pretending. "Heh, heh, heh! What do you want?! If you want to kill me, do it! I am the ruler of An. I have done what I have done!"
"He who accomplishes great things doesn't seek the counsel of the many! He who achieves greatness doesn't concern himself with trivialities!" The Emperor believed his words were powerful and meaningful, a look of pride on his face. But they didn't have the desired effect. The doubt in the ministers' eyes remained.
His words had a point; great men rise over countless corpses. But their attitude toward those corpses afterwards was a different matter entirely. An Emperor who acted like this would never earn the loyalty of his people, a truth he had always known. Otherwise, he wouldn't have worked so hard to hide his past.
"But we are not trivialities!" Ren Ruyi frowned. "We are living, breathing people!"
At that moment, Ren Ruyi's gaze suddenly shifted to the distance. In two separate locations, massive fires had erupted. Since the city guards and officials had been summoned to the palace, the fires were burning unchecked and unnoticed. But with a smile on Ren Ruyi's face, the An Emperor and Deng Hui also realized something was wrong. Soon, the ministers below were also drawn to the distant fires, and panic spread.
"Fire! There's a fire!"
"That's... Yong'an Tower! Where the Wu Emperor is imprisoned! Why is it on fire?!"
"No, there's another fire over there! It looks like the Zhu Yiwei's archives?!"
"What a massive fire! The sky is lit up!"
"It's over! The Wu Emperor must be finished now!"
Watching the distant flames and hearing the panicked cries, the An Emperor and Deng Hui's faces turned ashen. They never expected that with the situation at the tower unresolved, two more critical locations would go up in flames.
Wei Tingyu, watching the inferno from his hidden spot, nodded with satisfaction. He had arranged for these fires. Over the past five days, he had sent a messenger pigeon to his team hidden in the valley on the border. He had left the gold and some men there with two male Golden Shadow Guards for protection. The other two male Golden Shadow Guards had led a thousand Xuanjia Guards on a forced march along a secret path to a forest near Andu. He had also used the silver from his treasury to recruit another thousand Xuanjia Guards and the thousand mounted cavalry he had just been rewarded. These three thousand elite riders were now hidden in the forest, awaiting his command.
The two male Golden Shadow Guards, despite their exhausting journey, had immediately snuck into the city to set the fire at Yong'an Tower. As for the two female Golden Shadow Guards who had been with Wei Tingyu, they had gone with some of the Zhu Yiwei "White Sparrows" that Ren Ruyi had recruited to the archives.
"Listen, all Zhu Yiwei!" Ren Ruyi shouted as the fires grew larger. She smiled and pulled out a stack of papers from her clothes, throwing them down.
"This is the antidote for the secret poison the An Emperor uses to control you!"
"The ingredients have been prepared outside the four city gates!"
"Now that the Zhu Yiwei archives are destroyed, there is nothing left to control you!"
"If you no longer wish to remain with the Zhu Yiwei, the world is your oyster!"
The Zhu Yiwei guards picked up the papers, and their faces lit up with joy.
"We're free! This is great!" Some were so excited they shouted aloud.
"Don't move! Behave yourselves!" Deng Hui, the commander of the Zhu Yiwei, was terrified of becoming a leader without followers. But it was clear that no one was listening to him anymore. Many Zhu Yiwei were so absorbed in their newfound freedom that they didn't even bother to look up.