35 The Assassin Killer

Concubine Jing sat placidly, drinking tea delicately form an ornate, porcelain cup, decorated with inlaid golden swirls, resembling lotuses calmly floating on the lake's edge, flying fish leaping above them in wonderous, perfect arches.

Her chosen robes, pale blue with patterns of both black and white spools of thread, subtly glittering and dancing in the sunlight as she swished her arms around gracefully, were immaculate without a single crease of imperfection, sitting just as beautifully as she did, artfully draping themselves around her, framing her and covering her as if she were the subject of a portrait that contained a subject looking too perfect and pristine for this world.

Her posture was strict and rigid, her back so straight that it was parallel with the walls which held up the very room, and her legs, so tightly crossed, looked as if they were beginning to fuse together in response, her knees too close together for her to comfortable use them as a rest of her elbows.

She was the epitome of all that the poets praised: disciplined, quiet, and beautiful.

They would be horrified if they knew that, at very moment, she was plotting the murder of at least one man.

An abundance of papers that were scattered around her, in loose collapsing piles that she must have spent hours upon hours sifting through to find what she needed, and lo and behold, in front of her lay a collection of maps, floorplans, treatises on security and battle tactics involving espionage and sieges, and a historical record of all prior assassinations and failed attempts in the history of the Empire.

There were various splotches of ink messily scrawled on scrolls off to the side, smudges wiped by fingers onto the scrolls messily, the splotches almost spelling out their own words. There were half grinded inkstones laid about, here and there, and always at least a partially dry brush, stained with ink, somewhere at least tangentially close.

The windows were thrown out wide, the curtains flapping away in the breeze, blotting out the sun occasionally, every now and again, throwing the room into darkness, only for the light to return just as quickly as it had initially vanished.

The room was a mess, and Concubine Jing, through it all, sat up straight and untouched by the chaos around her that she had caused, proud and focussed, her gaze unmoving from what was in front of her.

Xiao Ying had not written this scene in his original novel, and had never even considered drafting it, almost to the point of having a maniacal need to keep his main character in the limelight at all times, as if his readers would forget about the child that he had spent tens of chapters focussing on non stop.

There had been no need for him to write out a scene here, as Ming Cheng, ultimately, would be the one to save the day, the machinations of the concubine going unnoticed by the main characters, with the entirety of Concubine Jing's character only serving to smooth Ming Cheng's identity reveal and give him the position that he had been born to inherit.

Xiao Ying moved away from the door, deciding to step closer to where she was pouring over all the information that she had open in front of her, no doubt creating and deciding upon plans to strengthen the Empire's defences and tightening up the pre existing security measures to ensure the safety of the Emperor and the Ambassador, if at least to avoid causing a major diplomatic incident.

Her eyes seemed to flit from page to page, going systematically through all her books, consuming the words and characters on the pages hungrily as if she were a tiger prowling around a herd of wile bison, taking note of all their movements as she hunted her prey.

Xiao Ying came closer, kneeling down onto the floor, as he tried to read what had been written on those pages.

He immediately recognised the reference used in one of the books on siege warfare to a battle that had occurred approximately one hundred and fifty years ago in a land to the West of the Empire in a country that, canonically, no longer existed.

There had been a conflict between the two heirs, twin boys, with the obvious favouritism, towards the eldest, from their father not at all helping.

The eldest son had been crowned the new Emperor, upon his father's death, and had quickly sent out the notice to assassinate his younger brother to avoid any complications. The younger brother, however, had escaped the country and had been raising troops to combat the armies of his brother.

His rebellion and coup failed quickly and the younger brother was killed.

The main commander of the rebel army swiftly took the reigns of the operation and led his troops out of the country in secret, travelling hundreds of miles with an army within the thousands not even reaching one hundred deaths.

The key strategies at play were misdirection, and proper reconnaissance, before reaching any new, unknown areas, often taking deliberately difficult paths and travelling over harsh terrain to discourage anybody who followed them.

The commander had written of his adventures in his old age, from the small house that he had retired in, living off the sales of his books through one of his friends who had grown in prominence as a teacher in the years while the commander had been at war.

Xiao Ying watched the eyes of Concubine Jing move from her books to the map occasionally, as if she had been looking for applications of concepts that she had just-

...

A knife, Xiao Ying realised, was suddenly passing through his body.

He gasped as the cold, ghostly sensation of it, passing through his body, and emerging from his back understood and embedding itself into the wall behind him.

He froze, unable to know what he had supposed to do, before gasping out, struggling for breath and hyperventilating as he fell backwards and desperately tried to crawl away.

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