21 What can I do to Earn your Trust?

Ming Cheng watched all the nobles and soldiers and concubines mingle around him, during the after party.

The Emperor sat high up on his throne, conversing with all those currently within the realms of his favour, and most certainly his brother as well.

The ghost could speak about whatever it truly wanted, but Ming Cheng knew, for a fact, that the Emperor did not love his brother.

His brother was a successful general with a strong military following. He was a threat to the the throne. All the resources and capacity for a violent coup and hostile takeover were present. The Emperor's brother was probably plotting to commit fratricide and take the throne for himself as he thought through the whole situation.

It was the natural way of doing things.

The strong preyed on the weak, and were never satisfied with their position.

No matter what the ghost said, the Emperor's life was in danger, and the source of that danger was his younger brother.

Ming Cheng had seen siblings turn on each other, breaking each other's bones in vicious, bloody fights for scraps of food, or even kill each other just for the opportunity to move upwards in the world.

However, it was always the siblings who worked together that were the most deadly. One would deliberately injure the other in a show to display their apparent hostility to the world, putting on acts which followed the typical norm of the way things were done, and had apparently always been done, before turning around and slinking back into the shadows with their prizes won, the apparent victorious sibling returning to lick the wounds of the one, chosen for that event, injured.

The siblings who cared for one and other were truly the most terrifying force of them all.

Love was a truly desperate force, turning men into almost inhuman monsters, creating desires that led to the most depraved of unions and other such things.

Ming Cheng continued to walk around the banquet hall, picking up the empty plates that needed to be refilled, as soon as Qi Tao spotted them and alerted him.

He heard the rumours of the palace, from one such magistrate losing his son in an a bandit attack, apparently for interfering in business which wasn't his own in his father's typical extrajudicial fashion of poor governance.

The ghost was keen to provide extra context to the situation, speaking into his mind once more, providing the rest of the story which entailed two rival vigilantes fighting in an inn before a group of bandits came to rob the establishment. The magistrate's son had been called for with a contingent of guards to help diffuse the situation, but by the time they had arrived, the two vigilantes had put their differences aside adequately enough for them to team up to, in short order, dispose of the bandits. The magistrate' son and his soldiers, arriving when the last bandit had been slain, arrested the two vigilantes in his frustration at his role seemingly useless in the entire incident, and because a great number of people had been slain in the inn. One of the vigilantes had then offended the magistrate's son by calling out his delay in arriving at the scene, and was prompted arrested, along with his newly acquired compatriot. The two were to be put to death, but they rebelled, accidently killing the magistrate's son before running off into the wilderness.

Ming Cheng held the back to instinctively scoff at the frankly ridiculous tale, walking back to provide Wang Yuan with the plate that he needed.

"The fifth concubine, the one dressed in yellow, has an empty plate of pastries next to her," Qi Tao informed Ming Cheng, prompting a nod to indicate that the instruction had been heard over the commotion of the hall.

Ming Cheng looked over to the large table, which had previously housed all the Imperial Family members and concubines, before identifying the concubine in question, who sat right at the end of the table, showing that she was the least favoured maiden in the Emperor's eyes at this moment.

The empty plate, right at the edge of the table, just pressed against the wall, sitting idly closest to Ming Cheng's approaching side was clear, and the concubine in question, who sat near it was sat with her back ramrod straight and eating small portions of food silently, without any behaviours which suggested any kind of reproach.

She did not speak with any of her peers and she was completely content to be alone, sitting on her own in her little corner, not speaking to any of her attending relatives at the banquet, nor any friends that she might have made.

Ming Cheng could spare some pity on her.

She was currently ranked as the Emperor's least favoured wife. Her family would be too disappointed and ashamed to speak with her, if she was simply judged by status alone by them, which it looked as if she was.

She looked and dressed in the same style as all the other's with pale, alabaster skin, borne from a lack of sunlight, with thin wrists and bones all over her body. Her pitch black hair was perfectly curled and pinned upwards, away and framing her face perfectly. There was not a single imperfect mark on her face, nor on any of the skin that she had deigned to reveal.

Slowly and carefully, Ming Cheng approached her, bowing in greeting as soon as he stood in front of her, muttering out the prescribed and practiced words that Lan Chang had instructed him to say," This humble servant greets noble concubine."

Looking upwards just enough to pick up the plate from the table, Ming Cheng reached out to take his charge away to be refilled, before his jaw was suddenly grabbed by a deceptively strong hand.

Almost lovingly, his face was brought to look upwards, straight into the eyes of the concubine whose almond shade his something distinctly dark and deceptive within them.

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