A Bright Future

This was not to say that Luo Zhao was unintelligent.

Quite the opposite—Luo Zhao was the most promising person Gu Chengyin had ever seen.

Her comprehension was extraordinary, her insight keen, and her progress in the arts of court politics advanced at a staggering pace.

Given time, Luo Zhao would surely become a female emperor as unfathomable as Emperor Luo himself.

But that was for the future. For now, Luo Zhao was still far too green.

Her methods, her schemes, her stratagems—all still carried the faint air of a student's work.

They could be seen through, predicted, and neutralized.

Gu Chengyin could guess seven or eight out of ten of the little tricks Luo Zhao tried to play on him with his eyes closed.

He simply couldn't be bothered to deal with them. After all, he still needed Luo Zhao as his banner—the crown princess standard.

But Emperor Luo was a different matter entirely.

Emperor Luo's methods were the seasoned cunning of a man who had steeped himself in power for decades.

Slow and deliberate, never showing his hand.

Every move landed where it was least expected; every strike fell precisely on the most critical point.

He would not, like Luo Zhao, wear every intention on his face or lay every card on the table.

He would simply pluck a single string, then retreat behind the curtain.

He would watch, quietly, as the ripples from that string spread outward in ever-widening circles.

And he would watch everyone scramble in panic within those ripples.

This imperial decree was both a warning and a transaction.

Gu Chengyin ran the contents of the decree through his mind once more, and grew ever more certain of that judgment.

Emperor Luo was not a man who liked to push things to the extreme. He was the sovereign of Great Luo.

He was the maker of rules, not the breaker of them.

Emperor Luo preferred to leave a path open for others, then watch them choose which way to walk.

This decree was exactly that.

On the surface, it was a marriage arrangement. In reality, it was a contract.

The terms of the contract were clear:

If Gu Chengyin followed the decree as intended—married Lin Qingyan obediently, became the imperial son-in-law obediently—

and became Luo Zhao's minister obediently, then Emperor Luo would do nothing further.

He would remain the Son of Heaven, and Gu Chengyin would remain the Crown Princess's Senior Tutor.

Everyone would be pleased, and everyone would have a bright future.

But a bright future, not a bright present.

Because the single drawback was that Gu Chengyin would find it very difficult to advance further.

Because he was the Senior Tutor to the Crown Princess.

That title itself was a constraint.

All the power and status of the Senior Tutor were tethered to the Crown Princess.

Every move Gu Chengyin made, every step forward or back, represented Luo Zhao's will.

When Luo Zhao stepped forward, he could step forward.

When Luo Zhao stopped, he could only stop as well.

And Luo Zhao's steps were never entirely her own to decide.

Every move she made was within Emperor Luo's control.

And as long as Emperor Luo sat on the throne, the court had to maintain its balance.

That was Emperor Luo's fundamental strategy for governing the realm.

He would never allow any faction to grow powerful enough to threaten the throne, nor would he allow any faction to grow so weak that it could be easily swallowed by another.

The Crown Princess faction and the Prince faction were like weights on opposite ends of a scale—they had to stand in opposition, they had to be evenly matched.

If one end grew too heavy, it had to be trimmed.

If one end grew too light, weight had to be added.

Now that the Shangguan family had cut ties, the Crown Princess faction had lost weight—so let the Heavenly Master's Institute step in and make up the difference.

That was Emperor Luo's balancing act.

He would not let the Crown Princess faction weaken from the loss of the Shangguan family, because if it weakened, the Prince faction would swell, and the court's balance would shatter.

But neither would he let the Crown Princess faction grow too strong from gaining the Heavenly Master's support.

So Emperor Luo had to weaken Gu Chengyin.

Gu Chengyin was the greatest variable in the Crown Princess faction.

His very existence added more than just a measure of weight to that faction.

Gu Chengyin's cunning, his methods, his influence—these were the sharpest weapons of the Crown Princess faction.

If he could not be peeled away from the faction, then he had to be held firmly in hand.

So Gu Chengyin could not succeed to the position of Minister of Rites, and he absolutely could not enter the Grand Secretariat.

That was the red line Emperor Luo had drawn.

Entering the Secretariat meant becoming a true heavyweight of the court, meant having the qualification to truly influence the government, if not all of Great Luo itself.

With Gu Chengyin's abilities, once he entered the Secretariat, the balance of the court would be nearly impossible to maintain.

He would forge alliances and weave schemes within the Secretariat, using his influence to shift the stances of more and more people.

He would cause the Crown Princess faction to gain the upper hand without anyone even realizing it.

At that point, the Prince faction would inevitably collapse.

And once the Prince faction collapsed, the balance of the court would be broken.

The Crown Princess faction would stand alone—Luo Zhao's position would grow more secure, but the imperial power itself would also come under threat.

Emperor Luo could never allow such a thing to happen. It wasn't that he didn't want Luo Zhao to ascend the throne.

It was that Luo Zhao was still too weak, and Gu Chengyin was too strong.

Even if she did ascend the throne in the future, she would be nothing more than Gu Chengyin's puppet.

That was the starting point and the end goal of everything Emperor Luo did.

The Crown Princess faction could not be too strong, but could not be too weak either.

Too strong and it would threaten imperial power; too weak and it could not counterbalance the Prince faction.

So the greatest variable—Gu Chengyin—had to be kept under control.

If Luo Zhao could control him, that would naturally be the best outcome.

After all, Luo Zhao was the Crown Princess. For her to control Gu Chengyin would be both proper and unlikely to cause too much backlash.

But since Luo Zhao couldn't control him now, Emperor Luo would personally do it for her—personally move to suppress and weaken him.

Gu Chengyin's gaze swept across Luo Zhao's face.

Luo Zhao was frowning, her lips pressed lightly together, her expression hovering between contemplation and unease.

Her fingers tapped unconsciously against her knee, the rhythm alternating fast and slow, revealing the turmoil within her.

The Crown Princess clearly sensed something was off, but hadn't yet thought it all through.

Her comprehension was indeed high, but Emperor Luo's move was buried too deep.

So deep that Luo Zhao couldn't yet connect all the threads.

The hall fell into silence.

A silence so complete that only the occasional sound of wind from outside the window could be heard.

The wind passed through the corridor, brushed over the flowers and trees in the courtyard, and stirred a faint rustling—like someone whispering softly from very far away.

The sunlight had shifted slightly, and the light filtering through the window lattices was no longer the harsh white of noon.

It had taken on a soft, warm golden hue, gilding the hall's furnishings with a gentle glow.

The agarwood still curled upward from the burner, its smoke drifting slowly through the beams of light, tracing countless invisible patterns.

Those patterns gathered and scattered by turns, like a school of fish without a destination, floating aimlessly through the air.

Gu Chengyin and Luo Zhao each pondered their own thoughts.

Their gazes fell in different directions, and their minds wandered to different places.

Yet they were pondering the same thing.

Emperor Luo's decree—and the invisible web that lay behind it.