Kangxi yanked Yinreng out of the Grand Empress Dowager's arms: "Baocheng! What did you say? What grandpa?"

Yinreng, dangling by the armpits in Kangxi's grip, kicked his short legs in vain.

"Grandma, please forgive him. Baocheng is young and may be confused." Knowing full well that his Khan-Father was the Grand Empress Dowager's Achilles' heel, Kangxi immediately hid tiny dumpling Yinreng in his arms.

The Grand Empress Dowager, her face dark as still water, waved her hand: "Let him keep going. Baocheng, who told you?"

Yinreng peeked out from Kangxi's arms: "That's what grandpa said."

The Grand Empress Dowager and Kangxi were once again filled with questions.

Grandpa said?

Kangxi placed the chubby boy on his lap: "Baocheng, do you know what 'Mafa' means?" (T/N: 玛法 — grandpa (Manchu mafa))

Yinreng thought about it. It seems that Emperor-Dad hadn't taught him Manchu yet.

"Mafa... is Mafa. Great-grandma's son, father's father," Yinreng said. "That's what Mafa said."

The Grand Empress Dowager and Kangxi exchanged a glance, both with a hint of gravity in their eyes.

Since the imperial family took matters of witchcraft seriously, they naturally believed in ghosts and spirits.

Every religion holds that young children can see things ordinary people cannot. And it was common knowledge that a child as small as Yinreng wouldn't lie. Either someone had been corrupting Yinreng, or Yinreng really could see things they couldn't.

Any other ghost would have made the Grand Empress Dowager and Kangxi wary. But hearing that the ghost was Shunzhi, neither of them could hide their excitement.

The Grand Empress Dowager asked, "Baocheng, when did you see grandpa?"

Yinreng tilted his head and thought, then said, "I don't know."

Kangxi frowned. "You don't know? Was it this year, last year, how long ago?"

Yinreng frowned. "I don't know."

Kangxi got impatient. "How could you not know?"

The Grand Empress Dowager was steadier than Kangxi.

She patted Kangxi's arm. "What sense of time do little children have? How could Baocheng possibly answer that? Baocheng, did you see grandpa during the day or at night? What does grandpa look like?"

Yinreng gestured: "Sometimes day, sometimes night. Grandpa is bright, glowing, can't see him clearly, dazzles my eyes. Grandpa is talkative, can't understand him, don't like grandpa. When father and great-grandma are around, can't see him."

Ah... Kangxi and the Grand Empress Dowager looked at each other in bewilderment again.

Bright? Glowing? What was this? Had he become a god, or a Buddha?

When the two of them are around, the kid can't see him? Why? Could it be that Khan-Father / her son didn't want to see them?

What was the alternating day and night about? Could ghosts come out during the day, too?

Kangxi had a flash of inspiration: "Baocheng, you didn't see this in a dream, did you?"

Yinreng clutched his head, acting like a bewildered Psyduck: "Dream? Was it a dream?"

"It was a dream visitation," the Grand Empress Dowager also realized. She sighed, her expression full of melancholy.

Kangxi patted Yinreng's head irritably. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Yinreng retorted with full conviction. "You didn't ask!"

Kangxi: "..." He really wanted to spank this kid's little bottom.

Kangxi pinched Yinreng's cheek. "What did grandpa say to you in the dream?"

Yinreng, still in his Psyduck pose, said vaguely, "A lot. Can't remember clearly."

The two big shots of the palace were speechless once again.

"Then tell us what you do remember," Kangxi said. "Didn't you just remember some?"

Yinreng put his hands down, pretended to think hard for a while, and started haltingly making things up.

"Grandpa said, father wet the bed!"

Kangxi: "...I did not."

Grand Empress Dowager: "No, you really did. Baocheng, continue."

"Grandpa said, Baocheng should study less. Father vomits blood from studying, Baocheng don't vomit blood."

Kangxi: "Ahem ahem... Baocheng, you still need to study."

The Grand Empress Dowager sighed. "Kangxi, Fulin has been watching over you all along."

"Grandpa said..." Yinreng paused, unsure whether he should take this opportunity to grab a bit more goodwill capital with Kangxi.

He knew that before this year, very few children had survived in the palace. After this year, his emperor-dad's sons and daughters would shoot up like bamboo after rain, and there would be no more worries about heirs.

Yinreng wanted to grab a bit of the credit for himself, to set up a nicer environment for his future after his courting death scheme got him confined.

But could he really pull off the acting? Yinreng wasn't so sure.

The deposed crown prince's memories from his previous-previous life were just memories. Yinreng watched them like a TV series. Afterward, he knew more facts, but it didn't help his personal growth.

The twenty years that actually shaped his soul, well... ahem, those twenty years of being pampered. For the first eighteen years, he only had to worry about the college entrance exam, shuttling between school and home. The last two years, he shuttled between the classroom, dorm, library, and dining hall at the university, never even joining a club or having a girlfriend.

With such a dull and boring but warm and smooth life, Yin really couldn't handle palace intrigue, domestic struggles, or court battles.

If he claimed credit like this, would he end up courting actual death and getting "cut down young"?

The Grand Empress Dowager and Kangxi mistook Yinreng's hesitation for spacing out.

Yinreng often spaced out and zoned off, so they were used to it.

It would be strange if a child under three didn't space out frequently.

Kangxi patted Yinreng's soft little face. "Wake up, wake up, what else did grandpa say?"

Yinreng blinked and made up his mind.

The credit for helping his emperor-dad save his sons... Even if he didn't get heavily rewarded, there was no way he'd be allowed to "die young" over it.

And besides, he himself didn't have the guts to commit suicide. If emperor-dad really did want him to "die young," that might actually be a good thing.

Father had a soft heart for his children, so he'd definitely help him find a painless way to die.

Hopefully, after being "cut down young," he could transmigrate back to the modern world with his memories.

"Grandpa... gets into a lot of fights." Yinreng blinked. "Fights with the dark, dark thing. Grandpa is really good at fighting."

The smiles on Kangxi's and the Grand Empress Dowager's faces vanished.

Fighting? What kind of fighting? They were all dead. What kind of fight could they have?

"Grandpa said, it's the female..." Yinreng frowned. "Female what... curse?"

Kangxi tightened his grip on Yinreng's arm. "Female what?"

Could it be some woman's witchcraft?

"Female... what... dragon vein?" Yinreng tried to scrunch his face up tighter, balling it into a knot to hide his lying expression. "Grandpa said, ancestor isn't fe-? Took over what qi? So fe- is angry? Curse... pitch dark?" (T/N: 女真 Jurchen and 女人 woman(female) both start with 女 nü; Yinreng's stutter lets the adults hear either.)

Yinreng clutched his head again, tilting it in confusion.

Kangxi and the Grand Empress Dowager drew a deep breath.

They finally understood why Yinreng kept seeing Khan-Father / her son in his dreams! Khan-Father / her son had a very important message he was trying to relay through the chubby little fellow!

But this chubby little fellow was a fool! He hadn't taken any of it to heart!

If Shunzhi hadn't come up by chance today, the chubby kid wouldn't have remembered any of it!

And yet they couldn't blame Yinreng. What could you expect from a two-year-old? Especially when the message came as a dream visitation, with so many things a small child couldn't understand.

Sigh!

Kangxi racked his brains trying to decipher Yinreng's words. "Dragon vein? Ancestor? Could it be some woman among the ancestors?"

But the Grand Empress Dowager remembered a secret she had once heard from Hong Taiji, back when she was still Consort Zhuang.

"It's the Jurchens," the Grand Empress Dowager said gravely.

Kangxi was startled. "The Jurchens?!"

The Grand Empress Dowager gave Sumalagu a pointed look. Sumalagu drove the palace attendants, who had already retreated to the entrance of Cining Palace, out of the palace entirely and personally stood guard at the gate.

Gu Wenxing also immediately took his leave and stood guard at the hall entrance with Sumalagu.

The huge palace hall now held only the three generations.

Kangxi sat up straight. He knew the Grand Empress Dowager was about to tell him a very important secret.

"You should know that the Aisin Gioro are not truly descended from the Jurchens," the Grand Empress Dowager said.

Kangxi nodded. The Aisin Gioro publicly claimed descent from the Jurchens, and the Ming had also called them the Jianzhou Jurchens (T/N: a Ming-era designation for tribes in the northeast). In reality, "Jurchen" was a geographic concept, referring to those "barbarian tribes" beyond the northeast frontier.

The Jurchens of the Jin (T/N: 12th–13th-century Jurchen empire that ruled north China) had been heavily Sinicized. The "Jianzhou Jurchens" of more recent times, who had seemed almost like wild men, clearly couldn't be true descendants of the Jin Jurchens.

The Jianzhou Jurchens included people of many different ethnicities. Back then, the Qing had called itself "Jin", just like every dynasty before, finding itself a distinguished ancestor.

"I don't know much about politics, but Emperor Wen once said that the Qing was not a continuation of the Jin, and the Qing people were not Jurchens. The unified ethnic name was Manchu. Among the Eight Banners, Mongols, Han, Jurchens, and others... as long as they submitted to the Qing, all were Manchu," the Grand Empress Dowager said. "Perhaps Emperor Wen had sensed something."

Emperor Wen was Hong Taiji, who was Kangxi's imperial grandfather.

The Grand Empress Dowager said she didn't understand politics, but she really only meant during Hong Taiji's reign. By now, having served as Empress Dowager through two reigns, she clearly understood it very well.

Maybe politicians were all fond of conspiracy theories because the Grand Empress Dowager quickly connected the dots to Hong Taiji's abrupt change of the ethnic name.

On the surface, Hong Taiji was promoting ethnic integration, preparing to enter the Central Plains as a ruler over the Han. But who could say for certain whether, in private, gods, ghosts, and dragon veins were involved?

Kangxi fell into deep thought.

Emperors throughout history believed in the ideas of fate and dragon veins. Whether it was the Nine Tripods (T/N: legendary symbols of imperial mandate) and Imperial Seals of antiquity, or the "claiming of ancestors," "guarding of dragon veins," and "selection of imperial tombs" of every dynasty after, they were all ways to borrow and accumulate fortune.

Borrow another's fortune, and you might suffer a backlash from it. Sure enough. If your own fortune grew adequately strong, you didn't have to worry about backlash. But the Qing were clearly not yet strong enough.

Kangxi thought of his Khan-Father, who had died young, and of his own children, dying young one after another. He clenched his fist so tightly that his nails almost dug into the flesh of his palm.

"Baocheng, where did you see the dark thing?" Kangxi asked through gritted teeth.

Yinreng tried to scrunch his face up uglier still, to cover up his awkward acting.

"Big brother? Little brother?" Yinreng clutched his head. "Father, don't worry, I absorbed it all!"

A teeth-gritting Kangxi and a heart-twisting Grand Empress Dowager: "???"

Yinreng patted his little chest. "Grandpa said, the Crown Prince is a hid-, hidden dragon! Has dragon-qi, can attract the dark thing, and keeps me away from the dark thing! Father's dragon-qi can protect me! But elder brother got sick, younger brother got sick. But father taught me, love your brothers! Baocheng is a baturu (T/N: Manchu for 'warrior, hero')!"

Kangxi's and the Grand Empress Dowager's expressions both went blank, like they'd been struck by a bolt from a clear sky.

Yinreng was still smug. "Baocheng is still small, his pull isn't strong enough yet! Grandpa said, big brother and little brother should be raised outside the palace. Next year, big brother and little brother can both come back! Father's sons, born healthy, can live! Grandpa said so!"

The Grand Empress Dowager said anxiously, "Kangxi! Fulin didn't mean to harm—"

Yinreng, head in his hands, doing his Psyduck act, cut off the Grand Empress Dowager: "But, I sucked the dark thing away, saved big brother and little brother, and grandpa is unhappy. Grandpa even wants to hit me? Lucky thing grandpa can't hit me. Why is grandpa unhappy? I protected my brothers, I'm a baturu!"

The Grand Empress Dowager breathed a sigh of relief. So it wasn't Fulin who had Baocheng draw in the curse. It was Baocheng acting on his own.

"Kangxi, there's definitely room to maneuver in this matter, no need to rush," the Grand Empress Dowager said calmly. "Summon the Grand Lama and the Grand Shaman to the palace."

The Grand Empress Dowager looked at the cluelessly innocent Yinreng and felt guilty for the small flash of relief that had risen in her heart.

For the Grand Empress Dowager, every great-grandson was important. But if sacrificing one Yinreng meant all of Kangxi's future sons could live, she couldn't help feeling a touch of relief.

But as for Kangxi now... The Grand Empress Dowager looked at Kangxi's grim expression and sighed deeply in her heart.

"Father?" Yinreng's expression was blank as he tugged on Kangxi's sleeve. "Why are you unhappy? Baocheng did a good thing."

"A good thing?" Kangxi pressed Yinreng down onto his knees.

Yinreng: "..."

Yinreng: "Waaah!!"

...

For the first time in over two years since transmigrating, tiny dumpling Yinreng had his pants pulled down and his bottom spanked.

A very memorable day.

 

 

 

Author's Note:

It is common knowledge that children don't lie.

(It is common knowledge that children are the best liars.)