The King's Mate - Part 2: Yaoshi

Chapter 21

Hua Cheng spent the following days eavesdropping as a mouse on the goings on in the throne room, putting together a theory as to what exactly Jun Wu, or Bai WuXiang, was trying to achieve, and preparing his next move. Which was to go on the offence, and kill the guy once and for all.

The eavesdropping was a bit annoying; he had hoped to never have to listen to Jun Wu's irritating voice again, but he gained quite a bit of insight because of it. And it certainly guided his theories into the right direction. In fact, after just a few days, Hua Cheng was already pretty sure that a certain theory of his was indeed correct.

Of course Jun Wu hadn't let anything slip about his past actions or intentions, but with the way he was orchestrating certain things for future events, well, it could only lead to one conclusion. And Hua Cheng hated him even more for it.

As it turned out, Jun Wu was a very sour loser, but cared about his face more than anything else in the world. Hua Cheng guessed that if his attack on the king hadn't been as spontaneous and swift as it had been, things would have turned out very differently back then. He figured that having Ling Wen create a poison that knocked him out for a few days or weeks was Jun Wu's backup plan in case Hua Cheng succeeded in one way or another. Hua Cheng was pretty sure that Pei Ming was indeed on his side in all of this, but that his general had simply trusted the wrong people.

Ling Wen was the obvious traitor to Hua Cheng's cause, though he figured she had never been on his side to begin with. Though, that didn't matter too much at this point. What did matter was the fact that Hua Cheng had never noticed anything off about her, and that he'd kept her on his court, like the ignorant idiot he had been.

Either way, Jun Wu had resorted to his backup plan; he had forfeited his throne to Hua Cheng and obviously hadn't planned on challenging him afterwards. No, befitting for a rat like Jun Wu, he just fled, and tended to his wounded ego by infiltrating a neighbouring monarchy, turning it into his puppets.

When Hua Cheng had already been reigning over WuYong for some time, information had reached him that the son of the king of Yong An had killed his parents, just because he hadn't wanted to wait any longer to take over the position. It was clear now that he'd done so because of Jun Wu's influence. While Hua Cheng had never liked that brat as a crown prince, he never had the backbone to go against his parents' orders.

At the time, Hua Cheng had simply thought that something must have happened to break the camel's back, and that, at least in the brat's head, he was justified to kill his parents. But he hadn't thought about it any deeper than that. Of course Hua Cheng had always known Jun Wu to be cunning and manipulating, but he'd thought he'd killed the former king successfully, and thus hadn't even questioned the radicalisation of the former crown prince at the time.

Thanks to Hua Cheng's eavesdropping, he knew that the brat had been dead for almost a decade by now, though word had never reached Hua Cheng of the circumstance that another king had taken the throne of Yong An. From what Hua Cheng could gather, the brat had decided to hand over Xie Lian to Hua Cheng on his own accord, without consulting Jun Wu first. Despite the fact that it was Jun Wu's idea to invade XianLe and capture its royal family, it was much more likely that his plan was to keep them prisoner himself. After all, Jun Wu was an obsessive old man, who had wanted to make Xie Lian into one of his pretty possessions for years at that point.

To Hua Cheng, it was obvious that the whole attack on XianLe had only taken place so Jun Wu could get his ugly, stubby fingers on Xie Lian. Though he hadn't taken into account Hua Cheng's reputation, and the fact that the brat had been terrified of WuYong under his leadership. Hua Cheng still thought what the brat had done was a disgusting and dumb attempt to win his favour, but it had inadvertently saved his gege from an even worse situation if Jun Wu had been his captor. Hua Cheng had to begrudgingly thank all the gods for that brat's stupidity.