C1 Part2

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Storm Rising | Pt. One: Muyun Sheng | 2

Little Sheng’er grew by the day, and the prince’s cleverness and natural talent were astonishing. People worried that before him, the other princes would lose their shine, especially since––since the Emperor Ming had once so loved his mother.

The other princes’ mothers had enormously powerful clans to support them, each of them pillars of the empire’s stability, whilst Muyun Sheng only had a mother who was so beautiful she was accused of being a mei.

Perhaps it was that the opposition was too strong, or perhaps there really were people who believed that Muyun Sheng was a person who had been abandoned by the heavens. The Emperor Ming seemed determined against all odds to turn Muyun Sheng into a normal person. He invited no tutors to teach him, brought him on no inspection tours, as if he wanted him to become a sproutlet that had withered for lack of sunshine and care.

In the course of his youth, little Sheng’er did not learn how to use a bow and did not understand military strategy. All he did every day was doodle, but even in such conditions, his talent could scarcely be concealed within the limited confines of the palace.

Perhaps it was because he had always lived in his own world, but little Sheng’er was stubborn and unrestrained. He didn’t read the classics, didn’t learn the rites; he only ever liked playing around with the girls.

This sixth prince was perhaps the palace girls’ least-feared person, because he had never once used his status as a prince to command or berate anyone. He had grown up fooling around with these girls who lived in the palace, playing until they were all but wild, tumbling about in a mess of arms and legs, never separating themselves into servant and master. His Qinfeng Hall was the only one amidst a sea of stern and solemn courts that never bothered with rules. So even though everyone in the palace said that the sixth prince was an unbridled child with not a chance in the world of becoming emperor, the girls were intimate with him, because in any case he was never going to be king, there was even less of a need to maintain their reserve.

Most of the girls in Hua’ai Palace were on close terms with him. It was unclear where it begun, but there began to be many pairs of clear, vivacious eyes that longed for him to grow up, so that they could care the way they wanted to care and as much as they wanted to care for him, although at that time they still believed that children were things that the Lord of the Skies placed into stomachs in the dead of night.

Muyun Sheng was happy to play with the girls every day rather than learning to shoot a bow or ride a horse or read the annals of history. But the only things that could entice him away from the girls and into solitary, quiet concentration were his picture scrolls. This sixth prince knew nothing of governance, but he could draw beautifully, a skill that must have come from the heavens, for such talent weaved through every warp and weft of his work that it put the work of even the masters to shame.

As an adolescent, the technical work of his realist portraiture was on par with those of famous masters. The little palace maids and the daughters of dukes and lords who had come to be study companions in the palace could all boast of owning a portrait he had painted of themselves. When he drew, there was always a gaggle of girls sneaking a look from outside, envious of the subject of that day’s portrait. And it was only when he was painting them that he was able to quiet down and devote himself to the task. He didn’t draw flowers or birds, didn’t draw pine or bamboo, only drew beautiful girls, and the girls he drew all seemed to be drifting immortals, each one a masterpiece.

Countless eyes took note of that carefree little Sheng’er, and many voices whispered, “The child is brilliant, but it’s a pity he lingers in a world of tender things, in an imaginary empire; I fear he never was cut from kingly cloth.”

He never sensed that in that world of adults, shadows lurked behind many a smile.