Chapter Text

序幕: Sunrise

This is the empire of Great Yang, written for the rising sun.

In the twentieth year of the era of Changgeng, fearing the growing power of the Crown Prince Lí Xi, the Emperor of Great Yang resolved to depose of him.

Complicit in this act was the Gracious Consort Bai and her clan, including the Right Chancellor Bai Sù, who were advocating for the deposal of the Crown Prince in favour of the Consort’s son – the fifth imperial son Li Rong, Royal Prince of Rongyu.

Claiming to possess foreknowledge of the event, the second imperial son Lí Chang, Royal Prince of Yongchang, began to act against his imperial father for the inheritance of his older brother.

With his own martial might, honed from expanding the borders of Great Yang, Lí Chang could perhaps contend with the Chancellor. However, some bond of fate as claimed by himself, led him to the Royal Tailor Yan Hong. As son of the Left Chancellor Yan Kou, Yan Hong furnished Lí Chang with a plan and advised him in the strategy of quick action.

Yan Hong then entered the Yongchang Royal House as the Prince Consort of Yongchang in pomp and circumstance. The wedding expenses was of such magnitude, that the ceremony expenses had the Imperial Censorate investigating for months for wrongdoing on the part of the notorious Prince of Yongchang. This, however, was enough to distract the Emperor’s spies from the Royal Prince’s preparations for rebellion.

In the twenty-first year of Changgeng, Lí Chang stormed the palace under the banner of ‘clearing the Court of villains’.¹ In an act which had no precedent and would have no followers in the history of Great Yang, Lí Chang thus slew the Chancellor Bai, and placed the Emperor’s personal residence the Beiji Palace under house arrest.

After the event, the Emperor’s edict of abdication was announced to all under the heavens. Crown Prince Lí Xi took the yellow robe upon his person, and changed the era name to Chenxi, meaning ‘the rays of the sunrise’.

Having received the Mandate of the Heavens, Lí Xi’s first few edicts were as followed: firstly, to elevate his imperial father to Retired Emperor; secondly, to elevate the Emperor’s primary spouse Imperial Lord Xun Shi to Imperial Grand Lord; and, finally, to promote Gracious Consort Bai, who had escaped the fate which had befallen the rest of her clan, to Imperial Consort Dowager. In light of the circumstances, and fearing for the end of his brother’s bloodline in consideration of an inability to bear children on the part of both males of the Yongchang Royal House, the Crown Prince now Emperor gave his own third royal son Lí Xù for adoption by the couple, proclaiming the Yongchang Royal House as pillars of the Great Yang.

In the first year of Chenxi, the Retired Emperor returned to the heavens at the age of fifty-four. After a state mourning which stretched for twenty days, Lí Qiming was given his era name as a temple name and enshrined in the imperial family temple, and thus he entered the history of Great Yang as the Changgeng Emperor.

After the funeral, the Royal Prince of Yongchang absented himself from the Court, and moved to the Department of Secret Books. Months passed in relative silence before the desperate Prince Consort of Yongchang broke into the Palace Library to confront his lord husband at last. When asked, the Prince of Yongchang claimed that he was researching the one who had sent him back in time, enabling him to change fate:

“Hong Yuan, Hong Yuexia. The Grandmaster of the JieJue Sect.”

“...oh.”

The news took Yan Hong by surprise, and no small amount of fear, for the world of cultivators and supernatural dangers which his family had left was now coming back for them.