The Hand That Moves the Board
Ouyang Qiangang spoke, his voice striking the cold stone walls and rolling out in a low echo.
"The power behind the conspiracy that has tormented Your Highness for thirty years, and those who have set this trap to ensnare me now — they spring from the same root."
In an instant, the gentleness drained from the Crown Prince's eyes, leaving them sharp as a blade. The air around him turned cold as a frozen lake.
"What insolence. What exactly do you imagine you know, that you dare run your mouth so recklessly?"
It was a quiet voice, yet the fearsome authority woven through it proclaimed beyond argument that this man was the Crown Prince of the empire.
But Ouyang Qiangang, bound in chains, did not shrink an inch. He met the Crown Prince's gaze with unwavering eyes.
"Your Highness's illness, Princess Myeonghwa's poison, the trap set for me. Why do you pretend not to see that all of these are strung upon a single thread?"
The Crown Prince gave no answer. Slowly, he turned his gaze upon the rough stone walls, scarred with the nail marks of the countless prisoners who had come before him. Upon his gaunt shoulders sat the deep despair and resignation of thirty long years, shouldered all alone.
"Could it be that Your Highness already knew who they were?"
The Crown Prince remained silent. In his eyes lingered an anguish beyond the reach of words.
The moment Ouyang Qiangang realized that silence was an admission, his eyes widened.
The Crown Prince spoke. Every trace of his earlier authority had vanished, and his voice was steeped in deep weariness.
"Yes... you're right."
At that flat acknowledgment, this time it was Ouyang Qiangang who found himself at a loss for words. He had never imagined the Crown Prince would concede so easily.
"If you knew, why did you do nothing? Your Highness has less than a year left to live."
Even at that staggering fact, the Crown Prince's expression did not so much as flicker. It meant he had long known the full details of his own condition.
The Crown Prince smiled bitterly.
"It is not that I chose not to stop them. It is that I could not."
Something about that expression struck Ouyang Qiangang as strange. It was not simple rage or a hunger for vengeance, but something deeper and far more tangled.
The Crown Prince tapped the damp prison floor with the tip of his toe and said,
"Do you know what holds this vast imperial palace upright? The foundation stones, driven deep into the earth beneath it."
His eyes sank into shadow.
"And what if... the mightiest of those stones, the one propping up the Imperial House itself, were rotting through from the inside? The moment anyone rashly pried it loose, the entire empire might come crashing down with it."
Ouyang Qiangang asked, his expression hard,
"What in the world is this Dark Current, that even knowing of it, Your Highness was powerless to stop it?"
"I cannot say."
"For what reason?"
"Did I not already tell you? Because the empire would be endangered."
The Crown Prince shut his mouth, immovable. A deep furrow carved itself between Ouyang Qiangang's brows.
With no apparent intention of answering, the Crown Prince turned to other matters.
"I meant only to die quietly. The Second Prince may have a tyrant's temperament, but he is no fool — I believed the empire would not be shaken with him as Crown Prince. If anything, I thought that would be better for the empire, and for the Imperial House..."
Ouyang Qiangang sighed inwardly.
'A brilliant man — but it seems he never grasped what the enemy truly wants.'
Had he known that the Dark Current meant to kill even the Emperor, the Crown Prince would never have accepted his death so meekly.
"Why tell me now, a secret you guarded so thoroughly and held so utterly alone?"
"You ask why my heart has changed?"
"I do."
"If they had not laid hands on you, I would never have come forward like this."
"Is it because of Princess Myeonghwa?"
The Crown Prince nodded.
"I had made my peace with dying. But not Myeonghwa. If you cannot shake off the charge of attempting to violate Sohwa, that child cannot live."
"I imagine not. That was the whole point of the trap they laid for me."
"Myeonghwa is a child with a heart as white as fresh snow. I cannot stand by and let her die without ever seeing a single flower bloom."
Ouyang Qiangang drew a long, slow breath. Only now did he fully understand why the Crown Prince had sought him out.
The Crown Prince continued with a wry smile.
"I believed that one death — mine — would be enough to sever this vicious chain of karma. But... they were men who would drag Myeonghwa down with me. My silence... only fed the monster."
Ouyang Qiangang let out a sigh.
"Whew..."
He asked, "You said there was something you wished to discuss with me. What would that be?"
The Crown Prince's gaze, fixed squarely on Ouyang Qiangang, turned cold. In a voice that seemed to be suppressing something, he continued.
"Petitions from the civil and military officials demanding your head are already falling like rain. Left Chancellor Jo Mun-gyeong condemns 'the crime of defiling the Imperial House with sinister arts of medicine,' while Minister of War Muk Cheol-gang calls you 'a treacherous Jianghu man who abused His Majesty's trust' — each pressing a blade to your neck for his own reason."
"Everyone's working so hard."
It was a situation that would have left even the boldest man trembling to his fingertips, yet Ouyang Qiangang's tone was nothing but serene.
Disbelief surfaced across the Crown Prince's grave face.
"Hah... They are denying every treatment you ever gave Myeonghwa and pinning her recent crisis on you as well — and you feel no tension at all?"
"I live every bit as diligently as they do. What is there to be nervous about?"
The Crown Prince clicked his tongue.
"What on earth are you saying... Hard work does not settle matters like these."
"It settles this one, so don't worry."
Ouyang Qiangang pressed on.
"And how has His Majesty reacted?"
The Crown Prince's face stiffened.
"He is at a loss. To shield you would make him a father who turned his back on Sohwa's suffering to save Myeonghwa..."
His eyes gleaming, he went on,
"First — get out of the prison."
"You would help me?"
"Hardly. A place like this, you could walk out of under your own power without breaking a sweat, no?"
"This is... the imperial palace dungeon, Your Highness. Aren't you speaking of it a little too easily?"
"They say that when the affair erupted at Sohwa Palace, you did not so much as twitch an eyebrow. I took that to mean you were confident you could slip this trap."
"It seems even in seclusion, you keep abreast of everything you need to know."
"However little of my life remains, I am still this empire's Crown Prince."
"..."
"Getting out of here, you can manage on your own. But to investigate them, you will need room to move within the palace. That, I will provide."
"I have already received the Nine-Dragon Token from His Majesty."
"That will be of little use for investigating them. It grants no entry into the Inner Palace, where His Majesty and the Empress reside — where I and the Second Prince reside."
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes flashed.
"You mean you will open even that place to me?"
"I do."
"Understood."
"When do you leave this place?"
"Today."
The Crown Prince's jaw dropped.
"This is the imperial palace dungeon. Even for you, how could you possibly..."
Ouyang Qiangang answered with a soundless smile.
"I picked up a small 'seed' at Sohwa Palace. A seed that grows wonderfully well with nothing more than darkness and damp. Let it sprout, and it will be more than enough to see me out of here."
"...I'll take you at your word."
"Please do."
"Come to the Crown Prince's palace the moment you are out."
"Understood."
The Crown Prince quietly left the dungeon.
Left alone, Ouyang Qiangang's gaze deepened.
'Not once, to the very end, did the Crown Prince ask me to treat him. An extraordinary man...'
That afternoon — Taehwa Hall.
This was where the power of the empire gathered: a colossal hall of stacked brick, bearing its majesty atop a three-tiered terrace of white marble nearly ten meters high.
The Changsung Emperor, clad in his dragon robes, sat upon the Dragon Throne, and before him several hundred civil and military officials stood arrayed in precise order of rank.
The scent of sandalwood rising from the censers filled the vast hall to its rafters, weaving a solemnity that pressed the very breath from one's lungs.
Iron chains upon all four limbs and a wooden cangue locked about his neck, Ouyang Qiangang was dragged forth by the Golden Guards.
Clank— clank—
Each time the chains dragging across the floor rang out against the marble, hundreds of gazes converged upon him at once.
Ouyang Qiangang was forced down onto his knees.
Thud—
Yet his face showed not a trace of fear or cowering. Though he wore the garb of a criminal, his back was ramrod straight, and his unfathomable eyes did not waver in the least.
Looking down from the Dragon Throne, the Changsung Emperor asked in a voice of towering majesty,
"Hahu Gang. Is it true that you attempted to violate Princess Sohwa?"
Ouyang Qiangang answered, straight-backed.
"It is not true, Your Majesty."
"If it is not true, then it is a slander. You were in the midst of treating Myeonghwa. Why, at such a time, would Princess Sohwa slander you?"
"I do not yet know the reason myself."
Left Chancellor Jo Mun-gyeong cried out in a voice thick with fury,
"He lies, Your Majesty! There are countless witnesses — how can we credit a single word from this man!"
Minister of War Muk Cheol-gang stepped forward and shouted,
"His head must be taken at once, Your Majesty! How can the crime of defiling the Imperial House ever be forgiven!"
The Changsung Emperor raised a hand to silence his ministers and pressed the interrogation.
"The witnesses number far more than one or two. And still you mean to lie?"
Ouyang Qiangang's voice remained as calm as ever.
"Call them dozens, if you will — but not one of them saw me lay a hand upon Her Highness's body. What they saw when they burst into the chamber was the Princess screaming, and I seated in a chair drinking tea."
"That would simply be your acting, would it not?"
"Your Majesty knows better than anyone that this is no situation an act could conjure one out of."
The Changsung Emperor's eyes sharpened like a blade.
"Then you are saying Princess Sohwa is lying?"
Every gaze in the hall fixed itself upon Ouyang Qiangang's mouth.
His answer shattered every expectation in the room.
"Your subject... cannot say whether Princess Sohwa's words are true or false."
"What!"
"Sophistry!"
The hall erupted in an instant into the furious shouts of the assembled officials.
His answer, which left everything conveniently ambiguous, looked for all the world like mockery of the throne itself.
The Changsung Emperor's brow knotted deep.
"You claim you are not lying, and that Sohwa is not lying either?"
"That may well be so, Your Majesty."
"You insolent wretch!"
At last the Changsung Emperor's fury erupted; he sprang up from the Dragon Throne and roared,
"What outlandish sophistry is this! One of the two is unquestionably lying — how can We accept that both are telling the truth?!"
Before the Emperor's wrath, every soul in the hall held its breath.
But Ouyang Qiangang, still gazing up at the Emperor with unshaken eyes, opened his mouth with perfect composure.
"Your Majesty, upon the board there exist only black stones and white — yet it is the hand of the player that moves them."
The words that followed never reached the ministers' ears, for Ouyang Qiangang had employed the secret art of Sound Transmission.
And with his head bowed low, not one of the civil and military officials could see his lips.