From CEO to Concubine-Chapter 117: Their History

For as long as Pan Liqi could remember, his father hadn’t spoken to his mother. His youngest childhood years were spent in a barren Great General Estate surrounded by silent servants and stern tutors. For a long time, they were his only companions, his father far away on the frontline in the north and his mother barricaded in her quarters, weeping to herself when she wasn’t breaking ornaments in an explosive show of temper.

Why did she cry so much? He used to ask the servants this back when he was still too little to understand why, as the only son of the revered Great General Pan, his life wasn’t as enviable as the other boys in the schoolyard made it out to be. Pride had kept him from explaining to them that after their tutor dismissed them, all that awaited him was a meal in his chambers surrounded by maids and a message from the elderly momo who took care of his mother, reminding him to apply himself to his studies and his martial training, so that he would not embarrass his father.

Why did she cry so much? He felt like he deserved to be the one crying instead, especially on the odd occasion when he went to greet his mother in the morning and she decided to return his greeting with a hurled tea cup or book or whatever was on hand instead. But the servants—or at least, the few who dared speak of such matters in front of their young master—told him that it was because his mother missed his father. They reassured him that it was because his father’s duty was a dangerous one, protecting the border towns from invasion by the barbarians meant that his life was at stake. That fearing for his father’s life was what his mother’s tears, his mother’s frustrations were for.

Pan Liqi hadn’t believed them. He’d thought that it’d made more sense for his mother to cry about his father’s long absences from their lives. After all, the only time in all of Pan Liqi’s years growing up that his father had decided to honour the capital with his presence, the great general hadn’t even bothered returning home, going straight from the front gates of the city into the palace.

His father had departed for the front again the next morning. That week, his mother had attempted to drown herself.

He couldn’t remember how old he was when he’d first heard the hushed whispers on the corridor by the very same servants who had tried to sell him pretty lies. He’d thought at first that the rumours were about his father finding a mistress. Phrases like ’too irresistible’ and ’so beautiful it was no wonder Master was tempted’ had misled him. But slowly, as he’d pricked his ears up and listened, paying attention to the salacious murmuring that went on behind his back, an all-consuming rage had started to boil in his veins.

His father was in love with a man. And not just any other man. A powerful eunuch, the pretty plaything that had the besotted emperor wrapped around his little finger.

The man known as ’Nine Thousand Years’ (1). He had slipped insidiously between the marriage of Great General Pan and Huilan Junzhu (2), had to be why his father never looked twice at any woman, even his mother. Pan Liqi had taken years to come to terms with the idea that he was the product of a union that had occurred merely to fulfil an obligation, to beget an heir to the family name and title such that the illustrious great general’s family line would not die out should he take an arrow to the chest on the battlefield.

Nine Thousand Years was the reason why his father didn’t speak to his mother, why his father would rather spend long years away from the capital fighting war after war after war without any regard for the wife waiting for him back home. Nine Thousand Years was why his father had sent a subordinate to attend his wife’s funeral instead, after the long years of pining had made her waste away in a cold nuptial chamber.

The subordinate had lit incense for Pan Liqi’s mother before taking him away to the north to join the rank and file of a man tradition taught him to respect but could only feel despise for.

And Pan Liqi had trained, ready for the day in which he would overtake his father. There was no such thing as eternal youth, even the strongest back and the hardest bone would crumble beneath the weight of the years. He dreamed of a day when his father would become old and decrepit and would have no choice but to hand over the reins and take a step back. He would be at Pan Liqi’s mercy then. Filial piety dictated that he would have to provide for his father in his later years; his mother’s quarters back in their estate in the capital were more than fitting for him to end his days in.

As for Nine Thousand Years...well. If half of Pan Liqi’s thoughts were preoccupied with taking revenge on his father, the other half were obsessed with that shadowy figure hidden away behind the tall palace walls but whose reach had seized Pan Liqi’s life in its unshakeable grasp and torn it apart.

He had envisioned—fantasised, even—about what their first meeting would be like, perhaps with the prideful eunuch on his knees begging for forgiveness, but always with him as the emergent victor, political power and military might at his fingertips.

Not once had he thought it would be so soon. And yet, when he heard that lilting drawl address him mockingly, every word dripping with the languid scorn of someone who was too used to feeling inferior to others and yet still smoother and richer than the sweet dew of honey.

Pan Liqi met the gaze of the man he once vowed to kill and his retort died in his throat.

For many sleepless nights, he’d lain in his cot in the barracks trying to imagine just how beautiful a man would have to be to enthral both the ruler of a country and a military genius, great men who were capable of great things losing their minds over something as paltry as a mere male pet.

Liu Suzhi was every inch as frivolous and ridiculous as he’d anticipated, from the tip of his pipe to the hem of his crimson robes.

He was also even lovelier than Pan Liqi’s most reluctant of wildest dreams would allow.

Pan Liqi found himself caught off-guard, weakened by the aggressiveness of the beauty he was confronted with. It was an arresting face, its minute imperfections overcome by a vibrancy that stole the onlooker’s attention.

It was also an expressive face. And right now, the casual disregard it was wearing grated on his nerves. With no small amount of effort, he steeled himself, forcibly tearing his eyes away before saying, "Gong Gong would do well to remember not to overstep his rank."

His voice came out hoarser than he intended. He pressed his clammy palms into the fabric of his tunic and tried to remain calm.

There’s nothing wrong with what you said, he told himself firmly over and over again. A eunuch’s highest rank is ’Four’. As a deputy general, and a young, promising one at that, he was already a ’Lower Three’.

But there was the unspoken caveat; Nine Thousand Years operated outside of the normal rules. Even though the person on the throne had changed, even though Pan Liqi had received news from his paltry list of informants that this Supervisor of the Department of Ceremonies, whose influence in the inner palace had once been greater than even the late emperor’s, had mellowed out into a state that resembled retirement. It didn’t change the fact that Liu Suzhi was not a force Pan Liqi could reckon with yet.

At this moment, Pan Liqi could hate to admit it with every fibre of his being but he couldn’t deny that he was intimidated.

A soft huff of laughter cut through the solid tension of the atmosphere. The merrymaking scholars who had been so brave to ridicule the emperor’s concubine along with him had now fallen deathly quiet.

Pan Liqi’s scowl deepened.

"What’s so funny—"

Searing pain bloomed across his cheek. Someone, probably Noble Lord Hua, gasped. A clattering noise echoed as something hit the stone pathway underfoot and through the ringing noise in Pan Liqi’s ears, he registered that Liu Suzhi had hit him across the face with the pipe he’d been dangling from lackadaisical fingers, hard enough to snap the cloisonne stem into two.

Blood trickled down his jaw from where the ornamental carvings on the bowl had sliced into his skin. Pan Liqi’s chest heaved as his gaze bored into the lofty, impassive stare that Liu Suzhi was regarding him with.

Slender narrow eyelids that curled upwards at the tips, too alluring to be phoenix eyes. Traditionally, Liu Suzhi had a pair of classic fox eyes, the eyes that were regarded as too seductive to belong to a person of good upbringing. A mistress’ eyes. A whore’s eyes.

How fitting, Pan Liqi thought. The anger pent-up over the years was the fuel of the recklessness that thrummed through his body. He forgot his trepidation in the heat of the moment, raising his fist to strike back at the man he blamed for all his misfortunes. If he could hurt him, if he could fell him—

"Back down."

The sharp command came out of the blue but Pan Liqi obeyed without hesitation, his obeisance towards that voice ingrained in him after years of training in the field.

Shamed burned on his face, his father’s protection of this beloved of his, gnawing at his gut. His obedience must have looked so spineless to Liu Suzhi; he didn’t miss the glimmer of cruel amusement in the eunuch’s eyes. But to his surprise, Liu Suzhi didn’t say fan the flames, just adjusted his outer robes more snugly around his shoulders before turning around to depart.

"Supervisor Liu."

If Liu Suzhi heard the great general speaking, he gave no indication. Instead, he walked up to Noble Lord Hua with a polite incline of his head.

"Lord Hua, if you would allow this servant to escort you back to the banquet hall." No matter how polite Liu Suzhi tried to make it sound, it was still a request and a flustered Noble Lord Hua nodded enthusiastically, not bothering to disguise his eagerness to leave.

Pan Liqi chanced a glance at his father, who stood to a side in silence, just watching. As expected, the unwavering sternness on his face was present, the menacing aura that he’d honed on the edges of blades of his enemies a constant companion of his even in times of peace. But this time, Pan Liqi thought that he could detect something more, a flicker of helplessness in the depths of dispassionate eyes that left the bitter taste of ashes in his mouth.

The evening breeze rustled through the trees in the garden. Red robes disappeared into the night and his father retracted his gaze, the faintest hint of warmth in them dying as soon as they landed on Pan Liqi...and the questionable company of spoiled scholars he had chosen to keep this evening.

"Are you done embarrassing yourself?" his father asked. Pan Liqi gritted his teeth to hold down his response. Whenever they fought together on the front, he was treated as an impartial subordinate, nothing more nothing less. But off the battlefield, his father had the natural ability to make him feel like an inadequate child, lacking in every way that a parent could possibly find pleasing.

But what could Pan Liqi say? He had no idea how long his father had been present, didn’t know how much of the conversation he had been privy to.

If anyone had overstepped tonight, it was him. Being aware of this didn’t make the reprimanding any easier to swallow.

"This son apologises for his misdemeanour," he managed to force out. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

His father scrutinised him for a while longer. He didn’t say anything, the terse silence between them stretching out into a yawning chasm that Pan Liqi was painfully aware he would never be able to cross.

They had never spoken about Liu Suzhi before. But he had a feeling it was going to be an open secret between them from now on.