"Ahhhhhh!!!!"
Zhao Huaiyuan screamed in pain as his heavy body tumbled down the stone stairs. Consumed by rage, he scrambled straight back up, ready to tear into Jing Luoluo.
How could Jing Luoluo give him the chance? Whack after whack, the broom came down on Zhao Huaiyuan as Jing Luoluo shouted abusively, "You think *I* am jealous of you? Jealous that your aunt didn't manage to get you killed? You stupid bird, I'll beat you to a pulp!!!"
Beaten back step by step by the broom, Zhao Huaiyuan found that every time he retreated, the broom landed with pinpoint precision right on his head. Furious, he pounded his fists against the ground. Ignoring the pain in his face, he suddenly leaped up from the floor and grabbed hold of the broom.
Jing Luoluo's small frame was no match for Zhao Huaiyuan in raw strength. Realizing he couldn't win a contest of brute force, he summoned every ounce of his energy, clutching the broom for dear life as the two of them pulled back and forth, neither willing to yield an inch.
"Hmph! Jing Luoluo, won't you let go? With your scrawny, skin-and-bones chicken frame, who could you possibly beat if you hadn't ambushed this Prince?"
Hearing this, Jing Luoluo curved his lips into a mocking smirk. "You told me to let go!" With that, he suddenly released his grip. The tremendous momentum sent Zhao Huaiyuan stumbling backward—*stumble, stumble, stumble*—before he landed squarely on his backside, hurting too much to crawl back up for a good long while.
"Stop right there!!!"
A sharp shout rang out from behind Jing Luoluo. Feeling a pang of guilt, he spun around and, before the newcomer could even react, slid across the floor on his knees to hurl himself against the person's legs, weeping and howling with a river of snot and tears.
"Audacious! Her Majesty the Empress is noble and revered—how dare you act so wildly!" The speaker was Noble Lady An, a newly favored imperial concubine whose family was minor official stock from the Jiangnan weaving bureaus. Having entered the palace only recently, she had lately won great favor with Emperor Hengwu thanks to her charming, sweet-sounding Wu dialect.
The Empress pinched the bridge of her nose and raised a hand to signal Noble Lady An to step back. "Enough. This rascal is always putting on such a show."
Immediately, an elderly maid by the Empress's side stepped forward to help him up, but he refused to let the matter drop. Lifting his bruised, purplish, black-and-blue eyes, Jing Luoluo wailed, "Your Majesty, you must grant justice to Luor! Look at how they beat my eyes, *boo-hoo-hoo*, Luor can't even clearly see your flower-like, beautiful face, Empress!"
Only then did the Empress truly look closely, and upon closer inspection, she got a bit of a fright. "Luor, how did you get hurt so badly? Quickly, someone summon the imperial physician at once!"
A senior maid waiting nearby acknowledged the order and hurried off.
"*Boo-hoo-hoo!* Empress Aunt, please save your nephew! If you hadn't come, your nephew would have been beaten to death!"
Sensing that the situation was turning against him, Zhao Huaiyuan scrambled up from the ground in a flash. Copying Jing Luoluo's shameless routine, he threw his arms around the other side of the Empress's skirt and refused to let go.
With that, he hoisted his chin high so the Empress could clearly see the crisscrossing scratches marring his face.
For a moment, an eerie silence fell over the courtyard. The Empress sat with a dark expression, saying nothing, leaving only the alternating wails of the two figures kneeling on the ground. Jing Luoluo was the first to sense that something was wrong; he instantly clamped his mouth shut and obediently lowered his head. Zhao Huaiyuan, however, kept right on crying and howling without the slightest restraint.
"You brat! What are you howling for while hugging the Empress?!"
Just as Zhao Huaiyuan was crying with gusto, he was abruptly knocked flying by a large foot from behind. His entire body rolled several times along the force of the kick before coming to a stop. Forgetting all about crying now, why on earth did he hear his own old man's voice?
With a blank expression, he looked toward the newcomer to see Prince An glaring down at him with a dark, gloomy face, his clenched fists cracking and popping as if he were ready to pounce and beat the living daylights out of him at any second. Zhao Huaiyuan felt a sudden wave of grievance. Just as his tears were about to spill, Prince An's sinister voice rang out:
"If you dare shed a single tear, brat, I swear I'll beat you until even your mother won't recognize you!"
Zhao Huaiyuan's accumulated pool of tears was forcibly choked back, his mouth twisting upward into a struggle that was as comical as expressions get.
"Hahaha, Seventh Brother, don't scare the child. Look at how frightened you've made him, hahaha..." Emperor Hengwu was amused by Zhao Huaiyuan's expression, letting out a rare, un-imperial roar of laughter.
"Cough, cough. Why hasn't the physician arrived yet?" Emperor Hengwu asked unnaturally.
The Empress shot Emperor Hengwu a playful glare before saying, "The physician was already summoned; they should be here any moment. These two children really are something—each one more troublesome than the last. How could they start a brawl right inside the palace?"
"Hah, if you want to talk about it, this is also my Luor's fault. We all saw it clearly inside the hall just now; it was my Luor who struck the first blow."
As it turned out, long before the two had started their dispute, Emperor Hengwu, Prince An, and the old Duke had watched the entire brawl between the two lads crystal clear—though from a distance, they hadn't known what the quarrel was about.
Yet seeing the crisscrossing bloody marks on Zhao Huaiyuan's face now, Jing Renyi assumed his son hadn't come out on the losing end, and so he began offering false, hypocritical apologies.
"Hmph! Good-for-nothing piece of trash, all that meat on him grows for nothing!"
Having followed Emperor Hengwu on military campaigns far and wide in the past, Prince An and Jing Renyi naturally shared a close bond; he was simply furious that his own son couldn't even beat Jing Luoluo. One had to remember that the boy had been sickly since childhood and stood a full half-head shorter. To let himself be beaten into such a ghastly state and still have the nerve to howl!
How could he not be furious?!
Kneeling to one side, Jing Luoluo stayed mute. Something didn't seem quite right here. Wasn't his old man usually fiercely protective of his own? Why was he apologizing on his behalf?
Little did he know that Jing Renyi still believed his son had won the fight and was currently winking and making faces in Jing Luoluo's direction, only for the boy to keep his head bowed the entire time, missing it completely.
"All right! Like father, like son—didn't you, Seventh, get beaten by Renyi to the point you couldn't get out of bed for a whole day?" Speaking of past events, a reminiscent gleam flickered in Emperor Hengwu's eyes as his gaze drifted off into the distance.
Mentioning this, Prince An wore an awkward expression, rubbing his nose unnaturally as he muttered in a muffled voice, "Your Majesty, please don't bring that up. That was my first time heading into battle. If it came down to it now, hmph, it'd be this old codger who wouldn't be able to get out of bed."
"Oh? Unhappy? You want the two of us to spar right now?" Hearing this, Jing Renyi instantly hit the ceiling, rolling up his sleeves as if ready to pick another fight with Prince An.
"Hahaha, do you two still think you're hot-blooded youths? You're both old bones now—be careful you don't fall apart." Emperor Hengwu was in an exceptionally good mood today; watching these two fellows scrap reminded him of his own youth, back when he wasn't yet an emperor and his closest confidants and friends never had to walk on eggshells around him.
"Your Majesty, the imperial physician has arrived." The chief eunuch stepped forward and lowered his voice.
"Good, go take a look at Huaiyuan. We can't have any scars left on that face." At Emperor Hengwu's command, the physician approached with his medicine chest, meticulously cleaning the wounds on Zhao Huaiyuan's face before writing out a prescription and preparing to gather the ingredients.
At that moment, the Empress spoke up to stop him: "Wait. What about Luor?"
Everyone's gaze snapped toward Jing Luoluo, who had kept his head bowed and silent this entire time, his body now trembling slightly.