Dense? Stupid? How infuriating. If you just meant a field full of rocks, why not just say that from the start!
“This subject did not understand what was meant.”
At Ha-hyeon’s bewildered response to the out-of-nowhere insult, the Grand Empress Dowager’s brow furrowed sharply.
“I am well aware that His Majesty visits your quarters every single night. And yet despite even having fertility tonics specially prepared and administered — how is it that you still show not even a sign of conception!”
Ha-hyeon’s mouth fell open. Yes, the Emperor came every night — but not a single thing that could produce an heir had ever taken place between them. And even if it had, pregnancy would be a physical impossibility.
It’s so deeply unfair — but I suppose I’d better apologize anyway.
After a brief internal deliberation, Sa Ha-hyeon decided to grovel.
“I — I am deeply sorry……?”
Regrettably, Ha-hyeon’s apology had no effect whatsoever.
“Because your womb has been so utterly silent, rumors are now spreading — vile, baseless rumors that His Majesty, who is in perfect health, is somehow incapable of siring an heir. It is even being said that he is a useless Emperor who cannot carry on the imperial line! How dare anyone speak of the Son of Heaven in such a disgraceful manner!”
Ha-hyeon felt like beating the ground and wailing inside. He had never felt so aggrieved in his life.
First — he had absolutely no idea such absurd rumors were circulating. If he’d known, at least the injustice of it wouldn’t have hit so hard. Second — he had only been in the palace for a few months — how could he already be called a barren stone field?
And lastly —
Am I really the only concubine here?!
Consort Hwa was obviously a man just like himself, so that was clearly a stone field without even needing to verify. But what about the other women? Even if the Emperor truly never returned to a concubine he had visited once — there were easily dozens of concubines within the palace walls. For not a single sprout to have taken root in all those fields was, statistically speaking, genuinely suspicious.
Just then, a memory surfaced in Ha-hyeon’s mind. That night not long ago — when he had lent his own hand to ease Wei Wuyuan’s heat.
Come to think of it……
He had finished rather anticlimactically, before things had even properly gotten underway.
The moment that thought hit him, Ha-hyeon felt a bitter taste in his mouth. A rational suspicion was beginning to form — that the problem might not be with himself, but perhaps with the Emperor himself.
Whether the Grand Empress Dowager sensed that Sa Ha-hyeon’s mind had wandered elsewhere, she brought her walking stick down hard against the snow-covered ground with a crack and shouted.
“What is everyone standing around for! Drag this useless stone field away at once!”
The moment the command fell, the eunuchs seized Ha-hyeon by both arms and hauled him roughly to his feet.
“Please! Please, let me go! I beg you.”
No one listened to Ha-hyeon’s desperate plea. Rather than a helping hand, he was surrounded on all sides by cold, hostile stares. The Grand Empress Dowager extended one long, thin index finger and pressed it firmly against Ha-hyeon’s throat.
“……!”
The finger didn’t stop there — it traced slowly down the line of his neck. Past the collarbone, past the solar plexus, all the way down to his lower abdomen.
“I intend to verify this with my own eyes.”
“……Verify what?”
Her gaze dragged over his lower abdomen with relentless focus. It was a sticky, deeply unpleasant look — as though she intended to peel back the skin and examine what lay beneath.
“I will personally confirm just how barren and withered your field truly is.”
Ha-hyeon’s face flushed hot with shame.
“If even the slightest irregularity is found — I will not let this pass quietly. You will pay the price for daring to deceive the imperial household.”
I’m completely done for.
There was no one here who could help him. If Wol had been with him, she would have clung to someone’s coattails, or else gone to find Baek Seojin or Wei Wuyuan to beg for help. There was no one here — not a single person who could come to Sa Ha-hyeon’s aid.
All he had done was try to put a toy bow in a snowman’s hands — and now here he was, being hauled away with his limbs restrained. It was so absurd it almost felt like a dream.
Ha-hyeon was dragged like luggage and flung deep into the innermost room of the Grand Empress Dowager’s quarters. It was a dark, secluded annex on the north side where sunlight never reached, its entrance all but swallowed by creeping vines. Even to Ha-hyeon, who knew nothing of the inner workings of this palace, it was plainly not a place where anything good would happen.
A hand shot out and shoved a gag roughly into Ha-hyeon’s mouth. Before he could even register what was happening, the eunuchs swarmed and pinned down all four of his limbs. Then they forced him down onto a wooden frame. It resembled a flogging board in shape — but with one key difference.
Rather than being made to lie face-down, it was designed to have a person lie on their back, legs spread apart, facing the ceiling.
“Mmph! Mmm!”
What on earth were they about to do to him that required binding his arms and legs too. Sa Ha-hyeon’s eyes darted in every direction in terror. Tragically, in this dark room where not a single beam of light entered, there was no one who could help him. Only the lamp flames flickering at the four corners of the room and at the Grand Empress Dowager’s side cast any light — casting grotesque, wavering shadows. Dark shadows began to dance as though mocking him.
“So noisy. Yeong-ui certainly has a powerful voice. Even gagged, the sounds coming out are quite something. With health like this, how is she a stone field.”
The Grand Empress Dowager’s face drew steadily closer. She pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves. The taut sound of leather snapping against skin scraped at Ha-hyeon’s nerves. What exactly was she planning to do?
“Hmph! Mmm!”
“Even after I said quiet!”
The Grand Empress Dowager grabbed Ha-hyeon’s jaw roughly and shook it.
“Let me hear then just what it is you’re so desperate to say.”
At her gesture, the eunuch at her side yanked the gag free. The moment he could breathe again, Ha-hyeon gasped and cried out.
“Let me go! I have done nothing wrong!”
“Whether you have done wrong or not is for me to decide.”
“If you only mean to examine me, you don’t need to bind me to do it!”
“Gag him again. I thought he was about to confess his crimes, but all he does is talk nonsense.”
As the eunuchs’ hands moved closer, Ha-hyeon screamed in desperation.
“You can’t — His Majesty is waiting for me!”
Even as the words left his mouth he paused for a split second. He couldn’t explain why he’d said that. The Emperor couldn’t be waiting for him. He had said he was too busy to come to Byeoksong Palace for a while.
And yet he had blurted out the Emperor’s name as a shield — probably because of raw survival instinct. In this bleak, hostile palace, the only lifeline Sa Ha-hyeon had was Wei Wuyuan.
“Oh ho ho. What an amusing thing to say. His Majesty is waiting for you?”
The Grand Empress Dowager shook with laughter, shoulders heaving, as if she were watching a clown perform. She turned her head slightly and looked at the senior court lady standing behind her — the same one who had shouted at Ha-hyeon at the training ground.
“Tell her yourself. This child appears to be lost in delusion. What is His Majesty doing right now?”
“He is currently understood to be in the quarters of Jaein Yu. As of today, the yin and yang energies are in perfect alignment — considered the most auspicious time to conceive a precious heir for the imperial line. Therefore, a schedule of nightly consummations has been arranged, without a single night’s exception, for fifteen days beginning today.”
Nightly consummation schedule? Are you serious. They even put sex on a calendar here? Wait — hold on. The reason he said he was too busy to come for a while — was it because of this?
Carrying on the imperial line was certainly an important duty for an Emperor — but Ha-hyeon had never in his wildest dreams imagined that the reason Wei Wuyuan couldn’t visit Byeoksong Palace was something like this. He felt more than just hurt — something close to a sense of betrayal pricked at him.
So caught up was he in those thoughts, he didn’t even register that his lie had just been thoroughly exposed.
The senior court lady continued.
“Tonight is Jaein Yu, tomorrow is Sogong Seo, and the day after——”
Among the names being listed one by one, Yeong-ui Songbaek was nowhere to be found.
“You heard that clearly, I trust? How dare you invoke His Majesty’s name to deceive me. Gag him again. Your nonsense does more harm than good.”
The moment the Grand Empress Dowager’s cold command fell, the eunuch shoved the gag back into Ha-hyeon’s mouth with rough hands. Ha-hyeon twisted his bound arms and screamed. If his secret were exposed here, things would become truly catastrophic. With so many eyes watching, the rumor would spread to every corner of the palace — and the lives of everyone who came to know could not be guaranteed.
And so, Yeong-ui. This must remain a secret between the two of us alone. If you conduct yourself carelessly — and the moment anyone other than me discovers the secret between your legs — in order to protect our secret, I will have no choice but to cut down whoever comes to know it.
Had Wei Wuyuan meant those words truly. Even if the one who found out was the Grand Empress Dowager — would he go that far? He probably couldn’t do anything to the Grand Empress Dowager. Ha-hyeon frantically scanned his surroundings. The eunuchs restraining his limbs. The senior court lady wearing a sneer. And the young maidservants standing in the darkness, holding lanterns. If his secret were revealed here — every one of them could lose their heads.
He could not let innocent people lose their lives because of him. Cold sweat poured down like rain.
What do I do? What do I do?!
With a gag in his mouth, he couldn’t say a single word. He tried desperately to meet the Grand Empress Dowager’s eyes, willing her with every fiber of his being to stop — for all their sakes.
“It’s alright. No need to be so frightened. No need for shame either. The ones behind you are nothing but shadows. And shadows have neither eyes nor mouths. So what reason could you have to feel shame at being seen?”
The Grand Empress Dowager rose and drew close to Ha-hyeon’s side. An eunuch swiftly produced a chair as though he had been waiting for the cue. Then Chief Court Lady Choi stepped forward and yanked Ha-hyeon’s skirts up with a rough hand. His thighs were exposed in one swift motion. Sa Ha-hyeon squeezed his eyes shut. The truth was, it wasn’t Sa Ha-hyeon who should have been closing his eyes — it was everyone else in the room except the Grand Empress Dowager.
Sa Ha-hyeon wished desperately that all of this was nothing but a dream.
The Grand Empress Dowager’s leather-gloved hand slowly stroked upward along Ha-hyeon’s smooth shin. The cold, rough texture of the leather sent goosebumps crawling across every inch of his body.
“My. You’ve put quite the effort into hair removal.”
It’s not hair removal — there’s just no hair there to begin with! You perverted old woman!
Ha-hyeon screamed internally. But trapped behind the gag, all that escaped him was a moan that couldn’t even become a proper scream. And it was precisely then. A warm, wet liquid spilled over the corner of his eye and slid down his temple, trickling into the shell of his ear.
Sa Ha-hyeon was someone who hadn’t shed a single tear even when faced with the Emperor’s chilling threats of immediate beheading. He hadn’t even feared death — yet here he was, breaking apart over a humiliation of this degree. He found himself pathetic and wretched beyond endurance.
When the Grand Empress Dowager’s fingers reached the inner thigh, one of the maidservants came forward and whispered something to the senior court lady. A moment later, the senior court lady leaned in and murmured something privately to the Grand Empress Dowager. The Grand Empress Dowager’s eyes gleamed with curiosity at what she heard.
“Oh? Very well, have them enter. This person may actually be better suited to the task than I.”
The creak of the door opening — from the wooden frame where he lay bound and gasping, Ha-hyeon’s gaze snapped toward it. Then a large silhouette stepped inside with a group of maidservants in tow, and drew closer, reaching Ha-hyeon’s feet. He knelt.
Skirts swept the floor, and a heavy fragrance of perfume stabbed at Ha-hyeon’s nose. The moment Ha-hyeon made out the face revealed in the darkness —
Oh — WHAT THE HELL!!!!!! WHY IS IT YOU AGAIN?!
“Consort Hwa pays her respects.”
He looked down at Ha-hyeon with an arrogant gaze.
