My brother entrusted his child to me, and I livestreamed raising the baby, making the Empress cry wi

The Javanese elder's words confirmed his guess.

The Javanese elder first awkwardly performed a Western Regions greeting. His two calloused hands were clasped together on his chest, his back was slightly bent, and his movements were so stiff that they resembled a bear trying to bow.

The leather boots on his feet, covered in dry mud, left two shallow gray marks on the stone brick floor of the main hall, and a few withered grass stems, brought from some unknown pasture, were still stuck to the boot tops.

His eyes were serious, and his beard trembled slightly with his movements.

He took a deep breath, his chest bulging, and then spoke in a booming voice, like a large cowhide drum being suddenly struck, rough and loud, echoing throughout the hall.

"Your Majesty! The Khan of the Balin tribe—" He paused, his Adam's apple bobbing loudly, a hint of pride rising in his eyes.

"He is my twin brother!"

The word "younger brother" landed on the ground with a buzzing sound.

The sound made the candles in the corner of the hall tremble in unison, their flames flickering and casting several darting shadows on the wall.

The thin gauze covering the high window was shaken open, creating a very fine ripple, like a pebble suddenly thrown into a calm water surface.

Ashina's heart skipped a beat. His fingers, which had been loosely draped over the armrest, suddenly tightened, his fingertips grinding hard against the red agate, the tips turning bluish-white from the force.

Although there are speculations that he might be a grassland person—his head and his skeleton are nothing like those of people from the South China Sea.

But to everyone's surprise, he turned out to be the Khan's own brother!

Sui Cheng thought, "How can the two brothers, one be the Khan of a large tribe in the north, and the other the King of a great nation in the south?!"

What does this mean? This family, with an older brother and a younger brother, actually each ruled their own kingdom in two places separated by tens of thousands of miles?

He leaned back on the throne, the cold chair back piercing his spine through his clothes, a thousand emotions churning within him—

Shock, absurdity, ecstasy... all swirled into an indescribable dizziness.

The painted mother-of-pearl caisson ceiling on the roof blurred into a swirling rainbow in his eyes, and the golden-lacquered immortals seemed as if they were about to leap off the wall.

The cloud patterns inlaid with seashells shimmered with colorful fragments of light under the sunlight, spreading out in concentric circles, making him even more dizzy.

In a moment of shock, he suddenly remembered an old saying from the Central Plains that he had heard before.

This family's ancestral graves must be emitting auspicious smoke!

Ashina seemed to lose her ability to speak for a moment.

His lips twitched, opening and closing as if he wanted to say something, but the words were forced back down by an overwhelming sense of absurdity.

The hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop; even the dripping of water from the eaves outside the window could be clearly heard.

After a long while, it was Dashiman, who was standing next to the three from the South China Sea, who spoke up in disbelief in a shrill voice.

"Impossible! How could this be! You're brothers! How could one of you be in the south and the other in the north!?"

The sound was so sharp it was like a knife slicing through sheet metal. Even the sparrows pecking at the water by the puddle outside the window were startled and took flight, kicking up a string of tiny water droplets.

The scream startled the incense burning in the bronze censer inside the hall, causing the smoke to disperse. The wisp of smoke that had been rising straight up broke into several pieces, tumbling erratically in the air before finally gathering again.

His face, roughened by years of wind and sand from the Western Regions, was flushed red as if he were drunk, his eyes almost bursting open, and a few blood vessels crawling out from under the whites of his eyes.

The Javanese elder scratched his head, his five thick fingers digging into his hair several times, making his already messy hairstyle even more chaotic.

Bathed in the sunlight streaming through the window, it looked like a clump of withered grass on fire. Then he grinned.

The smile that appeared on his bearded face seemed somewhat unbecoming of his status, a kind of simple honesty.

"Because our mother was from the South China Sea, she went to the northern grasslands with a merchant ship and fell in love at first sight with the then-Bahrain Khan, who is also our father. That's how they got together, and then my brother and I were born."

He calmly began to recount his parents' past, his voice softening noticeably when he mentioned "father and mother".

"But my mother just couldn't stand the grassland climate. The winters were too cold and dry, and the wind was too strong. My mother's health wasn't very good to begin with, and after a while, she started coughing constantly in the winter..."

At this point, the Javanese elder's expression darkened for a moment, but he quickly returned to normal, so quickly that no one noticed.

A thin cloud drifted across the sky, obscuring half the sun, and the light inside the hall dimmed slightly.

The shadows flowed like water across his forehead, over his eyebrows and eyes, across the bridge of his nose, and finally settled on his disheveled chin, before gradually fading away as the clouds moved and the sun appeared.

"My father, being the Khan, couldn't leave the tribe, so we had to part ways. Then I went back to the South China Sea with my mother, while my younger brother stayed on the grassland."

His rough knuckles unconsciously twisted an old, bald leather rope around his waist. It was a talisman often worn by children on the grasslands, the leather worn shiny from countless handlings.

"However, in the past, when the weather was nice on the grasslands every summer, my mother would take me to stay there for a while, so even though my brother and I lived far apart, we had a very good relationship."

He curled the corners of his mouth, as if his tongue could once again taste the sweet, fishy smell of the grass tips on the grassland in summer, mixed with horse manure and wildflower honey.

"Until he succeeded to the position of Khan of Bahrain, and I also conquered Java, we were no longer able to travel around, which is why we haven't seen each other for many years, but we have always kept in touch by letter."

He finished speaking and said nothing more, leaving the person on the throne to digest the information.

A sudden southerly wind arose outside the hall, blowing deep into the hall through the windows. The flame of the bronze lamp on the table was bent low by the wind, and it took a while before it straightened up again.

Ashina was quite shocked. After digesting the shock for a while, he couldn't help but turn to look at the other king, Yuan Yali, who he saw as a purely weak and pale-faced man.

The man was as thin as a sheet of paper, and his dark blue robe hung loosely on his body, making his exposed wrist appear almost transparent white, with prominent wrist bones and faintly visible blue veins.

He was standing quietly beside the Javanese elder, his head bowed as if listening to the elder's words.

A beam of light, shining through the high windows of the main hall, pierced his robe, creating a line where light and shadow met.

The dust particles floating in the beam of light drifted slowly past his shoulder, each one like fine gold dust.

His black hair was half-tied up, with the other half hanging down from both sides, covering most of his face, only revealing the outline of his chin, making it impossible to see his expression.

He was like a delicate white porcelain vase placed in the shadows, so still that he was almost invisible. Only when the hem of his robe was occasionally lifted by the wind could one be sure that he was not a statue.

As he looked around, he subconsciously spoke, his voice tinged with probing and a hint of expectation: "Then this one wouldn't also...?"