That day, when Luowei ascended the mountain, the morning had still been clear and bright. But within the span of a single hour, the skies broke open in a torrential downpour.
Rain fell upon the forest and trees, making the leaves appear an even richer green. Passing pilgrims could breathe in the fragrant scent of earth and grass freshly kissed by the rain.
Luowei sat on a meditation cushion across from the current abbot of Xiuqing Temple, Master Jichen, playing a game of Go.
After the monk Jiyun had passed away peacefully, Xiuqing Temple came under the management of Master Jichen. He was a smooth and worldly man, and Luowei found him rather congenial. Whenever she met him on her way up the mountain, the two would always sit down for a match.
Because rain had fallen that morning, far fewer pilgrims had come to the temple to pay their respects. The place was sparse and scattered. The room where the two sat was a meditation chamber above the main hall; looking out from the doorway, one could just glimpse the copper incense burner in the central shrine.
With fewer worshippers, there was less incense smoke. The rainy weather only made things worse—many sticks of incense had been doused almost as soon as they were lit. People found it inauspicious and refused to relight them, so even the little wisps of fragrant smoke that remained were swept away by the wet air. Luowei drew her gaze back into the room and placed a white stone on the board, saying with gleeful schadenfreude: “Heaven is not cooperating today—the old monk won’t collect much in offerings.”
Master Jichen recited a brief Buddhist invocation and said with great solemnity: “When people come to pay their respects and pray, only sincerity of heart matters—it has nothing to do with money.”
Luowei said, “And yet you want to gild the dome in gold leaf…”
Jichen replied, “That is precisely what sincerity looks like—sincerity of heart.”
He held his stone in hand, hesitating where to place it, and said with a laugh, “Your Highness used to be a believer. But over the years, you have grown increasingly irreverent. I wonder why?”
Luowei said deliberately, “Not only that—I worship the Buddha and the Three Pure Ones of Taoism side by side. After all, I am a person of this mortal world. Whoever can protect me is my true divine patron.”
Master Jichen heard this and fell into contemplative silence for a moment: “Your Highness sees more clearly than this old monk.”
Luowei did not quite understand, nor did she bother to ask. She only gazed at the sky with a furrowed brow: “With rain falling this heavily, I wonder if the people I am waiting for will still come.”
Jichen asked, “Whom is Your Highness waiting for?”
Luowei counted on her fingers: “Many people—friends, people who are somewhere between friend and foe, and enemies. Friends will certainly come. The ones who are neither friend nor foe, I do not know when they will arrive. What I fear is that my enemy might not come at all. Old monk, why don’t you shake the divination sticks for me and see whether he will come or not?”
Jichen had just placed his stone and was about to reply when a voice broke in abruptly from the doorway: “Your Highness need not bother with divination—this old subject is already here, is he not?”
Luowei turned to look, and there was Yu Qiushi closing the dull yellow oilpaper umbrella in his hand, strolling serenely into the hall. He was still wearing his usual half-new, half-worn deep blue Taoist robe with wide sleeves and a flowing hem. The hem of his robe had been soaked by the rain. The severity that normally clung to him in official settings had softened, and he looked like a genial old man wandering in search of immortal wisdom.
Jichen sat in his seat and gave him a nod without rising to bow: “The Grand Preceptor has come all this way in the rain. One can see his sincerity.”
Luowei, however, looked him over with a smile: “Grand Preceptor, you wear a Taoist robe to a Buddhist temple—clearly you mean to be contrary with our old monk here. The midday vegetarian meal—we shall not leave any for you. Let him dine on the wind and drink the dew.”
Yu Qiushi sat down at the Go table and, hearing this, cupped his hands in a gesture of entreaty: “This old subject is no immortal. I beg Master Jichen and Your Highness to spare me a meal.”
At this, all three broke into laughter as though they were old friends of different generations. A breeze swept through and stirred the Buddhist banners hanging at the doorway.
Jichen understood that the two had matters to discuss. He tucked the box of stones into Yu Qiushi’s hands and took up his oilpaper umbrella as a pretext to go light incense and leave.
In the quiet sound of wind and rain, only Luowei and Yu Qiushi remained, facing each other across the Go board. Yu Qiushi took black, Luowei took white. The game had already tilted in favor of the black stones, yet Luowei placed her pieces without hurry, and said with a teasing lilt: “The Grand Preceptor came up the mountain alone—does he not fear that this palace has hidden one or two companies of Imperial Guards in the forest, making this a Hongmen Banquet?”
Yu Qiushi frowned at the board without raising his eyes: “Hmm. Your Highness is the sovereign—if you wished to kill this subject, a cup of poison would suffice. Why go to all this trouble?”
He finally found where he wished to play and said with a smile, “It is easy to kill a man’s body; it is difficult to destroy his spirit. Bestowing death upon this subject is simple—leaving no pretext for it is the challenge.”
Luowei sighed: “The Grand Preceptor is as cunning as the old monk.”
Yu Qiushi blew a breath on the stone in his hand: “Indeed. That is why this old subject came to honor Your Highness’s invitation—I wished to hear you speak plainly. What crime have you and His Majesty prepared to pin on me? Corruption? Abuse of power? Or something graver still—treason?”
Luowei looked at him steadily: “The Grand Preceptor seems not in the slightest bit flustered.”
Yu Qiushi held that stone in his palm, raised his eyes, and asked abruptly: “Do you actually know what happened back then?”
As though in answer to that resounding question, a thunderclap suddenly burst from outside. The winds rose violently, and candles were extinguished one by one. From the distant rear of the mountain, beyond the curtain of wind and rain, came the long, drawn-out sound of a bronze bell.
Luowei answered calmly: “What difference does it make whether I know or not?”
“You knew all along,” Yu Qiushi studied her expression and smiled with a hint of admiration. “A year ago, two years ago—on the night of the Lantern Festival, you climbed to Tinghua Terrace alone. I went to look afterward. Beneath the golden statue, the stone was streaked with the traces of dried tears, and beside the stele there were faint marks of a blade. You have hated me and His Majesty to the bone all these years, have you not? And yet, Your Highness—this old subject truly admires you. A hatred this deep, and you swallowed it whole, going about each day as though nothing were amiss, even showing tender affection toward His Majesty. Truly—you have suffered, Your Highness.”
“Is it not the Grand Preceptor who has suffered?” Luowei’s expression did not change. “The day Suiyun discovered she was with child, many things suddenly became clear to me. Why did you send your daughter into the palace to begin with? After she entered the palace, she told me about the arguments you two had at home. At first I thought you sent her because you wanted to advance the fortunes of the Yu clan and secure the careers of your in-laws. But then I thought again—the Grand Preceptor clearly knew of Song Lan’s cold and ruthless nature. How could you have said something so naive as ‘bear a child for His Majesty’? With you in the court, would he have ever allowed Suiyun to have children?”
“Ha ha ha ha ha…” Yu Qiushi burst out laughing at this, a gleam of admiration in his eyes. “Your Highness, please continue.”
Luowei said: “That quarrel you had—you deliberately arranged it the night before she entered the palace so that she would tell me. Grand Preceptor, you have sharp ears and keen eyes. You had long since known that Suiyun’s heart was set on my elder brother. And you knew that she and I had some rapport, and that being naive by nature, she would never trouble me in the palace. You used her words to convey to me the message that I had ‘but a few years of peaceful sleep remaining’—to pressure me into acting sooner. Beyond that, of everything she said, only one sentence was true: ‘To earn the deep affection and favor of His Majesty—that is the only true protection.’ You sent her into the palace to protect her life, just as you knew full well that Shu Kang harbored ulterior motives, and yet you still allowed your second son to marry the princess. Grand Preceptor—you joined forces with Song Lan to commit the crime of usurping the throne, and you have fought and schemed to this day, gaining everything you have through great hardship. Why throw it all away so carelessly?”
Seeing Yu Qiushi remain utterly unmoved, she knew that everything she had surmised was true. Her heart plunged, sinking into a bottomless abyss. “Song Lan killed Lu Heng, killed Lin Kuishan, killed Ningle. You are this clever—you must have guessed that he will not leave alive a single person who knows what happened back then.”
“What does Your Highness think I seek?” Yu Qiushi struck the Go board sharply with his palm and said with sudden force. But after that outburst, his voice softened again. “Gold, silver, fortune, and rank—nothing but clouds floating in the sky. Fame, power, and influence—all dust and emptiness after death. What I seek, you do not understand.”
He rose to his feet, flicked his sleeves, and without the slightest care, let the wide hem of his robe scatter the black and white stones helter-skelter across the board with a clatter. “Your Highness must be very curious. Before the present emperor ascended the throne, I had already become Chief Minister, reaching the pinnacle of power. Why did I still risk eternal condemnation in history’s judgment and orchestrate the ‘Thorn in the Tang’ incident?”
Luowei said, word by deliberate word: “I am all ears for the Grand Preceptor’s instruction.”
“I passed the imperial examinations during the Chengping era, and your father and I were classmates of the same year. He placed second in the palace examinations, while I barely squeezed into the top tier. Even after I entered Qiong Ting, I was nothing remarkable. After my regional posting, I wrote a few well-regarded essays, and on the strength of my reputation I slowly climbed the ladder of seniority. In the middle I was demoted and, during my time in Youzhou, befriended some military commanders. I was only middle-aged when I finally returned to the capital to serve as Minister of Rites.” Yu Qiushi clasped his hands behind his back and slowly walked to the doorway, as though sinking into some distant memory. He paused and looked back. “By that time, your father had already been appointed Chief Minister.”
“The things I said to Suiyun were not entirely false. Because of my earlier literary work, I was assigned to the Zishantang to tutor the princes. Then came the salt scandal in Jiangnan, and my eldest daughter was implicated—she died young. I was utterly disillusioned with life. One day, when the late emperor came to the Zishantang, I stepped forward to stop him and submitted a memorial requesting to resign.”
Luowei’s gaze flickered slightly.
She remembered this.
“Yes, that day—that very day!” Yu Qiushi suddenly raised his voice, his eyes blazing with a fervent light. “I knelt before the late emperor and said I had lived in confusion. Clearly I had a high position and generous salary, yet I felt my ambitions were unfulfilled; my life had been tolerably smooth, yet why did I feel stifled and oppressed? In middle age I had lost a daughter, suffered the agony of white hair mourning black—it was truly unbearable. I said I wished to resign and retire, to wander the wilderness and forests like the sages of old, perhaps to find some greater realization. I spoke until I wept bitterly. And then—”
Luowei softly completed the thought: “The late emperor stood before you and recited your examination essay from the civil service exams, word for word, without a single mistake.”
Yu Qiushi nodded with a smile: “Your Highness still remembers. Did the late emperor mention it?”
Luowei said, “The late emperor spoke of it often.”
“Good, good,” Yu Qiushi repeated the words again and again. “That day, the late emperor told me that in my youth I had been too full of sharp ambition and brilliance—if my career had also gone smoothly, I risked losing my way. So all these years he had deliberately tempered me, letting me cultivate my character in Qiong Ting, and letting me see the true conditions of the people during my regional posting. Only then did I suddenly understand why I had been given a ceremonial position at the Ministry of Rites while being assigned to tutor the princes in the Zishantang—for all those years, the late emperor had regarded me as a man fit to be Chief Minister!”
“As he laid out everything so earnestly, I was overcome with shame and remorse. In my youth I had clung to petty pride and grudges, been weighed down by shame over my family background, and drifted along aimlessly and uselessly. That day, it was the late emperor who held up the sun, moon, and mountains before my eyes for me to behold anew. He gave me a new realm of understanding. This gift of recognition and appreciation—I will never forget it as long as I live, and I vowed to give my life for the late emperor and for all under heaven!”
At this, Luowei could barely suppress a cold laugh. Her eyes filled with tears that did not fall, and she said in a voice sharp with hatred: “So this is how you repaid the late emperor’s gift of recognition?”
“I told you—you do not understand what I seek!” Yu Qiushi spun around and shouted, with something almost frenzied in his manner. “The late emperor was benevolent and kind. He raised the Son of Heaven and his sons like a grandfather and his grandchildren. Crown Prince Ling was the eldest legitimate son of the Empress—the favored child of Heaven—raised from infancy in the lap of ten thousand affections. Father and son, ruler and subject, brothers’ rivalry, the dark intrigues of the inner court—he understood none of it! Your father and Fang He Zhi were sour and pedantic Confucian scholars, and they taught him to be pure-hearted, compassionate and loving, upright and ritualistic—was that good? Naturally it was good! If he had been born in a time of peace and order, or fifty years earlier as a descendant of the enlightened Emperor Ming, born in the era when the late emperor first ascended the throne—that would have been ideal.”
Luowei abruptly shot to her feet.
She had finally understood what the other man meant.
And Yu Qiushi continued: “At that time, the western wilderness had just been pacified. At court there were Su Chaoci and the Three Zhangs of the Council of State; in the military there were General Zhuozhou, and the great and lesser Generals Liu who had pacified the west and south. The court of the Great Yin dynasty shone with a galaxy of brilliant stars—a golden age of governance! The country had fought the western wilderness for so many years and was in dire need of rest and recovery. When the world is full of honorable men and speech is free and clear—that is the proper way. Had he been born into that age, he would surely have become a wise and enlightened ruler for the ages, worthy of the posthumous title ‘Benevolent.'”
“But Your Highness, that age has passed.”
“It will never come again. The northern tribes are stirring with restless ambition, the border trade has ceased, talent at court has withered, and though the late emperor struggled with all his might to hold things together, border threats dragged him down until he could scarcely breathe. Crown Prince Ling was truly too much like the late emperor—here—” Yu Qiushi sank back into his seat with a look of dejection and pointed to his own chest with a rueful smile, “too soft-hearted.”
“When he led troops south to suppress the rebellion, the Ghost Cult had committed every manner of evil—and yet he only executed the ringleaders and attempted to reform the populace. That is how Yang Zhong, Zuo Chenjian, and Liu Fuliang came to be players in the ‘Thorn in the Tang’ incident. Lu Heng had been at his side for so many years—whatever Lu Heng had done, he could not have been entirely ignorant. Yet out of an affection that a ruler ought never to have had, he only reprimanded him once. That is how the blade fell at Tinghua Terrace. And then the present emperor—”
Yu Qiushi looked up at Luowei and said slowly and deliberately: “Back then, in the Lanhun Courtyard, when they first met—do you truly believe the present emperor encountering you was a coincidence? Crown Prince Ling wished to show concern for him, but why did he not first ask clearly why his mother-consort had been confined, and what the palace servants who had waited on him all those years actually thought of him, and what had been the cause of the fifth prince’s quarrel with him in the Zishantang?”
Luowei felt her jaw trembling, beyond her control. She opened her mouth to say something, but felt only a chill spreading from her spine, freezing every word before it could form.
Seeing her like this, Yu Qiushi was all the more cheerful. He stroked his beard and laughed until he bent forward and back: “Your Highness—you say the ‘Thorn in the Tang’ incident was caused by this old subject. This old subject has no wish to deny it. But you said today you wished to hear my instruction, so let me offer you one piece of advice. Every moment, every event, every person, every thing in this affair was a mistake of your own making. To call it an assassination attempt is a misstatement—this old subject would call it a test. If you cannot even handle something like this, how will you serve as the master of the sword for this vast realm under Heaven?”