“…Mother.”
Fu Xuanmiao’s lips moved, releasing a sound so faint it was barely louder than a mosquito’s hum.
It seemed to be a murmur to himself, yet also a feeble plea.
Fang Shi appeared not to hear it at all. She walked past Fu Xuanmiao’s side and went straight toward the towering gates of Tongtian Pavilion. Her gaze swept from the upturned eaves to the vast sky where snowflakes fell in endless drifts.
A faint thread of sunset light pierced through the broken clouds, casting its glow upon the swirling snow.
It fell upon Fang Shi’s face — grief-stricken, resolute, and unyielding.
With her back to the crowd, she slowly bent her knees and knelt before Tongtian Pavilion. Facing that slanted beam of sunlight suspended in midair, her voice trembling, she spoke:
“Today… before the witness of a hundred officials, I shall confess my crimes before Heaven.”
“Mother…”
Fu Xuanmiao’s eyes darkened with an unfathomable depth as he stepped toward Fang Shi.
Fang Shi seemed to hear his footsteps. From somewhere unseen, she produced a razor-sharp dagger and pressed it against the slender column of her own throat.
“…”
Fu Xuanmiao halted, unable to take another step.
Fang Shi seemed indifferent to everyone around her. Her back to the hundred officials, her back to her own flesh and blood, she turned the keen blade upon herself with her own hands. Her tear-blurred eyes looked only at the vast, boundless snowflakes drifting through the air above.
“My first crime — upon learning I was nothing more than a substitute for the woman my husband truly loved, I did not make a clean break and leave when I should have.”
“My second crime — I chose to swallow my grievances in silence, yet could not truly endure them. In order to take revenge upon my husband for his heartlessness, I gave myself to a servant of the Fang household who had grown up beside me since childhood — and from that union, I later carried a child in secret…”
From somewhere in the crowd came a sharp, audible gasp. Fang Shi was wholly unmoved, her trembling voice continuing on.
“My third crime — I switched one child for another, allowing a coachman’s son to become the son of a prime minister… My fourth crime… I clung to a moment of familial reunion and did not leave the Fu household after formally separating from my husband while I still had the chance…”
“My fifth crime… I did not tell this child soon enough… that he was never truly alone… Even though we could not take him away, both I and his true father loved him more than our own lives…”
Fang Shi could barely complete a single sentence. Tears the size of pearls spilled ceaselessly from those eyes filled with anguish and sorrow.
“And my greatest crime…”
Bracing herself against her own knees, she slowly rose to her feet. Turning, she looked toward Fu Xuanmiao standing not far away.
“…was failing to stop him from committing the monstrous act of killing his own father with his own hands.”
The moment Fang Shi’s words fell, the space outside Tongtian Pavilion erupted like a cauldron of boiling water brought to a sudden rolling boil.
The words “usurping the throne” could provoke half the assembled officials to revulsion. The words “patricide, a beast who slays his own kin” could provoke the other half. In any dynasty, these two acts stood as the most despised and loathsome of all crimes — and Fu Xuanmiao, who had somehow united both extremes within himself alone, had long since forfeited any right to be measured by the standards of a human being.
At some point, Fu Xuanmiao had shed his pretense of effortless composure entirely. He stood alone and unmoving in the cold, biting wind and snow, his complexion paler than the drifting snowflakes around him.
“Today, I wish to confess my crimes before Heaven — for I could neither still my heart and watch my husband love another, nor bring myself to fight even once against convention for the one I loved. And I utterly failed as a mother! I brought him into this world, yet I did not guide him onto the right path… I watched helplessly as he strayed further and further, as the blood on his hands grew thicker and thicker, yet I could do nothing at all…”
“Half the guilt for the sins my child has committed rests with me. I have lingered in this world far too long. Today, willingly, before Heaven and before all the assembled officials, I seek to atone for the innocent souls who died unjustly at my son’s hands —”
A look of absolute resolution crossed Fang Shi’s face.
“Mother!” Fu Xuanmiao suddenly cried out in a sharp, desperate shout.
Before the words had barely left his mouth, and before Shen Zhuxi had any chance to react, the dagger in Fang Shi’s hand had already reversed its direction. Without a moment’s hesitation, she plunged it into her own body.
The blade met resistance as it entered the flesh, burying only its tip at first — but an instant later, Fang Shi bore down again with all her strength, and the cold gleaming length of it disappeared completely into her body.
Fang Shi’s face contorted in pain. She clenched her teeth and did not utter a single sound. Yet a searing crimson began to well up and pour from beneath the hilt of the blade.
The dagger buried in her body seemed to drain her of every last measure of strength. Fang Shi gazed at Fu Xuanmiao standing only a few steps away, and her body slowly slid downward.
Even after she collapsed upon the ground, even as a pool of blood gradually spread and soaked out from beneath her, she continued to stare at Fu Xuanmiao without blinking. Without question, this woman who had once been nearly blind was now gazing with perfect clarity at her son, only a few paces away.
Tears — sorrowful, agonized, tangled with both love and hate — streamed ceaselessly from those eyes that had endured so much at the hands of fate.
Those clear eyes, no longer clouded, washed clean by tears.
Those eyes that had now come to know the truth, through whose anger and shock had already burned — leaving behind only a mother’s heartbreak and the helpless, unconditional love that remained.
Fu Xuanmiao stared blankly into those eyes.
“Your Majesty!”
“Your Majesty!”
Yan Hui’s voice seemed to come from another world entirely, drifting over in fragments, muffled and indistinct.
Fu Xuanmiao raised his head and looked toward the panicked crowd at the foot of the steps. Following their gaze, he turned his eyes toward the distant city gates.
Sporadic explosions were already resounding from that direction.
The blood pooling beneath Fang Shi trembled in response, sending out faint, widening ripples.
In Shen Zhuxi’s hands was an arrow quiver, now empty.
The fireworks vanished in an instant. Only the ashes of what had burned remained, mingling with the falling snow and drifting down over every person present.
…
“Those old muskets smuggled out of Jianzhou are like that Western woman’s backside — they’ve got real kick to them!”
Wu Ying Military Commissioner Chunyu An watched with great admiration as the Jin Hua garrison scrambled desperately to flee beneath rubble and shattered timber.
Beside him, Li Wu sat mounted on horseback in silver armor, his helmet already blanketed with a layer of snow. Though his beard had gone untrimmed for several days and a shadow of dark stubble drifted across his jaw, his eyes still blazed with fierce, sharp vitality — brimming with the vigor of the morning sun.
Li Wu tugged his reins, bringing the restless horse under control.
“Pass the word to your men — whatever they do, don’t let anyone near an open flame near the black powder. Water won’t put that fire out once it catches.”
“Already told them. Did you really need to remind me?” Chunyu An stroked the thick beard along his jaw and laughed with full-throated gusto. “After today, I expect we’ll be rivals again. How about this — let’s make a wager. Whoever storms into Beichun Garden first is the winner, and the loser follows the winner’s lead from this day forward. Li Duck, do you dare take me up on it?”
“Why wouldn’t I dare? Get ready to play second fiddle to your big brother!”
With a piercing whinny, the horse beneath Li Wu had already shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow.
Behind him, the Qingfeng Army released a volley of arrows all at once — a curtain of shafts arcing through the air to cover the charging Li Wu, raining down upon the garrison soldiers on the city gate who had drawn their bows to return fire.
At the same moment, Dong Miji made a sweeping entrance mounted atop an elephant. The thunderous rhythm of the fully grown elephant’s footsteps drowned out even the ongoing explosions at the city gate. Wherever those massive feet fell, the allied troops scrambled hurriedly out of the way.
Dong Miji pressed two fingers to his lips and blew a sharp whistle, shouting commands in a dialect no one else could understand, directing the elephant to charge headlong into Jinhua’s already-tottering city gate.
The Qingfeng Army’s arrows fell in continuous waves upon the gatehouse. A handful of garrison soldiers crouched behind the battlements and managed a scattered return fire, but what few arrows found the elephant’s hide merely thudded against it as though striking stone, then dropped limply to the ground.
The gate guards who had been holding their position fled in terrified disarray before the towering beast, shouting and crying out in alarm.
With one final thunderous crash, what remained of the city gate — barely a third of it still standing — collapsed at last and came crashing down.
Through the Qingfeng Army rose the rousing roll of battle drums. The infantry, who had been waiting in readiness, gripped their blades and swords, roaring as they charged through the fallen gate.
Pinghai Military Commissioner Jiang Xingchuan, seeking to atone for past failures through merit, had also donned his armor and led the Pinghai Army and the Cangzhen Army into the assault. Behind him, Cangzhen Military Commissioner Kong Ye — his hair already streaked with silver — mounted a war chariot and personally oversaw the battle.
Explosion after explosion rang out without pause, as though the entire world were crumbling.
Inside Beichun Garden, with one tremendous boom, Tongtian Pavilion crumbled into a ruin of swirling dust and smoke.
Shen Zhuxi and the hundred officials at the foot of the steps — all of whom had been prepared — were entirely unharmed. Fu Xuanmiao was struck in the shoulder by a fragment of broken brick and sustained a minor wound. Fang Shi, shielded beneath him, was spared any further impact — yet she was already balanced on the razor’s edge between life and death, beyond all remedy.
“Please, do not be alarmed, my lords!” Shen Zhuxi called out earnestly through the dust and smoke. “Jinhua has fallen. Reinforcements will arrive momentarily. All of you were deceived by a traitor — but it is not too late to come to your senses now! In the name of Princess of Yue, I make this pledge to each of you: so long as you stand united and join the Qingfeng Army in opposing the traitor Fu, all that has come before will be forgiven and forgotten!”
Shen Zhuxi’s declaration caused visible uncertainty to pass across the faces of many officials.
The General of Huaiyuan and the Minister of Rites were the first to step forward and stand before Shen Zhuxi.
The General of Huaiyuan — broad-shouldered and powerfully built — drew the blade at his waist and swept a furious gaze across the crowd around him:
“Today, Zhang Guangyi pledges his very life here, and he will see the Princess of Yue kept safe!”
The Minister of Rites, his eyes blazing with righteous indignation, placed his thin and gaunt frame squarely in front of Shen Zhuxi and declared:
“This old man has nothing left to lose. Anyone who dares harm the Princess will have to step over this old man’s corpse first!”
Gradually, the Minister of Personnel and the Director of the Imperial Banqueting Court made their way to stand before Shen Zhuxi. Not long after, the General Who Guards the Nation stepped out from among the military officials — who had all been exchanging bewildered glances — and came to stand before Shen Zhuxi as well, drawing his weapon and training every nerve on watchful guard against Fu Xuanmiao across the way.
More and more people moved to stand before Shen Zhuxi, forging with their own bodies a line of defense around the last legitimate heir of the Great Yan imperial bloodline.
“Your Majesty! Jinhua has fallen — Your Majesty must relocate to safety immediately!” Yan Hui’s complexion had turned ashen.
Jinhua, if not quite impregnable, had at the very least been amply stocked with provisions and well garrisoned — it should have held without any difficulty for half a year. And yet several barrels of gunpowder had been enough to shatter its defenses.
In a flash, Fu Xuanmiao’s gaze snapped toward the young woman standing behind the protective wall of officials and guards.
He understood now. All of it.
It was she — she who had directed Fang Shi to mention Jianzhou speech in the Qingfeng Army while in his presence. It was she, with a scheme in which every link interlocked with the next, who had led him to uncover his own weakness himself, then handed it to someone else to deliver the killing blow.
Had he not grown suspicious at those words, he would never have investigated the court officials and main garrison forces who had accompanied him from Jianzhou to Jinhua. He would never have acted on a few scattered threads of suspicion and stripped out Jianzhou’s elite soldiers — who had been guarding the city gate and Beichun Garden — and replaced them with the rabble of local Jinhua troops.
Faced with a frontal assault, it was only natural that untested Jinhua soldiers, never baptized by fire, would flinch and fail to hold their ground. And it was equally certain that the Jinhua troops he had installed afterward had been bought, enabling someone to bury the gunpowder inside Beichun Garden without anyone noticing.
All of it had started from what appeared to be a single offhand remark by Fang Shi.
One misstep had led to another, and then another.
His caution and suspicion had carried him to where he stood today — and those same qualities had now brought him to a standstill at this very spot.
“Your Majesty, we must go — if we wait any longer it will be too late!” Yan Hui urged anxiously.
At last, Fu Xuanmiao stirred.
He stepped forward — past the General of Huaiyuan and the others who stood with weapons at the ready, braced as though facing a great enemy — and bent down to gather Fang Shi from the pool of blood.
Fang Shi’s breath had dwindled to the faintest thread. Her face, drenched in cold sweat, held not a trace of color. Her unfocused pupils strained upward with great effort, as though desperately trying to make out the face of the person before her.
“Your Highness, be careful!” The General of Huaiyuan caught Shen Zhuxi, who had instinctively stepped forward.
Shen Zhuxi stopped, watching the mother and son across from her — the words dying unspoken on her lips. In the end, she did not move to stop Fu Xuanmiao.
Fang Shi’s blood had stained Fu Xuanmiao’s pallid hands crimson. He looked at Shen Zhuxi with a deep and serious gaze — slow, deliberate, as though for the very first time he was truly taking in her face, committing it to his eyes in full.
“…This round — you’ve won.”
Without waiting for Shen Zhuxi to speak, he turned, cradling Fang Shi, and mounted the horse Yan Hui had brought forward.
“Stop right there!”
The General of Huaiyuan bellowed and moved to give chase — but the thunder of footsteps erupted from the corridor as the last of Fu Xuanmiao’s personal guards, light cavalry who had once been soldiers of the Fu family army, swept in and formed a tight protective circle around him, ushering him away and out of sight behind what remained of Tongtian Pavilion, now reduced to ruins.
The snow continued to fall, unceasing.
The white blankness of it covered the ruins. It covered the bloodstains. It returned everything that had been defiled to something clean.