It was said that in the city of wind and snow on the far northern Grete Plateau, there once stood a remarkable building known throughout the world — the Jingyin Tower.
This tower welcomed the finest craftsmen from all corners of the realm, and many timeless works had been created within its walls. Every three years, its master would host a grand banquet for all under heaven, spending gold like dirt, from which a single champion would emerge victorious and be granted passage into the tower’s depths to marvel at the master’s vast and staggering collection of jade and curios. The tower lived up to its name — concealed mechanisms lurked at every turn, and only the master knew the winding paths that led to hidden wonders, so that despite the countless treasures within, no outsider could ever glimpse so much as a fraction of them.
A jade enthusiast who had once been fortunate enough to enter the tower described its wonders thus:
Four sides to the terrace, six pavilions, twenty-four corridors, seventy-two doors, oriented to the east, west, south, north, heaven and earth — winding and interconnected, yet never in sight of one another.
As the name suggested, it meant that every part of this tower appeared independent, yet was linked to the others through hidden means.
And so it was with Jingbo Tower now.
Xiao Nanhui had returned to the secret passage, though she was not walking the same path she had come by. She followed behind Su Wei, winding her way through the darkness for some time, and only when daylight returned did she realize she had somehow made her way to the northern face of the tower.
The side that faced the lake had offered an open, unobstructed view — one could see several hundred steps into the distance. But this side faced a high wall.
Between that wall and the balcony railing jutting from the tower, there was only a little over one zhang of space. Jingbo Tower stood at least several dozen zhang tall, yet that wall rose even higher still. Looking closely, one could see traces of old and new earthen repairs layered across its surface, the massive stone bricks ancient and weathered, thick with moss accumulated over years of wind and rain — grey-white and blue-green interspersed, life and death cycling together for a hundred years.
“That is the palace wall. If you crane your neck, be careful you don’t get an arrow through it.”
Her thoughts laid bare, Xiao Nanhui felt her face grow hot. She gave a light cough and pulled her head back.
So this was the palace wall. Once, when she had stood at the base of the walls of the Dong family estate in Xishu, she had thought the palace walls could not be anything too extraordinary. Now she saw how ignorant she had been.
The atmosphere grew awkward for a moment, and she tried to change the subject.
“This tower is separated from the palace wall by only a narrow gap. Is His Majesty not afraid that someone might use this place to sneak into the palace?”
“Then do you know why the entrance to Jingbo Tower was placed inside the Black Feather Camp? Besides, the principle that it is easy to leave but difficult to enter should not be hard to understand.”
The reply carried a faint air of indifference, as though it highlighted just how foolish her question was.
Never mind how an outsider would even know of this place — the Black Feather Camp alone would be enough to give any ordinary thief a run for their money.
Not to be outdone, she put on an air of profundity and added: “His Majesty should also understand that a thief within the house is harder to guard against.”
The figure walking ahead paused, then suddenly turned and gave her a meaningful look.
“Indeed.”
What did that mean? Was he calling her a thief?
Xiao Nanhui felt a vague flash of anger, and alongside the anger, a pang of guilt.
Just then, the sound of carriage wheels and horses rumbled up from below.
She looked down instinctively, and saw a carriage emerge from the narrow alley between the palace wall and the tower — just barely wide enough to fit — and come to a slow stop at the alley’s end.
A person jumped down from the carriage. It was Ding Weixiang.
But Xiao Nanhui’s gaze remained fixed on the carriage itself.
The carriage looked entirely unremarkable from the outside, the sort a well-to-do household in Quecheng might use for travel, yet she had an inexplicable feeling she had seen it before.
The man noticed her puzzled, searching look.
“You have indeed ridden in that carriage before.”
Xiao Nanhui was taken aback, then quickly matched it to one of the few carriages she had ever ridden in.
It was the carriage they had taken on the return journey from Huozhou.
At the time, she had been outmaneuvered and lost the imperial seal, and when she turned around to settle accounts, the man had vanished along with the carriage, as though swallowed by the earth.
In hindsight, a place that did not appear on any map — it was only natural she could not find it.
Still, when had the palace’s carriages become so unpretentious?
“Is this a palace carriage?”
“No.” Su Wei paused, and before his mind’s eye there almost appeared the image of the old Chancellor’s furious, flustered face. He waved a sleeve with casual indifference. “It belongs to an old friend. Borrowed it, and forgot to return it.”
Fair enough — a palace carriage would be far too conspicuous. It would hardly have made it out of the street before the rumor mills of the ward started turning.
Xiao Nanhui did not look too closely into who this old friend of the Emperor’s might be, nor did she think much about what manner of person could inspire an emperor to use the word “borrowed.”
In only a moment, Ding Weixiang’s figure appeared on the terrace above. She had not even noticed which secret passage he had emerged from.
Jingbo Tower and the imperial palace were separated by only a single wall. She suddenly found herself curious how many more pitch-black, endless secret passages lay within this tower — and whether one of them led directly into the depths of the palace itself.
“Greetings to Your Majesty, greetings to Miss Xiao.”
Oh? When had this lackey become so courteous toward her?
Xiao Nanhui looked at Ding Weixiang with a newfound wariness, though he clearly had no interest in any kind of silent standoff with her. Without a word, he produced two thick veils and handed them over, donning one himself.
Su Wei accepted his and passed one to Xiao Nanhui.
“These have been pre-fumigated with suhe incense. You had best put it on.”
Fumigated? Why would they need incense? Did she have some strange smell about her?
Xiao Nanhui accepted it with mild puzzlement.
“Are we going to meet someone?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Half a cup of tea later, she understood why the veil was necessary.
Ahead was nothing but darkness. She seemed to have stepped into a sealed stone room with no windows and walls on all four sides.
A foul, rotting stench billowed toward her out of the blackness. Even through the thick veil, it was impossible to stop the smell from forcing its way into her nostrils.
The reek nearly knocked Xiao Nanhui off her feet, and the next instant, her back collided with the man’s chest.
Warmth seeped through layers of fabric. A heartbeat pressed against her back, faint and rhythmic. She suddenly recalled that night in the side chamber of the temporary palace — the memory of him applying medicine for her — and hurried to pull away. A slightly cool hand caught her by the arm and drew her back to his side.
“Stay close to me. It will do you good.”
That faint, cool aura enveloped her, driving away the nauseating, dizzying smell that surrounded them.
Xiao Nanhui did not move. She let that hand gently guide her forward.
She could not understand why that hand was cold, yet made her feel warmth spreading through her entire body.
“We’re here.”
Ding Weixiang produced a flint and lit the torch on the wall, and at last there was some light around them.
At the center of a perfectly square sealed chamber stood only a narrow, elongated platform. A white cloth was draped over it, and beneath that cloth was the vague outline of a human body.
Xiao Nanhui was beginning to understand where that smell was coming from.
Ding Weixiang stepped up to the platform and pulled the white cloth away in one motion.
Beneath the cloth lay a corpse, still dressed in palace attendant’s clothing. The face had swollen beyond recognition. The skin exposed to the air had turned a grayish-purple, the pupils had gone white, and the tongue, swollen and bloated, protruded half out of the gaping mouth. The empty sleeve revealed an arm that had been severed halfway.
Now she finally understood why the Emperor had earlier said it would be better to come on an empty stomach.
In a situation like this, anyone with something in their stomach would likely have retched it all up within moments.
“Come closer. Look carefully — have you seen this person before?”
Xiao Nanhui steadied herself, then held her breath and stepped closer by a few paces, doing her best to make out the face that had been rendered unrecognizable.
Strangely enough, a corpse decomposed to this degree should by all reason have been impossible to identify. Yet Xiao Nanhui recognized at once that the face before her belonged to the palace attendant who had inexplicably attacked her on that night in the temporary palace.
That eerily smiling face in the moonlight was not something she would ever forget.
“In reply to Your Majesty — this person should indeed be the one who fought me that night at the temporary palace.”
Su Wei gave a slight nod, then asked: “Before that night, had you ever seen him?”
Xiao Nanhui shook her head with absolute certainty. “Never.”
Su Wei turned his gaze to Ding Weixiang. “Was he an infiltrator from outside the palace?”
“I initially made that assumption as well, and investigated in the wrong direction. I later discovered that was not the case.” Ding Weixiang stepped forward as he spoke, holding out a bamboo register of palace personnel to Su Wei. “This man’s name was Xu Rui. He was a bedchamber attendant in the inner palace, and had been in the Bureau of Internal Affairs for six full years. He was generally well-behaved in his duties, so he was selected to accompany the imperial entourage for the Jiaosong Sacrifice.”
“Why would someone from the inner palace be in the rear courtyard?”
“On the day of the incident, due to a shortage of staff for the sacrifice, he was assigned to serve in the outer courtyard for one night.”
The memory of the night of the punishment came back to her, and Xiao Nanhui’s shoulder began to ache faintly again.
When the punishment ended, she had been dazed with pain, but she still recalled fragments of what had happened.
“I remember he was standing by at the place of punishment. When the interrogating officer ordered someone to escort me to the palace gate, he stepped forward and said he would take me there — but the path he chose was wrong.”
“Before he attacked you, did he say anything?”
“He said—” Xiao Nanhui narrowed her eyes, straining to recall that night in the datura flower garden. “He seemed to say he had met me before, but I had no memory of it whatsoever.”
“And do you know why he wanted to kill you?”
Xiao Nanhui shook her head. She thought back to the methods this man had used when interrogating An Lu in the western ridge, and felt something didn’t add up.
“Since he was captured, surely something was gotten out of him?”
Ding Weixiang caught the implication in her words, glanced at her, and then spoke. “At the time, I held back. I only severed his arm — I had no intention of taking his life. But he ceased breathing right then and there.”
“Was the cause of death determined?”
“The coroner said blood had pooled in the heart vessels. It appears he died of a heart condition.”
A heart condition, striking suddenly and causing death on the spot — that seemed plausible enough.
After all, even the most hardened villain, having witnessed Ding Weixiang’s single sword stroke that night, might well have had their legs go weak.
Xiao Nanhui glanced at this unremarkable-looking blade-bearing guard and felt a deep sense of gratitude that she had never made an enemy of him.
Ding Weixiang paid no attention to Xiao Nanhui’s look. His expression had become oddly peculiar.
“There is one more matter I have not yet reported to Your Majesty. I was unsure whether it should be said.”
“If you were not going to say it, you would not have brought it up. Since you have, speak plainly.”
Ding Weixiang was checked by that remark and paused for a moment before finally speaking.
“When this corpse was transported back to Quecheng, exactly seven days had passed since the day of death. Given that the weather had not yet warmed, the degree of decomposition should by all accounts have been relatively mild. Yet at the time of examination, the coroner stated with full certainty: this person had been dead for no less than half a month.”
“What?” Disbelief leapt across Xiao Nanhui’s face, and her gaze fell back upon the already-rotting corpse. “But he was clearly—”
She could not finish the sentence.
Would an ordinary corpse, stored for seven days in the current temperature, truly decompose to such a degree?
But if he had not died seven days ago, then what was the creature she had seen that day — one that could walk, stop, speak, and attack?
Su Wei’s expression remained largely unchanged, though a trace of contemplative thought flickered through his shifting gaze.
“Has his whereabouts from half a month ago been verified?”
“I verified everything one by one. According to the head attendant on duty during those days, Xu Rui was still reporting normally for duty inside the palace half a month ago, consistent with what was recorded in the duty roster.”
“Did he leave the palace during that time?”
“He never left the palace grounds. He only took half a day’s leave on the twenty-third day of the first month, saying he was feeling slightly unwell.”
“Did anyone else handle the body during transport?”
“I personally oversaw the entire convoy. No one else was aware of it, nor did they have any opportunity to handle it.”
A brief silence settled over the air. No one could break through the mystery crouching in the darkness.
But in that instant, Xiao Nanhui’s thoughts drifted far away.
What if — she said, what if.
What if Xu Rui had already been dead that night?
She suddenly recalled certain details from that evening.
She had followed behind that swaying palace lantern, and throughout, she recalled a faint, intermittent smell of rot about the air. At the time she had assumed it was her imagination — how could there be anything decomposing in an imperial temporary palace? But now, thinking back, an incredible answer had suddenly presented itself.
That day, she had not been following a living person at all. She had been trailing behind a corpse dead for several days.
The realization sent a wave of revulsion and dread surging through her. The doubt rising from deep within her spread like ink dropped into water, and Xiao Nanhui felt another one of her assumptions about the natural order of things being shattered.
It was at that moment that Su Wei’s voice finally rang out again.
“Apart from the wound where you severed his arm, are there any other external injuries on this corpse?”
“There is one, though I am not certain it counts as such. Your Majesty will need to come closer to see it clearly.”
Ding Weixiang lifted the candlestick toward the other arm of the corpse.
In the candlelight, on the swollen fingertip, there was an inconspicuous black dot — it looked like a thorn that had accidentally pricked the finger.
“What is that?”
“I do not know. The coroner who examined the body could not identify it either. It may be a mark left by some poison or parasite. I have already consulted every person in the palace with expertise in such matters, but no one could offer any explanation, and a search through the medical texts yielded no recorded precedent.”
“Wait.” Xiao Nanhui suddenly spoke up, then looked toward Ding Weixiang beside her. “I remember that during the Jiaosong Sacrifice at Changru Terrace, there was a person standing in the crowd shaking a bell. Do you still have the portrait of that person?”
Ding Weixiang stood in place for a moment without moving.
“There is still one.”
“Have you shown it to His Majesty?”
“The assassination has yet to be conclusively determined, and that portrait was only a rough sketch drawn by a roadside fortune-teller—”
“Bring it out.” Xiao Nanhui cut him off urgently, momentarily forgetting Ding Weixiang’s reaction. “Bring it out and show it to him.”
An instinct she could not name was threading together the fragments in her mind, vaguely tracing the outline of the truth behind all of this. She wanted to see more clearly but had no way to grasp it directly, and could only follow her feeling to seize on a thread or two to verify.
Ding Weixiang’s gaze met hers, as if weighing the source of the urgency in her voice. Beside them, Su Wei had already spoken.
“It is no matter. It is only a portrait. Let us have a look.”
The master having spoken, Ding Weixiang had no choice but to produce the crumpled wanted sketch.
“I once used this portrait to launch a search within a hundred li of Jiaosong County, but ultimately found nothing, so I assumed the portrait might not be an accurate likeness of the culprit, and did not present it to Your Majesty at the first opportunity.”
Su Wei said nothing, only took the paper in silence.
The thin sheet lay in his hands as candlelight danced within it, making the figure outlined on its surface twist like a ghostly shadow.
Xiao Nanhui watched his face anxiously for any reaction, but this man was ever impassive, and she could make nothing out.
Ding Weixiang at her side was already growing somewhat impatient, but Xiao Nanhui held him back with a hand just as Su Wei set down the portrait.
“The likeness is rather rough, but it captures the spirit well enough.”
Xiao Nanhui pressed forward at once. “Then has Your Majesty seen this person before?”
Su Wei paused for a moment, then spoke a name.
“Zou Sifang.”
Three light syllables, yet they felt like a giant hand resetting a great boulder in Xiao Nanhui’s heart.
One person mistaken, perhaps. Two people mistaken, possibly. But surely a third person could not also be mistaken.
Her deduction had been correct. The shadow lurking among the crowd below Changru Terrace that day — it had been Zou Sifang.
Ding Weixiang could not help but speak up as a reminder.
“But in the marshes of Bai Yaoguan that day, Zou Sifang already died.”
“Yet Xu Rui died too.” Xiao Nanhui’s voice grew steadily more certain. She gathered her courage and gave voice to the conjecture she had harbored in her heart. “What if Zou Sifang, like this Xu Rui, had returned from the dead?”
This bold and terrifying deduction plunged the entire sealed chamber back into brief silence.
Life and death are fated — who on earth would seek to defy heaven itself?
Or was it the divine being spoken of by Pu Huna, manipulating ghosts and spirits, overturning human souls?
“The dead cannot return to life, and neither ghosts nor gods have that power.” Su Wei’s voice resonated low and deep beside her. “But there is indeed something suspicious about this matter. I recall that in Huozhou, it was the young man of the Qu Family who treated Zou Sifang.”
Ding Weixiang nodded. “That is correct.”
“Convey my secret edict — go at once to the Qu Family in Wancheng and summon Qu Mo here. Tell him that—” He paused, then spoke of the thing that had nearly been forgotten by everyone. “Tell him the secret seal has encountered a problem and he is needed to come and examine it.”
“Yes.”
Ding Weixiang bowed and received the order. The Emperor’s voice followed with a further instruction.
“This matter must be kept in complete secrecy. Do not disturb others.”
The smell of suhe incense mixed with the reek of rot, forming an uncanny odor in the nose — as though some terrible truth was on the verge of breaking free from concealment and rushing out all at once.
A cold draft swept through, and the torches on the walls twisted and shuddered. Xiao Nanhui shuddered along with them.
In the dim, murky light around her, she had almost an illusion:
The blackened finger hanging over the edge of the white cloth — seemed to twitch.
And the memory of being in Mu Er He in late spring drifted through her mind, conjuring a scene she had never witnessed with her own eyes.
Perhaps, after they had walked out of that wilderness that day — somewhere behind them in that untamed land, in the cold and damp of the marshes — something had shattered the deathly silence.
From the earth that had swallowed a living soul and smoothed itself flat again, a pale, blue-white hand suddenly thrust upward. A body that should have long since rotted broke through the ground, and in a grotesque fashion, crawled its way back into the world of the living.