Ming Huashang ran quickly back to Zhao Cai’s side — but instead of examining the wounds, she began searching through the clothing. And there it was: in Zhao Cai’s small carrying-pouch, she found a finely worked gold plaque.
She had glimpsed it once, without paying attention, when she examined the body earlier and had put it back in the pouch without giving it another thought. Only now did it register: she had been with Zhao Cai every day of these years. She knew everything Zhao Cai owned. And she had never once seen Zhao Cai wear this gold plaque.
Ming Huashang examined it closely. It was about half the size of a palm — thin and light, the sort of thing that looked like an ornament. But engraved on it in small seal script was a single character: 空 — “empty” or “void.” No other design, no other markings.
In Zhao Cai’s own words, something like this was entirely too “inauspicious” — she would never have liked a piece in this style, let alone carried it on her person. So what was it doing in Zhao Cai’s pouch?
Ming Huashang arrived almost instantly at the answer: the killer had left it there.
Why would he leave a gold plaque on Zhao Cai’s body? What was he trying to say?
In a flash of sudden intuition, Ming Huashang thought back to the cipher left at the scene of the third murder. Everyone had assumed the character the killer left was 明 — “bright/Ming” — and that Zhao Cai had died because the killer mistook her for Ming Huashang. But what if they had all guessed wrong?
Ming Huashang rapidly retraced the scene of Yan Jingcheng’s explosion: the pavilion above, carved with sun and moon patterns; the couplet outside reading “The morning colours of the sunrise go unnoticed; moonlit river water flows wherever it will”; Yan Jingcheng’s body slumped beneath them, with only the gold ornaments preserved intact. Xie Jichuan had said that Yan Jingcheng’s body appeared to be missing something. And at the scene of Zhao Cai’s death, her body had an additional gold plaque of unclear origin.
Sun. Moon. Void.
Could it be…
Ming Huashang’s eyes went wide. Su Yuji, watching Ming Huashang murmur to herself, stepped closer with a flicker of concern and touched her shoulder: “Are you all right?”
Ming Huashang spun around and seized Su Yuji’s wrist with both hands, her voice charged with urgency: “I know who the killer’s true target is! We need to move — on the day of the Flower Festival, the Holy Sovereign is leaving the palace to watch the lanterns. The Hibiscus Gardens are in danger!”
Su Yuji stared at her, completely at sea, and had to physically press Ming Huashang to calm down before she could speak: “What are you talking about?”
“He intends to assassinate the Emperor.” Ming Huashang’s eyes burned with a fierce, clear light, brilliant as a kindled star. “The next person he wants to kill is not Zhao Cai, and not me. It is the Holy Sovereign herself — Her Imperial Majesty!”
Sun and moon, poised in the sky together — there was only one person in the world who bore that name.
The Holy Sovereign. Wǔ Zé Tiān.
And at that moment, from the direction of Vermilion Bird Street, the distant sound of ceremonial music drifted toward them. Ming Huashang’s expression changed sharply, struck with sudden confusion: “That sounds like the imperial processional — the ceremonial music used only when the Emperor is on the move. But today is only the fourteenth. The Holy Sovereign said she would go to watch the Flower Festival lanterns on the fifteenth of the second month. Why has she moved it forward by a day?”
·
After receiving Princess Taiping’s reply the previous night, Ming Huazhang had remained seated at the window without moving, watching the night-colour settle over the eaves.
No moon that night. The cosmos was vast; the stars wandered their slow courses.
Ming Huazhang’s thoughts turned to not long ago, when he had travelled to Huxian to visit Song Yanbai’s parents. The sky’s great river had blazed with the same splendour then.
Those two old people had spoken in numb voices about having resigned themselves. They had once refused to accept that their son’s death had been ruled an accident; they had lodged appeal after appeal, and even with the help of a kind-hearted supporter, the arm could not overpower the shoulder. The Jing Zhaoyin had investigated and upheld the original verdict. Chu Ji was a man of distinguished virtue and high reputation — what could he possibly stand to gain from scheming against his own disciple? Song Yanbai must simply have made a mistake with the medicinal ingredients during preparation and accidentally poisoned himself.
Song’s parents had spent every ounce of their strength, and changed nothing. From fury to numbness — and now, they had even begun to wonder whether perhaps their son truly had mis-remembered the medicines and brought about his own end.
Ming Huazhang sighed in silence. He had asked in passing who it was that had helped them compile their evidence and encouraged them to appeal. The two old people said: an official by the surname of Liao.
Official Liao… The name sparked something in Ming Huazhang’s mind — and he thought of the Li Shi widow.
When they had been piecing things together earlier, they had searched in vain for a common thread among the victims. In fact, there was one connection shared by the first two murder victims beyond the Li Shi widow — they had all filed reports with the authorities.
Except that no one had ever uncovered their crimes. All of them had walked away unscathed and continued to enjoy their wealth, authority, and reputation.
Like a single spark in the dark, the thought ignited a string of others. Those who had visited the Jinxiu Tower to view the hundred-year lanterns were not only the people on the list — the authorities had also been there. Before the Lantern Festival, officials would conduct city-wide inspections of lamps and fire hazards. That sort of task had always been handled by the Jing Zhaoyin.
Who could have had a thorough knowledge of the long-buried details of Chang’an’s cold cases — knowing which people had clearly been guilty yet were released without charge? Who could have killed Black Tiger in prison without making a sound, without leaving a trace? Who, every single time, had been able to release the suspect and slip away just before the Jing Zhaoyin closed the net?
All these threads, like strands of a web, pointed ultimately to a single person.
A man who had served for ten years as Judicial Advisor in Chang’an and had only just been promoted the previous year to the position of Jing Zhaoyin — that supposedly unremarkable, mediocre official: Liao Yushan.
Ming Huazhang had already been suspicious of the Jing Zhaoyin from the moment he returned from Huxian. But unexpected events had struck one after another — Li Chongrun’s beating, Princess Yongtai’s miscarriage, Zhao Cai’s murder, Ming Huashang’s illness and collapse. Ming Huazhang had been so occupied with managing the aftermath that there had been no opportunity to confront Liao Yushan at the Jing Zhaoyin office.
But what had transpired today was more than enough to confirm his suspicions. With Ming Huashang devastated by Zhao Cai’s death and absent from the scene, and with Ming Huazhang having taken personal leave on family grounds, the Jing Zhaoyin had moved smoothly under their chief’s direction to apprehend a suspect: a raving madman, incapable of defending himself, whom everyone was quite naturally prepared to accept as the killer.
A madman was, indeed, the most perfectly convenient scapegoat imaginable. Last time, Liao Yushan had tried to pin the blame on He Yong — but with Ming Huazhang and Ming Huashang both present, the two of them being as tenacious and relentless as they were, Liao Yushan’s attempt to extract a false confession had been impossible to sustain and He Yong had had to be released. With neither Ming Huazhang nor Ming Huashang around to complicate matters this time, he had finally gotten his wish.
Stepping forward at the critical moment to salvage the case with a swift arrest — quite the achievement. But was that truly what Liao Yushan had gone to all this trouble for? Just to earn a merit?
There were far simpler methods available to him for that. Why resort to murder?
Unless he had a reason he could not avoid.
Ming Huazhang slowly tightened his hand around the sealed note. He knew that once he broke this seal, he would have his answer.
Princess Taiping’s trusted messenger had brought the letter, and with it an additional piece of information. The Jing Zhaoyin had cracked the case before the final deadline; the Holy Sovereign had dismissed her attendants and received him alone in her chamber for a private audience, the contents of which were unknown. When he emerged, the Holy Sovereign issued a decree to advance the Flower Festival schedule by one day — the palace procession would leave tomorrow to view the lanterns.
When a creature senses danger, the direction it flees tells you where its den is. By the same logic — when a person realises they are in danger, what they do in that moment tells you what they value most.
Ming Huazhang could not believe that Liao Yushan did not know he was already under suspicion. Yet despite that, he had gone into the palace to report. All simply to convince the Holy Sovereign to leave the palace one day early. What was he planning?
Ming Huazhang sat for a long time without moving. At last he tore open the sealed letter.
The previous year, a traitor within the Xuan Xiaowei had passed their movements to Prince Wei, nearly causing Ming Huazhang to be exposed. Ming Huashang had deliberately circulated false information in order to flush out the spy — and that day, Prince Wei’s people had gone ahead to set an ambush at the designated meeting point, just as expected. This meant that among the people who had handled their intelligence, there was definitely a traitor.
Ming Huashang had been clever about the timing. The palace gates were locked every evening by rule, and she used that to create a narrow window. She intentionally sent the false information on the evening before, just before the gates closed, and arranged the rendezvous for early the following morning — and yet the ambushers had still arrived before them. To pass intelligence in so short a window, the message could only have been carried by whoever was first out of the palace gates that morning.
This alone had already narrowed the traitor’s identity substantially. Ming Huazhang had originally intended to identify the traitor through his own investigation and had been reluctant to borrow Princess Taiping’s resources, since he disagreed with her methods. But now he wavered.
As long as he could get results, perhaps it did not matter so much how he got them. Princess Taiping had spent years cultivating her influence within the palace and her reach was deep. Using her resources was the fastest and most efficient route. Why not?
So Ming Huazhang had sent word to Princess Taiping requesting a recent record of departures by members of the Feathered Guard. The Feathered Guard was the innermost intelligence tier of the Xuan Xiaowei; each member’s identity was a closely held secret. And yet, this most sensitive of documents had been delivered to him within a single hour of his asking. Princess Taiping had been as good as her word.
Ming Huazhang scanned the list line by line and one name caught his eye.
The Feathered Guard maintained a dedicated eunuch who left the palace daily on errand runs, using those outings to send and receive messages. The one eunuch who had gone out both on the evening Ming Huazhang’s decoy message was sent and on the early morning of the rendezvous the following day was a correspondence-handler by the surname of Zheng.
Ming Huazhang looked further into Zheng’s area of responsibility. And there, as chance would have it, was Changshou Ward.
Ming Huazhang let out a silent breath. After everything, it was unmistakably clear.
His own superior, Liao Yushan, was, like himself, a man of two identities.
The Jing Zhaoyin also served the Xuan Xiaowei. That was how he knew which historical cases would cause the greatest sensation if replicated — how to draw out the Twin Jades and win distinction before Prince Wei. If Ming Huazhang remembered correctly, it was around that same period that Prince Wei had been constructing his Flower Festival lanterns to please the Holy Sovereign.
Or rather — it was after Liao Yushan heard that Prince Wei intended to present the Holy Sovereign with those lanterns that he had been moved to consider defecting to Prince Wei’s camp in the first place.
Liao Yushan had gone around such a long and circuitous route, painstakingly courting Prince Wei’s favour — manufacturing explosions across Chang’an, pinning guilt on an innocent person to close the case, allowing a suspect to be beaten into a false confession in front of onlookers with no thought to the Censorate’s oversight, all with a recklessness that bordered on self-destruction. What on earth was he in such a rush for?
Without his noticing it, the eastern sky had begun to pale into the thin grey of fish-belly dawn. Ming Huazhang felt as though the light were a needle stabbed into his eye; he raised his hand and covered them.
He and Liao Yushan had not crossed paths many times, but he had witnessed Liao Yushan coughing up blood on several occasions — which told him plainly that Liao Yushan’s health had already deteriorated badly. Liao Yushan knew he did not have long to live. And so he was in a desperate hurry to see his plan through before he died.
A man that frantic had never intended to have an “afterwards.” His goal, from the very first, had been to kill the Emperor.
This was the first time Ming Huazhang had found the morning light harsh and difficult to bear. He covered his eyes, and the world turned to still, dark water around him. He thought: if he did nothing — if he simply let Liao Yushan kill the Holy Sovereign — then the world would return to the Li family’s hands.
All of it would end. The deaths of Li Chongrun and Princess Yongtai. His father’s unjust fate. The grief of the Li family, who had been forced to smother their own humanity and their own love for one another simply to survive. All that suffering would be resolved, cleanly.
In the sealed black of his covered eyes, a set of footsteps approached from a distance. And then her voice fell through the darkness like a shaft of morning light: “Second Elder Brother — I’ve found the answer!”
It was her. But she shouldn’t be awake yet — what was she doing?
Ming Huazhang snapped his eyes open, and when he saw that Ming Huashang had only a thin cloak thrown over her and was running through the cold wind with her hair loose, his expression turned heavy and cold. He stood up immediately, strode to the base of the steps, and caught Ming Huashang as she arrived.
When he took her hand and felt how cold it was, the displeasure in his expression deepened further. He quickly removed his own outer robe and wrapped it closely around her, saying with a note of reproach: “Why are you dressed so lightly?”
Ming Huashang had no attention to spare for her own clothing. She gripped Ming Huazhang’s hand and said: “Second Elder Brother, I know who the killer is — it’s the Jing Zhaoyin. The cipher he left at the last crime scene wasn’t ‘Ming’ — it was sun-and-moon-blazing-in-the-sky — ‘Zhào.’ He’s very likely planning to move against the Holy Sovereign during the Flower Festival!”
Ming Huazhang’s expression remained entirely undisturbed, without the slightest ripple. Ming Huashang, an instant too late, caught something off: “Second Elder Brother — you already knew?”
Ming Huazhang said nothing. He wrapped the robe tighter around her and steered her inside. He had been sitting awake here all night; the tea had long since gone cold, and he had never been in the habit of using a charcoal brazier. He looked around and found nothing to provide warmth. All he could do was settle Ming Huashang on the couch and crouch down before her, warming her hands between his own.
Ming Huazhang’s fingers were long, his hands narrow and fine-boned, his palms thin — just wide enough to enclose both of Ming Huashang’s hands at once. He carefully warmed them, voice quiet and low: “I know. But isn’t this… rather good, in a way?”
Ming Huashang was completely bewildered: “What?”
“Loyalty repaid with death; informers rewarded with promotion. What sort of dynasty is worth protecting? She it was who brought cruel officials upon the Great Tang — blood and terror and catastrophe. She drove my father to his death. She had my eldest brother killed at seven years old. She fomented an atmosphere of informing and denunciation; she needed no more than an unproven charge of ‘rebellion’ to raise her blade against women and children who could not defend themselves. The princes and princesses of the Li family were hunted down and slaughtered until almost none remained. And now she has gone further still — for the sake of two male favourites, she had her own grandson and grandnephew beaten to death in public. Is a tyrant like this worth saving?”
Ming Huashang’s expression grew serious by degrees. She looked at Ming Huazhang steadily and said: “But she is also your grandmother. You have not forgotten — we spoke of this before. Even a person who is guilty ought to be dealt with by the law. The world has its own justice. We cannot stand by and do nothing.”
“But does the world actually have justice?” Ming Huazhang’s voice was cold and clear; his eyes were black as deep water. He seemed to be asking Ming Huashang, and asking himself.
He had once believed sincerely in the principle that the righteous will be vindicated by their own righteousness; that the virtuous man cleaves to his virtue; that in times of poverty one cultivates one’s own integrity, and in times of power one benefits the world. But what he had received in return was the violent deaths of those he loved, rivers of blood, and the desecration of everything he had tried to protect. The person he most wished to keep safe had come within a hair’s breadth of losing her life.
He had held to those principles and conducted himself accordingly — and he had failed at all of it. He hated the Holy Sovereign for wielding power to crush the human spirit, forcing the Crown Prince and Prince Xiang into standing by and watching Li Chongrun die just to preserve themselves. Yet what he himself had done — was it truly so different from what she had done?
Duke Zhenguo had likewise sacrificed his own daughter for Ming Huazhang’s sake, and if necessity demanded it, he would sacrifice Ming Huashang as well. Had it all been worth it?
In the countless times he had stood over the sleeping Ming Huashang, Ming Huazhang had tormented himself again and again over why he had ever left the capital, why he had gone chasing after some so-called truth and simply abandoned her. If only he hadn’t left that day — if only he had stayed beside Ming Huashang — perhaps Zhao Cai wouldn’t have died.
And yet in the very next breath, Ming Huazhang turned on himself with another question: if he had been there that day, and had learned that Li Chongrun and Wu Yanji were being flogged at the Danfeng Gate — what would he have chosen? On one side, blood relations; on the other, the foster-father who had given him a second life. Would he really have risked placing the Duke Zhenguo’s household in danger in order to save Li Chongrun?
He had not witnessed those events — and yet in his mind he had lived through that day again and again, making the choice each time. Every time he made it, his contempt for himself grew a little deeper. He could save nothing. A man like that, still clinging to the facade of a principled gentleman — what use was any of it, really?
From the moment he sent that message to Princess Taiping the previous night, Ming Huazhang had been like a solitary white swan that had finally, wearily, abandoned its futile pride. If this was how the world worked, then he could walk through the mud along with everyone else. What difference did it make? His convictions and his dignity had been eroding ever since. He had begun to wonder whether the only thing that truly mattered was getting the result he needed, regardless of the means.
Letting the Holy Sovereign die was precisely that — an unintended route that led to the same destination.
If she died, the throne would need a new occupant. The Crown Prince was the most legitimate heir. The reversal of Zhou, the restoration of Tang — that goal he had spent ten years pursuing — would be accomplished without him having to lift a finger.
In that case, why expose Liao Yushan at all? Once Liao Yushan blew the Holy Sovereign to pieces, he himself would certainly not survive the aftermath. He would also serve as the perfect scapegoat for the Li family.
Ming Huashang watched Ming Huazhang quietly. Then, all at once, she reached out and pulled him into a firm embrace. Ming Huazhang’s first instinct was to pull away — as her elder brother, it was his place to protect her, not to lean on her. But Ming Huashang held on with increasing force, stubbornly refusing to let go. Not wanting to hurt her, Ming Huazhang gradually stopped resisting, and at last — as though emptied of all his blood and breath — he rested his head against Ming Huashang’s shoulder in utter exhaustion.
Ming Huashang held him and said: “Second Elder Brother, in my heart you will always be the moon. While you are here, the Great Tang’s moonlight is here. Because you believe in fairness and justice, such things will never be extinguished in this world. Light will ultimately overcome darkness.”
“I have never once blamed you. When I fell ill, it was because I blamed myself for being useless — for not being able to protect anyone. Zhao Cai is gone; there is nothing I can do to bring her back. But at the very least, I want to protect you.”
“Justice still exists in this world. Let us go find it together.”
Ming Huazhang’s head rested against Ming Huashang’s shoulder. She had been gravely ill; beneath the thin single layer of clothing, he could feel precisely how slight she truly was. And yet those slight shoulders had a resilience that refused to yield — like water: utterly yielding, utterly soft, and yet after being scattered apart, always gathering itself whole again.
The churning within him gradually stilled. He reached out and wrapped his arms firmly around Ming Huashang’s back, and felt as though he had been given back a limitless supply of strength.
She was the vulnerability he needed to protect, and the armour that made him invincible. As long as she was here, he had the courage to face whatever lay before them.
“All right.”