◎ Tall Trees ◎

When Qu You woke the next day, the rain had already stopped.

She opened her eyes to see Bo Ying sitting not far in front of her, grinning at her with a sly, foxlike smile. It seemed he’d noticed she was awake, because Zhou Tan carefully withdrew his hand from behind her head.

So he’d been awake for a while already, and had simply stayed still so as not to disturb her sleep.

Qu You climbed up a little awkwardly and asked, “Are you feeling better?”

Before Zhou Tan could answer, Bo Ying cut in: “He took the medicine I gave him and his fever’s broken. Lord Zhou, I have to say—knowing your body’s this weak and still running out to get soaked in the rain, that’s practically begging to die. One more time like this and don’t bother calling me. If you insist on wrecking your own health, not even the immortals could save you.”

Zhou Tan’s voice was still a little hoarse. “My apologies.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Bo Ying shook his head, exasperated. “You dragged me out of the city to treat you this time—that’s extra pay.”

Qu You rubbed her eyes and walked a few steps outside, only then noticing that a number of masked guards had gathered outside the mountain shrine. Their bronze masks were identical to the one worn by the man in black from before. She leaned close to Bo Ying and asked quietly, “Are these all Boss Ai’s people?”

“Yeah,” Bo Ying said. “The man in black went to the North Street last night to call for reinforcements. Boss Ai sent this group, and dragged me along too. The rain was so heavy, and Jinghua Mountain’s got so much wild forest, we searched for ages before we found the shrine where you two were holed up. It was nearly dawn by then.”

Qu You started in alarm. “You got here and didn’t wake me? You just brought this whole group to watch me sleep?”

Bo Ying glared at her. “You two were wrapped around each other so tight, the moment I got close he startled half-awake. He wouldn’t let me call out to you—how is that my fault?”

Qu You pressed a hand to her forehead, and it was only then that she noticed a middle-aged man in Ministry of Justice robes lying on the shrine’s crumbling front steps, bound up like a rice dumpling, a few loose wraps of white gauze around his waist, unclear whether he was alive or dead.

It was Liang An, the man Zhou Tan had shot with an arrow the day before.

She turned to look at Bo Ying, who shrugged and explained, “Picked him up in the forest yesterday. Everyone else was dead—he’s the only one left alive. I figured Lord Zhou might find him useful, so I brought him back.”

As if hearing their voices, the half-dead Liang An glanced up at her, his face ghastly pale. “Sp-spare me…”

Zhou Tan, wearing a black cloak Bo Ying had brought, walked slowly over from behind Qu You.

The moment Liang An saw him, his expression truly changed. He hadn’t gotten a clear look at the archer’s identity the day before—Qu You had been disguised as a man, and he hadn’t recognized her either—but with Zhou Tan appearing here, in a situation like this, it could only mean, it could only mean…

He swallowed hard and forced out the words, “It—it was you who sent men to kill Lord Peng?”

Zhou Tan crouched down in front of him, expression blank. “Do you know what exactly it is that Peng Yue has in his hands, that has Fu Qingnian so wary?”

Liang An tried to force a smile but failed—his expression came out worse than if he’d cried. “You don’t dare kill me! I was sent by Chancellor Fu himself, I’m an official of the Ministry of Justice—if you act outside the laws of Great Yin, how will you answer to His Majesty?”

Zhou Tan glanced around. One of the masked men immediately gripped his sword hilt and struck a brutal blow against Liang An’s knee—his aim was precise; Qu You even heard the crack of bone.

Liang An had some martial skill, sturdier than the utterly defenseless Peng Yue, but even he couldn’t bear this pain, and let out a low howl. “I—I don’t know! I only heard the two of them talk about it once… Before Peng Yue came to the Ministry of Justice, he spent some time at the Ministry of Personnel. It was, it was some kind of blueprint for something!”

Zhou Tan’s expression didn’t change. “Where did he hide it?”

“I really don’t know!” Liang An said. “Even Chancellor Fu doesn’t know! If he wasn’t carrying it on his person, then it must be hidden somewhere very obscure! That thing was his lifeline—how would he ever tell me!”

“I see,” Zhou Tan said simply. He reached out and pressed his hand to the back of Liang An’s neck, then suddenly asked, “Lord Liang doesn’t seem to have any family, does he?”

“You can’t kill me!” Liang An froze, then raised his voice to a scream, his voice twisted with terror. “You—you’re the Vice Minister of Justice! Even if I’m guilty, it should go through the Three Judicial Offices! The laws of Great Yin are clear as day…”

“Are they?” Zhou Tan smiled faintly at him. “If the law were truly so clear, why would you be so brazen and unafraid?”

He lowered his eyes slightly. “Lord Liang, while I was still badly wounded and not yet recovered, you led men to break into my household, searched it, seized my official seal, and tried to kill me to silence me—you even insulted my wife. Do you remember what you said at the time?”

Liang An’s mind went blank. He stammered, “I… I…”

Of course—Zhou Tan still remembered that old grudge even now. There was no way he’d let this go today.

“Let me help you remember,” Zhou Tan said softly, though to Liang An’s ears his voice now sounded like a demon summoning death. “You said my wife was joking with you—that the Ministry of Justice, the Court of Judicial Review, the Censorate, whether or not they’d even have the chance to intervene, no one would pay any mind to a woman, and Zhou Tan’s family besides. Lord Liang, did I get that right?”

Qu You froze slightly to the side. When Liang An had said this to her, she’d still been at Xinji Hall—by rights Zhou Tan shouldn’t have had any way to hear it. He must have heard it later from Nanny Yun and Uncle De, who’d overheard it at the time.

Zhou Tan stood, a flash of disgust crossing his eyes. “It’s precisely because of men like you that all those laws people poured their hearts into become empty paper in the eyes of ordinary folk. They stake their lives on it, and all they get in return is your mockery. Since that’s how you are, why should I treat you according to the law?”

Cold sweat poured down Liang An as he listened. Seeing Zhou Tan about to leave, he cried out urgently, “Zhou Tan! You speak so righteously! If you kill me, how are you any different from me?”

“You’re right. There’s no difference between us.” Zhou Tan glanced around. “Do it.”

Ignoring the wailing behind him, he walked forward a few steps, and there was Qu You, standing at the entrance of the ruined mountain shrine, watching him. Her eyes were damp. The moment their gazes met, she came forward at once. “Wait.”

She was a kind, good person—one who’d once dared to speak up for wronged women, who’d dared to beat the petition drum on the Imperial Street, who’d read the laws of Great Yin thoroughly, and surely held some hope in the law itself. Zhou Tan’s lashes trembled. He thought: and yet today, he had no choice but to resort to methods that couldn’t stand the light of day to solve this problem.

“Of course there’s a difference between him and you,” she said, to his surprise stepping past him and looking down at Peng Yue’s killer behind him. “The reason you’re so certain you won’t die under the law isn’t because you’re innocent—it’s because the law is unjust.”

She glanced at Zhou Tan and gently tugged at his sleeve. “I swear to you, he will change this. One day, violence will no longer take effect without the sanction of fair judgment. If you’d been born in that age, you’d never have lived this long. Be grateful, Lord Liang.”

Zhou Tan’s breath caught. He found himself gripping his black cloak tighter without meaning to.

The masked men dragged Liang An’s body back into the deep forest. The heavy rain the day before had wiped every trace clean; along the way, they also stripped Peng Yue’s remaining belongings, making it look as though bandits had robbed and killed him.

Yan Wuping’s body couldn’t be brought back into the city, so it had to be cremated. Before returning, Zhou Tan specially took Qu You to a plot of land he owned on the outskirts of the capital.

Most of the wealthy and powerful owned farmland on the city’s outskirts, but what Zhou Tan owned was a low earthen hill. In front of it stood a simple cottage, and the old man living there recognized Zhou Tan; seeing him arrive, he respectfully handed over the key to the fence surrounding the hill.

Beneath the shade of two towering old trees, Qu You saw several low burial mounds.

Bo Ying and the masked men didn’t follow up the hill, so Zhou Tan personally buried the urn holding Yan Wuping’s ashes into a plot of ground that had already been dug, beside another urn. He planted a simple wooden marker and said, “In a few days, I’ll have someone carve a proper gravestone for Miss Yan.”

Qu You bowed solemnly to the wooden marker, then turned to see a newly erected stone beside it. It was the one Yan Wuping herself had put up, engraved simply with a single line: “My friend Xianghui, whose life was as fragile as a reed.”

She stood staring at that gravestone in silence for a long while. Beside her, Zhou Tan spoke. “Liang An was a regular at Fangxin Pavilion. Only because it wasn’t in the public eye did the Chancellor speak one word and pull him out of trouble. If not for that, would only sixty-one people have been implicated?”

Belatedly, Qu You realized Zhou Tan was explaining himself to her. “Ah—you really don’t need to say more. That day, when he came to your door to humiliate you and wanted your life, even if you were only paying him back in kind, I don’t think it was excessive. Besides, he truly was a wicked man.”

Zhou Tan said nothing.

“My parents are also buried here,” he suddenly said after a long pause, and sure enough saw the faint surprise on her face. “The circumstances were complicated—I didn’t dare put up a gravestone for them. If something ever happens to me, bury me here too.”

“If, by then… we’re not yet divorced.”

The trees swayed in the wind, rustling softly.

Qu You suddenly laughed. “I don’t know what changed your mind, but I can tell—right now you’ve made some major decision. You’re going to do something you feel you absolutely must do.”

She really was perceptive. Zhou Tan smiled bitterly and said nothing more.

“Actually, you don’t need to be this pessimistic. You won’t die,” Qu You said earnestly. “And what you want to do will succeed. But right now, I have to ask you this—Zhou Tan, last night I said you’re like a bridge. To be a bridge means never seeing the far shore yourself, being trampled by countless feet, ferrying others across without ever crossing over yourself. What if I told you that even if you succeed, that far shore is still pitch black?”

“‘Hear the Way in the morning, die content in the evening’—that’s the fate of a martyr. Knowing that already, will you still go?”

Zhou Tan braced a hand against the tree beside him, his fingers tracing the deep grooves of its bark.

After a long moment, he answered quietly: “My heart is like a tall tree. It cannot reach the clouds, but it will still strive to grow.”

“Good.”

Qu You looked at him, feeling something inside her burn white-hot. She remembered how her graduate school roommate, who’d studied archaeology, once heard that some artifact or ancient text had been unearthed somewhere—one that happened to confirm exactly what her thesis had speculated—and had gone wild with joy, hearing in her mind the imagined sound of pages turning. Qu You thought she finally understood how her roommate must have felt.

After returning to the city, the two of them went back to the residence together. Zhou Tan walked her to Fanghua Pavilion, where she lived. Just as they reached the door, he suddenly asked, as if offhandedly, “Brother Ni—is he a very close friend of yours?”

Qu You didn’t catch on for a moment. “Who?”

Zhou Tan said, “You kept calling out his name in your sleep yesterday.”

Qu You thought for a long while before finally realizing he must mean Nietzsche, and she couldn’t help but laugh. “He… uh, actually… he was my teacher.”

From the corner of her eye, Zhou Tan seemed to let out a breath. “If you revere him so much, I’ll accompany you to pay him a visit sometime.”

Qu You said hastily, “No need. He passed away long ago.”

Zhou Tan pressed on. “Does he have a gravestone?”

Qu You replied, “It’s a hundred thousand miles from here. I’ll go see him if I ever get the chance.”

Seeing Zhou Tan hesitate instead of leaving, she asked, curious, “Is there something else you wanted to say to me?”

After all, he wasn’t usually the type to linger without a reason.

Zhou Tan made a soft sound of acknowledgment. “Actually, what I wanted to say was…”

Before he could finish, a commotion sounded behind them. Uncle De came running in, followed by a wiry, leather-clad He San. Qu You was still dressed as a man; He San must have seen her at the Ministry of Justice before, because his gaze paused on her, a little startled.

Still, he suppressed his surprise and dropped to his knees, saying urgently, “My lord, this morning I came looking for you and found you weren’t at the residence. I had no choice but to announce publicly that you were still recovering from a chill, and stayed to keep watch here. If I’ve overstepped, please punish me!”

Zhou Tan said in a low voice, “You did well. What’s happened at the Ministry of Justice?”

He San answered, “Last month the Capital Prefecture took on a case that should have gone through the Ministry of Justice and then to the Three Judicial Offices for sentencing. Chancellor Fu mentioned it in passing before His Majesty, and so the case bypassed the Ministry of Justice and was closed hastily. But recently, the family of the accused heard that the Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review had been exiled, and… encouraged by my lady’s drumming on the Imperial Street, they rewrote their petition and brought it to the Ministry of Justice.”

“Just yesterday evening, not long after you left, and with Lord Liang also absent, I didn’t dare take any action, and it caused quite a stir. I heard His Majesty grew angry at this morning’s court session and specifically named you to reinvestigate. Chief Chancellor Gao has sent a card saying he’ll come to the Ministry of Justice to call on you tomorrow.”

He finished in a rush. Zhou Tan said nothing. Qu You had heard every word clearly and found it all rather strange; just as she was puzzling over it in her mind, Zhou Tan turned back to face her.

“What I wanted to ask just now was whether you’d be interested in coming to the Ministry of Justice, to work as a clerk under me—to continue doing what you’ve set your heart on, holding to what’s right, refining the law from above and speaking for the wronged from below.”

Author’s Note:

Taking a break for a day due to a procedure, will update Sunday at 11pm, then back to the regular 8pm daily schedule after that~ Thanks everyone for your support!