◎Past Life · First Meeting◎

In the early days of the sixth year of Chongjing, the new year had just passed, but deep winter still held its grip. Spring was slow to arrive, and a bitter wind threaded through the long, secluded corridor, sending out a wailing sound from end to end, like a child crying in the night.

The sky above the imperial city had darkened heavily, and heavy snow arrived together with the cold night.

A young palace maid, her hair done up in twin low buns, knelt shivering at the side of the corridor, breathing on her hands again and again in a futile attempt to create some thin warmth for herself.

This year’s snowflakes seemed larger than in years past.

A thin layer of frost had settled over the young maid’s hair, bound only with a single red cord, and snow had piled thickly on her narrow shoulders.

The handprint on her cheek seemed to have been frozen over by the snow; she could no longer feel any pain from it.

That, at least, was something of a blessing.

After sunset, the imperial city grew quiet, and this path led only to the empty imperial prison — ordinarily no one passed this way at all.

She had knelt here for two hours. Earlier she could still hear voices carrying faintly through several walls, but now there was only the hiss of snowflakes melting swiftly against the surface of the bronze rain vat beside her.

Then, in the darkness and the heavy snow, she suddenly heard the clank of shackles.

On that snow-swept deep winter night, a man draped in a pure white crane cloak came walking slowly toward her.

He walked very slowly — she turned her half-frozen neck and saw at a glance that he must be badly, badly wounded, even still bleeding; faint traces of red lingered on the snow where he passed, sinking swiftly into the white.

She stared unblinking at the man who had appeared so abruptly amid the snow, like some kind of divine miracle, entirely overlooking the two dark shadows behind him.

Then the god-like figure came to a stop before her.

She saw a pair of pale amber eyes.

He too seemed to be freezing; he spoke slowly, his voice trembling, “Why… are you kneeling here?”

But he wore such a thick crane cloak — how could he be cold?

She wore only a thin short jacket and skirt; surely she should be the colder one!

The young maid opened her mouth, but it seemed frozen shut. When she finally managed to part her lips, only one or two indistinct sounds came out. She thought for a moment — her throat must have gone hoarse from the cold.

The two guards following him grew somewhat impatient, maintaining a courtesy that was neither warm nor cold, and urged, “My lord, we should go.”

Before she could react, he had already untied the crane cloak she so envied and draped it over her.

She stared blankly at his face, so close to hers, and realized he was beautiful — a face both cold and noble, the kind she would never normally dare look at for long.

Had it not been for him kneeling there with trembling hands, tying the sash of the cloak for her, she would never have believed that this man, who looked like a deity, could have any connection to her at all.

His fingers, cold as jade, brushed against her cheek. Having lost his outer robe, the man shivered at once, but still staggered upright, leaving only a low murmur of “Wrap it tighter” behind him.

The maid clutched the cloak and lifted her eyes just in time to see his retreating back — beneath his outer robe, his inner garment was stained through with blood, thin and tattered. An iron ring, rusted at his neck, hung a chain that dragged forlornly across the snow.

She finally found her voice: “My lord…”

My lord, where should I return this winter cloak?

But the man did not turn back.

The crane cloak still carried the last traces of his body’s warmth, mixed with a faint scent like still water. She breathed it in slowly, and even the smell of blood seemed to carry an indescribable note of sorrow.

Not long after he left, the snow stopped.

Once the sky had fully brightened, the maid, having counted out the required hours, braced herself against the red wall and staggered to her feet. Her knees were nearly frozen solid; she could barely walk. Had it not been for the thick winter cloak, she surely would have frozen to death in the deep winter night before.

She walked a few difficult steps and fell again into the snow. Before she could rise, she heard hurried footsteps approaching from the end of the lane, and a swath of bright yellow cloth appeared before her eyes. She heard a young voice, tinged with panic: “Who… gave you this crane cloak?”

She raised her head. Sunlight caught the jade beads swaying on the Son of Heaven’s crown, his face cast in heavy authority beneath the daylight.

One of the guards beside him seemed to be one of the two who had escorted that lord to the prison the day before. He stepped forward and answered respectfully, “Your Majesty, it was the Chief Councilor… Lord Zhou passed by yesterday, and taking pity on her, removed his own robe to give to her.”

Hearing “Lord Zhou” spoken alongside “Chief Councilor,” even as slow as she was, she understood at last who the man from the night before had been.

She had never imagined that the Chief Councilor who struck fear into the entire court, who had been reviled as a treacherous minister for five years, would turn out to be like this.

The day before, her mistress, Consort Ting, had gone to the prison to see this Lord Zhou, and had returned in a foul temper. It happened that the maid made some small mistake in her service, and was punished on the spot — made to kneel by the corridor for six hours.

The Emperor meant to ask further, but at that moment several guards came carrying a corpse from the end of the corridor.

The body was covered simply with white cloth, stained here and there with blood. She saw a long, slender, beautiful hand hanging out from beneath the cloth.

A man in purple robes standing behind the Emperor suddenly stumbled forward. Without a shred of courtesy, he pushed past the Emperor, reached out, and pulled back the white cloth. The moment he saw the face beneath it, he froze completely, then instinctively staggered backward, tripping over the bronze rain vat carved with lotus patterns, and fell heavily right in front of her.

She reached out to catch him and felt a string of five-colored prayer beads around his wrist.

“Liar,” she heard him say, his voice trembling. He had lost all composure, all sense of propriety. “How could this… how could this have happened?”

He shuffled forward on his knees, two steps, and knelt before the young Emperor, crying out in anguish, “Your Majesty… Ziqian!”

Frost glittered like a fine sheen of ice on Zhou Tan’s lashes. The Emperor’s gaze moved slowly from the corpse to the cloak draped over her shoulders, and he murmured to himself, low and distant, “…He refused to accept anything of mine. If he had kept that outer robe, he would not have died.”

He suddenly looked up and stared straight at her. “Why are you crying?”

The maid raised the back of her hand and wiped it across her face, only then realizing she had been crying. Moments before, a eunuch at the Emperor’s side had pressed a hand warmer into her grip; having held it for a while, she could finally speak. “Lord Zhou gave me his robe… out of pity for this lowly servant. This servant is merely the most humble, most lowly person in the imperial palace. My lord showed mercy, and I… I am overwhelmed with gratitude.”

The man in purple robes spoke as well. “It wasn’t that he refused Your Majesty’s gift out of pride — he simply took pity on this young girl… that is all, Your Majesty.”

The Emperor bit his lip stubbornly and said nothing.

The man in purple robes, seeing her about to remove the cloak, reached out to stop her, and asked, “What is your name… and why are you kneeling here?”

She answered softly, “This servant’s name is A’Lian.”

The spring wind of old once pitied me; yet the moon goddess is now but an old acquaintance.

The Emperor seemed to come back to himself, and said hesitantly, “I remember… you are one of Consort Ting’s maids.”

Even after a night frozen in ice and snow, her cheeks bruised blue and purple, her lovely features could not be hidden — he had seen this maid before, at Consort Ting’s side, and had glanced at her more than once.

It occurred to him that this might well be the reason she had been made to kneel in punishment.

A’Lian did not dare respond. If word of anything she said reached her mistress’s ears, she would only be punished again upon her return.

Fortunately, the Emperor did not press further. He simply waved his hand wearily and instructed, “You need not attend Consort Ting any longer. Go and serve at the Tower of Burning Candles instead.”

The Tower of Burning Candles was a hall built by the previous emperor for rites of sacrifice; the usual duties there — sweeping, lighting candles, tending incense — were considered an easy and enviable post within the palace.

A’Lian, trembling, offered her thanks for this mercy. The Emperor personally stepped forward to help the man in purple robes to his feet, covered the corpse once more with the white cloth, and led his attendants away, looking utterly lost in grief.

Before leaving, he still remembered to have someone carry her back to her quarters and send for the imperial physician.

A’Lian truly could not understand it.

The Emperor and the lord in purple robes had so clearly cared for that man in white, Lord Zhou — so why, on such a cold night, had no one come to check on him?

If only someone had come sooner, perhaps he would not have died.

Though the Emperor himself had ordered her transferred to the Tower of Burning Candles, somehow Consort Ting still learned of the matter. After that night of kneeling, A’Lian ran a high fever for several days, and Consort Ting, using the excuse that her illness might spread to others, had her moved out of the palace along with several other palace servants from the Cold Palace who had contracted a seasonal epidemic.

A’Lian was sent, along with that group of servants, to Xiuqing Temple on Ting Mountain.

As far as she was concerned, this too might have been a blessing in disguise.

The great master of Xiuqing Temple set aside a courtyard for this group of servants and had people sent to care for them. She herself did not fall ill, and before long had fully recovered, so she began helping to tend the sick, and to wash vegetables and cook alongside the temple’s female cultivators. Her days there were, in truth, far more peaceful than they had ever been within the palace.

Yet A’Lian, keenly aware of the misfortune that beauty could bring, never once removed her veil — even the female cultivators who grew close to her assumed her face had been ruined by illness.

One day, a member of the imperial family came to burn incense and pay respects to the Buddha, and left behind a collection of poetry on the prayer cushion.

The female cultivators picked it up to look through it, but could make no sense of it. When it was passed to A’Lian, her heart suddenly clenched.

The Spring Tan Anthology.

The cultivator close to her asked, puzzled, “A’Lian, can you actually read?”

A’Lian nodded slowly. “Many years ago, my father held office at court, but he was implicated in some affair and exiled far away — I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead now. My mother died of illness not long after my father’s misfortune, and I was taken into servitude and sent into the palace to serve.”

The cultivator asked curiously, “Oh, then what was your name before?”

A’Lian thought for a moment. “It seems my surname was Qu… but I can’t remember what my given name was.”

She sat beneath the moonlight, reading Zhou Tan’s poems line by line, over and over, until she knew them by heart.

She read: “A joint of green jade holds its will uncrushed; one path of spring light, yet no plan unfolds. Dew and snow press the branch, untouched by dust; the drifting winds and waves seem like a foe.”

She also read: “Between heaven and earth, the rains fall clear; the tide rises, jade-green shrouded, scattered without end.”

She read: “White snow returns with spring too soon; can it let one be young again?”

And also: “A meager, humble life, seeing only the sun in vain; swallowing sobs, old and sick, weeping at the road’s dead end.”

“Pah, pah, pah — this line is no good.”

She dipped her brush in thick ink and crossed out the entire poem.

In the third month, a cold snap struck late in spring, and far fewer visitors came to Xiuqing Temple than in the first month. During the last spring snow of the sixth year of Chongjing, a branch of the old tree in the front courtyard — tied with many red ribbons — was snapped under the weight of the snow.

The red ribbons on that old locust tree had originally been tied by worshippers making wishes; a broken branch was considered inauspicious. Since A’Lian could read, she helped the abbot untie the red ribbons from the branch and find a new place to retie them.

She worked with great patience, carefully untying the wishes of others and setting them aside in a wooden box.

Year after year, the branch had accumulated layer upon layer of red ribbons; the lowest layers had already begun to fade. As she untied the last one, its edges gone pale white, she glanced at it once more and froze.

It was written in Zhou Tan’s own hand — his sharp, thin gold-style calligraphy, each stroke like hooks of gold and cuts of jade, fierce and unyielding in spirit.

“To my late mother: your son is soon to be married, and I am filled with trepidation. Watch over my wife, that she may know peace and good fortune… The road ahead is long, the seas turbulent, but I vow to keep true to my heart. Written by Tan.”

She hid the ribbon away, tucking it inside the poetry collection.

On a clear day, she retied the ribbon back onto the century-old tree. Sunlight fell warm against her white veil.

She moved slowly, and countless memories rose up in her mind.

In the fourteenth year of Yongning, Zhou Tan had returned to the capital from his post abroad and entered the Court of Judicial Review.

Emperor De intended to arrange a respectable marriage for him — ideally to a family of modest status, without a prominent father, and preferably aligned with the moderate faction among the scholar-officials.

Gu Zhiyan, at a banquet hosted by Gao Ze, had heard how the legitimate daughter of the Historian Qu family and Gao Ze’s eldest daughter had composed linked verses together, one hundred and eight lines in all. After the banquet, he sent a formal proposal to the Historian’s household.

The wedding date was set for the following summer.

After Zhou Tan read a line of poetry she had written — “Before the hall, the flowing water carries the blossoms away; heaven, earth, and man alike know nothing of it” — he sent, during the New Year, two jars of apricot blossom wine he had brewed himself.

Gao Yunyue had gone quietly to see the man for her, and came back blushing, telling her that he was truly, truly wonderful.

She had always held herself above most, and praise from her was rare.

Every young woman in the capital city envied her such a fine match — the man was a top scholar who had placed first in all three imperial examinations, young and accomplished, elegant and unrestrained. Even the Chief Councilor’s own daughter had failed to secure him, and it was she who had gotten the better bargain.

She had made a face at Gao Yunyue in mock indignation.

“I’m so wonderful — why isn’t it said that he’s the one who got the better bargain?”

Gao Yunyue had laughed together with her. “Of course you’re wonderful. He’s the lucky one, to marry you.”

But she never saw Zhou Tan again, and never lived to see that wedding.

In the fifteenth year of Yongning, the Candle-Burning Case broke out. All of Gu Zhiyan’s relatives and old associates were thrown into prison. Qu Cheng, the Historian, was implicated and handed over to the Ministry of Justice, sentenced to exile three thousand li away, his son to accompany him, his wife and daughters reduced to palace servitude.

Her mother, overcome by shock and illness, died in their household before the apricot blossoms had even bloomed.

Gao Yunyue exhausted every means she had to fake the deaths of her and her younger sister, sparing them from being sent to the Bureau of Music and Entertainment. Instead, they entered the palace as maids, like the daughters of any other disgraced official’s household.

Zhou Tan survived the Candle-Burning Case. The moment he was released from prison, wounds covering his body, he came to knock at her family’s gate. She hid behind the door and told him, low and quiet:

“The young lady of this house has already died. There is no need for you to come again, my lord.”

She knew he could barely protect himself as it was — why should he trouble himself further over her family’s affairs, and bring more misfortune upon himself?

She truly did not want him to see her in such an undignified state.

Gao Yunyue had erased her identity so thoroughly and carefully that even after Zhou Tan spent a long time investigating, hoping to look after her in some way, he found nothing at all.

Not long after entering the palace, she offended the matron in charge through her clumsiness in service and was sent off to do menial labor in the flower rooms. One of her younger sisters was sent to serve in Imperial Noble Consort Fu’s palace and was never heard from again after that; the other, too, gradually lost all contact.

One day, carrying a potted apricot sapling past the imperial court, she heard that the young Lord Zhou had angered His Majesty and was being punished with the court rod.

So she entrusted a young eunuch with some of the wound medicine she used herself, along with a bribe of silver, and asked him to deliver it.

The eunuch, looking down on her for being so poor, agreed on the surface, but used the silver to buy himself a plate of peanuts to go with his wine, and left the medicine somewhere forgotten.

When spring came, Zhou Tan was demoted and exiled to Ruo Prefecture.

Much later, the palace was turned upside down. He killed the cruel and tyrannical deposed crown prince, and returned to court in glory, supporting the young Emperor’s ascension to the throne.

The late Emperor’s final edict had been unclear and disputed; Zhou Tan was too young, and though his reputation preceded him, it was not enough to silence all the whispers. As she followed her mistress about, she often overheard the gossip that circulated everywhere.

But she showed no reaction at all — as though she had never known the man.

And truthfully, she supposed she no longer did.

After so many years in the palace, whatever pride and spirit she once carried had finally been worn away entirely.

Her father’s fate remained unknown; her sisters had long since been swallowed by the cold vermilion palace walls; Gao Yunyue’s entire family had perished in the calamity stirred up by the deposed crown prince. Precious few people left in this world still remembered her at all.

She herself had forgotten her old name. Even hearing that the young Chief Councilor remained unmarried his whole life, and each year broke off a branch of apricot blossom to lay upon a grave mound, stirred nothing in her anymore.

One spring night, as she looked up at the moon and lost herself for a moment in thought, someone called out, irritated, “A’Lian!” She lowered her head and hurried over.

“This servant is here.”

The moon was still the same moon as before; the spring wind, too, was the same spring wind, brushing against her face just as it once had.

The spring wind of old… no longer pities me.

The moon goddess grows cold and distant, and does not know her old acquaintance.

She had clearly forgotten all of her past life entirely — so why, at a moment like this, sitting in the old tree hung with fluttering red ribbons, did she suddenly, heavily recall her own name?

Jia… yi.

A beautiful wish, in the end, could never come true. If there was a next life, she did not want to bear that name again.

A’Lian clutched tightly at the faded, aged wish in her hand and wept aloud beneath the clear sky.

That very night, she slipped out of her lodgings, taking the poetry collection with her, intending to climb the wall and flee.

Before leaving, she passed by the main hall, its doors left unlocked. The golden statue of the Buddha lowered its eyes in mercy, its expression solemn and severe.

Driven by she knew not what, for the first time since arriving at Xiuqing Temple, she knelt devoutly upon the prayer cushion, bowed deeply, and, trembling, made a wish.

“If the Buddha can hear this humble believer’s prayer…”

There were so many things she wished for.

She wished her family had never fallen. She wished her relatives and friends had never passed away. She wished… she wished she could carry her old pride for the rest of her life, never again forced to bow and scrape as a servant.

She thought for a long while, and in the end, only one sentence came out.

“Simply let this believer accompany my lord, life after life, to repay the debt of the borrowed robe.”

Once spoken aloud, it felt somewhat greedy — it did not sound like a wish made for Zhou Tan’s sake at all, but rather one made for her own.

She fled Xiuqing Temple that very night. As she fell from the wall, she thought she heard the abbot let out a sorrowful sigh.

It was probably only her imagination. Had the abbot truly been there, he would have stopped her — she was, after all, still counted among the imperial household.

A fine spring rain fell that night. She walked for a long while along Ting Mountain, and finally, with great difficulty, reached a small hill on the outskirts of the capital.

Zhou Tan’s reputation had been ruined; rumor had it the Emperor had cast his body onto a mass grave. But she had witnessed the scene with her own eyes that day, and always felt it could not possibly have come to that. Later, eavesdropping behind a curtain as the Emperor made his own prayers, she finally learned of this place.

Sure enough, atop the hill stood rows of simple graves, the names on the headstones some familiar to her, some not.

She supposed they were all people who had once lived boldly and fully.

If only she, too, had had the chance to know such people, to have lived such a life… how good that would have been.

This year, white snow returns with spring too soon — can it perhaps let one become young again?

Beside the old headstone Zhou Tan had erected for his parents, she found a new grave.

To her surprise, the headstone did not bear Zhou Tan’s name alone.

This gravestone was old, its inscription dated to the fifteenth year of Yongning, when the Candle-Burning Case had broken out — Zhou Tan, having barely survived the prison ordeal, had come up the mountain himself and carved out this headstone with his own hands. It was a joint grave marker — the stone bore the family name of the wife he had never married, so that she might have somewhere to rest, and not be left utterly alone and unclaimed.

Her fingers traced across the headstone; she could no longer tell whether it was spring rain or tears upon her face.

When the apricot blossoms bloomed again, Su Chaoci brought a jar of wine up the mountain, and noticed that the earth before Zhou Tan’s grave had recently been disturbed.

He thought nothing of it — the place was secluded, and he assumed it was simply the result of rain.

On the tree before the grave, someone had tied a red ribbon, its edges already faded; he could not make out the blurred writing upon it, and so let it flutter freely in the wind.

Later, it was blown away by something unknown, and he never saw it again.

The love and longing of this world, in the end, are no more than rain falling clear from an azure sky — scattering without end, without reason.

The flowing water carries the blossoms away; heaven and earth alike know nothing of it.