One, two, three, four… those imperial guards who fancied themselves skilled fighters fell before Yao Wuhen one after another.

To Yao Wuhen, these silk-clad men were all the same—each one only another weight added to the scales of his life’s worth, there to make the final measure heavier before the end.

Each one they lost added one more measure of brightness to Yao Wuhen’s name.

Yao Wuhen’s garments were slashed to shreds; even the resilient soft armor had long since ceased to function. When he was finally brought down, the bodies piled around him were enough to make a man’s scalp crawl.

Meanwhile, outside the palace, Crown Prince Yang Jing paced back and forth. His face was white. He was in genuine torment—for as Yao Wuhen had said, what he had asked to be done was the most devastating act a man could commit, and though someone else would take the blame, no one could take the pain in his place.

He was not without feeling. How could he not hurt?

He only prayed for success. If he had suffered all this devastation and still failed in the end, then what would any of it have been?

A joke?

In the darkness of the night, the palace gate creaked open. The young eunuch Jing Tingming came stumbling out, running and shouting.

“His Majesty has been assassinated! Quickly, summon the Crown Prince into the palace!”

Yang Jing heard those words and stood motionless. Then he let out a long, long breath. Then he burst into laughter—laughed for a moment—and then crouched on the ground and wailed.

Not long afterward, Yuwen Chonghe, as the court’s most senior minister, arrived at the palace in urgent haste. He was not the only one; civil and military officials were all making their way there as quickly as they could.

The Crown Prince knelt at the side of the old Emperor’s remains and fainted several times over from weeping.

Yuwen Chonghe knelt at a somewhat greater distance, his head bowed low the entire time—because he was afraid he might laugh out loud.

The old Emperor, on the brink of death, had thought that not a single minister at court wished him dead. He was wrong. At the very least Yuwen Chonghe had wished for it, though to all appearances the Yuwen family had already climbed as high as they could go and Yuwen Chonghe had risen as far as a subject could rise. Still he was not satisfied, still not content.

Because above him was still Liu Chongxin.

Only with the old Emperor dead and the Crown Prince on the throne would he be truly, utterly supreme among his peers.

The Crown Prince was desperately short of allies—apart from the Yuwen family, virtually the entire court was composed of Liu Chongxin’s creatures. The Crown Prince had no one he could trust. The Crown Prince’s ascension meant that the Yuwen family would also reach its pinnacle.

“Your Highness—take comfort in your grief.”

Yuwen Chonghe knelt there and offered his counsel: “Your Highness must now take care of your health and oversee the great affairs of state. Dachu cannot go a single day without a ruler, and the realm cannot go a single day without a master. Your Highness—please place the greater situation first.”

Crown Prince Yang Jing looked at Yuwen Chonghe with eyes red as blood and cried out furiously: “Right now I want only to follow my father and mother into death! I want to do nothing else!”

Yuwen Chonghe looked at this Crown Prince with his somewhat contorted expression, and what he was actually thinking was: how many times will I need to urge him before he finally, reluctantly, agrees?

—

The next day, in the Great Hall.

Crown Prince Yang Jing wore the dragon robe, with black mourning bands upon it. He looked as though grief had hollowed out his features—his complexion haggard and drawn—but in his eyes there was a light that made men uneasy.

Every official at court petitioned without delay for the Crown Prince to ascend the throne, and there was truly no other candidate. The only princes still living within the capital were dead; the sole surviving one outside it was the Third Prince, Yang Ting, who had been dispatched by imperial order to Lake Bu to train a naval force in preparation for a campaign against the rebels entrenched in the Dongshan highlands of Lake Bu.

This Third Prince was, in fact, the only person who might have contested the throne with Crown Prince Yang Jing. He was naturally gifted, widely read, and had personally led troops against rebel forces. His temperament was even more aggressive than Yang Jing’s.

But this sole rival was not present, and even had he been, he could not have overcome the indisputable legitimacy of the Crown Prince’s rightful claim.

Taking advantage of Liu Chongxin’s absence, the Crown Prince became Emperor of Dachu in a manner that was somewhat hasty, yet one that no one dared to question.

The newly appointed Chief Eunuch Overseer of the palace, Jing Tingming, carried the new Emperor’s first imperial decree with both hands to the edge of the high platform. He looked down at the assembled officials—all of them wearing some measure of anxiety—and let a cold smile curl at his lips.

This first decree contained no governance edicts. It was a proclamation to be disseminated throughout the realm—essentially an account to both court and commoner of how the old Emperor had died, and the circumstances under which the Crown Prince had ascended to the throne.

What mattered more was the Emperor’s second decree. The second decree began by announcing a change of reign era title to Jingli.

It then ordered the immediate recall of Prince Wu, requesting that he return to the capital with all speed. This was followed by a similarly worded summons for Surveillance Bureau Director Liu Chongxin to return to the capital.

Then came words of reassurance to the common people, words of reassurance to the court officials, and finally—at the very end—the matter of the assassin Yao Wuhen, who had killed the old Emperor.

The proclamation was long—long enough that Jing Tingming had only just reached the section addressing the common people.

Yang Jing sat on the dragon throne. Before him, the young eunuch Jing Tingming was reading aloud the decree Yang Jing had drafted long ago. Every word was familiar to him; he had weighed every sentence countless times. His lips moved almost imperceptibly, perfectly in step with each word Jing Tingming read aloud—not a syllable off.

His fingers passed lightly along the armrests of the dragon throne; at his fingertips there was a tingling warmth that spread through him, and little by little his expression grew one of quiet intoxication. A moment later he caught himself, realizing he might be losing his composure, and quickly sat up straighter.

At this moment, Jing Tingming had reached the passage about the people.

“His Majesty, knowing of the realm’s disorder and the people’s unease…”

Jing Tingming looked up at the assembled officials as he read. Those men seemed to have been waiting all along to hear what concerned them, but that part had not yet come, and some of them were already visibly losing patience.

Jing Tingming thought to himself: what right have these men who fill their posts without doing their duties to stand in this great hall?

He cursed them silently, then continued reading the decree, which ran to ten thousand characters in length.

Yang Jing had decided on a general amnesty across the realm. All rebels who laid down their weapons and submitted once more to the court would be pardoned without exception, regardless of what they had done previously.

The court would also open its granaries as widely as possible to distribute grain to the people, along with seed for planting. For every household willing to return to their home village and till the land properly, the local government would provide a reward of five taels of silver.

Yang Jing had also decided to establish a new army. Former rebels who wished to could also join the court’s new forces; anyone meeting the standards for military service could become a regular Dachu garrison soldier.

For every soldier enlisted in the new army, the family would be converted to military household status from the day of enlistment. Military households would receive their own allotted land, and the grain grown on that land would be exempt from taxation. The court would also distribute various generous annual rewards.

Beyond these measures, even more compelling to ordinary people who had joined the rebel forces was the provision that in the first year, they would receive grain and seed from the government; in the second year, they need only return the seed—no grain tax at all.

Yang Jing believed that once the people saw his resolve, they would change.

The most effective way to deal with rebel forces was not to annihilate them—it was to let those common people who had taken up hoes as weapons pick up those hoes and go back to their fields. That was striking at the root of the problem.

Everyone with land to till, food to eat, clothes to wear, and good days ahead to look forward to—who would choose to be an outlaw?

Jing Tingming read on, sentence by sentence, and the faces below were growing increasingly troubled. Even Yuwen Chonghe’s expression had turned dark.

Every word, every provision in this decree offered nothing of benefit to any of them. If it were truly implemented as written, what would become of them?

Yuwen Chonghe looked at the young Emperor sitting on the dragon throne, and the expression in his eyes grew complex.

—

Two hours later, in the prison.

When Emperor Yang Jing walked in, Yao Wuhen, lying on the stone platform, lacked the strength even to turn his head.

His body was riddled with wounds from everywhere. He thought to himself that he ought to be dead already; why he was not, he couldn’t explain.

But he knew the distance between himself and death was not great. His only logical conclusion was that the heavens had kept him alive for one last look at the self-satisfied expression of that Crown Prince with his grand ambitions—no, he must remember to say *Emperor* now.

The Emperor walked to him, looked down at this figure who had barely a breath left, and was silent for a long moment.

Yao Wuhen’s four limbs were all broken; his jaw had been shattered, and his tongue lolled out. He looked like a freshly arrived ghost who had just been put through every torture the underworld could devise—the pitiable thing being that he wasn’t a ghost yet, and when he eventually arrived in the realm below, he would likely face another round of it.

“I have wronged you.”

Yang Jing let out a slow breath. “But what I did was correct, and you should understand that I was right. Yet I do not wish you to depart with eyes that cannot close in peace—which is why I must say these words. I have wronged you.”

Yao Wuhen lay there. His eyes moved—that was the only thing he could still move.

His face was so swollen that his eyes were slits, so even that slight movement of his eyes was known only to himself.

The Emperor’s attendants brought over a chair, and the Emperor sat down beside Yao Wuhen. He looked at that wretched state, was silent for a moment, and then said: “Tomorrow I will issue the decree for your dismemberment by five horses. If there is truly such a thing as reincarnation, then however I treated you in this life, you may treat me in the next.”

The Emperor paused, then continued: “That woman—I have already sent people to take her out of the capital and settle her somewhere safe. She carries your child.”

At those words, Yao Wuhen’s body seemed to move slightly.

What he had feared most was that Yang Jing would learn that Zhou Wan was with child—which was why he had made those few careful remarks before entering the palace. He had not expected that Yang Jing would leave nothing unchecked, even this.

“But you know that what you have done admits of no less than the extermination of nine clans. So I will still dispatch men to investigate your family and your kin; if they search with diligence they will find them. I keep Zhou Wan, and in doing so preserve at least some trace of your bloodline. She is only a woman from a pleasure house; you gave her no formal status, so she falls outside your nine clans.”

Yao Wuhen’s body stirred faintly again. He seemed to be making an effort to open his eyes fully—to look properly at this Emperor of Dachu. He couldn’t manage it. If he could have, he would have liked to spit directly in the face of this Son of Heaven, and then say: you really are something.

The Emperor rose and gave Yao Wuhen a gentle pat.

“You are a hero of Dachu. I gave you my promise, and I will make your name known throughout the realm. And so I proclaim to all under heaven: the one who assassinated the Emperor was a man called Yao Wuhen.”

With that, the Emperor turned and left.

—

Four days later, at the Left Vanguard Guard’s encampment.

When Prince Wu Yang Jiju received the imperial decree sent from the capital, he stood there motionless as if his mind had gone blank, so that his attendants had to prompt him several times before he thought to receive it formally.

That brother of his—who had been an imbecile all his life, who had spent his whole life indulging himself, and who had nearly played the entirety of Dachu away—had died just like that?

“Your Highness.”

The young eunuch who had come to read the decree took a few steps forward and lowered his voice: “Your Highness, please dismiss those around you. His Majesty also has a verbal command to convey.”

Prince Wu was silent for a moment, then nodded and bowed slightly: “Your subject is ready to receive the decree.”

The young eunuch leaned close to Prince Wu and spoke very quietly: “His Majesty says—he does not wish Liu Chongxin to be able to return to the capital alive. Your Highness’s army is currently the closest to Juma City…”

Prince Wu froze again, then bowed: “Your subject receives the decree.”

—