Though it was high summer, the sky had clouded over not long after they set out. The rain stubbornly held off, but the wind blew readily enough, so there was no real feeling of stifling heat.

The escort company convoy followed the official road south, encountering no particularly bold bandits along the way — though this wasn’t entirely a matter of luck.

It was because the scouts deployed around the convoy had dealt with most of what could be dealt with.

A five-man squad of elite scouts handling a few dozen stragglers — that wasn’t much of a challenge.

Zheng Shunshun lay in the wagon humming a tune, looking to be in decent spirits. After all, the two-crates-of-gold-sand situation was a pit their superior had fallen into, not them — they had their Gui Sir to weather whatever came.

How pleasant.

He lay there looking up at the sky, watching birds pass overhead, his gaze tracking them — until it accidentally landed on the flag atop the escort wagon.

And so he couldn’t help but feel a private moment of appreciation: the name of this escort company was truly striking and full of meaning.

One side of the flag bore the large character for *escort*. The other side bore the escort company’s name: *Abundant Virtue*.

The name was something only a learned person could have devised — spreading virtue across the land, and since an escort company travels the world, it meant *Abundant Virtue Throughout All Under Heaven*.

He was mulling this over, while Gui Yuanshu lay in the other wagon paging through the files in his hands.

These documents were intelligence that the covert operatives left in Daxing had been continuously sending back to the Ning Army.

Gui Yuanshu had read through them more than once already. Yet every time he read them, a hundred different feelings stirred within him.

Every one of those feelings was a needle pricking him — a hundred pricking needles.

He lay there, eyes seemingly fixed on the dossier, yet with a hollow distance to them. His mind turned over the same few names again and again.

Because of those names, he had very little desire to return to Daxing. He didn’t want to face what was there.

Because of those names, he had ultimately decided to return to Daxing. He wanted to try — to see if he could actually do it.

After he left Daxing, not long after, the Emperor of Great Chu had used a pretext to purge the court — and the pretext he used was Gui Yuanshu himself.

The Emperor had sent Gui Yuanshu to Qingzhou, intending to have him killed there — because all signs suggested that Gui Yuanshu might already have been bought by Prince of Ning, Li Chi.

The Emperor could not have Gui Yuanshu disposed of in Daxing, because everyone knew Gui Yuanshu was a loyal official.

Most importantly, Gui Yuanshu was also the man recommended by Prince Wu Yang Jiju. If Gui Yuanshu were convicted and sentenced in Daxing, the Emperor feared Prince Wu would feel implicated.

The great pillar of Great Chu was down to one. The Emperor had to hold that last pillar steady with his own hands.

Not long after Gui Yuanshu departed for Qingzhou, the Emperor suddenly ordered the Imperial Guards to make arrests — at least a dozen officials of Third Rank and above were seized, along with countless below Third Rank.

Two charges were leveled. The first: they had colluded with the enemy.

They had leaked word of Gui Yuanshu’s mission to Qingzhou to the great bandit Gan Daode in advance, causing the deaths of Gui Yuanshu and all those with him.

Though in fact it was Gan Daode who died — did the Emperor care?

Never mind that the Emperor hadn’t known it at the time. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared.

He sat in the great hall of his court day after day, watching those men prostrate themselves before him three times and nine times, watching the false humility and submission on their faces — he had long since wished he could slice every last one of them to pieces.

Those people spent every day in court hurling accusations at one another. When it came to matters of state, they fell silent.

The Emperor had simply lacked the resolve to act. He had still harbored illusions about the great families.

It was only when he decided to move against Gui Yuanshu that he found those people had actually rallied together. When the Emperor announced that Gui Yuanshu would be dispatched as Imperial Envoy to Qingzhou, their faces had been full of joy.

Because they knew the Emperor was sending Gui Yuanshu to his death. In their eyes, Gui Yuanshu was the odd one out.

Even with Great Chu in the state it was, none of them would trouble themselves over matters of state — they would only trouble themselves over someone like Gui Yuanshu, who didn’t belong.

So they were all pleased. After the Emperor announced the decree, they prostrated themselves again, once more calling out that His Majesty was wise and sage. Yet Emperor Yang Jing knew — this was the first time they had genuinely meant it.

*Wise and sage?*

In truth, the Emperor had known for years already: not one of the great Daxing families could still be relied upon.

How else had the assassins sent by Shuzhou rebel Yang Xuanji managed to slip into the Imperial Palace with such ease?

How else had the assassins of the great bandit Li Xionghu managed to attack the Imperial palanquin in broad daylight on the public streets?

Without someone deliberately covering for them, or even guiding them — how could they have done it?

These people were all waiting for the Emperor to die.

Once the Emperor died, they could welcome their new master into Daxing without wearing the name of traitors — because if the Emperor was already dead, how could they possibly be traitors?

The Emperor had only later come to understand what they were waiting for — a coordinated strike from within and without.

But that person was certainly not Li Xionghu. It was Yang Xuanji.

Only Yang Xuanji satisfied every requirement those great families had, and would preserve every benefit those great families stood to gain.

Most importantly, they had a perfectly legitimate justification.

Yang Xuanji was also a member of the imperial clan. Welcoming Yang Xuanji into the capital to inherit the throne — this was a natural and reasonable thing, even something that could be called righteous. Whoever called them traitors would themselves be the traitor.

Emperor Yang Jing, finally resolved to act, needed only a pretext to remove those people.

Everyone in Daxing knew Gui Yuanshu would never betray his allegiance — because he was a loyal official, because he was the man recommended by Prince Wu. How could he defect?

Yet it was precisely this loyal official who had been killed by those traitors.

So when the Emperor moved, when he announced it to all the citizens of the city, it was with total righteousness and a clear conscience.

Those who had killed the loyal official were of course the corrupt officials, the treacherous traitors.

Before he made his move, the first thing the Emperor had done was root out the internal spies within the palace.

In a single night, the Imperial Guard commander Hui Chunqiu and the martial masters he had recruited from the martial world had killed over sixty people throughout Daxing.

More than half of those were commanders of the Imperial Guard — the rest were eunuchs and palace guards.

Once those were eliminated, the Emperor personally entered the Imperial Guard barracks and seized command of the military, then ordered the Imperial Guard to sweep through the rebels in the city.

In just two days, over a thousand people were arrested in Daxing.

Having accomplished this, the Emperor could exhale a long-held breath of bitterness, and then ordered those traitors and their entire families executed.

They had already come this far — what was there still to be cautious about?

Before, he hadn’t dared act because he feared losing the support of these last remaining people. When the Emperor realized these people had stayed in Daxing not out of loyalty but to await the moment to welcome a new master into the city — what was there still to be cautious about?

After killing the palace spies, the Emperor added another charge to those who had been arrested: *plotting to assassinate the Emperor and seize the throne*.

*Collusion with the enemy* and *assassination and treason* — these two charges were enough to send the entire city into righteous fury.

Emperor Yang Jing had finally seen clearly: the power of those great families — he could not borrow a fraction of it.

The only power still available to borrow was that of the common people — that force he had once considered to be of little consequence.

The resentment the common people of Daxing had built toward those families ran deep. Killing those people could buy back the people’s hearts.

Over a thousand heads fell in Daxing, and it was as if every shackle binding the Emperor had finally been shaken loose.

Yet he knew it had come a little late.

If he had done this a few years earlier, Great Chu might truly have been saved.

He hadn’t needed much time. More than three years ago, after Yang Xuanji’s assassins had been scared off, the Emperor should have made up his mind then.

If he had moved at that time to root out the internal spies, if he had immediately begun elevating men of humble origins, he might truly have gathered a great number of people still willing to serve Great Chu.

He knew it was late — but he only hoped it wasn’t too late.

In the wagon, Gui Yuanshu shook his head hard, as if trying to dislodge those names from his mind. He failed.

*Huang Wei’an, Li Shang, Weichi Guangming…*

Once, a group of young men studying together had made a vow — to become extraordinary people, to become the pillars of Great Chu.

They had pledged brotherhood beneath the peach tree in their academy courtyard, bowing their heads and swearing together, then looking at each other and bursting out laughing.

But fate does not favor people simply because they are young and full of passion.

The most outstanding young men in Daxing’s Chongwen Academy — one by one, fate beat them until they were bloodied and broken.

In the end, of the five who had sworn brotherhood, only one — Gui Yuanshu — had risen to become Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review. The head of a department that nobody even paid attention to anymore.

After receiving his seal of office, he had rushed to find his brothers, full of excitement, telling them — the opportunity had come.

But what he saw were faces of indifference, with a trace of pity beneath the indifference.

*”Brother — stop your wishful dreaming. You have Prince Wu’s recommendation, so you can serve at court. But that place of yours… what use is it for anything?”*

*”Brother, I know your intentions are good. You want us to follow you, to find an opportunity to revitalize Great Chu. Are you still dreaming? Is Great Chu something we can save?”*

*”Take care of yourself. Those court officials will see you as an outsider. They have no time to think about how to save Great Chu — but they have plenty of time to think about how to chew up and swallow someone like you.”*

They looked toward the memorial tablet enshrined in the room.

Their brother Liu Cairu had been beaten to death on the open street by agents of the Secret Investigation Bureau — simply because he had objected to them harassing a woman in public. Then the Secret Investigation Bureau casually pinned the label of *rebel spy* on him, and his whole family had not been spared.

*”Brother… that Chief Justiceship of yours is just Prince Wu taking pity on your talents and abilities, giving you something to console yourself with. And of course, you were lucky — who told you that Prince Wu happened to know you, but didn’t happen to know us?”*

Huang Wei’an had patted Gui Yuanshu on the shoulder: *”We’ll be idle folk living out our days. You — take care of yourself.”*

“Ah!”

Gui Yuanshu suddenly let out a loud cry.

Outside the wagon, Zheng Shunshun and the others were all startled. They rushed over and brought the cart horse to a stop — only to find their superior was drenched in sweat, his face drained of color.

“Sir?”

Zheng Shunshun called out tentatively.

Gui Yuanshu’s hollow, distant gaze fell on Zheng Shunshun’s face, and only after a long moment did the light return to his eyes.

“I… I’m fine.”

Gui Yuanshu smiled, doing his best to look as though nothing were wrong.

“I fell asleep just now. Had a nightmare. Just a nightmare…”

He smiled again, forcing it, yet still didn’t dare look at the eyes of these subordinate brothers around him.

“Sir…”

After a moment of silence, Zheng Shunshun said quietly: “We all know.”

Gui Yuanshu startled.

He instinctively looked again at the dossier, at those names.

Just moments ago, his brothers’ words had echoed through his mind again and again, thunderous as rolling drums.

He had cried out. The dossier had fallen.

Now the topmost page lay there, those names visible to all.

Zheng Shunshun and the others looked at that page too. No one spoke, as if all of them had forgotten they knew how to speak.

*Huang Wei’an, Minister of Rites of Great Chu. Li Shang, Minister of Finance. Weichi Guangming, Minister of War…*

These names — Zheng Shunshun and the others knew them well.

Back in those days at the Court of Judicial Review, they had had so much idle time — both poor and idle, sitting in that run-down courtyard while their superior drank wine that was more than half water, telling them about those passionate young men of Chongwen Academy, time and again.

Every dusk, their superior would sit beneath the peach tree in the Court of Judicial Review’s courtyard in a daze, muttering those names under his breath, over and over.

Gui Yuanshu leaned down and picked up the dossier, patted the dust from it.

“Tired of lying down.”

Gui Yuanshu stepped out of the wagon and looked toward the distant sunset.

Over there — what looked like a wild peach tree. No flowers. No fruit.

—