To seize imperial power, one must first break the garrison troops.

The court’s method of commanding its armies carried a grave structural flaw. Since the Tang dynasty, each dynasty in succession had inherited the policy known as “holding the center to control the periphery” — that is, “heavy forces stationed in the capital, with the military strength within and around the capital accounting for half of the empire’s total forces” — concentrating more than half the empire’s military forces around the capital, in an attempt to achieve the effect of “the combined might of all the realm’s forces being insufficient to match those of the capital.” With several hundred thousand troops packed into the area around the capital, the Emperor — fearing that military commanders might lead their soldiers in rebellion — went to great lengths to divide power and impose checks and balances.

And so it came to be: the garrison commanders held the right to command troops in battle, but not the right to mobilize or deploy them. The Ministry of War’s group of civil officials, acting under the Emperor’s orders, held the right to mobilize and deploy troops through the use of official seals and military tallies — but held no right to command them in the field. The moment a disturbance broke out within the palace walls, the garrison troops surrounding the capital would think first not of how to suppress the rebels, but of waiting for imperial edicts and military tallies from the court.

This manner of deploying forces seemed on the surface to hold the capital region firmly in check. In reality, the moment the capital was lost, the rest of the empire would crumble in a cascade of collapse.

The opposing side’s military forces were no match for the Great Qing’s in a direct confrontation — and so they had zeroed in on the flaw in how Great Qing commanded its armies, aiming to use this to bring down a power greater than their own.

Inside the several palace halls sealed off by the rebels, chaos reigned, with palace servants and maids scattering to hide wherever they could to avoid harm.

All the civil and military officials were gathered in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and there were very few people on duty in the offices of the Six Ministries.

Pei Shaohuai and Yan Chengzhao entered the Ministry of War and, after confirming the military tallies were safe and secure, split into two groups: Yan Chengzhao went to lead the troops in suppressing and eliminating the rebels, while Pei Shaohuai stayed behind with a group of men in ambush, waiting for the quarry to come to them.

Before long, a set of quick and light footsteps came echoing down the corridor.

The great door swung open, and in walked more than a dozen elderly palace attendants — at their head was none other than Xiao Jin.

“What errand brings Attendant Xiao here at this hour? What business is he running on behalf of His Majesty?” Pei Shaohuai lifted aside the curtain and stepped out, asking in a quiet and measured tone.

At the same moment, the Brocade-Garment Guards lying in ambush drew their blades and surrounded the entire group of palace attendants in a tight circle.

With the air of one who had come prepared to risk everything — “succeed and live in wealth and glory, fail and end up a cold corpse” — Xiao Jin, upon seeing Pei Shaohuai and realizing the plan had failed, showed not the slightest trace of fear. He simply stood calmly upright and thought for a moment, then said with a smile: “It seems that after following the Emperor for several decades, I was still unable in the end to fully fathom the workings of an imperial heart. I wonder — at which step did I go wrong, that it allowed Lord Pei to see through my intentions?” If the Emperor had not harbored suspicions of him from early on, why would the Emperor have gone to the trouble of summoning him back to his side to play out this scene?

“Although my mother bears the reputation of being virtuous and worthy, the reverence that Attendant Xiao showed toward her was a little too deliberate and studied.” Pei Shaohuai said, “Attendant Xiao was harmed by his birth father and stepmother and had his manhood taken before entering the palace. When the time came for his revenge, he claimed his birth father’s life through the corvée labor system, and yet made no excessive effort to harm his stepmother or half-brother — which indicates that in your view, the primary fault lay with the birth father. That being so, if Attendant Xiao truly harbored reverential feelings toward someone, it should logically have been toward my birth father and not toward my mother. And yet, you have had no small amount of dealings with my father before today.”

A display of reverence that was too deliberate could only be masking a true underlying intention.

Pei Shaohuai continued: “Furthermore, how critically important were the confidential dispatches sent back from Fujian and the south? Attendant Xiao has followed His Majesty for many years — steeped in the ways of the court for so long, you would surely have absorbed its practices — and I do not believe you were completely unable to understand what those dispatches signified. A person who truly cared for the Eastern Palace — who truly wanted to help the Crown Prince, who had watched the Crown Prince grow up and regarded him as a child — would never, knowing how easily the Crown Prince’s convictions were swayed, have passed along such a dispatch to him and allowed him to expose himself to danger. That would have been harming him, not helping him. Therefore, Attendant Xiao did not steal that dispatch to help the Crown Prince — he did so only to use the Crown Prince as a mouthpiece to leak the information.”

Attendant Xiao applauded and praised him, saying: “Lord Pei has reasoned this out admirably.”

“That is correct. I am not the Crown Prince’s man — I am Prince Huai’s man.”

“At this stage, does Attendant Xiao still wish to play a game of smoke and mirrors?” Pei Shaohuai said.

If Xiao Jin were truly Prince Huai’s man, it would have been utterly impossible for him to come to the Ministry of War alone to look for the military tallies.

Pei Shaohuai did not deny it: when he had first entered the court as an official, he had harbored a degree of goodwill toward this warm and mild old palace attendant who would occasionally offer a kind and well-timed word of guidance to those around him. But now, he despised Xiao Jin from the depths of his heart.

He despised the gaping maw hidden beneath that placid and unruffled surface.

If he had guessed correctly, the fire in the Qianqing Palace had been set by Attendant Xiao’s hand — the death of Wu, the supervisor of the Imperial Bureau of Astronomy, had also come from his hand — and the twisting, treacherous undercurrents that had run through the imperial palace had all been orchestrated by him in concert with the opposing side. His intimacy with the Emperor and those close to the Emperor was as deep and thorough as if he had known them all his life; he had read the Emperor’s every thought and kept himself concealed to an extraordinary degree. Had the opposing side not been so eager to manufacture a pretext, perhaps Xiao Jin would never have been discovered.

Pei Shaohuai said: “There is something Pei genuinely cannot comprehend — you are a person of the Great Qing. Why would you act on behalf of a foreign people to bring disorder upon the Great Qing and plunge its people into suffering and misery?”

“Is Lord Pei about to lecture me on the great cause of national duty?” Xiao Jin said with a mocking smile. He continued, “I am a man who has had his roots cut off — after death I will not be buried in a clan tomb, and no one will ever come to pay offerings to me. Where would I find any distinction between my own people and another people? In my eyes, in this world under Heaven, regardless of what people one belongs to, there are only two kinds: masters, and servants.”

“After serving as a servant for so long, I wanted to try and see whether I might perhaps be capable of being a master.” Xiao Jin turned the question back to Pei Shaohuai: “When I was of the lowest station, who ever gave a thought to me? Now that time has passed and circumstances have changed, and when I have the chance to be a master — by what right does anyone demand that I give a thought to those of the lowest station?”

“This world is like a single bamboo pole — on one end, people scramble to climb up; on the other, they knock others down. Whoever manages to climb up becomes the master.” Xiao Jin continued: “I advise Lord Pei not to take this all too seriously. You may as well take me in as a trophy achievement — there is no necessity to dig at the roots of everything. In this world, all things have a result, but not all things have a traceable reason.”

In Pei Shaohuai’s view, the more Xiao Jin spoke this way, the more it suggested he was concealing something. What lay behind that concealment was the person he truly wanted to shield.

After all, no one goes to the risk and danger of rebellion for no reason at all — to say nothing of a deep-palace attendant who had served as a liaison between inner parties and a foreign people.

There must have been a catalyst somewhere at the origin of all this.

With the coup pressing and time short, Pei Shaohuai had no leisure to continue engaging with Xiao Jin. He resolved to have the Brocade-Garment Guards take him into custody first and deal with the questioning later.

The Ministry of War’s great door had barely closed when, not a quarter-hour later, two people came from the direction of the left side gate to the entrance of the Ministry of War offices — arguing and grabbing at each other in a tense dispute.

Listening carefully, he recognized the voices of Huang Qingxing and Wang Gaoxiang.

Pei Shaohuai walked to the window and pushed it open a narrow crack to observe the commotion outside. He saw Wang Gaoxiang spreading out his arms and blocking Huang Qingxing’s path, saying: “Huang Di — are you out of your mind?”

Huang Qingxing, being the younger and the stronger of the two, shoved Wang Gaoxiang aside with ease and made straight for the Ministry of War’s main doors, saying as he walked: “‘In the end, how many men truly snare the deer — most do not know they only chase fish in their dreams.’ Today I will show him who snares the deer and who only chases fish in dreams.” The mocking verse that the one above had thrown at him still rankled with him deeply.

Wang Gaoxiang scrambled up from where he had fallen and rushed again to grab hold of Huang Qingxing, urging him anxiously: “You cannot outmaneuver the one above — step back and save yourself while you still can.”

Huang Qingxing shook his arm free and sent Wang Gaoxiang stumbling against one of the pillars of the corridor eave.

He bent forward at the waist, looking down at Wang Gaoxiang collapsed on the ground, and said: “I know I am a piece on his board. Prince Huai is also nothing but a piece on his board. The one above never had any intention of allowing either the Crown Prince or Prince Huai to take power — every scheme he has laid has been in service of his own people’s great cause. But none of that matters — these are his plans and his alone. What does ‘his people’s great cause’ have to do with me? At the moment, he wants to fish in troubled waters and reap gains as the third party. That will not be so easy.”

He added: “As long as I help Prince Huai get a firm grip on the several hundred thousand garrison troops, the imperial throne is Prince Huai’s — and once the matter is concluded, I will be the foremost meritorious official. I would very much like to see whether the one above, for all his remarkable cunning and resourcefulness, has the power to break through several hundred thousand garrison troops, seize the capital, and realize his grand design.”

Wang Gaoxiang looked up from the ground and said: “Don’t forget — there are four thousand sworn-to-death loyalists inside this palace who are his people. If they discover you have treacherous intentions…”

“In this world under Heaven, those who do not fear death are few; those who crave fame and wealth are not few.” Huang Qingxing showed not a trace of fear, and said: “As long as I get the military tallies, wiping out four thousand sworn-to-death loyalists is no more than a wave of the hand.” He then added: “Only a few days ago, Grand Protector Wang was still advising me not to let myself be manipulated — to take control of my own life and death. Why is Grand Protector Wang now trying to stop me?”

Watching from behind the window, Pei Shaohuai thought to himself: so it turned out that at this critical juncture, Huang Qingxing had started to defect from the original plan.

The opposing side intended to use Huang Qingxing and Prince Huai to launch a coup, creating an opportunity for their own people to invade. Huang Qingxing, however, planned to turn this scheme to his own advantage — he would push Prince Huai onto the imperial throne himself and monopolize all the credit for having rallied to the new ruler from the start.

Pei Shaohuai smiled to himself. What a fine spectacle this was — dogs snapping and tearing at each other. And indeed, given Huang Qingxing’s character, how could he be content to remain merely a chess piece?

It was a pity, however, that before Huang Qingxing could enter the Ministry of War, the heavy, clanking sound of armored footsteps came from outside the courtyard — voices speaking a foreign language in choppy, rolling tones.

Huang Qingxing tensed and tried to rush into the Ministry of War to hide, but in his haste he made too much noise and exposed his whereabouts.

Dozens of rebels surged into the courtyard.

The black-helmeted rebels, their faces hidden, apparently had seen through Huang Qingxing’s intention. Without a moment’s hesitation, their commander made a slicing gesture at his subordinates, indicating that Huang Qingxing was to be killed on the spot.

Several blades were drawn, flashing sharp and bright as they thrust directly toward Huang Qingxing.

Just as Huang Qingxing was falling into despair, a figure suddenly threw itself across his path, using its own body to block the blades on his behalf.

That person was Wang Gaoxiang.

Huang Qingxing stood stunned behind him, watching as the blades plunged in and were pulled back out — blood spraying forth, drenching the scarlet official’s robe with an even deeper, darker crimson — until Wang Gaoxiang slumped against the wall and slowly began to fall. Only then did Huang Qingxing come back to himself. He reached out with trembling hands and caught Wang Gaoxiang in his arms.

Pei Shaohuai ordered the Brocade-Garment Guards to rush out and subdue the rebels at once.

Amid the clashing sound of blades, Huang Qingxing cradled Wang Gaoxiang in his arms, his eyes reddening — his voice breaking with grief yet brimming with rage as he cried out furiously: “Do you think that by doing this you can dissolve my hatred — erase your own guilt? The suffering and humiliation I have endured over these several decades cannot be repaid even with your death…”

The Brocade-Garment Guards, with their superior martial skill, subdued the rebels quickly. The sounds of fighting gradually ceased.

Huang Qingxing’s screaming rage gradually faded into sobs, and the unstoppable flow of blood stained his hands crimson — then ran along both men’s robes and pooled across the ground.

Pei Shaohuai stood quietly several paces away from the two of them, leaving a small measure of grace for a man in the last moments of his life.

Wang Gaoxiang, collapsed like withered grass, murmured faintly: “I am not doing this to dissolve your hatred — you have every right to your hatred. I only want to tell you that to be born into this family — even as a legitimate son — was to live a life of ignominy and humiliation. To dwell in the nest of wealth, yet to have one’s spirit ground down and tormented — the suffering I endured was no less than half of yours…”

His eyes began to grow dim and unfocused. At the very end of his life, it was impossible to know what scenes were unfolding before him.

“When you were born, I was already thirteen. I watched the one above force your birth mother to hang herself, then had you abandoned in a ruined temple. I asked the one above why he did this, and he said… only by severing every bond of love and kinship, by carrying no attachments, by enduring every humiliation the world had to offer, and by climbing up step by step from the very depths of degradation — only then can the most ferocious of solitary hounds be bred. He said it was the fate of illegitimate sons in the family…”

That Wang Gaoxiang had chosen to reveal these words on the very threshold of death showed plainly that this matter had tormented him day and night without rest.

“I have spent a lifetime regretting that I never had the courage to resist.” Wang Gaoxiang gave a faint smile, coughed up a mouthful of fresh blood, and said, “It was precisely because of my cowardice and incompetence — my willingness to be moved and used by others — that my own child has had to endure the same suffering as you…”

“I should go down and make my apologies…” With those final words, Wang Gaoxiang’s eyes slowly closed, and gradually all life went out of him.

Huang Qingxing sobbed aloud with broken, wailing cries — he pulled Wang Gaoxiang’s cold body tight against himself, and through his hoarse and weeping voice, he finally let slip from his lips the word he had never spoken before: “Elder brother.”

Nearby, many of the subdued rebels were being pressed to the ground by the Brocade-Garment Guards. Pei Shaohuai walked up to one of them and tore off his helmet in one sharp motion.

As expected — beneath the helmet, the hairstyle of a foreign people was revealed: jet-black hair tied with colored silk thread and braided into two plaits at the temples, with gold rings hanging from the left and right earlobes, resting on the shoulders.

This was the unmistakably distinctive hairstyle of the Jurchen people. Since the catastrophe of the Jingkang Incident during the Song dynasty — when the Jurchen Jin forces seized the Sixteen Prefectures of You and Yun and stood in opposition to the Southern Song for more than a hundred years — they had not expected that the Mongols rising behind them would grow and expand their power until it surpassed that of the Jurchen Jin, moving ahead to establish a unified empire.

The Jurchen Jin had retreated beyond the Shanhai Pass to recover and rebuild their strength, and were now seizing upon an opportune moment to make their return.

Pei Shaohuai asked Huang Di: “Should Pei address you as Huang Di, or Wang Di, or perhaps Wanyan Di?”

As for the given courtesy name “Qingxing” — the two characters meaning “green” and “floating waterweeds” — Pei Shaohuai felt he was not worthy of the name that Master Nanju had given him.