Huang Qingxing laid his elder brother’s remains flat upon the ground, smoothed out the disorder of his robes, and used his own sleeve to carefully wipe the bloodstains from his face, leaving him with one final measure of dignity.

The two of them shared the same father but different mothers. Though they were bound by the blood of brothers, they had neither a brother’s affection nor the reality of being brothers — and only at the threshold between life and death had they found in each other a kindred spirit. It was a truly lamentable thing.

When all of this was done, Huang Qingxing finally replied: “Why must Lord Pei seek to shame me with such a question? My surname is Huang, my courtesy name is Qingxing — my teacher addressed me as Huang Qingxing.” He acknowledged Wang Gaoxiang as his elder brother but refused to acknowledge that he himself was of foreign descent.

“The water-weeds float green and lush upon the rippling waves, reflecting the green mountains — your conduct and deeds are entirely unworthy of the name ‘Qingxing’ that Master Nanju gave you.” Pei Shaohuai pressed on, “By what right do you call Master Nanju your teacher? Are you not ashamed before all that he invested in nurturing you?”

Huang Qingxing rose to his feet. The Brocade-Garment Guards raised two blades to bar his path, but he paid them no heed. He gripped the flat of the blades bare-handed, letting his palms bleed freely as blood seeped across them, and stared fixedly at Pei Shaohuai, saying: “You served the reigning Emperor; I served his son, Prince Huai. Each of us served his own lord. The winner lives; the loser dies. That is all there is to it. Who is more noble than the other?”

He refused to acknowledge that he and the one above were operating as one.

Huang Qingxing continued in a frenzied vein: “If I had arrived half an hour earlier today, successfully seized the military tallies, and helped Prince Huai ascend the throne, I, Huang Qingxing, would have been a meritorious official who rallied to the new ruler from the start, wielding power that reached to the very heavens.” He closed his eyes and indulged in the fantasy with an expression of excited fervor, as though it had already come to pass. He said, “Once I had restored my teacher’s name and enabled him to be recognized as a minister of the Great Qing dynasty — celebrated by the world and by historians setting their brushes to record — they would praise me for honoring my teacher and repaying his kindness with loyalty and devotion. At that point, how could it have been your place to stand here questioning me about my name and origin?”

“You do not even know what Master Nanju truly wanted, and yet here you continue to speak of honoring your teacher and repaying his kindness — how laughable.” Pei Shaohuai said.

Perhaps in Huang Qingxing’s heart, he placed Old Master Zou and his wife in the highest possible position — as close to him as parents reborn — and perhaps in Jinling City he had genuinely devoted himself wholeheartedly to caring for the elderly couple in their final years. But none of this could make amends for his transgressions.

From the moment he used financial schemes to inflict harm upon the common people — disregarding their lives and wellbeing for the sake of his own ambitions — he had already turned his back on the path that Master Nanju walked, and become the very “tares” that Master Nanju had spoken of.

“I do not know what my teacher wanted? Perhaps so…” Huang Qingxing argued back. “But I know that my teacher certainly did not want suspicion, exclusion, and factional struggle — he did not want to serve the sovereign with wholehearted devotion and be punished by that same sovereign — he did not want his own students to be demoted, dismissed, and never employed again!”

“Have you experienced that, Lord Pei?” That question, light as a feather, coiled like a venomous snake around the arm, its tongue flickering right before Pei Shaohuai’s face.

Seen from this angle, the opposing side had indeed succeeded in one thing: they had abandoned and raised Huang Qingxing into a selfish and ruthless solitary hound.

“Yes — I will acknowledge it. The financial strategy targeting the three great clans of southern Fujian was devised by me. By issuing paper currency through money shops, I used those institutions to drain the household wealth of common people by sleight of hand, allowing the three great clans to seize a stranglehold over supply chains — making the goods scarce and precious by monopolizing them — and squeezing small merchants out of existence…” Huang Qingxing suddenly burst into laughter, thick with derision, and reminded Pei Shaohuai: “Do not forget — these were nothing more than tricks already played out by the reigning Emperor himself. How is it so? When he, as the Son of Heaven, printed and issued treasury notes on a massive scale, that was an unavoidable necessity of the times — but when we, the ‘treasonous rebels,’ followed the same technique, that was poisoning the people of southern Fujian? The most hypocritical ones of all are you two Pei brothers — you studied your teacher’s full body of knowledge and ability, yet you have prostrated yourselves at the feet of the very sovereign who wounded your teacher most deeply.”

It was true that in the early years of the Emperor’s reign, he had not heeded Old Master Zou’s counsel and had issued treasury notes on a massive scale, forfeiting the people’s trust.

Pei Shaohuai had no intention of whitewashing the mistakes the Emperor had committed in the past. Sovereigns have always been the greatest exploiters within any social order — all he could be grateful for was that the Emperor he had encountered was a mature and steadied man, rather than a young ruler who had just ascended the throne and, surrounded on all sides by predators, had resorted to desperate remedies in a state of crisis.

He felt an even deeper gratitude toward Master Nanju for having already walked half the road, and for having sent him to walk further still.

The road toward Great Harmony Under Heaven was not forged by any single person walking it alone — Huang Qingxing was incapable of grasping this truth.

“If Master Nanju had been as you imagine him to be, he would not have remained connected to the world of the court and the common people even while living in retirement. And if Pei had truly been as contemptible as you claim, Master Nanju would never have passed on the full treasury of his life’s learning and reflection to me.” Pei Shaohuai replied. “What Pei has learned and received from Master Nanju was not for himself, and not for any single individual — it was for the common people of the realm, so that they may have food to eat, clothing to wear, and learning to pursue. Minting silver coinage was done for this purpose. Going south to open the sea routes was done for this purpose. And what is being done today — capturing the rebels and sparing the Great Qing from the fires of war and chaos — is done for this purpose as well. I, Pei Shaohuai, have a clear conscience, and have not failed the teachings of Master Nanju. No matter the time or place, I can stand upright before Master Nanju and declare plainly that I have not betrayed his hopes, I have not broken my own promises, I have not yielded to the flood of material desires — and I can say to him with certainty that the peace and prosperity for the common people, and the Great Harmony Under Heaven that he yearned for, will ultimately come to pass. And you?” Pei Shaohuai walked over, took hold of Huang Qingxing’s chin and lifted his face, looking down at him from above, and said: “When Master Nanju sent you into the fields to pull out the tares, did it never once occur to you that he was trying to save a student who had lost his way?”

Huang Qingxing’s pupils dilated wide, then contracted. He had ultimately become the very tares that could not be pulled out of himself.

Pei Shaohuai released his grip and turned away from Huang Qingxing. “You have disappointed Master Nanju.” With that, he left the Ministry of War.

Master Nanju had given Huang Qingxing a chance. Pei Shaohuai had also given him a chance.

Yan Chengzhao led his forces to systematically suppress and eliminate the rebel troops point by point. The advantage in numbers, weapons, and martial strength meant that the scene was not particularly brutal — and without even stirring a great deal of commotion, the fighting came to an end.

Inside the Eastern Palace, the Crown Prince’s family had hidden themselves in scattered concealed rooms, and though they had received a considerable fright, they were unharmed.

In the Hall of Supreme Harmony, Prince Huai — still unaware of what was happening outside — remained in high spirits, his face flushed with excitement.

Several ministers who had submitted to Prince Huai were now before him in the hall, fawning with great eagerness. One of them said: “Should Your Highness not change the way you address yourself? Changing from ‘This Prince’ to ‘We,’ in keeping with your current station, would be more fitting.”

“Lord Lu makes a fair point — and before long, it would have to be changed again.”

Prince Huai was overjoyed, and the ministers broke into laughter along with him, the sound echoing and reverberating throughout the vast and open hall.

Daylight streamed into the great hall, illuminating the dragon throne on the central dais — magnificent and imposing in its gleaming splendor. One of the ministers said: “Your Highness is now presiding over state affairs in the Emperor’s stead — you hold the substance of a sovereign. Sitting upon the dragon throne would fully accord with ritual propriety.”

Prince Huai made a show of modest reluctance, making a pretense of declining, saying things like “ritual propriety must not be abandoned” and “one must not give others any cause to take issue,” while at the same time sending the ministers out of the hall one by one.

He wanted to savor this moment of glory alone.

Just as he was about to seat himself, Prince Huai remembered there was one troublesome matter still left unresolved. He was a man who repaid every grievance and settled every score. The Pei family had humiliated him before — now he intended to make an example of them, kill the chicken to frighten the monkeys, and settle that personal vendetta.

“Someone come.”

The great door creaked open. Prince Huai assumed it was his own guards who had entered, and without bothering to look, continued pacing back and forth before the dragon throne, issuing his commands: “The household of the Earl of Jingying has shown audacious brazenness — acting in a personal vendetta, they colluded with palace servants to introduce their kinsman Zhang Geng into the Eastern Palace, where he savagely murdered Our imperial elder brother, to the outrage of both gods and men. Their crime is unpardonable. Convey Our command — have every member of the Pei household of Jingying arrested and thrown into the imperial prison, and on a chosen date have them executed at the Meridian Gate as a warning to all.”

But after the command was issued, instead of hearing the expected “Yes, Your Highness,” he heard the sound of suppressed laughter.

Prince Huai looked over with furious eyes — and there in the middle of the hall stood two figures, one civil official and one military officer. He recognized the military officer as the chief commander of the Southern Garrison Brocade-Garment Guard. The civil official he did not recognize.

Prince Huai was instantly struck with terror.

Yan Chengzhao did his best to suppress his laughter. He managed to keep a straight face for a few breaths, then immediately lost his composure again and said: “Did Lord Pei hear that? You just stepped out of the imperial prison, and here he is already wanting to throw you back in. Perhaps Lord Pei would like to go back and sit there a while longer?”

“You… how did you two get in here?” Prince Huai immediately sensed that things had gone gravely wrong. “Guards! Guards — quickly, seize these two treasonous rebels!”

Pei Shaohuai said: “This is a matter among your Yan family — Yan, the chief commander, deal with it swiftly. Time does not stand still for us — there is still urgent business to attend to outside the palace.”

These two, when working together, had always operated on a basis of mutual consultation and coordination.

Just at this moment, a furtive old scoundrel with a ratlike, shifty face peered out from one of the side doors of the great hall. He glanced at the figure standing before the throne — who was dressed in fine brocade and not in a dragon robe — and in that instant charged forward, wielding a thick, sturdy jujube-wood staff, bringing it down with a dull, heavy crack on the back of Prince Huai’s neck.

The speed of it was such that Prince Huai had not even had a moment to see who had come at him before he crumpled and collapsed at the foot of the dragon throne.

The old scoundrel dusted off his hands with a look of smug satisfaction, saying: “I figured that a treasonous rebel would be after the imperial throne, so it couldn’t go wrong to wait by the dragon seat for the rebel ringleader.”

When Pei Shaohuai finally made out the old scoundrel’s face clearly, he pressed a hand to his forehead — it was Uncle-by-marriage Zhang, with whom he had very little to do.

He quickly worked out the logic behind it all, and could not decide whether to laugh or shake his head in disbelief. Prince Huai had planned to use Uncle-by-marriage Zhang as a tool — once the matter was concluded, he would have falsely accused the Pei family of sending this man in to assassinate the Crown Prince: at one stroke clearing his own name and eliminating the Pei family, a scheme to kill two birds with one stone. The pity was that for all that calculation, the blow of the cudgel had landed on his own head.

It turned out that after Scholar Zhang had followed the rebels into the palace the night before, he recognized the Forbidden City by its red walls and golden tiles. He had been muttering to himself about “the first and greatest achievement” the whole time, terrified that someone would snatch it away from him. And so, seizing a moment when the rebels were not watching, he had slipped away from the group and gone blundering along on his own like a disoriented rat in the dark, until he somehow found his way to the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

Yan Chengzhao said quietly, consulting with him: “What does Lord Pei intend to do with him?”

“Lock him up and give him a good fright. Let that teach him not to get himself mixed up in foolishness again — because next time, he won’t be so lucky.”

“Leave him to me.”

The coup was on the verge of being fully suppressed, and everything was set to return to proper order.

And yet inside the imperial study, the objects that had been scattered and upended in disorder would be very difficult for anyone to arrange back to their proper places in a manner that could satisfy the Emperor.

The Emperor held his teacup. The remaining half-cup of tea inside had long since gone cold; he took a sip — it was cold and bitter, with no trace of fragrance.

Xiao Jin was brought in under escort. He stood squarely where he was, and refused to kneel.

The Brocade-Garment Guards were about to use force, but the Emperor waved them off and said in a low, composed voice: “Let him be. All of you withdraw.”

Without waiting for the Emperor to speak first, Xiao Jin opened his mouth: “Your Majesty has thousands upon thousands who come to kneel before you. Over the long span of several decades, this old servant too has knelt before you thousands upon thousands of times. It is no great loss to be without this last one.”

“Xiao Jin — you lost your way.” The Emperor said. “You know this — what I kept you beside me for was never your act of kneeling.”

“Your Majesty may not require it, but this servant cannot fail to kneel.”

“We allow you now to refrain from kneeling—” the Emperor began, then stopped himself midway, realizing there was something wrong with those words. He swallowed them back and changed course: “We have several questions to ask you.”

The Emperor stepped down from the dais and stood on the same level ground as Xiao Jin within the imperial study. He asked: “When We were being jointly persecuted by Imperial Noble Consort Zhou and Prince Chu, you risked your life to bring Us food to eat — was that also a fabrication? You urged Us to spend more time accompanying Zheng’er, so that We would not face Empress Xiaozhen without a shred of dignity when the time came for the afterlife — was that a fabrication too? The things We enjoy eating and using — the things We wished to say and do — did you truly understand them, or was it all nothing more than the performance of your duties?”

“Fabrications — all of it fabrications.” Xiao Jin replied in an instant. “It was nothing more than privately gauging and catering to your preferences. Whatever Your Majesty desired, this servant provided.”

He then said: “Why must Your Majesty both require this servant to be a servant, and at the same time demand that this servant possess a genuine heart?”