When Master Jichen the old monk had left a short while ago, he had casually shut the door behind him. Now the wind and rain howled outside, the daylight dim and overcast. Rain droplets struck the paper window panes in a sound like a relentless and pressing urge.
Luowei reached out and picked up a black stone.
She gripped it in her hand, gripping it tightly: “The late emperor was benevolent and peaceful, never raising arms, and so the northern border threat dragged on for more than a decade. Therefore, from the day you were appointed Chief Minister—or perhaps even earlier than that—you had already made up your mind to choose the ruler for all under Heaven?”
Yu Qiushi admitted it openly: “Of those men at court, how many have ever gone to the northern frontier? When I was posted to the regions, I walked every inch of the border territories with great care. Between the Great Yin dynasty and the northern tribes—the Wuer Hui, the Chahari, the Ezhen—there must come a decisive battle in this dynasty! If the ruler has no fighting spirit and seeks only accommodation and peace, how many more years will this border threat linger on? Crown Prince Ling practiced the way of benevolence. But when Confucius himself was driven from state to state with his ideals, what becomes of a man who clutches his ideals and believes he can simply stride through every obstacle—what will he lead the nation into?”
“It is not as though I never gave you the chance. But he was so naive he could not even see past the dispute between Lu Hang and Xue Wenming. I sat in the Zishantang and listened to every one of his political discussions; I had contact with each of the princes. The third prince was mediocre, the fourth was dissolute, the fifth was aloof. Only His Majesty—”
“You chose him.”
“That is correct. Though His Majesty was still young at the time, I already knew that among all the late emperor’s sons, only he had the iron-fisted will to govern the nation and drive away the border threat. I knew the late emperor loved Crown Prince Ling dearly, but the debt of recognition I sought to repay was not to the late emperor alone—it was to this nation, to all under Heaven!”
“The ‘Thorn in the Tang’ incident was the last opportunity I gave you, but regrettably, you failed to seize it.” Yu Qiushi said gravely. “Since ancient times, has any succession struggle not been stained with blood? Your Highness, your guess was half right. I know that given His Majesty’s temperament, once he came to power he would not tolerate me—would not tolerate anyone who knew what had happened back then. From the very beginning, I never intended to walk away unscathed.”
“Wealth and power hold no appeal for me. A name in the historical annals is merely a floating cloud. I only did what I believed was right for this nation. Though I should die ten thousand times, I would still have no regrets. As for my children and grandchildren—protect them if it can be done; if not, let them follow me to the west beneath Heaven’s canopy. That is not so terrible. Your Highness has chosen a fine place for today—the Buddha says: all living beings of the realm of endurance, in their every rising thought, every stirring notion, commit nothing but karma, nothing but sin. Yet when all sentient beings are saved, Bodhi is realized. If I do not enter hell, who will?”
He lifted a hand and overturned the Go board; stones scattered everywhere. Luowei sat in place, and repeated aloud the scripture he had recited, then suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter. She bowed her head and looked at the black stone in her hand, then said with cold detachment: “The Grand Preceptor speaks with great righteousness and moral splendor. Had I come to know you even one degree less well over these years, I might have believed you.”
She raised her eyes; her face clearly held a smile, but her eyes held not a trace of one. “I know you have the resolve to sacrifice yourself, and you truly did make your choice. But Grand Preceptor—do you truly have not a single shred of selfish motive? All these years, you never engaged in corruption, never amassed wealth, never sheltered anyone through favoritism or personal interest—but when you used the ‘Lament for the Golden Sky’ to destroy men, did you truly bear no personal grudges? When you were writing ‘Zhongni’s Dream of the Ritual Hall,’ were you never afraid that the retribution of good and evil might one day fall upon you? In the dark of night, lying awake, do you never hear the late emperor’s questioning?”
Luowei cast down the stone and stood, saying with disdain: “You believe that because Song Lan uses cunning stratagems to control people, he can sit the throne securely? He is young now. While you and I are still at court, he can endure with patience. Zhuque has already been established—do you think he can restrain himself much longer? Even if by then he has crushed the border threat with an iron fist, if the court’s censors and remonstrators are silenced, if the people speak only with their eyes downcast—where will the literary spirit, the moral conscience, the ritual order, the integrity of principle go? To find one’s way to sainthood without caring for one’s posthumous reputation—you fall far short of that mark.”
Yu Qiushi’s hand trembled slightly, but he said: “If Your Highness says this old subject falls short, then this old subject falls short.”
“A petty man slaying a noble man, and still requiring such elaborate concealment—truly it disgusts me to hear it. Besides, no matter how soft-hearted he was, he could still tell right from wrong. And you—of all the words in your confession, how many parts were the aspiration of a saint, and how many were the vile impulse of a petty man? You know best in your own heart.”
The more Luowei spoke, the angrier she became, her cold laughter continuous: “By what right do you sit in judgment over him? Did you think he did not understand all the dark machinations you described? He chose not to—because he disdained to! A single branch of cassia in Guilin, a fragment of jade from Mount Kun—the noble man, precisely because of his rarity and preciousness, is what the world cannot contain. Yet they shine across a thousand years and are revered as sages; the spirit that has endured long upon this land is something that cunning stratagems can never comprehend. Enough—there is no use in saying more to you. Grand Preceptor, I have a phrase to return to you: your choice is riddled with a thousand flaws and a hundred holes. The ideal of our peaceful and prosperous realm—that is what you do not understand.”
Yu Qiushi’s face was expressionless, only his graying beard and hair trembled faintly. After a long silence he said: “No matter. I have been a solitary subject my whole life—walking alone before death, with only blowflies to mourn me after. Today, in order to be rid of me, you have exhausted everything you have. I imagine you have already guessed that after my death, you too will not survive. Very well—as for whether my choice was right or wrong, history’s simple annals will have the final word. Let us both go to the underworld together and see.”
Luowei closed her eyes, drew a long, deep breath, and let herself grow calm. “The underworld? Grand Preceptor, if you wish to enter hell, go on your own. This palace has no intention of traveling that road with you.”
She rose to her feet, wearing a contemptuous smile, and looked down at him from above: “Exhausted everything… Do you think that is all there is? Song Lan still sits upon the court. Killing only you—how could that be enough? Today I summoned the Grand Preceptor to this place because there is something I wished to tell you.”
Yu Qiushi gave a dismissive smile and said coolly: “This subject is all ears.”
Luowei leaned down and lowered her voice: “This is something I imagine you certainly do not know. Ever since Song Lan ascended the throne, you have persistently urged him to have me killed to eliminate future troubles, and you have tested him again and again in every conceivable way—and yet Song Lan has never trusted your counsel. You assume this is because of the lingering thread of affection he feels for me.”
Yu Qiushi was slightly taken aback: “His decisions and killings are decisive—only for you and the Empress Dowager does he retain some old sentiment.”
“Grand Preceptor, you have misread the situation entirely,” Luowei said earnestly. “He is the very man you yourself selected. How could he be bound by a single word like ‘affection’? You told him that I would eventually learn the truth and that he should strike first—but Grand Preceptor, you are clever all your life. Have you never considered that you, too, are within the trap that has been laid?”
At this, Yu Qiushi frowned slightly: “What do you mean?”
“I mean—have you never considered that the reason he does not kill me is because there is no difference between you and me?” Luowei said with a smile. “He fears that I know the truth, and he fears that you know the truth. So he simply lets the two of us coexist at court, each holding the other in check, while he sits above and watches the tigers fight. Whoever dies first—it does not matter.”
Yu Qiushi glanced at her with a flicker of puzzlement and murmured to himself: “The truth… is there still some truth that I do not know…”
“Of course there is,” Luowei said decisively. She stripped away every expression from her face, lifted her eyelids, and looked directly at him. “Grand Preceptor—do you know how the late emperor died?”
At these words, Yu Qiushi’s face finally changed dramatically. He leapt to his feet, his hand trembling as he pointed at her: “You—you dare to make false accusations—”
“False accusations?” Luowei countered coldly. “These years I have managed affairs within the inner palace with painstaking care. Within the nine fortified gates, there is no secret I do not know. I know you do not believe me—so before I came up to Xiuqing Temple, I took the trouble to send some gifts to your residence. You might wish to go home and examine them.”
Yu Qiushi immediately rose and swept his sleeve as he turned to walk out. He had not taken many steps before he heard Luowei laughing behind him: “Grand Preceptor—a solitary subject your whole life? Ha ha ha ha ha. You repaid the late emperor’s gift of recognition—and sent him with your own hands into the dark and shadowed realm of the dead. The two characters for ‘usurping the throne’ are truly no injustice! When you see the late emperor below, you must ask him—whether he can still recite your examination essay from memory?”
He pushed open the door and looked back once. Luowei stood where she was, her face half in light and half in shadow, as serene as a stone statue. Her voice, too, seemed like the murmuring of a dream.
“—By then, you will know whether what I have said is true or false.”
Yu Qiushi’s lips quivered faintly. He turned and hurried away with great urgency, nearly stumbling over the door threshold as he went. Jichen had taken his oilpaper umbrella. He looked around but could not find it, and so he straightened himself and walked directly into the curtain of rain.
Before he lifted his foot, Yu Qiushi looked down and saw that his sleeves were already soaked through.
“This is a great downpour,” he murmured. “No matter how careful we are, we cannot avoid being drenched by the rain.”
Luowei watched his retreating figure, one hand braced against the door frame as she sank down, and let out a long, slow sigh of relief.
She pressed her hand over her own wildly beating heart, and finally broke into a laughter of pure, unrestrained relief.
Outside the meditation room, along the corridor, rainwater had gathered into streams that fell in unbroken lines. She reached out her hand to catch them; the heavy drops struck her palm and even splashed a few drops onto her face, cool and faint.
Luowei tilted her head back to look at the dark and overcast sky. She could not tell the hour—only that it must be time for Yan Lang and Ye Tingyan, whom she had summoned, to arrive.
She sat patiently at the doorway and waited for a while. The first to arrive was Yan Lang, who came riding up the mountain wearing a bamboo rain hat.
Yan Lang wiped the water from his face and came running over, peering into the room: “Where is that old fox?”
Luowei smiled and answered: “Frightened away by me.”
She braced herself against the door frame and tried to stand, but her legs had gone so soft she could not rise. Yan Lang was startled and rushed to help her up: “He came up the mountain alone, didn’t he? How did you end up frightening yourself like this?”
Luowei shook her head. Yan Lang turned to close the door behind him, then wrung out his soaked cloak and said curiously: “When you decided to act, even I was startled for a moment. But tell me—what did you actually say to him that frightened someone as deeply calculating as that old fox into running away?”
“In truth, no amount of strategy or dark intrigue, no matter how tightly woven the net, is of any use,” Luowei was quiet for a moment before she began to speak slowly. “I told him the same thing—that what one calls ‘strategy’ and ‘power,’ when it comes down to it…”
She hugged the stone box and crouched down, slowly picking up the white pieces scattered across the floor: “…is about making them lose heart of their own accord. Song Lan has relied on him for years and held him in suspicion for years—yet in the end, a child of one’s own blood and bone will always matter more than any minister; Yu Qiushi has supported Song Lan and known his deep scheming—but if that scheming runs so deep that even he cannot fathom it? The ancients said there is such a thing as going too far. I wanted to see whether the ‘sword-holding sovereign’ he had chosen would give even him a fright.”
She examined one of the white pieces she had just picked up, and said with a smile: “When all is said and done, he thought himself to be like Zhang Liang’s strategies and the elevated plank roads—but in reality, he was nothing more than a nameless piece with no name of its own.”
Yan Lang listened with a look of half-understanding, and when Luowei saw his puzzled expression, she sighed and offered him an explanation: “When Ningle died, she found for me a blade to wedge between them—do you know how the late emperor passed away?”
“The late emperor?” Yan Lang said in shock. “What do you mean—was it Song Lan?”
“It was Song Lan,” Luowei said, finishing the thought. She let the smile fade from her face, reached out, and wiped away the tear at the corner of her eye that had not yet fallen. “Yu Qiushi, in the end, holds feeling for the late emperor. Even though I had not guessed what was in his heart, I was certain that this matter would be enough to destroy both of their spirits at once. After today, the threat that is Yu Qiushi will exist no longer. And when one speaks of it, it is in truth the late emperor who helped me…”
She had not yet finished speaking when Yan Lang suddenly heard footsteps in the rain, and called out sharply: “Who’s there?”
He pointed his sword forward; the old wooden door of the meditation room flew open in response to the force of the sword energy, creaking and rattling. Luowei looked back—and there stood Ye Tingyan in the doorway.
He wore a single layer of blue-green robes, his hair loose and disheveled at his temples. Perhaps because he had come up the mountain without an umbrella, he was drenched through to the skin. Strands of hair clung to his cheeks, and water droplets slid down his pale white face—one could not tell if it was rainwater or tears.
Luowei rarely saw him looking like this.
A wandering traveler in blue-green robes caught in wind and rain—like a piece of translucent glass that would shatter at a single touch.
“You—”
She hesitated, about to speak, when Yan Lang at her side exclaimed: “Third Young Master Ye! So it really is you! Long time no see—what brings you here today as well?”
Luowei turned to ask: “You know him?”
Yan Lang scratched his head: “Of course I know him. Third Young Master Ye is quite the legendary figure in our Youzhou. The battles we fought against the northern tribes last year—it was thanks to the Third Young Master coming into my father’s camp to serve as military advisor that we won so easily.”
He hugged his sword and moved a little closer, speaking with easy familiarity: “I heard you’ve taken an official post in the capital but have mostly been under house restriction and unable to get away—I haven’t had the chance to call on you. Third Young Master, how have you been lately? Oh, and did your betrothed come with you to the capital? When can we drink the wedding wine?”
Luowei repeated slowly: “…Betrothed?”
She noticed that Ye Tingyan’s complexion was wrong, and so she walked up to him and pushed the strands of hair clinging to his cheek back behind his ear.
Yan Lang saw the intimacy between the two and was struck dumb, but still managed to keep from saying anything. Luowei looked closely at Ye Tingyan. Her fingers passed over his ice-cold face. He, too, looked down at her, his eyes intent upon her, his bloodless lips trembling for a long moment before he asked, very softly: “Is this… your masterstroke?”
Luowei’s hand stilled: “What did you hear?”
But he seemed dazed, murmuring things to himself that she could not follow: “He treated you so well—when you found out, did you…”
Yan Lang finally could not help himself: “What kind of riddle are you two talking in?”
Hearing that, Ye Tingyan seemed to wake from a dream. He stepped back a pace, glanced first at Yan Lang, then at Luowei, and forced out a strained smile: “What Your Highness wished to tell this subject—this subject already knows.”
Luowei’s hand froze in the air. She took a step forward and called out in a low voice: “Ye San…”
Ye Tingyan stepped back once more, without the slightest care exposing himself fully to the rain.
In the rising mist and vapor, he looked at her, the corners of his eyes faintly tinged with red. For some reason, Luowei suddenly felt a pang in her heart—the same pang she had felt the very first time they met. And that pang was even sharper now than the held breath with which she had faced Yu Qiushi moments ago.
Her heart thudded, beat by beat, bringing with it a piercing, unspeakable pain.
Her face went deathly pale; she nearly stumbled. Yan Lang reached out to steady her, and when she raised her eyes again, she found that Ye Tingyan had already gone—stumbling and swaying—into the rain. That trace of blue-green grew fainter and fainter in the downpour, until it merged with the milky white mist and could be seen no more.
Luowei came back to herself and realized that the hem of her skirt had been soaked by the rain as well, more than halfway up.
“This is a great downpour,” she said with a bitter smile, murmuring softly. “No matter how careful one is, one still ends up… soaked through by the rain.”