From that day forward, the Emperor came every day, yet he never managed to set foot inside Danyang Palace.

Both of them felt they were doing what was right.

With the Emperor and Empress at odds, those in the rear palace could not help but begin to scheme.

One day, Talented Lady Zheng happened to “chance upon” the Emperor in the palace and tearfully implored him, saying she longed desperately for her two children, and begged for his compassionate consideration.

The Emperor said, “If you truly want them, I can return them to you.”

Talented Lady Zheng’s face lit up with joy. But the Emperor continued, “I will arrange a manor outside Yunjing. From then on, you and your children will live there in peace, and you need no longer suffer the pain of separation. Your palace titles will all be revoked, and you shall live as ordinary people, leading a proper life.”

Talented Lady Zheng was seized with shock and kowtowed repeatedly.

The Emperor said, “I keep my word. I will give you one more chance to choose.”

Talented Lady Zheng naturally chose to remain a Talented Lady, keeping her son’s status as an Imperial Prince and her daughter’s as a Princess.

The Emperor said, “Very well, then go back.”

Talented Lady Zheng had barely made it back to her quarters in a flurry of panic when an inner attendant arrived to seal her doors. “By His Majesty’s oral decree: since you have chosen to remain a person of the palace, stay properly within the ‘palace.'”

Her small courtyard was sealed, and from that day she was placed under confinement.

Talented Ladies Qin and Su had put Talented Lady Zheng — who had given birth to the eldest princess — forward first to test the waters, and were horrified by what befell her. Their hearts turned to ash, and they dared not entertain any further notions.

Cui Shiba sat doing her needlework when she heard of this, and gave a faint, cold smile. “Overestimating their own cleverness,” she said.

How deeply that man despised anyone who used his children to scheme for personal gain.

Those three women had come to his side as concubines and had never witnessed his moments of true tenderness, and so they could not understand what the coldness that followed truly meant.

A teardrop fell onto her needlework, and Cui Shiba’s vision blurred.

That gentle young man had long since died.

In this world now, there was only the Emperor.

A month passed. The Emperor and Empress had not seen each other once. The Emperor’s temper grew increasingly volatile, and those around him suffered his displeasure at the slightest provocation.

Liang Chen spoke up again: “Your Majesty would do well to explain everything clearly to Her Highness. Her Highness loves Your Majesty deeply — how could she not understand Your Majesty’s difficult intentions?”

Li Gu said, “You don’t understand.”

After a long pause, he finally said, “You do not know what kind of person she is. She has always been most protective of vulnerable women and cannot bear to see them suffer. If she were to know, she would certainly try to stop it. And if she were to stand by and watch without intervening, I fear it would weigh on her conscience and haunt her for the rest of her life. That is why I do not want her to be touched by even a trace of this. Such matters — I will handle them cleanly in her stead.”

He said, “Wait a little longer. There is only one more month. After one more month, both she and I will be free.”

Li Gu finished speaking and went back to the inner chamber.

Liang Chen slowly raised his head, his face deathly pale.

How was he to save her? How could he save her?

Within the palace walls there was a wall that had been built at a later time, separating the rear palace of Da Mu from the long-abandoned chambers of the former Zhao dynasty. Past that wall, in a stretch of land utterly deserted, stood a set of chambers that had once fallen into ruin but had since undergone modest repairs. People now lived within that courtyard.

The place was furnished with food, clothing, and all manner of necessities — lacking for nothing.

Only the main gate of the courtyard bore a great iron lock, and soldiers stood guard outside, allowing no one to leave.

In the main hall, three heavily pregnant women sat around a brazier in silence, not a word passing between any of them.

Niu Min’er suddenly felt the baby move, and let out an involuntary cry. When the movement stilled, she burst into tears. “Are we… are we going to be killed once we give birth?”

The other two sat with ashen faces.

All three were women in their twenties, well past the bloom of youth. They had assumed they would simply endure the years in the palace until their hair turned white. Then the Emperor had unexpectedly visited them. They had believed they were rising to the highest boughs to become honored ladies, only to find themselves with neither rank nor reward. The Emperor had never once asked any of them their names. He had visited them in close succession, and the moment the first signs of pregnancy appeared, he had seized them and shut them away here.

Everyone in the palace knew that the Empress had long remained without child. By now, who could fail to understand what the Emperor intended?

There was no road to heaven and no gate to earth.

Day after day they watched their bellies grow, day after day they waited for death to descend.

“It won’t — it won’t happen,” Hu Yue’e suddenly said. “He promised. He said he would find a way. He said the Empress has a kind heart, and that as long as we could let the Empress know, we would surely be able to live.”

Xiao Meiniang said, “Just tell us — who is this person of yours?”

But Hu Yue’e refused.

A eunuch and a palace maid — that had always been a forbidden thing within the palace. If it became known that it was him, and the secret leaked out later, not only would his position be lost — he might not even keep his life.

That Emperor was so coldly indifferent he hardly seemed a living person. He would certainly have him killed.

Hu Yue’e was not clever, but she was stubborn through and through. She simply would not say.

Xiao Meiniang and Niu Min’er kept pressing her: “Could it be Eunuch Leqing? Eunuch Xifu? Eunuch Huai’an? Surely it couldn’t be Eunuch Ji Shi? That’s impossible.”

Their relentless guessing about the man’s identity was really just a way to ease their own hearts once they knew.

As they guessed their way along, the names grew more and more senior, until they had even arrived at Ji Shi, who ranked just below Chief Eunuch Liang Chen — and even then they felt it was unlikely.

Someone of Ji Shi’s standing could have his pick of any palace maid outside Danyang Palace. Why would he ever set his eyes on someone as simple and clumsy as Hu Yue’e?

From beginning to end, not once did anyone’s guess land on Liang Chen.

Eunuch Liang Chen was handsome, quiet, and steady in character, deeply trusted by the Emperor, the most honored and relied upon of all the eunuchs at the Emperor’s side.

He would never take interest in Hu Yue’e.

“He must have only been deceiving you!” Niu Min’er wept again. “The one who wants us dead is the Emperor. These children — he wants to give them to the Empress. Why would the Empress let us live?”

Hu Yue’e was not clever, and hearing this, she too trembled with fear and began to weep.

She could only think: why had Liang Chen still not come to save her?

The first time she encountered the Emperor, everything had happened so fast — cold and without any tenderness. She had not dared believe she had truly been visited in the way legends spoke of. Liang Chen had told her she would become a cherished lady, but in the end he had been wrong.

Were they really going to die?

Hu Yue’e followed the others and wept, tears and mucus running freely.

The Emperor and Empress had been coldly estranged for two months. The Laba Festival came and went, and the days crept ever closer to the Little New Year.

That night, Xie Yuzhang was suddenly jolted awake by a commotion outside.

“Your Highness.” Her maid rushed in. “It is Eunuch Liang Chen.”

Xie Yuzhang turned over. “I will not see him.”

“Your Highness!” the maid said in startled uncertainty. “Eunuch Liang Chen is kowtowing at the gate and has knocked his forehead until it bleeds. He insists on seeing you!”

Xie Yuzhang threw off the covers and sat up, a frown on her face.

When Liang Chen entered, he was in a wretched state. His ceremonial headpiece had long since fallen off, and blood seeped from his forehead.

The moment he saw Xie Yuzhang, he fell to his knees directly before her and, in a breach of all propriety, seized the hem of her robe. “Your Highness! I beg you to save someone!”

Liang Chen had always been the picture of composure. This was the first time Xie Yuzhang had ever seen him in such desperate, frantic disarray. She frowned and said, “Speak clearly. What has happened?”

Liang Chen raised his head and looked at the Empress’s beautiful face.

What madness had seized him, to have believed that Yue’e was going to become a cherished lady?

When the Emperor had locked the three of them away, he had understood everything. But he had not dared expose himself, and had managed only with great difficulty to find a chance to hint to Xie Yuzhang. Yet the Emperor had refused to tell the Empress the truth.

So it had dragged on, and dragged on, until now.

If he did not save them, it would be too late.

Liang Chen no longer cared about himself.

With tears streaming down his face, he said, “She is about to give birth. If Your Highness does not go now, she will die.”

The color in Xie Yuzhang’s eyes shifted.

In the crumbling old palace of the former Zhao dynasty, soldiers gripping sword hilts encircled the courtyard, and Hu Jin led his men to block the entrance.

There was a saying in Da Mu: pray you never find Hu Jin’s men surrounding your home and blocking your door. For no household that Hu Jin had ever surrounded and blocked had been left with a single person alive.

And now, the fearsome “Hu the Barbarian Head” — Hu Jin — found himself looking at Xie Yuzhang and feeling as though his head might split in two.

Xie Yuzhang stood at the foot of the steps before the courtyard’s main gate and asked, “Is he inside?”

Hu Jin broke out in a cold sweat and shot a fierce glance at Liang Chen, whose forehead was still bleeding, standing behind Xie Yuzhang. Then he bowed toward Xie Yuzhang. “His Majesty is attending to some miscellaneous matters. The night is deep and the dew heavy, Your Highness. Please go back.”

Xie Yuzhang paid no heed and stepped up onto the stairs.

Hu Jin used his own body to block her, even spreading his arms wide to bolster himself. “Your Highness! Your Highness! His Majesty truly has matters at hand!”

Xie Yuzhang simply walked forward.

Hu Jin could only keep retreating, step by step. “Your Highness! Please stay out of this! His Majesty has arranged everything!”

Everyone inside the courtyard — the women in labor, the midwives, the attendants — would be left with no survivors. No one would be given the chance to one day tell those children the truth.

A sharp, wrenching pain seized Xie Yuzhang’s heart.

She raised her eyes. “Hu Jin. Do you dare lay hands on me?”

As she spoke, she took one step forward.

Hu Jin caught his foot on the threshold and stumbled backward, crashing into the courtyard gate and throwing it open.

Inside the courtyard, lanterns blazed with light. The once-magnificent palace chambers were now worn and dilapidated; beneath the railings, dirty snow lay piled and crusted with dust.

Li Gu stood under the covered walkway of the main hall, listening as the women in the main and side chambers cried out in waves of pain — one after another, rising and falling. His gaze drifted unfocused into the empty air, settling on nothing.

The courtyard gate suddenly burst open. His chief guard Hu Jin came tumbling in, rolling to the foot of the steps.

Li Gu lifted his eyes.

His wife stood in the moonlight and the firelight, draped in a silver fox fur cloak, looking back at him.

Her expression was dazed. The fury of two months ago was gone, replaced by an indescribable sorrow in her eyes.

After all, he had still made her sad.

Li Gu closed his eyes.

Xie Yuzhang crossed the courtyard and walked toward Li Gu. With every step she took, she trod upon the cries of suffering that filled the air.

She walked all the way to the foot of the steps before the main hall and looked up at the man on the steps. He looked back at her.

Their eyes met.

Xie Yuzhang’s lips moved. She did not know how to begin.

What was there left to ask at this point?

The words “spare the child, take the mother” hung there, bloody and raw, right before her eyes.

The man walked down the steps and stood before her, looking at her. “You’ve grown thinner.”

Xie Yuzhang’s lips trembled slightly. After a long pause, tears slid down her cheeks. “So — you did this for me.”

Li Gu wiped away that tear, but another slid down in its place. He kissed her eyes. “Don’t cry.”

Xie Yuzhang’s tears would not stop. “They are giving birth to your children.”

Li Gu had calculated the timing carefully and had the three women given medicine to induce labor — all three at once, all dealt with at once.

He said, “When it is done, it will all be over.”

Xie Yuzhang said, “They are the mothers of your children.”

“This is wrong, Li Gu.” Xie Yuzhang wept as she said it. “This is wrong.”

“I know, which is why I am the one doing it — so you need not be involved,” Li Gu said, pulling her into his arms and kissing her forehead. He told her quietly, “Go back and sleep. When you wake up, you will have children. They will belong to you and you alone. This is the best solution.”

Li Gu’s voice seemed to carry a kind of enchantment.

He gently turned Xie Yuzhang’s shoulders, steering her around, and with his arm around her, began walking her toward the gate. “Go back.”

“Sleep, and it will all be over. After this, everything will be fine.”

Xie Yuzhang moved as though in a trance, led by Li Gu one step at a time toward the exit.

What Li Gu said was not untrue. Even if consort selections were held openly and women summoned to bear children, every child would still have its own birth mother — who would not be drawn to their own flesh and blood? In the end, they would never be of one heart.

Better for a few nameless palace women to quietly give birth, and quietly die.

By morning, Li Gu would have dealt with all the complications on her behalf, paving the way for everything that lay ahead.

……

……

Only he himself — his hands would be stained with the blood of the mothers of his own children.

His affection, it seemed, truly was different from that of other men.

Xie Yuzhang walked to the threshold of the courtyard gate, and her steps halted.

The women’s cries of pain came one after another, pulling her back into memories she had nearly forgotten across many long years.