Xiao Nanhui stared at the treasure revealed beneath its outward disguise, and for a moment her mind could not quite catch up.
“Don’t forget — before it was found, it had been soaking in that swamp for many years.”
Hao Bai’s eyes were similarly riveted on the precious jade as its beauty began to emerge, his large, pale face edging closer and closer.
With a sharp snap, Zhongli Jing closed the wooden box.
Hao Bai touched his nose, then seemed to recall something, and retrieved from his person the jade seal that Xiao Nanhui had wrested from Zou Sifang. He placed it in front of A’Lu.
“This was swapped out by you beforehand, wasn’t it? Who gave it to you?”
A’Lu turned his head slightly, defiance written in his eyes. “It’s my own.”
Hao Bai couldn’t help pressing further. “Whoever gave you that item knows a great deal — otherwise they couldn’t have produced a counterfeit this nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. What did he tell you, that would make you work for him so willingly?”
A’Lu pressed his lips shut and said nothing. Hao Bai was about to ask again when Zhongli Jing, unhurried, produced a jade-green silk handkerchief from within his robe and unfolded it before A’Lu.
Embroidered in one corner of the handkerchief was a tuberose blossom — the very handkerchief Xiao Nanhui had used to cover her face that night.
“Do you know what this is?”
A smirk curled at the corner of A’Lu’s mouth. “Of course. That’s something my sister embroidered. What — do you think I’ll tell you everything just because of a handkerchief?”
Zhongli Jing gently traced the tuberose blossoms embroidered on the handkerchief. The stitches were strikingly lifelike — even the veins along the petals were visible, testament to extraordinarily skilled needlework. “Then do you know there is a style of embroidery certain women create exclusively for those they love — one that uses the embroiderer’s own hair as thread?”
Zhongli Jing’s tone was perfectly even, but A’Lu reacted as though a thunderbolt had struck him. His lips trembled for a moment — then, as if seized by madness, he lunged forward to snatch the handkerchief.
Xiao Nanhui was startled. Ding Weixiang had already moved like lightning, and with a single palm strike sent A’Lu flying backward.
A’Lu took the blow to his chest, and blood and energy churned within him. He lay on the ground coughing with great force.
Xiao Nanhui felt a flicker of reluctant pity — but the expression on Zhongli Jing’s face had not changed from start to finish.
“In the history of Huozhou, there was once a severe plague — the very mention of it struck terror into people’s hearts. A’Yun died of that epidemic. After her death, her body was burned, and the bedding and clothing she had used during her lifetime were burned as well, to prevent the disease from spreading. The person who sought you out promised that if you could find what he wanted, he would help bring your deceased sister back. I would wager that something belonging to A’Yun would be required for the summoning ritual. Yet when you received word and hurried here, there was already nothing of hers left in the Wangchen Pavilion. You searched every corner of it — her dressing table, every comb — and still found not a single strand of her hair. Unwilling to give up, you took a position as a manservant in the pavilion, spending your days in Mu Er He gathering information on the whereabouts of that item, while at the same time collecting whatever traces A’Yun had left behind in life. Am I correct?”
A’Lu lay gasping, staring at the man before him as though he were a beast of flood and fire.
“You — who exactly are you? Why—”
“An Lu. Are you aware that the An surname was once a noble and honored clan name? Do you truly believe that the so-called kind-hearted person who offered to help you find your sister was doing so out of genuine goodness?”
An Lu’s feelings toward the man before him had shifted from shock and suspicion to outright fear.
He and his sister had been born into servitude. Had An Yun not been blessed with exceptional beauty and worked her way up through the Wangchen Pavilion, he would very likely have spent his entire life as the lowest of house slaves in someone else’s household, never able to escape that station.
He had once asked his sister why some people were born as young masters and young ladies, while they were born to serve as slaves. His sister had told him: because that is the only way to survive.
What kind of people were born into bondage — even looked down upon by fellow servants? This was something An Lu had gradually come to understand as he grew older. An Yun was a few years older than him and could recite the names of three generations of their forebears — yet every one of those people was gone from the world. That was the sentence of exterminating three generations of kin, the crime levied against those convicted of high treason.
The surname An — once he understood what it meant, he had never used it again. His sister was the same.
Yet the person who had sought him out had, at their very first meeting, spoken aloud the name he had nearly forgotten.
Just like this moment, right now.
He had grown up in the harshest of circumstances, and he had developed some ability to read people. The man before him, like that other person, was someone he could not afford to provoke.
An Lu pressed his lips tightly together. After a long silence, he forced the words out with great difficulty. “He told me — that jade is no ordinary jade. It has divine power. With that jade, he said, my sister’s soul could be summoned back.”
Xiao Nanhui could not hold herself back from cutting in. “Isn’t that nonsense? It’s just a piece of jade — can it actually bring the dead back to life?”
An Lu shook his head stubbornly, his eyes lined red with exhaustion and the aftermath of agitation. “No, it’s true! He told me that’s what the emperor used to do in the old days.”
At those words, everyone in the room was struck silent with astonishment.
After a long moment, Zhongli Jing’s cold, measured voice broke the silence.
“The emperor? Which emperor are you referring to?”
An Lu shuddered for no apparent reason, his voice dropping lower.
“The — the emperor of Niexuan.”
An Lu’s words were soft, carrying a faint tremor — yet they landed on the ears of those present like a great boulder crashing into the sea.
Even though the old dynasty had been gone for nearly a hundred years, matters pertaining to the former imperial family were a deep and absolute taboo of the current reign.
Just how severe was this taboo? Legend had it that the last emperor of Niexuan, Qiu Yuan, had loved red lotuses — they had bloomed everywhere throughout the imperial palace. After the dynasty’s fall, Tiancheng had used a mere three years to root out and eliminate every red lotus visible within its borders.
The degree of that obsession sometimes struck Xiao Nanhui as baffling. But how could she — a woman of humble origins who had never concerned herself with political affairs — possibly know what was in an emperor’s mind?
Perhaps it was because everyone was shaken by those words coming so suddenly. No one noticed the emotion that flickered and vanished in the depths of Zhongli Jing’s eyes. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to its usual calm.
“I’ve never encountered a case where someone could be persuaded to risk their life on nothing more than empty words.”
An Lu lowered his head, a note of self-mockery and sorrow in his voice. “If I had any other choice, why would I do this?”
Zhongli Jing drew a small, slender message canister from his sleeve and pulled out the thin sheet of paper folded inside it.
An Lu’s face went pale at the sight. He finally understood how he had been exposed.
“Apart from communicating by letter, have you ever seen this person in person?”
“He and I always kept in contact through correspondence. Except for the very first meeting — but even then there was a door between us, and I never saw his face.”
Zhongli Jing’s fingers loosened, and the paper and canister fell before An Lu. At the same moment came a quietly delivered remark.
“Your sister was a clever woman. To think her brother turned out to be a fool.”
The veins on the young man’s hands rose instantly beneath the skin. His fingers dug fiercely into the earth, and his eyes glistened as if tears were about to fall.
In those eyes lived both shame and hatred.
He had lost — completely and utterly, with no ground left to stand on.
They had already walked some distance from the courtyard when Xiao Nanhui turned to look back at the forlorn figure collapsed on the ground, and felt an inexplicable wave of sympathy rise within her.
Everything An Lu had done, she could understand. If the person who had died had been Xiao Zhun, she too would have clutched at any offered lifeline and believed in whoever promised to help.
Even the most infinitesimal chance can drive a person to hurl themselves into it like a moth toward flame — when it comes down to it, that is simply obsession.
Yet in this world — how many people’s obsessions are ever rewarded?
A wind rose among the trees, moaning and sobbing through the branches, stirring up a swirl of dust.
When the dust settled, a small, slender figure crawled out from a clump of grass not far away, looked around, and slipped into the courtyard of that earthen dwelling.
“A’Lu, elder brother.”
The young man’s form had been pressed to the ground, motionless as a stone, for a long time. At the sound of the voice, he slowly raised his head.
The figure standing at the gate — not yet fully grown in stature — was looking at him with timid, nervous eyes. It was Jin Dou’er.
“A’Lu, elder brother,” Jin Dou’er called again, hesitating before taking a few steps forward. “Are you alright?”
An Lu’s eyes stared blankly at the person before him, without a word.
Jin Dou’er felt that the person standing before her bore no resemblance to the careful, cautious A’Lu she had known at the Wangchen Pavilion — but his hand reached into his sleeve and touched something he was keeping there, and gathering his courage, he held it out.
The small, thin hand slowly opened. In its palm was a crumpled piece of jade-green fabric.
“This is for you. It was something that belonged to A’Yun, elder sister.”
An Lu’s expression changed in an instant. The next second, he snatched the item from those hands like a starving wolf and carefully unfolded it.
A handkerchief embroidered with tuberose blossoms.
The dense, fine stitches were vivid and lifelike — yet the tuberose blossoms were not white. They were a dark, russet brown.
How had he never noticed before.
An Lu raised his head and regarded Jin Dou’er.
“Why are you giving this to me?”
Jin Dou’er looked at the handkerchief, as if recalling things from long past. The large, round eyes held an expression of tender longing. “A’Yun, elder sister, used to treat me very well. She was the kindest person in the entire pavilion to me. I was just too small — I couldn’t save her. This is the last thing she left behind in this world. If you miss her too, keep it — let it be a remembrance.”
An Lu looked at Jin Dou’er. In truth, the other was only a few years younger than him, yet considerably shorter in stature — the kind of appearance that came from years of heavy labor and too little proper food.
He himself had lived through such hard days — but still—
“When did you arrive here?”
Jin Dou’er, unaware of the subtle shift in the other’s eyes, answered reflexively: “I saw you leave the pavilion alone, so I followed along with Uncle Li who was making a delivery.”
So then — everything that should have been heard, had been heard.
An Lu staggered to his feet.
Ding Weixiang’s blow had been heavy, and his chest still ached dully — but he paid it no mind. He carefully folded the jade-green handkerchief and tucked it close against his body.
“Jin Dou’er.” An Lu called in a low voice, his tone carrying the gentle warmth of an elder brother. “Come here to me.”
Jin Dou’er looked at An Lu in a daze. The person before him naturally bore some resemblance to An Yun, and while the earlier unfamiliarity had been a little frightening, now that this warmth showed through, it brought to mind the way An Yun used to speak.
Jin Dou’er’s feet moved without thinking, drawing closer toward this boy with the elder-brother smile.
An Lu opened his arms and drew Jin Dou’er into an embrace. His voice was low, like a lullaby hummed to coax a child to sleep.
“Thank you for everything you did for my sister. I will bring her back.”
Jin Dou’er’s eyes, which had been drifting closed, snapped suddenly wide open. As something warm drained away from his body, his pupils gradually expanded — two hollow, empty voids.
An Lu’s voice, flat and without inflection, sounded again beside his ear.
“One of us is enough. Go in peace.”