The moment the two of them entered the jade house, a bright-eyed young attendant stepped forward to greet them: “Are the two gentlemen here to browse or to sell? Do you have a regular shopkeeper you work with? Allow me to fetch someone for you straight away.”

Ding Weixiang looked around — the person he was expecting was not there. “Is the head shopkeeper available?”

This jade house had eight shopkeepers in all, each with their own area of expertise; on any given day, each held court in the shop and displayed their particular mastery. But even eight could not function without a leader — above the eight sat a head shopkeeper. The head shopkeeper was also the principal owner, the true master of the jade house and the most seasoned authority among them all.

The young attendant hesitated — he had not expected the visitor to ask for the owner directly. He recovered and politely deflected: “I’m afraid the head shopkeeper is getting on in years, sir, and his mobility is limited. He has not been receiving guests for many years.”

Ding Weixiang said, “We have a prior arrangement with him. If you would be good enough to inform him that Young Master Zhongli has come, that will be sufficient.”

The attendant agreed and hurried toward the rear courtyard.

After roughly the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, he returned supporting an elderly man who walked with a dragon-headed jade cane. This was the head shopkeeper himself.

The old man looked at Zhongli Jing with evident surprise. After a long moment he gestured for the attendant to withdraw, then took up a lantern himself and led the two of them toward the rear courtyard.

The back of the jade house opened onto a long, narrow corridor, lined on both sides with low rooms, each door secured by a massive bronze lock — the storerooms where the raw jade was kept.

The head shopkeeper finally stopped before a small tiled room at the far end of the corridor and began to speak, slowly and without hurry.

“Father caught a chill some days ago. We brought a physician who said the outlook is not good. If there is anything you have left unsaid, young master, this visit may be the time to settle it.”

Zhongli Jing bowed. “It is a gift to see the elder gentleman once more. I ask for nothing beyond that.”

The head shopkeeper smiled. “That you should feel this way is itself something rare. Though I do fear my father’s age means he may not be able to give you the answers you are hoping for.”

With that, he pushed open the door.

The room was very small, but had everything necessary. The early summer air outside was already warm, yet the room within was cool and pleasant. In one corner lay a small mound of ash — the remains of mugwort that had recently been burned.

Passing a simple partition, they came upon a low wooden bed with a warming platform. On it lay an old man bundled in a thick quilt — white-haired, gaunt, his hand resting on top of the quilt little more than bones wrapped in thin skin. Had it not been for the faint rise and fall of his chest, anyone who came upon him might have taken him for a corpse already dried.

The head shopkeeper, leaning on his cane, bowed respectfully toward the figure on the bed, and raised his voice: “Father — the person you have been waiting for has come.”

The old man’s long-shut eyelids quivered, then slowly opened. His clouded eyes moved, settled with difficulty on Zhongli Jing, spent a long moment making out his face, and then — at last — one thin finger stirred faintly.

“I see. You may go.”

The head shopkeeper looked once at Zhongli Jing and Ding Weixiang, said nothing more, and withdrew with a bow.

The old man on the bed eased himself slightly more upright, enough to draw breath a little more freely. “You have finally come, young master. I was beginning to think I would not live to see you.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself to sit up, elder.” Zhongli Jing nodded to Ding Weixiang to bring the item forward. “I have brought the item here. You can examine it without leaving the bed.”

Ding Weixiang stepped forward, moved the small side table that stood at the head of the bed into position, and set it just so. The table was ordinary camphor wood, worn to a gleam from decades of use — it had seen countless fine jades and rare stones rest upon its surface in the years and years of its service. Once the table was placed, Ding Weixiang carefully unwrapped the soft cloth. On the white fabric lay a small, perfectly square object, no larger than a man’s palm, its surface dull and murky — the material was unclear.

The old man drew in a breath. Slowly, he rolled back his sleeve. The moment his withered fingers made contact with the object, they seemed to quicken with a life they no longer ordinarily had. He turned it in his hands, examining it from every side, and when he found the small hole at the center, he gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

“There is a black jar in the bottom of the cabinet over there. Bring it.”

Ding Weixiang brought over the jar — no bigger than a fist. Inside was a colorless, transparent liquid with a faint, bitter smell. With trembling hands, the old man poured all of it over the object. Fine bubbles rose across its surface, and the old man then took up a piece of silk cloth and wiped it carefully over the object — and as though the cloth carried some enchantment, wherever it passed, the caked grime and thick dust were swept away, revealing the luminous, translucent substance beneath.

A moment later, a piece of deep, brilliant jade — crystalline and vivid — was revealed, encased within a transparent thin-walled container. It had been stored inside a box crafted precisely to its shape.

Such a wondrous thing was truly rare. To see it in person defied description — no number of words could capture what it contained.

“My eyes have failed me. You look — does the jade inside have any writing on it?”

Zhongli Jing carefully lifted the transparent case. Through the carved latticework of the crystal wall, a perfectly square piece of jade hung within — its eight faces as smooth as mirrors, as though floating in some transparent medium, suspended in midair. The effect was unlike anything ordinary.

“No writing.”

“Is there a crack at any of the four corners?”

Zhongli Jing turned the case so the candlelight fell across each corner, and at last, through the wall of the case, made out a hairline crack — not immediately obvious.

“There is.”

“Then there is no doubt. This is what you were looking for.”

Though he had been seven or eight parts certain in his heart already, hearing it confirmed aloud still made Zhongli Jing’s brows ease open slightly.

The journey to Huozhou had been unorthodox and fraught with danger at every turn — yet the outcome was worth every step. And beyond the object itself, he had met someone interesting.

His slender finger rested lightly on the surface of the jade. The pale white of his skin against the vivid green formed a sharp contrast — like the deep, uncrossable gulf of time that stretches between youth and antiquity.

“How did you come to see this object all those years ago, elder?”

The air was quiet for a moment before that worn, slow voice resumed: “A person like me — I could never, under any ordinary circumstances, have laid eyes on something like this. You might as well call it fate.”

The old man paused to cough twice. But his eyes had brightened — as though the memory had called him back to some earlier time, and his face had recovered a trace of spirit. “I was no more than twelve or thirteen then, an apprentice. My master kept his secrets close, and when he brought me with him into the old imperial palace, I had no idea what we were there to do. Only when we arrived did I learn — we had come to repair the imperial seal.”

Zhongli Jing looked at the perfectly square crystal case and asked: “Something as valuable as the imperial seal — how could it have been damaged?”

“All I remember is the rumor that circulated through the palace at the time: the former Emperor had taken a liking to the jade used to make the seal and declared it of such purity that it could keep a person’s soul intact even after death. He wanted the seal for his own burial. The reigning Emperor Niexuan naturally refused — without the seal, how could the realm be passed on? The two of them argued in the imperial bedchamber, and in the confusion the secret seal fell and chipped a corner. One might call it the will of heaven, in its way. A damaged imperial seal was no good omen — and in the end, events proved that true.”

Zhongli Jing listened, and something moved in his thoughts. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, though his eyes held no laughter: “In the elder’s estimation — is there truly a jade in this world that can grant someone immortality?”

The old man laughed at that, the creases of his face folding together: “If there were, would I be lying here struggling through these final days? I spent a lifetime in the jade house, and every fine stone there is passed through my hands. I never once saw a piece of jade develop a spirit, let alone capture a human soul. Stone is stone. It is only a matter of whose hands it passes through.”

Time had carved its marks into that fragile body, yet also granted it a kind of clarity that could see through most things. Those clouded eyes could no longer make out small objects in any detail, and yet they could read a great deal of what passed through human life.

“I suspect, young master, that you did not come to see me merely to verify whether this object is genuine.”

Zhongli Jing’s expression remained composed. He did not obscure his purpose, and went straight to the point: “Is there any way to retrieve the contents, elder?”

But the old man shook his head. “I know the mechanism and principles of this case. And yet I am powerless.”

Zhongli Jing’s voice remained level, though a faint undercurrent of pressure entered it: “Is it that you cannot — or that you are unwilling?”

The old man had seen enough of the world, and spoke without pretense or submission: “Given who you are, young master, I would not dare conceal anything from you. It is not that I am unwilling to help you retrieve what is inside — it is that neither you nor I, nor anyone left in this world, can open it.”

Zhongli Jing’s brow furrowed slightly. He looked at the small, perfectly circular hole at the center of the case — inside it, a sharp protrusion was visible, its purpose unclear. “Is it that the key to this case has been lost?”

“You have no doubt noticed the mechanism. But this case takes no key. To open it, one would need the blood of someone of the Qiu lineage.”

And so that was it.

The hole was not a keyhole. It was designed to draw blood. Zou Sifang, in his desperation to open the case, had pricked his finger by accident and triggered the mechanism — and been poisoned.

But since the dynasty had changed hands, the Qiu line had been exterminated root and branch. The Su family, in consolidating their throne, could not afford a single loose end. Nearly a century had passed — to find even a single drop of Qiu blood now would be harder than plucking a star from the sky.

“What if the outer case were simply destroyed by force?”

“Do you know why the Qiu family went to such lengths to create this case in the first place? It was so that if the worst came to pass and the seal could not be protected, it would be locked away — to be opened only by a descendant of the Qiu line, and if forced open by any other means, both case and jade would be destroyed together. This is the craft of the Jingyin Pavilion. If you doubt it, you are welcome to try.”

The Jingyin Pavilion had once been the largest jade house in Chizhou. The raw jade used to make the secret seal came from this very house. Legend held that beneath the Jingyin Pavilion, a dozen or more zhang of earth had been hollowed out, concealing untold wonders within, and that the craftsmen who worked there were of exceptional skill — beyond their work in jade polishing, they spent their spare hours studying mechanisms and intricate devices, creating custom commissions for the powerful and the privileged.

The Jingyin Pavilion had vanished into history along with the upheaval of a century ago, and the works that had passed through its hands were rarely found in circulation now — priceless, and without parallel. Could this object before him truly possess the legendary qualities attributed to it?

The old man had spoken at such length, and the spirit he had summoned earlier was beginning to ebb. His eyelids grew heavy: “Everything I know, I have told you, young master. What you do with it now is your affair.”

The night wind rose suddenly, and the jade chimes rang out clearly above.

The figure on the bed had already begun to drift, whether entering at last the long dream of some distant night, with no desire to wake.

The figure at the bedside rose quietly. The road had left a coat of dust about him, yet there was no trace of weariness or hollow pallor in his face — and his eyes, if anything, were a deeper black than before.

No. Things were far more complicated than they appeared on the surface.

That night in the imperial bedchamber of the Niexuan reign — what had the two emperors truly been arguing over, that a seal always kept secured in its case had fallen and been damaged? And why had the Qiu family afterward chosen to seal this one particular seal inside its case — going to such elaborate lengths to hide it, and protecting it even as their dynasty crumbled, willing to destroy it rather than let it fall into other hands?

Secret seal. Seal of secrets.

What other secrets did the Qiu house still hold?