The Imperial Archives Bureau had not been established long, and its foundations were still shallow. In order to expand its collection and pave the way for the sole heir, Bai the Thirteenth, the Longxi Bai Family — the foremost book-collecting clan in the Tang Kingdom — had given almost everything they had: donating books, scrolls, and paintings free of charge, and even contributing copied manuscripts of the dynastic records and their own family’s miscellaneous daily journals.
The Bai Family head made it all sound very noble: “To spread learning throughout the realm is the sacred duty of our generation; the Longxi Bai Family will shoulder this responsibility without hesitation!”
The Emperor greatly praised the Longxi Bai Family’s charitable act and attached considerable importance to the books and scrolls they had donated, ordering the construction of twelve special archive vaults, each named and ordered after the twelve Earthly Branches.
The miscellaneous daily journals from the twenty-fifth year of the Xuande reign through the first year of the Xuanchang reign were stored in the Mao Vault. Looking out across the space, the shelves towered like a forest, scroll-books piled up like mountains of stone, and the musty smell of aged documents hit the nostrils with full force — Ling Zhiyan let out one tremendous, whole-body sneeze.
Bai Ruyi held up the oil lamp, sweat beading on his forehead. “The miscellaneous daily journals have only been at the Imperial Archives Bureau for four months. There hasn’t been time to organize them properly — they’ve simply been stacked on the shelves in rough chronological order. Searching through them is going to be—”
He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence: searching through them would be the death of us!
Ling Zhiyan sighed, reached into her robe, and pulled out two night-luminescent pearls, each the size of a fist, each fitted with a jade base. She handed one to Bai Ruyi. “Let’s get searching.”
Bai Ruyi’s eyes went wide as saucers. “There’s one for me too?”
“Lin Niangzi said that fire safety comes first in the document vaults — no candles or torches allowed. These are North Sea night-luminescent pearls; the light is bright without straining the eyes, perfect for long hours of reading.” Ling Zhiyan raised her lamp stand. “Let’s start from the twenty-seventh year of Xuande—”
She spoke for a good while but received no reply. She turned her head — Bai Ruyi’s eyes were brimming with tears. He stood motionless, staring at the night-luminescent pearl in his hand, his jade-white face radiating an air of utter desolation.
Ling Zhiyan suddenly recalled the gossip the Jingmen disciples had passed along with a letter: this bookworm had once delivered a love poem to Lin Sui’an at Sanhe Academy — which had of course been rejected — and upon returning to the Eastern Capital, had spent a good while washing his face in tears and wallowing in dejection.
Ling Zhiyan had originally written it off as an amusing story. Bai Ruyi and Lin Niangzi had barely met — how could he have fallen so hopelessly in love so suddenly?
Yet seeing Bai Ruyi’s expression now, the rumors were clearly no exaggeration.
“Ahem!” Ling Zhiyan gave a pointed reminder. “Bai the Thirteenth, lead the way, if you please.”
Bai Ruyi nodded, composed himself, and led Ling Zhiyan through a series of left and right turns through the archive vault until they reached the northernmost shelf. A wooden placard hung on the shelf, inscribed with “Twenty-Seventh Year of Xuande” — thirty-two years ago. It was densely packed with scrolls, at least several hundred of them, their chronological order completely jumbled. There was nothing for it but to go through them one by one.
At this point, there was no choice but to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
Ling Zhiyan and Bai Ruyi arranged a desk and a couch, set out the night-luminescent pearls, and began unrolling and reading through the daily journals.
One look, and they nearly lost their minds.
The Longxi Bai Family lived up to its fame as a renowned clan of scholars and poets — they were truly the Tang Kingdom’s undisputed champions of “keeping small accounts.” The content of the miscellaneous daily journals was all-encompassing, recording everything no matter how trivial; not a single thing was left unrecorded.
Daily life went without saying: what time they rose (what clothes were worn, what shoes and socks, what hair ribbon was tied); what time they ate (the types of dishes, how many bowls and plates, what pattern was on the chopsticks); what time they drank tea (the tea ware used for brewing and the time taken); what time they read (how many books, what their titles were, how many reflections were written afterward, what brush was used, what ink, what paper, how many characters were written); what time they went to sleep (what incense was burned before bed, how long the foot-soaking took, what book was read during the foot-soak, whether the bedding had been aired out)… on and on and on and on…
When no visitors came, it was somewhat manageable; but if anyone came to seek instruction, the journals also recorded who had visited, how many people came, how long they stayed, the content and central themes of the scholarly debates, whether any conclusion had been reached, whether a follow-up meeting had been arranged — and these bookworms and old pedants would typically argue for several hours at a stretch, easily filling an entire scroll at the drop of a hat.
What was even more daunting was that the central figure of the daily journals during this period was the previous Bai Family head, Bai Haojun — an oddity within the clan, who was not only a chatterbox but also loved getting involved in everyone’s business. Weddings and funerals alike, he had to stick his nose in; every few days he would head out to wander and study, filling his journals along the way with travel essays, miscellaneous writings, and secondhand gossip and romantic scandals he’d picked up along the road. He was even a regular patron of the Eastern Capital’s most fashionable entertainment quarter. Thanks to this man’s tireless efforts to expand the Bai family tree, the family of bookworms had at least managed to avoid dying out, making him something of a great contributor to the Bai Family.
Ling Zhiyan had only read through about a dozen days’ worth of entries and already had a foreboding sense that her hairline was retreating. She thought to herself that if Hua the Fourth were here, their efficiency would at least triple.
Fortunately, Bai Ruyi had spent years immersed in archives and was no slow reader either. Ling Zhiyan herself had honed the skill of speed-reading during her time in the document vaults at the Bureau of Judicial Review. The two of them working in tandem, they read from dusk through to the dead of night, and at last discovered a clue.
In the daily journal entry for the twenty-eighth day of the tenth month of the twenty-seventh year of Xuande, news of Yicheng appeared.
[The first quarter of the Shen hour. After my midday rest, I received an urgent letter from an old friend, who said that Yicheng was in danger and that a change seemed imminent, urging me not to leave the house in the coming days.]
“I remember that the great victory at Yicheng came at the end of the year, and that Deputy Minister Lu mentioned the great catastrophe at Yicheng had occurred about a month before that — the timing fits.” Ling Zhiyan was overjoyed. “This is exactly the right period.”
“I just went back over the earlier journal entries,” Bai Ruyi said, unrolling one scroll. “On the third day of the tenth month of the twenty-seventh year of Xuande, the former family head arrived in the Eastern Capital on a study tour and was temporarily staying at a friend’s home. He had originally planned to stay only a few days, but unexpectedly, the Emperor’s old ailment flared up and he fell gravely ill. The former family head was deeply worried and so remained.”
Ling Zhiyan: “The founding Emperor Wuling passed away in the fourth month of the twenty-eighth year of Xuande.”
Bai Ruyi nodded. “Less than half a year later.”
“The former Bai Family head’s friend was—” Ling Zhiyan rapidly flipped through the earlier journal entries. “Here it is. It says he wrote out a piece of calligraphy for his friend as a gift, inscribed: ‘Zhenru.’ ‘Zhenru’ should be this friend’s courtesy name.”
Bai Ruyi’s eyes lit up. “Zhongqin, courtesy name Zhenru, style name Mingyue Shanren. The Bai ancestral home has a painting by this man — he was the Prince Consort of Princess Pingle.”
Princess Pingle — the most beloved daughter of the founding Emperor Wuling, and the current Emperor’s aunt. By the reckoning of their ages, Princess Pingle and her Prince Consort Zhongqin would both have been over sixty at the time.
This discovery was a wonderful surprise, for it meant that the former Bai Family head could obtain a great deal of firsthand news from the Prince Consort Zhongqin.
Ling Zhiyan and Bai Ruyi immediately pulled out all the scrolls from the surrounding area and went through them one by one with great care. The trivial daily records grew fewer and fewer, while news of Yicheng and the palace grew more and more frequent, soon occupying the primary position in the miscellaneous journals.
[The twenty-ninth day of the tenth month of Xuande 27: My friend was urgently summoned to the Forbidden Palace and did not return all night. My heart burns with anxiety.]
[The thirtieth day of the tenth month: At the third quarter of the Zi hour, the city gates were suddenly thrown open; an eight-hundred-li military dispatch arrived at Changjia Gate, and the sound of the courier’s cries reverberated throughout the streets.]
[The first day of the eleventh month, at the first quarter of the You hour: My friend sent word from the Forbidden Palace that the Emperor was gravely ill; the Empress had urgently summoned the Third Prince and Noble Consort Jiang Shi into the hall to attend at the Emperor’s sickbed. The Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace was touring Guangdu City and had not yet returned. My friend remained at the Emperor’s side and could not come home.]
[The second day of the eleventh month: Court was suspended. My friend has not returned. I have no heart for reading.]
[The third day of the eleventh month: I went shopping at the West Market and, from idle conversation with merchants from the Western Regions, learned that Yicheng was in danger and that the Tuzhan Kingdom’s wolfish ambitions were now plain for all to see. On my way home, I saw the common people in a state of panic and dread, and my heart was full of sorrow.]
[The fourth day of the eleventh month: The palace was sealed; no word from my friend.]
[The fifth day of the eleventh month: Court was suspended. The palace was sealed. No news.]
[The sixth day of the eleventh month, at the Mao hour: A second eight-hundred-li military dispatch from Yicheng entered the city; the common people were gripped with terror.]
[The seventh day of the eleventh month: I encountered a foreign tribesman at the West Market and heard the shocking news that the casualties at Yicheng were beyond counting, that reinforcements had not arrived, that the Qin Family Army was holding Yicheng alone, that blood had dyed the river running before the city walls, and that the account was too horrifying to bear — truly a national catastrophe and cause for mourning. Alas and alack!]
The journal entries for the next several days had apparently been stuffed into some forgotten corner and couldn’t be found. Ling Zhiyan and Bai Ruyi rummaged for quite some time before finally locating the entry for the fifteenth day of the eleventh month of the twenty-seventh year of Xuande.
[The fifteenth day of the eleventh month: The West Market was closed, the South Market was closed, the North Market was closed; those among the common people without urgent business were not permitted to leave their ward.]
[The sixteenth day of the eleventh month: Court was suspended. The palace was sealed. No news.]
[The seventeenth day of the eleventh month: No news.]
[The eighteenth day of the eleventh month: No news.]
[The nineteenth day of the eleventh month: No news.]
Ling Zhiyan and Bai Ruyi found themselves unconsciously holding their breath. Both of them came from great aristocratic clans, and by now they had already guessed at part of the truth.
The Emperor was gravely ill, a border city had fallen — in the midst of both domestic troubles and foreign threats, the Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace was unable to return in time, leaving only the Empress, the Third Prince, and the Noble Consort within the palace walls. The Empress hailed from the Jiang Family of Ganzhou; the Noble Consort was a daughter of the Jiang Family of Taiyuan. The influence of the two Jiang clans at court was nearly evenly matched. At that time, the Tang Kingdom was facing its most perilous moment.
[The seventeenth day of the eleventh month: A fifth eight-hundred-li military dispatch from Yicheng entered the city; the hoofbeats of the courier horses shook the night sky and seemed to shatter the very stars. Court had been suspended for ten days. The palace gates were shut. No news.]
[The nineteenth day of the eleventh month, at the Xu hour: All the city gates of the Eastern Capital were locked, and the ward gates were sealed. After nightfall, fire suddenly blazed up in the palace, the sounds of killing beyond the ward gates shook the heavens, and the clamor of weapons and hooves went on without end. My heart is racked with worry and dread; I have not slept the whole night through.]
[The twentieth day of the eleventh month: As the first light of dawn was born, the morning drums of the Yingtian Tower resounded through heaven and earth; the ward gates were opened. The palace was reopened; court was convened; the Crown Prince returned; the Eastern Palace assumed the regency.]
[The twenty-first day of the eleventh month: The Eastern Palace issued an edict summoning the Wan Family of Qingzhou to ride to the relief of Yicheng. The West Market, North Market, and South Market were reopened; the common people were jubilant, as happy as if it were a festival.]
[The twenty-second day of the eleventh month: A letter from my friend arrived, saying that matters at court had been settled; he urged me not to worry.]
Though the entries were sparse in their phrasing, Ling Zhiyan and Bai Ruyi felt as though they had been transported back to that breathtaking time. Now, seeing that the court had been set in order, both of them involuntarily breathed a sigh of relief.
The daily journal entries that followed reverted to their usual chatterbox style — rising, eating, drinking tea, strolling through the streets, shopping — life going along quite pleasantly. The two of them picked up speed as they read through the journals, and the passage of time slipped swiftly under their hands until, before long, they had reached the second month of the following year.
[The fifth day of the second month: My friend came to visit — I was overjoyed. We drank ten jars of Manbi wine together. As night fell, my friend became drunk and suddenly burst into tears; amid his drunken ramblings I heard of an earth-shattering case and was greatly alarmed.]
Ling Zhiyan’s heart leapt into her throat. She flipped quickly through the pages — yet the subsequent journal entries contained not a single further mention of this case.
“Wait, wait, wait — let me think—” Bai Ruyi paced around in circles. “When the former family head drank too much, he loved to compose verse and prose. He was particularly accomplished in the art of fu prose — long and wordy things like that wouldn’t appear in the daily journal but rather in the Collection of Haojun’s Lyrical Works. The Collection of Haojun’s Lyrical Works should be in the You Vault!”
The two of them took up their night-luminescent pearls and rushed hurriedly to the You Vault, found the shelf holding the Collection of Haojun’s Lyrical Works — goodness, the collection ran to sixty volumes. Ling Zhiyan and Bai Ruyi could only grit their teeth and keep searching. This time it took only half an hour before they found the piece titled “Elegy for the Ages” — over six hundred characters of bold and unrestrained brushwork, suffused with grief and righteous fury.
Ling Zhiyan had no heart for appreciating the prose style; her gaze swept rapidly through the text in search of clues.
[Heaven bestowed a martial star, a great general of the nation; the one who broke armies for a thousand years of glory… accused of the crime of treason… a gross and monstrous injustice… alas… the Xu Family of Liu’an, great vermin of the nation, their greed horrifying; the military equipment rotted and rusted… though they die a hundred deaths, their crimes can never be erased… a pillar of the nation, cruelly poisoned by the nation’s rats — how terribly wronged… the loyal martyrs of the Qin Family Army, holding the isolated city in defense of the nation; when the nest is overturned, not an egg survives — mountains and rivers share in the grief, heaven and earth weep in agony… treacherous ministers and wicked bandits, croaking like toads in a cesspool, their testimony filthy… they actually claimed with their own eyes to have witnessed the great general fleeing to the enemy, abandoning the nation’s territory, deserting the family army — their words are fit only to be fed to dogs and passed by donkeys (one hundred characters of profanity have been omitted here)… Alas and alack! Alas and alack!]
Bai Ruyi read and took notes as he went; Ling Zhiyan occasionally extracted the key points. Before long they had pieced together the outline of the case.
“There are two key pieces of evidence in this case. First: the Xu Family of Liu’an.” Ling Zhiyan pointed to her transcription. “The Xu Family of Liu’an was responsible for manufacturing the military equipment, yet they embezzled the funds for maintaining and repairing it, causing the equipment to fall into disrepair from years of neglect. This was one major contributing factor to the great catastrophe at Yicheng.”
Bai Ruyi: “And furthermore, the Xu Family of Liu’an then shifted the blame for embezzling the military funds onto the Qin Family of Taiyuan.”
Ling Zhiyan: “The second piece of evidence: the commander of Yicheng’s garrison — that is to say, the commanding general of the Qin Family Army, Qin Nanyin — was accused of defecting to the enemy, with an eyewitness claiming to have personally seen her do so. The former family head wrote over a hundred characters of abuse, which evidently means it was this eyewitness testimony that was the decisive evidence.”
“That’s absolutely absurd. What kind of general would go and defect to the enemy alone and single-handedly, leaving behind the brothers who had fought side by side with her through life and death to hold off the enemy?” Bai Ruyi said. “And besides, when I read through some of the journal entries from the twenty-eighth year of Xuande just now, there was not a single further mention of General Qin — does that mean that after the great victory at Yicheng, Qin Nanyin simply… disappeared?”
Ling Zhiyan thought for a moment. “That’s not right. Qin Nanyin was a genius at commanding troops, with matchless martial skill. If she had been stationed at Yicheng, the city would never have been driven to such desperate straits — so she must have already left Yicheng before the great catastrophe, that is, before the tenth month of the Xuande year, which is what gave the Tuzhan Kingdom the opening it needed.”
Bai Ruyi: “Where did she go?”
Ling Zhiyan furrowed her brow for a long while, then shook her head. “The most suspicious element is this eyewitness. Who exactly was this person? And why was their testimony alone sufficient to convict the Qin Family of Taiyuan?”
Bai Ruyi fixed his eyes on the lyrical prose. “‘Treacherous ministers and wicked bandits, croaking like toads in a cesspool, their testimony filthy…’ Honestly, the former family head — was there really nothing useful he could write besides insults?”
Ling Zhiyan sighed. “No matter what, we’ve at least confirmed that the Xu Family of Liu’an is connected to the treason case. Let’s follow this thread and keep investigating. We won’t go wrong.”
Bai Ruyi flipped through the Collection of Haojun’s Lyrical Works a little further and came across a strange little piece. “What’s this?”
Ling Zhiyan squinted at it for a while. “The tonal pattern is a bit odd — doesn’t look like the former family head’s handiwork. It reads more like a folk song.”
Bai Ruyi: “I actually think it looks more like… a military marching song—”
The two of them were still discussing this when a servant came rushing in to report that someone named Ming Shu, a personal attendant, had come seeking the Bureau of Judicial Review’s Director of Justice.
Ming Shu had run so hard he was gasping for breath. He handed over a letter. “This has just been sent over from the Document Authentication Hall.”
The Document Authentication Hall was a newly established institution within the Bureau of Judicial Review, specializing in the verification of handwriting. It had been in operation for less than a year and had only two forensic handwriting consultants — both celebrated masters of calligraphy recruited from among the civilian population. Their reputations were great, their tempers equally great, and in ordinary times everyone had to go begging for their services; their efficiency was notoriously and extraordinarily low. Ling Zhiyan had been waiting for nearly five days and had at last received the results.
The characters in the authentication report were bold and freewheeling, utterly unconstrained.
[The handwriting on the military equipment design documents and the examination papers have been compared and verified — they are the work of the same person.]
Side Story
Lin Sui’an: “These night-luminescent pearls were clearly a gift from you — why did you say they were from me?”
Hua Yitang: “If I said they were from me, Bai the Thirteenth would certainly refuse to use them. And if his eyes were strained from reading by them, wouldn’t the Longxi Bai Family come looking for trouble with me?”
Lin Sui’an laughed. “Bai Ruyi isn’t you — how could he possibly be that petty?”
Hua Yitang sighed. “You don’t understand. A man’s jealousy is a terrifying thing.”
Lin Sui’an: “…”
I actually believe you!