All around was silence.
After a long while, Xie Changgeng slowly sat up.
“Then you know everything?” he said.
“Since when?” Apart from his voice being low, his tone contained surprisingly little shock.
The young boy did not answer at first. He only untied the sword at his waist.
“When your guards saw me just now, they recognized that this sword at my side came from Your Majesty, so they did not ask me to remove it. They allowed me to enter with it.”
As he spoke, he held one hand flat in front of him and with the other grasped the hilt, slowly drawing the blade. Cold light flashed.
“Do you know what the one thing is that you should never have done in this lifetime?”
He lightly ran his finger along the edge of the blade. The skin split at once under the keen edge, and blood spread like a halo, slowly diffusing along the stretch of blade his finger had touched. In the candlelight, it shimmered with a strange and sinister gleam.
Yet the young boy seemed to feel nothing at all. He let the blood from his finger flow into the fuller of the blade, pool, and then overflow, trailing along the edge — dripping, one drop at a time.
“The one thing you should never have done was what you did that year, when Mother was taking me away from Guzang — when you rode out beyond the city gates and gave me this sword.” He said.
“How I wish you had never given it to me. Or that I had listened to my mother that day and not accepted it. Even if I had accepted it — had I simply never touched it afterward, that would have been better too…”
The young boy’s expression was bleak.
“Had that been so, I would never have known, in this lifetime, that you are my father. But in my heart, you would always have been that Lord Xie — the man I respected and admired. I would have held you in even greater regard than a father.”
“But there are no ‘what ifs’…”
He hurled the sword — the one now stained with his blood — violently to one side, so that it landed beside Xie Changgeng.
“You were right just now. I remembered everything a very long time ago. Do you know why I was determined to become Crown Prince — even though I could plainly see that my mother was unwilling, when you first came seeking me?”
“The reason I did so was entirely because of you. Because you were going to be Emperor, I was determined to be Crown Prince as well!”
“On what grounds do you seek my mother’s forgiveness? Do you believe that by making my mother the most exalted woman under heaven, by making me Crown Prince, by living out your days in peace and then passing this realm down to me — that the harm you caused can be written off, and your conscience can be at ease?”
“Truly — I do not hate you for my own sake. In a previous life I chose to die; that was my own choice. What does it have to do with you? It is for my mother that I think it unjust. When I remembered everything, I finally understood — while neither you nor I knew, she alone remembered every last thing that happened before. She should not have needed to be so magnanimous, swallowing all her pain herself, to accommodate you. And you — after everything you did to my mother — on what grounds, in this lifetime, do you still get to have everything go your way, not only becoming Emperor, but even daring to seek my mother’s heart again?”
The young boy gave a laugh.
“How could I allow you to have your wish? I could not wait until I was grown to strip you of everything — that would take too long, and it would be far too easy on you. So when you came to Yuezhou, I went outside the city to see you. I told you to go to Huguo Temple. I knew that once I spoke, you would certainly go. Once there — if you still could not remember anything, then I would accept it as Heaven’s grace to you. Fortunately, Heaven still had eyes in the end, and did not allow only my mother to suffer alone.”
The young boy’s expression grew increasingly agitated.
He said: “That is right. I wanted you to see clearly what kind of person you truly are, lest you think yourself so magnanimous, as though it is my mother who has wronged you. I also wanted you to know that you do not deserve my mother’s forgiveness — and you even less deserve her feelings. If you do not disappear, my mother will never know peace for the rest of her life. Every time she sees you, she will remember all the pain she endured. If you have even half a conscience left, you should never let yourself appear before her again!”
The young boy said all of this in nearly one breath, then stopped. His chest rose and fell with rapid breathing.
Xie Changgeng had been gazing at him all along, utterly motionless.
“Then what am I to do? Is death the only way to bring this to an end?” At last he spoke, his voice strained and heavy.
The young boy’s gaze flickered briefly over the sword lying beside him.
“Your guard is just outside, not far off.”
“I may as well tell you plainly: I have a squad of warriors who are completely loyal to me alone. Their devotion and courage are no less than those who serve you. But tonight, I did not bring them here. Right now you may call your men in, charge me with treason, and have me killed on the spot. I would not offer even the slightest resistance. I mean every word.”
“But —”
His tone shifted sharply, his voice turning cold and hard.
“If you do not have me killed, you have no other choice left.”
“And you need not die either. Compared to the suffering my mother endured — if you were to die so easily, don’t you think that would be letting yourself off far too lightly?”
He paused, fell silent, as though sinking into some distant memory, and finally spoke again.
He said: “Many years ago, you brought me — still very small — through great hardship to Tianshan Mountain to fetch my mother. At the end of that long, snow-covered road, at the foot of Tianshan, there was a solitary city called Jincheng. There, you made me a promise: that you would one day guard that place well, no matter how remote or desolate it might be.”
“I do not know whether you have forgotten what you said that day. I have never forgotten it. Now is the time for you to fulfill your promise. That is where your place is.”
“How one disappears from this world — you should know better than I. Rest assured: after you are gone, I will govern this realm in your place. The ministers, I will command and direct. The people, I will guide and nurture. That small court still clinging to life — I will personally extinguish it. And you will be recorded in the histories by the court chroniclers as the founding Emperor, a ruler of great achievement. I will also write for your memorial tribute the most laudatory posthumous title I can conceive — just as you once did for my mother.”
He sat down on the ground, gazing at the man across from him.
“I await your choice.”
“Either I die, and you continue as Emperor.”
“Or you disappear from this world entirely. Only then will my mother’s suffering truly come to an end.”
……
At the fourth watch of the night — in the darkest hour before dawn — a slender young boy’s figure slipped out through a small side door of the residence, silently and without a sound.
His close attendant, waiting in the shadows, hurried forward, leading the horse to meet him. The boy looked at his mount and stopped walking. The horse too paused where it stood, then turned its head and nuzzled his arm affectionately. The young boy suddenly threw both arms around the horse’s neck, pressing his face against it. At first he was perfectly still; then after a moment, his shoulders began to tremble faintly. From behind, it seemed as though he might be crying, or might be laughing — yet not a single sound escaped him. The sight of it was, in truth, rather unsettling.
The attendant dared not disturb him, and stood to one side with head bowed, hands folded in waiting. Fortunately, before long, his emotions seemed to subside. He slowly released his arms from around the horse’s neck, gave its mane a stroke, then swung himself up into the saddle and rode off swiftly.
……
On an utterly ordinary day, Mu Fulan, who had been watching and waiting anxiously in the palace of the Upper Capital for many days, received a sealed letter from Hexi.
The letter had been sent by Liang Tuan — whom she had dispatched to escort the Crown Prince on the journey — by express relay, eight hundred li a day.
Mu Fulan had not yet finished reading the letter when she froze where she stood.
She had granted Xi’er’s request and let him travel out of the capital to welcome the Emperor home in triumph. By her reckoning of the days, they should have already been on their way back by now — and yet the people she had sent out had found no trace of the Emperor’s army returning, and Hexi had gone six or seven days without sending any new dispatches. Ordinary ministers might not yet have noticed anything amiss, but among a handful of trusted senior officials such as Liu Guan, suspicion had already arisen. Over the past few days, they had come to Mu Fulan repeatedly, asking about the latest news.
Mu Fulan had maintained a calm face outwardly, but inwardly she had long since sensed something was wrong — a persistent feeling that something had happened out there a thousand li away, something she did not yet know.
She had not expected that this very day, the news would finally reach her — and that the news would be such a catastrophe.
He was gone? That man named Xie Changgeng was actually gone?
How could this be.
Yet there it was in black and white, perfectly clear. Given Liang’s position, if this had not been an established and verified fact, how could he possibly have sent a false report of the Emperor’s death?
In his sealed letter, he said: His Majesty the Emperor had led the campaign personally, achieved a great victory, and had been preparing to return to the capital in triumph in recent days. Before departing, he made one last light-armed inspection of the frontier. On his way back from this circuit, he encountered a summer flash flood.
The flood came without the slightest warning. It was like the earth shaking, the mountains trembling, the sun and moon going dark. The surging water demolished the road in an instant. The Emperor’s party had no time to escape. They were swept up in the current and disappeared without a trace. Everyone searched in utmost secrecy and with full effort. At last, following the channel carved out by the floodwaters, they pushed deep into the northern territory, searching as far as a lake called Huimeng.
Many years before, when the Emperor was still the Military Commissioner of Hexi, to avenge the massacre of the local Mahe Valley people, he had led three hundred light cavalry in pursuit of northern raiders who vastly outnumbered them, and had cut them down here. Now, the northern forces had long since retreated westward to avoid the main strength of the army, not a single enemy remained in sight, and this spring lake had come under Hexi’s control.
It was a living spring in the wilderness. Over countless centuries the water had accumulated into a lake — deep, broad, and vast beyond measure, said to connect at its depths to the very center of the earth. The search team spent many days dragging the lake, and in the end recovered the imperial cap that the Emperor had been wearing that day. Beyond that, there was not a single further trace.
What this meant, there was no need to say. Fortunately, though the Crown Prince was still young, he handled matters with exceptional decisiveness — a quality reminiscent of His Majesty the Emperor. He promptly came forward in place of His Majesty, stabilized morale, and arranged all necessary affairs. Mindful also of the greater situation, from the day of the incident onward, the news had been kept from all but a small number of close attendants and officials. The sealed letter had been sent first to the palace, to await the Empress’s final determination.
Mu Fulan’s eyes flew wide open. She stared fixedly at the letter in her hands, unable to believe what she saw.
Her heart slammed against her chest with violent force. The blood surged and roared in her ears. Her two hands would not stop trembling.
That night at the Western Pass, the figure of the man riding away in the moonlight was still vivid before her eyes — and this man had died, just like that? He had vanished from this world without a trace?
Her legs went weak beneath her. She could no longer hold herself upright. Her hands scrabbled blindly at a corner of the table. She collapsed into the chair.