The first day of the seventh month was, by long custom, the day Li Shu went to burn incense at Qianfu Temple. This rule was as fixed as the movement of the sun and moon. Only this time she intended to stay on for several days.
There was, after all, nothing pressing to attend to.
In former times, when she had wished to linger at Qianfu Temple, there had always been some obstacle — the mansion was a constant bustle of visitors, all of them eager to call on her, because she had access to both the Emperor and the Crown Prince. Those people valued her power and influence, and came in droves to curry favor, bring gifts, or ask for help.
Now, though, things were quite different. She had been publicly scolded by the Emperor and cast aside by the Crown Prince like a worn-out sandal. The once-clamorous stream of callers at her gate had gone utterly quiet.
That was perfectly fine. In the past she had stood in the foreground — every move, every gesture scrutinized by watchful eyes — unable to make a single deviation from the expected. Now she had retreated into the shadows, and could observe others at her leisure. Working in obscurity was, in fact, far freer.
Li Shu set out from the city at dawn and arrived at Qianfu Temple by midday.
The temple was built into the mountainside, its long staircase climbing the slope in a winding series of steps. Li Shu had never counted them exactly but estimated there were likely several hundred.
The carriage stopped at the foot of the mountain. The servants brought out a sedan chair and carried Li Shu up along the stone steps.
About the time it takes an incense stick to burn, and they had reached the temple gate. Li Shu had only just stepped down from the sedan chair when she heard Hong Luo huffing and puffing beside her.
Hong Luo had climbed up on foot, and had nearly collapsed from the effort. Her face was streaming with sweat.
The weather that day was truly stifling — the sky a heavy, oppressive grey without a breath of wind, making it hard to draw a full breath. It all felt like the prelude to a sudden downpour.
The crimson gates with their bronze studs — Qianfu Temple’s main entrance — stood wide open. The abbot led a row of monks, all assembled outside to receive Li Shu with considerable ceremony.
Li Shu blinked at the sight of so many shaved heads.
Qianfu Temple was maintained entirely through Li Shu’s patronage, so naturally the abbot reserved the most spacious guest quarters for his benefactress — even though she almost never actually stayed here, the rooms were swept clean by young novices every day, not a speck of dust to be found.
Hong Luo directed the servants to bring the luggage in and settle the quarters, while Li Shu was led by the abbot toward the main hall.
Along the way, only a handful of scattered worshippers were to be seen.
Qianfu Temple was not among the great temples. It was more remote than most — the path up the mountain especially treacherous — and so its incense trade was sparse.
That suited Li Shu well enough. It saved her the trouble of ordering the guards to seal off the temple and clear it of other visitors.
Of late, she held a very different position in the court from what she once had. Keeping a low profile was the wiser course.
The abbot led Li Shu into the main hall of the great shrine. Before her stood a massive gilded statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, gleaming with golden radiance. The statue was posed in the manner of the sandalwood Buddha — one hand raised in the gesture known as Fearlessness, which is said to fulfill the wishes of all living beings and relieve them of suffering.
Li Shu didn’t believe a word of it.
Wishes had to be won by one’s own struggle. Suffering had to be endured by one’s own will. What good could a Buddha possibly do?
Were it not for her deceased mother, she would never have set foot in a temple in her life. She was an entirely practical person and never dwelt on anything fantastical or unreal.
Li Shu knelt on the cushion before the Buddha and burned three sticks of incense.
Then the abbot led the assembled monks as they settled cross-legged on their cushions and began to chant the Prayer for the Dead in unison. The voices hummed and resonated, filling the vast hall with their sound, echoing through the great space.
This, too, was the custom every time she came to burn incense. Though she understood nothing of the sutras, she could sit and listen to the monks chant through an entire afternoon — until Hong Luo came to tell her it was time for the evening meal.
Li Shu returned to the guest quarters and ate a few bites of the vegetarian supper — taking only two or three tastes of each dish before setting her chopsticks down, reflecting that however long the Qianfu Temple cook had been there, no one had yet seen fit to replace him.
After the meal, Li Shu walked along the covered corridor toward the back courtyard of the temple, passed out through the rear gate, and followed a winding path that climbed further up the mountain. Before long she reached a stone terrace, where a slender, elegant pagoda stood before her.
Hong Luo did not accompany Li Shu up into the pagoda — she waited below on the terrace, standing on tiptoe to keep the Princess’s figure in view.
The pagoda held an eternal flame lamp, and it was the Princess’s habit to enter and stand alone there for a time.
At the very center of the pagoda stood a lamp tower of white jade, roughly twenty feet in height — taller than two grown men stacked together. It was a pure, unblemished white, carved all over with scenes from the life of the Buddha, each a delicate work of fine relief.
At the summit of the lamp tower, a great lotus-shaped dish bore a thick wick connected to an oil reservoir within the tower’s interior. It burned with a steady, brilliant flame. This was the eternal flame lamp.
The eternal flame did not go out — it would only die when the oil ran dry, just as a person burns until they are spent. The abbot claimed this lamp could burn for a hundred years. Li Shu didn’t know whether that was true; she only knew that in the years she had been maintaining it, she had never seen it go dark.
Whether it went out or not — it was merely a gesture. The dead might not know. It was only a thought held by those still living.
Li Shu drew her gaze back and stepped out of the pagoda.
The pagoda was built upon a raised platform, with ancient trees pressing in thickly on three sides, and the fourth side looking out over a cliff, enclosed by a railing.
Li Shu walked over and stood at the railing. Looking downward, she saw the whole mountain enveloped in the last light of dusk, everything faintly blurred and grey.
From this terrace, nearly half of Qianfu Temple could be seen spread below. Li Shu watched as the monks, having finished their evening worship, filed out of the hall. They stood beneath the eaves, lifted down the lanterns that hung there, lit the candles inside, and rehung them.
From where Li Shu stood, it looked as though the hand of some divine being had swept lightly across the scene — and every lamp had ignited in succession, one by one, illuminating the entire temple.
Layered rooflines, towering halls, guardian warriors with fierce glares, bodhisattvas with gentle downcast eyes — the firelight touched them all, softening their expressions, as though imbuing them with the warm, smoky essence of the mortal world.
Whether her mother had loved this place or not, she didn’t know. But Li Shu herself was very fond of Qianfu Temple.
Li Shu’s mother had been a dancer in the palace, possessed of some measure of beauty. Through one night of imperial favor, she had conceived, and had been fortunate enough to carry the pregnancy to term. This was an ordinary enough story in the inner palace — a tale told of many an imperial concubine-born prince or princess. Yet it was only Li Shu and her mother who ended up in the Cold Palace.
Her mother had not been clever — one might even say she was somewhat foolish. She had never learned the first rule of survival in the inner court: keep quiet and draw no attention to yourself. Instead, buoyed by her pregnancy, she had repeatedly made rash mistakes — vying shamelessly for favor, offending concubine after concubine throughout the imperial harem.
And so, not long after giving birth to Li Shu, the Empress had grown weary of watching her strut about and seized on some minor fault to banish her to the Cold Palace.
Li Shu had no patience for foolish people. Yet from the very day of her birth, she had been bearing the bitter consequences of her mother’s foolishness.
Those vast and empty palace halls, so still that you could hear the blood moving through your own veins. That silence was the kind that made the heart turn cold with dread.
Just like the silence that lay over the whole mountain now.
Then, all at once, a sound of breathing rose from behind her. Unmistakably clear, just at her back.
Li Shu’s heart lurched. She spun around sharply — but in that split second, she only caught a glimpse of a masked face.
She had no time to say a word. No time even to cry out. The figure reached out and shoved her backward, hard.
The sensation of weightlessness threw Li Shu into sudden panic. She flung her hands out wildly, grasping for the railing — but instead caught only a small jade ornament hanging from the belt of the figure before her.
Then she fell from the cliff.
The evening bell of the temple rang out at that precise moment, its sound vast and deep, carrying across the entire mountain and all the surrounding wild.
And so the sound of Princess Pingyang’s “accidental fall” from the cliff was swallowed completely.
The masked figure looked down over the edge of the cliff, satisfied with their work.
Just now, when Princess Pingyang had turned around so suddenly, those eyes of hers had been so penetrating and sharp — as though in an instant she had seen straight through to his identity.
He had been startled inside, but fortunately had managed to push her over the edge in the end.
Earlier, when the news had reached the Eastern Palace, the Crown Prince had nearly demolished the entire chamber — vases and teacups shattering across the floor.
The Crown Prince’s eyes had turned bloodshot red with fury. “Cui Jinzhi says this whole thing was her scheme?”
He gnashed his teeth. “Very well. What a fine loyal dog!”
“Do you know what happens to a dog that bites its master?”
The guard shook his head.
The Crown Prince smiled savagely. “A dog that has bitten its master once must be put down at the earliest opportunity. Leave it alive, and it will bite again.”
*
A four-man sedan chair was making its way along the eastern official road toward the Yanxing Gate, with two attendants walking alongside.
The dusk deepened around them.
One of the attendants urged the bearers along. “Faster — the city gates will be closing soon.”
Just then, a bell rang out from the mountain above — distant, yet immense and resonant, ringing in a deep and stately tone. It startled every bird roosting in the mountainside trees into sudden flight.
The man inside the sedan chair heard the sound and lifted the curtain. A crimson cuff emerged around his hand, throwing his complexion into relief — pale and very fair, the fingers sinewed and well-defined. A pleasing sight.
“What place is this?” Shen Xiao asked.
He had left the city that morning on official business and was only now making his way back.
Ever since the Emperor had promoted him to the Secretariat, his duties had only multiplied compared to his time at the Ministry of Finance. The colleagues at the Secretariat were also doing their best to squeeze him out — every errand that involved running around outside the city got assigned to him.
The days of a Secretariat Reviewer were exceedingly busy.
But every time he climbed the white jade steps of the Taiji Palace for the morning court session, facing the rising sun, standing tall outside those lofty halls and looking down over all below — it all felt very much worth it.
He wanted to climb higher. That ambition had always been with him.
Through the gathering dusk, Shen Xiao looked out at a lushly forested mountain. But as night deepened, all that deep green had taken on a shadowy, indistinct quality — shifting and obscure, carrying a sense of something dark and consuming.
The attending servant heard the question and replied quickly, “My lord, this is Donggangshan. There is a Qianfu Temple on the mountain — that bell just now was the monks of Qianfu Temple striking the evening bell.”
Shen Xiao looked up toward the mountain and saw, through the dusk, that halfway up, lights burned in abundance. That must be the temple.
Shen Xiao said, “That temple looks to be quite well lit.”
The servant also glanced up the mountain, and at the sight of all those lights let out a surprised sound. “Qianfu Temple is usually quite a quiet place — not many worshippers come. So many lights tonight?”
He had barely finished speaking before the thought came to him. “Oh — I nearly forgot. Today is the first of the seventh month. Princess Pingyang comes to Qianfu Temple to burn incense every first and fifteenth of the month. No wonder the whole temple is lit.”
Even the monks of the Buddha’s house dared not be careless in their reception of the Princess.
Hearing this, Shen Xiao looked more intently at Qianfu Temple.
Since the day at the Hanyuan Hall, he had not seen Princess Pingyang for nearly half a month.
She had labored to lay a trap, and he had simply cooperated with her — and in doing so, she had lifted him to the rank of fifth grade.
That single word of thanks outside the Hanyuan Hall that day had never come close to capturing all that Shen Xiao felt.
And even now he still did not understand: she and Cui Jinzhi were both committed members of the Crown Prince’s faction — so why had her scheming around the grain seizure, from beginning to end, ultimately cost the Crown Prince so dearly?
She had seen straight through his character, had known he was the kind of person bold enough to stake everything on a single gamble — and yet he still had not been able to see through what she was truly thinking and planning.
Princess Pingyang… Princess Pingyang…
Three years ago, after the night of serving at her side, she had promised him an official post but had gone back on her word — at that time, Shen Xiao had felt a hatred for her that was carved into his very bones.
But the more he came into contact with her now, the more her intelligence and cunning — and even those occasional, fleeting glimpses of solitude — made it impossible for that hatred to hold.
She was the most extraordinary woman he had ever encountered.
Shen Xiao reined in his far-wandering thoughts, and was just about to draw his gaze away from Qianfu Temple when the thought suddenly surfaced — that day she had turned her ankle. He wondered if it had healed by now.
And so the phrase “Let us continue on into the city” that had been on the tip of his tongue was swallowed back down. The servant heard the clear, cool voice from inside the sedan chair say, “It is getting late. By the time we reach the Yanxing Gate, the city gates will likely already be closed.”
“It would be no trouble to lodge a night at Qianfu Temple and enter the city come morning.”
And so the sedan chair turned in the falling night, came to a stop at the foot of the mountain. The stone steps were too steep for the chair to ascend. Shen Xiao stepped out, lifted his eyes to the lights blazing across the whole temple, and began to climb.