Soldiers began searching for water to douse the fire. The deputy commander raised his hand; two powerfully built soldiers stepped forward and pressed their hands down on Cui Jinzhi’s shoulders. The arrow had buried itself entirely in his knee — blood flowed freely — and when he tried to stand, he could not help but stagger. But the soldiers behind him did not hesitate; they wrenched his arms behind his back and locked him in place, allowing him not so much as a fraction of movement.
Li Shu could not bear to keep looking at him. She turned her gaze away to the carriage, where the elder Duke Cuiguo was weeping openly as he watched Cui Jinzhi. Li Shu gave Hong Luo a slight wave of her hand, signaling her to lower the curtain — a scene like this was far too cruel for a father to witness.
The carriage turned and carried the Duke Cuiguo away from the lane. Cui Jinzhi’s gaze followed the carriage all the way until it disappeared at the far end of the alley. Only then did he slowly turn his head back.
His eyes were bloodshot — consumed with hatred.
“Li Shu — are you satisfied now?”
Li Shu stumbled back a step at the sudden violence of his hatred.
This hatred was not born only from today’s fire and the burning of Duke Cuiguo’s Mansion. It had accumulated over a long stretch of time, traveling across the years to reach her now — and its weight was crushing.
Cui Jinzhi’s voice was raw and hoarse. “My family — the Cui Family — has been ruined piece by piece at your hands. What deep enmity could you possibly have harbored against me?”
Li Shu froze. “What?”
What did he mean by “piece by piece”?
Cui Jinzhi let out a cold laugh. “What innocent act are you putting on? Five years ago, when my two elder brothers were killed in the southern frontier, it was your idea that prompted the Emperor. And now you have destroyed my last hope of restoring the Cui Family with your own hand.”
When Li Shu’s face went white as a sheet — eyes wide, still visibly uncomprehending — Cui Jinzhi coldly spat out eight words: “Gold cups shared in friendship; white blades show no mercy.”
“Or are you going to tell me you never said those words?”
Those eight words struck Li Shu with the force of a blow, leaving her momentarily stunned. Before she could recover herself, the soldiers had already forcibly turned Cui Jinzhi away — yet he twisted his head back, gaze sharp as a blade, as though he wished to drive it straight through her.
*
Time flows like water. In the span of a mere month, the court was transformed beyond recognition.
Cui Jinzhi’s march on the palace had brought the Crown Prince down with him. The Qianniu Guard had also uncovered the truth behind the Luo Mansion disaster and the incited uprising of refugees. Emperor Zhengyuan lay on his sickbed, yet he was so enraged he could have shattered the imperial bed with his fists. The Crown Prince was deposed and confined to a separate residence under close watch. The entire staff of the Eastern Palace was purged, to say nothing of the officials at court whose ties to the Eastern Palace ran deep.
With the Eastern Palace fallen, the standing of the Seventh Prince and Shen Xiao — who had together brought it down — rose naturally with the tide. Emperor Zhengyuan’s health grew worse with each passing day; no one knew when he might breathe his last. The Crown Prince had been deposed and the heir apparent’s seat stood empty. Who else but the Seventh Prince could fill it?
After the truth of the Luo Mansion matter was established, Shen Xiao’s restraints were lifted. But there was much he was needed for in coordinating with the Qianniu Guard’s investigations, and during that period he made multiple trips to Luo Mansion to help put down the final remnants of the uprising and restore peace and stability to the people there.
He had promised to spend the New Year’s Eve with Li Shu. That promise, in the end, went unfulfilled. The two of them were separated by distance, and it was only near the end of the first month — the new year nearly over — that Shen Xiao finally returned to the capital.
The first thing he did was go to find Li Shu. But when he arrived at her residence, the doorman told him Her Highness was not home today.
*
The place where members of the imperial family or high officials were imprisoned was naturally kept separate from the ordinary cells of the Ministry of Justice. The holding facility here housed few inmates, and the conditions were relatively better.
Cui Jinzhi, however, felt nothing particular about any of this. He had never been imprisoned before, so he had no basis for comparison.
A dim and heavy light filtered through the tall, narrow window. Cui Jinzhi wore only a white inner robe. Though nearly a month had passed since the day of the rebellion, and the weather was edging toward early spring, the air was still bitterly cold. The jailers had naturally tossed a padded coat in — but Cui Jinzhi did not wear it. He seemed to feel no cold at all. He sat with his back to the wall, out of the shaft of light falling from the window, submerging himself entirely in the dark.
Suddenly Cui Jinzhi heard the sound of footsteps, followed by the respectful voice of someone saying, “Your Highness, this way, please.”
He snapped his head up. Li Shu’s figure appeared in the doorway of the cell.
Li Shu narrowed her eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the darkness. She was still struggling to make out the shapes of the objects inside when she heard a hoarse voice say, “A person under criminal charges — what would bring the Princess Pingyang all the way here, condescending to grace me with a visit?”
His voice was ragged. His entire person was shrouded in the shadows at the corner of the wall — the voice seemed to drift out of the dark like something spectral.
Li Shu followed the direction of his voice and strained to make out Cui Jinzhi’s silhouette among the shadows.
Even at this remove, Li Shu could discern it well enough: Cui Jinzhi was now terribly gaunt. The jailers had told her that since the day of his imprisonment he had eaten and drunk almost nothing, had barely spoken, and simply sat in the dark all day long in utter silence, like a carved effigy.
Executions were not carried out during the first month, out of concern for disrupting the festival’s auspicious spirit. Cui Jinzhi was simply waiting for the month to end. He knew his guilt could not be escaped, and he had no desire to confess voluntarily or beg for leniency to reduce his sentence; he refused to cooperate with any investigation whatsoever. Li Shu could see it plainly — Cui Jinzhi was waiting to die.
After Cui Jinzhi’s mocking barb, Li Shu did not reply. She stood in silence, looking at him. He, in turn, waited in silence, as though the two of them were facing off — or perhaps quietly tallying all that had passed between them across the years.
After a long pause, Li Shu finally spoke. “Cui Jinzhi — after everything that has brought you to this point, have you ever felt any regret?”
At her question, Cui Jinzhi gave a sound like a man who has just heard the greatest joke in the world. “Regret? Li Shu — what face do you have to ask me that? ‘Gold cups shared in friendship; white blades show no mercy.’ Have you forgotten?”
Cui Jinzhi lunged out of the shadows and hurled himself against the cell door, gripping the wooden bars. He was almost pressing his face against hers.
He met her eyes directly. His gaze was all resentment and hatred.
“Have you remembered now? Or have you forgotten everything?”
Li Shu was startled by Cui Jinzhi’s sudden lunge and instinctively stepped back. But Cui Jinzhi’s arm shot through the bars and seized her by the forearm, clamping down with a grip like a drowning man unleashing a last burst of desperate, hopeless strength.
“If you’ve forgotten, I don’t mind helping you remember.”
“I haven’t forgotten!” Li Shu was locked in his grip, forced to endure Cui Jinzhi’s blade-cold gaze, the pain almost unbearable — yet she found she had no desire to pull away.
She met his eyes, and slowly began to speak. “Five years ago, the Crown Prince had his eye on Princess Anle as a prospective bride for you. I was displeased with the arrangement, so I found a way to sabotage the match and took Anle’s place, substituting myself as your intended. It was because of this that Qing Luo lived in daily dread and faked her own death to escape disaster.”
“That was the moment you decided I acted without scruple. You began to despise me from then on.”
The rift between them — the distance and the estrangement — had not been forged in a single day. Too many things had come between them.
“After we were betrothed but before we were wed, I was walking through the Imperial Flower Garden one day and happened upon my father the Emperor. He was reading. He had been reading a history, and had come to the tale of ‘the hound slaughtered when the hares are gone.’ He asked me what I thought of the emperors throughout history who had cut down their meritorious subjects.”
“To please my father, I offered only eight words: ‘Gold cups shared in friendship; white blades show no mercy.'”
Glory and wealth could naturally be shared — but the moment a subject’s power truly threatened the imperial authority, that subject had to be eliminated. So it had been throughout every dynasty. Li Shu had distilled the countless tales in the histories into those eight words.
When she reached this point, Cui Jinzhi cut in through gritted teeth: “It was because of those words of yours that you helped the Emperor make up his mind. In the battle on the southern frontier — did my two elder brothers truly die by accident in combat? They did not. The Emperor had people arrange it behind the scenes. From that day onward, the Cui Family never recovered. It was all because of you!”
Li Shu’s face was white and bloodless. She gave a slow, acquiescent nod. “Yes. From that point, you concluded that I had curried favor with the Emperor at the Cui Family’s expense — that I had even whispered slander into his ear, and that it was I who caused the Cui Family’s final downfall.”
The matter of Qing Luo was wholly beside the point. What mattered was a blood feud impossible to erase.
She had been freshly released from the Cold Palace at the time, her grasp of politics not yet sharp. She had not known that Emperor Zhengyuan was already troubled by the Cui Family’s power. She had not known that a single careless phrase of flattery could bring about the deaths of Cui Jinzhi’s two elder brothers.
Li Shu opened her mouth, wanting to defend herself, yet not knowing how. She felt herself to be innocent — it was only a handful of words — yet also not entirely innocent, for it was her father who had acted on what she said, and the Cui Family’s downfall had followed.
Five years of an unhappy marriage. Five years of cold indifference. The reason had finally been found. It had nothing to do with a mistress or any other woman. It was the enmity of slaughtered brothers. He had hated her — and yet in the end he had still married her. Day and night he had lived beside her across an ocean of blood, and every time he looked at her, he was reminded of the deaths of his two brothers.
And so everything he had done — the coldness, the hatred — had its justification.
Li Shu had never thought this before, but now there were only three words echoing in her mind: she deserved it. Every pain of those five years of marriage — she deserved every bit of it.
Li Shu no longer dared to meet Cui Jinzhi’s hateful gaze. The hatred was almost tangible in its weight — pressing her back one step. Cui Jinzhi watched the anguish on her face and released her arm.
Li Shu’s steps nearly faltered; she was on the verge of losing her balance entirely. At that moment, a pair of hands reached from behind and steadied her firmly.
Those hands carried warmth. Li Shu turned, and saw Shen Xiao’s face.
He must have just returned from Luo Mansion — there was still dust and road-weariness about him, stubble shadowing his jaw, fatigue beneath his eyes.
She did not know when he had arrived at the prison, or how much of what had been said he had heard.
“Shen Xiao…”
Li Shu called his name, but Shen Xiao did not look at her. His gaze fell directly on Cui Jinzhi.
He drew Li Shu into his arms, and after a long silence, he finally spoke. “Lord Cui — you are truly a coward.”
His tone was one of undisguised contempt.
Cui Jinzhi snapped his head up, his eyes burning with fury.
Shen Xiao met his gaze with a cold laugh. “Why are you looking at me like that — do you object?”
“The death of your brothers and the fall of your family — you have laid all responsibility for it at Li Shu’s feet, placed the blame on those eight weightless words. Then let me ask you this: if the Emperor had harbored no suspicion toward the Cui Family whatsoever, could Li Shu have changed the mind of an emperor with eight words alone?”
Li Shu started, and listened as Shen Xiao’s voice turned colder still:
“In those days, the Cui Family’s power and influence were overwhelming. The Emperor was constrained and burdened by the great clans; his edicts were blocked and obstructed at every turn. He urgently needed to break up the power of the aristocratic houses, and the Cui Family was the foremost target to be made an example. The Emperor had already resolved upon it — he only lacked a final push. Even without Li Shu, even without the battle on the southern frontier, there would have been other campaigns; your two brothers were destined to die in battle, the Cui Family’s military power was destined to be stripped away.”
“You believe that all your suffering today traces back to those eight words of Li Shu’s — and so all these years you have treated her with cold disdain, even with hatred; you have disregarded her feelings entirely and trampled her emotions underfoot.”
“You dared not direct your hatred at the high and untouchable Emperor — so you could only vent all your bitterness on Li Shu. You deceived yourself. You convinced yourself that if not for Li Shu’s eight words, your brothers would have lived; if not for Li Shu, the Cui Family’s glory and favor would have endured…”
Shen Xiao’s voice suddenly rose, cutting sharp through the cold stillness of the cell — a relentless, piercing demand: “Tell me — do you truly believe they would not have died?”
Shen Xiao’s words drove Cui Jinzhi speechless. He was silent for a long while; in the quiet of the cell, all that could be heard was his heavy, ragged breathing.
Forced to the wall by those cutting words, utterly without recourse, Cui Jinzhi clenched his teeth for a long moment — and then gave a cold laugh:
“Lord Shen has quite a silver tongue. I cannot argue against you. Now that the Eastern Palace has fallen and the great clans have collapsed, the commoner-born have risen to power — overnight, a wave of newly elevated men has emerged. Lord Shen is foremost among them: young, talented, at the height of your influence. Small wonder you speak with such sweeping authority. I am nothing but a declining old-clan man who has already been cast aside — I could not possibly compare to Lord Shen in anything.”
His quiet laugh drifted out from the darkness of the prison cell. “But, Lord Shen — there is one thing you had best not forget. The longer a commoner-born man roots himself at the top of the court, the greater the chance he becomes the new old clan. You stand at the peak of your fortunes today — but do you truly believe you are the winner in this game of political struggle? There will come a day when you — or your descendants — arrive at the same place where I stand now.”
When the ancient towering trees fall, the sunlight finally reaches the forest floor. The small trees that once had no access to light begin to drink in the nourishment desperately; they begin to grow with furious urgency — and one day, they too will rise to become towering trees. And when their canopies spread wide, they too will claim an entire stretch of sky, taking all the light for themselves, leaving not so much as a single ray for anything growing beneath.
The old trees fall. New trees stand in their place.
The cycle churns on. The court remains a sea of purple and crimson robes — only the surnames have changed; everything else is the same as before.
You have defeated me today; one day, someone will come to defeat you.
What standing do you have to speak to me? When you have truly walked to the same desperate dead end where I now stand, then — and only then — will you have any right to understand what I have done.
Cui Jinzhi saw it all with painful clarity. The politics of the court was nothing more than an endless cycle: you replace me, then another comes to replace you.
But to Cui Jinzhi’s surprise, Shen Xiao heard all of this without the slightest flicker of emotion. He even gave a faint smile. “Lord Cui speaks very rightly. There is only one point on which I must respectfully disagree.”
“Some will be rich, some will be poor; some will hold high station, some will be low — this is an immutable law that no one can change.”
“Do you know where your error lies, Lord Cui? There is nothing wrong with being wealthy or exalted. But to strive to preserve that exaltation forever — that is the gravest of errors. To protect your prominence against all challengers, you feared every force rising from below. You tried to seal off every upward path for those born into poverty and low rank. You wished to keep society as still as a dead pool of water — you wished to ensure that the privileged remained privileged forever, and the lowly remained lowly forever.”
At this, Shen Xiao crouched down, and through the bars of the cell door, he met Cui Jinzhi’s eyes directly.
“Lord Cui — in my view, you are a coward through and through. Because you — and your kind, the old clans — for all your apparent invulnerability and lofty superiority, what you were doing was simply sitting on your gilded thrones, trembling in fear. You were afraid that the commoner-born would surpass you. You were afraid that the moment we gained any strength, we would overturn you completely. That is why you sought to crush me while I had not yet risen — you feared that once I had grown, I would upend your entire order entirely.”
“But I am different from you. I have never been afraid of anything. Let those with talent rise — I would never block the path of someone striving upward. I have never feared that another person might threaten my position. There will always be those who prosper, and always those who struggle — but if the cycle flows freely, if no station is locked in permanence forever, that is enough.”
“That, Lord Cui, is the difference between you and me. Between the old clans and those who rose from nothing. Do you acknowledge now that you are a coward?”
At those final words, Cui Jinzhi was visibly shaken. Yet Shen Xiao did not spare him another glance. He rose to his feet and said to Li Shu, “Let us go. There is nothing more to be gained from visiting him.”
Li Shu hesitated, lingered half a step behind, and finally said to Cui Jinzhi, “Your… your father is not well. I have petitioned my father for an imperial favor — you will be permitted to leave prison to visit him for half a shichen. Clean yourself up a little, and when you see him tomorrow, try not to let him worry.”
After all, it would be their last meeting — Li Shu left that unsaid. The elder Duke Cuiguo’s health was failing with each passing day; he had already reached the point of a lamp guttering in the wind.
Li Shu and Shen Xiao left together. Standing outside the prison, Li Shu blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light. She was silent for a long while, then let out a long sigh.
“Shen Xiao — do you know, when I first came to know Cui Jinzhi, he was nothing like this.”
He had been a young man in fine clothes riding a spirited horse — dashing and free, the kind of man who caught every eye.
Li Shu did not quite know why she was saying any of this to Shen Xiao. She simply had many things in her heart with no one else to say them to.
“Cui Jinzhi had two elder brothers, each a good deal older than him, who both followed the arrangements of the elder Duke Cuiguo and went into the army early to inherit the family’s military legacy. Cui Jinzhi was the elder Duke’s son of his old age — his two brothers were so much older they were almost like fathers to him, and they doted on him endlessly.”
“In those days the Cui Family wielded tremendous power, and Cui Jinzhi lacked for nothing. As a young man he was utterly carefree — he loved mountains and rivers, loved the life of a wandering knight-errant, loved the celebrated courtesans of the pleasure quarters in Chang’an whom even a thousand gold pieces could hardly buy an audience with. No one told him he was wrong for any of it, and no one forced him to be any particular way. When he got into trouble, his family smoothed it over; when he spent lavishly, his family kept the gold flowing.”
“He — he was too happy in his youth. He had too much. And so when those things were gone, the loss was all the more unbearable to him. What brought him to this point was also —”
“— There is no shortage of misfortune in the world,” Shen Xiao suddenly cut in. “If you like, I can find you ten thousand examples of broken families and ruined lives among the common people.”
His voice was almost cold. “There is a great deal of suffering in this world, but none of it is Cui Jinzhi’s justification for his crimes. I have no interest whatsoever in his helplessness or his pain. What interests me is only the consequences of his actions.”
Shen Xiao released Li Shu’s hand, pressing his lips together, and for a moment a trace of something unyielding and distant crossed his face. “If you are moved to feel sympathy for him because of the past you once shared, then how do you account for all the people of Luo Mansion — those whose uprising he incited? How could you possibly extend that same sympathy to them?”
“Li Shu — in this life, there are countless things beyond our control. At every crossroads, you choose: left or right, toward the light or into the dark. Endless choices compose a life. If he had made even one choice correctly, he would not be standing where he stands today.”
With that, Shen Xiao seemed to have no further words for Li Shu. He appeared somewhat annoyed. He left her where she stood and climbed into the carriage on his own. Li Shu looked after him, her mind gone momentarily blank.
Shen Xiao had boarded the carriage on his own and sat leaning against the carriage wall, his profile drawn tight and sharp. Had it not been for Cui Jinzhi inciting the uprising in Luo Mansion, the spring planting there would have been well underway by now. Cui Jinzhi had his helplessness — but then, who in this world did not?
Li Shu and Cui Jinzhi shared too deep a history. No matter what Cui Jinzhi had done, it seemed she always found in herself some special softness toward him — and Shen Xiao disliked that in her.
He sat in the carriage for a long while, but heard no sound of Li Shu boarding. The two of them were separated — one inside, one outside — in a silence like a standoff; this had never happened between them before.
In the end, it was Shen Xiao who relented first. He lifted the curtain and saw Li Shu still standing outside the carriage, her expression adrift, lost in thought.
Shen Xiao let out a helpless, quiet sigh. He stretched his hand out to her — his tone hovering somewhere between yielding and commanding. “Come inside.” Part concession, part insistence.
The carriage set off, the soft rolling sound of the wheels only making the silence feel deeper.
Li Shu looked out through the carriage curtain at the passing scenery, keeping her gaze away from Shen Xiao — and then she felt warmth pressing at her back. Shen Xiao’s body leaned in close; he rested his chin on her shoulder and folded his arms around her.
Shen Xiao tilted his head slightly, his breath grazing her face. Li Shu turned away — but the rigid tension went out of her spine, and she leaned back into his arms, half-resting against his chest.
“I was not trying to defend Cui Jinzhi, nor am I saying I feel sorry for him. I was just… thinking…”
Li Shu exhaled slowly. “He and I are very similar people in many ways — his obsession was his family name, and mine was power. If not for you, I would have walked down the same road as him sooner or later, fallen completely into it and brought about consequences beyond redemption.”
Shen Xiao was quiet for a moment, and then gave a soft laugh.
The small resentment in his heart vanished all at once. He thought to himself: yes, Li Shu and Cui Jinzhi might share a past that he could never be part of — but that past had only pushed her further into a deeper abyss. For Li Shu, he was the one who was irreplaceable: the ferry that carried her across the water, or the light that had led her home.
Shen Xiao tightened his arms around her. “I know you wanted to help him. But he has to find his own way to clarity first.”
*
The following day, Cui Jinzhi was fitted with shackles on his hands and feet, and a detail of jailers escorted him to a private courtyard.
It was mid-afternoon. The sky above was still heavy with thick cloud, no sunlight breaking through — the day felt oppressively overcast.
The elder Duke Cuiguo had had no knowledge whatsoever of Cui Jinzhi’s march on the palace; his health was in ruins; and he had in his time rendered distinguished service to the empire. None of Cui Jinzhi’s rebellion had been allowed to fall upon the old man’s shoulders. Besides — even if it had not, he did not have long left to live.
The door of the main chamber was opened, and a sharp, dense smell of medicinal herbs drifted out. From the inner room came the sound of a cough. Cui Jinzhi’s entire body tensed; he gathered the chains at his hands and feet and walked forward, as lightly as he could manage.
His father — the elder Duke Cuiguo — lay in the bed. He looked even more ashen and diminished than the last time Cui Jinzhi had seen him. Although Cui Jinzhi moved with great care, and the elder Duke Cuiguo had been hard of hearing and poor of sight for years, he seemed to sense something by instinct — he looked up at once.
The old man opened his mouth and raised his hand, pointing toward Cui Jinzhi with trembling fingers.
Cui Jinzhi hurried to his side and sat on the edge of the bed. The chains clinked. The elder Duke Cuiguo’s gaze was drawn to the sound; he turned and looked at the chains on Cui Jinzhi’s body. The clarity in his clouded eyes suddenly filled with tears.
He opened his mouth, and made several sounds — as though trying to say something — but because his speech was impaired, only a confused, indistinct murmur came out, the words impossible to distinguish.
“Father… Father…”
Cui Jinzhi gripped the elder Duke Cuiguo’s hand tightly. Beyond those two words, he could not find any others.
The elder Duke Cuiguo looked back at him. His gaze held the kind of tolerance and forbearance that only comes from having weathered a lifetime of hardship. Cui Jinzhi bowed his head to the edge of the bed. The old man struggled to raise his left hand, and let it fall — gently — on top of Cui Jinzhi’s head. He began to smooth his son’s hair, picking out one by one the bits of straw caught in it — as though his son were nothing more than a child who had come home after a day of mischievous play, and the straw in his hair were nothing more than leaves that had fallen on him while he was climbing trees.
“Third… Third Son…”
The elder Duke Cuiguo finally spoke his first words of the day. And though his slurred speech made even these almost indistinguishable, Cui Jinzhi understood them perfectly.
He was the third child. In private, his father and brothers had always called him by that name.
It had been so long since he had heard that tender, familiar form of address. Since his brothers had fallen in battle five years ago and his father had taken ill and never recovered, he had not heard it once.
Or perhaps — truth be told — there had been moments when he could have heard it again. Only in these past years, he had been so consumed by court affairs, by conflict and struggle, by shouldering the weight of the family name, that he had forgotten the most important thing of all: to simply be at his father’s side.
“Third Son…”
The elder Duke Cuiguo’s bony hand rested on the chains at Cui Jinzhi’s wrists. He opened his mouth wide, as though there were a thousand things he needed to say — yet he could only form the simplest of words and sounds.
What was the meaning of supreme power, or the family’s former glory? It had brought him nothing but suffering — only loss. It had taken two sons from him, and then he had watched with his own eyes as his youngest, the son least suited for the court, was blinded by hatred and drawn into political struggle, until at last he had lost every trace of his former clarity and walked headlong into ruin.
Cui Jinzhi harbored his resentment toward the imperial throne — but the elder Duke Cuiguo did not. He had lived to this age and witnessed far too much. He had seen through everything long ago. He had already lost two sons. He did not want to lose the last one.
His time was nearly done. The one wish that remained to him was only this: that Cui Jinzhi might live on, and live well.
“Third Son…”
“I am listening, Father. I am listening…” Cui Jinzhi answered urgently.
“Forget… forget the Cui Family… it doesn’t matter, those… those past glories, those… they don’t matter.”
No one demanded that you carry the Cui Family’s honor on your shoulders. Who rises and who falls, who lives and who dies — it is the natural order of things. Do not try to force what cannot be forced.
“You alone… you alone, live on well. Forget all that is past. From now on… be lighter… be happier…”
When those words were spoken, it seemed as though every last reserve of the elder Duke Cuiguo’s strength had been exhausted. He lay with his mouth open, gasping in shallow breaths, his chest rising and falling. His pupils grew wide and unfocused — yet he strained, with what remained of his will, to raise his hand once more.
Cui Jinzhi reached forward and clasped the elder Duke Cuiguo’s gaunt, skeletal hand. He could feel it plainly: his father was leaving him. His hand shook with violent, helpless trembling.
The withered fingers came to rest against his brow. After years of scheming and maneuvering in the court — years of plotting and counter-plotting — Cui Jinzhi’s brow, once the most carefree and unencumbered of brows, was now furrowed with deep creases.
With infinite slowness, the elder Duke Cuiguo smoothed away one of those furrows. That featherlight gesture used the very last of his strength. Then his hand lost all support, and fell back onto the bedding.
“Father… Father!”
A piercing cry of anguish erupted from the room — a sound beyond the category of weeping, raw with a grief so primal the man seemed to have been stripped back to something animal.
The dead have gone. Those left behind still have a long road ahead of them.
*
In the blink of an eye, it was the third month. Spring had long since arrived; the trees beyond the city walls were bright with new growth, a sight that lifted the heart.
Two officers of the law were escorting a prisoner in chains. They had just passed through the city gates and were heading south down the official road, bound for Lingnan, when — scarcely a few steps out — the sound of a carriage came up behind them. It slowed and stopped.
The carriage curtain was lifted. Princess Pingyang stepped down from the carriage and gave a courteous nod to the two officers. “I have come to bid a farewell. Would you allow me a moment?”
Neither officer dared to refuse Her Highness. They stepped aside at once, though their eyes remained fixed on the prisoner, not missing a single movement.
The first month had barely ended when Emperor Zhengyuan finally failed to survive the winter and passed away. In his final moments, he had gripped the Seventh Prince Li Qin’s hand without letting go, repeating again and again: “You… you are kind-hearted…”
Li Qin understood what Emperor Zhengyuan meant. He nodded. “Your son understands.”
Let the Crown Prince live. Do not exterminate him entirely.
Emperor Zhengyuan closed his eyes and was gone. The Seventh Prince Li Qin ascended the throne before the emperor’s coffin. The deposed Crown Prince was stripped of his title, reduced to commoner status, and exiled to Qianzhou, never to return to the capital. As for Cui Jinzhi, who had led troops to storm the palace — Li Qin, out of respect for the great service the Cui Family had rendered in the past, had not sentenced him to death. Exile to Lingnan to serve as a soldier; his descendants to remain commoners for all generations. This was an enormous act of mercy.
Today was the day Cui Jinzhi set out on his journey.
Li Shu and Cui Jinzhi stood facing each other in silence. Since the death of the elder Duke Cuiguo, Cui Jinzhi had refused food and drink for many days in the prison — and just when Li Shu thought he meant to starve himself to death, he seemed to have made peace with something, and began eating and drinking normally again.
Looking at him now, Li Shu saw only a face that was tranquil and at rest. The reckless ease of his youth was gone; the tight-held bitterness and silent endurance of his adult years were gone too. What remained was an absolute and entire calm.
Let go of wealth and glory. Let go of all the hatred and obsession. Everything he had done over the years — he had told himself it was to restore the family name, but at its root, it had been nothing more than a longing to return to the days when his father and brothers still surrounded him.
He had once had the chance. While his father was still alive, he could have abandoned everything at court, stayed faithfully at the old man’s bedside, and allowed him to live out his remaining years in peace — rather than letting him die in the terror of a coup attempt.
Or: had he not directed his hatred toward Li Shu, they might have had a happy marriage. He might have built a new family, one that could have eased the pain of losing his brothers.
Cui Jinzhi had not taken any of these roads. He had chosen the hardest one, the most obsessive one — the road of power — and in the end it had collapsed entirely beneath him. He had lost all power, and at the same time lost every bond of love.
He had come to understand all of it clearly, and so now he was utterly at peace. It did not matter who was rich or who was honored. His father had told him to live on and live well… Li Shu, too, wished him to live on and live well.
Cui Jinzhi looked at Li Shu. After a long silence, he said: “I am sorry.”
There were many things he owed her an apology for. But through all the twists and turns of fate, the two of them had at last come to this end.
Li Shu had been deeply worried about Cui Jinzhi before coming to see him off — afraid that he might be unable to make his peace with all that had happened. But now, looking at him, so tranquil and composed, the anxiety left her.
She did not know what else to say; a thousand words had been spent in all that had passed between them, and the future was an open blank. So Li Shu could only say: “The road to Lingnan is long. Take good care of yourself.”
Sky and road stretched wide ahead. This parting would last a lifetime.
The wound in Cui Jinzhi’s knee had never fully healed, and he walked now with a slight but permanent limp. Yet his silhouette, as he walked away, was resolute.
Li Shu watched his retreating figure for a long, long while. Then she turned, and walked in the opposite direction — through the arch of the city gate, back into the city, step by step, on foot, unwilling to ride.
One road, two ends. They had once crossed. In the end, each walked toward a different fate.
*
When the new Emperor ascended the throne, he opened the imperial examinations wide, raising up scholars from humble origins in great numbers. Shen Xiao, for his role in aiding the new Emperor’s ascension and for his proven ability in governance, was appointed Grand Secretary — a position equivalent to Chief Minister. Three years later, when Princess Pingyang’s mourning period came to an end, she was wed to Shen Xiao.
(End)