Since the death of the Jiang clan matriarch, Penglai Palace had been locked and sealed. Day to day, only a few elderly palace maids stood watch; no one else came or went.

The tiered terraces and carved railings of former days, once fragrant with growing things, were now dark with creeping moss on the steps and fallen cobwebs trailing from the roof tiles.

The long-sealed gate was opened, and everyone followed Prince Duan and Guo Lang as they hastened inside, passing through palace corridors now overgrown with wild grass, and quickly came to the sleeping chamber where Lady Jiang had lived — stopping at the place behind the great plaque that Song Changsheng had described.

Two palace guards raised a long ladder and climbed up. And indeed — in the hollow space behind the plaque, they found a box of dark sandalwood. Those below received it, wiped away the surface dust, and carried it up to a small incense altar that had been set out for the occasion.

Prince Duan led the assembled company in burning incense and paying reverence with a bow. After washing his hands, he himself stepped forward and opened the lid of the outer box.

Everyone held their breath and looked on. Inside the outer box was another, inner box. Opening this second one as well, they found a scroll of silk.

This, surely, was the imperial decree that Lady Jiang had left behind in life.

Prince Duan lifted it out and unrolled it, skimming through it rapidly. The great weight in his heart settled at once, and he was overcome with deep emotion. He raised his eyes to meet the gazes being directed at him from all sides, steadied himself, passed the decree to Song Changsheng, returned to his position, and led the assembled officials in kneeling before the incense altar to receive the edict.

Song Changsheng read aloud the last decree Lady Jiang had left behind in life, word by word.

“On the sixth month of the forty-first year of Xuanning, the day of jihai, at the hour of jiazi, the Emperor came before me late in the night. He said: as to the case of the Crown Prince forcing the palace in the thirty-ninth year, he had known all along — on that day, Prince Qin had in truth no involvement whatsoever with the matter. It was the Liang Crown Prince’s scheme, designed to trap him in a position of disloyalty and impiety.”

“The Emperor further condemned himself, saying that in his urgent fury at the time, his mind had been clouded and he had committed a grave error, causing Prince Qin to bear an unjust grievance. Now, knowing that his final days were at hand, and having weighed the matter thoroughly, he found that Prince Qin was truly magnanimous and benevolent, a man of great talent and broad vision, who would certainly be capable of preserving the ancestral temple and steadying the dynasty — and so he had set down a final testament, wishing to pass the throne to his fourth son, Prince Qin.”

Yet Mingzong had also harbored concerns: he feared that this decision of his might come too suddenly for the court, triggering upheaval. And so that night, he had come to Penglai Palace in the deep of night to see Lady Jiang, bearing the edict, hoping that she, after his passing, would personally proclaim this final decree and lend her support to Prince Qin’s accession to the supreme throne.

Lady Jiang wrote in her decree that she had carefully considered the matter at the time and, on the grounds that the Emperor’s second son, Prince Jin, was already of age and had given no cause for reproach over the years, and that it was contrary to ritual and propriety for the Emperor to pass over an older son to appoint a younger one, she had prevented Mingzong from passing the throne to Prince Qin. And yet over the years that followed, having witnessed the many upheavals in the nation and at court, and in the final moments before her death, reflecting on the considerations of that earlier day — whether right or wrong was difficult to judge absolutely — she found that her own action then had not been without its element of rashness.

Before the steps of the hall knelt over a hundred people, utterly silent. Every ear was turned to listen. Apart from Song Changsheng’s voice reading aloud Lady Jiang’s final words, not even half a sound could be heard.

Song Changsheng finished reading. His eyes were already rimmed with red. He paused, cleared his throat, and at last looked up at Prince Duan, Guo Lang, and the others before him and said: “The Grand Empress Dowager said that the decree of succession Mingzong left behind in life is sealed within her great outer coffin. After she passed, if the country remained at peace, it was never to be opened — on the day of her final burial, it would be sealed beneath the earth with her forever. But if the realm should fall into great upheaval, the coffin was to be opened and the decree retrieved; all subjects under heaven were then to follow Mingzong’s final testament and go to welcome Prince Qin, to succeed to the ancestral line and continue the heritage of those who came before.”

When his voice fell, the steps before the hall were silent for a moment — and then several ministers were moved to wipe their tears, overcome with emotion that the Grand Empress Dowager, even in her final moments, had still made such painstaking arrangements for the sake of the court. At first it was only a few; then more and more joined them, until at last the sound of weeping filled the air.

A gust of wind passed, and the startling-bird bells at the corners of the hall swayed gently. Along with the sound of quiet weeping, they chimed out a few faint and lonely notes.

Prince Duan reverently gathered up the Grand Empress Dowager’s decree, cast a glance at Marquis Yao and his followers — now completely limp on the ground, their faces ashen, unable to utter a single word further — exchanged a few words with Guo Lang and the others, and ordered them taken into custody. Then he led the assembled ministers on their way, riding without pause, all of them making haste toward the imperial mausoleum together.

Lady Jiang’s coffin was in four layers, the outermost being the great outer coffin.

When they arrived at the Hall of Enshrined Peace, after completing the rites of sacrifice and reverence, at the appointed auspicious hour, the coffin was brought out and the outermost layer of the coffin lid was opened.

As the heavy lid was slowly raised, a sealed box was indeed revealed within — placed square and true upon the lid of the second layer of the coffin.

The assembled company held their breath and watched as Prince Duan lifted out the box. He opened it, and with careful hands drew from within a rolled scroll, which he spread out upon the altar of sacrifice.

Guo Lang led the assembled officials forward to personally examine the decree of succession that Mingzong had left behind in those years past.

The body of the edict was written on yellow silk, the two ends wound around jade rollers. The surface of the silk bore a pattern of auspicious clouds and cranes in hidden relief, with a nine-clawed coiled golden dragon on each side.

This was unmistakably the form of a decree of succession.

And its contents, just as Lady Jiang’s final words had described: Mingzong had intended to pass the throne to his fourth son, Prince Qin.

At the foot of the edict were two great seals. One was the national seal; the other, Mingzong’s imperial seal.

By convention, the national seal was passed down from emperor to emperor through the ages, while the emperor’s personal seal was buried with the emperor upon his death.

Mingzong had reigned for more than forty years. Many of the officials present had worked with his seal countless times and knew it intimately.

The seal impressions on this testament were vivid and clear, with every detail perfectly intact — unmistakably the imperial seal Mingzong had used in his time.

There was no longer any room for the slightest doubt: Prince Qin’s succession to the supreme throne was now beyond question.

Prince Duan took the testament in hand and led the company out of the Hall of Enshrined Peace to pay obeisance before Mingzong’s tomb. The sound of bowing and calling out reverberations shook the original mausoleum grounds, startling the mountain birds so that they scattered with a rustling flutter.

After Prince Duan led the assembled ministers back to the capital, he immediately proclaimed the matter to all under heaven. The people of the capital, upon hearing the news, were without exception in a fervor of excitement. The court then convened to deliberate and selected representatives from the imperial clan and among the ministers, who set out in a six-horse carriage for He Xi to welcome Prince Qin back to the capital to ascend the throne.

After the procession departed the capital, Prince Duan and the others waited with eager anticipation.

What they did not yet know was that at this moment, the situation in the north and in Xiyu had changed once more.

The welcoming party had set out at the start of the month.

At the end of the month, Prince Duan received a message from He Xi.

Prince Qin had not yet set foot on the road back to the capital.

He had gone west again, beyond the pass.

Out there, one final great battle awaited him.

……

Deep in the night in the north, in the great tent of the Dongdi Khan, the Shuang Khan received the news of Shen Yang’s death, and also learned that the Eastern Capital had been taken. He could no longer sleep.

More than a year before, Lady Jiang of the Li dynasty had died; the new emperor was mediocre, and the court had no capable ministers.

He had judged the Li dynasty’s fortunes to be in decline, and all preparations had been completed. So he had launched this massive southward campaign.

In his conception, beneath the iron hooves, the Li dynasty would suffer the double blow of He Xi falling and the north being lost. And at the very heart of their territory, Shen Yang would also drive in a sharp, piercing blade straight through to the core.

War on all sides, within and without — the Li dynasty could not possibly emerge unscathed. Even if they managed by a stroke of luck to escape total destruction, the vast stretches of He Xi and the northern territories he had long desired would certainly fall to them.

He had not imagined that the Li dynasty’s national fortune would still not be broken.

Because of one man — Li Xuandu — he had no choice but to swallow this bitter fruit of defeat.

He was unwilling to accept it. Yet even if he could now organize his troops and mount another campaign, he no longer had confidence in fighting on.

Nomadic regimes by nature admired strength — this gave them the most formidable and ferocious warriors, but it also brought with it a fatal flaw: the diffusion of power. Unlike the dynastic polities of the central plains, which had relatively stable organizations and systems of officials, here, unless a supremely authoritative and powerful leader emerged, once a great military defeat was suffered, the Khan who had been raised up through the coalition’s consensus would face doubt, and even rebellion and replacement, from the various tribes below.

In hundreds of years past, there had never been an exception.

He himself had risen to his position in precisely this way.

He also knew himself well.

The successive great defeats in He Xi and the northern frontier had cost him his prestige; he could no longer freely mobilize the forces of the various tribes. If he were to press on with the fighting and somehow failed to reverse the losses, it would certainly bring about his own destruction.

The most important thing now was to first stabilize his position. And so, having thought it over carefully beforehand, he had refused the plea sent from the Eastern Capital asking him to send troops again to ease the pressure there.

In practical terms, his relationship with Shen Yang — that sworn brother — had been nothing more than cooperation for mutual gain. In his earlier plans, if the southward campaign had gone smoothly, he would sooner or later have fallen out with him and fought another battle.

He believed Shen Yang harbored such intentions as well. Once Shen Yang had wiped out the Li imperial family and replaced them, he would surely not have yielded so much as half a step to him.

Yet now, upon hearing the news that Shen Yang was dead, the Shuang Khan walked out of the great tent and stood outside, gazing at the countless tent tops stretching away before him in the nightfall, beyond all seeing, and listening to the distant sound of warhorses whinnying on the wind — and in his heart, he still felt a kind of desolate sorrow, like the grief of the hare at the fox’s death.

“Why was he unwilling to come to me, to seek a chance to rise again?”

Having been acquainted for so many years, he knew Shen Yang had come from humble origins and harbored boundless ambition. But how the Han people thought — he had never been able to see through that, even after all this time.

He let out a sigh, fell into brooding for a moment, and at last made up his mind. He summoned a trusted aide by his side and gave the order for a command to be issued at dawn: a full withdrawal of all troops, returning to the royal court.

The man seemed to hesitate and asked: “My Khan, will you truly issue such an order?”

The Shuang Khan said: “If the national fortune will not come, what is to be done about it? The opportunity before was already missed; if we press on fighting, it will likely bring us no good either. Better to first withdraw our troops, and plan for the future.”

His words had barely fallen when a cold laugh sounded from behind him: “What national fortune? Clearly it is you who are incompetent, unable to defeat a single Li Xuandu — unfit to hold the throne of Khan!”

The Shuang Khan started, spinning around sharply. He saw torches blazing all around, and many men surging toward the Khan’s tent from every direction. The firelight illuminated face after face — all of them nobles and commanders of the various tribes.

The one who had spoken was Mili. He had long been called the number one warrior of the Di nation. When the Di people split into Eastern and Western factions, he had migrated west with his tribe; several years ago, he had failed in a bid for power within the Western Di and fled back to this side. Relying on his wife’s family connections and his fighting prowess, over the past two years his position had risen swiftly and steeply.

In this southward campaign, the Shuang Khan’s assessment of the battle situation had been optimistic, and in his private mind he had also harbored a measure of wariness toward Mili; thus before the campaign began, he had not intended to make use of him. It happened that Mili himself provided an excuse — right before the battle, he got into a conflict with a noble and injured the man — and so the Shuang Khan had held him detained. The reason he had not dared to move rashly in the campaign was partly fear of Mili stirring up trouble at his back.

He had planned to find an opportunity to eliminate Mili’s power base after returning to the royal court. But he had not expected Mili to appear here at this moment.

“Is it you?!”

The Shuang Khan was shocked. When he recovered his senses, he knew the situation was dire, and shouted fiercely for his trusted aides to come to his rescue.

The sound of fighting came from the distance — evidently his personal guards were being cut down — while the men around him all looked on with cold eyes, not one of them responding.

Mili advanced with a savage grin, drew his blade, and with a single stroke killed the Shuang Khan. He then cut off the head and raised it high on the blade, displaying it to the men on every side.

Around the Khan’s tent, following this gesture of his, roars and battle cries erupted.

The blood from the former Khan’s severed neck dripped down onto his face and head. His eyes, lit up by the torchlight, flickered with a gleam of near-bestial excitement.

Conquer the Western Di, reclaim Xiyu, carve through He Xi, and finally raze the central plains to the ground.

That was his objective.

Of course, before all these objectives, there was one most important thing — and that was to kill Li Xuandu, who had once driven him out of the Western Di, and wash away this humiliation of earlier years!