With a sharp crack, the firewood in the hearth burst out a cluster of sparks, scattering in all directions.

Pu Zhu drank the last mouthful of honeyed milk, stirred the fire once more, and stared at those sparks—tracing their dazzling arcs before vanishing without a trace—her gaze remote and indifferent.

All of her grandfather’s crimes, and all of her bitter suffering, had their root in the former Crown Prince Li Xuanxin.

It happened in the thirty-ninth year of Xuanning under the Ming Emperor—when she was eight years old. She would never forget it.

In the early autumn of that year, Empress Dowager Jiang had inadvertently taken cold and fallen ill. She was, after all, past sixty, and the illness came on fiercely; at one point she was even in critical danger.

Though Empress Dowager Jiang had not appeared at court for thirty years, her lingering authority had not diminished. From the Ming Emperor, the imperial sons and grandsons, the consorts and concubines of the rear palace, down to the civil and military officials, all kept vigil day and night in anxious suspense. Fortunately, with the imperial physicians’ treatment, she finally pulled through the crisis. But the Empress Dowager’s spirits remained persistently low; it was said she had lost interest in everything, and would smile only when Prince Qin came to amuse her. The rest of the time she lay alone in bed, and her appetite dwindled day by day—she bore the aspect of a lamp nearly burned out, as if her remaining time were not long.

At just this moment, Crown Prince Li Xuanxin received another piece of news. The month before, he had stood in for the Son of Heaven and led the Three Excellencies, the Nine Ministers, and all the great officials in the ritual sacrifice at the Southern Suburbs, according to proper rite. Crowds of common people along the route had knelt from a distance and caught a glimpse of the Crown Prince’s appearance and ceremonial robes—as magnificent as a divine being—and in their excitement cried out “Long live the Crown Prince!” The cries were so loud they faintly carried into the city. The incident was reported to the Ming Emperor the very same day by those with interested parties; it was said the Emperor fell silent and must have been displeased.

Since Empress Dowager Jiang’s illness, rumors had surged through the court: the Emperor had refrained from moving against the Crown Prince all this while only out of consideration for the Empress Dowager. Once the Empress Dowager was gone, there was sure to be a great upheaval.

The Crown Prince consulted his maternal uncle, Great General Liang Jingzong. Liang Jingzong urged a coup once more. This time, the Crown Prince was finally persuaded and made up his mind to gamble everything, to force the Emperor to abdicate before the Emperor struck him first, and then, once he ascended the throne, to honor his father as Grand Emperor.

Their attempt failed.

That day, Liang Jingzong was killed at the palace gates. All those who had joined the coup were executed on the spot. Within Changan Palace, at the palace gates and throughout the compound, the killing was so thorough that heads rolled everywhere.

This shook the court and the populace—yet it was only the beginning.

The Ming Emperor ordered a thorough investigation, which unearthed numerous conspirators. Among the most prominent were three.

First was the nephew of Empress Dowager Jiang, the then-Commander of the Southern Bureau’s Twelve Guards, Marquis Pingyang, Jiang Yi.

Second was the one who had served as Commandant of the Eagle-Soaring Guard under the Northern Bureau’s central imperial army for barely half a year—Prince Qin, Li Xuandu.

The third was her own grandfather, the Crown Prince’s Grand Tutor, Pu Youzhi.

Jiang Yi, as Commander of the Twelve Guards of the Southern Bureau and the one responsible for palace city defense, bore the charge that while he had not directly participated, he had known of the Crown Prince’s planned action and reported nothing, sitting on the fence—no different from a confederate.

Prince Xuandu, in his capacity as one of the Northern Bureau’s guard commandants, had a duty to protect the imperial palace. That day he used a pretext to leave the capital, and though he did not appear in person, he had actually handed his command tallies to a trusted subordinate; his three thousand Eagle-Soaring Guard troops were thus rendered as useless as a paper barrier, and it was through the northern gate under his command’s jurisdiction that Liang Jingzong’s rebel forces entered the palace and advanced without obstruction.

It was said the Ming Emperor was so furious at this that he vomited blood.

Jiang Yi was sent to the Zhao Prison to await judgment of his guilt. As for the imperial son who had betrayed him—his beloved son was stripped of his princely title and escorted to a place far away in the dynasty’s ancestral homeland, a thousand li distant.

There stood the Wuyou Palace, built specifically for the confinement of gravely offending imperial sons of the imperial clan. The palace’s name meant “Without Sorrow”—yet in truth it was a place of high walls and battlements, a room of only a few square feet.

The last person sent there had been a member of the imperial clan from the Taizong era. In less than two years, that man had gone mad. One day he cried out that there was a hole in the wall through which one could enter and exit, charged at it in a frenzy, and smashed his head against the wall, scattering his brains.

Pu Zhu did not know whether Jiang Yi and Li Xuandu had truly committed the crimes laid out in their charges. But thinking it over, they each had rational reasons to join Marquis Liang and the Crown Prince in that risky venture.

Old Marquis Pingyang Jiang Hu had, after the war in those years, married the granddaughter of the old Marquis Liang. Jiang Yi’s mother was thus Empress Liang’s elder sister. Jiang Yi was by nature part of the Crown Prince’s faction—there was no way to separate them; as one prospered, so would the other, and as one fell, so would the other. Over these years, with Empress Dowager Jiang retired and the Jiang family no longer pushing forward to contend for power, apart from Jiang Yi who still held high rank as Commander of the Southern Bureau, the rest of the family had half-retreated into obscurity and made no voice at court. In corresponding proportion, the Chen family and the Dong family had both risen; the Dong family in particular was aggressive, and Donggan was the trusted man the Ming Emperor relied upon.

He naturally hoped that Marquis Liang’s Crown Prince would accede smoothly.

Prince Xuandu had even more reason to participate.

Although there were rumors that at fourteen years old, the Ming Emperor had, when drunk, hinted at making him Crown Prince instead—the probability of him ascending to the throne was virtually zero.

Setting aside the two natural disadvantages of his youth and of his mother being from the Que clan, there was also Empress Dowager Jiang: however much she adored this grandson, she would not, when there were other grown imperial sons without fault, support him ascending the throne out of thin air. That would be openly supporting the destruction of the rules of succession, and once the rules of succession were openly destroyed, it would open a disaster without end.

Judging by Empress Dowager Jiang’s past practice—wielding sole power and then withdrawing completely and returning all governance to the Emperor—in her heart, the state came first, and she would absolutely not permit such a thing to happen. And with Empress Dowager Jiang’s influence over the Ming Emperor, if she truly refused to approve, the Ming Emperor would not defy her.

Moreover, after that one drunken utterance, the Emperor never again expressed such sentiments in any setting, presumably knowing himself that this was not feasible. The ministers had no thought of it whatsoever either. It was rather the second and third princes—Prince Jin and Prince Chu—who had each gathered their own supporters in these years.

Although ultimately it was Prince Jin who ascended the throne, no one could have seen this coming at the time. Prince Chu, in fact, appeared to have the better prospects.

Prince Jin’s advantages were only two: his higher rank by order of birth, and his mother Consort Chen coming from the family of Empress Dowager Chen. But his disadvantages were equally obvious. He was the least talented of the four brothers—appearing the most mediocre—and the Ming Emperor did not think highly of him. The Chen family, though it had the late Empress Dowager Chen as its backer—she had been the Ming Emperor’s birth mother—even during the Empress Dowager Chen’s lifetime, apart from that one occasion of conferring the title many years back, the Ming Emperor had shown no further expressions of closeness toward this birth mother. The Chen family had no outstanding sons either, unlike the Dong family, which produced capable men in successive generations; Donggan was the one the Ming Emperor trusted and relied upon.

So one could conclude that if the Crown Prince was truly deposed, the second prince would not necessarily be the one to accede smoothly. With the two men of similar ages, both could be argued for. Who would ultimately prevail between him and the third prince was genuinely impossible to say.

As for Prince Xuandu: if the elder brother he was close to—the Crown Prince—were deposed, whoever ascended in his place, whether Prince Jin or Prince Chu, would be to his total disadvantage. Prince Chu in particular would be the worst outcome. The third prince harbored considerable resentment toward him, maintaining only a surface appearance of brotherhood while being extremely cold at heart.

This was presumably also the reason that after the incident, when the fourth prince submitted a memorial in self-defense, the Ming Emperor simply set it aside without response—because he genuinely had sufficient reason to support his elder brother the Crown Prince in the coup.

All the above was Pu Zhu’s judgment and analysis based on the inside information she had gradually come to learn in her previous life.

She felt her analysis was sound. One could therefore essentially conclude that Great General Jiang Yi and Prince Xuandu had brought their fates upon themselves—no one else to blame.

But her grandfather was an entirely different matter.

Her grandfather, in his capacity as Crown Prince’s Grand Tutor, was firmly convinced that the Crown Prince would be a benevolent and enlightened ruler in the future, and placed great hopes on him. The Ming Emperor’s ambiguous attitude deeply troubled him. He had many times spoken in the Crown Prince’s defense before the Ming Emperor, but as for the Crown Prince and his maternal uncle Liang Jingzong’s secret plotting, her grandfather had truly not known the slightest detail.

Not only that, but her grandfather had also perceived that the Emperor disliked the Crown Prince’s closeness to the Liang family, and had on multiple occasions urged the Crown Prince not to form factions.

This was presumably also why the Crown Prince, when he set his plans in motion, had not leaked a breath of wind to her grandfather—because if her grandfather had known, he would absolutely not have approved.

More than ever in such moments, one must be strict with oneself and avoid any action that could be used by one’s opponents as grounds for attack. As long as the Crown Prince could achieve this, then even if Empress Dowager Jiang departed before the Emperor, even if the Emperor grew to dislike the Crown Prince even more and harbored thoughts of replacing him, there would be no legitimate grounds for a replacement.

The rules of succession and public opinion were, in fact, the Crown Prince’s greatest protectors.

To err and go astray was to fall into a true abyss.

This was how her grandfather had admonished the Crown Prince.

Yet the Crown Prince still failed to hold himself steady.

By the time her grandfather learned of it, the Crown Prince’s forces had already advanced on Changan Palace. After Liang Jingzong and the others were killed, the Crown Prince was placed in temporary confinement.

Her grandfather was grief-stricken to the core, and racked with self-reproach. Knowing full well that the Crown Prince could never return to the Eastern Palace, that this act had crossed the line of no return, he nonetheless acted alone—at a time when officials great and small were all keeping silent and seeking only to protect themselves—and submitted a memorial. Beyond blaming himself, he stated that the Crown Prince’s guilt was indeed hard to excuse, but this had surely been the result of being led astray for a moment by Liang Jingzong’s instigation; there could not possibly be any intent to harm the Emperor. He begged the Emperor to investigate with discernment and to show clemency in judgment.

This was her grandfather. Even if she could go back to before it all happened, she suspected she could not have stopped him from submitting that memorial. And even if she could have stopped him, given his position and the situation of that moment, he was already too deeply entangled to extricate himself. Whether the memorial was submitted or not led to the same outcome.

He had always been the Crown Prince’s most stalwart supporter. As the Emperor and his son grew increasingly estranged, the Ming Emperor had already long grown displeased with her grandfather’s constant championing of the Crown Prince. Added to other points of disagreement between them, the harmony between ruler and minister was already a thing of the past. Besides, her grandfather had been at court for many years in a high position; enemies were inevitable. With the Crown Prince’s coup, such a perfect opportunity—how could his political enemies let it pass so easily?

Almost simultaneously, a memorial reached the Emperor’s ears, accusing her grandfather of also having participated in the Crown Prince’s secret conspiracy—and of being the hidden mastermind behind it.

On that very day, her grandfather was thrown into the Zhao Prison. He died of illness in prison in the end—while the Crown Prince, whom he had devoted his entire life’s energy to protecting, had, the very day after being imprisoned, taken his own life.

Concerning the Crown Prince Liang affair, in Penglai Palace, when the Ming Emperor himself went personally to visit Empress Dowager Jiang and respectfully ask her to decide Jiang Yi’s fate, she said one sentence: “Let the law of the nation decide.”

To let the law of the nation decide meant no pardon—a grave crime under the law. The gravest meant death by dismemberment; the lightest, as for Prince Xuandu, meant imprisonment for life.

The Ming Emperor did not comply. This was the sole exception of a lighter sentence among those implicated in the Crown Prince affair.

Jiang Yi was kept in the Zhao Prison for a full year. Though he never confessed, he also never opened his mouth in his own defense. After that year, he was finally released: his marquisate and the post of Great General were stripped away, and he was transferred to the Court of the Imperial Stud to serve as the Supervisor of Pastures at a border commandery.

That year, Jiang Yi was thirty-five. When he entered the Zhao Prison, he had been in his vigorous prime, with a head of black hair. When he emerged, his temples and hair had gone as white as freshly fallen snow.

If Pu Zhu remembered correctly, Marquis Pingyang had never married. In her previous life, up to the year before she died, he was still serving as Supervisor of Pastures at the upper commandery on the border.

Pu Zhu did not know why he had never married. But a commander who had come from a distinguished family, who had dominated the battlefield at twenty—in the prime years of a man’s life, instead of commanding troops to defend against the enemy, he had gone to a border commandery to tend military horses, and had been there for more than ten years.

Was this the Ming Emperor’s leniency toward the once-great Marquis Pingyang, the war-god commander—or a punishment all the more cruel by comparison? Or did the Emperor have some other purpose in mind?

But this had nothing to do with her.

With the Crown Prince affair thus concluded, from start to finish it had implicated several thousand people; among them, many were her grandfather’s disciples and former associates, all either demoted or banished, which in turn pulled down countless scholars of the capital, cutting off their official careers. The Jiang family became completely marginalized at court. The Liang family was uprooted entirely; Empress Liang, after the Crown Prince’s death, also took her own life. The former Eastern Palace was sealed with iron locks, cobwebs thick as cloth across its beams.

This was the full account of what happened in the year Pu Zhu turned eight.

Two years after she was exiled to the frontier, Mingzong reached the end of his allotted years.

Pu Zhu recalled the events she had only learned of afterward, in her memory.

With the Crown Prince dead and Prince Xuandu imprisoned, the only remaining candidates for Crown Prince were Prince Jin and Prince Chu. But on the day before the Ming Emperor died—two full years after the Crown Prince Liang affair—he had still, astonishingly, not established a new Crown Prince.

In his illness, he woke in the night, his spirits suddenly sharp and clear—like a man recovered from a great sickness. He issued a decree: the fourth imperial son had been falsely accused by the former Crown Prince of treason; he was innocent, his princely title immediately restored and he was to be recalled to the capital. Then he rose, and commanded that he be conveyed to Penglai Palace to see his adoptive mother Empress Dowager Jiang.

It was already midnight; at the fifth watch the Ming Emperor returned from Penglai Palace, and on his return he was no longer in good spirits—his complexion was gray and ashen. Before he reached his sleeping hall he vomited blood and, unable to support himself, collapsed on the spot. Before breathing his last, he struggled to issue a verbal edict to the eunuch at his side, Shen Gao.

He named the second imperial son, Prince Jin, as his successor.

When the ministers rushed to his side, Shen Gao conveyed the late Emperor’s last decree, but a group of ministers led by Donggan immediately rose to denounce it: the late Emperor had clearly intended the fourth imperial son to succeed; why else would he have suddenly, at this moment, restored his princely title and urgently recalled him to the capital? Shen Gao had fabricated a false edict—a crime punishable by death.

At that moment, imperial guards broke in and surrounded everything. The Chen family might have been weaker in ordinary days, but they would not have come unprepared. Both sides faced each other with blades drawn; another massacre within Changan Palace seemed on the verge of breaking out. At that most critical juncture, Empress Dowager Jiang arrived in her imperial conveyance shortly after, suppressed the entire scene, and declared that the late Emperor had come to Penglai Palace the previous night and made it clear with his own words that the throne was to pass to the second imperial son, Prince Jin.

In the Empress Dowager Jiang’s last illness two years before, everyone had assumed her life was drawing to its end—unexpectedly, after the Crown Prince affair passed, she had gradually regained her appetite and finally managed to outlast the illness.

Her prestige was such that one could call it the authority of heaven itself. With her personally coming forth and speaking thus, who else dared question it?

Prince Jin thereby smoothly ascended the throne—becoming the current Xiaochang Emperor. At the time he was thirty-four; he had now been on the throne six years and had just turned forty.

As for someone with a criminal background like her own—because she was not the primary offender, she had in that year received the grace of a general amnesty issued by the new Emperor upon his accession, and was pardoned. But from then on she retained only the status of a commoner.

Fate was like a play: in her previous life it was also in this very year that, through a sudden turn, she became the consort of the current Crown Prince Li Chengyu. And before all of this happened, she had been nothing more than what she was now—an orphan girl taken in by the Yang family.

Yang Hong was in truth a man of integrity. In his early years he had received a favor from Pu Zhu’s father; eight years earlier, upon learning of the catastrophe that befell the Pu family, he had found the young daughter of his benefactor—exiled here with her family as a border convict—and done all he could to shelter her. After the general amnesty, pitying her for being unwelcome among her own relatives with nowhere to go, he had taken her into his household, and it had remained thus to this day.

But Yang Hong’s wife Madam Zhang was rather different.

At the outset, her husband had been a senior beacon officer—a rank not especially high, but one of real authority. Not only did he oversee a dozen or so beacon towers and command dozens of beacon captains and tower captains, he also managed the farmland clearing and wall-building for the districts under his jurisdiction. On the border, the only ranks above him were the Commandant and the Grand Protector General—senior regional commanders. So in those days, Madam Zhang traveled in a carriage and sedan, and even had several servants in the household. A’Ju, moreover, was not only skilled in needlework but also tireless and willing; she helped with chores, and so Madam Zhang—though displeased with her husband’s decision to take in the Pu girl—had raised no great objection, constrained by her husband. As for the Pu girl, with A’Ju beside her, they managed.

Yang Hong, a man of diligence, had also participated multiple times in campaigns against the Di people—small-scale conflicts near the border Great Wall, but he had shown bravery and sound command, earning the respect of his troops and a solid reputation. By rights, after so many years and accumulated achievements, he should long since have been promoted. But because his character was blunt and he had no gift for dealing with people, he had offended his superiors, and after many years not only had he not been promoted, but his official career had peaked. Last year his performance review came back poor, and he was demoted—from senior beacon officer to beacon captain.

One character’s difference between “senior officer” and “captain,” but one was a legitimate local official on the court’s regular payroll, the other an irregular minor functionary outside the formal roster.

From official to functionary: not only did his standing plummet, his treatment fell with it.

His official residence was confiscated, his salary drastically reduced. The Yang family moved twice in the space of barely a year, each time to a smaller place. Since moving here half a year ago, the few maidservants the household once had were gradually let go one by one; at last only old Lin Shi and A’Ju remained for the work. Old Lin Shi leaned on her seniority and on Madam Zhang’s favor, and whenever she could slack off she did; at first she put work onto A’Ju, and later, when that was not enough, gradually also onto Pu Zhu as well. At first she had been worried Pu Zhu would tell Yang Hong, but having discovered that no matter how much she was put upon she never complained, her attitude grew more and more careless.

Things having reached this state, how could Madam Zhang not know that old Lin Shi treated the Pu girl this way? She must have given her silent permission.

In the old days, her grandfather had occupied one of the three highest official posts, yet the clan relatives—apart from the clan school and the ancestral land, which were the two customary obligations—had not received from her grandfather the benefits they had anticipated. Privately, they had long concluded that her grandfather was ungenerous and unwilling to help his own people. When her grandfather fell from grace and the relatives were implicated and also exiled here to serve as border garrison settlers, naturally they harbored even greater resentment, and so two years later when the amnesty allowed them to return to their home districts, not one household was willing to take in the then-ten-year-old Pu Zhu.

In an instant, from cloud-heights she had tumbled into the mud. On the road into exile, she had witnessed with her own eyes those relatives who had fawned upon her so extravagantly giving her cold stares without end, even cursing without stopping. She knew she was no longer the cherished little daughter of the Pu family. She was grateful to Yang Hong for his years of shelter and support, and she knew Madam Zhang did not like her; living in another’s household, homeless and voiceless, having to survive under Madam Zhang’s roof, from a very young age she learned to watch people’s expressions, to fathom others’ likes and dislikes, to do her best not to provoke the mistress’s displeasure, in order to win for herself and for A’Ju a roof over their heads.

What is more, the Yang family’s situation was genuinely difficult now—and they had one more mouth to feed, with money needed in every direction. Madam Zhang had not gone to Yang Hong to make trouble, had not driven them away, and for that Pu Zhu was already endlessly grateful. She also did not want A’Ju to be too exhausted, bearing virtually all the household chores alone, so in ordinary times there were many things she simply did on her own initiative without waiting to be told.

Every task she completed was one less task for A’Ju.

All this said—the Pu family had been a distinguished name for generations. Her grandfather had long occupied high positions and had also presided over the compilation of the dynastic history, making him the man looked up to by all scholars—especially those of the capital region. Her father had been fluent in foreign tongues and possessed grand ambitions; unafraid of dangerous roads, he had made multiple journeys to the Western Regions as senior envoy, forging connections with the various nations to guard against the northern threat—and ultimately lost his life to this cause, his soul unable to return to his homeland. And her mother had been a woman of gentle and refined character, renowned in the capital of her day as a true woman of talent.

Born into such a household, Pu Zhu knew she was a disgrace to her family’s legacy. On the surface, like the “Shu Shu” of her mother’s choosing for her childhood name, she appeared quiet, gentle, and refined even here in this harsh border land, dressed in plain cloth, adorned with nothing more than a hairpin. But inside—only she knew—she was vulgar through and through.

In the quiet depths of the night, tossing and unable to sleep, listening to the sound of A’Ju’s deep breathing in her exhausted slumber beside her, what she racked her brains over without ceasing was always: how, in the future, could she change her circumstances, leave this place of suffering, and ensure that both she and her Ju A’mu would never have to work so hard again, but could live a life of ease?

At that time she still did not know that before long her fate would truly change. An enormous stroke of fortune would fall upon her head, and she would seize it at once and hold on tight.

But she also could never have known that afterward, it would all be like a dream of yellow millet—and when the dream ended, she found herself back ten years ago, once again the orphan girl living under another’s roof at the edge of the frontier.

When she thought about it—it was truly, deeply frustrating. Things should not have turned out this way. If she had been a little more ruthless, willing to deliver the killing blow…