At the first quarter of the Hai hour, a small sedan chair carried Gong Zhiyi out of the Daliang Palace.
The Son of Heaven sat in the side hall of the Dongming Hall, earnestly writing out his own reflections.
Today’s lecture had covered the era of ancient rulers who governed through non-interference. After much deliberation, Yang Zao wrote earnestly: The great way, free of self-interest, is the true path; a sovereign all the more must set aside love and hatred alike to achieve the good way…
The poverty of the Daliang dynasty was not a poverty of the treasury, nor a poverty of military provisions, but a poverty of the sovereign’s own understanding. The more he governed this nation, the more Yang Zao felt that everything he had studied before simply wasn’t enough.
Ministers could specialize in a single field; a sovereign could not.
In truth, a sovereign didn’t need to master a great deal of knowledge himself—he needed his ministers to report to him, and needed only, upon hearing their reports, to grasp the essentials and choose from among the many proposed solutions the one most beneficial to the nation.
This was already extremely difficult.
It was also what Yang Zao most urgently needed to learn now; he was an exceedingly diligent sovereign.
His penmanship wasn’t strong, but he worked hard at it nonetheless. As he wrote, someone quietly entered the hall to report that the person he was waiting for would arrive at the third quarter of the Rending hour.
Yang Zao, without looking up, said, “Understood.”
At the third quarter of Rending, Yang Zao set down his brush and read back over what he’d written several times. He wasn’t quite satisfied with it, but didn’t want to waste any more time, so he stood, picked up his prayer beads, and walked toward the multi-treasure cabinet—then, thinking of something, set the beads back down.
He reached out and pressed a strip along the cabinet’s edge. With a click of the mechanism, a hidden passage revealed itself.
A hidden guard dropped down from the roof beam, took Yang Zao’s seat, picked up the lamp, and cast his shadow onto the door and window screens, mimicking the posture of someone diligently studying.
The palace had, in the past, punished several people for disturbing the emperor at his studies—now no one dared come near while he sat there.
Yang Zao looked back, confirmed all was safe, then led the way down the hidden passage with a lantern in hand.
This passage had existed since the previous dynasty; now only two or three people knew of it. The passage ran deep, straight down for half a li before branching off in several directions. At the head of the passage stood four iron doors set crosswise; Yang Zao took a key from his waist and unlocked one of them, entering.
Outside the palace.
In a dim room with no candlelight, only the window open to reveal the western gate of Daliang Palace, night-patrol guards paced the city walls, their silhouettes silent as ghosts.
The covert agent had arrived long before, not daring to disturb the sovereign’s arrival and having only reported the third quarter of Rending.
Afterward, he sat quietly, watching the night-shrouded Daliang Palace in silence, until he heard the sound of knocking beneath the floor tiles. Only then did he stand, move the table aside, pry open the floor tile, and help the sovereign climb up from below.
The sovereign raised his lantern and looked at the man’s face, crisscrossed with scars, with a warm, familiar smile.
The covert agent’s clothes were shabby, but Yang Zao showed no disdain. Once on solid ground, he spoke, calling out the man’s name affectionately: “Migu.”
Migu was the name of a divine tree from ancient texts, said to grow on Mount Zhaoyao. When its light shone, it illuminated all directions; whoever wore it upon their person would never lose their way.
Migu smiled and knelt to pay his respects to the sovereign.
He seemed to have truly missed him, his voice stirred with emotion as he spoke: “You… how have you grown so thin?”
Yang Zao smiled and sat down in the spot Migu had just vacated, gazing too at the western gate of Daliang Palace. After a long while he said, “Looking at it from here, it’s as if I’m looking at someone else’s home.”
Migu said nothing, but warmed a pot of wine for him.
These days, Yang Zao’s every mood and even his treatment were beyond his own control—even changing a padded robe required a record to be filed.
What clothes he changed into each morning, which door he left from, what conveyance he took, which road he traveled from where to where, even where Gaoxing fed the palace’s goldfish—all of it had to be recorded.
Watching Migu bring over the strong wine, he smiled, poured himself a cup, and sighed: “How could I not grow thin? Consort Cao is gone, A’Duo resents me for not knowing how to be flexible, and so many old attendants who served me for years have left as well. You’ve probably heard it too by now—they say the sovereign is heartless…”
He tipped his head back and drank the cup down, saying: “Get on with it—I have matters to attend to today.”
Migu answered with a soft acknowledgment and began his report, focusing on the important points: “On the twenty-third of the fifth month, the Prince of Fuyi Commandery left Qinwei Alley and went to Qingque Nunnery, where he made an offering to… the spirit tablet of the late Old Madam of the Zheng family.”
Yang Zao’s hand, pouring wine, paused, and he nodded with a smile: “Just like him, to do such a thing—hating Zheng Xingyun and my own maternal grandfather so clearly, and yet the man is dead and he still won’t set up a memorial tablet for him… How is his health?”
Migu said, “It truly seems his vitality was damaged. Going up and down the mountain, he has to be carried; kneeling too long in the main hall, even the young prince couldn’t kneel any longer. That day he also caught a chill, and once back home he was scolded for it, then spent several days on medicine before he recovered.”
“Ai, in the fifth month, it’s the wind-chill that isn’t cold or hot that’s the most dangerous—I’ve wronged him,” Yang Zao interjected, his face showing pained sorrow as he drank and sighed. “I have only this one good man by my side, and still I have to use him as the scapegoat. Do you think I should grow thinner still? Ever since Consort Cao passed, I still have to display my grief, or else the girls will resent me even more. Being sovereign is such a hard thing—say ‘solitary’ and you’re solitary indeed. I’ve been eating vegetarian meals to this day, my mouth’s practically gone bland and peeling from it.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what! Is there… anything else?”
“It’s the same as always—Chen Dasheng and the others are kept busy, and even off duty they never socialize with outsiders. They all ride fast horses straight back home to Qingfeng City and stay there, rarely going out.”
Yang Zao sighed: “Ai, no ambition, and that’s just how it is—for all I know, by the time Qingling grows old, he won’t even have an old in-law friend to stroll around with. He’ll need to be taught—meeting few people means learning little, they’re already lacking in that one regard by nature.”
The sovereign spoke to this Migu with particular ease, his tone relaxed, occasionally slipping between the formal “zhen” and the more casual “wo” (I/me).
He tapped the table and said to Migu, half in jest: “Do you know, in his scout’s intelligence reports, he still hasn’t said a single word about the Tan family, not to this day.”
Migu answered honestly: “Not a word good or bad about them—that alone already makes him a rare gentleman. If it were me, I couldn’t manage it. After all, the Tan family is greedy for merit; too many of Old Dao’s men have died because of them.”
Yang Zao slammed his hand hard on the table. He wanted to say—if he didn’t need a hundred of them, just give him ten men like Chen Dasheng, and any trouble could be put down.
But it truly was wishful thinking. Thinking of this, he grew all the more resentful of Tan Shiyuan.
Seeing his displeasure, Migu said gently, “Marquis Chen is mild-tempered and reasonable in his dealings—his reputation among the common folk is good as well.”
Yang Zao nodded: “His father was just the same.”
The sovereign brightened again—after all, Old Dao was someone he himself had raised up from nothing, and who had given him countless pleasant surprises since.
But where there were pleasant surprises, there were also vexations.
So he complained to Migu: “Let me tell you, I’ve had my eye on several of the Tan family for some time now. Compared to Tan Er, they’re a far cry, but Tan Er’s boy is a good deal sharper than his father—he’s quite won my favor. Once he’s grown… I’m thinking of giving him my Linghui, it would hardly be excessive repayment for the several times his father risked his life to save mine.”
Migu said nothing, but instead took an oil-paper package from the table beside him and set it down.
The moment Yang Zao saw the package, he smiled, reached out and opened it—inside was half a soy-braised pork hock, plump and glistening with oil.
The one playing emperor rolled up his sleeve and began gnawing at the hock right there.
Migu attended him at his side, chattering all the while about the trivial matters of the low-ranking officials in the Six Ministries’ alley.
Bitter experience had taught them—in this world, the higher-ups’ awareness could be entirely irrelevant, while trouble always arose at the lower levels. Any decree, once it passed through three hands, would have its meaning entirely changed—each layer of officialdom adding its own petty understanding, mixing in all manner of odds and ends until the final document formed. As many prefectures and counties as there were, that’s how many variant versions there’d be—this was the most maddening thing of all.
And so, as low-level officials increasingly gathered on Quanhou Street, Emperor Wu had dispatched his most trusted covert agent to monitor Quanhou Street—not targeting any particular household in isolation.
Rather, it was that if any great evil were to enter Yanjing, Qingfeng would be the last line of defense.
Migu’s family had for generations served as the Yang family’s covert agents; by this generation, though they’d risen to become the imperial family’s covert agents, their status remained one that could not see the light of day, nor dared show their faces.
How to put it—the Migu family’s history of misfortune stretched back a long way, all the way to its roots several hundred years ago.
Several hundred years before, there had been a sage who preached the Way, intending to walk across every inch of the earth to spread his knowledge and ideals. Once, passing through Migu’s ancestral hometown, that impoverished, remote village received this outside visitor, and the villagers, in an act of shameful greed, extorted and robbed him. The sage was even forced to do a season’s worth of farm labor before he managed to escape their region, left with nothing but a single tattered thin robe on his back in the dead of winter.
Afterward, that sage, in his writings, cited that wicked land as an example, and all the villains described in his book were drawn from the people of Migu’s village.
Generation after generation passed, and as the sage’s followers multiplied, repeated slander built into an unshakable verdict—no matter how much Migu’s ancestors tried to atone, it did no good. Anyone who could identify by name who in the village had actually committed those misdeeds knew that one among them was Migu’s very own bloodline ancestor.
As later generations studied the sage’s teachings, and his doctrine spread ever wider, with texts on the subject numbering in the thousands of volumes, this became an unavoidable, inherited curse—so it was that the Migu lineage became, forever after, criminals of history, transformed into villains passed down through the ages.
Under the relentless condemnation of scholars’ pens, the Migu family’s numbers dwindled generation after generation, until only a single line remained, on the verge of extinction. When word of this reached the Yang family’s ancestor, then a minor official in the region, he sought out the Migu ancestor and said: if your family is willing to serve my family as master for all generations to come, I will give you a way to live—a new identity.
The Migu ancestor, overcome with gratitude, disfigured his own face and entered service with the Yang family, continuing down to this very day.
Compared even to She Qingling, this was in truth the person Yang Zao trusted most.
Yang Zao ate with great satisfaction in front of Migu, saying between bites: “It’s been seven years since the previous dynasty fell, and we’ve begun compiling their history now. Since we’re moving forward with this, I’ll simply overlook those books belonging to your family’s old enemy—some of the important classical texts will be compiled, but his work needn’t be included. Just bear with it a few more generations, your family—once the writings are gone, after just three generations of silence, it’ll be as if it never happened.”
Migu started slightly, then after a long moment knelt earnestly and said, “Your Majesty must not, for the sake of someone as lowly as us, interfere with the sage’s teachings…”
Yang Zao laughed lightly: “What sage—what he and the others wrote is all much the same, either pondering the way of heaven, or hoping to sell it to some ruling house. My family isn’t buying, so what can he do to me? If I don’t use him, I simply don’t use him—there are plenty of others to use instead.”
Migu, somewhat moved, knelt on the ground, speechless, hardly able to believe it.
In truth, by this generation, they no longer even knew whom to blame.
In the end, the ancestors had truly done wrong, and the sage, too, had taken his righteous revenge.
Yet Yang Zao smiled and said to him, “There’s still some time—tell me more about what’s happening out there.”
Migu raised his sleeve to wipe his tears: “What would Your Majesty like to hear?”
Yang Zao thought for a moment. “Anything at all.”
Migu said, “Well, there’s no shortage of trivial matters. Chen Dasheng’s second elder cousin has taken in a concubine.”
The sovereign burst out laughing: “No need to guess—that old grandmother of theirs will surely say it’s a waste of food.”
Migu nodded, laughing along: “You’re not wrong, that’s exactly what she said.”
“What else?”
“Oh, that woman married to the one called Tan Weitong in the Tan family has moved with her legitimate eldest son to live on Quanhou Street.”
The sovereign’s smile faded slightly: “And what’s the meaning behind that?”
Migu shook his head: “There’s no scheme behind it—she’s genuinely fleeing for her life. If the Tan family weren’t so burdened by their inner household troubles, they wouldn’t be in such an awkward position now. The principal wife was being driven to the edge by the concubines; her younger brother, having some money, secretly took his sister out and found her a way to survive.”
“Wu Xiu!” Yang Zao murmured the name, then, thinking of something, smiled: “That little loach has stirred up quite a few tricks for himself. Have your family’s boy keep watching over him for a few more years by his side—those inferior coins he’s been minting still have their uses. Whatever you do, don’t let old Tan Shouyi catch wind of it, or he’ll grow ambitions of his own.”
The two of them chatted on for the better part of an incense stick’s worth of time before Yang Zao descended back down the hidden passage, patting his greasy, satisfied stomach as he made his way back to Dongming Hall.
He’d only just emerged from the passage when a hidden guard came to report that the eldest princess, Yang Lingyao, had secretly left the palace—the palace guards had tried to stop her, but the young lady had even taken a whip to strike at people tonight, and finally held a dagger to her own throat, forcing them to open the city gate… it seemed something had happened to Zheng Aman.
This news thoroughly ruined the sovereign’s good mood for the rest of the night.
He sniffed, looked around, and finally muttered helplessly, “Ai, what people, what fates!”
Being a parent meant endless worry that never stopped. Whether it was Aman, or the three daughters Consort Cao had left behind, they all hung on him like inherited debts.
The half-built princess mansion in Lianhua Alley—since the future consort’s family had been thoroughly raided and stripped of everything, Aman had nowhere else to stay, and could only take shelter here for now.
The sovereign’s original intention had been to have him live in the outer palace, but Zheng Aman had refused, and instead wandered like a lost spirit into the only place he could still call his own.
The male elders of his family were now all in the Ministry of Justice’s prison, awaiting reckoning after autumn, while the female relatives who’d been exiled had only him left to pin their hopes on.
Day after day they sent letters pleading, threatening, cursing, humiliating him… and yet these had once been elders he’d loved and cherished dearly.
Today, visiting them in prison, Zheng Aman had spent the very last of his possessions—a gold belt.
Truly stripped bare, with nothing left to hold him to this world.
Once home, he saw the stack of letters piled a foot high on his table—he didn’t even need to open them to know at least half were written in blood.
Indeed—why should his whole family suffer misfortune while he alone continued to live in comfort and splendor?
After several pots of gloomy drinking, dressed in a thin blue robe, hair disheveled, he climbed up to the newly completed third-floor moon-viewing pavilion of the princess mansion.
Hair loose, feet bare, he chanted deliriously for half the night like a madman, and at last decided to jump—but got caught, dangling in midair. As he struggled, the eldest princess Yang Lingyao arrived just in time, calling up to coax him from below: “Brother Aman, please don’t move, all right?”
Zheng Aman, hanging from a roof ornament, swayed and said, “Not all right!”
His expression was one of utter despair, his spirit withered—that once jade-handsome, radiantly brilliant, effortlessly elegant Zheng Aman now seemed like an entirely different person.
Yang Lingyao, still young in years, burst into loud sobbing at this.
Just as she was crying, Li Jingui came rushing in, wearing two mismatched shoes…