Ming Huazhang found this puzzling. “What do you mean?”
Ming Huashang replied: “People often speak of meeting someone and instantly feeling they’ve known each other half a lifetime. They’ll say their ideas align perfectly, and onlookers can see a striking resemblance in their qualities — they’re the same kind of person. Take Second Elder Brother and me: we’re siblings, but if the two of us were each to commit a murder, the scenes and methods would certainly be completely different. So I thought — could we reverse that? Could we read the traces left at a scene to infer the killer’s thinking, and from there sketch the kind of person he is in real life?”
Ming Huashang finished and looked nervously toward Ming Huazhang, afraid he would find her absurd. Ming Huazhang gave a soft laugh. He reached out and tightened the fastening at her collar. “I don’t fully understand it, but I follow your meaning. Your analogies always take the most unexpected paths.”
Ming Huashang gave an embarrassed little smile and burrowed deeper into her fur trim. “The killer has taken three lives in total. I already have a vague outline, but I’d like to see all three scenes before drawing any conclusions. Second Elder Brother, I want to go look at Lian Xin.”
That had been Ming Huazhang’s original purpose in coming out tonight. He had been delayed this long, and at last they were returning to it. Ming Huashang had spent a great deal of time absorbing the first two scenes; by now the night was deep, and the wind and snow were bitterly cold. Ming Huazhang untied the cord at her throat, retied it properly, and wrapped her round until she was bundled into a perfect sphere before he said: “All right. Let’s go.”
Ming Huashang trundled along behind Ming Huazhang like a moving ball of fur. “Second Elder Brother,” she asked, “you really don’t mind me wasting your time, or thinking wild thoughts?”
As a woman, and a rather useless one by the world’s standards, she ought by rights to have been staying indoors tending to seasonal melancholy, preparing for marriage, and deferring to authority on all matters of right and wrong. When confronted with violent death, a proper woman was expected to look away and leave the judgment to the great figures above.
But here Ming Huashang was, pointing and commenting on a murder case — even proposing, on nothing more than her own “feeling,” to overturn the case-solving methods that investigators had built from years of experience, and to forge her own path instead.
If word of this got out, she would certainly be denounced by many Confucian scholars: they would say women are long on hair and short on insight, and have no business interfering in matters of justice.
Ming Huashang couldn’t manage other people’s opinions. But she did very much want to know: had Ming Huazhang truly taken her words to heart, or was he, out of indulgence for a younger sister, simply sitting through her ramblings without paying any real attention?
Ming Huazhang walked ahead. His young shoulders were straight and steady, his bearing like a pine tree, his silhouette casting a shadow that seemed large enough to shelter all of Ming Huashang.
He didn’t turn around. His voice was cool and unhurried, but it quietly shielded her from the worst of the wind and snow. “The rules and laws of the court were not handed down from heaven. They were fixed in place only after being tested and proven effective. The fact that your thinking differs from theirs doesn’t mean you’re wrong — it only means that no one like you has existed before. Whatever you want to say, whatever you want to do — do it without restraint. Don’t worry about what others say. You are the only daughter of the Ming family, and you deserve a lifetime of smooth sailing and happiness. Even if the sky fell, I would stand in front of you.”
Ming Huashang felt a warmth move through her. She had always thought of her Second Elder Brother as someone renowned and cold — emotionally distant — and so had never dared to draw close. But when she had taken that first step toward him, she found that the coldness was real, but there was nothing at all thin about his affections.
He was like freshly fallen snow — clear and pure and elevated. But hold genuine warmth to it, and it will slowly melt into water.
The anxiety she’d been carrying set down. Even after being chilled half the night, she felt content.
She noticed that Ming Huazhang was wearing only a thin robe, his hands and face bare to the wind and snow, growing paler by the minute, almost unreal. She didn’t know why he resisted warmth; but now that she saw it, she certainly wasn’t going to keep herself warm while leaving her Second Elder Brother out in the cold.
Ming Huashang skipped up to his side, cupped both hands around his, and breathed on them. Ming Huazhang, who kept no guard behind him, found his hands captured before he could react; once he understood what was happening, he immediately tried to pull back — but Ming Huashang held on. “Second Elder Brother, look, your fingertips have gone to ice. I’m dressed thickly, let me warm you up.”
“There’s no need,” Ming Huazhang said, at a loss. “I’m not cold.”
“Nonsense. You’re made of flesh too — how could you not be cold?”
While they bickered, the courtyard arrived. This was the guest quarters where Ming Huashang and Ren Yao had stayed, but now it sat in blackness, dead-silent, its main gate flung carelessly open — like a beast crouching in the dark with its jaws wide, waiting without goodwill for prey to walk into its mouth.
Ming Huazhang walked in without flinching, utterly unmoved. He struck his fire-starter, and the flame leaped out, driving back the darkness — and illuminating the female corpse not far away.
The wind howled; the dim flame swayed. The atmosphere was genuinely terrifying, but Ming Huazhang moved through it as though he could not feel it at all — one hand holding the light, the other sorting through Lian Xin’s body with complete lack of scruple, pressing close to that pale and eerie face with its two hollow, bloody sockets.
Ming Huashang considered herself reasonably thick-skinned and unshakable, but witnessing this still made her hair stand on end. She silently pulled her cloak tighter. “Second Elder Brother, are you not afraid at all?”
“Afraid of what?” Ming Huazhang’s voice was utterly composed — calm to the point of near-indifference. “She was killed by a person. If there is anything to fear, it should be those refined and respectable living people. Why would anyone fear a corpse?”
Ming Huashang had no answer to that. She quietly suppressed her dread of the dead and carefully searched the room for psychological traces the killer might have left behind.
This was probably not the primary crime scene — where Lian Xin had actually been killed — but for Ming Huashang, how the killer had arranged the body and staged the scene he had in mind was far more important than the place of death itself. She paced slowly through the room. In her mind, a figure stepped over the threshold, one shoulder bearing a beautiful, soft, still-warm body.
He moved through this noble young lady’s sleeping quarters unhindered. The furnishings around him — unmistakably belonging to an aristocratic woman — filled him with simultaneous excitement and loathing. He surveyed the room. Under the bed, inside the wardrobe, on the sitting furniture — there were many places a body could be placed. But none of them satisfied him. He searched a long while before finally finding the place he wanted.
The bed.
The bedding was folded neatly and smoothly, still carrying the faint perfume of a woman. Trembling with anticipation, he placed “his woman” on the sleeping platform, pulled back the coverlet, and drew the silken quilt — so recently pressed against the skin of a noble young lady — over Lian Xin’s face.
Without realizing it, Ming Huashang had crouched before the sleeping platform, staring fixedly into Lian Xin’s hollow eye sockets. Ming Huazhang waved the fire-starter before her eyes and called softly: “Second Young Lady?”
Ming Huashang snapped back to herself and looked sideways to find Ming Huazhang frowning at her, something that looked like concern in his eyes. The flame flickered and guttered; his finely drawn face was half lit, half shadow, carrying the solemn gravity of a deity in a wall painting.
Ming Huashang stared at him for a long moment, pulling herself free from that state of extreme shared sensation. Ming Huazhang, seeing she still wasn’t speaking, reached out to check her forehead — and Ming Huashang grabbed his hand.
“Second Elder Brother, I’ve found the most important point. I’ve thought of it!”
Ming Huazhang said nothing about his proximity to the corpse, but seeing her crouched before a dead person, he quietly took her by the arm and steered her to a cleaner part of the room. “Mm?”
Ming Huashang was entirely consumed by excitement; she didn’t notice what Ming Huazhang was doing at all. “I’ve never been sure of his attitude toward women, but now I finally understand. He clearly despises us — he deliberately wanted to shock us. But if his only aim was to frighten people, hanging the corpse near the entrance so we would see it the moment we opened the door would have been far more effective. So why did he specifically choose to conceal Lian Xin in our bedding?”
Ming Huazhang had been focused on how Lian Xin had died — what tool the killer used, at what hour — and had not actually stopped to wonder about the reason behind the act.
But yes: every action has a need beneath it. What was running through the killer’s mind as he did all this? Why had he chosen to do it this way, and not some other way?
Ming Huazhang asked earnestly: “Why?”
Ming Huashang pointed toward the sleeping platform, her gaze alight. “Because of the bed. The bed is different from other furniture—”
She had been about to say that a bed is the place where a married couple share their life together — its meaning far surpasses any ordinary piece of furniture — but as the words reached her lips she realized she was facing her elder brother. Ming Huazhang’s eyes were clear and beautifully sharp, watching her with attentive seriousness. How was she supposed to say this?
Ming Huashang’s face flushed crimson. For once, she stumbled to a halt. Ming Huazhang caught her expression and grasped the meaning. He felt a trace of awkwardness himself, but he was the elder brother — he could not dwell on such a thought in front of his younger sister. He summoned his composure with effort. “And then?”
Ming Huashang wasn’t sure whether Ming Huazhang had understood or not, but she pressed haltingly forward. “This is a hidden impulse in him — perhaps he isn’t even aware of it himself. When he is challenged and feels the need to assert his power, his instinct leads him to the bed. That choice reflects precisely his lived experience.”
Ming Huazhang’s attention was genuinely caught this time; the faint awkwardness dissolved completely. “His lived experience?”
From a murder scene — one could read the killer’s lived experience?
“Yes.” Ming Huashang nodded and began to organize her thoughts from the beginning. “He must be a man. Age, somewhere between twenty and thirty. Not too young — someone young would lack experience and wouldn’t have such a strong emotional charge attached to a bed. Not too old, either — killing three people in two days places considerable demands on physical strength. Given the intensity of his desire for and hatred toward beautiful maidservants, I suspect he once had a wife — lovely in appearance, charming in manner, well-liked by everyone around her. His wife likely served as a maidservant in a wealthy household, but for some reason she betrayed him, and very likely became the concubine of the household’s master—”
Ming Huashang paused here. She thought of the situation at Princess Taiping’s estate. “No. Not the young master of the house. The master himself. A concubine to the main lord of the household.”
Once she had worked that out, her thinking flowed even more freely. “Look at the brutality he inflicted on the bodies — clearly he is physically powerful, strong in constitution, and has a powerful possessive drive. Someone of that kind, upon learning that his wife had been unfaithful, would most likely explode in fury on the spot, beat her violently, perhaps kill her outright. His rage would not be the sort that sits suppressed for years and then vents itself on a group of maidservants who have no relation to his wife but resemble her in station. The most likely explanation is that he was away from home for some time, unaware of what his wife was doing — and when he returned, she had already gone off with the aristocrat. So he must have served in the military. He is a physically formidable soldier.”
The image in Ming Huazhang’s mind was taking shape almost immediately, but he did not accept it hastily. He asked: “Someone away from home for years could equally be a merchant. Why do you think he is a soldier rather than a traveling trader?”
Ming Huashang said: “People often say a person’s fate is heaven-determined, but I think a person’s nature and the trade they enter actually choose each other. A person suited to commerce is not combative. By the same token, someone who favors resolving things through force would never have taken to trade from the start. The way he wears his grudge and his vengeance so openly on the surface — that doesn’t think like a merchant. It thinks like a soldier. And given his combative, brutal nature, combined with his inability to conceal it, he probably fared poorly in the military — most likely he was pushed out. Yet here he is at Princess Taiping’s estate. Which means that after leaving the army, he attached himself to a powerful figure and became a servant in some great person’s household.”
Between twenty and thirty years old, a former soldier now serving as a household retainer, fierce and combative, a vigorous man whose wife had once left him… Ming Huazhang’s mind produced a face at once.
Ming Huashang saw the change in his expression. “Second Elder Brother, do you have someone in mind?”
Ming Huazhang let out a slow breath. “Perhaps.”
If his own deductions aligned with Ming Huashang’s portrait.
Ming Huashang leaned in, eyes bright with curiosity. “Who is it?”
Ming Huazhang thought of the forces that stood behind this person, and instinctively moved to keep her out of it. “This has nothing to do with you. Don’t listen any further.”
“How can it have nothing to do with me!” Ming Huashang was too engrossed to let this drop. “I nearly lost my life to him. If I don’t know who it is — if I don’t take precautions — then maybe next time it’ll be me who dies!”
Ming Huazhang’s expression immediately darkened, and he gave her a sharp look. “Don’t say things like that.”
He reprimanded her sternly, but his resolve had wavered. He felt that whoever was behind this would not be reckless enough to move against her directly — but what if he was wrong? The mountain road might stay blocked for days yet. If anything happened to her, how would he answer to the Duke of Zhenguo? Weighed against the risk of her death, allowing her to glimpse the figure behind the curtain was a risk that could be entirely disregarded.
Ming Huashang detected the crack in his resolution and immediately put her coaxing to good use. As Ming Huazhang had no defense against this approach whatsoever, he gave in after a moment, helpless. “Do you remember the servant in blue who stood beside Prince Ding this evening?”
Ming Huashang blinked. She had a hazy recollection of several figures standing behind Prince Ding during their audience with Princess Taiping at dusk, but she could no longer recall them clearly. “Is it him?”
“I suspect so.” Ming Huazhang said, “But my deduction is nowhere near as remarkable as yours — it must seem rather rigid and plodding by comparison.”
“Whatever method works to catch a killer is a good method!” Ming Huashang praised her elder brother wholeheartedly, then asked with eager curiosity: “Second Elder Brother, how did you work it out?”
Ming Huazhang spoke without hurry. “My first suspicion arose when I saw Wei Zi’s body. The thorned branches she had been bound with still had their barbs — not something just anyone can handle skillfully. The binding technique resembled military methods. At that point I suspected the killer had once served in the army. It wasn’t until I saw Lian Xin that I was certain. Being strangled to death is a terrible agony — no one could possibly smile through it. Yet the corners of Lian Xin’s mouth were turned up. I thought of a particular tree — the upas tree, also called ‘blood seals the throat.’ It’s commonly used to tip arrows with poison — hence the name. But in the military it is also used as an anesthetic: applied to an injured soldier, it relaxes the body and loosens the muscles, allowing the army surgeons to work on him without resistance. The smile on Lian Xin’s face must have come from contact with the upas tree’s sap.”
Ming Huashang had never heard of this before, but that didn’t stop her from being impressed. “Second Elder Brother, you know so much.”
So this is what comes from reading widely, she thought.
Ming Huazhang’s expression remained unchanged. He continued: “Because I already had my suspicions, when I was chasing Yang Er, I paid particular attention. Although he ran nimbly, his lower body was unstable — no discipline in his movement — clearly no training at all. One exchange was enough to tell me that Yang Er was not the killer. I thought I’d see what whoever was behind it all intended by staging that scene, so I went along with it, letting it play out: I pushed Yang Er in front of Princess Taiping, using the pretense that I’d caught the murderer, and brought everyone together in the hall. In that session, I had no real expectation of getting anything useful out of interrogating Yang Er. The whole time, I was covertly searching among the retinues of Prince Ding and Prince Wei for anyone with a military background. But men who serve as guards know how to adopt a fierce bearing even if they weren’t born with one, and I couldn’t question any of them directly, so I could only narrow it down to a general range. I intended to come here tonight to find concrete evidence and pin it on a specific person. But after hearing your account, I believe I have found him.”
Ming Huashang thought to herself: so this is what they mean by thunder in the heart and stillness on the face. He had suspected from so early on, and yet he had appeared entirely calm — as though proceeding at random, guided by luck. As this thought settled in her mind, she suddenly sensed that she had overlooked something. “How did you know the killer was among Prince Ding’s or Prince Wei’s people?”
“Again, it came from the black-thorned branch used to bind Wei Zi,” Ming Huazhang said. “Do you remember the rumors of a Snake Ghost harming people — rumors that spread wildly overnight?”
Ming Huashang nodded. Something that strange and sensational — of course she remembered. Ming Huazhang lifted his eyes and looked out at the vast, shrouded snowfall. His voice was unhurried. “The first time I heard them, I thought something was odd. Black-thorned branches grow throughout Jiangnan West Circuit, yet the rumors insisted without exception that the ghost had come from Fangzhou. Jiangnan West Circuit is enormous — why single out Fangzhou in particular? When I thought about it carefully, the one thing that made Fangzhou special compared to everywhere else was, perhaps, Prince Luling.”
Ming Huashang’s eyes went wide. She had not flinched at hearing of hauntings, had not flinched at seeing the dead — but now cold sweat broke over her all at once. “You mean — whoever is behind this is going after Prince Luling?”
Prince Luling. That name was one no subject of the Great Tang — or rather, the Great Zhou — could fail to know. He was the Empress Regnant’s eldest living son, the brother of the Crown Princess and Princess Taiping, the former holder of the imperial throne who had once ascended to the highest seat of power, only to be deposed by the Empress herself.