“The Crown Prince has brought back the True Master…”
The clamoring crowd’s words outside the palace chamber floated in gently, yet they struck Wei Shubin’s chest like a catapult from the imperial garden, shattering her completely.
Her knees gave way as she collapsed to the ground. Clutching her chest and gasping for breath, she crawled toward the Emperor’s bed and grabbed the corner of the desk, pleading:
“Your Majesty… please show mercy…”
“All sins were committed by me… your subject Chai Shao alone, and have nothing to do with my children…” On the other side of the imperial desk, the Princess of Pingyang’s consort was also kneeling and begging, “Third Lady has only this one daughter… Empress Dowager Dou has only this one granddaughter… Second Brother…”
The aging consort, now over fifty, had grown up rough-housing with his brothers-in-law from the Li family. In his desperation, he even reverted to using forms of address from before the founding of the Great Tang, as tears streamed down his face. The Tang Emperor beseeched from both sides, wore a grave expression, and gazed outside without responding, showing no joy at having solved the mystery or revealed the truth.
In the southern part of the high chamber, between the hanging bamboo blinds on either side, the doorway was piercingly bright. A dark figure appeared, swaying as it entered, followed by the graceful silhouette of a woman. Both came forward to pay their respects before the Emperor. Wei Shubin quietly retreated, though not behind the screen, instead kneeling in the corner of the chamber, silently beginning to cry.
The world before her eyes scattered in chaos like raindrops trembling and falling endlessly. Her ears buzzed, making it difficult to hear clearly. She could only vaguely see and hear the two new arrivals—Crown Prince Li Chengqian and Chai Yinglu—answering imperial questions. Both the Emperor and Kang Sumi spoke, while Li Chengqian went to the desk to examine two golden wine vessels, raising his voice in agitation until his father reprimanded him…
A hand reached out to grasp hers. Through her tears, Wei Shubin turned to see that Li Yuanxu had somehow entered the chamber and was quietly kneeling beside her, tears also streaking his face.
The two young people held hands, silently and hopelessly watching the dispute unfold. The Emperor, irritated and exhausted, dismissed it as “an inner palace matter” and rose to leave. Kang Sumi had already been driven out, while Chai Shao, crying until his strength was spent, was personally helped out by the Emperor. The Empress ordered the screens removed, leaving only the women in the chamber, along with the uncle and nephew, Li Yuanxu and Li Chengqian.
Empress Zhangsun, leaning against another couch, appeared drained as if she had endured years of torment in less than half a day. The Crown Prince’s consort, sitting at the edge of the bed attending to her mother-in-law, was equally pale.
“Ying’er, do you… must I still question you…”
The Empress could barely complete a full sentence. Chai Yinglu, kneeling on the felt carpet before her bed, shook her head and said softly, “Aunt, you’re too exhausted, and I’m tired as well… let’s save our strength.”
She raised her head to look around the chamber, her pretty face showing a mix of bewilderment and serenity as if awakening from a great dream, and even bore a child-like innocent smile:
“This morning when I left Anhua Gate, before me stretched the clear waters of Qingming Canal beneath the endless southern mountains, and behind me lay the prosperous old dreams of Chang’an. As the clouds inscribed the vast void and my bones scattered like cold jade, I suddenly understood many things… I’ve practiced the Dao for nearly ten years now, yet never entered the mysterious gate, all because I’ve held onto too many deluded desires.”
Her turn to evil began when her mother, Princess Pingyang, passed away.
In the sixth year of Wude during the founding of the Great Tang, when the empire was newly unified, the struggle for succession between the Crown Prince and Prince Qin intensified at court. Princess Pingyang was then pregnant with her second child and near term when she happened to encounter her second brother, Prince Qin Shimin. She tried to persuade him to yield for the sake of filial harmony. The siblings argued, and Princess Pingyang, agitated, suffered complications with her pregnancy and died in childbirth after returning home. That year, her eldest daughter Yinglu was already twelve years old. Unable to release the pain of losing her mother, she came to hold a grudge against her second uncle Shimin.
In the following years, as the brothers became bitter enemies, Chai Yinglu also learned she had been promised marriage to her eldest uncle’s firstborn son. If Prince Qin succeeded in taking the throne, she would lose everything and possibly face downfall; if Crown Prince Jiancheng ascended safely, she would at least be a prince’s consort, and with some maneuvering, might even become Crown Princess or Empress. By the eighth year of Wude, she was fourteen or fifteen, fully grown in stature but still childish, impulsive, and arrogant—”Just like you children are now,” she said with a smile to Li Yuanxu and Wei Shubin.
During those two years, Kang Sumi sent a batch of valuable gifts to the Chai Consort’s mansion in Chang’an. With Chai Shao away commanding troops, the household manager dared not make decisions alone and asked the First Young Lady how to proceed. Chai Yinglu was initially just intrigued by a pair of hunting leopards and couldn’t bear to part with them, so she ordered the gifts accepted—those leopards didn’t live long, though their cub survived and became her pet leopard Atun—Later, out of boredom, she examined the gifts and discovered the double-hearted golden wine vessel. Being clever from a young age, she figured out its purpose on her own and thought it might be useful, so she secretly hid it from everyone and destroyed the gift inventory. When her father returned to the capital, she simply said the inventory had been lost somehow.
She emphasized that her father never knew about the golden vessel from beginning to end, and the rest of the family knew even less. What she did had nothing to do with anyone else.
In the eighth year of Wude, her eldest uncle Jiancheng’s eldest daughter was betrothed to her elder brother Zhewei, and the Eastern Palace planned a celebration feast for the engagement. She thought this double-hearted vessel could finally be put to use, and coincidentally, her fourth uncle Yuanji came to her home to probe, speaking much about Prince Qin’s treasonous schemes. Her father didn’t take the bait, but she heard it all and privately went to discuss it with Li Yuanji, and they immediately reached an agreement.
If she had just given this golden vessel to her fourth uncle and taught him how to use it, letting him find someone to carry out the deed, that would have been that… but what does a fourteen or fifteen-year-old child know of the world’s ways? She knew Li Yuanji wasn’t reliable and didn’t trust him, so she volunteered to personally administer the poison, “to avenge my late mother” and also to clear obstacles for her future husband’s family… By then she was as tall as most men, and when dressed in a eunuch’s tall hat and robes with fake whiskers, in dim light, no one could tell she was a woman. From a distance, even her father couldn’t recognize her.
“But First Lady saw through it, didn’t she?” Li Yuanxu suddenly asked, his voice hoarse and broken, “Though she was young, she noticed your flaw… and this brought about her death.”
Chai Yinglu smiled slightly:
“This was indeed my miscalculation. In the Eastern Palace, only when offering wine at the throne did the First Lady and her nurse stand closest to me. But the First Lady was only nine that year, and even if I was cautious, I would only have worried about her nurse noticing something amiss. Fortunately, the nurse stood facing the same direction as me, and her attention was completely focused on the Grand Princess, so she wouldn’t even glance at me. But First Lady, when she turned to take the wine I poured from the tray, looked up and saw… this red birthmark.”
Everyone in the room stared at her chest. Chai Yinglu wore a brown upper garment covered with a floral-patterned straight-collared half-sleeve, and at her collarbone, that birthmark gleamed like a red plum blossom in snow.
“I had been extra careful when dressing, as the eunuch’s ceremonial robe’s crossed collar could almost cover this birthmark, and I had attached fake whiskers that hung down in a fuzzy curtain, which could thoroughly conceal both my Adam’s apple and this area. At the Eastern Palace’s great feast, with people rushing about, who would pay attention to a helping eunuch brought by Prince Qi? Even the Grand Princess First Lady didn’t know exactly what she had seen. She was just a child, merely looking up, her gaze happening to pierce beneath my false beard to see this birthmark, leaving an impression in her mind.”
It was just a very vague impression, one that Li Wanxi herself didn’t understand, and Chai Yinglu knew even less about at the time. The poison that Li Yuanji had procured was weak, and their daringly executed poisoning plot ultimately failed to end Li Shimin’s life—this also strengthened Chai Yinglu’s determination to become Sun Simiao’s disciple and learn medicine and alchemy herself—During two subsequent investigations, she luckily escaped without being implicated, thinking herself safe from then on, until last year when she entered Ganye Temple on the Empress’s orders to oversee her elder brother’s wedding to Li Wanxi.