On a blazing summer day in the fifth year of the Jinghe reign of the Great Yin dynasty, Wumang, the grand chieftain of the Ezhen tribe, led his forces on a covert crossing of the Yin Mountains and launched surprise attacks on Chang’an and Biandu, two great cities of the Central Plains, one after another.

At that time, the war on the northern frontier had yet to be settled, and the great army had not yet returned. Wumang’s assault on the city lasted less than an hour before Biandu fell into chaos — even the Emperor had changed into commoner’s robes, preparing to abandon the city and flee.

The sky was overcast with dark clouds when, all of a sudden, royal soldiers descended from above like heaven itself had intervened, driving the enemy forces back in a great rout.

Song Ling, the Crown Prince Chengming, who had supposedly died in the murky and bewildering Thornbush Assassination case, had miraculously returned from the dead and led the royal army back to Biandu.

Empress Su, who had “died” during the Valley Tour Mountain Incident, also returned to Biandu with the army. Working in coordination from within and without, she entered the imperial palace one step ahead of the others.

The following day, Crown Prince Ling ascended the platform of the御史台 (Censorate) and burned a copy of the “Lament for the Jintian Guard” that he had written with his own hand.

This gesture was tantamount to a promise that he would never again pursue the scholars and officials who had been deceived in the Jintian case, and he ordered the court historians to erase all the complimentary verses that had been written in its support.

With the endorsement of Zhang Pingzhu, the Minister of Finance; Assistant Minister Gan, who had compiled the great national code; and Imperial Tutor Fang Hezhi, civil and military officials gathered before the Censorate platform and called out “Long live” in unison, recognizing the identity of Crown Prince Chengming.

The Censorate, using the written confession in the late Grand Preceptor Yu Qiushi’s own hand as evidence, immediately announced the retrial of the Thornbush Assassination case. However, the students of the Imperial Academy could not wait for the Censorate’s formal review — on the very evening that the Crown Prince ascended the Censorate platform, they stormed the Thorn Flower Terrace with bare hands and toppled the “Stele Commemorating the Execution of Rebellious Students at Year’s End of the Gengzi Year.”

The crowd knelt beneath the golden statue, covering their sleeves to weep, and then began to chant Qu Yuan’s “Summoning the Soul.”

The three kneeling statues also fell with the stone stele, smashed to pieces, their fragments sinking heavily into the waters of the Bianhe River. The current swept the pieces away one by one, as though seeking liberation for the souls within and carrying them toward a free and vast new world far away.

“The river runs deep and clear, with maple trees above; my gaze stretches a thousand li, and my heart aches with the grief of spring —”

“O soul, come home; mourn the Southland.”

*

The officials held their jade tablets and waited outside the Qianfang Hall. The sun had already sunk in the west; the night grew dim and hazy. To the east, a faint shadow of the moon hovered, its glow not yet revealed.

Song Lan clutched the imperial seal tightly to his chest and curled up beneath the writing desk in the rear hall of Qianfang.

From somewhere nearby came the faint creak of a wooden door being pushed open.

Song Lan did not raise his head, yet it was as though he suddenly remembered something — he stretched out one hand, groping around in all directions. Before long, he found, beneath the writing desk, the Bodhisattva statue he had hurled down in a fit of rage.

The statue had lost an arm when it fell, then been flung aside, and no palace attendant had dared remove it. Song Lan clutched it as though it were a lifesaving object, set it upright before him, adjusted his posture, and knelt cramped beneath the narrow writing desk, kowtowing twice with a dull thud.

The person who had pushed open the door and entered the hall lit a candle and waited patiently for him to finish his prayers before calling out: “Zi Lan.”

Song Lan had convinced himself countless times — Ye Tingyan had impersonated Song Ling, and it must have been at Luowei’s instigation. She had wanted to use this man as a chess piece to usurp the throne and establish herself as ruler.

It was precisely because he had been so convinced of this that he had believed the world would not accept it, the court officials would not accept it, and that the other man could never succeed on the Censorate platform.

But hearing this one summons, Song Lan suddenly felt as though he had fallen into a pit of ice.

Much as he was unwilling to admit it, he could no longer avoid facing the truth — he had not died at all.

Ye Tingyan truly was Song Ling.

That was why, at their first meeting at the northern border, he had been able to cater to Song Lan’s tastes, saying exactly what would strike at the very tip of his heart. That was why he had maneuvered in the court with ease, handling the relationships between Song Lan and the court officials smoothly, with every matter perfectly calculated. That was why he and Luowei were natural co-conspirators — every reason that had left Song Lan at a loss to understand his defection was, in this moment, given a complete and clear answer.

And so… even knowing he might be walking into a trap, he had returned to Biandu without the slightest hesitation. And so, wearing this unfamiliar face, he had still stubbornly made the world acknowledge his identity, overturning the Thornbush Assassination case in a single day!

Song Lan crawled out from under the desk and slumped down on the cold dragon throne, biting his teeth and responding: “…You’ve come.”

Song Ling set the sword beside him on the desk and looked at him with a cool and level gaze.

He was always like this — he did not even need to say a single word. One glance alone was enough to effortlessly draw out the malice that lay suppressed and hidden within Song Lan’s heart.

“What have you come here for?”

Song Ling lowered his eyes slightly, his voice still calm and unruffled.

“— To ask Your Majesty to pass on.”

“Ha ha ha ha…” Song Lan pointed at him, laughing out loud. “You want me to die. If I refuse to die, what will you do? Don’t tell me you would commit regicide — murder your own brother!”

Song Ling remained utterly unmoved, even adopting Song Lan’s mocking expression with a contemptuous smile of his own: “If you refuse to die, it suits my purposes even better. Do you think I would be content to let you die so quickly?”

Song Lan gasped for breath, his lips trembling ceaselessly.

All the civil and military officials had already chosen their new sovereign. After Yu Qiushi’s death, Song Lan had not yet had time to win over their hearts before one matter after another had battered him into confusion and annoyance, and he had squandered the best opportunity.

Looking back now, all those matters must have been deliberately arranged by them!

He had disdained the pure-stream civil officials who had once been on good terms with Luowei, and his trusted associates had mostly been power-wielding ministers like Ye Tingyan. But such ministers — unless he spent a very long time winning them over and scheming so that they would lay down their lives for him — would naturally know to choose whoever was most advantageous to them when the winds of fortune suddenly shifted.

The outcome was already clear.

Song Ling sighed, then suddenly walked toward him and sat down at the other end of the dragon throne where he was sitting.

“Enough — in truth… I came to see you because I truly wanted to ask you one thing face to face. I have asked you this countless times before — you, why on earth did you do it?”

Song Lan opened his mouth, but before he could speak he was interrupted again: “It has come to this. Just tell me one truth.”

Song Lan loosened the grip of his hands around the imperial seal. He bit his lip, and after a long silence, finally said in a low voice: “…Do you know my mother consort?”

He no longer wished to keep up the pretense. At this moment he was even unwilling to call out the word “Imperial Elder Brother.”

Song Ling said: “Naturally — a spy of the Ezhen tribe.”

“You actually guessed that?” Perhaps because he had lost all will to live upon confirming that the other man had not died, Song Lan let out a long breath and said with the smugness of a child whose scheme has succeeded: “But I’m sure there are many things you couldn’t have guessed — for instance, how did your mother die?”

Song Ling froze for a moment. He turned his neck stiffly and asked slowly: “What did you say?”

“Don’t look at me like that. It has nothing to do with me. I only learned of it recently as well.” Song Lan tossed aside the imperial seal, raised his hands, and assumed an expression of innocence. “It was on the very day that Suiyun strangled my child to death. I was covered in blood, and I barged into the Grand Empress Dowager’s palace. I wanted to ask her a question — she was my mother, wasn’t she? How could she stand by and watch my consort kill my child!”

As he mentioned this, the veins in his neck bulged and his gaze turned fervent: “As it turned out, she confessed her identity to me — the Ezhen tribe had sent so many spies, infiltrating among the palace attendants, among the official household dependents. Among them all, only she had climbed the highest, worming her way to the side of the Empress; and she was the boldest too — bold enough to scheme with Father, to become pregnant, to make him unable to refuse giving her a title!”

“Do you know why she was confined to the Lanxun Courtyard? At the time, she and your mother were with child together. She even pretended to be deferential and requested to wait upon the Empress personally. As it happened, both women gave birth on the same day. Your mother’s child died. I, however, lived. From that day on, your mother fell ill and never recovered, and within five years she had died in melancholy and despair.”

“Why do you not speak more plainly?” Song Ling said coldly. “The rumor in the palace was that it was your mother consort who harmed the Empress’s child. Unfortunately, at the time the court was in turmoil, the hearts of those within the Qionghua Palace were not united, and there was no evidence whatsoever. Your mother consort had just given birth and was at her weakest. She wept and lamented, insisting on her innocence, then collapsed in a faint before the hall. When she awoke, she had lost her sanity. My mother, considering her friendship with her, could not bring herself to have her killed, and only confined her to the Lanxun Courtyard.”

“So you actually knew,” Song Lan lunged forward, grabbing him by the front of his robe. “Your father and mother and you — you were all equally foolish. For the sake of some benevolent reputation, for the sake of some friendship, you so easily let go of this suspicious murderer? If they had known she was a spy of the Ezhen tribe, they could not have rested even in their graves beneath the nine springs.”

Song Ling clenched his fingers tightly and asked: “She admitted it to you directly?”

“Of course — if not her, then who? That child, your brother who never saw the light of day — he had barely been born when she smothered him to death with her bare hands, leaving not a trace. The imperial physicians examined him repeatedly and could not determine whether he had died of congenital weakness or been harmed by another person.” Song Lan said softly. “That was your full-blooded brother, the one who should have been showered with a thousand honors and ten thousand blessings. Since you already knew this, how could you still come to show concern for me? If he had known, he surely would have despised you, his elder brother, to death!”

Song Ling pried open his fingers one by one, his expression dark and somber, saying nothing.

“But what does this have to do with me?” Song Lan’s tone shifted abruptly, and he seemed to descend into self-pity and self-lamentation as though gripped by madness: “You, your father — you both insisted on benevolence, yet you wouldn’t do things thoroughly! My mother consort bore a reputation as a killer and was confined, and throughout the entire palace, who would dare raise her child? A child with no one to nurture him, forgotten by his father, placed in the care of palace attendants — what kind of fate would he have?”

Before Song Ling could speak, Song Lan continued: “I know at the time you were young, busy from morning to night without a moment to spare — how could you have had time to look after me? When I finally grew old enough to understand things, the Lanxun Courtyard was sealed to entry. But I forced my way in regardless. Even if my mother was mad, at her side it was far better than being surrounded by those palace attendants.”

“But later I discovered that in truth, my mother was not terribly mad at all. After I came to live with her, during each day there were always some hours when she was lucid. In her lucid moments, she would cling to me and ramble on endlessly with complaints — saying Father was heartless, saying the Empress was wicked, saying no one in this rear palace remembered us, lamenting the coldness of the world and the injustice of heaven. She also spoke of you —”

Song Lan spoke all in one breath up to this point, his face flushed crimson, but after drawing a breath he became much calmer: “She admitted she was a spy — I couldn’t understand it. She was supremely clever. She had reduced herself to such a state; could this somehow better serve her home country? Only when she made it explicit did I suddenly understand — from the very beginning, it had all been for my sake alone. Ezhen had charged their spies with finding ways to sow internal strife in the country. After she became pregnant, she made up her mind to cultivate for you a brother who was ruthless and unscrupulous, violent and wicked, yet supremely skilled at disguise. She wanted to set me against you, fighting over the empire, causing fratricidal strife that would shake the realm. Only then could the Ezhen tribe reap the gains without effort, and wipe away their past humiliation.”

So that was it.

Song Ling’s spine ran cold. Only after forcing himself to calm down did he see the full picture of events clearly — from twenty years ago, or perhaps even earlier, the Ezhen tribe and the northern allied tribes had engaged the Great Yin in battle, suffering defeat after defeat.

After deep reflection in the aftermath of their pain, they dispatched countless spies into the Central Plains.

Song Lan’s mother was the most outstanding among them. She endured patiently, biding her time, causing the death of the Empress’s child, getting herself demoted to a cold palace, lying low and hiding her light, and pouring the seeds of hatred into Song Lan’s ears, hoping that one day he might throw the nation into great chaos.

At that point the Ezhen tribe, having built up its military strength over many years, could naturally sweep southward all at once and seize the entire territory of the Great Yin.

This was also a gamble. Among all the spies sent at that time, only Song Lan’s mother consort had succeeded in her mission.

They had come within one step of victory — if he had died back then, if Luowei had not spent these years in careful planning, this scheme would have succeeded triumphantly.

“She truly understood the human heart. Those words she murmured in my ear were not all curses. She often sighed with feeling, saying Father was kind and loving, and would surely remember me one day; saying the Empress was benevolent, and even if she didn’t trust her, she would never implicate me; saying you — saying you were the finest elder brother in all the world, that even the attendants who served you knew it, that you cherished your brothers and sisters and were deeply loved by others — For a time, I truly longed to see you, and even believed her lies. Every birthday, I prayed devoutly, praying you would remember, that Father would remember, and come to give me a piece of cake — even just one piece of cake!”

“I waited one year, two years, three years, and by the time I had grown up, I finally understood that she had been deceiving me. You would never come.”

Song Lan reached up and wiped the tears from his cheek, his tone becoming indifferent: “I coaxed Yanyu, the one who waited upon me, and staged a great performance — I had intended to lure you to the Lanxun Courtyard, but to my surprise, the one who came was —”

He raised his head and gazed fixedly at the silhouette cast on the window paper.

Luowei stood just outside the hall. She was this close; naturally she would have heard every word the two of them had spoken.

“You finally came along with her, and upon meeting me you called me Sixth Brother — so you had seen me before, hadn’t you? At the great palace banquet, when Father finally remembered me — but at the time I was still too young to be sensible, dressed up nicely and held by the nurse, and you all thought I was getting along just fine. If you hadn’t called out that greeting, perhaps I wouldn’t have grown to hate you so much afterwards. Since you knew who I was, why didn’t you come to rescue me?”

“If you hate me, then kill me. Those three people on the Thorn Flower Terrace, and the one thousand two hundred and forty-one people in the Jintian case — what quarrel did they have with you?” Song Ling grabbed him by the collar and said, suppressing his fury: “Does the entire world owe you a debt!”

Song Lan shoved him away forcefully and howled: “This is exactly what I despise about you — that sanctimonious appearance of yours! How are you still the same! Why is it that even to this day, the first thing you ask about is their lives? What do their lives have to do with you? Haven’t you ever had selfish desires? Haven’t you ever felt hatred? Clearly… I have dreamed of you often over the years. Whenever I see you, I think of what Fifth Elder Brother said back then — that I was born to be the shadow that holds the sword for you, the hero. From the very moment of my birth, I could never measure up to you!”

“I harbored this thought and looked up at you in fear and trembling for a long time. Then I went to study, and the books said: ‘The night-glowing pearl need not come from the He River at Mengjin; a jade disc that fills the hand need not be quarried from the Kunlun Mountains.’ Only then did I summon the courage to contend with you!”

He staggered to his feet on the dragon throne and looked down from his height: “I, who have neither father nor lord, neither kin nor friend — abandoned by all in this world — I cannot be blamed for my defiance! Heaven condemns me; I defy heaven. Water comes to flood; I overturn the rain and cover the earth! Heaven created all things to isolate me — even if I were to smash my way through the nine layers of the heavens, what wrong would I commit!”

Moonlight suddenly poured into the hall. Song Lan, steadying himself against the cold golden carvings, turned his head and saw Luowei close the hall door and walk to Song Ling’s side.

Whenever these two people stood together, it was as though they were bound by some invisible force, and no one in the world could separate them.

For a long time now, his gaze had pierced through the lush banana leaves, through the desolate plum garden, through all the red-walled corridors of spring drifting with petals, and watched the backs of these two people — and it would fill him with a heart-piercing jealousy.

Luowei took hold of Song Ling’s hand and looked across at him.

She had never witnessed his hysteria before. He maintained a three-tenths false veneer with everyone and everything — even when she had confessed on the Valley Tour Mountain, Song Lan had never shown his true self.

Today, on the eve of his death, he had finally cast aside all his previous disguises.

“Why does he trust you so implicitly?” Song Lan stared at Luowei, his face streaming with tears, his voice softened. “Why have you never harbored resentment toward him? Do you know that discovering he was still alive was not as painful to me as discovering you still stand by his side? He is heaven’s favored son, already possessing the finest things in this world, while I have nothing — the things I struggled to obtain with all my strength are only your pitiful compassion.”

“Because you have never loved another person as he has.”

Luowei was silent for a long while before she raised her head and answered softly: “You have never loved — you have never loved me, nor have you ever loved this world. Only today do I realize that perhaps you have never even loved yourself. Your eyes have always held nothing but self-pity. That line ‘the skills of the Blue Sky not yet exhausted’ is your own annotation. What did you learn from books, and what did you learn from him? He who already understands the vastness of heaven and earth, yet has squandered the life of grass and trees — that is what you are: lofty, eternal, forever above it all, feasting on the flesh of others.”

“What I saw were his shortcomings!” Song Lan sneered. “History has long since recorded the verdict, written by those who were victorious: to be a ruler is to be the master of heaven’s way — he does not need ‘love,’ does not need virtue. He only needs to clear away all obstacles in his path, to make use of all that is useful to his rule, regardless of good or evil, right or wrong, preference or aversion, what to keep or cast away. Benevolence and devoted love are only obstacles on his path to the throne. Though I did not do it well enough, I did it far better than he — and all that has happened today is only because your side played a superior hand!”

Having said all this, he turned to Song Ling with a peculiar smile: “You so despise the art of power and manipulation — yet in the end, didn’t you use it to kill people too? You and I are no different…”

Song Ling cut him off: “Now that it has come to this, you asked me earlier why I am still like this. I can answer you now. I have no use for your scheming. To die at the hands of a petty person, and yet drag this broken body back from the deepest pit of hell. Because even lying in the mire, I can still admire the moon; even in murky confusion, I still struggle to bloom the purest flower in the world. As long as there is one seed, my way will live on forever — you cannot kill me.”

“And I must thank you. Thank you and Yu Qiushi for making me understand: this thing is not entirely worthless. If the art of power is used to protect, it will naturally not be so despicable. It can protect people, and thus it can protect the way. You once had the opportunity, too — but it is a pity you governed through trickery. I fear you will never come to understand. When a great edifice collapses, heaven and man shall unite in condemning you. In the hazy annals of history, with three thousand brushes of red ink, your fate was written long ago. Since you have read it, can you not see your own end?”

Song Lan slumped down on the dragon throne and laughed: “The winner becomes king, the loser a bandit — how could I not see? But even to this very moment, I have no regrets, feel no pain. Even if I fade into darkness, destined to be extinguished in this eternal black night, I should still strive with all my strength, and fight against an unjust fate! Even if — even if all I have kindled is a single fleeting spark — to me, that is an eternal, brilliant, magnificent life. The blood of those your side cares for is my footnote. It is always better to feast on the flesh of others than to be a blade of grass.”

He watched as Luowei and Song Ling linked arms and left the dim rear hall of Qianfang.

“Not killing you would be insufficient tribute to those departed souls in the clouds above. I will send you back to the underground chamber of the Burning Candle Tower and then seal that place forever. I will never go to look upon you, and I will never think of you — I should not have come to question you, for you, even to this day, still believe all things are the fault of others. Since you remain unrepentant until death, the bond of blood between us ends here. The blood I shed in the underground chamber back then is my final apology to you.”

May you, in the eternal loneliness from the beginning of primordial time to the end of all ages, repent and die.

Song Lan finally felt a dull, suffocating pain within his chest. He opened his mouth uselessly, trying as before to squeeze out a burst of weeping, or a fit of hysterical cursing, or a pleading moan of sorrow and submission — but it was as though someone had seized him by the throat, and he could not utter a single word.

Someone grabbed his arms and dragged him out of the hall. He stumbled in a daze, lifting his head to look at the sky.

At the start of the lunar month, there was no moon — not even a crescent sliver of a bow moon.

“Take one last look at the moon. From now on, you will never see it again.”

These words rang out abruptly beside his ear. Then he fell heavily into the dust and earth, letting the guards fill the space above his head with their forms until not a single crack of light remained.

Song Lan groped about in the darkness, but stumbled on something unseen and fell heavily to the ground.

Lifting his head, he saw in his imagination the late Emperor Gao lying on a couch before him.

As though bewitched, Song Lan crawled and scrambled until he was close to the old man.

He remembered what he had looked like at this moment. It was the deep of night on the day of the Thornbush Assassination case. After hearing that Song Ling had been assassinated, Emperor Gao had vomited blood and fallen unconscious. Yu Qiushi kept vigil at his side and, before the rest of the imperial family arrived, summoned Song Lan first.

Before going in, he had, behind Yu Qiushi’s back, procured from his physician subordinate a medicinal potion that would trigger a flare-up of Emperor Gao’s chronic head ailment.

Emperor Gao had suffered from headaches for many years; when they struck, the pain was unbearable. Song Lan walked to the bedside holding the medicine bowl, his heart quivering. Emperor Gao happened to wake at that very moment, narrowed his eyes, and called out to him: “Zi Lan…”

Song Lan’s hand jerked, nearly smashing the bowl of medicine. He wiped his tears and knelt down: “Father…”

Emperor Gao patted him on the shoulder. In his current illness-clouded haze, he had not even realized why Song Lan was alone here: “Good child, you — you go and call your Fifth Elder Brother here…”

Fifth Elder Brother?

Emperor Gao cherished the Empress deeply, and thus could not force himself to favor this child who did not suit his heart. Although after Song Ling had told him of Song Lan’s circumstances he felt guilty and immediately sent him to the Zishantang Academy, from beginning to end — whether at palace banquets or in private — the care he showed him was no different from that shown to anyone else.

Even these rare moments of father and son alone together could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

He knelt before the bedside, longing for the dying man to say one word to him — and having waited until now, all he had been given was “Fifth Elder Brother.”

Song Lan heard himself say, as though he were a wandering ghost: “Yes, Father. Drink the medicine sent by the physicians first.”

The funeral bell tolled through the night of the Lantern Festival.

Yu Qiushi knelt before the hall and kowtowed heavily until his forehead turned black and blue. He stumbled out of the hall in a daze, pressed his lips together and wiped all expression from his face, leaving only grief-stricken bewilderment: “Teacher, Father has gone.”

“Your Highness need not be afraid.”

Afraid… Indeed there was fear, but what he feared was not the lack of father, mother, teacher, or friend — rather it was Yu Qiushi before him, and Luowei, and the day that one of them would eventually learn what he had done.

Yu Qiushi had originally only wanted to push Song Lan forward as heir apparent after the Thornbush Assassination case, never anticipating that Emperor Gao would pass away because of it. Overcome with remorse, he fell ill for several months.

Since he had sat down on the throne, there was no road back.

From that day on, though still so young, he too developed chronic headaches.

Song Lan clutched his head and rolled in agony on the ground. But the scene before his eyes continued like a shadow puppet play unfolding one act after another. After the figures of Yu Qiushi and Emperor Gao successively vanished, a voice suddenly sounded out of nowhere near his ear — aged and female.

It was the words she had whispered against his ear when he had been goaded into a surge of blood and fury and thrust his sword through Consort Chenghui’s chest — the words she pressed close and murmured as she fell against him.

“Your… armies… before they crossed the Saiming River, mother too had brothers and sisters… if they had not all perished beneath the blades of Yin soldiers, why would I have risked death nine times to come here… my entire life has been ruined at the hands of you Yin people… fortunately… fortunately…”

She gave a low laugh, her voice as though laced with poison: “That’s right… you guess — is it better to have a child carrying the Ezhen bloodline usurp the throne of the Great Yin, or to have full-blooded brothers turn against each other in fratricidal strife?”

He released his grip on the sword hilt and said in bewilderment: “What are you saying?”

But she began to shed tears, calling out to him again and again as though cradling a treasure: “I mean, Zi Lan, Zi Lan — you guess, the child I killed back then… was it my own child, or the Empress’s? When I saw your favored consort holding her child… I was suddenly reminded of him. He was so small, so soft. I wonder if he would have…”

Song Lan shook her by the shoulders: “Mother, what are you saying!”

But her breath had grown faint; she had already breathed her last in his arms.

“Ha ha ha… I will not tell you… you will never know… who you really are…”

This voice clung to his ears like a nightmare. Song Lan lay face-down in the cold damp straw, covering his ears with his hands and curling his body tight.

“The blood flowing in me is Ezhen blood,” he murmured to himself. “Lowly barbarian bloodline… all of this you left me… Before you came to be at the Empress’s side, you also disguised yourself as a border woman, weeping to many people about your ruined family… You had a discerning eye — among that group of people… Yu Qiushi rose to receive the Emperor’s trust, and when he chose me, he must also have been thinking of you.”

“No, that’s not right — with your ruthless, stop-at-nothing ways… perhaps I am not of imperial blood at all, and you deceived Father… ha ha ha… you deceived Father, I, I…”

The last of the light vanished completely. In the boundless, endless darkness, Song Lan stretched out his hands and screamed out the words that he had been unable to say moments before to Luowei and Song Ling.

“Elder Sister… Elder Sister! Elder Brother…”

No one answered.

In the last night of that summer in the fifth year of Jinghe, all that answered him was a cicada’s cry — faint, distant, and elusive.

Then came eternal, drifting death and solitude.

*

Luowei carried the imperial seal and walked slowly out of the hall with Song Ling.

Song Ling saw her bowing her head in silence and said: “What happened to him today was not your fault.”

“I know,” Luowei nodded, her gaze growing distant. “I only recalled — a very long time ago, when I first entered the palace, I brought him a gift, and he dried plum blossoms and gave them back in return, hiding behind a crabapple tree and saying, ‘Elder Sister and Imperial Elder Brother are truly the finest people in all the world.’ At that time, A’Qi and Ningle had not yet died, and Elder Brother and Suiyun were also still alive. The palace was spring — that languid, drifting spring — and you and I were like that too, walking hand in hand beneath the swaying tree shade.”

When they were so young that they did not even know how to write the words “loss.”

Few flowers bloom in the azure heights; when spring comes, the wind and rain prevail.

Where now is the face I once knew? Blown into dreams, into rivers and mountains.

…

In the fifth year of Jinghe, the tyrant Emperor’s plot was exposed and he was executed in the Qianfang Hall.

The next day was the first day of the sixth month — an auspicious date.

Fang Hezhi read aloud Emperor Gao’s last testament before the main hall of Qianfang, proclaiming that the crown prince of the imperial family, Crown Prince Chengming Song Ling, was to be established as Emperor. With the written testimony of Yu Qiushi and the former Emperor’s early abdication edict as supplementary proof, the hundred officials were convinced, and for the first time fully understood the tyrant Emperor’s conspiracy. The whole world reviled him.

Song Ling received the imperial seal and was enthroned, changing the reign title to Xuanning. He continued with Empress Su, having her receive the ceremony of honor alongside him, with both sovereigns present in court together.

The affair of one Empress who had married two Emperors circulated among the people for many years. But in the more than twenty years that followed, the Emperor never again took a consort; he often dispatched Empress Su to serve as regent in his stead — a devotion that even the historical record could set down, especially since the two had a childhood betrothal and a bond of youthful affection. Those who loved tales of talented scholars and beautiful women found it not difficult to guess Empress Su’s original reason for first entering the palace as a bride.

But all of this was a later story.

After Song Ling ascended the throne, his first imperial edict urgently pressed for the retrial of the Thornbush Assassination case. Within one month following the victory in the city defense, Fifth Prince Song Qi, the three — Yang, Zuo, and Liu — and the one thousand two hundred and forty-one people subsequently implicated were successively exonerated. After the golden statue on the Thorn Flower Terrace was melted down, a new “Stele Summoning the Souls of the Wrongfully Executed in the Jiachen Year’s Jintian Case” was erected in its place.

The second edict summoned the lords of the four quarters to the capital to swear allegiance to the sovereign. The gates of Biandu were locked for a month to guard against a counterattack by the Ezhen forces — for Wumang still had his troops encamped thirty li from the city, ready at any moment to launch another assault.

The third edict was beyond anyone’s expectation.

The new Emperor had barely ascended the throne when he issued an edict of self-condemnation.

In calling it “self-condemnation,” it was not in truth limited to one person — he was accepting guilt on behalf of the entire imperial family.

And so the edict spread, and within a day people knew: the third son of the Ye family, who had been garrisoning the northern border, had given his life in the Thornbush Assassination case. The new Emperor had sworn before his grave that one day he would surely vindicate the Ye family.

Even though after learning the truth he had discovered that this matter greatly damaged the imperial family’s reputation; even though only the second son of the Ye family remained in the army, and this vow had been known only to him and the one who had died.

A promise worth a thousand gold pieces.

Old General Ye was posthumously granted the title of Auxiliary State Grand General, Grand Pillar of the State, bestowed the title of Marquis of Pingyuan, and interred in the Imperial Ancestral Temple. Young General Ye Kun, under suspicion of treason, was granted the posthumous title of Marquis of Loyal Righteousness and General of the Garrison Army, with a commemorative stele erected on the edge of Ping City so that the border people might forever honor his achievements.

The third son of the family was also awarded the Golden-Purple Senior Grand Master, while the second son was granted honors in the army; when the war was over, he was to return to the capital to receive the imperial grace.

On the day the edict was proclaimed, Chang Zhao, on the official road not far from Biandu, suddenly awoke from a nightmare of arrows raining down upon him from all sides.

The sole surviving soldier who had come through the brutal Battle of Ping City with him had stumbled into his military tent, his face deathly pale, clutching a gold-embossed imperial decree.

Upon seeing him awake, before the soldier could even speak, he fell to his knees before Chang Zhao’s bed, tears streaming down his face.

“Young Master —”