“You’ve gone mad, you lunatic!” Boluoye kept shaking his head.

Xuanzang shared the sentiment. Facing Cui Jue felt like facing two entirely different people — one who, with a casual laugh, could uproot an entire powerful clan, burn over a hundred lives to ash, even degrade in a perverse way a woman who had once been his wife; the other, refined and cultured, brimming with talent, his every word on poetry and literature a precious gem.

“Boluoye, stop your nonsense — go boil some tea.” Xuanzang hastily shooed him away.

Boluoye dared not refuse, but was equally unwilling to leave, so he simply carried that small red clay stove over and placed it in the middle of the three of them. Cui Jue didn’t seem to mind, and with elegant movements, gave both men an impressive demonstration of his refined tea-making craft.

In the early Tang, northerners rarely drank tea — the habit didn’t become widespread until the Kaiyuan era — but Cui Jue clearly had deep mastery of the tea ceremony. As he brewed, he said, “Master, this Fuzhou Dew Bud I ordinarily offer you was obtained through tremendous effort on my part — this year’s total yield was a mere two catties. Once ground into powder, its color is like gold, its texture as tender as pine flower. Look at this tea broth — the world says the South Zero water of the Yangzi is finest, but that is nothing more than a cold spring at the river’s heart, clear and pure, yes; yet the water I use for tea is drawn from a hundred fathoms beneath the earth’s core. Brewed with this, it surpasses that South Zero water by a full three measures.”

Xuanzang was no connoisseur of tea, but having drunk a great deal of it, he at least knew good from poor. Cui Jue divided a kettle of broth into three bowls; Xuanzang drank slowly and found the flavor truly inexhaustible — an entirely different world from what Boluoye’s clumsy hands produced.

At this point the sky was still dark, and the meditation hall outside was utterly silent — not even birdsong. Xuanzang found this strange. They had been here quite a while; by rights, dawn should have broken long ago. He had too many doubts pressing on him to think it through carefully, so he fixed his gaze on Cui Jue and said, “If this poor monk’s assessment is correct, you spent a fortune building Xingtang Temple precisely in order to act against the Emperor, did you not?”

“Correct.” Cui Jue said it without a care, then divided the remaining tea in the kettle into two more bowls and looked apologetically at Boluoye. “A kettle only yields five bowls — any more and the flavor is lost, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go without.”

Boluoye had no attention to spare for this, and gave a grunt without answering.

“This is a vast plan,” Xuanzang pondered aloud. “If the intent were regicide, I would find it hard to believe — there are far more effective methods of killing an emperor than building a temple far from the capital. What is your actual goal?”

“The Buddha said: it cannot be spoken.” Cui Jue smiled slightly.

“Whatever your goal may be — to fake a suicide, abandon your wife and daughter, assume a false identity, lie in hiding for seven years, watching your wife remarry and your daughter recognize another man as father — that resolve, that will, that tenacity commands this poor monk’s absolute admiration.”

“Crack —”

The tea bowl was crushed to powder in Cui Jue’s hand. His face suddenly turned ashen, and a cold, fierce light flashed in his eyes as he stared icily at Xuanzang. “Are you mocking me?”

“These are words from this poor monk’s very heart.”

“Hmph.” Cui Jue pulled up his monastic robe, wiped the fresh blood from his fingers, and said coldly, “I know you mean to rebuke me — but is it easy for me? For the sake of the great ambition in my chest, I abandoned the dignity of a county magistrate, disguised my appearance and faked my death, hiding alone in a cold underground chamber, never seeing sunlight for a full year, year after year — seven years in all, with no one to speak to, no one to communicate with, enduring it alone. Our original plan was to move against Li Yuan; we had arranged to strike during Li Yuan’s inspection of the Hedong Circuit in the seventh year of Wude — but that very year the Turks invaded south, reaching the outskirts of Chang’an, to the banks of the Wei River Bridge. Li Yuan was overwhelmed and cancelled the inspection. So we waited again. It was set for the eighth year of Wude, but then, God damn it, Li Shimin and Li Jiancheng were at each other’s throats fighting for the throne, and Li Yuan had no interest at all in coming to Hedong. Then in the ninth year of Wude, Li Shimin suddenly launched the coup at Xuanwu Gate, and Li Yuan actually abdicated…”

Cui Jue let out a wretched laugh, tears streaming down his face: “There I was, at the bottom of Xingtang Temple, waiting, waiting, waiting — a year, a year, and another year. Waiting through one emperor, then another… Think of it — I abandoned everything in this human world, all for the sake of launching this plan, gambling on leaving my name in the annals of history. Why did it have to be so difficult? I could accept not being enfeoffed as a prince or marquis while alive — but could I not even fulfill my own dying wish once dead? At that moment I was utterly despairing, and nearly thought to dash my skull against the underground rock. The emperor had changed to Li Shimin — faced with a stranger, an emperor we had absolutely no way to control, this plan was undeniably ruined. All those years of painstaking effort, all that terrible price I paid — what did I gain? Not even my beloved companion of a wife — she became another man’s woman, night after night degraded by that coarse and stupid fat pig, and my beloved daughter, her father dead and her mother remarried, the Cui clan she had once been proud of no longer having any connection to her, with no one each day to cherish or love her — how do you think I felt?”

“Finally there came a day when I could bear it no longer. In those days I mutilated myself — I cut my own body with a sharp blade until the blood ran freely…” He blankly pushed up his sleeve. Xuanzang and Boluoye both startled — his arm was covered in scars, crisscrossing in every direction, like ugly earthworms. Judging by their length and depth, Cui Jue had come dangerously close to dying by his own hand during that time.

“If I stayed down there any longer — if I never went out to see my beloved wife and daughter — I feared I would die alive underground.” Cui Jue calmed himself a little and said slowly, “Finally one day I left Xingtang Temple, entering the county magistrate’s rear compound through the tunnel beneath the earth shrine…” He shot Xuanzang a sideways glance. “You know that tunnel — you followed me through it just tonight.”

Xuanzang gave a rueful smile.

“I built that tunnel in the first year of Wude. The purpose at the time was not escape but counterattack against enemy forces besieging the city. The Tang had just been founded, yet the Hedong region where Li Yuan had risen was not at peace — Liu Wuzhou had seized the northern Hedong Circuit’s Mayi and harbored ambitions of pushing south at any moment. Huoyi was the essential pass on any southward march. To prevent a repeat of the Song Laosheng incident, I constructed tunnels throughout Huoyi, with three points inside the county compound connecting to outside the walls. If the city were besieged by the enemy, I could launch a surprise force through the tunnels and catch them off guard.” Cui Jue smiled. “I used this tunnel for military purposes only once — when Song Jingang invaded, I led three hundred civilian militiamen in a night raid and killed over a thousand of his men. Song Jingang boasted of being invincible, yet he watched me lead the entire county’s populace into Huoshan in broad daylight and dared not pursue.”

“To save countless lives in a time of chaos — the Magistrate’s merit is immeasurable.” Xuanzang pressed his palms together in admiration.

“Immeasurable my foot!” Cui Jue said savagely. “When Liu Wuzhou and Song Jingang invaded south, they very nearly took over half of Hedong. Li Yuanji lost Taiyuan and fled in disgrace, yet was still made Prince of Qi. Pei Ji suffered a catastrophic defeat at Duosuoyuan, yet remained a favored confidant. Jiang Baoji was killed in defeat, yet was posthumously awarded the title of Left Guard Grand General. And I? Though I lost the city, I defeated Song Jingang, and not one person in the county died. What was the final verdict? Merits and demerits cancelled each other out — still just the County Magistrate of Huoyi! Ha ha ha —”

Xuanzang was silent. Li Yuan’s favoritism in appointments was notorious. Just as Cui Jue had said: on that occasion, Pei Ji had suffered a crushing defeat and nearly lost the entire Hedong Circuit, and yet Li Yuan treated him even better afterward — when someone accused him of treason, Li Yuan actually sent one of his own consorts to Pei Ji’s home to offer comfort. In the sixth year of Wude, when Pei Ji wished to retire to his hometown, Li Yuan not only refused to permit it but sent a Ministry clerk to keep a daily watch at Pei Ji’s residence, afraid he might leave.

Yet why had he treated Cui Jue so harshly, leaving this brilliantly talented young man to grow old and die in office at Huoyi?

“Ah, what was once a stalwart defense — who could have imagined it would later become my shortcut for a secret rendezvous with Youniang?” Cui Jue smiled bitterly. “But I truly could not bear that torment inside me — if I didn’t go to see Youniang, didn’t go to see Lu Luo, I would truly have taken my own life. So a year ago, one deep night, I entered the rear compound through the tunnel, used the Five-Sense Incense to put everyone to sleep, and entered her bedchamber. That dead pig Guo Zai was sleeping right beside her. I was consumed by jealousy and regret — I wanted so badly to run him through with a sword… Over ten years ago, we first met in Brocade Lane in Yizhou. She was still a young girl just coming into bloom. At one banquet, my poem moved her heart, and from then on she followed me without hesitation to Hedong, where she lived in the mountains, bore children, and washed clothes and cooked meals…”

Cui Jue suddenly began to sob, his face streaked with tears, his eyes full of deep and overflowing tenderness: “Yet I abandoned her for the sake of my own ambition, leaving her and our child with no means of support, alone in this world. That she remarried — I don’t hate her for it, truly. Even if the tree by the road can be plucked at, white hair like silk and a heart like ash. But I could not bear that dead fat man sleeping beside her! Time and again I raised my sword intending to kill him, yet… the moment I thought that I was no longer the person they depended on in this world, that I was a man destined to die — that if this fat man died, they would be truly alone, destitute, cold and hungry — I could never bring myself to do it. Master, would you say I am a cowardly man?”

Xuanzang pressed his palms together and said, “The Magistrate holds within him the nature of Buddha. That you can restrain the poison of anger — how can that be called cowardice?”

“You are a most amusing monk.” Cui Jue gave a desolate smile. “I don’t quite know why, but I simply enjoy talking with you. Though you are a monk, you are not rigid or pedantic — you see clearly through worldly affairs and the human heart. Talking with you, I feel at ease.”

Xuanzang sighed and said, “And yet, Magistrate — you may harm yourself as you please, but why must you go and disturb the peaceful life of Lady Li and Miss Lu Luo? Do you know what your reappearance means for them?”

“Monk, you are right to rebuke me.” Cui Jue admitted this honestly. “That night, Youniang was so startled at seeing me she acted as though she’d seen a ghost — she thought she was dreaming. I tried every means to explain myself, even asking her to pinch me until the flesh drew blood before she would believe I was a living person and not a spirit.”

“That is not what this poor monk means.” Xuanzang said sharply. “After that night you went frequently to her room, rendered Guo Zai senseless and threw him on the floor, and then enjoyed intimate nights with Lady Li? When I first arrived in Huoyi, her maidservant invited me to perform an exorcism — the red marks on Lady Li’s body were your doing, were they not? But do you know — though she was once your wife, she is now the lady of the Guo household. In terms of formal status she has no connection to you whatsoever. For her to meet with you secretly is adultery. What regard have you for a woman’s honor?”

Cui Jue’s face flushed with indignation. “Monk, I dislike what you’re saying! She was once my wife — she will always be my wife. I never wrote a letter of divorce, and I never truly died. Why should husband and wife not share their love?”

“But to the world, you have long been dead!” Xuanzang raised his voice as well.

“But I’m clearly not dead — it was a faked death!” Cui Jue’s voice grew louder still.

“But did Li Youniang know that?” Xuanzang demanded.

“She…” Cui Jue was silenced. After a long pause he said, “Naturally she did not know.”

“That is precisely it! She did not know you had not died. In the eyes of everyone — in every conceivable way — you are a dead man. Your marriage contract was therefore annulled. Her remarriage falls under the protection of the law, and equally under its constraints. In terms of standing, she is no longer a woman of the Cui family but a woman of the Guo household. You entered her private chambers secretly and consorted with her — does this not violate propriety and law?”

“Then…” Cui Jue rubbed his bare scalp in frustration, at a loss for words.

“This poor monk asks further: did Lady Li truly feel no remorse at all about consorting with you?” Xuanzang said coldly.

“She…” Cui Jue deflated like a punctured bladder and murmured, “She was of course remorseful — I know it. In truth, on our first night, she felt a kind of joy at recovering something once lost, and was tender and loving with me. Yet on the second night she refused to allow me near her body. Later it was only when I could no longer contain the pain within me and told her of my six or seven years hidden underground at Xingtang Temple that she forgave me and allowed us to be intimate again. Yet I know — in her heart, she was resistant.”

“She loves you too,” Xuanzang sighed.

“Yes!” Cui Jue said, dazed.

“It is precisely because you reappeared that her heart was filled with pain and contradiction. On one hand she must honor the duties of a married woman; on the other, she feels love and pity for her former husband. In this struggle, how do you expect her to choose?” Xuanzang said slowly. “If you truly loved your wife and daughter, you should let them believe you really are dead — stop disturbing their lives and let them grow accustomed to their current circumstances, living in peace. This poor monk does not believe you were incapable of staying away from one woman. In truth, you lay in hiding for six years and never once went to see them. It was only because you could no longer bear that torment — because you were filled with regret — that you transferred your own suffering onto them.”

“That is not so! Monk, do not slander me!” Cui Jue said loudly.

“Have I slandered you?” Xuanzang said mildly. “Do not try to distinguish right from wrong with me — the world’s hollow rationalizations do not concern me. You cannot even see clearly into your own heart right now, let alone speak of right and wrong.”

Cui Jue was a man of vast learning — how could he fail to understand Xuanzang’s meaning? His face went scarlet, yet he had no reply.

“You are far too selfish. You think only of finding a haven for yourself. But it is not only Lady Li you have harmed — you have also harmed Miss Lu Luo.” Xuanzang sighed softly.

“Nonsense. Lu Luo is my daughter — how could I possibly harm her?” Cui Jue said coldly. “Did you think that in the seven years I hid in Xingtang Temple I was entirely indifferent to them? I can shake all of Great Tang — certainly I can manage a small county of Huoyi. All these years their lives have been peaceful — not without my efforts on their behalf. Lu Luo was implicated in the death of the Zhou family’s second young master on account of her attempt to assassinate you, and the Zhou family sent out a large number of people to investigate the truth. They had vaguely learned it was Lu Luo who was behind it and were plotting revenge against her. Hmph — what of their powerful and prestigious family? Anyone who dares touch my daughter, I will see them without a grave to be buried in! In a single night I uprooted the entire Zhou family and permanently eliminated any threat to Lu Luo…”

Xuanzang looked at him with sorrow, thinking in his heart that this man had truly gone mad. To protect his own daughter from consequences, he had gone to the insane extreme of killing one hundred and twenty-three people — and was still self-satisfied about it.

“Did you use the Five-Sense Incense?” Xuanzang asked.

Cui Jue nodded. “You’ve experienced this incense firsthand yourself, so I won’t hide it from you. I first put them to sleep with the incense, then set fire to the place. Hmph — even drowned or burned, they wouldn’t wake up; they probably died still dreaming beautiful dreams.”

Xuanzang kept shaking his head. But facing this man of twisted character, he didn’t expect mere Buddhist teaching to move him to repentance. “Then what about her killing Kong Cheng?”

“That’s not much of a matter.” Cui Jue was dismissive. “Except for causing me great trouble, there was no harm to her personally. To make up for her mistake of killing someone, I even concealed the scene of the crime for her — to her it might have seemed a most bizarre dream!”

“This poor monk has always been curious how you managed to conceal that scene,” Xuanzang said, genuinely perplexed. “In that brief time — Kong Cheng’s body could naturally have been removed, and the bloodstains washed away — but the dust on the steps? And the hole in the window paper? In this poor monk’s estimation, that window paper had certainly not just been replaced — it was thick with dust. How did you manage that? And furthermore, Lu Luo clearly came out through a hidden passage in the wall — yet that wall was so thin. How could there possibly be a hidden passage?”

“You will understand very soon.” Cui Jue revealed an enigmatic smile.

Seeing he would not explain, Xuanzang had no recourse, and asked instead, “According to this poor monk’s deduction, this plan certainly could not have been executed by you alone. Kong Cheng was also involved, was he not? Did you begin impersonating him after his death? And how were you able to achieve such a convincing resemblance?”

“After his death…” Cui Jue gave a wry laugh. “Allow me to inform the Master: from the sixth year of Wude onward, after I faked my death, I was already impersonating him. The identities of us both were too unusual, and there were too many things we needed to do in secret that could not be exposed to the light — while I was a man who could not appear in the open. So we made masks of each other. When he needed to go out, I would impersonate him; when I was not present, he would impersonate me.”

“When you were not present?” Xuanzang said in surprise. “Did you have a public identity as well?”

Cui Jue was startled, then suddenly pointed at him and burst out laughing: “Master, you appear honest yet you are so crafty — you nearly drew that out of me! Well, I’ll reveal a little — it won’t hurt. Kong Cheng and I each managed our own sphere. He operated in the open, I worked in the shadows. The Feiyu Compound you saw below the mountain belongs to my network — apart from me, none of them know anyone else, and apart from me, they accept no one else’s orders. Unfortunately, Kong Cheng was killed by my precious daughter in a single stroke, and things have now reached the most critical juncture, so I have no choice but to impersonate Kong Cheng every day to deal with the Emperor.”

Xuanzang then suddenly understood everything — no wonder he and the false Kong Cheng had lived side by side day and night without uncovering a single flaw.

“But there is one inconsistency,” Xuanzang said slowly. “On that day, Miss Lu Luo had been following Lady Li, discovered that Lady Li was meeting someone in secret, and in a moment of angry shock, accidentally killed that person. Looking at it now, the person meeting Lady Li in secret that day was naturally you. Then why was the one who died Kong Cheng?”

“That,” Cui Jue pondered, “involved an element of coincidence. That day it was indeed I who was in the room having a tryst with Youniang. She had come to the temple to find me that day because Lu Luo had moved into the temple to stay with you, and Youniang, being worried, wanted to ask me to look after her properly. While we were meeting in the room, that little minx unexpectedly recognized Youniang’s silhouette from behind and quietly followed. After Youniang left, Kong Cheng came rushing to find me through the hidden passage — there was a pressing matter that needed my attention — so I left through the passage. Kong Cheng was old, with bad hips and legs, and being in his own temple, naturally there was no need to creep and squeeze through tunnels — he opened the door and walked out openly. Unexpectedly…” Cui Jue couldn’t help but smile bitterly. “Lu Luo, without a word of warning, put a sword straight through his chest. It was truly as though the Buddha were looking out for me — if Kong Cheng hadn’t come to fetch me at that critical moment, and I had walked out through the front door, I fear that little minx would have killed her own father.”

The Buddha would hardly be looking out for you, Xuanzang thought to himself.

“All right, all right.” Boluoye had been listening to the two of them ramble on and had long since grown impatient. He rapped on the tea kettle. “You’ve talked long enough — it’s time to explain your purpose. Since you are not trying to assassinate the Emperor, why did you have Lady Li counsel Guo Zai to urge the Emperor to stay at Xingtang Temple? Come out with it, or I’ll have to bring you before the authorities — in the Justice Ministry’s prison, they won’t give you a choice about opening your mouth!”

At these words, both men’s expressions turned peculiar. Xuanzang looked up in surprise. “So you are a man of the government?”

Cui Jue roared with laughter. “Master, you’re still being kept in the dark by this barbarian? And here I thought there was no one in this world clever enough to fool you!”

Boluoye gave a grunt and ignored him.

Cui Jue looked at Xuanzang. “Master, this person’s identity is quite extraordinary. He is a member of the court’s Buliang Men — the Ill-Omened Men.”

Xuanzang had clearly never heard of the “Ill-Omened Men” and looked completely blank, but Boluoye’s complexion changed drastically. His right hand shot into his robe and gripped his knife handle as he said in a low, steady voice, “You knew all along?”

“I knew.” Cui Jue said it lightly, then turned to Xuanzang. “The Ill-Omened Men is an organization founded personally by Li Shimin, subordinate to the inner court. Their duties are surveillance, assassination, planting secret agents, and gathering intelligence. Their leader is called the Chief of Rogues, and their members — drawn from all walks of life, each possessing a special skill — are thus called the Ill-Omened Men. Their membership is complex: Han and barbarian alike, Shatuo, Turks, Qiuci people, even Dashi men from the far west. This Boluoye’s ancestral home is in North India. His father was a Vaishya — a great merchant who traveled the Silk Road trade routes of the Western Regions. He later offended King Harsha, had his property confiscated, and fled to the Kingdom of Qiuci with Boluoye, his only son. After his father’s death, Boluoye made his way to Great Tang. Li Shimin had long had ambitions to reopen the Western Regions and was gathering intelligence about them. This Boluoye had traveled tens of thousands of li through dozens of kingdoms, possessing wide-ranging experience and knowledge — so he was absorbed into the Ill-Omened Men.”

“You…” Boluoye’s forehead was damp with cold sweat. “How do you know all this so clearly?”

“Because since Li Shimin took the throne three years ago, the court has dispatched nine secret agents to Xingtang Temple!” Cui Jue said coldly. “You are the tenth.”

“And those agents?” Boluoye asked, shocked.

“The six who gathered classified information are all dead. The other three I have safely housed, because they were rather dim.” A smile spread across Cui Jue’s face. “I also know that the one directing these agents is the Daoist Wei — Wei Zheng. That old fellow’s stratagems are exquisite. Seeing that Xingtang Temple was impenetrable, he thought of something novel and sent a Tianzhu barbarian in on the coattails of Master Xuanzang. Heh — not that I mean to hide anything from you, but though Daoist Wei’s schemes are of the highest order, he doesn’t know that I have access to all the files on these Ill-Omened Men agents. Master, does the court know of your plan to travel west to India?”

“It does.” Xuanzang nodded. “In the first year of Zhenguan I submitted a petition for permission and was denied.”

“That’s exactly it.” Cui Jue nodded. “Wei Zheng tailored Boluoye to fit you — knowing you could hardly refuse to let him follow.”

Xuanzang could only smile bitterly. He hadn’t imagined that his journey to find his elder brother had become a pawn in the court’s political contest.

Boluoye’s expression shifted. “You have a spy in the court!”

“That’s right,” Cui Jue said with a light smile, “and one of far higher rank than Wei Zheng. However clever he may be, how could he possibly evade the network we have been weaving in the court for so many years?”

Boluoye drew a deep breath. “In the court, those whose rank surpasses Wei Zheng’s can be counted on one’s fingers — anyone could guess who this person is, to say nothing of His Majesty. Aren’t you afraid I’ll escape and carry this information to Lord Wei?”

Suddenly, a thought struck Boluoye. Quick as a leopard he launched himself up, pressed his short knife to Cui Jue’s neck, and demanded, “Why is the sky outside still black?”

Xuanzang now noticed it too. They had already passed the mao hour when they returned to the Bodhi Courtyard, rested for half a period, and — by rights — it should have been past the chen hour by now, with the sky just beginning to lighten. Since then they had been talking with Cui Jue for well over another full hour — the monks in the incense kitchen should have been delivering breakfast by now.

Why had dawn not come?

The two looked around. Outside the window was pitch-black; outside the door was complete silence — not even the burbling of the hot spring water, nor wind, nor birdsong. The natural world had gone utterly quiet.

“What is happening?” Xuanzang said gravely.

“Open the door and see,” Cui Jue said casually.

Boluoye kept his knife at Cui Jue’s throat and did not dare to move away. Xuanzang rose and opened the door — and stopped, stupefied. Boluoye’s mouth fell open, his eyes going round as saucers.

Outside the door was a thick, solid stone wall.

“What is this?” Boluoye shouted. Forgetting Cui Jue for the moment, he leapt over and flung open every window. Outside each one — solid black stone wall, ice-cold to the touch, with droplets of water seeping down. He stabbed at it several times; his fine Wootz-steel curved blade could shear through iron and steel, yet against this stone wall it rang and rang, scattering sparks in all directions.

“Save your effort.” Cui Jue sipped his cold tea and said lazily. “We are now thirty fathoms underground. You could shout your throat raw and no one would hear you. You could take an iron shovel and still not dig through this thick rock.”

“Thirty fathoms… underground…” Both men were dumbstruck. How was this possible? A moment ago they had been in the Bodhi Courtyard — they hadn’t moved at all, just sat drinking tea and talking. How had they ended up thirty fathoms underground?

“Nothing to be surprised about.” Cui Jue smiled. “You’ve been asking all this time how I disposed of a murder scene in the Suo Po Courtyard without leaving a single trace — well, I’ve replayed it before your eyes just now and you still couldn’t see through it. Master, it appears even your wisdom has its limits!”

Xuanzang’s face went pale. He walked to the doorway and felt the stone wall — rough and uneven, covered in the marks of chiseling; smooth in a general sense, but obviously not naturally formed. He thought for a moment, then said, “Can it be… that this entire room has sunk into the earth?”

“Exactly!” Cui Jue clapped his hands, his face full of admiration. “The Master truly lives up to his reputation! Yes — the ground beneath this meditation hall has been entirely hollowed out and fitted with mechanical pulleys. When the mechanism is triggered, the entire room descends; once it aligns with a horizontal track, it slides sideways, and then an identical room slowly rises up and stands in the Bodhi Courtyard in its place. And the Suo Po Courtyard where Lu Luo killed Kong Cheng works the same way — were you not puzzled by the unmarked steps, the layer of dust, the undamaged window paper? This is how it was done!”

Cui Jue described it simply enough, but both men’s eyes were wide with astonishment. A mechanism this massive, capable of sinking and raising an entire room — what an undertaking it must have been! What precision of machinery! Especially when this was not flat ground but a mountain, with rock everywhere. How had he accomplished it?

“It’s not as complex as you might imagine.” Cui Jue seemed to read the confusion in Xuanzang’s eyes and explained. “This mountain’s interior is riddled with rock caverns and countless underground streams. I simply worked with what nature provided. Most of it does not rely on human labor but on wind power and water power. The windmill you saw at the mountaintop provides only a small fraction of the energy — the majority of the motive force comes from the rapid underground streams turning waterwheels, which transmit power through gears and drive chains to hubs throughout the system. Those chains number in the hundreds, stretching for hundreds of fathoms, crisscrossing in every direction, extending deep into the darkness underground. Ah — easy to say, but this work took me five or six years. Construction began in the fourth year of Wude; by the sixth year the above-ground structures were complete, and then I descended underground to build the underground works. Now, nine years on, it is eighty percent finished. But that is already sufficient for my purposes.”

“What a grand undertaking!” Xuanzang was genuinely awestruck.

“Indeed.” A trace of pride showed on Cui Jue’s face. “The scale of expenditure was enormous — the cost of building thirty temples wouldn’t be enough. It was precisely because so much money was spent that the court took notice and sent people to secretly investigate my accounts. At that point, I had no choice but to fake my death. On the surface, constructing Xingtang Temple cost thirty thousand guan — but the underground portion cost three hundred thousand guan. Once I was truly arrested and they asked where the money came from, what could I have said? Even the entire resources of Jinzhou Prefecture wouldn’t have amounted to that much. So for me, the best solution was: the man dies and the accounts die with him.”

Both men suddenly understood why Cui Jue had staged his hanging.

“In truth, the court had no particular suspicions at first,” Boluoye said with a sigh. “After all, building Xingtang Temple was by the Grand Emperor’s decree. The only strange thing was where you got so much money. The state treasury provided not a single coin, yet you, a county magistrate, somehow raised thirty thousand guan. Where did a man like you get that kind of influence? Looking at it now, the total funds you mobilized — ten or twenty times thirty thousand guan wouldn’t cover it. If this were known, all of Great Tang would be thunderstruck.”

Cui Jue smiled and turned to Xuanzang. “Master — he doesn’t know where I got the money. But surely you can guess?”

“How would this poor monk know?” Xuanzang was at a loss.

Cui Jue simply smiled and watched him in silence.

Xuanzang’s mind stirred, and the answer came involuntarily: “The Buddhist establishment —”

Cui Jue burst out laughing. “The Master is sharp as ever. In the world today, the wealthiest are not the court, nor the wealthy nobles and officials — but the Buddhist establishment.”

Xuanzang said nothing, knowing this to be true. Though the Sui Dynasty had lasted only thirty-seven years, it was briefly mighty, and both Yang Jian and Yang Guang were devout patrons of Buddhism. In the Kaihuang era alone, Yang Jian ordered the construction of three thousand seven hundred and ninety-two temples. After Yang Guang took the throne, he established Dharma assemblies broadly and ordained monks and nuns by the thousands — and though the Jiangnan region suffered repeated devastation by war and countless Buddhist temples were burned, nearly all the Buddhist temples of Jiangnan today had been established through Yang Guang’s patronage. The Buddhist establishment had accumulated an immense foundation throughout the Sui dynasty.

The chaos at the end of the Sui lasted over a decade. The common people resorted to cannibalism; officials were killed; aristocratic families were annihilated; fertile fields lay fallow. Even seven or eight years after the Tang’s founding, the economy remained in ruins — along the lower Yellow River, for a thousand li the landscape was empty, with no smoke from human habitation, no sound of dogs or chickens. Yet the Buddhist establishment’s foundations had not suffered any serious upheaval. The wealth accumulated over a century meant it recovered within a few years to nearly full strength. A single temple often held lands for hundreds of li around — surpassing even the households of princes and marquises.

In particular, since the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, the practice of lending money at interest — “seal money” — had become widespread among temples. Originally, the motivation was simple: with little expenditure in a temple and more donated money than could be used, the funds were lent out at low or no interest to the poor. The intent was good, yet once money — that demon — was unleashed, no one could control it. Over time, the scale of these loans grew enormous, and the borrowers expanded from the poor to wealthy officials and nobles who needed quick cash, with interest rates climbing ever higher. Some merchants, desperate for liquidity, began pawning real property and other assets at temples for ready money. After more than a century of development, nearly every temple had gone into the business of moneylending and pawnbroking, earning handsome profits, with wealth piled high in the storerooms.

Compared to the court’s empty treasury, saying the Buddhist establishment’s wealth rivaled a nation’s was no exaggeration. Xuanzang had lived long enough at Konghui Temple, and Chang Jie had inherited the mantle of Master Xuancheng — naturally he understood all of this very well.

Xuanzang had no wish to dwell on this topic and turned to ask, “Now that you have laid out almost all your secrets, how do you intend to deal with us?”

“Deal with us?” Boluoye looked furious. He shouted, pressing his curved blade once again to Cui Jue’s neck. “Even if we’re trapped underground — hmph — I don’t believe you can’t get out. If you can get out, so can we.”

Xuanzang could only smile bitterly. Given Cui Jue’s depth and cunning, it could hardly be that simple.

Cui Jue didn’t even glance at Boluoye, and kept his gaze fixed smilingly on Xuanzang. “As for the two of you — Boluoye must die without question. He is one of the Ill-Omened Men; I can hardly let him go and carry word to Wei Zheng. As for you, Master… you should not die at my hands.”

“Oh? And why is that?” Xuanzang smiled. “Killing one person is killing; killing two is also killing. Why can you not kill this poor monk?”

“Because I made a promise to someone that I would not kill you.” Cui Jue sighed. “I must honor my word.”

Xuanzang’s heart stirred. “Can it be… Chang Jie?”

“Ptuh!” Cui Jue suddenly erupted in fury. “Don’t mention that name before me! That degenerate, that coward, that shameless, incompetent, ruinous wretch! He is not fit to carry that person’s shoes. We were blind — out of a thousand, out of ten thousand, and we chose that bastard Chang Jie!”

Hearing him curse Chang Jie so violently, Xuanzang’s own expression darkened. They shared one mother, after all — if you call him a bastard, what does that make me? Still, he was genuinely astonished by the depth of Cui Jue’s hatred toward Chang Jie. What had happened between them?

“Is Chang Jie still alive?” he asked urgently.

“Alive!” Cui Jue said bitterly. “Why wouldn’t he be? The good die young while the troublesome linger for a thousand years. That fellow lives very comfortably, believe me. Never mind him…” Cui Jue waved a hand with weary disgust and fixed his gaze directly on Xuanzang. “You will still die — only the one who kills you will be someone else.”

“Who?” Xuanzang’s expression remained unmoved.

Cui Jue did not answer. He looked at Xuanzang with regret and murmured, “Such boundless promise ahead of you — why break your vows?”

Xuanzang was baffled. I break my vows? What can this mean?

“I have said all there is to say. The one who will kill you will come within days. Master, be prepared.” Cui Jue smiled and suddenly pressed his fists together in salute. “Farewell.”

“Where do you think you’re going?!” Boluoye’s knife was still at his throat; seeing he intended to leave, Boluoye laughed coldly.

Cui Jue gave a mild smile and suddenly pressed one hand against the floor. With a crack, a large hole opened in the center of the meditation hall floor, and Cui Jue, along with his cushion, the stove, tea bowls, and kettle, tumbled down with a clatter and vanished into the hole in an instant.

Boluoye was caught completely off guard and nearly toppled in after him. In the chaos he reached out and braced himself against the edge of the hole and didn’t fall — but a moment later thought better of it, and called to Xuanzang: “Master — after him —”

He let go and dropped in.

Xuanzang saw the logic of Boluoye’s thinking. The two of them were trapped underground with nowhere to go. Even this opening offered some sort of way forward. And if they could seize Cui Jue, so much the better. Without hesitation, he ran over and leapt in.

Wind howled past his ears. Total darkness. He fell and fell with no end in sight. He didn’t know how long he had been falling when suddenly — thud — he landed squarely on top of someone. That person let out a muffled grunt, then something seemed to spring beneath him; Xuanzang bounced up, came back down, and landed on that same person again, then bounced again…

“Master…” came a groan from below. “You’re crushing me — it hurts — be gentler…”

Before the words were finished, Xuanzang landed again. The person beneath let out a shriek and nearly blacked out. Xuanzang finally managed to stabilize himself, but when he kicked out with one foot to find the ground, he found nothing — his two legs seemed caught in a net, tangled and unable to move.

“Is that you, Boluoye?” Xuanzang felt around beneath him.

“Isn’t it obvious…? Ow ow — you just kicked me in the groin, and now you’re… groping…” Boluoye groaned loudly. “We’ve fallen into that scoundrel’s trap — there’s a net down here…”

Xuanzang froze and quickly withdrew his hands.

Boluoye fought through the pain, fished a fire-starter from his robe, and lit it. The faint light illuminated a few feet of space. They were indeed in an enormous cavern. All around was impenetrable darkness, with a vast net suspended in the center — the two of them were caught in it like flies.