“It has been four days. News of Jianzhou should have reached the young master’s ears by now.”
Li Que sat at a square table of yellow rosewood with a scrolling grass motif, idly running a small knife along a wet crab-green inkstone.
The crab-green inkstone was one of Fu Ruzhi’s most cherished possessions — carved from a single piece of crab-green stone, its pool sloping downward at an angle, with a tiny frog carved at the bottom, so lifelike it seemed about to croak.
Fu Ruzhi loved this crab-green inkstone, and loved most of all the distinctive charm of that frog at the bottom of the pool.
Li Que sharpened his blade against the top of the frog’s head without the slightest regard, as though afraid this remarkably lifelike little frog might somehow live on forever.
“Would you not agree, adoptive father?” He did not lift his head.
Fu Ruzhi lay on the bed, motionless.
Li Que set down the inkstone, put away the small knife, rose, and walked toward the bed.
He sat down beside it, and picked up the quilt that Fu Ruzhi had kicked aside in his struggles, gently draping it over his limbs — which had taken on the dark, bruised color of pooled blood from being bound so long.
Four days without a drop of water or a morsel of food had left Fu Ruzhi’s complexion ashen. The color that had drained from his cheeks had gathered instead at his cracked and parched lips, where, in the tiny dry fissures like cracks in a drought-stricken field, dried blood had congealed.
Sensing someone sitting down beside him, Fu Ruzhi’s eyelids flickered. He slowly opened his weakened eyes.
“What… do you intend… to do to Chan Yu…”
Li Que looked at him and gave a completely unrelated reply: “Why is the young master’s childhood name Chan Yu?”
Fu Ruzhi did not answer his question.
Yet Li Que provided the answer himself.
“The young master was born in autumn. The autumn rain falls like the unbroken, lingering song of the cicada — tranquil and far-reaching, quiet and serene. Perhaps on the day the young master was born, you had just been standing under the eaves watching the autumn rain, a pot of da hong pao tea worth a thousand gold pieces beside you. The birth of a legitimate heir — even you, at that moment, felt a rush of joy.”
Li Que said quietly:
“And so you gave the young master the childhood name Chan Yu.”
“And I…” he said. “Why was I given the name Bu Ping?”
“I hoped that you… would not tolerate injustice, that you would raise your voice against it, that you would make a mark on the world. I taught you to read… to write… to play the qin… to paint. I treated you as my own son…” Fu Ruzhi’s voice was hoarse and rasping, barely audible unless one bent close to listen. “Who could have imagined… that I had let a wolf into my home…”
“Every single word you say—” Li Que tilted his head, his gaze resting on the bare wall for a moment. He pressed a hand against his abdomen, then turned back to look at Fu Ruzhi. “—makes me want to retch. Do you know why?”
Fu Ruzhi said nothing.
“Because you and that legitimate son of yours are the same — beasts wearing human faces. Beasts speaking — naturally that makes one want to retch.” Li Que said.
“Chan Yu is a beautiful blessing. Bu Ping is a filthy curse.” Li Que looked at him, and from between his teeth came a voice laced with cold, seething hatred. “You hoped that I would contain injustice, endure injustice, submit to injustice — because I am the very product born of power crushing the powerless.”
Fu Ruzhi’s expression shifted. He looked at Li Que without moving, his eyes holding surprise, suspicion, and the telltale residue of a mind quickly working through something.
“Adoptive father?”
The hand Li Que had propped on the bedside curled slowly inward, his nails digging deep into his palm.
He stared at Fu Ruzhi lying on the bed, and one word at a time, drew up from the depths of his heart the hatred he had buried there for so long.
“How could you say such things?”
“My birth father…”
Fu Ruzhi held his gaze. In the span of those brief moments, many expressions had already passed across his face.
“When… did you…”
Li Que paid no heed to his question, and continued speaking, as though only to himself.
“My mother was originally from a family of officials. My maternal grandfather, Rong Dejing, was only a low-ranking eighth-grade official of modest means, but he was respected by those around him, and the family lived comfortably without want. That simple, peaceful life was shattered in my mother’s sixteenth year. Grandfather was falsely accused, and to prove his innocence, he hanged himself in prison. The remaining family members — the men were exiled to the frontier, never to be permitted to enter the capital; the women were consigned to the pleasure quarters, there to be mocked and used for others’ entertainment.”
“What wrong had they done?” Li Que looked at Fu Ruzhi and said, word by careful word: “The only wrong they committed was in bringing my mother to Baima Temple to burn incense, where she encountered you — a man with a human face and a beast’s heart.”
“My mother’s only failing… was that she resembled Noble Consort Bai in her youth, which stirred your depravity anew, leading you to repeat what you had done before.”
“Without lifting a hand yourself, with no more than a lingering glance, you had countless willing accomplices bring what you desired to your doorstep. All it took from you… was a look held a little longer than the rest — and that was enough to destroy the lives of dozens of people.”
Fu Ruzhi looked at him in silence, but his cracked lips were trembling slightly.
“Vice Administrator Fu… your life is too pitiable.” Li Que said slowly. “Born into a family of generations of court distinction, you were the companion of the late Emperor in your youth, rose to the highest offices after coming of age, held power enough to overshadow the whole court — even the Son of Heaven himself deferred to your will. Your entire life was spent in wealth and prestige, yet you spent all of it in pursuit of a shattered illusion.”
“The young woman of the Fang Family, and my mother… both were fragments of that illusion, certain pieces of certain moments. Once those parts that resembled the illusion faded, you cast them aside without mercy.”
“…With your own grief, you fashioned even greater grief for others…”
“…Vice Administrator Fu, am I not correct?”
Fu Ruzhi pressed his trembling lips together and closed his eyes.
Li Que gazed at that face, now completely sealed off — still as a dead well — and in his low, quiet voice, a faint and barely detectable tremor surfaced:
“I used to wonder — how could a person as naive as my mother have concealed everything so flawlessly, given birth to a child in secret, and then claimed the child was an adopted foundling? Later I understood… it wasn’t that my mother had deceived the pleasure house, had deceived you — it was that the entire pleasure house had deceived my mother, and it was our esteemed Chancellor Fu, upright and pure as a bright wind and clear moon, who had deceived my mother!”
Beneath Li Que’s calm voice, a surging undercurrent was rising. The fire of hatred flared and dimmed in the reddening rims of his eyes.
“How could you — when my mother asked you to name me — have the face to give me the name Bu Ping?!”
When Li Que’s words fell, the inner chamber went utterly silent, as though the whole world had stilled.
After a long silence, Fu Ruzhi’s faint, parched voice rose once more.
“Between your mother and me… there was only that one time, when we were drunk. She did not know the full story. She only thought that my heart belonged to another, and on her own initiative took on another’s guise, wishing to comfort my spirit. When we were sober again, we each pretended nothing had happened… but afterward… she was with child, and she tried to conceal it from me and give birth without my knowledge. Knowing that I had wronged her, I pretended not to know and quietly made arrangements in the background. I named you Bu Ping because I hoped you would understand — injustice is as common as grass in this world. If you raged against every wrong, it would only bring destruction upon yourself. The strong bend and break; the pliant endure and persist. To contain injustice… was nothing more than my wish for you to live peacefully and joyfully, as an ordinary person…”
“The greatest injustice of my life was the one you inflicted upon it!”
Li Que’s enraged cry, stripped of all restraint, broke through Fu Ruzhi’s words, and for a long time afterward continued to echo throughout the inner chamber, churning the thick and heavy air.
“You and your legitimate son are equally vile, equally contemptible—” Li Que said. “Your legitimate son, raised under your constant influence, has even surpassed you. You still think of him as the young child who needs your protection, yet he has long since infiltrated every corner of your Chancellor’s residence and quietly usurped your power without your knowledge. You thought that once he returned to Jianzhou, you would be safe? Do you truly believe he will return to Jianzhou so soon?”
Li Que said:
“Has it never occurred to you — why, after three days, the imperial guards have still not broken through your gates to rescue you?”
Fu Ruzhi was silent.
“They have been waiting for you to die… for far too long.” Li Que said. “And I have waited for this day… for far too long as well.”
“After my mother learned the truth from an old household servant, she could not face her ancestors in the afterlife. She went three days without food or water, and starved herself to death in that pleasure house of excess and indulgence. Before she died, she told me the truth, and severed the bond between us as mother and son. In her eyes, I was the child of her enemy — yet she did not know that the enemy had never regarded me as a son.”
“After my mother died, I wandered in confusion and disorientation, drifting from place to place. I debased myself as a way of facing the shame and hatred eating me from within. Until… I met Elder Brother, and then later, Sister-in-law…”
“Only then, bit by bit, did I begin to understand… I am no one else.” Li Que said, his voice settling into calm. “I am only myself. I am Li Que of Yutou Township — Que, the magpie, the bird whose call foretells good fortune. Killing you is not for the sake of avenging Rong Bu Ping — it is to repay the debt of life owed to my mother.”
“I want to become Li Que in full… For the rest of my life, I only want to go on being Li Que. And for that, I must kill you. Using the death my mother chose for herself, I will make you atone to the forty-eight innocent souls of the Rong family who were wrongly killed.”
What appeared to be the pooled blood from Fu Ruzhi’s limbs seemed to have crept up into his face, lending his already pallid complexion the faint greenish cast of a man near death.
He struggled, but the feeble effort was laughably futile against the ropes that bound him fast. He ceased the hopeless attempt. Those eyes — emptied of their former sharpness and penetrating clarity — fixed steadily on Li Que before him. His blanched lips parted, and from them came a thin, hissing breath.
Li Que leaned down, drawing close to his throat.
“Chan Yu… Chan Yu…”
The broken, faltering sound, like a snapped qin string, ceased abruptly.
The chest at his ear had long since stopped rising, and even the faint, barely-there heartbeat had completely stilled. Li Que remained in his earlier posture for a long time before at last straightening.
A stray beam of moonlight filtered through the window and fell over the motionless Li Que.
He had fulfilled the one great wish of his entire life, yet felt not the slightest sense of triumph.
Only an emptiness — a hollow void, a gaping hole with a cold wind howling through it — remained with him forever.
He rose, walked out of the lifeless master bedchamber, passed several fully armed soldiers, and came to the side courtyard that had been sealed off layer upon layer.
The servants attending Fang Shi scattered out of his way the moment they saw him, shrinking back in fear. He walked without obstruction into Fang Shi’s room.
Fang Shi sat on the luohan daybed, a string of prayer beads in her hand. On the low table before her sat a cup of tea that had long since gone cold. Her vacant eyes stared into empty space, thoughts unreadable.
Li Que stopped a few steps from the luohan daybed and performed a respectful bow.
“Li Que’s long-held grievance has been avenged. I offer my gratitude to Madam.”
Fang Shi’s expression was unmoved. She gently turned a bead between her thumb and finger.
“…I have done nothing. What is there to thank me for?”
“That Madam did nothing — to Li Que, that is itself a grace.” Li Que said. “The battle that lies ahead should be one of life and death. Please remain in the side courtyard and do not venture out, Madam, lest stray blades cause you harm.”
“Are you not afraid to die?”
“Madam should understand better than most,” Li Que lowered his head, “that death holds no fear. There are times when it takes more courage to go on living than to die.”
Li Que gave her one more silent bow, then turned and walked out.
At the very moment he stepped over the threshold, a cool, distant voice came from behind him.
“When he needs to travel in secret, he often comes and goes through the private study in the main courtyard.”
Li Que stopped. He turned and looked toward Fang Shi. Fang Shi moved a prayer bead in silence, her face expressionless, as though the voice had come from someone entirely else.
Li Que swept his robe and performed a deep bow toward her, then rose and walked out of the side courtyard.