The bell of the ancient temple rang in the cold. The old trees rustled their leaves.

A small novice monk carried two brimming buckets of water, hopping along without spilling a drop — yet when he came face to face with a squad of soldiers whose expressions were cold and fierce, he splashed water onto his own trouser legs. The novice lowered his head and held his breath as he squeezed past this troop bristling with deadly intent. Only after they had gone did he finally let out a sigh of relief and hop forward again with his water buckets.

In the vast ancient temple, the sight of a monk’s robe was a rare thing. Armed soldiers in heavy armor were everywhere.

In the most heavily guarded courtyard of Jinping Temple, a large bluestone boulder half the height of a man had been carved into the lifelike likeness of a Pixiu. The top had been hollowed out to form a naturally seamless incense burner. Smoke curled like a gliding serpent, rising slowly from the burning candles, while a few crimson points flickered and dimmed on the candlewick tips.

A cold wind swept in from the horizon. The candle flame shuddered, and a cluster of ash tumbled down.

A soft sigh drifted from the stone pavilion in the courtyard. An elderly monk looked at the game of chess that had remained still on the board for quite some time, shook his head, and said:

“This humble monk has lost.”

Fu Xuanmiao, sitting across from the old monk, raised his eyes — those eyes always calm as undisturbed water — and said slowly:

“The game has only progressed halfway. How can there be any talk of winning or losing?”

“…Knowing that the path ahead holds no way out, why must one still wait until one is utterly shattered and destroyed?” The old monk looked at Fu Xuanmiao.

“Without walking all the way to the end, how can one know for certain that destruction awaits?”

“You cause yourself such needless suffering, good patron…” The old monk shook his head once more.

After the time it took to burn one stick of incense, only the unfinished game and Fu Xuanmiao remained in the stone pavilion. He raised his wide, capacious sleeve and slowly began to gather the black and white pieces back into their containers, one by one.

At some unnoticed moment, the figure of Yan Hui appeared outside the pavilion.

Yan Hui came and went without a sound. Fu Xuanmiao had never looked up, yet seemed to have spotted his presence the instant it materialized. He spoke:

“Report.”

Yan Hui lowered his head and said respectfully: “Reporting to Your Majesty — Beichu Garden today was the same as the past several days. The Princess of Yue made several attempts to divert the attendants and make contact with the Empress Dowager, but none were successful.”

“And the Empress Dowager?” Fu Xuanmiao asked.

“After the first day, the Empress Dowager has not again requested to go outside. She spends her days quietly engaged in Buddhist devotions within the Snow Courtyard, with no suspicious behavior.” Yan Hui paused, then ventured carefully: “As for the Princess — should we deploy more people to keep watch over her?”

Fu Xuanmiao placed the last chess piece back in its container.

“Let her be,” he said softly. “Until one sees the Yellow River, one’s heart will not die… We are alike, she and I.”

Yan Hui did not dare offer the slightest remark.

Until one sees the Yellow River, one’s heart will not die…

But upon seeing the Yellow River — can the heart truly die?

Yan Hui seemed to have noticed something and looked up at the sky in surprise.

A moment later, Fu Xuanmiao walked slowly out of the stone pavilion and raised his head to look at the fragments of jade-white substance drifting down from mid-air in a flurry.

Dark clouds muddied the heavens. The pale daylight from beneath the cloud layer cast itself down, illuminating the snowflakes that had suddenly begun to fall. The cold wind made Fu Xuanmiao’s robes rustle and snap. He stood like a jade flute, straight and upright in the wind and snow, his expression as cold and distant as the ice and snow themselves.

“Your Majesty, shall I arrange for you to move to the inner chambers?” Yan Hui asked.

Fu Xuanmiao did not stir, seemingly oblivious to the question.

In the blink of an eye, Jinzhou welcomed its first snow of the year. After the imperial capital had fallen, he had fought his way from place to place. The last snowfall he remembered was in that magnificent, resplendent palace city — watching the snow from a railing with Shen Zhuxi.

He still remembered — that day, the night sky had been as clear as washed silk, the pavilion warm as spring, heat braziers burning on all six corners of the stone gazebo. He had personally brewed tea for her, and when passing her the teacup, his fingertips had accidentally touched hers, leaving a moment of warmth that lingered on.

The sun rose and the moon set. Time passed like a white colt flashing past a crack in a wall.

These three years had felt to Fu Xuanmiao like a dream. He had stood higher than he ever had before, yet what he felt was only a cold more penetrating than any he had ever known. At some point he could not place, even the flowing sand he had clutched desperately for had disappeared without a trace.

He had become a true sovereign without subjects — utterly alone.

Not one of those he had strained to keep had been kept.

The ancient bell tolled at that very moment. The deep and distant sound of the bell rang through all of Jinping Temple, spreading outward like waves, like tide. Most of the people on Jinzhou’s streets cast anxious looks at the snowfall — unusual for this place — while only the children, oblivious to the world’s troubles, still tilted their smiling faces upward and stretched out their hands to catch the cold snowflakes.

Three days remained until the imperial wedding.

……

This first snowfall over Jinzhou showed no sign of tiring after falling for an entire day.

Shen Zhuxi had watched the snow from inside her window for the entire day and had still not found an opportunity to make contact with Fang Shi.

As evening came, A’Xue urged her to go to bed several times, but she shook her head each time, continuing to stare, lost in thought, at the winter snow she had not seen since leaving the capital.

When they had still been in the imperial palace, snow had fallen every winter. White ice crystals swept through the air over the vermilion palace walls, spiraling around the bright lanterns in the hands of attendants. Viewed from atop a towering pavilion or terrace, the imperial palace under the night snow was the most breathtaking — and the most utterly silent — place in the world.

Shen Zhuxi’s attention was on the snow beyond the window, yet not entirely on it. She paid no mind to the footsteps approaching from behind, until a warm and heavy fox-fur cloak was draped gently over her shoulders. Only then did she seem to notice. She spun around swiftly, pressing herself against the wall, her gaze meeting a pair of deep, still, and unfathomable eyes.

“How are you back?” Shen Zhuxi looked at him warily.

Fu Xuanmiao did not answer her question.

“Why aren’t you resting yet?” he said.

“…It’s none of your concern.” Shen Zhuxi turned her head away and said flatly.

“In three days it will be our wedding. The Ministry of Rites has already drawn up the proceedings. Once you’ve looked them over, is there anything you’d like changed?”

Shen Zhuxi stared out the window. A long time passed — so long that Fu Xuanmiao had begun to think she would continue her silent resistance — before she finally spoke.

“…I have been married before and have done everything a wife is expected to do. Does that truly not bother you?”

Fu Xuanmiao caught in this cold, indifferent remark a trace of a sign that her attitude was softening. The pulse of joy that leapt up unbidden in his heart drowned out the sting in his chest at the same moment, and he said, with almost no hesitation:

“I can not let it bother me.”

Shen Zhuxi turned her head back to look at him. That face — which had always shown him nothing but wariness and cold indifference — now carried a faint and complex hint of being moved.

“…You are now the exalted ruler of all under heaven. With your abilities, you could conjure another princess of Great Yan without difficulty. Why must it be me and no one else?”

“The bond between you and me,” Fu Xuanmiao said, standing before the daybed, separated from her by a distance within arm’s reach, hands hanging at his sides, his gaze fixed on her clear and translucent apricot-shaped eyes, “…cannot be replaced by any other person.”

A snowflake drifted through the half-open latticed window and fell before Shen Zhuxi’s eyes. She stared at that crystalline flake and said in a hushed voice:

“If I were to marry you, would you spare Li Wu and all those with him?”

Fu Xuanmiao startled. He seemed to doubt what he had just heard. His brow instinctively furrowed, then quickly smoothed out again, and his dark, deep eyes seemed to flash with a sudden brightness of startled joy.

“You’ve thought it over?”

Shen Zhuxi closed her eyes. After a long pause, her lips, drained of color, murmured a quiet, private thought.

“…I am only tired.”

Fu Xuanmiao said nothing for quite a while, seemingly composing himself, or perhaps weighing how much sincerity lay behind her words. After a moment, he sat down on the daybed, only a single fist’s width now between himself and Shen Zhuxi.

He looked at her, his words measured and deliberate: “I promise you. As long as Li Wu and his people are willing to leave Great Yan forever, I swear on the name of my deceased father — I will not pursue any of their former offenses.”

Shen Zhuxi was silent, her expression withdrawn. Fu Xuanmiao hesitated, then reached out tentatively toward her right hand resting on her knee. Before his fingers could make contact with the back of her hand, she drew her hand back first, tucking it beneath the fox-fur cloak.

Fu Xuanmiao’s outstretched hand, extended only halfway, ultimately came to rest back on himself.

Shen Zhuxi seemed not to have noticed his small gesture. Her gaze remained fixed steadily out the window, at the night scene cloaked in darkness, her face wearing a faintly distant expression.

“…From Cuiwei Palace, if you looked out, there was also an enormous tree soaring to the sky. When the night snow fell, the snow piled on the treetop could be three or four feet thick. When daylight came, I always used to wander beneath the tree, worried that some clumsy bird might have built a nest up there — that when the piled snow fell, it would knock down the nest and send the little birds to be caught by the palace attendants or the princes and princesses, costing them their lives.”

“You have always been so tender-hearted.” Fu Xuanmiao gazed at her intently.

“…It was only that I had nothing else to do.” Shen Zhuxi’s voice lowered. “It was simply that only those creatures who could not speak were willing to listen to me speak,” she said.

This time the silence settled on Fu Xuanmiao.

Shen Zhuxi continued: “In those days, I was very unhappy. I longed to see you, and yet I feared seeing you. Because you were the only one who treated me as a living person — and yet I never felt genuine sincerity from you. There was a mask over your face… which always prevented me from seeing your true intent, from seeing what lay beneath your cold smile — whether there was some ulterior motive behind it.”

“……”

“Even so, I had only you.”

Shen Zhuxi drew her hands out from beneath the fox-fur cloak and stared at them in the moonlight veiled by the night snow.

“I disliked the qin and se, but in order to earn a look of approval from you, I had no choice but to practice bitterly every day, and even when my ten fingers went numb, I dared not relax for a single moment. Because I knew… though you appeared to indulge my every wish on the surface, the moment there was anything not to your satisfaction, you would punish me with loneliness.”

“…Zhuxi.” Fu Xuanmiao could not help but interrupt her. “I promise — nothing like that will ever happen again.”

He paused, then spoke in a tone of controlled restraint:

“Can we forget the past — forget the grievances and sorrows of the previous generation — and start anew?”

Shen Zhuxi revealed a faint, bleak smile.

“What I have forgotten…” She looked at her hands, which were no longer the tender and delicate hands they had once been, and said in a low voice, “…is only how to play the se. I’m afraid that now, even if a se were placed before me, I could no longer play a tune to your satisfaction.”

“…That won’t happen. As long as I remember for even a single day,” Fu Xuanmiao said, “you will not forget.”

Shen Zhuxi looked over at him.

“Attendants.”

At Fu Xuanmiao’s single command, attendants immediately came hurrying into the room with quick steps. Before long, a qin and a se had each been brought before the two of them.

“Would Zhuxi be willing to play a duet with me tonight?” Fu Xuanmiao looked at her, and even his eyes — which ordinarily made it so difficult to tell joy from sorrow — could not help but overflow with a trace of anticipation. “…Just like before.”

Under his unwavering gaze, Shen Zhuxi sat motionless for a long pause, then finally reached slowly out toward the ancient se before her.

Seeing this, Fu Xuanmiao also gathered himself, settled his wide sleeves, and sat properly before the qin table, his ten fingers resting lightly on the strings.

Fingertips descended, and a melody of pleasing beauty, like the first cry of a morning phoenix, began to flow forth. Shen Zhuxi’s expression shifted, and she said coldly: “I don’t want to play that.”

The melody of “Phoenix Seeks His Mate” broke off abruptly. After a brief silence, Fu Xuanmiao said: “Whatever Zhuxi wishes to play, then play that.”

Shen Zhuxi considered briefly, then let her ten fingers move like flowing water across the ancient se, and the melody of “Cypress Boat” emerged at once. Fu Xuanmiao pressed his lips tightly together. Only after quite some time did he begin to join in, qin and se sounding in harmony.

The page in the Book of Odes belonging to “Cypress Boat” rose unavoidably in Fu Xuanmiao’s mind.

My heart is no stone — it cannot be turned. My heart is no mat — it cannot be rolled up.

Every single character was like a sharp and slender needle, plunging deep into his chest.

He closed his eyes and struggled to drive the intrusive images from his mind.

Turned or rolled — he had never expected either from the beginning.

The lowly blood of a nest-usurper — even the only mirage he had possessed had been stolen from someone else.

He had never dared hope — that he might be truly loved by someone.

Turbid light, faded shadows…

How dare one covet the radiant moon.

……

In the Snow Courtyard facing south to north, across from the building where the qin and se played in harmony, most of the palace attendants had already retired for the night. Only the soldiers on watch still stood faithfully guarding the single candle burning in the room.

Fang Shi listened with a furrowed brow to the strains of qin and se drifting through the night outside the window, and she had already formed a guess as to who was playing.

She had only not expected that Shen Zhuxi would be willing to once again join Fu Xuanmiao in a duet of qin and se.

The puzzlement lingered in her heart for a brief moment, before a sudden thought cut through her mind like a bolt of lightning in a clear sky, jolting her to her feet with a start.

“Empress Dowager?” Zisu, standing in attendance in the outer room, caught sight of her figure and immediately asked.

Fang Shi suppressed her true feelings and said coolly:

“…I cannot sleep. Help me to the study to sit for a while.”

Zisu suspected nothing, and helped her to the adjacent study. Fang Shi asked her to prepare incense candles and a Buddhist icon. Zisu attended to each item. Then, with an expression of undisguised revulsion, Fang Shi ordered her to leave. Zisu hesitated only slightly, and then, trusting that a woman who could barely see would not be able to stir up any trouble, withdrew to outside the study.

After Zisu left, Fang Shi softly chanted the name of the Buddha under her breath — just as she always did when she engaged in Buddhist devotion — yet her feet moved quickly to the bookshelf in the corner of the room.

With a brief sweeping glance, she spotted a yellowed copy of the Book of Odes nestled among the many other volumes.

Fang Shi glanced back to confirm that Zisu was still in the outer room, then swiftly pulled out the book.

Inside was poem after poem of familiar verse. Using the candlelight, and with every bit of effort she could muster, Fang Shi used her eyes — somewhat better than before — to make her way through the entire volume as best she could.

The contents of the book were no different from the Book of Odes she knew.

Fang Shi stared long and hard at the volume in her hands with knitted brows, then suddenly turned the book back to the page for “Cypress Boat” and ran the pad of her right index finger carefully over every inch of it without missing a spot.

At this, Fang Shi’s expression turned to one of stunned astonishment, and she could not help but raise her head and look toward the night sky visible through the window.

From that direction came the clear, distant sound of the qin and se.

When the piece ended, Fu Xuanmiao looked deeply at Shen Zhuxi, who had raised her head.

“Our wedding draws near. I hope the Princess will focus her mind on the ceremony and stop making futile attempts.” Fu Xuanmiao said with a veiled meaning, his voice gentling, “If there is anything you wish to ask, I can convey it on your behalf.”

Shen Zhuxi turned her head away coolly, her gaze returning to the night snow, which had grown ever deeper and more dark.

That face — once the beautiful and innocent face of a young girl — was more and more revealing the radiance of steadiness and reason.

She was of golden branches and jade leaves — but she was no longer only that.

Meticulous calculation and planning, cautious and measured deliberation at every step, and the resolve to sacrifice what must be sacrificed had at last allowed her — under the cover of a carefully spread mist — to strike true to the mark, right before Fu Xuanmiao’s eyes.

A man as conceited as Fu Xuanmiao would never have imagined that she had, right in front of him, delivered the secret message.

“…There is no need.” Shen Zhuxi said.

Whatever she wished to ask —

She would ask herself.