The sounds of reality, the stench of rot and blood, finally jolted him awake. He lay curled on the bloodstained, foul-smelling straw — still in the cell, though he had no idea what time it was. Sunlight leaked in through the window, forming a column of light and drifting dust. He slowly moved his eyes; another figure sat in the cell, in a chair, watching him quietly.

Tang Minjie looked back at him, waiting for his blurred vision to clear. He breathed hard, struggling to shift back, and sat up on the straw, back against the wall, facing the man.

“…Has Jin fallen already? People keep wandering into this cell every day…”

He hadn’t expected to see this figure appear before him in this prison.

It was a tall, elderly man, his full head of white hair still combed neatly back, wearing a brocade robe embroidered with dragon patterns.

“Jin has not fallen. The Western Court may have lost, but here in Yunzhong, this old man can still go wherever he pleases — no one can stop me.”

Gushen. Wanyan Xiyin.

He spoke: “Your scheme was played too far. Did Ning Yi teach you this?”

At the mention of Ning Yi, Tang Minjie drew in a breath but said nothing, leaning against the wall, watching him quietly. The cell fell silent for a moment.

…

“…I’ve heard that you’re Ning Liheng’s own disciple, so I came to have a look at you. All these years, I’ve always wanted to sit down face to face with Master Ning of the southwest, to talk things over properly — but I suppose there won’t be such a chance now. What kind of man is Ning Liheng? Can you tell me a little about him?”

The young man on the straw across from him said nothing, his eyes fixed steadily on him. After a moment, the old man smiled faintly and sighed.

“Truth be told, over all these years, I’ve known something of what my wife did in secret. She saved tens of thousands of Han people, and passed along, here and there, a fair bit of intelligence. For more than a decade, Han people in the north have lived wretched lives, but those in my household could at least live like human beings. Outside, they call her ‘Han Furen’ — she’s done countless good deeds. Yet in the end, you sold her out… What you’ve done will be laid at the Chinese Army’s feet. On our side, in Jin, we’ll make a great show of publicizing it. There’s no escaping this stroke of the pen, sharp as a blade, for either of you.”

The old man paused, looking at his opponent across from him. But the young man said nothing, only watched him, a cold mockery in his eyes. The old man nodded.

“Of course, the Chinese Army will tell people outside that this was only a confession beaten out of you under torture, that you’re nothing but a traitor who gave up the Han Furen… This has always been a fight to the death, where belief has never depended on truth — and that’s not wrong either… After this, the Western Court will eventually be unable to withstand the pressure, and sooner or later, this old man will fall. But the Jurchen people were never held up by this old man alone — the Western Court still has the Marshal, still has Gao Qingyi, Han Qixian, and the resolve born of hard-learned lessons. Even without Wanyan Xiyin, they won’t collapse. All these years, that’s how we’ve always carried on — my Jurchen people have never needed any one person to keep going…”

As the old man spoke, his gaze grew steadily more resolute. He rose from his chair, holding a small bundle in hand — likely some kind of medicine — and walked over, setting it down beside Tang Minjie. “…Of course, this is this old man’s own hope.”

Tang Minjie paid it no mind. Xiyin turned away, pacing slowly a few steps around the cell, falling silent for a moment.

“…I keep thinking back… over the years, the things I said to my wife. I told her long ago that treating Han people as slaves wasn’t right. More than ten years ago, I told her I would slowly change these things. A few years ago, I said it again. Before the southern campaign set out, I said it again…”

“…In our Great Jin, the Jurchens are few, and to govern steadily, we had to divide people into ranks and classes — harshly, at first, of course, with the intent to gradually reform it over time. When Wuqimai was in power, he issued many decrees forbidding the wanton killing of Han slaves — that, of course, was reform. It could have been done faster. I said this to my wife often, and told myself I’d done a fair bit — but there was always some greater matter pressing ahead of it…”

“…Curbing the nobility, rooting out corruption, cultivating new talent, promoting scholarship and craft — over these past ten-odd years, every one of these was a major undertaking. The plight of the Han slaves had eased somewhat, so it kept getting pushed further back. By three years ago, with the southern campaign approaching, that became the greatest matter of all. I thought, once this campaign was over, I too would be old — so I told my wife that once this was behind us, I would make the matter of Jin’s Han people my foremost priority. In whatever years I had left, I would see to it they lived better lives — for their sake, and for the Jurchens’ as well…”

“…One matter kept giving way to the next, and in the end, it was never done. Seeing you today, I find myself thinking back to the Jurchens of forty years ago.”

The old man sat back down in his chair, looking at Tang Minjie.

“…Back then, the Jurchens were nothing but a few small tribes on the Hui River — few in number, weak, scraping by in the ice and snow. Liao was like some boundless colossus, crushing us down year after year! We finally couldn’t endure it any longer. Aguda rose up and led the uprising — three thousand against a hundred thousand! Twenty thousand against seven hundred thousand! We slowly forged a name for ourselves, thunderous and resounding! People outside said the Jurchens were fierce and brave — fewer than ten thousand Jurchen soldiers, and none could stand against them!”

“…We slowly brought down the once-invincible Liao, and we came to believe the Jurchens were all heroes and men of valor. And down in the south, we came to see, little by little, the weakness of you Han people. You lived in the finest lands, held the best territory, led the finest lives — yet spent your days composing poetry and prose, soft and feeble! That, we thought, was the very nature of you Han!”

The old man’s gaze turned fierce, his finger pointing at him.

“…When Aguda was near death, he told us — with Liao destroyed, we could take the Wu Dynasty next… We marched south, swept through and took Bianliang, and you never fought a single respectable battle. In the second southern campaign, we brought down the Wu Dynasty entirely and occupied the Central Plains — every time we fought, we slaughtered the troops without mercy, and you never resisted. Even the weakest sheep would have shown more courage than you!”

“…In the third southern campaign, we searched the mountains and combed the seas, pushing all the way to Jiangnan — so many years, and it was always the same. Not only were you weak, you were forever tearing yourselves apart from within. The few among you with any backbone at all, in that first battle at Bianliang, were gradually pushed out to the northwest and southwest. Wherever we went, the fighting came easy — even sieges… The first time we besieged Taiyuan, Nianhan surrounded it for a year, and Qin Shaohe held the city, reduced to eating people from hunger — yet Nianhan still couldn’t break through… But after that…”

“…By the second and third southern campaigns, the slightest pressure and you surrendered. In siege warfare, we’d send a few squads of our fiercest men forward — just holding their ground was enough to make you bleed like a river, and then we’d go in and slaughter. Why not slaughter you, what right did you have not to be slaughtered, a pack of cowards! You were always like this—”

The cell fell silent. The old man paused.

“…But I… I love and respect my wife, and I always believed we couldn’t just keep killing forever, couldn’t keep treating them as slaves forever… But on the other hand, you people kept showing me that this is simply what you were — that it was fine to take things slowly. So I waited, and waited, more than ten years passed like that, all the way to the southwest, where I saw your Chinese Army… and now, today, I see you.”

“I know now — you were finally driven to this.”

He looked at Tang Minjie.

“It turns out… there’s not so much difference between the Jurchens and the Han after all. We were pressed down in the ice and snow for hundreds of years, until we finally couldn’t survive, couldn’t endure it any longer — we took up the blade and forged ‘ten thousand cannot stand against us.’ And you, you weak Han people, over these ten-odd years, pressed down, slaughtered — slowly, it drove you into what you are now. Even after betraying the Han Furen, you still had to bring down Wanyan Xiyin, to throw the eastern and western courts into a power struggle. I hear you even had someone maim Mandu Dalu’s own son. That method wasn’t a fine one — but in the end, this is a fight to the death…”

“But I find myself thinking, little Tang…” Xiyin said slowly, “these past few days, what I’ve thought of most is my wife, and the children at home. The Jurchens took the realm and treated the Han as no better than beasts — and in the end, there came men like you, and armies like the Chinese Army, Han heroes rising up. If one day, as you say, your Chinese Army does march up and take the realm, and the Han hold power — how will you treat the Jurchens then? If your teacher, Master Ning, were here, what do you think he would say?”

He looked at Tang Minjie. This time, Tang Minjie finally spoke with a cold sneer. “He’d kill every last one of you, leave no trace behind.”

Xiyin laughed as well, shaking his head. “Master Ning wouldn’t say something like that… Of course, what he would say doesn’t matter either. Little Tang, this is simply how the world turns. The Liao’s misrule drove out the Jurchens; the Jin’s cruelty drove out you. If one day you take the realm and turn just as cruel toward the Jurchens or others, then sooner or later, some other people, ten thousand strong against all odds, will rise to bring down your Chinese realm in turn. Wherever there is oppression, people will always resist.”

The old man rose to his feet. His frame was tall and gaunt, and only the pair of eyes in his face still carried a striking vitality. Across from him, Tang Minjie looked much the same.

“You’ve had it hard.” he said. “You betrayed your own comrades — the Chinese Army will never acknowledge what you’ve done, history won’t record your name, and even if people speak of this someday, no one will call you a good man. But here, today, I think you’re remarkable… Tang Minjie.”

This was some unnamed afternoon, in a grim cell, where Wanyan Xiyin said to him: “…It was you who defeated Wanyan Xiyin.”

Tang Minjie laughed. “Then hurry up and die.”

“I will. Just not quite yet… I will.” What he said last was: “…A pity.” As if regretting that he’d never have the chance to speak with Ning Yi after all.

Then he turned and left the cell.

The jailer came back to remove the chair and lock the door. Tang Minjie lay back on the tangled straw, the column of sunlight slanting past his side, dust dancing within it.

He didn’t know why Xiyin had come to say all that, nor did he know what stage the conflict between the two courts had reached — and by now, he no longer cared to wonder. After betraying Chen Wenjun, there was little left for him to think about; he’d stopped even bothering to track the date. Life was now the only burden left to him. This was the most at ease he had felt since arriving in Yunzhong and witnessing countless scenes of hell. He was waiting for death to come.

But death was slow in coming.

A few days later, again in the dead of night, a strange smoke drifted in through the cell’s opening…

When he woke, he was in a jolting carriage, someone pouring water on his face. He forced his eyes open — inside the pitch-black carriage, he couldn’t tell who these people were.

They had left the city, the road rough and jarring the whole way. Tang Minjie tried to resist, but rope bound his body, and the drug hadn’t yet fully worn off, leaving him without strength.

The carriage came to a stop somewhere outside the city; it was near dawn, the sky at the horizon just beginning to show a faint fish-belly white. He was shoved off the carriage, tumbling to the ground, and did not stand — because standing before him was Chen Wenjun, holding a long blade. The white in her hair had grown more, her cheeks more gaunt. On any other day he might have mocked how she and Xiyin had come to resemble each other as husband and wife, but this time, he said nothing. Chen Wenjun set the blade against his throat.

This was the desolate wilderness outside Yunzhong’s walls. The few who had brought him out here withdrew of their own accord to a distance, and Chen Wenjun looked down at him.

“Do you remember… after what happened with the Qi family, when I came to find you, and you told me — about the Han slaves?”

Her voice was low and slow. Tang Minjie looked up at her, confusion in his eyes.

Across the dim wilderness, the wind moved lightly, and Chen Wenjun’s voice was just as light. “Back then, you told me about that one chained up like a dog — his leg crippled, his right hand hacked off, his teeth knocked out, his tongue cut away… You told me that Han slave had once been a soldier… You imitated his cries in front of me — hmm hmm hmm, ahh ahh ahh…”

The wind stilled over the wilderness. “I went to see him,” Chen Wenjun said.

Tang Minjie gave a faint shake of his head.

“These past few days, I’ve been out to where the Han slaves live outside the city… those who froze to death last winter are only now being carried out… some had their homes burned down around them, everyone skin and bones… I went and saw… some places I’d known of before, but never gone to see with my own eyes. I went to that little gambling den in the south of the city called Xiaoyao Retreat… do you know that place…”

Tears welled in Chen Wenjun’s eyes; Tang Minjie shook his head faintly — he knew all of it, and his shaking his head was for something else entirely.

“They kill people there, kill Han slaves for others to watch… I only saw a little of it — I heard that last year, they caught Han slaves, soldiers especially, and inside, they’d… skin people… they’d…”

She stopped there, pressing a hand over her mouth, unable to say more.

Another cart approached across the wilderness, another struggling figure aboard it.

“…I went to see the woman who caused Lu Mingfang’s death… remember her? A madwoman, from your Chinese Army… the younger sister of a hero called Luo Ye… it was Luo Ye, wasn’t it? A hero?”

“…She’s still alive, but she’s not even human anymore after what they did to her… All these years by Xiyin’s side, I’ve seen so many Han people, some living wretched lives — I felt for them, I wanted them to have better lives. But even these wretched people, compared to others, already had it good. That is Jin. That is the hell you live in.”

“…I keep thinking back to when Shi Li’ai told me to pick a side, trying to open my eyes — was I to be a kind-hearted Jurchen wife, or was I bound to be that ‘Han Furen’ standing with the Han people? You asked me too, that if one day the northern campaign succeeded, where would I go. You’re all so clever, aren’t you — but I’m afraid, the Chinese Army isn’t a place I can go to anymore.”

Tang Minjie shook his head, more forcefully now, leaning his neck toward the blade — but Chen Wenjun stepped back again.

“I still hate you for betraying me. For the rest of my life, I will never forgive you — because I have a good husband, and a good son, and now, because of me, they’re going to die. Chen Wenjun will never, as long as she lives, forgive your shameless act today! But as a Han man, Tang Minjie — your methods truly are formidable. You really are a remarkable man!”

She bent down, gripping his face, her thin, bony fingers nearly digging bloody marks into his skin. Tang Minjie shook his head. “No…”

“I will not forgive you.” Chen Wenjun stared at him. “But since you’ve brought about my death, then get out of here, go back south! With a mind as sharp as yours, methods as formidable as yours — for the rest of your life, you will live it in atonement for the people of the south! Make their lives better, don’t let the tragedies of the Central Plains happen again, don’t let hells like this Jin ever happen again — do you hear me… Go back, and atone for your sins—”

A desolate, hoarse voice rose from Tang Minjie’s throat. “Kill me—”

Chen Wenjun said, “I hate you — so don’t you dare think you get to die by my hand. Go back. The merit will be mine. Your sins, you’ll never finish atoning for them!”

“I won’t go back…”

“Get the hell—” Chen Wenjun’s voice broke off. She released the kneeling Tang Minjie and rushed to the other cart, dragging down the struggling figure — a frightened, cowering madwoman.

“Have you seen her! Have you seen her! It was her who caused Lu Mingfang’s death — but she’s also the younger sister of your Chinese Army’s Luo Ye! Here in the north, she’s suffered unspeakable abuse, she’s gone mad, but she’s still alive—”

Chen Wenjun held the blade toward Tang Minjie, crying as she shouted, “You have two choices now. Either you kill her, avenge Lu Mingfang, and take your own life here. Or, you take her with you, all the way south, so that this hero Luo can see the only family he has left in this world — even if she’s mad now, she never meant anyone harm—”

She swung the blade, cutting the ropes binding Tang Minjie. He crawled forward on his knees, his eyes now also filled with tears. “Have someone take her south. Kill me — kill me—”

Chen Wenjun kicked him back down. “You think dying is going to be that easy for you? For the rest of your life, you’ll remember me…”

She flung one thing after another at him. “Here’s a bundle, dried rations, silver, a pass from Prince Lu’s household! A blade, and the woman, and the carriage — take it all, no one will come after you. Han Furen, a living Buddha to countless families!… You are the last people I will ever save.”

Her voice rose high, only to turn suddenly gentle in that final line.

Tang Minjie picked up the blade from the ground and stumbled to his feet. “I’m not leaving, I won’t go…” He tried to move toward Chen Wenjun, but two men stepped in, blocking his way.

“You bastard…” Chen Wenjun laughed through her tears. “Who said you get a say in this? Clown, hah, playing mad, pretending the fool — how did that laugh of yours go again, heh heh heh heh hah hah hah hah… Everyone look, he’s crying, hah, some great hero…”

Chen Wenjun laughed unrestrainedly, mocking Tang Minjie as the drug slowly wore off — and in that moment, on the wilderness at dawn, she looked, in fact, more like the “Clown” once feared throughout Yunzhong than he did.

Tang Minjie strained against the two men holding him back. “Stay, damn you, listen to me, Chen Wenjun… you fool—”

Chen Wenjun walked toward the distant carriage.

“I won’t leave—”

“I’ll kill her—”

“Don’t do this…”

“Kill me—”

“You worthless woman, I betrayed you on purpose—”

Chen Wenjun climbed into the carriage, which slowly pulled away. The two men holding him back withdrew as well. Tang Minjie moved toward the madwoman on the other side, brandishing his blade, threatening to kill her — but no one paid it any mind. The madwoman, startled by his roaring and the flash of the blade, screamed and wept loudly. He struck her, knocking her to the ground.

“Aaaaaaaaaaah—”

Across the wilderness, Tang Minjie howled like a wounded beast. “I’ll kill your whole family, Chen Wenjun—”

Beside him, the madwoman screamed and wailed along with him, clutching her head, rolling on the ground. “Aaaaaaaaaah—”

These sounds of utter, bottomless grief rose together across the wilderness…

…

The carriage drew further and further away, until even Tang Minjie’s wailing could no longer be heard. Han Furen, Chen Wenjun, leaned against the carriage wall, no more tears left, and something like the faintest smile touched her face.

The carriage made its way toward the towering walls of Yunzhong Prefecture. At the city gate, someone reminded her, and it came to a stop. She stepped down and climbed the wall, and there, atop it, gazing out into the distance, was Wanyan Xiyin.

The two looked at each other.

“I thought you’d leave,” Xiyin said.

“The matters of the state, of the Han people — none of that concerns me anymore. What’s left now is only family. Why would I leave?”

“Then it would have been better if you had.”

Even as he said it, Xiyin reached out and took his wife’s hand. The two of them walked slowly forward along the wall, talking of family matters, of things past… In this moment, certain words, certain memories once too difficult to raise, could finally be spoken.

Chen Wenjun told Xiyin, in broad strokes, about how she had been taken north in her youth — how the Bureau of Covert Affairs under Qin Siyuan had recruited members here, originally meaning to plant her among Liao’s upper ranks, only for her, later, to catch the eye of a Jin dignitary, setting off this long chain of events.

“…What kind of man was Qin Siyuan, back then?” Xiyin asked, curious.

Chen Wenjun shook her head. “I never met him myself. I don’t know — only that our fathers’ generations had some dealings.”

She spoke of how she’d felt on first arriving in the north, and of how she’d felt when Xiyin first took a liking to her, saying, “There was a poem I loved back then that I never told you about. Of course, once we had children, that feeling gradually changed…”

“Which poem?”

Sunlight spilled over them. Chen Wenjun looked south, toward the place she could never return to in this life, and said softly, “Fubo only wished to return home wrapped in a horse hide; why need Dingyuan return alive through the pass. Let not a single wheel return to the sea’s lair — leave still one arrow to be shot at the Tianshan. When I was young, that was my favorite poem. I never told you, back then.”

“Let not a single wheel return to the sea’s lair, leave still one arrow to be shot at the Tianshan…” Xiyin held her hand, smiling slowly. “Different masters we may have served, but my wife truly is a remarkable heroine among women.”

Sunlight swept across the sky, across the vast northern land.

The arrow that Qin Siyuan had loosed toward the Tianshan, so many years ago, had finally completed its task…

ps: Fubo only wished to return home wrapped in a horse hide; why need Dingyuan return alive through the pass.

Let not a single wheel return to the sea’s lair — leave still one arrow to be shot at the Tianshan.

— Li Yi of the Tang Dynasty, “Border Song”

Married Into a Wealthy Family, Volume 10: Long Night Through Spring (End)

There will be a brief afterword.

Volume 10 Summary

I hesitated for a while over where to place the break point for Volume 10.

Since Volume 10 was titled Long Night Through Spring, its meaning was actually drawn from Lu Xun’s line about “the changing banners atop the city walls” — and from there, I could have extended the story further, writing about the shape of the various powers after the Wu Dynasty’s initial collapse. But in the end, I decided to end it here, at the Clown.

The Clown is a fairly complex character. I’ve written some relatively complex figures before — Wang Shitong, for instance, or Si Zhongxian who sold out Jianmen Pass, or Dai Mengwei — but those kinds of complexity could still be easily parsed and categorized; call that elementary-level complexity. The Clown, here, reaches an intermediate level.

Writing a novel calls for gradual buildup — you can’t make things too knotty for the reader too early. But starting from this point with the Clown, the later stages will begin to bring more complicated situations, because the rising action has reached its final stage. Many threads, even the entire world of Married Into a Wealthy Family, are beginning to reach a point where everything comes together amid complexity. Everyone’s fate is heading toward a point of culmination and resolution — so this Clown arc is, in a sense, a heads-up for what’s coming.

Of course, the threads won’t get exaggeratedly tangled — I’m not writing serious literature, after all. Even where there’s some depth of thought, it’ll always be wrapped in an engaging plot, coated in sugar. No need to be too worried.

As for the Clown’s merits and faults, I don’t intend to render judgment — the plot simply reached this point, and there was a person who did this particular thing. How you choose to see it is entirely up to you.

One thing I’d like to point out about the plot structure: Tang Minjie is a very likable character design — his appearances have always been high points, and even after betraying Chen Wenjun, on his own stage he remained a singular protagonist. But in the fourth chapter of the Clown arc, I swapped his position with Chen Wenjun’s — he ends up lost and helpless, while Chen Wenjun laughs. Relatively speaking, “who is the Clown” now looks more like Chen Wenjun, left behind in the north.

All along, Chen Wenjun’s portrayal has been relatively understated, and the contradictions within her run even deeper than the Clown’s. Taken north as a young woman, she was later recruited by the Bureau of Covert Affairs and became a spy — originally meant for Liao, but she ended up instead within Jin’s political circles. She passed along a great deal of intelligence, but after the fall of the Central Plains, the Wu Dynasty’s Bureau collapsed, and she had already gained her freedom by then.

Over the last two arcs, she’s basically been caught wavering between two impossible positions — whether to be a Jurchen wife, or to be a “Han Furen.” The two can involve doing the same things, but mean something entirely different. So in the end, she takes on the image of the Clown, while Tang Minjie loses that identity, bringing the Han Furen’s mercy back to the south.

This kind of swap elevates the Han Furen into a brighter protagonist.

I teased on Weibo that neither of these two characters dies here — they carry, on their shoulders, ideas far more complex than what’s shown so far. That’s what Volume 11 will bring out.

Now, a bit about Volume 10 as a whole.

I’ve always said Married Into a Wealthy Family is an experimental work — depending on what I’m trying to practice, it tries different things at different stages. At the start of the book, I wanted to dig as thoroughly as I could into satisfying payoffs and unfinished threads — using, so to speak, twice the prose to deliver one measure more of expression. So the opening chapters were written in a somewhat rambling style, and once things reached a climax, I’d often try different angles to bring out more of that satisfaction.

In the earlier volumes, to make Volume 7 land as tightly as possible, I held back on certain techniques — for instance, when Zhou Tong made his attempt on Nianhan’s life, I noted at the time that the scene had strayed from the protagonist’s viewpoint, and that I’d try to avoid that going forward.

Of course, after finishing Volume 7, I felt I’d reached a kind of peak in terms of personal satisfaction with the payoff, and afterward I started wondering whether I should spend more effort developing the side characters and the ensemble cast. In my original plan for the back half of the book, I’d considered keeping the plot centered tightly on Ning Yi, writing more romance and family drama to drive the side characters and reveal the brutality of war through that central thread — but later I decided there was no need to be so conservative.

Since stepping away from the protagonist’s viewpoint is naturally a point that costs you something, in developing the side-character plotlines I had to dig up more points that add value, so readers wouldn’t be tempted to look away. I also thought — if, even without the protagonist present, my plot could still draw in a large readership, then for my next book, there would basically be no weak points left. That’s why, after Volume 7, we saw such a large ensemble cast emerge.

And going by subscription numbers, even with this pace of updates and the frequent absence of the protagonist, the 24-hour subscription count still topped ten thousand — the overall appeal of the story clearly hadn’t gone off track. Of course, one could also say that if I’d made it a bit more crowd-pleasing, the numbers would have climbed even higher — something to look forward to in my next book.

Volume 10 as a whole was also largely about building out the ensemble cast — from Jun Wu and Zhou Pei at the start, to the Chinese Army’s southwestern campaign, with Qu Zhengyan above, the five-man group led by Mao Yishan in the middle, and below them all the various company commanders whose coats got stolen by Mao Yishan and who ended up as cannon fodder; there was Si Zhongxian, contrasted against Yu Mingzhou, and Dai Mengwei, Wu Qimei, and He Wen, Zou Xu… Impressions of them will naturally vary in depth, but I think readers should be able to recall all of them once named. Overall, I’d call this a success — and from Volume 8 through Volume 9 and now, I don’t think this aspect of the writing has really faltered once.

And so it all comes to a close with Tang Minjie and Chen Wenjun, ending this volume.

Married Into a Wealthy Family as a whole should run to eleven volumes. Which means the next volume will be the last. Of course, this final volume will be considerably larger in scope — its timeline will span more than a decade, and countless characters and threads will gradually converge toward their endings within this vast plot. These threads are all already laid out clearly before me now. Many people ask why Married Into a Wealthy Family is written so slowly — it’s because bringing threads together in an orderly way is far harder than laying them out. For the ending of this book, I don’t just want to tie off the threads and call it done — I want every character and every idea to reach some kind of culmination. Now that the groundwork is in place, I’ll approach this final performance of the book with great care.

As an experimental work, what lies ahead is its greatest challenge yet: bringing a work of over five million characters to a perfect close and resolution — likely a challenge an author gets only once in a lifetime.

Volume 11 has a great deal to carry. In terms of overall direction, I considered several titles, and in the end settled on The Waters of the World Flow East — a title that fits the spirit of Volume 11, one that’s fairly neutral in tone, though it can be read either pessimistically or optimistically. The more pessimistic reading comes from a certain poem many readers will likely recognize.

In those years, loyalty and devotion repaid the state — when did we ever fear losing our heads? Now that the whole realm has turned red, who is left to guard these rivers and mountains? The work unfinished, the body wearied, the temples already turning to autumn. Are we, then, to let our long-cherished wishes be swept away with the eastward-flowing tide?

This poem is said to have been written by Chairman Mao in his later years, addressed to the Premier — though in truth, its authenticity is hard to confirm. I originally wanted to use the line “Are we, then, to let our long-cherished wishes be swept away with the eastward-flowing tide?” as the epigraph for Volume 11, but given how uncertain its authorship is, and its somewhat pessimistic tone, I chose a more optimistic line instead — one that likewise comes from the words of that great figure.

And so, everyone, welcome to Volume 11 of Married Into a Wealthy Family:

The Waters of the World Flow East

A bleak autumn wind blows once again today, and the world has changed anew! — Mao Zedong, “Waves Scouring the Sand · Beidaihe”