The sea wind moaned, the lantern-light swayed. On the dim, small platform, the two figures suddenly closed the distance of over a zhang between them, colliding against the low railing at the platform’s edge.
A low, muffled sound escaped from deep in Qin Hui’s throat as he continued driving forward with all his strength, his eyes wide, bloodshot. Zhou Pei’s slight frame was on the verge of being shoved over the edge, her long hair flying wild in the night wind — but at that instant, the hairpin from her head had already been driven into Qin Hui’s face, piercing clean through the old man’s mouth. Half the pin now protruded from his left cheek, the sharpened other half jutting out through his right, the smell of blood spreading gradually through the air, lending his entire expression an especially grotesque quality.
Just a moment before, as Qin Hui had rushed forward, Zhou Pei had spun around, pulled the metal hairpin from her own head, and driven it forcefully into the side of his head. The pin had pierced straight through his face — the old man must surely have been struck with terror in that instant — yet he hadn’t paused for even a moment, hadn’t even cried out. He had slammed Zhou Pei hard against the railing, both hands closing around her throat.
Zhou Pei fought back with all her strength, kicking at Qin Hui twice, one hand gripping the railing while the other clawed at the hands strangling her throat. On Qin Hui’s weathered, orange-peel face, half a hairpin protruded grotesquely, his once dignified and upright features rendered utterly bizarre in the flickering light, low grunts of restrained pain hissing from between his teeth.
At the front of the dragon ship, the brightly lit night banquet continued on, the faint strains of strings and flutes drifting over from that direction, while here at the stern, in the sea wind, the moon emerged briefly from behind the clouds, showing half its face before slowly vanishing again, as though grieving over what was unfolding here. Dark clouds gathered over the sea.
Her long hair whipping in the wind, Zhou Pei’s strength was gradually failing; both her hands now clawed at Qin Hui’s own, her eyes beginning to roll upward. The old man’s eyes burned red, blood spraying from his face, yet despite his age, the hands clamped around Zhou Pei’s throat remained utterly unyielding — this was his final chance.
For all these years, every scheme, every calculation he had ever made had rested upon the foundation of royal authority. Had Jun Wu and Zhou Pei ever recognized his true worth, taken him as their teacher, he never would have settled for turning to Zhou Yong as a second-best choice.
Had Zhou Yong been a strong, capable emperor, willing to adopt his many proposals, the Wu Dynasty would never have fallen to such a state as this.
Had the Wu Dynasty not fallen to such a state, he never would have proposed to Zhou Yong that plan of sacrificing a limb to save the body — pitting the Jin state and the Black Banner against each other in mutual destruction.
He had already put forward this plan. The Wu Dynasty needed time, needed patience, needed to wait quietly for the outcome of the two tigers’ struggle to emerge — even weak, even suffering the greatest hardships, they had to endure and wait it out.
But now Zhou Yong was dying!
This was an outcome he could never, in any scenario, have anticipated. Once Zhou Yong died, the shortsighted princess and crown prince would surely hate him bitterly, and would move to settle accounts with him. His own death meant nothing to him — but everything he had planned for the Wu Dynasty, every calculation for its future revival, would all come to nothing as a result. The hope that the countless multitudes of the Wu Dynasty’s people were waiting for could not simply be allowed to come to nothing!
“Ghh, ghh, ghh—”
Amid the searing pain, blood and saliva mingled together and sprayed from the old man’s twisted mouth. He tightened his grip on Zhou Pei’s throat with all his remaining strength, forcing her back toward the sea beyond the platform’s edge!
Fortunately, the princess had once attempted to drown herself in the sea before — so long as she leapt into the water once more before Zhou Yong’s death, then whether the crown prince at Jiangning lived or died, the legitimacy of the court would, in the end, still fall firmly within his own grasp.
Zhou Pei’s consciousness was growing hazy and distant, when suddenly, some sound seemed to reach her.
The door outside the small platform swung open, and someone came running in — after a brief moment of shock, she rushed forward. It was a relatively slender figure — she seized Qin Hui’s hands, trying to pry them apart. “What are you doing—” It was Zhao Xiaosong.
Her words were only half spoken when Qin Hui turned his face toward her; in the dim light, Zhao Xiaosong caught sight of that grotesque, blood-flecked face with the hairpin still lodged through it, and was startled badly — but her hands never stopped moving, and she wrapped her arms around Zhou Pei’s waist, trying to pull her back. Qin Hui freed one hand to slap Zhao Xiaosong hard across the face, then kicked her as well. Zhao Xiaosong staggered back a couple of steps but never once let go.
With one of Qin Hui’s hands now off her throat, Zhou Pei’s consciousness began gradually returning; she gripped his remaining hand and strained with all her might to pull herself back. Zhao Xiaosong, still gripping her waist, lent her what strength she could, and as Zhou Pei’s own strength gradually returned, she sank her teeth into Qin Hui’s hand. He recoiled in pain, and Zhou Pei, clutching her throat, staggered a couple of steps away from the railing. Qin Hui lunged after her, but Zhao Xiaosong threw herself forward, wrapping her arms desperately around his waist, crying out over and over, “Run, Your Highness, run—”
Qin Hui seized her by the hair and began tearing at her head with brutal force, transforming the dim platform’s edge into a grotesque silhouette. Her hair disheveled, Zhou Pei straightened up and walked deeper inward without looking back, making for the shelves in the small chamber, trying to pry open and search through the chests and boxes stacked there.
From behind came a low, beast-like growl. The grotesque old man abruptly yanked the hairpin from his own face in the night wind and drove it down into Zhao Xiaosong’s back. A sharp scream tore through the air as the girl’s shoulder was pierced, and she collapsed to the ground.
In the dim light, the wind howling fiercely, the lower half of Qin Hui’s face was entirely covered in blood, his eyes burning red as he advanced toward Zhou Pei within, hands trembling as he fumbled at his waist. He drew out a dagger and staggered toward her — but the wooden boxes Zhou Pei had opened held nothing but useless paper and brushes.
“…For the sake… of this realm… you ignorant… fools…”
His eyes blazed red, strange sounds issuing from his throat. Zhou Pei snatched an inkstone from one of the boxes, spun around, and struck him hard across the head with it.
Qin Hui staggered back a couple of steps and collapsed to the deck, blood streaming from his forehead, his head ringing. At some point he rolled over on the ground and tried to struggle back to his feet.
“Help… someone help…”
By now Zhao Xiaosong lay weeping on the deck. Zhou Pei, gripping the inkstone, walked over to Qin Hui, her long hair hanging loose, her eyes cold and hard as ice. She brought the inkstone down again onto the arm still instinctively gripping the dagger.
Exhausted from days of strain, her constitution weak, Zhou Pei’s strength was not great; after two blows in succession, Qin Hui finally released the dagger, though his arm remained unbroken. Zhou Pei struck him again, this time square on the top of his skull. In the dim light, amid the girl’s sobbing, tears streamed from Zhou Pei’s own eyes as she brought the inkstone down again and again upon the old man’s head. Qin Hui continued crawling weakly on the deck; before long his head was entirely soaked in blood and grime.
Guards, alerted by the commotion, came running and burst through the door, freezing in shock at the bloody, grotesque scene before them. Qin Hui lay sprawled on the ground, his face twisted beyond recognition, still faintly twitching, as Zhou Pei continued bringing the inkstone down upon his head and face. Seeing the guards enter, she dropped the inkstone, walked straight over, and drew the long saber from one guard’s waist.
She turned back, saber in hand. Qin Hui lay face-down on the deck, no longer moving at all, a trail of blood smeared across the floor extending half a zhang in length. Zhou Pei’s gaze was cold and hard, though tears continued to fall; over by the platform railing, Zhao Xiaosong’s soft, choked sobbing continued without pause.
Zhou Pei stood frozen for a long moment, then lowered the blade. “Get him help.”
At the front of the dragon ship, the singing and dancing continued unabated. Before long, word of what had happened at the stern reached the front. Zhou Pei tended to her injuries before going to report — her fingernails had been torn loose while wielding the inkstone, leaving her hands bloodied, and the bruising on her neck had not yet faded. She explained the entire course of events to Zhou Yong; the only witness to what had actually happened was her attendant Zhao Xiaosong, and for many parts of the account, she had no way to prove her version. Zhou Yong, lying in his sickbed, listened to the whole account and simply nodded with relief. “As long as my daughter is unharmed, that’s all that matters. As long as my daughter is unharmed…”
—From beginning to end, he never once considered his own responsibility as emperor.
…
The full truth of how Zhou Pei came to kill Qin Hui would, from this point forward, likely never be fully clarified. But the fact of her killing him, and the grisly manner of Qin Hui’s death, carried enormous symbolic weight within the little court aboard the dragon ship.
On the sixteenth of August, Yu Zihua, commander of the Imperial Guard, and Li Wei, the naval general in command of the dragon-ship fleet, both pledged their loyalty to Zhou Pei at Zhou Yong’s implicit direction. As this news was confirmed and spread, on the seventeenth of August, Zhou Yong convened a court session and formally issued the decree transferring the throne to Jun Wu.
Had she not, all along, understood the need to transfer the throne as soon as possible — if only to grant her brother, still fighting desperately at Jiangning, a proper claim to legitimacy? But having been abducted aboard this ship as she had, she now had not a single person left at her disposal she could truly rely on, and the assembled ministers aboard ship would never willingly see their own group stripped of its claim to legitimate authority. Having already endured betrayal once, Zhou Pei no longer spoke rashly — not until she had killed Qin Hui with her own hands and secured the support of the military did the matter finally, at last, get settled.
Since the Tai Lake fleet had already put out to sea in pursuit, the decree could only be carried ashore by messengers aboard a small boat, to be spread throughout the realm from there. The dragon-ship fleet continued drifting southward, searching for a safe opportunity to make land.
After the decree of succession was sent out, Zhou Yong’s health continued to decline steadily. He could barely eat anything at all, his mind clouded much of the time, with only occasional moments of clarity. Life aboard ship offered no glimpse of autumn’s colors; he would occasionally mention to Zhou Pei how beautiful the autumn must be at Jiangning. When Zhou Pei asked whether he wished to put ashore, he would only shake his head and refuse.
And so they drifted on, until, on the morning of the twenty-eighth of August, Zhou Yong’s spirits suddenly seemed to improve. Everyone understood at once what this meant — the last flare before death. The consorts gathered around him, though Zhou Yong had little to say to them. He summoned his daughter to his bedside and began speaking of his younger days in Jiangning, chasing chickens and fighting dogs. He had never possessed any ambition since childhood; his own family had raised him as nothing more than a dissolute prince. He had taken wives and concubines, yet had never taken any of it seriously, spending his days idling about outside causing trouble. During Zhou Pei and Jun Wu’s own childhoods, Zhou Yong had, in truth, hardly been a good father at all — it was only gradually, it seemed, after the first great “search of the mountains and seas,” that he had begun to take any real interest in his two children.
“I was not a good father, not a good prince, not a good emperor…”
Speaking of himself this way, before long his thoughts drifted to Zhou Xuan and Kang Xian, both long since passed.
“…When I was young, I was terribly afraid of Aunt Zhou Xuan, and never knew how to talk to Kang Xian — I envied them so much… At some point, I don’t even know when, I too wished I could be like my imperial aunt, to hold something meaningful in my hands, to be a good prince — but I could never manage it. Your father here… seized other people’s shops through trickery and coercion, and before long had squandered them away again, and even grew tired of the whole business — but… for that one brief stretch of time, I too wanted to be a good prince… I simply couldn’t manage it…”
His gaze had grown gradually distant and unfocused.
“They… made me emperor because… I had a fine pair of children. I truly did have a fine son and daughter — it’s only a pity… that I let this nation crumble beneath my own hands. Little Pei… little Pei…”
He called out his daughter’s name. Zhou Pei reached out her hand, and he grasped it.
“So many people… so many people… have died. I’ve seen it… so many people dying. While I was out at sea, your grandmother Zhou Xuan and grandfather Kang Xian were killed at Jiangning — I have failed them… And old Minister Qin, too — how much did he do for this nation? Zhou Zhe had him killed, and even then he bore no grudge… Our Wu Dynasty, the House of Zhou, over two hundred years… father… I never wanted it to end in my own hands. I was already wrong…”
His hand, withered like a bird’s claw, gripped Zhou Pei’s own. “I have no face to see them again, no face to set foot on land again. After I die, throw me into the sea, to atone for my sins… once I’m dead… I should no longer have to be afraid… you must support Jun Wu, little Pei… you support Jun Wu, and carry the House of Zhou’s realm forward, carry it forward… carry it forward…”
He repeated this several times. Zhou Pei nodded through her tears. Zhou Yong, not seeming to notice, only gazed at her with vague, expectant eyes: “…Well?”
“…Yes! Father… yes.”
Zhou Pei said this through her tears.
“…Ah… ha.”
Zhou Yong nodded, his expression gradually easing. “Tell me… is it cold out at sea?” Then he added, “You and Jun Wu… come see me…”
After another pause, he spoke softly: “Little Pei… you and Ning Yi…” Between these two sentences lay a long pause; his gaze gradually grew fixed and still, and all his words came to an end there.
At the moment of his death, Zhou Yong’s weight had wasted down to little more than fifty jin, skin and bone. He was the incompetent emperor who had dragged the entire population of the Wu Dynasty into ruin, and he was also an ordinary man whose very marrow had been drained dry by the burden of the imperial title. He died at the age of fifty-one.
And with this, the reign of the Jianshuo era — and with it, the House of Zhou’s realm — came, forever, to its end…