Chapter 151

 

“More than a father is a teacher’s grace—engraved upon the heart and soul, a debt deeper than the heavens. Now, I, unworthy as I am, have failed to live up to that kindness. I only pray Master does not take it to heart, and will take care of yourself. Your unworthy disciple, Baiya, bows his head once… and again—”

The second “bow” was only halfway carved before it cut off, abruptly and unfinished.

Ye Zhongli’s trembling hand brushed over this final line—sealed in dust for so many years, now finally returned to light—and once more, he could not hold back his silent, grief-stricken tears.

“Girl, do you know how I felt when I finished the last stroke of the mural in Yong’an Hall that day?”

Xuyu raised her tearful face from Pei Xiaoyuan’s arms and looked at her grandfather’s back.

“Day after day, the sun shines brightly. When the number reaches its limit, it will end; when the peak is full, it will decline.” She heard her grandfather say leisurely.

“That was the painting I poured the most of myself into—my proudest work. And yet, in that moment, a foreboding struck me: this mural, created for the sovereign, might not endure.

“I decided to leave Chang’an. I asked Baiya if he was willing to go with me. He hesitated for a long time, then knelt before me and said he could not yet leave. There was still a debt of gratitude he had not repaid. That was when I knew—his heart was no longer unburdened.

“After the rebellion, with His Majesty now on the throne, I began hearing rumors about him and Princess Consort Yin. Of course I didn’t believe them. He certainly made a big mistake and shouldn’t have harbored feelings for another man’s wife. But I know his character very well, his heart was like crystal in a jade vessel. He understood the boundary between affection and propriety. He would never cross it. Yet lies repeated become truth, and so I resolved to find him and see the truth with my own eyes. I searched for years. And now, at last… I have my answer…”

“Grandpa!”

Xuyu came out of Pei Xiaoyuan’s arms, knelt in front of Ye Zhongli, and fell on his knees.

“It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t broken in by mistake and interrupted you, Grandpa, you might have found him then…”

For a moment, she burst into tears.

Ye Zhongli smiled and shook his head. He lifted her face and wiped away the tears from it.

“It’s not your fault. When Grandpa arrived, he had already gone. Besides, though Grandpa never find him, Grandpa found you instead. Isn’t that Baiya’s intention all along? It was he who led Grandpa there, so that Grandpa might meet you. All of it was Heaven’s design. Now that everything has come to light, Grandpa can finally be at peace.

“Grandpa still wants to sit here, you go and see your mother.”

Xuyu kowtowed solemnly towards the bag of bones beside Ye Zhongli, and then she got up from the ground.

The dream that had long haunted her—of the flower forest by the pond under the spring moon, of a beautiful woman calling, again and again, not to return—came drifting back on the wind.

It turned out that her mother had always been here, by her side.

She staggered forward, unsteady with every step, stepping on the soft mud covered with fallen flowers and rotten grass, walking towards the place in her dreams.

The spring moon rose above the forest, and the pond was full of spring water. On the bank where trees of different heights intersect, the ancient apricot tree quietly spread out its dense canopy, pure as silk and white as clouds. The moonlight shone through the gaps, outlining a faint and hazy shadow of flowers on the ground covered with fallen petals.

The sound of footsteps startled a spring pigeon that was enjoying the sweet nectar of apricot buds among the flowers. The pigeon let out a startled cry, hastily loosened its claws, and flew away, kicking the flower branches and making them tremble. The lonely flowers on the branches seemed to be whipped by heavy rain, and they fell away from the branches.

Yang Zai’en drove away the miscellaneous people and hastily used curtains to enclose the entire flower forest. Pei Xiaoyuan personally led people to dig the ground under the tree. When he dug about an arm’s depth, he felt the hoe seemed to hit something metal, making a slight ding sound.

He immediately stopped, threw away his hoe, and ordered the people who were digging with him to throw away their tools and start digging with their hands. Then he squatted down and carefully used his hands to dig away the soil.

With the help of the fire stick, he saw a few golden lights flickering faintly under the ground.

He gently pulled the object out from the mud, brushing away the clinging dirt on his sleeve. When it was clean enough to see, he recognized it—a golden hairpin, the kind a woman would wear as an ornament. His heart tightened slightly. He instinctively turned his head and saw that, sure enough, she had collapsed to her knees beside him, her face buried deep in a patch of mud littered with decaying fallen blossoms. Her slender shoulders trembled violently, yet not a sound escaped her lips.

A sharp pain struck his chest, as if lashed by a barbed whip. He first placed the golden hairpin in his hand on the plain cloth spread beside him, then quickly walked to her side, held her shoulders, and gently lifted her pale face from the mud.

“I’ll take you back first,” he said.

She shook her head violently, then rushed to the mud pit, drooping to her knees on the pile of dirt. Bending low, she began digging into the earth with her hands alongside the others.

“Hao’er! You are not needed here, just be obedient and go back first.”

He could already foresee what she would see in a moment. How could he dare to let her endure such a sight? He followed her, kneeling on one knee at her side, and tried in a low, pleading voice to dissuade her. But she seemed not to hear a word. There were no tears—her eyes wide open, lips tightly pressed together, she stared fixedly into the pit, her hands digging into the soil without pause.

Suddenly, a piece of damaged brocade embroidered with elephant flowers appeared in a piece of mud she had just dug out. Once vibrant and exquisite, the fabric had been buried underground for nearly twenty years, and was now as fragile as paper. As the lump of soil crumbled, the brocade fell apart, fragment by fragment, vanishing without a trace.

Her hands paused for a moment. The corners of her eyes flushed red, and her whole body began to tremble even more violently.

“Hao’er!”

Pei Xiaoyuan’s heart suddenly began to beat violently. He tried to stop her again, but she pushed him away.

He never knew her strength could be so great; when she suddenly pushed him, he was caught off guard and fell to the ground.

“Leave me alone!” she said sternly, without turning her head, gritting her teeth, and lowering her head to continue digging in the mud.

“Send her back!”

At this moment, a low and hoarse voice suddenly came into his ears.

Pei Xiaoyuan turned around and saw the emperor and Zhao Zhongfang standing behind him. The old palace eunuch’s already hunched body looked even more bent, and his expression was full of sadness.

A thin cloud slowly enveloped the spring moon. The forest suddenly darkened.

In the dim moonlight, the emperor’s face was as solid as cast, and his figure seemed to be standing unusually straight.

“Send her back.”

The emperor spoke again, his voice like a stream of iron, each word delivered with deliberate force.

Pei Xiaoyuan suddenly sprang up from the ground, rushed to her side, and lifted her into his arms, carrying her past the emperor.

She was like a wounded wildcat, completely unhinged, her skin icy cold, body rigid, struggling frantically within the cage formed by his arms and chest. She kicked and hit him in silence, her nails clawing wildly at his skin. Her resistance was so fierce that he momentarily lost hold of her—his grip slipped, and she fell to the ground.

Without a word, the moment she was free, she scrambled up and turned to dash back toward the flower forest. He caught up in a single stride, seized her around the waist, and stopped her. Then, no longer allowing her any resistance, he effortlessly hoisted her up onto his shoulder, held her down by the waist and hips, and continued walking forward.

She was forced to hang upside down over his back, blood rushing violently to her head and face, making her dizzy. Her hands had nothing to brace against, and she could no longer muster any strength. Choking back sobs, eyes flushed red, she bit down hard on his shoulder blade—so hard that the taste of blood filled her mouth—but still she did not let go.

In the second half of a spring night, fog gradually filled the palace.

He seemed to be unaware and let her bite into his back. His eyes stared straight ahead as he strode forward, guided by the dim lanterns lining the palace path, now shrouded in a faint mist.

“Pei Xiaoyuan, you bastard! Let me down! Let me down!”

Her relentless struggle gradually drained all her strength. In this clash of will, she ultimately lost. Her jaw loosened, her attacks weakened, until finally she ceased resisting altogether. At last, like a fragile silkworm that had spun out its final thread, she slumped limply over his shoulder, her voice reduced to a few indistinct, broken murmurs of pleading.

“…Let me down. Please, I want to go back, Pei Xiaoyuan…”

Hearing his name being called out from her mouth in such a broken and desperate tone, his heart was almost broken. He quickened his pace, leaving the flower forest far behind.

For fear of scaring Xiao Hu’er, he sent her to the nearby Ziyun Palace, walked through the West Hall, and gently placed her on the couch in a small partitioned area.

Her face was originally pale, but because she had just been hanging upside down, her cheeks were flushed with a sickly color. Her fluffy and soft long hair was covered with dirt and petals, and was scattered on her face with her eyes tightly closed.

Pei Xiaoyuan lit the silver candle, sat beside her, and slowly wiped away the dirt on her long hair and delicate face. Her body was tightly curled up, stiff and cold like someone struck by illness, trembling uncontrollably as if caught in a chill. He could no longer bear it. Still in his clothes, he lay down beside her, pulling her into his arms, using his own warmth to ease the cold from her skin.

“Hao’er, cry. Please cry out. You’ll feel better.” He stroked her icy, dry eyelids and pleaded in her equally cold ears, just as she had just begged him. She trembled in his arms for a moment, and then suddenly raised her hands to her face, breaking into sobs.

“I still held on to a fantasy. A fantasy that my mother is still alive somewhere in this world… that I simply don’t know where she is…”

As she sobbed, tears flowed out from between her fingers like a tide, soaking his clothes.

“Turns out she has been there all along… all alone for so long…

“My mother, she will never come back…”

She could no longer speak—her whole body was gripped by an intense grief. She clenched his arms tightly with both hands, as if he was the only piece of driftwood she could hold on to in the vast ocean of suffering. She kept crying, gasping for breath between sobs, crying until her voice turned hoarse and her eyes reddened like they would bleed. Yet the tears didn’t stop, like the water in the pond, endless and would never run dry.

“I’m still here. I’ll always be here. Until the day you no longer need me…” He whispered beside her ear. Then he gently kissed her lips, catching her next sudden sob in his mouth and swallowing it into himself. He kissed her tear-streaked cheeks, her swollen eyelids, softly drinking up her sorrow, then returned to her lips once more. Under the warmth of his kisses and the steady comfort of his touch, at last, her sobs began to ease.

“Go to sleep.” He whispered softly in her ear.

She quieted down, slowly closed her eyes that were tired from crying, and fell into a deep sleep in his arms.

The dark blue night sky gradually brightened, the morning moon disappeared, and a bright star rose in the eastern sky.

Pei Xiaoyuan walked out of Ziyun Palace amid the faint sound of morning drums coming from afar.

Wisp after wisp of morning mist, like waves of clouds, slowly flowed from the vast surface of the pond to the forest on the shore, wetting the lush green grass on the muddy ground, and soon dyeing Pei Xiaoyuan’s boots and clothes wet.

He hurried back to the quiet flower forest shrouded in white mist. Just as he approached the curtain wall, he suddenly stopped.

The old palace eunuch knelt behind the emperor. The people around him had already moved away and knelt outside the curtain wall with their foreheads slammed on the ground. No one dared to move or raise their head, and no one dared to make the slightest sound.

In the dim morning light, from afar, he saw the emperor lying prostrate under the ancient apricot tree from last night. In his arms, he tightly held a piece of white silk that covered something unknown. On one corner of the silk, a cascade of raven-black, soft hair spilled onto the ground.

Clutched in the emperor’s hand was a golden hairpin. His face was buried deep in that tangle of hair, as if even now, he could still catch her lingering scent. He did not move for a long time, his figure utterly still—almost as if he had fallen asleep.

Nearby, there was a pool of scarlet blood in the muddy earth.

Dew condensed between the damp flowers and leaves of the ancient apricot tree, and drop by drop fell into the blood. The blood slowly seeped into the mud and disappeared.

…

“In years past, Emperor Taizong went hunting and was caught in a sudden downpour along the way. His oilcloth raincoat became soaked through, leaving him miserable. So he asked those beside him, ‘How can an oilcloth be made truly waterproof?’ A censorial official at the time replied, ‘If it were made of tile, then surely it would not leak.’”

On a post road running from east to west, a horse carriage set off early in the morning. Inside sat an elderly man with silvery hair, holding a scroll in hand and reading by the dim morning light filtering through the window. Seated cross-legged across from him was a young man, attentively listening to his storytelling.

“Do you know what the censor means by this?”

The young man pondered for a moment and replied, “The censor’s words concealed a sarcasm. If you want a completely waterproof oil coat, the only way is to use tiles on the roof. He is advising Taizong to do less hunting and spend more time in the palace.”

“That’s right. Do you know why the censor gave such advice?”

The young man hesitated for a moment, then asked softly, “May I speak something that might be considered disrespectful?” Seeing the old man nod with a smile, he said boldly, “In the past, Emperor Taizong loved hunting very much. The Forbidden Garden could not satisfy him, so he often went out of Chang’an, hundreds of miles away, and often did not return for several days. As the emperor, he traveled with many attendants, and wherever he passed, the burden on the common people increased for no reason. Local officials, scrambling to please the emperor, disrupted the people even more. During the busy farming season, farming work had to be delayed. The people were resentful but dared not speak out. So the censor spoke up for them through this response.”

The old man nodded: “Exactly so. The book “Yu Li Zi” that I taught you a few days ago said that ‘The ruler should not let his desires become burdens upon the people.’ It speaks to the very same principle.”

“Yes. I remember. But I don’t quite understand why you want me to read these books?” the young man asked with a little confusion.

The old man was silent for a moment, then turned around and looked out the window at the receding field. He smiled and said, “Soon, you will know.”

At dawn, the news of what happened in the ruins of Yong’an Hall last night spread like wildfire. In the morning, not to mention the emperor, even the princess was nowhere to be seen. Various rumors were rife. As the day passed, by the evening, a worrying piece of news had spread to everyone. All the officials refused to leave their posts and gathered in Ziyun Palace.

After waiting for a long time—until dusk fell and the palace lanterns were lit—a figure with a firm, steady gait finally emerged from within the palace. The officials kneeling on the ground looked up and saw that it was Pei Xiaoyuan who had returned to the capital early not long ago.

He stopped on the steps in front of the officials and said solemnly: “All of you are to leave the palace immediately. You are not permitted to remain. Anyone who dares defy this order will be punished for insubordination!”

As his words fell, a portion of the officials slowly retreated in silence. Yet some remained. One of them rose and said, “We have heard that His Majesty coughed blood and fell unconscious this morning. We are gravely concerned. We humbly implore Prince Consort to relay our words again—to beg His Majesty to allow us…”

This person was Zhang Zhe, a Palace Attendant, but before he could finish his words, Pei Xiaoyuan interrupted him: “Palace Attendant Zhang, didn’t you hear what I just said? I said all of you are to withdraw!”

Since entering court, Pei Xiaoyuan had always been known for his courteous and mild manner, never raising his voice—let alone publicly rebuking a dignified third-rank minister like this. Zhang Zhe and the few standing beside him visibly stiffened, clearly wanting to react. But after a glance toward the dark, looming doors of the inner palace behind Pei Xiaoyuan, they held their tempers in check, and continued, “May I ask, Prince Consort—are these your words, or do they come from His Majesty? Or perhaps… the Princess?”

Pei Xiaoyuan did not answer.

A sharp metallic clang rang out—he took a sword from the eunuch who had followed him out and drew it in one fluid motion. Holding it across his chest, he said coldly, “This is His Majesty’s imperial sword. I am authorized to strike first and report later. I will say this one final time: Any of you who dare linger here further will be charged with conspiracy and rebellion—and executed on the spot!”

This sword was the evil-repelling sword in the emperor’s palace. Which courtier didn’t recognize it? Pei Xiaoyuan’s expression was stern, his eyes were sharp, and the blade was cold and gleaming.

There was a murderous aura all around him.

Everyone knew that he had just returned from the battlefield in the northwest, and for him, killing would be as easy as beheading a chicken.

Everyone was silent, retreated, knelt down in front of the sword, then stood up and left in a hurry.

Pei Xiaoyuan stood there, watching the officials retreat coldly, and then slowly put the sword back into its sheath. He turned around and quickly walked inside again.

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