The front courtyard of the Changping Marquis Manor was brightly lit. The spies sent by the Internal Affairs Bureau were busy settling into the front hall and the reverse-facing rooms. The door to the rear residence, however, had been securely locked with a brass padlock by Li Sheng, isolating it from the clamor outside.
Xu Qinghuan pushed open the door to the bedroom.
This room hadn't seen human presence in twenty years. With no brazier lit, the blue brick floor exuded a biting, damp cold. Moonlight slanted in through the tattered window paper, casting pale squares on the floor. Thick cobwebs gathered in the corners, and the air was filled with the stale, musty smell of something long hidden from the sun.
The door latch fell. The wood emitted a dull sound of friction.
Without taking off her outer garment, Xu Qinghuan walked straight to the canopy bed that gave off a musty odor. She squatted down, reached under the bed, and grabbed the camphor wood trunk with brass corners.
The trunk was heavy. When pulled out, the brass nails at the bottom scraped against the blue bricks, making a teeth-setting sound.
Lifting the top layer of clothing, she groped to the bottom of the trunk. Her fingertips touched a cold, hard object.
A palm-sized brass padlock.
What it locked was a very inconspicuous poplar wood box, which didn't even have a layer of clear varnish. The rough grain of the wood pressed against her palm. This was what she had dug out from the depths of the storehouse in the Liu Garden in Jiangning.
Her fingers fiddled with the lock spring. A dull click sounded.
The wooden lid flipped open.
Resting quietly on the velvet lining was a thread-bound booklet, its corners already curled from being flipped through so much. This booklet had followed her all the way here, and on it was densely recorded the original plot of the book "World of the Powerful Minister" in tiny regular script.
It was her book of destiny.
Standing up, she walked to the peeling rosewood table.
The fire stick blew out a spark of dark red, igniting the remaining half-inch of thick candle on the table. The dim yellow flame flickered, casting Xu Qinghuan's shadow obliquely on the wall of the Changping Marquis Manor that had once been splashed with blood.
She flipped directly to the middle.
A few large characters were written in the header: Xu Family Character Arc.
Xu Qinghuan pulled a wolf-hair brush from the pen holder. Without dipping it in water, she simply licked the remaining overnight ink in the dried inkstone.
Her gaze fell on the paper, where the reasons for Xu Youde's house being raided in the original work were clearly written.
"Embezzling military provisions, causing the border army to freeze and starve."
"Privately manufacturing repeating crossbows, intending to rebel and commit treason."
The tip of the brush pressed heavily onto the Xuan paper, the dry wolf hair scraping against the surface.
A thick black "X" with rough, flying white strokes directly covered these two lines of text.
The tip of the brush moved to the blank space next to it and hovered for half a breath.
Then it fell.
"Loom."
"Lime braised pork."
After writing these seven characters, Xu Qinghuan flipped her wrist, and the brush tip drew a very thick, hard black line from top to bottom, connecting these two events with the bolded name centered at the top of the page.
Emperor Tiansheng.
Her gaze wandered along that thick black line.
The starting point had changed. She didn't embezzle according to the original work, but by a strange combination of circumstances, she had created peerless military provisions and divine machinery.
The process had also changed. What should have been secretly investigated evidence of guilt had become righteousness loudly praised by the Chief Grand Secretary in the Golden Throne Room.
But the end point of the lines eerily converged. No matter which way she went, they all overlapped on those two lines of small characters.
The Great Qian's number one corrupt official.
The Emperor's knife for amassing wealth.
Xu Qinghuan dropped the brush, leaned back, and sank into the hard back of the chair.
A knife.
The old emperor needed a knife, a living creature that could hold money.
In the original work, the old emperor raised Xu Youde, this giant rat, to scrape the fat and marrow of the people. When he was about to breathe his last, he would slaughter this rat with one knife, filling the national treasury with the money and leaving a clean reputation for himself.
And now? The Xu family wasn't corrupt anymore.
So the old emperor dragged them to the capital and stuffed them into this haunted house where the marquis's entire family had died.
Bestowed a gold medal, gave an official title.
Sharpened this knife until it gleamed, to cut the flesh of the noble families of the world, to promote that loom that could lay golden eggs.
If you do evil, he is your living Yama. If you perform meritorious deeds, he is still your living Yama.
The net of fate was tightening, strangling one's throat until it ached.
Her fingers rested on the edge of the booklet, and she flipped it forcefully.
The pages rustled over, and the slight breeze they created made the candle flame tilt slightly.
The large heading caught her eye.
"Emperor Tiansheng's passing."
Directly below the heading, a precise point in time was marked with extremely heavy ink.
The twenty-eighth year of Xuanwu of the Great Qian, winter month.
Xu Qinghuan's eyelid twitched. Today was the twenty-sixth year of Xuanwu, April.
Two years.
At most, only two and a half years were left. That empty plaque outside the Changping Marquis Manor, stripped of its characters, had long been counting down.
Her gaze smashed down the page, and the ending of the original work pierced her eyes.
"The old emperor passes away. The new emperor ascends the throne."
"The first imperial edict: raid the Xu family of Jiangning."
"Xu Youde, death by a thousand cuts. Three thousand six hundred cuts, dying only after three days."
"The Xu family's nine generations, skinned and stuffed with grass, their property confiscated to fill the national treasury."
"Thereby, appeasing the anger of the noble families and the scholars of the world. Congratulating the new monarch on his ascension."
Her breathing slowed down.
Today in the Golden Throne Room, the civil and military officials retreated like a tide, leaving that empty expanse of gold-brick floor. That was the anger of the scholars of the world.
The tattered calligraphy copybook Wei Zheng sent late at night, that was the hatred of the great noble families.
The old emperor was protecting the Xu family now because this knife hadn't earned enough silver for him yet.
In two years, the old emperor would kick the bucket.
The new emperor would sit on that dragon throne, looking at the ministers filled with towering resentment, looking at the noble families whose financial paths had been cut off by the Xu family's loom. What would he do?
Smash this knife.
Killing the Xu family could take over the weaving industry of the whole world, confiscate mountains of gold and seas of silver to fill the privy purse, and earn a good title of "setting things right" and "an eternal wise monarch."
A guaranteed profitable deal.
There was absolutely no way out.
Xu Qinghuan straightened up and reached out to pinch the first few pages of the booklet.
On them were written all the absurd, naive plans she had when she first came to this world.
"Accumulate evil deeds."
"Beg for exile to Lingnan."
"Eat lychees, hide from court struggles."
She looked at these words, and the corner of her mouth twitched. Exile? Lingnan?
This man-eating Great Qian dynasty didn't even give you the chance to be a piece of trash. Even if the old emperor ground your bones to dust, he would squeeze out the last two ounces of oil from your bone fragments.
Her wrist exerted force.
"Riiiip—"
The crisp sound of tearing silk echoed in the empty room. Those few pages were forcefully torn off, their edges jagged.
At her feet lay a bronze brazier without charcoal, a layer of cold ash accumulated at the bottom.
The fire stick moved closer, and the completely dry Xuan paper ignited at the touch of fire.
The tongues of flame instantly shot up half a foot high, the orange-red light illuminating half of Xu Qinghuan's face.
She pinched the top of the paper with two fingers, suspending it above the brazier, watching the flames slowly swallow those naive fantasies, watching the black scorch marks spread upwards.
The paper curled in the high heat, emitting a faint crackling sound.
The heat wave roasted her fingertips, and she didn't let go until the flame licked her fingernails.
The burning ball of paper fell into the basin, rapidly shrinking and turning into a pile of dark red embers.
Xu Qinghuan picked up the iron tongs resting on the basin stand and poked them straight into the bottom of the basin.
The iron rod crushed those embers, stirring them together with the cold ash underneath. Pounding them into a mush, shattering them into a puddle of black powder that could never be pieced back together.
Dust rose, choking her nasal cavity.
Since the way out was cut off, then she wouldn't need a way out.
Turning around, she sat back at the desk and took out a blank sheet of rice paper.
She picked up the brush, dipped it in ink, and held her wrist suspended in the air.
"The World of the Powerful Minister."
The words landed squarely and neatly on the paper.
That was the name of the book, the ironclad law drawn up for this world by the so-called "Will of Heaven."
The brush abruptly reversed its course.
Two thick strokes of ink slashed down, forming a massive cross that took up half the page, completely obliterating and concealing the title.
To hell with the powerful minister, and to hell with the plot dictated by the Will of Heaven.
The tip of the brush paused slightly on the paper. The wolf-hair bristles, heavy with ink, bled a round, black droplet onto the surface.
Moving down three inches, she started a new line.
"Two years."
"The one who wields the knife shall die."
Since the emperor treated the Xu family as a knife, and since the noble families thought that holding the handle meant they could discard it at will...
Then let them see whose throat gets slit when the blade is turned inward.
Xu Qinghuan closed her eyes, sifting through all the factions in the Daqian imperial court as they flashed through her mind like a revolving lantern.
The old emperor would not live past three years, and Xu Jie's group of veteran cabinet ministers were ungrateful wolves that could never be satisfied. Wei Zheng came today wanting to use the Xu family as a stepping stone.
The only solution to this dead end lay with the new emperor.
As long as the next emperor was not someone who absolutely had to execute the Xu family, this doomed chessboard could be brought to life.
She opened her eyes.
Xu Qinghuan lifted her brush and sequentially wrote down several names on the bottom left of the paper.
The First Prince.
The Second Prince.
The Fourth Prince.
The Seventh Prince.
Her gaze swept over the ink marks one by one, sharp as a blade.
The First Prince's maternal family held immense power, with disciples and former subordinates spread throughout the Six Ministries. If he ascended the throne, pulling up the radish would bring up the mud; the noble families reaping the benefits alongside him would never allow the nouveau riche of Jiangning to monopolize the financial power of the looms.
The Second Prince was deeply calculating, hypocritical, and enduring. Today he could call you a brother, and tomorrow he could stab you in the back. If they supported his rise, Xu Youde wouldn't survive for three days.
The Fourth Prince was a reckless brute backed by several veteran generals who held military power. Once in power, his first reaction to a shortage of military funds would be to slaughter the fattest pig in Jiangnan.
The Seventh Prince. A disciple of Xu Jie and a pawn secretly supported by the Xu faction. Wei Zheng's delivery of the Three Friends of Winter painting tonight was precisely to pave the way for the Seventh Prince. If the Seventh Prince took the throne, Xu Jie would become the true emperor, and the Xu family would be nothing but meat on the chopping block.
All of them were dead ends. These princes who fought to the bitter end in the original novel and had the highest voices of support were each a death warrant for the Xu family.
Her gaze moved away from the four names, and the tip of her brush wandered aimlessly along the edge of the rice paper.
She scoured her mind for the names of the other princes mentioned in the original novel.
The brush paused, the ink settling onto the paper.
Xu Qinghuan pressed the brush down and wrote a fifth name.
With a twist of her wrist, the brush heavily drew a circle around this name.
With a loud smack.
The wolf-hair brush, soaked in thick ink, was slapped backhanded onto the desk, rolling off to the side.
Staring at the encircled name, Xu Qinghuan raised her hand.
She blew out the remaining half of the candle on the desk in a single breath.
This ominous room in the Marquis Changping's estate plunged completely into bottomless darkness.
