The study of the Lord Count’s mansion was nestled in the deepest part of the inner courtyard, where even the sparrows seemed to exude tranquility as they flew past on ordinary days.
Xu Youde was holding a warm cup of tea, listening to Xu Zijin explain the regulations of the new autumn imperial exam policy. The autumn sun streamed through the window, casting a cozy glow over the scrolls.
Just then, a frantic, nearly stumbling set of footsteps echoed down the corridor.
The steps were so disorderly they lost all rhythm—Xu Fu, a steward who had spent many years in the Count’s household and normally walked with measured grace, now panicked as if his very soul had fled.
With a bang, the carved wooden door of the study was flung open violently from the outside.
A celadon teacup placed by the threshold was knocked over by the door’s swing, shattering on the glazed brick floor, scattering shards everywhere.
Xu Fu staggered in, half his body still clinging to the doorframe. His face, usually adept at reading expressions and always wearing a perfectly appropriate smile, was now deathly pale, his lips tinged with blue.
“Lord Count! Lord Count… it’s dreadful!”
Xu Youde didn’t move the hand holding his teacup; he only lifted his eyelids. “What’s the fuss? Has the sky fallen?”
“It’s—it’s half-crumbled, my lord!” Xu Fu clung to the doorframe, his throat bobbing violently, his words stumbling out. “At the gate of the Imperial Academy… beneath the memorial archway… a brawl has broken out!”
“The brawny servants of the great clans set up iron cauldrons to burn the pamphlets, while the poor scholars scrambled desperately to grab and protect them… dozens of scholars wrestled into a tangled mess, bricks and tiles flying everywhere!”
“The stone pedestal of Confucius’ statue… is splattered with blood, my lord! A disgrace to learning, a disgrace to learning!”
Xu Youde’s brows slowly furrowed.
He set down his teacup and leaned forward. “What were they fighting over?”
“Over… over that essay, ‘On Investigating Things and Rectifying the Mind.’” Xu Fu swallowed hard, his gaze involuntarily drifting toward Xu Zijin, who sat in the rosewood armchair, then quickly darting away, not daring to look any longer.
Xu Youde’s expression shifted slightly.
He knew better than anyone the origins of that essay, and how vast a wave it had stirred up in the capital. Yet in just a few days, the turmoil had escalated to bloodshed before the Imperial Academy’s gate.
“And then?” Xu Youde asked with feigned ease. “A mere street brawl wouldn’t have left you looking so utterly unhinged, Old Xu.”
Xu Fu trembled, steeling himself to blurt out the most critical piece of news.
“The whole city is in chaos, burning books and seizing them. But the capital officials… not a single word of suppression, not even one soldier dispatched toward the Imperial Academy’s gate.”
“The Five City Patrol waited all morning for orders from the Inner Cabinet—but within the Cangshu Pavilion… there was utter stillness!”
At these words, the study fell into a silence so profound it was terrifying.
Xu Youde shot up from his armchair.
He had weathered countless storms in his decades of navigating officialdom, braving deep waters without flinching.
But now, even his shrewd, worldly eyes churned with genuine dread.
Stay put, on standby—the weight of those four words was far more frightening than all the bloodshed in the streets.
“Oh?” Xu Youde rasped, a fierce glint flickering in his gaze. “Is that so? Grand Secretary Xu… what exactly is he trying to do?”
A man who had held the reins of the literary world for generations, the indomitable Old Grand Secretary of three reigns—and he sat idly within the Cangshu Pavilion, watching blood stain the stone statue of Confucius before the Imperial Academy, watching the seeds of Great Yong’s learning tear each other apart, without so much as lifting a finger.
This was no oversight. It was clearly an attempt to use this fire to burn something completely to ashes.
A cold sweat broke out on Xu Youde's back in an instant.
Only then did he realize that what he held in his hands was not some magnificent treatise meant to establish a new school of thought, but rather a calamitous root that could summon a great heavenly conflagration.
This, this—Qinghuan had never mentioned anything about this!
Everyone in the room was suffocating under the weight of this news.
Only the blue-robed scholar sitting in the chair had not moved a muscle from start to finish.
Xu Zijin slowly set down the teacup in his hand, which held only a few cold dregs.
He raised his eyes; there was no panic in his expression, only an excessive calm.
"Magistrate Xu, is this not only fitting?"
He uttered these four words unhurriedly, without haste.
Xu Youde snapped his head around, frozen in place.
Only fitting?
The city was drenched in blood and fire, the Grand Secretary had withheld his troops, and yet Xu Zijin said this was only fitting?
Xu Youde remembered clearly.
Just a few months ago, this scholar was a poor village xiucai who had been so terrified by the pursuit of a powerful man's thugs in Jiangnan that his soul had nearly fled, and had been scared into signing a death contract by his daughter's mere words. In those days, there was panic in Xu Zijin's eyes, timidity, that particular anxious unease born of a humble scholar ground down by the unholy ways of the world.
But the man sitting before him now...
Xu Youde had lived more than half his life and had seen countless figures, from the lowliest to the most exalted.
He prided himself on being an excellent judge of character. But now, as he looked into Xu Zijin's eyes, he found he could not fathom them anymore.
In the depths of those eyes lay an unfathomable abyss.
Calm, yet radiating a grim authority over life and death.
The man sat there, exuding an indescribable certainty in his posture, as if he had long since calculated every move on this entire chessboard.
In only a few short days, this scholar had been reborn.
"Ziqin..." Xu Youde's lips moved slightly. "What do you mean by 'only fitting'?"
Xu Zijin rose to his feet.
He smoothed his robes, his movements unhurried and composed.
"Lord Count, the Grand Secretary's action—appearing to stand by idly—is in truth the deepest move beneath heaven."
"If he had sent troops to suppress the unrest, these writings would have become officially banned as heretical speech, never again to see the light of day, and the New School would have died before it was born. But he chose not to move."
"He wants this fire to burn even hotter. He wants the scholars of the realm to tear each other apart over these writings. The fiercer the argument, the more deeply these truths within the writing will take root in men's hearts."
Xu Zijin paused. His voice carried no trace of agitation.
"To survive the brink of death. The Grand Secretary intends to first press the New School deep into a dead end, then watch to see if it can struggle back to life on its own. If it lives, it is true gold. If it cannot, it burns to ash and that is the end of it, with no burden to the court."
"This is the mind of one who dwells among the clouds."
"Such lofty calculations at the pinnacle of government are not for the likes of you and me to fathom."
"The struggles and mortal battles of the people below—to his eyes, they are no more than a trial."
"And since it is a trial, we must go along with this momentum. There is no reason to beg for mercy halfway."
Xu Youde listened, and the shock and anger on his face receded, little by little.
He stared blankly at Xu Zijin for a long moment, then suddenly let out a long, deep breath, followed by a hearty laugh.
"Good! Very good!"
He stepped forward and delivered a heavy slap to Xu Zijin's shoulder.
"Xu Zijin, oh Xu Zijin—your skill now, your deep cunning..." Xu Youde laughed, the crow's feet around his eyes bunching up. "You have truly earned my utmost respect!"
“When I brought you back from Jiangnan back in the day, you were still a timid fledgling, startled by every little thing. Now, faced with a calamity of such catastrophic proportions, you sit as steady as a rock on a boat, dissecting the Grand Secretary’s thoughts with such sharp precision.”
“This skill of stirring up storms and remaining unshaken in peril… it reminds me of my girl Qinghuan—a full seven or eight parts resemblance!”
At the mention of his daughter, the approval in Xu Youde’s eyes grew even thicker.
In his heart, his daughter Xu Qinghuan was the most calculating, the most ruthless figure in the world.
To be compared to her was the highest praise imaginable.
Xu Zijin kept a perfectly measured smile of humility on her face, clasping her hands in a bow.
“Lord Count, your praise is too great. Ziqin merely borrows from others’ wisdom. Without Lady Xu’s guidance back then and those few notebooks of her writings, there would be no Ziqin today.
“This ability was bestowed by Lady Xu in the first place.”
Her words were watertight, yielding every bit of credit away.
But as she lowered her gaze, she couldn’t help silently shaking her head to herself.
This old fox, Magistrate Xu, changed his face too fast. Moments ago, he was so terrified his face turned white, and now, with the danger still unresolved, he was already all smiles again.
These Xu father and daughter—they were cut from the same cloth in their very bones. Calculating was etched into their very marrow.
One was flipping the table and gambling with his life in the imperial court; the other was scheming against fate and rooting out trouble on the border. Even this talent for instant face-switching ran in the family.
But no matter how much she grumbled inwardly, her outward decorum never slipped.
Because, truly, she did admire them!
In recent days, she had even started to feel that Lady Xu had already begun to maneuver Chief Grand Secretary Xu.
Xu Youde burst into a long laugh, then abruptly reined in his mirth.
He picked up the cup of tea on the low table, which had long gone cold, but didn’t drink—only held it in his hand.
“Still, easy talk aside, we have to pass this trial right in front of us.” His tone turned heavy again. “Don’t forget—you’re now the most conspicuous thorn in the side of the entire Beijing literati circle.
“All those old-guard Confucian scholars in the court hate you to the bone. And those great families and nobles from Jiangnan, with their deep roots—what dirty tricks are they not capable of? The moment your true identity is exposed, a mountain of joint memorials impeaching you will flood the emperor’s desk.”
He stared at Xu Zijin, worry creeping across his face.
“Ziqin, you’re a newly risen storm’s eye. They’ll try to crush you first.” Xu Youde set down the teacup. “So tell me—for this life-or-death situation, how do you plan to break out?”
Xu Zijin met Xu Youde’s gaze calmly.
“Lord Count, Lady Qinghuan—you and your daughter need only sit quietly in your mansion.”
“Sit quietly?” Xu Youde frowned.
“And watch the show,” Xu Zijin said with a faint smile—one that held a certainty and boldness Xu Youde had never seen on her face before. “The upheaval outside is just about to begin. Let the Xu Mansion stay put and watch in peace.”
She paused, then slowly spoke her next words.
“Ziqin will prepare a grand gift for the Xu mansion.”
“A grand gift?” Xu Youde’s pupils contracted slightly.
Xu Zijin offered no further explanation.
She simply clasped her hands and bowed, her posture unhurried. Yet the aura radiating from her was so overwhelming that even Xu Youde, a man steeped in officialdom for half a lifetime, fell silent, unable to press another question.
Xu Youde watched the young scholar before him, a complicated feeling knotting in his chest.
He suddenly felt that the scholar he had brought back from Jiangnan was never a poor, failed examinee.
Instead, he was a sleeping giant, one who would inevitably stir the winds and clouds in due time.
How strange! To change so quickly?
After a long pause, he waved his hand.
“Enough. I will trust you this time.”
…
The crowd retreated, and the footsteps in the study gradually faded into the distance.
The wooden door, which Xu Fu had slammed open, creaked shut once more, sealing off the clamor and the raging flames of the besieged city outside.
In the vast, silent study, only Xu Zijin remained.
He stood by the window and reached out to push open the carved wooden casement.
The cold autumn wind rushed in, carrying with it faint echoes of the bustling crowd outside, tugging at his worn-blue scholar’s robe, its hem flapping noisily.
He looked out at the patch of gray, oppressive sky beyond the courtyard, his expression slowly darkening.
The calm confidence he had shown before Xu Youde did not fade in the slightest. But deep within his eyes, something others could not see began to churn.
He remembered that night a few days ago.
That night, too, had been such a night, the cold wind biting to the bone.
Once again, the Old Steward Xu from Grand Secretary Xu Jie’s residence had come looking for him in secret.
Without a single superfluous word, the steward had handed him a lantern that dimmed its light, led him through several deserted, dark alleys, circumvented layer after layer of guards, and smuggled him into the deepest, most heavily guarded courtyard of the Great Qi dynasty—into the Grand Secretary’s study.
It was the second time he set foot in that room.
Several antique bronze lamps burned in the study.
Their light was dim and yellow, the flames flickering faintly in the drafts, casting the withered shadow of the three-reign Grand Secretary onto the book-lined walls, stretching it long and then short.
That night, Xu Jie sat beneath the lamps.
This old man, who had held the literary authority of the empire for decades and whom even the emperor could not easily best, looked at him—this obscure scholar born from a base lineage—using his murky yet profound eyes that held none of the world’s imagined thunderous wrath.
He did not scold him for his audacity, nor did he denounce him for his unconventional heresy, nor did he even hint at tearing out this anomaly by its roots.
Beneath that bronze lamp, Xu Jie slowly spoke.
The Old Grand Secretary lightly tapped his withered fingers on the worn copy of The Rectification of Things and the Heart-Mind, its pages dog-eared from being read repeatedly.
His first words were:
“Young man, do you know why I haven’t killed you?”
Xu Jie’s deeply lined face was hard to make out in the flickering shadows.
“I have guarded this robe and mantle of mine—the very bone and spine of the Great Qi civil officials—for three reigns, for fifty years.” Xu Jie’s voice was low and slow, but every word was heavy. “All this time, I have been waiting for someone. For someone both capable of bearing it and bold enough to accept it.”
A faint glimmer suddenly lit up in the old man’s murky eyes, piercing sharply at the Xu Zijin beneath the lamplight.
“There is a line in your essay that perfectly matches my mind—”
“The essence of rulership is a descending mountain beast.”
Xu Jie slowly rose to his feet, his gaunt form blotting out most of the light from the bronze lamp.
“I did not summon you tonight to debate your scholarship.”
“It is to ask you one question.”
That question—Xu Zijin’s back still ran cold whenever he recalled it.
