The wind and snow outside Zhengyang Gate had been still for three days.
The snow piled along both sides of the main thoroughfare had already been shoveled by the street-sweeping soldiers of the Five-City Military Command until it lay heaped beside the moat.
The weather was bitterly cold, and yet the ten-li imperial road was packed with a dense sea of people.
Having heard that the Xu siblings were returning to the capital, the people of the city had poured out from every ward toward the gates from the hour of the Hare.
Bodies pressed against bodies, shoulders brushing shoulders, squeezing the banners that the runners from Shuntian Prefecture had put up until they hung crooked and askew.
The people chattered among themselves.
“The Xu family is truly something these days!”
“No kidding. If it weren’t for Lord Xu, who knows what Zhenbei City would have become!”
“Only Zhenbei City?”
“Think about it. If Zhenbei City had fallen, wouldn’t the capital have been next in line?”
“The Xu family truly is a blessing to Great Qian. They deserve this heaven-sent fortune.”
Lu Zhengyuan, a Vice Director of the Office of Ceremonies in the Ministry of Rites, stood in the draftiest spot beneath the gate arch. The blue-satin, double-soled riding boots on his feet had long since been soaked through by the frozen ground.
He hunched his neck, thrusting his hands, folded inside his sleeves, another half-inch deeper into his brocade robe. Then he gave a muffled chuckle to several familiar Supervising Secretaries behind him.
Lu Zhengyuan turned his head. “Everyone, take a good look! The Ministry of Imperial Household Affairs has certainly spared no expense for today’s banquet.”
Ten zhang behind him stood eight palace eunuchs in red robes and black gauze caps, their hands hanging respectfully at their sides. Together they carried an eight-man sedan chair with a vermilion carved-lacquer base, its four corners hung with gold-painted tassels.
The curtain was woven from heavy Suzhou embroidery brocade bearing cloud, dragon, and crane designs. As sunlight broke through the clouds, the fabric glittered as though inlaid with gold.
By the regulations of Great Qian, apart from princes and commandery princes, even a first-rank civil or military official could ride only in a four-man sedan along the imperial road outside Zhengyang Gate.
An eight-man golden sedan of this kind was reserved for imperial use or for bestowing upon foreign envoys during grand court assemblies.
Lu Zhengyuan’s gaze swept over the curtain before shifting to several men in indigo scholar’s robes, their appearances resembling those of failed examination candidates, who stood amid gaps in the crowd.
They were informants secretly planted by the Censorate and the Imperial City Bureau.
Everyone understood without saying so: if this newly ennobled hereditary Marquis of Pacifying the North and the First-Rank Noble Lady accepted the musical escort, bent down, and stepped even half a pace into that golden sedan, then before dawn the next day, the gates of the Office of Transmission would be piled high with memorials accusing the two of them of “arrogance, ritual usurpation, disrespect, factionalism, and rebellion against the throne.”
From the end of the long roadside pavilion and ancient avenue came the sound of many hooves striking the ground.
On the drum towers flanking Zhengyang Gate, the thirty-six men hired by the Ministry of Rites spotted the first glimpse of banners.
They immediately swung their arms, pounding the buffalo-hide drums and crashing the gongs with earth-shaking force.
Everyone looked up.
At the head of the procession rode none other than General of Illustrious Valor, Marquis of Zhenbei Xu Zhan!
He wore the qilin-patterned uniform of a third-rank general, without the slightest trace of the rounded softness common among officials who served at court.
At his waist hung an unsheathed, four-foot-long, solid black-iron mace with eight ridges and six striking faces. As his horse walked, it clanged against the animal’s ribs.
Behind his horse rode Xu Qinghuan.
She sat upright upon a tall black steed.
Upon her head rested the First-Rank Noble Lady’s Nine-Pheasant-and-Four-Phoenix pearl crown, presented by the court.
Xu Qinghuan wore not the slightest trace of palace cosmetics. Her skin was pale enough to see through, cold as frost-hardened iron.
The commoners on either side of the gate had been shouting themselves breathless—“Warrior!” “Female Saint!”—but as the more than hundred surviving soldiers of Zhenbei approached, the filthy stench of blood forged from burning camps and pits of corpses rolled over them.
The people’s hands gradually lowered of their own accord, and even their breathing slowed.
The Ministry of Rites officials, who had been laughing and murmuring moments before, caught the murderous air in their nostrils. A chill ran down their backs, raising gooseflesh over their entire bodies.
Lu Zhengyuan bit down hard on the trace of fear at his lower lip, straightened the chest bearing his embroidered egret insignia, and hurried forward. He cupped his hands and bowed deeply.
“Your subordinate, Lu Zhengyuan, Vice Director of the Office of Ceremonies, together with my colleagues from the various offices and the fathers and mothers of the capital, respectfully welcomes the Marquis of Pacifying the North and First-Rank Lady Xu home in triumph!”
His voice rang out, his words flowing like court music.
“May the sacred dynasty’s virtue and might spread throughout the realm! General of Illustrious Valor, standing alone, burned the barbarians and slew their commander, proclaiming Great Qian’s magnificent victory. First-Rank Lady Xu, by saving the world and restoring the whole, broke the chains of disease and preserved the lives of countless people along the frontier.”
“These achievements are all due to His Majesty’s vast grace and protection, as well as the two honored ministers’ devotion to the state and their glorious feat of cowing the northern wastes!”
The lengthy parallel prose fell upon the people’s ears without a single word lost, every note of praise ringing clear.
When he had finished, Lu Zhengyuan stepped a foot to the side, revealing the dazzling eight-man golden sedan behind him.
Then he extended a hand and swept it downward.
“His Majesty, mindful of the general’s injuries and inconvenience, and of Your Ladyship’s weariness from the journey, has specially ordered the Ministry of Imperial Household Affairs to send this imperial sedan to receive you! By court regulation, the two meritorious servants are to dismount, surrender their weapons, board the sedan, and enter the ceremonial gate to return to the capital and receive the blessings due them!”
Xu Zhan halted, his brows immediately drawing together.
Just as his younger sister had told him beforehand, the capital officials would indeed come to put them in their place.
A fierce glint flashed across his eyes.
The warhorse he held by the reins had endured countless battles and knew the intent behind such clashes of military power better than any man.
At once, its forehooves slammed into the ground, and it let out a long, shrill neigh laced with the stink of crushed grass and raw flesh.
The horse’s cry charged straight toward the sedan bearers and the accompanying mounts.
Those pampered imperial steeds, raised in the palace on fine beans, had never heard the furious call of a northern warhorse.
Overcome by the reek of blood, they shrieked miserably and stumbled backward on trembling hind legs.
The two harnessed imperial horses lurched sideways, dragging the bearers on either side to the ground.
The exceedingly precious golden sedan swayed in midair and nearly toppled toward the commoners.
Lu Zhengyuan cried out in a sharp, broken voice and hurriedly retreated.
Before he could demand an explanation, Xu Qinghuan spoke from horseback.
“Lord Lu.” At the sound of her voice, the warhorse immediately fell silent. “Step back and remove this ostentatious display.”
“First-Rank Lady Xu, this… this is His Majesty’s oral decree of special favor. He specifically ordered…”
“The frontier’s bones have only just been covered with yellow earth, and the stench of the dead still rides the wind. The Xu siblings have returned alive because the Son of Heaven has not abandoned his isolated and wounded soldiers. We are not yet entitled to indulge in such ceremonial splendor.”
Xu Qinghuan lowered her eyes and looked down at Lu Zhengyuan’s stiffening official face.
“If the two of us were to ride in such an impermissibly grand imperial sedan, would that not be taking the honor of every fallen soldier in the northern lands and turning it into a prop for official maneuvering outside Zhengyang Gate?”
Xu Qinghuan did not look at him again.
She swung over the right side of the saddle and jumped down, pressing both hands against the pommel.
Once she had landed steadily, she removed the golden hair clasp from beside her ear and carefully lifted the pearl crown from her head.
The cold wind immediately stirred two strands of her black hair.
She took three steps forward, facing the direction of the vermilion steps of the Forbidden City.
Raising the crown high above her head, she knelt without hesitation in the muddy, slush-filled snow.
Xu Zhan followed close behind.
The instant he dropped to one knee, the hundred men of the Pingqiang Army and the surviving soldiers of every personal guard unit behind them drove the butt ends of their spears into the ground and knelt as one.
All those present heard only the ringing clash of armor plates.
“Your servants, Xu Qinghuan—”
“Your servant, Xu Zhan—”
“Pay homage and thanks for His Majesty’s heavenly blessing.”
“The survival of Zhenbei Pass was not due to any merit of the Xu family. It was due to the three-hundred-year accumulated fortune of Great Qian’s imperial house, and to His Majesty’s steadfast rule, which drained the courage from the barbarians!”
“The Northern Horse Route did not fall because Heaven and Earth follow their proper laws and would not allow evil spirits and pestilence to invade the sacred capital!”
“The Xu siblings return to the capital today solely to surrender their command and return to their proper places. We dare not, on account of our meager abilities, presume to accept honors beyond our station from the imperial court!”
As soon as these words were spoken, the tens of thousands of commoners lining the official road—craning their necks to watch the spectacle and secretly brooding over the tragedy in the northern frontier—were stunned by the phrases “solely to surrender our command and return to our proper places” and “Heaven and earth permit no evil.”
Old Xing, standing among the crowd, dropped to his knees and struck his forehead hard against the ground toward the city.
That single kneeling was like a breach in a dam.
Within moments, countless men, women, and children in the surrounding crowd followed suit.
Word spread from ten to a hundred, and the wave of kneeling extended from the trenches all the way to the streets of Shuntian Prefecture.
“Long live the wise Emperor!”
“Long live Great Qian!”
The cries surged like a tsunami—not toward the siblings, but toward the central axis of the imperial city, rising and falling with thunderous force until they completely drowned out the gongs and drums welcoming their arrival.
Lu Zhengyuan’s face, illuminated by the snowy landscape, turned the pale color of pig’s liver.
He and the group of censors behind him stood frozen in the middle of the road.
How could the words they had spent half the night drafting—intended to take advantage of the moment and brand the siblings with the charge of “overstepping propriety and accepting undue imperial favor”—now be impossible to utter?
Seeing both the unruly civilians and the soldiers kneeling on either side of the road, if the seven or eight court officials continued standing upright while pointing out their supposed faults, they would be committing blatant treason and disrespect.
“Th-this subordinate…”
Lu Zhengyuan’s legs trembled. He hurriedly lifted the hem of his official robe and awkwardly knelt and prostrated himself before the mass of commoners.
In the middle of the snowy road, Xu Qinghuan slowly rose to her feet.
Leading Xu Zhan and the little more than a hundred surviving soldiers behind them, she made no use of a ceremonial escort and paid no heed to the ritual official’s praises.
They walked their horses themselves, step by step entering through Zhengyang Gate.
An hour later.
Within the imperial palace, in the warm chamber adjoining the Imperial Study to the west of the Hall of Heavenly Proclamation.
A bronze brazier stood burning with animal charcoal in the center of the room. The quiet fragrance of agarwood had driven away all trace of the winter chill.
Behind the imperial desk, the old emperor sat in the dragon throne, wrapped in a short fur-lined cape.
He held a grain administration memorial that had just arrived from the southeast, yet his eyes remained fixed on a box of cold ink beside his hand.
The chief eunuch of the Directorate of Imperial Supplies, Eunuch Li, knelt beside the desk on the floor. He scarcely dared to breathe too loudly as he recounted, word for word, everything that had happened outside the city during that brief stretch of time.
“…And that was how it happened. Lord Xu refused to take the seat.
“He removed his First-Rank Noble Lady’s jeweled coronet himself and knelt in the snow to offer thanks to His Majesty.
“He also said that the pacification of the frontier was not the achievement of the soldiers, but the result of His Majesty’s sacred might driving back the barbarians, and the dynasty’s vast virtue suppressing the plague mother…
“When the more than a hundred thousand commoners outside heard this, they all turned toward the Meridian Gate and cried, ‘Long live the Emperor!’ Lord Lu and the others from the Office of Scrutiny… stood there dumbfounded. In the end, they… they knelt along with everyone else!”
After finishing his account, Eunuch Li remained kneeling on the floor, silently awaiting the emperor’s response.
Upon hearing how the Xu siblings had conducted themselves, the old emperor’s vermilion brush wavered in midair. A single red drop of ink spread into a small circle on the memorial.
He slowly closed the unfinished memorial and pushed it aside.
Then he gradually leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, no one knowing what thoughts occupied his mind.
A long while passed.
Just as Eunuch Li began to suspect that His Majesty had fallen asleep and was about to step forward to drape a fur blanket over him, he heard the old emperor let out a cold snort.
