The time it took half a stick of incense to burn passed.
Xiao Jingxing said nothing more.
He was waiting—for the men below to be the first to speak.
The co-examiner stood three paces below the large desk.
Several beads of sweat crawled down from his cheekbone, slid across his cheek, and finally gathered precariously at the tip of his chin.
“Your Highness!” Unable to withstand the suffocating pressure of the silence, the co-examiner repeatedly knocked his head against the floor. “The arguments in this essay run contrary to the principles of morality and justice! We are too ignorant to dare assign it a rank rashly. Such outrageous and unrestrained ideas… If left here at the Court of Judicial Review, they may well cause trouble.”
He raised his head and glanced quickly at Xiao Jingxing’s black official boots before lowering it again.
“I humbly dare to beseech Your Highness to seal this essay separately in a case and submit it to His Majesty. Let the Emperor make the sole decision!”
Xiao Jingxing slowly straightened his back. One by one, the five fingers gripping the ink-covered essay loosened.
He looked down at the examiner kneeling before him.
This was precisely the pretext he had wanted.
The essay absolutely could not be held back and suppressed privately. If he made the decision himself, it would inevitably give people something to criticize him for in the future.
With the Ministry of Rites’ examiner taking the initiative to request that it be submitted to the Emperor, he would merely be “forwarding it on his behalf.”
Xiao Jingxing rolled up the essay and casually tossed it into a nearby wooden case.
“Lock it.”
A minor clerk immediately stepped forward and fastened the brass lock with a click.
…
The Palace of Mental Cultivation.
Night had fallen.
To Xiao Jingxing’s surprise, there was not even a trace of medicine in the hall.
Several red-clay braziers had warmed the floor tiles.
Eunuch Li entered the inner hall in quick, mincing steps, holding the wooden case stamped with the seal of the Court of Judicial Review in both hands.
He reached the low table and set the case down steadily.
“Your Majesty, the First Prince is waiting outside. He says that the Ministry of Rites came across an essay while reviewing the examination papers that they could not decide how to handle, and he seeks Your Majesty’s judgment.”
Emperor Tiansheng, half reclining against a bolster, turned his head and glanced at the wooden case.
“Have him come in.”
Xiao Jingxing, who had been waiting outside, strode into the center of the hall and knelt, knocking his head against the floor.
“Your son pays his respects to Father.”
Emperor Tiansheng gestured.
Companion Li broke the seal, took out the essay, and spread it flat on the low table.
The Emperor’s gaze fell upon the opening proposition.
Silence once again filled the hall. The only sound was the faint rustling of paper as the pages were turned.
“The Void is qi.”
A page turned by an inch.
“There is no divine being who governs it.”
Another rustle sounded.
From beginning to end, Emperor Tiansheng spent the time it took a tea to cool reading the essay.
After reading the final eight characters, the Emperor withdrew his hand from the page.
He closed his eyes and settled his body completely against the bolster before speaking.
“Companion Li.”
“Your servant is here.” Eunuch Li bowed in response.
“Go to the Palace Scriptorium and select fifty copyists with clean backgrounds,” Emperor Tiansheng said leisurely. “Have them make one hundred copies of this essay overnight, exactly as it is.”
Xiao Jingxing’s brows drew tightly together, and a doubtful look appeared on his face.
One hundred copies?
His father was not only refusing to burn the essay or suppress it—he actually intended to have it copied on a grand scale?
Emperor Tiansheng continued, “When the palace gates open at dawn tomorrow, send them outside. The capital’s twelve wards, every teahouse and wine shop, and those shabby dormitories at the Imperial Academy. Stuff copies into all of them.”
“Your servant obeys.” Eunuch Li lifted the essay from the table with both hands and slowly backed away.
Only then did Emperor Tiansheng lower his gaze to his eldest son below.
“You handled the Court of Judicial Review’s affairs well. You may withdraw.”
Hearing this, Xiao Jingxing could not help feeling a surge of joy. He lowered his head even further.
“Your son takes his leave.”
Maintaining his bent posture, he slowly rose and retreated backward.
Only after passing over the threshold of the Palace of Mental Cultivation did he step fully into the night wind.
…
The Palace Scriptorium.
Midnight.
Fifty copyists dragged from their shared sleeping quarters were crammed into the narrow room.
Dozens of tung-oil lamps had all been lit, illuminating the room as brightly as day.
The sounds of nibs scraping across xuan paper merged into a single sheet of driving rain.
No one stopped, and no one raised his head.
When someone’s wrist grew sore and numb from writing, he could only rotate his arm twice while the ink stick was being ground, then hurriedly suspend his wrist and continue writing.
An older copyist happened to glimpse the words “There is no divine being who governs it” on the page. His wrist trembled, and he nearly let a drop of ink fall onto the white paper.
He hurriedly bit his lip and forcibly steadied his hand.
The guards patrolling the room gripped their sword scabbards.
Eunuch Li stood by the door.
The end of his whisk rested perfectly still across the crook of his left arm.
A young eunuch came running over with a teapot, leaned close to him, and whispered, “Godfather! The wording on this essay is truly alarming. If it gets out, once those gentlemen from the Censorate see it tomorrow morning, I fear they’ll be throwing themselves against the palace pillars.”
Eunuch Li turned his head and gave him a sidelong glance, his tone flat.
“His Majesty has ordered us to make one hundred copies and distribute them. So distribute them.”
He reached out and patted the young eunuch on the back of the head.
“We are servants of the palace. Whatever our master orders, we do. Whether those officials outside throw themselves against pillars or leap into Taiye Lake—”
“That is for our master to worry about. What does it have to do with you and me?”
The young eunuch shuddered and nodded repeatedly before retreating.
Dawn broke.
The Divine Martial Gate was forced open from within.
Several unremarkable blue-topped carriages rolled out of the palace grounds.
Their wheels crushed the snow on the stone-paved road.
The young eunuchs accompanying them changed into short jackets and trousers worn by street urchins. Once they reached the streets, they scattered in different directions.
The sound of their boots blended into the gradually swelling clamor of the morning market.
Within half an hour, one hundred sheets of paper had flowed through hidden channels into the capital’s twelve wards.
The Imperial Academy.
The Doctor’s study.
The doors and windows were tightly shut.
Four or five scholars in blue official robes stood gathered around the desk.
At the center lay a copy of the essay, still exuding the fresh scent of ink.
A scholar over fifty extended two fingers and pointed at a line on the page.
Before his fingertips could touch the paper, they began trembling uncontrollably.
He quivered, turned toward the old Chancellor of the Imperial Academy seated at the head, and stammered, “Chancellor! This… this…”
He managed to utter two words before his throat locked.
“Blasphemy! Sheer madness!” another scholar shouted, slapping the desk. His breathing was rapid. “This is clearly an attempt to sever the foundation of the orthodox teachings of the Sage! Who put such filthy writing into our Imperial Academy?”
The old Chancellor of the Imperial Academy seated at the head had hair as white as silver, and the wrinkles on his face lay deeply sunken.
He extended a withered hand and snatched up the copy.
The old Chancellor clenched the paper into a ball, breathing heavily as his beard trembled.
The surrounding scholars fell silent and retreated half a step.
The study became so quiet that one could hear a pin drop.
A full quarter of an hour passed.
The old Chancellor’s breathing gradually steadied.
He opened his palm again, placed the heavily creased paper on the desk, and began smoothing the wrinkles outward, little by little, with force.
He stared at the distorted characters once the paper had been flattened.
“Everyone, read it…” the old Chancellor finally said.
His face was alight with excitement, yet seemed tinged with sorrow, and his voice carried an endless helplessness.
…
The lowest-ranking dormitory of the Imperial Academy.
Snow swirled in the bitter northern wind.
The rickety wooden door creaked as the north wind battered it.
A poor scholar dressed in a faded, single-layer robe pressed himself against the back of the door.
The person outside glanced around in both directions. Then, with a swift motion, he pulled a sheet of paper folded several times from the sleeve of his padded jacket and shoved it through the broken gap beneath the door.
“Just half an hour! Brother Wang is waiting at Studio C to look over the second half of the volume. Hurry up and copy it!” The man outside lowered his voice and urged him through the door.
The scholar dropped flat onto the floor and pulled the half-page of the damaged manuscript inside.
He slid the bolt into place and secured it tightly.
Then he hurried to the crooked wooden desk and struck a firestarter.
With several hard blows, he coaxed it alight and lit a crude oil lamp whose flame was no bigger than a soybean.
A dim, yellow glow spread through the room.
The scholar laid the fragment flat on the wooden boards and weighed down one corner with a broken brick.
Several sheets of coarse, inferior paper lay beside it.
He picked up a battered brush with half its bristles worn away and began copying the words.
“Qi possesses yin and yang; each thing is composed of two aspects.”
He clenched his back teeth as he dipped the brush into the ink.
His hand moved across the paper.
Cold wind poured through the gaps in the roof tiles and blew straight down his collar, numbing the knuckles that gripped the brush.
But he had no time to stop and warm his hands.
The moment he finished a line, he raised his head to look at the original.
“Thus, the greatest benefit of learning lies in seeking, through one’s own efforts, to transform one’s natural disposition.”
Clutching an ink stick no bigger than his fingernail, he ground it desperately against the cracked old inkstone.
As his wrist turned, he lost control of his strength.
Several drops of thick, black ink splattered onto the back of his hand.
But there was no time to wipe them away.
He hurriedly tossed aside the ink stick, seized the brush, and soaked it in dark ink.
“Transform one’s natural disposition…”
He pressed down so hard that he nearly pierced the thin paper.
Each stroke grew heavier than the last, dragging thick black lines across the page.
When he reached the final horizontal hook of the character “qi,” he flicked his wrist.
Still holding the brush, he prepared to copy the next sentence.
Suddenly, footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.
“Ahem! In the middle of the night, which dormitory is still wasting lamp oil with its light on?”
The stern, hoarse voice of the dormitory supervisor came through the thin wooden door.
The sound of his boots advanced straight toward the ramshackle entrance.
The scholar trembled, and the brush tip carved a long, ugly streak across the page.
He had no time to think. He dropped the brush, snatched up the half-page manuscript from the desk, and bundled it together with the inferior paper he had just finished copying.
Then he turned and lunged toward the stiff wooden bed. Throwing back the tattered bedding, he shoved the paper bundle deep inside and pressed it firmly beneath the straw mattress.
At once, he puffed out his cheeks, leaned forward, and blew at the oil lamp—
Puff.
The flame went out.
The dormitory plunged into absolute darkness.
Outside the door.
The supervisor’s footsteps stopped directly in front of it.
He shoved the wooden door hard twice. When it refused to open, he issued several warnings and then walked away.
The scholar curled up on the wooden bed, breathing heavily. The burning conviction in his heart completely overwhelmed the cold that gripped his body.
