In the first year of Emperor Shengde's reign, on New Year's Eve.
The jailer of the Dali Si prison hunched his neck and scooped up a mouthful of steaming liquor.
Ordinarily, alcohol was strictly forbidden in the prison, but the cold this day was so biting that icicles hung from men's noses, and even the daily inspections had been waived.
Besides, with the new emperor having just ascended the throne and issued a grand amnesty, only one prisoner remained in this jail.
"Good riddance!" The heavy bowl slammed onto the low table, splashing wine stains across the floor. "Once that traitor is pierced by a thousand arrows, the common folk will finally have better days!"
"As for the many evils he has committed, flaying his skin, drawing his tendons, and executing his entire clan wouldn't be enough."
"Ah, but he's not of their blood—his family cut ties with him long ago, and now they've even denounced him in the name of righteousness, donating grain to relieve the poor. That's why His Majesty has shown leniency."
"Yes, I hear the folk of Bozhou suffered greatly because of him—tens of thousands became refugees, and it's thanks to his family's relief that they've survived."
"They say he took bribes amounting to ten million taels, yet wouldn't spare a single bowl of rice water for the beggar at his own doorstep."
"His Majesty is wise, and the Chief Minister is upright—that's the only reason this wretch won't see the spring!"
...
The drunken shouts pierced through the narrow, shadowy cells, reaching the ears of one man.
The straw mat, soaked in snowmelt, was bone-chillingly cold, and the oil lamp in the wall niche couldn't cast its light into this cramped, low-ceilinged cell.
That man leaned against the gloom, clad in coarse ochre hemp garments, with loose black hair spilling down, utterly silent and still.
A round skylight the size of a bowl let in a sliver of silver moonlight, gathering on his pale face. Only the occasional trembling of his eyelashes showed he was still alive.
Ever since his leg had been broken during torture, he had remained in this posture without moving for two days, and now the wound had turned darker than the stone walls—numb beyond all pain.
But even in such a ravaged state, he still held his head high with proud arrogance and straightened his back, making the gaunt silhouette in the shadows all the more pitiful and sorrowful.
"A noble guest arrives!"
A servant's shout at the entrance startled the jailers, who tumbled backward, spilling wine and toppling the jar.
They scrambled to their feet, shook their drunken heads, grabbed the bamboo-woven storm lanterns, and stumbled toward the prison entrance.
A servant minced forward, guiding a nobleman in a python-patterned robe with a jade belt. The fragrant tassels chimed and clinked, wafting the scent of herbal sandalwood into the foul cell.
"The noble lord wishes to see the death-row prisoner—lead the way quickly, and keep your mouths sealed tight!"
"Yes, yes..." The jailer wiped his flushed face and hurried to comply.
On New Year's Eve, a nobleman had come to see the one beyond redemption?
The nobleman frowned at the jailer's drunken ugliness, but his lofty rank made him disdain to speak a word.
Before long, the bolt slid open, and a servant burst into the cell, lighting a sesame-oil lamp and slapping down a thick stack of yellow hemp paper covered in writing.
The lamplight was a pea-sized flame, the cold gleam like white silk.
This was the first time in a month of imprisonment that Wen Zhuo had felt warmth.
The fact that they had lit expensive sesame oil rather than choking rapeseed oil told him—his hour had come.
"You little wretch, everything you're suffering today is the fruit of your past wickedness!" The jailer spat, his face full of loathing, but then turned to smile sycophantically at the nobleman outside the cell door. "Thank you, my lord. This place is foul, and the prisoner is treacherous. Do be careful."
Xie Langyang stood solemn and imposing, straight as a pine, his black leather shoe stepping onto the wet straw that jutted from the cell door, his gaze fixed on Wen Zhuo's exposed left leg, where bone met flesh and sinew.
At last, Wen Zhuo raised his bruised, swollen, and stiff hand to gather the flickering flame, seeking a little warmth.
He also cast a glance at the yellow hemp paper—it was a confession written in his own voice, but the familiar strokes of the brush told him the scribe was none other than Lord Xie, standing outside the cell door.
Every word struck like a hammer against his chest, raw with regret—but that was hardly his style.
He leaned against the stone wall with a sneer, saying nothing.
The jailer was furious, raising the blood-caked whip as if to strike.
“You castrated bastard, you won’t even live to see tomorrow’s sun, and you still won’t bow to the Grand Secretary?”
Wen Zhuo simply closed his eyes. The firelight illuminated his face—though battered and humiliated, he remained exquisitely delicate, impossibly untouchable.
“Him? Worthy of my bow?”
“You—” The jailer’s eyes bulged in disbelief, barely restraining himself from beating Wen Zhuo to death on the spot to please Xie Langyang. “My lord, this wretch is insolent—let me teach him a lesson, I’ll make him kneel and apologize!”
“Please step aside, my lord, I’ll flay his skin!” someone chimed in.
“Let me!”
“All of you, GET OUT!” Xie Langyang’s features twisted grotesquely, a dark, resentful cloud pressing down from his seal-bearer’s face, every trace of his usual purity and dignity gone.
The jailer froze mid-sentence, unsure what Xie Langyang meant, and shuffled backward in fearful retreat.
Once the guards had scurried far away, the man who was supposedly the upright, poise-maintaining Grand Secretary of the Court suddenly went weak in the knees, crashing to the ground before Wen Zhuo, eyes bloodshot and throat choked with sorrow—
“Wanshan, I’m sorry. My wife is pregnant. I… had no choice.”
If the whole world were to witness this scene, they would think either Xie Langyang had gone mad, or they themselves had lost their minds.
Since ancient times, honest officials and corrupt ones, loyal ministers and traitors, had been irreconcilable enemies.
How could a loyal minister kneel before a treacherous one, weeping in remorse?
Wen Zhuo sneered at Xie Langyang.
In the blink of an eye, Xie Langyang had fallen apart—his official robes soaked through with snow-water, his black leather boots smeared with mud, two hot streams of tears streaking down a face as white as jade, coffin-wood splinters packed beneath his fingernails.
He was so utterly shattered, as if he were not the very man who had impeached Wen Zhuo for framing loyal officials and harming imperial princes.
If Wen Zhuo had not lived through it himself, he would never have believed that the radiant, cloud-and-moon Master Langyang, the man who would climb mountains to break off a single camellia branch for him, could have cast him into an abyss of utter ruin.
“You. Wife. Pregnant.” The four words came out one by one, as if Wen Zhuo were crushing a searing flame in his palm. “This past month, Grand Secretary Xie certainly enjoyed himself.”
For the month he was on trial, for the month he endured torture, Xie Langyang’s career had soared, and warmth and fragrance had filled his arms.
“I… was exhausted, mind and body, drank too much wine, and remembered none of it.” Those words seemed to slice precisely into Xie Langyang’s rawest wound. His expression instantly fell away into desolation, hollow and lost. “My death would be a small matter, but the innocent blood of the Xie family—the Emperor used that as a threat. In this life… I am destined to betray you.”
“Xie Langyang.” Wen Zhuo laughed lazily.
He took up the brush, dipped it in ink, and signed the confession of guilt—but his stroke was unsteady, his broken fingers weak, no longer carrying the elegance of past days.
Then he tossed the brush toward Xie Langyang’s face, as if he could not bear even to look at him a moment longer: “If I could live one more life, I would send you to a death with no place to be buried.”
To see such burning hatred, one might think Wen Zhuo harbored some injustice, some hidden truth.
That would be wrong.
He truly was a detestable, hateful, fraudulent, power-grasping treacherous minister—and it was only fitting that Xie Langyang, an honest and virtuous minister, brought him down.
But this path of forbidden love, this road from which there was no return, was one Xie Langyang had set him upon. In the end, it was he who withered away, waiting until death.
At his words, Xie Langyang's figure swayed, all his pent-up melancholy dissolving into an ethereal, insubstantial hope: "I once thought that perhaps a Penglai wonderland truly existed somewhere in this world, where there could be a version of you and me—one where neither of us entered officialdom at the imperial examinations, and I would take you far away, never to betray you."
Those words were meant to be taken lightly. Anyone who actually believed them would be the greatest fool under heaven.
A man capable of such profound devotion would not marry the daughter of the former Grand Secretary. He would not get that daughter with child.
Of course, he had plenty of excuses—family duty, unrepayable gratitude to his master, the need to carry on his bloodline, and the claim that there was never any love between husband and wife.
There was a time when Wen Zhuo had believed every last word of it.
Everyone said Director Wen was frivolous and dissolute, flirting with every flower he passed, but in truth, he had never been intimate with anyone.
Wen Zhuo loved men. That was the great taboo of Daqian, and his death sentence.
Three years prior, the old emperor fell gravely ill, and the conflict among his seven sons for the throne officially began.
Among the old emperor's many princes, the Sixth Prince, Shen Chen, was not the most gifted.
The reason Wen Zhuo chose Shen Chen was because Shen Chen had dared to declare before the old emperor that there was nothing shameful in preferring one's own sex, and had begged His Majesty to open up discourse and correct the public view.
The old emperor flew into a rage at the time, kicking him hard, and—considering his youth—ordered him to kneel before the Hall of Cooling Breezes for three full hours.
As it happened, a torrential rain broke out, needles and arrows of water lashing down. Wen Zhuo, umbrella in hand, walked to the front of the hall and pulled Shen Chen's icy hand upward.
Shen Chen's eyes were rimmed red, and he collapsed into Wen Zhuo's arms, choking out a sob: "Master Wen."
Thinking of Xie Langyang—who had never involved himself in factional strife and had refused to take anyone as his disciple—Wen Zhuo relented and answered: "Mm."
Shen Chen's principal consort and Xie Langyang's wife were sisters, which meant Xie Langyang had naturally become one of Shen Chen's people.
This led Wen Zhuo to mistakenly believe they were striving toward the same goal.
Xie Langyang was upright, incorruptible, and held himself to the highest moral standard. Wen Zhuo could not bear to see him dragged into the schemes and calculations of the succession struggle.
So whoever Shen Chen feared, Wen Zhuo eliminated. Whatever wealth Shen Chen coveted, Wen Zhuo seized. Whatever power Shen Chen wanted, Wen Zhuo snatched away.
After all, to remain an unsullied, loyal courtier was Xie Langyang's lifelong wish.
"Get out," Wen Zhuo said to Xie Langyang.
Xie Langyang crawled on his knees to press against the prison bars, tears carving crooked tracks down the bridge of his nose. His trembling hand reached out, trying to touch Wen Zhuo's broken left leg: "Believe me or not, I only ever wanted to keep looking at you like this..."
But he knew perfectly well that once the confession of guilt was submitted, Wen Zhuo was as good as dead.
That death warrant had been written by Xie Langyang's own hand and delivered by his own feet.
On the day of the execution, the snow had just begun to melt, and a full sun hung high in the sky. A column of imperial archers in silver armor with red cloth masking their faces ran to the front of the hall, arrows nocked.
Wen Zhuo's limbs were bound to the stake, and a large red circle had been painted over his heart.
Shen Chen strode up to him. The boy who had once trembled like a frightened bird in the rain finally shed all pretense: "I forgot to tell you, Teacher—your household guard Jiang Mannü tried to break you out of prison, and was chopped to pieces by the Left Battalion Guard, then fed to the wild dogs. Your steward Liu Qiying petitioned with a ten-thousand-name plea for your life, and had his throat slit and head hung from the South Gate."
The man before him was never the boy shivering in the storm. Never the weeping student crying, "I have only you, Master Wen."
A single tear traced its way down his frostbitten cheek, like a red-hot iron strip gouging into flesh.
Wen Zhuo laughed, and coughed.
How strange. He was sharp enough to perceive the faintest signs, a reincarnated Zhuge Liang, and yet he had been blinded by this pack of beasts.
When he had laughed enough, he swallowed his disgust and said: "Shen Chen, if I could return to the twenty-third year of Shunyuan, the one who takes this throne today would certainly not be you."
"Teacher can save your regrets for the next life." Shen Chen's eyes were cold and fierce, his mercilessness plain to see. Then he swept his robes aside, turned, and mounted the supreme throne that Wen Zhuo had seized for him.
The eunuch shrieked in a shrill voice: "The hour has come—archers, draw!"
The assembled ministers fell prostrate, crying out in unison: "Purge the treacherous, steady the realm!"
The shouts rose from every direction, gathering into a malevolent, surging tide that battered Wen Zhuo's eardrums. Then, piercing through the clamor, came a sharper, more strident sound, splitting the air—
Thunk!
The arrowhead tore through Wen Zhuo's flesh, sinew, and bone, bursting out from his shoulder blade and clattering to the ground.
All he felt was a scorching dampness at his shoulder, and then agony exploded from deep within, lancing through every nerve.
A second arrow. A third…
Blood soaked through his prison garb. The cold wind had just begun to congeal the raw, throbbing wounds, only for hotter blood to wash them open again. He no longer had even the strength to groan.
In the end, it came to nothing more than this.
In his dying moment, Shen Chen walked toward him through the pools of blood, wearing that expression of loathing—at once unfamiliar and all too familiar—and ground the last remnants of his pride beneath his heel.
"A man who willingly submits beneath another—how you sicken me."
Wen Zhuo had already gone numb, his vision slowly mottling with scattered black spots.
And then, at that very moment, the heavens shifted without warning!
The sun hanging high above was abruptly devoured by a shadow, and the earth plunged into darkness.
The ministers looked up, frightened by the solar eclipse, but then a single thread of daylight burst through the center of the shadow, slicing straight down and cleaving the central axis of the palace.
In a daze, Wen Zhuo watched the vermilion walls and towering terraces before him split apart with a roar. At the fissure came the sound of rain falling like a torrential storm.
And standing on that same central axis with him—were Xie Langyang, his face ashen, and Shen Chen, his brow tightly furrowed.
