A Wu's neck was suspended from a sash.
As the sash dug into her throat, she could feel her breathing growing more and more labored. She closed her eyes in despair, the shadow of death spreading before her vision.
Just as her consciousness began to fade, suddenly, she found she could move.
Her survival instinct kicked in first. Without time to think, in the last instant before her consciousness scattered completely, she used both hands to claw desperately at the sash around her neck—the very sash she had been manipulated by the plot into hanging over the beam herself. She used the last of her strength to pull her body upward.
With a violent fit of coughing and dizziness, she crashed to the floor. Air rushed back into her lungs, bringing a burning pain that was oddly life-giving. Tears spilled from her eyes uncontrollably.
She had survived.
She was A Wu.
In the plot description, she was merely one of the unremarkable children saved by the Crown Prince and Crown Princess from a group of refugees. After returning to the Eastern Palace, she became a low-ranking maid. Because she served no purpose in advancing the plot, there was no further mention of her until the novel's ending. And so, even after ten years had passed, she still followed her original setting—a barely-there palace maid whose only duty was sweeping and cleaning.
[Those palace maids, gleaning from the whispers of matchmakers and eunuchs, learned they were to be conscripted into official brothels. In despair, several of them chose to end their lives in the Eastern Palace that very night.]
[Among them was a young girl the Crown Prince had saved out of kindness in his early years, but even though she was rescued, she drifted through fate's turns only to meet a miserable end. The benevolent Crown Prince saved no one in the end.]
This was the ending described in the book, and one of the few passages that mentioned A Wu at all.
Now, as the book in A Wu's dream turned to its final page, she was finally able to control this body of hers.
She slumped to the floor, like a fish flung onto shore.
Outside the window, the faint sound of celebratory drums and gongs drifted in. Today was the third day of celebrating the new emperor's ascension—that clamor belonged to the victors, the heroine and hero of the book.
And she, a minor casualty whose death wasn't even described in detail, welcomed true rebirth in a corner forgotten by everyone.
But the shadow looming over the Eastern Palace had not yet dissipated.
Since the Crown Prince was convicted of treason and died, death in the Eastern Palace had rolled down in order of rank—first the stewards and matrons, then the eunuchs with any measure of standing...
By day, corpses were tossed onto carts like cargo. After nightfall, corpse wagons would quietly drive into the Eastern Palace and haul away these piled 'miscellaneous goods' to the crematorium on the outskirts of the city.
Because without this, the accumulating corpses might breed plague, they weren't even granted the courtesy of being dumped in a mass grave with their bodies intact for a time.
A Wu pushed herself up. She had no time to hesitate.
She pulled out a few thin gold leaves from the very bottom of her wooden box—savings she had accumulated over many years. She wrapped them in a piece of cloth and tucked them into her shoes. When she stepped down, there was a slight foreign sensation, but she could walk without issue.
The Eastern Palace was generous to its servants, and there were still over thirty taels of savings in her wooden box.
Silver ingots were too conspicuous to carry away, so she only wrapped a few pieces of loose silver in soft cloth and pressed them into her bosom. Two small pouches were filled with copper coins and tied around her waist with several loops of sash. Two hairpins and a pair of scissors were wrapped in strips of fine cloth and bound to the inside of her arm.
She swiftly pulled her dark-grey narrow-sleeved padded jacket back on, then threw a worn grey quilted short overcoat on top, hiding everything on her person securely.
She sat down before the dressing mirror, opened her makeup box, and applied rouge to deepen the red marks around her neck.
Then, stepping onto a round stool, she untied the sash still hanging from the beam, and from the very bottom of her clothing chest, she retrieved an old, frayed sash that had seen years of use.
She compared the two, made a small, inconspicuous cut in the middle of the old sash with her scissors, then gave it a hard tug with both hands, snapping it so that only a few threads held it barely together.
Everything was ready. She stepped onto the round stool, threw the sash over the beam, and tied a firm knot. Taking a deep breath, she let her neck slip just slightly into the noose, bent her knees, and let her body hang heavy.
Crack.
A faint sound came from above, just as she had expected—the tampered sash snapped under the strain. She fell backward, while at the same moment the tip of her foot kicked the round stool aside. Bang. The stool tumbled, and she crashed heavily to the ground, the pain making her vision go black.
A Wu held her fallen pose, lying calmly on the floor. Her thick jacket concealed the faint rise and fall of her chest.
Soon, the sound of chaotic footsteps came from outside the door.
Bang! The door was shoved open roughly. Soldiers burst in with torches, and the first thing they saw was the sash still swaying slightly from the beam, and the maidservant on the ground with red marks around her neck, utterly lifeless.
'Another one who tried to off herself,' the lead soldier said with irritation, shining his torch at the broken sash. 'The sash didn't hold. She fell.'
Another soldier crouched down and pressed a calloused finger beneath her nose. 'No breath.'
He stood up, nudging her neck with his foot. 'Look at this mark. Body's still soft too—must've died not long ago.'
'Soft or hard, doesn't matter. Even if she had a breath left, once she goes into the crematorium furnace, she comes out ash. Same either way,' said the first soldier, using the scabbard to prod her head aside. He saw she wore no jewelry, just the grey short jacket of a low-ranking maid.
'Stop dawdling! A cleaning girl—what dirt could she have on her? Throw her on the cart and get moving. The west corner gate's about to overflow!' The soldier by the door urged them on.
Then A Wu felt two pairs of rough hands grab her and fling her onto the cold, unforgiving wooden wheelbarrow. She could faintly smell blood on the cart boards.
She relaxed her body, held her breath, and bit down hard on the tip of her tongue to stop herself from grunting at the impact of the jolts.
The cart rattled on over stone-paved roads. Halfway along, it stopped with a jolt, and another body seemed to be carelessly dumped on, landing right beside her arm. The weight was so light it made her heart clench.
'Pah, what rotten luck! Why's there a runt this small?'
'Who knows? Orders from above: all Eastern Palace folk, wipe 'em out, no exceptions. This one probably had parents who lost all hope and took the kid with them. Anyway, not a single one spared.'
Not a single one spared.
Those four words slammed into A Wu's heart.
The cart eventually came to a stop at the secluded west corner gate.
A Wu felt herself lifted like cargo and tossed down, landing in a pile of cold, stiff corpses. The smell of blood and a gag-inducing stench instantly flooded her nostrils.
When the sound of footsteps finally faded away, she cautiously opened her eyes a sliver, using the dim light from the distant celebration to see what lay beside her. It was a child of about four or five, face pale, and from what she could tell, he had been well cared for in life. His eyes were shut as if he were merely asleep—but there was not a trace of warmth left in him.
Beyond the palace walls, joyful music drifted faintly, making the dead silence of the Eastern Palace all the deeper.
After what felt like an eternity, a sharp cry pierced the stillness.
'Fire! Fire!'
A Wu turned her head slightly and saw that the side hall where the Crown Princess and the little prince were imprisoned had already burst into towering flames!
The soldiers outside made no move to extinguish the fire; instead, they watched the accident with cold indifference. Meanwhile, all the old servants of the Eastern Palace were locked in various places, no one able to get out.
The firelight flickered in A Wu's eyes, and memories surged up uncontrollably, one after another.
Ten years ago, it was the Princess and the Crown Prince who had rescued her from the refugees and given her a way to live. And there was the little prince—a soft, chubby child who would giggle and share his pastries with the serving maids.
She thought of the plot that had controlled her for ten years. She had lived like a marionette for a decade.
Under the dismissive label of "traitors," she could only watch helplessly as countless people in the Eastern Palace died.
"Bastards…" she cursed in her heart, though she wasn't sure who she wanted to curse—the new emperor who had ordered the fire, or the damn novel that had sealed their fates.
The side gate where the corpse carts were parked was the darkest, quietest corner of the entire Eastern Palace.
Or rather, the whole Eastern Palace had already been drained of its vitality by days of relentless purges.
Moreover, with the new emperor's ascension and the empire celebrating, most of the soldiers left to guard the palace were low-ranked men without prospects. At this moment, they were either entirely distracted by the "accidental" blaze, rushing over to "fight the fire" and keep watch on the living, or simply slacking off in guard rooms far away. No one wanted to linger near this pile of corpses that reeked of ill fortune.
And so, this corpse cart—which should have been under watch—sat alone in the shadow of the wall.
Just then, in the darkness, a figure slipped silently down from the cart.
A Wu dove into a nearby pond, soaked herself thoroughly, then quickly climbed out. She wrung the dripping water from her sleeves and trouser legs, then took off her short jacket and wrapped it around her head.
Ten years as a lowly cleaning maid had made her familiar with every corner of the Eastern Palace, including the hole hidden behind the side hall, covered by overgrown weeds.
She crawled through the hole and felt the heat and thick smoke spreading through the sealed room. Quickly, she pressed the wet sleeve of her jacket over her nose and mouth, groping through the haze.
Finally, she found them in the inner chamber.
The Crown Princess was shielding the little prince with her own body, but her once-straight bearing seemed to be crumbling. Blood trickled from the corner of her lips, a sight that was horrifying in the firelight.
Beside them, on the table, an empty teacup had rolled to the floor. A Wu knew that cup all too well—for days now, it was from such cups that poisoned wine had been sent to deliver the Eastern Palace's old retainers, one by one.
Flames had already begun to lick at the Crown Princess's skirt. Sensing someone entering, her unfocused gaze sharpened, as if she vaguely recognized the familiar face.
"Take him... go!" the Crown Princess used the last of her strength to shove the child toward A Wu, her eyes filled with desperate pleading.
A Wu took the child and realized the little prince had already been smoked unconscious, lying soft and limp in her arms.
