Lin Yue had never once spoken of these things. She only kept her vigil beyond the palace walls, waiting for the Third Prince. Though still young, he had been precociously sensible, often bringing her food and small necessities. With clumsy hands he even built her a thatched hut no taller than half a man, naming it Linhan Palace, and vowed that one day he would construct for her a proper palace courtyard within the imperial grounds.
In those days Lin Yue’s body was marred and broken. After every rain, when the skies cleared, a foul odor would rise from her wounds. She always hid from the Third Prince, tossing him grasshoppers she had woven from straw from afar. Once he caught them, he would dart to her side, lean against her knees, and sing children’s rhymes.
At such moments, tears would trace silent paths down the dark rims of her eyes.
She never spoke of who she was, nor of what she had endured. She only urged him, time and again, to listen well to his mother. In secret, she would call him by his milk name—Xi’er.
Mu Xueshi. Mu Linxi.
When the snow fades, the dawn arrives.
That was the vow exchanged between Grand Tutor Mu and Lin Yue before either child was born.
For a time, the Third Prince searched everywhere for herbs to treat Lin Yue’s injuries. Fearing discovery, he later began cultivating strange flowers and plants within Muyan Pavilion. He said he wished to create a blossom whose fragrance could be detected from a hundred li away, curing illness and easing pain—so that even when confined within his small courtyard, he could still heal his mother.
During that period, Consort Mu was consumed with palace affairs and seldom spared him attention. By the time she noticed his furtive movements, she understood the gravity of the threat. Lin Yue had not died. The mystery of the Third Prince’s birth would one day become a fatal weakness.
He remembered clearly how he had watched the officials cut his mother down with a single blade, and how her body had been delivered to Consort Mu’s torture chamber for inspection.
In her youth, Consort Mu had been ruthless and merciless. Not only did she kill Lin Yue—she scraped her bones clean, boiled them into broth, and distributed it to unsuspecting servants to drink. At the time, a rumor circulated among the people: if one’s bones were shaved before death, the soul would scatter, never to reincarnate.
The first time the Third Prince laughed openly before Consort Mu was when he saw those servants savoring the broth, kneeling to thank her for the reward. The gaze of a child scarcely four years old was so vicious that it sent a chill through her.
After that, she treated him as her own son, utterly different from before. She believed children did not retain such memories—besides, he had not yet reached four at the time. If she showered him with care henceforth, surely he would forget.
Yet at five, the Third Prince tracked down each subordinate who had maimed Lin Yue in the wilderness and dragged them back to that same desolate place. There, he let mad dogs and wild beasts gnaw at them for three days and nights before granting them death.
At seven, he built Linhan Palace and seized the servants who had spied upon and reported his secret meetings with his mother. The voyeurs had filth stuffed into their eye sockets; infection soon spread until their bodies rotted. Before their last breath left them, they were cast upon the back mountain to be devoured by insects. Those who had informed were forced to have their teeth pulled out one by one and made to swallow animal excrement without cease, retching themselves to death.
At eleven, upon moving into Qinyi Courtyard, he summoned all those who had once drunk the bone broth. He ordered them to swallow a special elixir, then bound them upon iron racks while flames burned below. Beginning with toes and fingers, he pierced small holes with a blade and extracted each bone alive. Because of the elixir, they remained conscious until the final bone was drawn.
The chief conspirators who had harmed Lin Yue—Mu Wan’er, Consort Mu, Grand Tutor Mu, and Mu Xueshi—were all inscribed upon the Third Prince’s list for slow torment.
Grand Tutor Mu’s death was Heaven’s favor; yet the one who caused it would never smile in peace. Consort Mu had suffered enough—out of regard for the countless times he had called her “Mother Consort,” he allowed her to pass. As for Mu Wan’er and Mu Xueshi, they still waited beneath an approaching calamity, blissfully unaware.
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