Futile Devices Scans

In the second month of the fifteenth year of Jinyuan, Mu Heng, by then enfeoffed as Prince Yong, accompanied the Empress Dowager to Jichuan City to recuperate at the hot springs. They had originally planned to return in early fourth month. But on the fifth day of the third month, while staying at the imperial villa, Mu Heng suddenly received a secret edict delivered by Hong Shou, Deputy Commander of the Imperial Bodyguard. Emperor Jinyuan ordered him to return to Fengdu immediately, without delay.

“Hong Shou’s lips are sealed. He refused to tell me anything.” Zhong Yi pushed open the door, his expression tense and his words clipped. “Your Highness, the personal guards are ready. We can leave at any time.”

Mu Heng was full of doubts, his brows drawn so low they nearly reached his eyelids. “There’s no time to waste. We leave at once. Shuchen, you—”

Before he could finish, Wei Fu gestured that he intended to come along. Mu Heng asked, “What about the Empress Dowager?”

Although Mu Heng was leaving in haste under imperial orders, if anything happened to the Empress Dowager after his departure, there was no guarantee the blame would not somehow land on his head. Wei Fu took out the palm-sized notebook he always carried and wrote swiftly: I’ve ordered everyone at the imperial villa to strengthen the defenses. As an outside official, I cannot properly attend the Empress Dowager. Staying serves no purpose. I’ll go with Your Highness.

Time was short. Mu Heng had no chance to argue. He led the party out of the imperial villa and galloped north.

The route from Jichuan City back to Fengdu necessarily passed through Dutou Mountain. The mountain stood at the borders of three cities, high and densely forested, and took its name from its resemblance to an ox’s head. Following the flat official road around its base would cost them at least two additional days, while cutting directly through the mountain would take less than three days at full speed.

Mu Heng was traveling light and desperate to return to court, so which route he would choose could hardly have been more obvious. Before entering Dutou Mountain, the party stopped in a small town at its base to rest and replenish their supplies. Wei Fu handed Mu Heng his notebook. Four characters were written on the page: A bad feeling.

Mu Heng’s right eyelid had been twitching throughout the journey, yet he still pretended to be calm. “What is it?”

Wei Fu wrote: Once a piece is placed on the board, every move lies in another’s hands. The road ahead is unclear. I fear something may go wrong.

Apparently being unable to speak did nothing whatsoever to diminish the power of Wei Fu’s jinxing. His words struck directly at the vague unease Mu Heng had been trying not to acknowledge. Zhong Yi, utterly incapable of reading the atmosphere, chose that moment to add, “The paths through Dutou Mountain are steep and sparsely traveled. If I were an assassin, I would definitely choose the mountain road for an ambush.”

Elio’s Notes: 乌鸦嘴, literally “crow’s mouth,” means someone whose gloomy prediction seems to jinx events. The joke here is that Wei Fu cannot speak at all, yet he can still be a “crow’s mouth” in writing.

“Ancestors above, I’m begging the two of you. Say something auspicious for once.” Mu Heng felt as though the pair of bastards were taking turns poking holes through his chest. Unfortunately, he could not think of anything reassuring either and only sighed. “Even if we take the worst possible view, who could manipulate Father Emperor into issuing an edict? If matters truly have reached that point, whether we go back or not, there’ll be no escaping what’s coming. It would only be a question of sooner or later.”

The spring mountain wind still carried a lingering chill, brushing coldly across the backs of their necks. In the bizarre silence that followed, with all three of them staring at one another, two crows flew over Mu Heng’s head. Caw! Caw!

Wei Fu immediately grabbed a cinnabar brush, drew two hideously crooked talismans on paper, tore them free, and slapped one onto each of his companions’ chests.

Mu Heng pinched his between two fingers and inspected it. The chaotic brushstrokes nearly assaulted his eyes. “What is this?”

Wei Fu wrote: A protective talisman. Learned from Daoist Master Zhang of Yunji Daoist Temple. Works every time—guaranteed not to cheat young or old.

Mu Heng regarded him suspiciously. “The last time you went to Yunji Daoist Temple, you were ten. Daoist Master Zhang passed away last year. And this ‘guaranteed not to cheat young or old’ business… it wouldn’t happen to be because neither of us is young or old, would it?”

Zhong Yi, meanwhile, held his little scrap of paper with great care. “But Shuchen has a photographic memory. If he saw the talisman once, he should be able to reproduce it. It ought to work, shouldn’t it?”

“Stop worshipping him blindly.” Mu Heng snatched Zhong Yi’s talisman, held it beside his own, and thrust both in front of his face. “Open your eyes and look! These two talismans aren’t even drawn the same!”

Wei Fu: “…”

He threw down the notebook, rolled up his sleeves, and moved to beat the prince. Zhong Yi hurriedly restrained him. Mu Heng was forced to tuck the badly scribbled talisman safely inside his robes and even promised that, once they returned, he would have it mounted and solemnly displayed in his study.

After resting, the party reorganized their belongings and rode into Dutou Mountain. On one side of the path rose a sheer cliff; on the other yawned a steep drop. At its narrowest point, there was room for only a single horse. They guided their mounts through with extreme care, advancing as slowly as a thread being drawn through the eye of a needle. Only after they finally reached a broad, level stretch did the mountain wind reveal how much cold sweat had soaked their clothes.

The riders at the front had just reined in their horses to wait for the rear of the party when Zhong Yi caught sight of suspicious movement in the roadside trees. He immediately threw himself toward Mu Heng. “Ambush! On guard!”

The enemy struck without warning. In the chaos, Mu Heng’s vision was obstructed. He only managed to catch Zhong Yi briefly. “A’Yi! Are you hurt?”

Zhong Yi had no time to answer. He drew the saber at his waist, turned, and struck Mu Heng’s horse hard across the hindquarters with the scabbard. “Break through! Keep going forward! Don’t look back!”

A rain of arrows followed immediately. The anguished neighs of wounded horses sounded one after another as clouds of dust surged from the road. More than a dozen black-clad assassins burst from the forest and crashed into the personal guards.

“A’Yi!”

The horse, stung by the blow, bolted. Everything had happened within a few breaths. Zhong Yi’s reaction had been terrifyingly fast, and Mu Heng’s mount was a powerful horse with excellent speed. Man and horse broke through the encirclement almost instantly, leaving the shouts of battle behind them.

Mu Heng bent low over the saddle and galloped blindly forward. In what felt like an instant, he had covered nearly three li. The only thing left in his ears was the howling wind. Gradually, his mind recovered from the blank shock of the sudden attack, and he instinctively tightened the reins and slowed the horse.

Elio’s Notes: A li is a traditional Chinese unit of distance. Three li is roughly 1.5 kilometers, or just under a mile.

His head felt numb, his face expressionless. When he shifted his grip on the reins, something sticky coated his hand. Mu Heng looked down and found his right palm covered in half-dried blood.

He stared at it for a long time before the realization arrived belatedly. It was Zhong Yi’s blood.

Zhong Yi. Wei Fu. The fifteen personal guards who had accompanied them… Mu Heng looked back at the empty road behind him. Something inside him collapsed without a sound.

Faint hoofbeats rose again in the distance. Already as skittish as a bird startled by the bowstring, Mu Heng was about to spur his horse away when a nearly inaudible jingle reached him through the wind.

His spirits lifted sharply. Wei Fu habitually carried a small bell. Whenever he needed to identify himself to someone through a closed door or across a long distance, he used its sound.

Mu Heng waited where he was, heart in his throat. Soon, a rider appeared in the distance at a gallop. Wei Fu signaled to him from horseback. Once they reunited, they rode another half li before abruptly plunging into the dense forest at a bend in the mountain road.

“Where are the assassins? How is A’Yi? Did you see him? Are the others still alive?”

Mu Heng grabbed Wei Fu and fired off questions without pause. Wei Fu raised a finger to his lips, signaling for silence, then dismounted and pulled him behind a tree.

An arrow had grazed Wei Fu’s arm, and the injured limb trembled with pain. Gritting his teeth, he pulled a map from his robes, marked their position with the charcoal pencil he carried, then circled Zhensong City to the northwest. Beside it, he hurriedly wrote one character: Xiu.

“Zhensong City… you mean Wei Xiu…” Mu Heng’s voice emerged as nothing but trembling breath. He forced it lower. “I remember he serves there as Prefectural Judge. You want to find him?”

Wei Fu nodded, rolled up the map, stuffed it into Mu Heng’s robes, stripped off his own outer garment, and tossed it aside. Then he began clumsily tugging at Mu Heng’s clothes.

“What are you doing?” Mu Heng stared at him. “Have you gone mad?!”

Wei Fu forcibly pried away the hand clutching his collar. For the first time, Mu Heng realized that all those mornings Wei Fu spent training alongside Zhong Yi had not been wasted. The bastard could actually pin down Mu Heng’s struggles with one hand.

Wei Fu stripped off Mu Heng’s outer robe, shoved his own into Mu Heng’s arms, and motioned for him to put it on. The meaning could not have been clearer. Mu Heng already understood what Wei Fu intended to do. His eyes burned with sudden heat, and his insides seemed to twist into fire. He seized Wei Fu’s wrist. “You’re coming with me!”

Wei Fu twisted free with an almost unnatural calmness and rapidly wrote several lines in his notebook: We split up. You find reinforcements. I’ll wait for you.

But everything about his actions made the real plan obvious. He intended to disguise himself as Mu Heng, draw away the pursuers, and buy the prince time to escape.

“Splitting up” was simply a less cruel way of saying sacrifice the pawn to save the king.

“No, Shuchen.” Mu Heng gripped his wrist again, his voice shaking almost into a plea. “We’ll escape together. You can’t go…”

Wei Fu looked at him quietly. After a moment, he raised one hand and pointed to his own throat, then gently patted Mu Heng over the heart in reassurance. Just as he always did, his eyes curved into that familiar, gentle smile.

He silently mouthed two words: Take care.

For years afterward, Mu Heng would think about that moment countless times. Where had Wei Fu found the courage? What kind of resolve had allowed him, in the space of a few fleeting breaths, to calmly choose a road for himself from which there would be no return?

Even as he prepared to walk alone toward death, he had still been capable of using a calmness bordering on cruelty to comfort Mu Heng: I cannot speak. You can be completely at ease.

He truly was the perfect choice. Even if he fell into enemy hands and they tortured him for Mu Heng’s whereabouts, he would never utter a single word.

In the past, whenever Mu Heng read stories of the ancients “sacrificing life for righteousness” or “giving one’s life to fulfill benevolence,” he had thought only of how heroic they sounded. Only when such a thing truly happened before his own eyes did he understand the unbearable weight behind the words going willingly to one’s death—and how merciless a person had to be toward himself in order to carry such a choice through.

The ancients often said, If someone treats me as a man of exceptional worth, I repay him as one. But Wei Fu was only fifteen. Forget “a gentleman dies for one who truly understands him”—he had not even had the opportunity to enter official service. He was no military man. At best, he might one day have become an unofficial adviser beneath Mu Heng. No future like that was worth wagering one’s life for. What could Wei Fu possibly have expected in return? That saving a prince would earn the illustrious Wei clan one more memorial arch?

Through countless long, sleepless nights afterward, Mu Heng replayed that moment again and again, imagining every possible path by which the two of them might somehow have escaped together. But in the one past that could never be changed, he had not even had time to say a word, nor wipe away the tears running into his mouth. All he could do was watch helplessly as Wei Fu burst from the forest, leapt onto the mountain road, mounted his horse, and galloped away, while Mu Heng himself led his horse through the narrow trails of the dense woods in the opposite direction.