Elio’s Notes: The chapter title comes from one of Li Yu’s elegies: “Where now is all that brilliant beauty? All that drifted away is gone.” The original poem mourns irreversible loss, which gives the title a particularly ominous resonance here.
At dawn, Hongxiu was awakened by the sound of footsteps outside. She had only just started toward Flowing Wind Pavilion when she heard Li Hongji suddenly laugh. The sound was wild and bitter. Every servant passing nearby froze, none daring to move and none knowing what to do.
Hongxiu smiled faintly. The answer was already obvious. Li Hongji cared even more than she had expected. So he too could suffer. From far away she saw a pond completely drained and withered. It should have been the season when koi swam among lotus blossoms. Now only a solitary pavilion remained.
Li Hongji had dismissed everyone and sat alone inside Flowing Wind Pavilion.
Seventeen or eighteen years old.
The scenes of those years remained perfectly clear. Even the faintest breeze could once pass through the hall and stir flowers and willows. A young man in Tianshui Blue would sit alone there, smiling as he watched wind and moon. From the shore, Li Hongji could not see his pupils or see through that deep pool of water. He saw only hair lifting in the breeze, and ripples forming across the lake.
He had never stopped brooding over Sixth Brother’s eyes. From beginning to end, others had lifted that child toward the heavens and called his face the countenance of an emperor. Li Hongji always wondered whether, if age and seniority did not stand between them, even the position of Crown Prince might have been handed to someone else.
Now only one red sandalwood box remained. Nothing else.
Li Hongji suddenly wanted to laugh.
The woman in red slowly approached along the shore, neither alarmed nor afraid, and bowed calmly. “Crown Prince.”
“You may leave.” Li Hongji sounded openly impatient.
“Lord Han asked Hongxiu to report to the Crown Prince that he is unwell today. The physician has ordered him to rest properly, so he will not be visiting the residence for the next few days.”
Li Hongji gave a cold snort without turning toward her and offered no answer.
Hongxiu sighed faintly. In the end, she gathered her courage and entered the pavilion. The red sandalwood box on the stone table remained unchanged after all these years, though the stains left by water had dried and deepened the wood’s color.
Li Hongji still did not turn around. “Sit.”
Hongxiu obediently sat on the stone bench. “Crown Prince.” He cut her off. “You want to know the story of this string?” Hongxiu did not answer. Li Hongji laughed loudly. “There is no harm in telling you. It was only a dream.”
All that drifted away was gone. However magnificent the dream, eventually one still had to wake.
When the story ended, Hongxiu suddenly felt that Li Hongji was far less capable of letting go than she had imagined. “Crown Prince, the Duke of Anding has no intention of competing with you.” That was all she could say, even though too many people had already said it.
Li Hongji suddenly spun around, seized her, and gripped the back of her neck with brutal force. His voice was thick with rage. “Doesn’t want to fight! Doesn’t want to fight! I have heard those words since childhood. You say them, they say them, everyone says them! Sixth Brother himself never argues. Instead, he tries everything he can to act clever and withdraw from every dispute.” He stared at her coldly, though it seemed he was no longer speaking only to Hongxiu. “He thinks he can hide from it. But how can I hide? Every bit of pressure around me comes from the threat to the throne!” His voice sank lower. “I know he does not want to compete with me. But he is not the one competing. It is rumor. It is the human heart.” Slowly he released her neck and stepped backward as though lost. His laughter became almost mad. “He may not fight, but one phrase, ‘the countenance of an emperor,’ created endless uncertainty. Father believes it. They believe it. Then how can I not believe it?”
Standing inside the ruined pavilion in the morning wind, Li Hongji laughed in complete loss of control. “Hongxiu, do you know? Sometimes I want to gouge out those eyes. Gouge them out… destroy him. Destroy that Tianshui Blue. Destroy every trace of red sandalwood fragrance in this world. Then perhaps he could always remain my Sixth Brother calling me Brother Hongji. Perhaps he would not need to… keep hiding, always hiding…” He staggered backward and collapsed onto the bench. “Then I… would never have lost that guqin string. Perhaps I could still hear… Xiangquan…” His reddened eyes were threaded with blood. The Crown Prince had not slept all night and now looked utterly exhausted. His final words emerged almost like a growl as he slammed one palm against the stone table. Hongxiu retreated toward the railing in alarm. Yet when she saw him in such a state, she still could not help stepping forward and taking his arm. “Crown Prince. Crown Prince…”
Li Hongji threw her off. “I do not need you here to laugh at me.”
“This is not a joke, Crown Prince. If…” Hongxiu drew a deep breath. “If you stop now, then none of this needs to become a joke.”
Something seemed to strike Li Hongji. He suddenly looked at the woman in red who had fallen to the ground. He bent down and slowly stroked her wrist, his movements careful and strangely gentle. “Hongxiu, if someone ordered you to return to Green Willow Lane now, would you be afraid? Would you agree?”
Hongxiu said nothing.
His fingers moved slowly along her hand, then tightened. “They truly are beautiful hands. Wasn’t it the grace of these hands that first caught Lord Han’s eye? What do you think would happen if I broke them now?”
Seeing the sincerity in his eyes, Hongxiu felt genuine fear and abruptly tried to withdraw her hand. Li Hongji caught it immediately. He gave her a reassuring look. “Do not worry. How could I bear to do that now? My Hongxiu still has important work to accomplish. As long as you obey me, what would it matter if I made Green Willow Lane disappear forever?” Hongxiu nodded. “You see? You understand too. Perhaps if I stopped now, we would not become a joke. But it would create countless uncertainties. Who can say whether tomorrow’s Crown Prince would still be Li Hongji? And if you returned to Green Willow Lane, you would still be nothing more than a poor, lowly girl.”
She understood.
They were both people who had already seen how vast the sky and sea looked from a mountain peak and could no longer bear to turn back. Even standing now upon a cliff, they would still gamble everything. Of all things in this world, turning back was the hardest. Few people could still see warmth inside the dust below them, and fewer dared believe that such faint light could continue shining for long.
Things had already reached this point. The Prince of Qi was dead. If the Duke of Anding was removed as well, half the Southern Kingdom would belong securely to Li Hongji.
“You are tired, Hongxiu. Go back and sleep properly.” When Li Hongji stood again, he had become the proud, self-assured Crown Prince once more. He straightened his sleeves and was about to leave when he noticed the small wooden box on the stone table. He picked it up, closed the lid, and held it beneath the daylight, turning it idly for some time. Then he turned and casually handed it to the stunned Hongxiu. “Take it.” He did not look at it again. Something discarded no longer held meaning. He should have understood that from the moment he threw it into the pond all those years ago.
How ridiculous.
Hongxiu accepted the box and withdrew. Blue bruises still marked the wrist he had gripped.
After leaving the side gate of the Crown Prince’s residence, Hongxiu wandered the streets alone with the box in her hands. People passed endlessly around her, unfamiliar faces carrying their own stories forward. For the first time, she felt that whether one wore common cloth or stood beneath only the emperor and above ten thousand others, everyone possessed a past too difficult to speak aloud. Leave those wounds untouched and life remained peaceful. Tear away the scar one day, and anyone could become uncontrollably mad.
It was the same with the endlessly noisy market around her. All kinds of people came and went. Some struggled for survival, others became fools for love. What Li Hongji pursued merely sounded more dignified, something ordinary people did not dare imagine. Yet once done, it was no different from anything else. A small red sandalwood box. If the person holding it now were that man instead… Hongxiu once again remembered the figure she had seen, Flowing Wind Pavilion, Xiangquan.
How wonderful it might have been if Flowing Wind and Xiangquan had simply laughed together and watched worldly glory pass.
Hongxiu raised her hand and casually tossed the box away. She watched it roll alone into the dust beside the road. What had passed was past. No one truly missed that guqin string anymore.
She slowly walked away.
She never saw A-Shui following behind her.
He had trailed after her foolishly. Seeing that she discarded something, he ran over and picked it up. Finding only an empty box and having no idea what it meant, he eventually tucked it into his arms.
Even something she threw away seemed precious.
A-Shui had night patrol duties, yet slipped out during the day merely to see her. His face was exhausted, but his determination remained. Even after watching her enter and leave the residences of powerful men, even knowing what sort of person she had become,
he still remembered that he needed to work desperately and obtain official rank.
The world was always unpredictable, and there were always fools who refused to wake.
That afternoon, Zhao Kuangyin had still received no secret message from the Crown Prince and was beginning to speculate when someone knocked at the door again. He ignored it, assuming it was a servant from the residence. But after a long silence with no voice outside, he finally rose and opened the door. The wooden door moved slightly, revealing one eye with double pupils. Zhao Kuangyin froze.
“You… Duke of Anding…” In an instant Zhao Kuangyin remembered the two of them together atop the high tower the previous night, their descent through the air, and… that kiss. For once he did not know what to say. He could not guess why Li Congjia had come privately to see him and simply stood there stiffly. The man before him, meanwhile, looked as composed as ever, no different from usual. A faint smile rested at his lips while dark eyes watched Zhao Kuangyin without a ripple.
“This is my residence. Am I not allowed to enter?” Li Congjia spoke half jokingly from the doorway. Perhaps he had passed flowering trees along the way, for a tiny pink petal rested upon his shoulder, carrying a trace of spring.
Peach blossom? Zhao Kuangyin narrowed his eyes slightly. This man always remained in his thoughts. Li Congjia. The name moved slowly through his heart like a spring breeze. Zhao Kuangyin stepped aside to let him enter and saw only the soft simplicity of Li Congjia’s robes, making him look even more like something out of poetry and painting.
This man was always distant as faraway mountains, as though nothing in the world could ever shock him into losing composure. Even if he wandered through ten li of mortal splendor, he remained only a single stroke of ink across an immense painting of jeweled towers and worldly prosperity. He himself seemed to care for nothing, while everyone around him became hopelessly entangled, infected by a heart-gu from which they could no longer escape.
“Something you need?”
Li Congjia sat beside the table and drank a mouthful of tea. “You have traveled north and south for many years and must have seen much. I came to ask about the whereabouts of something.”
“What is it? There are still things in this world capable of making the Duke of Anding obsessive?” Zhao Kuangyin became interested. So even Li Congjia had something he wished to find.
“Have you ever seen the score of a lost composition, the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe Dance?” There was a trace of expectation in his voice.
A smile appeared on Zhao Kuangyin’s face, though he did not answer. He merely stared at Li Congjia as though he had heard something genuinely absurd. “So it is merely some musical score. Have you sobered up? The Duke of Anding certainly has leisure to spare.” His meaning was obvious. With so many threats around him still unresolved, Li Congjia had come merely to ask about a score.
“Why not?” Li Congjia raised one brow over his teacup, the expression quietly unconcerned.
Besides, it was the score Ehuang had wanted for years.
The Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe Dance represented the most extravagant splendor of the flourishing Tang. In the twenty-eighth year of Kaiyuan, when Yang Yuhuan first appeared at Huaqing Pool, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang was said to have played the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe music to accompany her entrance. Li Congjia slowly recited the lines: “The celestial palace lies deep beneath an endless night; beneath green clouds, immortal music dances the Rainbow Skirt. One jade flute fades into the empty sky; the moon fills Mount Li as the palace water clock runs long.” Zhao Kuangyin’s smile only deepened.
Since becoming engaged and marrying Li Congjia, Ehuang had never stopped searching for the score. During countless moonlit nights among flowers, her thoughts would inevitably return to it. Li Congjia could hardly bear to watch that brilliant smile cloud because one wish remained unfulfilled. He had quietly sent people to search, but every effort ended without result. As time passed, the longing became almost an illness. Husband and wife alike grew attached to that legendary dance of the Kaiyuan era. Li Congjia had mentioned it many times at banquets with Han Xizai, but even Minister Han, who had spent so many years moving among music halls and pleasure quarters, could not find it. Poetry, songs, calligraphy, music, whatever Li Congjia wanted, what could he ordinarily fail to obtain? Yet this one composition truly seemed extinguished from the world. News brought back only stories of warfare and chaos. If even an age overflowing with flowers and magnificence could be overturned, how much easier for a single musical score to disappear?
Ehuang refused to believe it. Surely some old palace musician must have carried it down through the years. Once she became so heartsick over it that she could not even play the pipa for several days. After that, Li Congjia cared about the matter even more. Somehow he had to find it for her. How could Ehuang be allowed to worry? He had always told himself that no matter what happened, she deserved a life of splendor, untouched even by the smallest unnecessary grief.
If she wanted it, he would find it.
After resting briefly from the night-long banquet, he had seen how tired Ehuang looked and risen alone to visit Zhao Kuangyin in the side courtyard. Perhaps Zhao Kuangyin, after so many years of wandering, might have encountered some clue.
Zhao Kuangyin’s thoughts shifted. So Li Congjia had not come for the reason Zhao Kuangyin had imagined. “Ehuang wants it? The Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe Dance would indeed suit her.” The tone was almost arrogant. It was only music, only a woman. Why treat such things so seriously? Zhao Kuangyin understood little of the world of song, dance, and entertainers.
Li Congjia frowned. Even displeasure upon that refined face remained elegant enough to inspire admiration. “Ehuang is not a name for you to use.” She was his wife, a phoenix standing proudly above a peony in bloom. No matter what else happened, marrying such a woman had been his good fortune.
A strange anger rose inside Zhao Kuangyin that he could not explain. He could not bear seeing Li Congjia like this. Those beautiful brows should never have been burdened by worry. Why should some insignificant matter disturb all that rain and mist within him?
He could not bear watching Li Congjia lose himself over something another person wanted. It was a dangerous thought. By the time Zhao Kuangyin recognized it, it was already too late. He crossed to Li Congjia, who remained seated, his eyes still carrying the shadow of that peony.
Zhao Kuangyin reached out, one sword-like brow slightly raised, and said slowly to the man in blue-green, “Li Congjia, you encountered a peach tree.” The words sounded nothing like something Zhao Kuangyin would ordinarily say, yet speaking them felt strangely satisfying. His hand moved slowly across the Tianshui Blue cloth and brushed away the petal resting on that slender shoulder. For the first time, a man who lived with swords and blades touched something with the softness of someone afraid to startle fish from a pond.
Li Congjia stared blankly as the petal drifted down. “Peach blossom?” Before he could think further, strands of Zhao Kuangyin’s hair, still loose from the previous night’s drinking, swept across his vision.
There was faint sweat in Zhao Kuangyin’s palm.
Zhao Kuangyin bent closer. He found himself remembering the moment when red sandalwood fragrance had lingered between their lips. No. He repeated the word silently again and again. No. Do not let some peony of a flourishing age disturb your heart.
He suddenly wanted to bite Li Congjia hard enough to see whether even the blood that emerged would carry red sandalwood fragrance. The force of the thought startled Zhao Kuangyin himself.
This time Li Congjia was obviously frightened. He stared at the strange expression on Zhao Kuangyin’s face. The forbidden memory of the previous night, something neither of them should mention again, made it impossible for Li Congjia to maintain his usual composure. The man in blue-green abruptly stood and retreated two steps. Zhao Kuangyin reached out and caught his sleeve. In the struggle neither paid attention to the table. The teapot overturned and hot water splashed. Li Congjia gave a quiet cry and flung his right hand backward.
One boiling droplet struck Zhao Kuangyin’s face. He abruptly released his grip.
The sharp crash of porcelain broke through the confusion filling the room.
When Zhao Kuangyin recovered himself, Li Congjia had stumbled against the folding screen beside the wall. The exquisite white-gauze landscape screen framed a pale profile. Long hair fell forward, hiding his expression. Only his slender fingertips remained visible, dripping with water.
Zhao Kuangyin looked at the countless porcelain fragments across the floor, steam still rising from them. Only then did he realize the boiling water had spilled across Li Congjia’s hand. Anxiety struck instinctively. He took one step forward. “Your hand…”
Li Congjia kept his face turned aside. When Zhao Kuangyin approached, he retreated. “Zhao Kuangyin.” His voice sounded nothing like usual, low enough to make one uneasy.
Zhao Kuangyin had barely begun to move forward again when Li Congjia turned and dragged the screen across between them. That beautiful wrist disappeared behind it. Redness was already spreading across his right hand. He had indeed been burned.
A crooked folding screen now stood between them, faintly revealing the blue-green figure behind it. “Zhao Kuangyin.” Li Congjia did not say anything else. He merely called his name in a low voice, almost as though addressing someone drunk, unconscious, and no longer in possession of his senses.
“Come here, I…” Zhao Kuangyin had no idea how to phrase anything properly. Everything at this moment left him helpless in a way he had never experienced through all his years wandering north and south. The person behind that screen truly was driving him mad. “I mean your hand…”
Li Congjia did not answer. It was difficult for him to trust Zhao Kuangyin now.
Zhao Kuangyin had always acted directly. His mind remained fixed only on the temperature of the water. Seeing that he had genuinely frightened Li Congjia, Zhao Kuangyin finally abandoned caution. In the manner he always used to solve problems, he drew the sword hanging from the wall and slashed through the already unstable screen.
The luxurious landscape screen split cleanly down the middle, fragments and dust scattering aside. Behind it stood Li Congjia, his double pupils black as ink, his left hand covering his injured right while he examined it. The sudden crash, and the sight of Zhao Kuangyin actually cutting the screen apart, finally made Li Congjia genuinely furious.
He opened his mouth to call someone. The first sound had barely emerged when Zhao Kuangyin flashed forward. One arm locked tightly around Li Congjia’s waist while the other hand covered his mouth.
One eye with double pupils, the countenance of an emperor. This time the darkness within it seemed deep enough to drown a man.
At that moment, Zhao Kuangyin smiled teasingly. “You can be afraid too.”