Elio’s Notes: The chapter title comes from Li Yu’s Ziye Ge: “The past has already become empty, still as though in a dream.” The same lyric also gives Chapter 6 its title.
Li Congjia could not call out with a hand over his mouth, and Zhao Kuangyin had one arm locked tightly around his waist, leaving him unable to move. How could he possibly break free from Zhao Kuangyin’s strength? Anger surged through that double-pupiled eye. This time, he was clearly truly furious.
“You can be afraid too.”
The man in Zhao Kuangyin’s arms shook his head and looked toward the door. There were voices outside.
Zhao Kuangyin had no choice but to become cautious as well. Piaopeng, who had accompanied Li Congjia, could be heard asking from outside, “Master? Did something break? Shall I have someone come in and clean it up?”
Both men froze. Zhao Kuangyin removed the hand covering Li Congjia’s mouth, clearly signaling for him to answer. Li Congjia was utterly helpless. He ought to call someone inside, but if anyone saw the position they were in now…
Absolutely not. He turned, trying to pull himself free of the arm Zhao Kuangyin had locked around him. Zhao Kuangyin only tightened his hold and dragged him two steps backward.
“Duke of Anding? Young Master Zhao?” Piaopeng had heard the noise and came closer to ask. After receiving no answer for so long, he began to suspect something and continued calling from outside.
Zhao Kuangyin pushed Li Congjia directly against the wall and spoke low beside his ear. “Answer him. You know what you should say. If you call someone in now, I will send you straight to Yang Yuhuan to ask her for the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe Dance.”
Elio’s Notes: Yang Yuhuan had died roughly two centuries before this scene. Zhao Kuangyin’s threat to “send” Li Congjia to ask her for the dance is therefore a jokingly phrased death threat.
Li Congjia flicked his sleeve. This was simply how he was. Since the situation had already reached this point, struggling uselessly was inferior to meeting it calmly. He stared at Zhao Kuangyin and said softly, “If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it just now.”
The sword-browed man glanced at the sword lying beside the screen he had split apart, then leaned even closer to Li Congjia’s ear. “Yes. I do not want to kill you yet. Then how about a different threat? If you call someone, I will tear off your clothes.” As soon as he finished, he actually exerted enough force to pin Li Congjia against the wall, leaving him unable to move.
Li Congjia became visibly unnatural. The instant he heard those words, his eyes shifted away and he turned toward the doorway. Zhao Kuangyin very much wanted to know what expression he wore now. A man raised amid all the brocade and misty rain of Jiangnan had probably never in his life endured such a rude threat. Unfortunately, the shadow hid his profile. Li Congjia only raised one hand in a gesture for silence, warning Zhao Kuangyin not to speak.
“Piaopeng, it is nothing. A cup broke. Have someone clean it after I leave.”
“Master, did the tea spill? Why not let Piaopeng come in…”
“Go. It is nothing. I still have important matters to discuss with Young Master Zhao.” Li Congjia’s voice had returned to its usual calm, carrying even a trace of lazy indifference, and Piaopeng no longer dared question him.
The footsteps receded.
Li Congjia’s back hurt where it had struck the wall, and he did not know how badly the boiling water had burned his hand. He seemed genuinely tired now. Raising his wrist to his forehead, he said quietly to the man who still refused to release him, “Everyone has gone. You can let go now.”
Zhao Kuangyin only looked at him. He did not speak and did not release him.
The stalemate continued until Li Congjia finally met his eyes. “Zhao Kuangyin, do you understand the words taking a mile after being given an inch?” As soon as he said it, he found the phrasing oddly inappropriate and involuntarily remembered their descent through the wind from the high tower, the distance of mere inches between them…
There were actually moments when Li Congjia did not know what to do.
The man before him lifted his right hand. “You were burned.” The man in blue-green instinctively tried to pull his hand back, only for Zhao Kuangyin to catch his wrist again. The slender outline of bone was exquisitely beautiful. The feeling of it pressing against Zhao Kuangyin’s palm seemed to remain there, lodged in his heart.
Zhao Kuangyin had never known that even in spring, Li Congjia’s fingers were cold.
“Remember to put medicine on it. Do not let it leave a burn scar.”
Li Congjia turned half his face toward him. “Who was it who said even a minor wound had to be treated with a woman’s methods?”
Zhao Kuangyin laughed loudly and released him.
As though quite satisfied, he picked up the sword from the floor and wiped the dust from it against his sleeve.
Li Congjia released a long breath and slowly started back toward the table. Unexpectedly, Zhao Kuangyin suddenly turned the sword point and aimed it directly before his eyes. The blade still carried some of the chill of the blue-stone floor, its bright tip no more than an inch from Li Congjia’s pupil.
Against that picturesque mountains-and-water blue-green, a smile suddenly appeared before the hostility of a sword.
In truth, life and death were only an inch apart.
Li Congjia’s hair had loosened during all their pulling and struggling. Strands had fallen across his forehead and covered half his eye. His face was pale and delicate, and a barely perceptible smile touched his lips.
Zhao Kuangyin feared him most when he looked like this.
Every time Zhao Kuangyin finally recovered his resolve and prepared to act ruthlessly, Li Congjia seemed to possess some dark art capable of bewildering the human heart. He told you clearly that he did not care. Death would be no great loss. And that made Zhao Kuangyin hate him to the bone. Why?
Carrying an unspeakable past, he could still remain as light as wind and cloud.
“Why not return?” Li Congjia raised one brow with effortless grace and continued with evident enjoyment. “After I die, I ask Young Master Zhao to search privately for the score of the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe Dance. If you are ever fortunate enough to find it, please give it to Madam on my behalf.”
Zhao Kuangyin’s anger was unmistakable.
Seeing him like this, Li Congjia instead looked somewhat puzzled. “Did you not come here to kill me in the first place? That poison is called Qingu, if I am not mistaken?” The question made Zhao Kuangyin freeze. “Qingu? You…”
“You lost something.” Li Congjia calmly told him that on the night they first met, he had picked up the bottle that rolled onto the ground. “Put the poison into Qinghuan wine, and the death resembles heart disease?”
“You know quite a lot, but still not much.” Zhao Kuangyin thought that even if Li Congjia had made inquiries, he certainly could not know all the details of this northern poison. He must merely have reasoned from what happened to the Prince of Qi.
Li Congjia shook his head. “It is enough.”
Zhao Kuangyin suddenly frowned,
and the sword point shifted aside, piercing three parts deep into the wall.
Zhao Kuangyin looked at the redness swelling across Li Congjia’s hand. “Li Congjia,” he called his name directly without the slightest concern for propriety. “I will not kill you today. You owe me one life.”
This time Li Congjia laughed aloud. His heart was exhausted, yet he could find no release. If that sword had truly pierced him just now, might it actually have been a good thing? The Crown Prince’s faction would no longer need to fear him, and Zhao Kuangyin could rescue his younger brother and go on to contend for the realm. But… Ehuang. He still could not stop worrying about her. In the end, his only lingering attachment was that woman who had said she would personally dye blue-green cloth for him.
The thought passed in an instant, only to startle him. Since when had he begun hoping that Zhao Kuangyin truly would rescue his younger brother?
Perhaps he remained far too attached to this. He still believed in the human bonds between elder and younger.
Li Congjia still hoped he might witness true feeling in this age of chaos.
He nodded as though he had discovered an interesting game. “I told you before, you are not the person who wants me dead. But now it seems you too have become interested in my life. How strange. I do not treat human life cheaply, yet people are always trying to treat mine as worthless.” He sighed. One imperial throne had entangled them for so many years.
Zhao Kuangyin watched him fall silent for a long while, then sat alone beside the table without looking at him. He tossed out a single sentence that made Li Congjia sweep his sleeve aside and stride out through the door, leaving unusually quickly and refusing to say another word.
“I am only interested in you.”
Everything that happened the previous night had been an accident impossible to explain. It had unfolded far too naturally, and that very ease left both of them with an extraordinary sense of guilt. Neither quite dared face it directly.
They still had their own positions. This game of chess was not yet finished. How could either side produce a traitor before the battle was over?
A young maid in her teens was about to enter when she saw the wreckage everywhere, the screen split into two pieces and porcelain scattered across the floor. Trembling, she asked from the doorway, “Young Master Zhao? Shall I call someone in to clean?”
Zhao Kuangyin rose and walked toward the door. Far in the distance, he could still see that blue-green robe gradually disappearing.
Remembering Li Congjia’s graceful fall through the air the previous night, Zhao Kuangyin slowly closed his eyes as the fragrance of red sandalwood seemed to fill his nose again. “Come in and clean it.”
“Yes…”
The servants hurriedly carried away the broken screen. Their private whispers did not stop until Zhao Kuangyin silenced them with a single glance. Fortunately, the Duke of Anding had not blamed anyone, and the young maids quietly withdrew.
Zhao Kuangyin lay on the bed and closed his eyes. He had waited so long for word from the Crown Prince, yet still nothing had come. It seemed Li Hongji would not change his mind.
He still intended to kill him.
He intended to kill his own Sixth Brother.
Li Congjia had lost the wager.
Zhao Kuangyin raised a hand to touch the arrow wound on his shoulder. It had never been deep, and the wound had already closed. In a few days it should heal completely. But those men in black… Their skill had been enough to put an arrow into Zhao Kuangyin’s shoulder. Then he suddenly wondered how Guangyi was doing now. Perhaps Zhao Guangyi was being kept under equally strict surveillance.
Compared with the child in Zhao Kuangyin’s memories, Zhao Guangyi had long since shed his childishness. The boy beneath that dead tree years ago was now as tall as Zhao Kuangyin himself. Perhaps because he had spent so long in a temple, Zhao Guangyi had actually grown calmer than his elder brother. Their reunion in the Southern Kingdom had been completely unexpected.
Years ago, their father had still been a highly regarded military commander. Zhao Kuangyin clearly remembered the enormous training ground behind their home when he was young. Before dawn each morning, his father’s men would already be there practicing their fists. His father had sent Zhao Kuangyin to study, but Zhao Kuangyin had been born unable to tolerate a proper teacher swaying his head over recitations. Every time he went, trouble followed. Relying on the martial arts he had practiced since childhood, one day he fought a classmate and the next he even provoked the teacher. In the end, books became impossible, and he devoted himself entirely to martial training.
Zhao Guangyi was different. As a child, he liked quiet and enjoyed studying, something Zhao Kuangyin had once found deeply irritating. Now Zhao Kuangyin lay on the bed with nothing to do but think. Remembering Guangyi from those years, he could not help laughing.
One afternoon, after finishing his boxing practice, Zhao Kuangyin sat against the stump left behind after a dead tree in the courtyard had been cut down, carving a piece of wood with a knife. When he looked up, he saw Guangyi returning from his lessons.
The little boy had been somewhat afraid of his elder brother. Zhao Kuangyin was always fierce, constantly playing with knives and weapons. Whenever Guangyi found marks scratched into one of his books, Zhao Kuangyin was almost certainly responsible. Yet Guangyi never complained to their father. Zhao Kuangyin once mocked him triumphantly for this, but Guangyi only said that the elder brother came first.
Those words made Zhao Kuangyin think again of Li Congjia. Both men understood the proper bonds of filial duty and brotherhood. But Zhao Guangyi had only been a small child then. As he gradually grew older, he ultimately proved to be much like Zhao Kuangyin himself, with an untamed heart visible in his eyes.
At four or five years old, Zhao Guangyi had been extremely curious about the dark piece of wood in his brother’s hand. It even seemed to carry a faint fragrance. “What is that?”
Zhao Kuangyin had always enjoyed little tricks when he was idle. At the time, carving wood was fashionable among the children they knew. They carved different shapes and patterns, then displayed them together to show off. Zhao Kuangyin was naturally one of the best among them. He answered lazily, “Wood.”
Of course it was no ordinary wood. Its color was deep and rich, and it carried its own quiet fragrance. Zhao Guangyi stared at it in confusion for a long time. Just as he was about to speak, his elder brother lifted a hand for silence, so he closed his mouth.
Zhao Kuangyin looked around. No one else was present, and their father happened to be away on business. He pulled Zhao Guangyi over to sit beside him on the stump, raised the piece of wood, and showed it to him carefully. “Keep your voice down. This is top-quality red sandalwood. Look at the deep purple color. It is a treasure.” Zhao Guangyi was surprised by the wood’s origin and reached out to touch it. Though he did not yet understand such things, instinct told him it had to be valuable.
“This was a gift from a high official to Father. I secretly stole it. You absolutely cannot tell anyone, otherwise…” A threatening look entered Zhao Kuangyin’s eyes, making Zhao Guangyi nod repeatedly.
“But what are you going to do with it?”
“Idiot! Obviously I will carve some peerless treasure and secretly sell it for silver later.” Zhao Kuangyin instructed him carefully and continued turning the wood over in his hands until Guangyi too became eager and interested.
After endless pleading, his elder brother finally agreed to teach him how to carve it too.
There was hardly any real technique involved. It was only a children’s game. They simply split the precious wood into two pieces. The easiest thing would be to carve circles and polish them, like the bracelet on Mother’s wrist.
Then why not make a pair of wooden bracelets?
The brothers made one each. Once the fragrant fine wood had been polished, they actually looked surprisingly decent. When other children saw them later, they teased the brothers that when each of them eventually married a wife, the bracelets would make perfect betrothal gifts.
As children, the brothers delighted in them for a long time, until their parents discovered what they had done and gave them a severe beating.
Everyone had once been young and reckless, convinced they were without equal beneath Heaven. The two brothers knelt in the courtyard as punishment and stubbornly vowed to treasure their pair of bracelets forever. It was only red sandalwood. One day, once their wishes were fulfilled and they stood proudly above the nine heavens, what would be impossible to obtain? What could still count as precious?
Zhao Kuangyin once declared a grand ambition before his younger brother. What he wanted was the realm. He would never be satisfied remaining merely a military officer serving some small state in one corner of a chaotic age.
Zhao Guangyi nodded. Whatever his elder brother wanted to accomplish, he would help him accomplish it.
That was all. Everyone had a legend of their own.
Who could have known that the wood carving from one childish prank would later become proof by which the brothers recognized each other?
After warfare scattered the family, the mystery of Zhao Guangyi’s whereabouts became a knot in their mother’s heart. Several years earlier, Zhao Kuangyin had left home and followed armies on campaigns north and south. He happened to learn that Guangyi might have traveled south with a group of monks years before, so Zhao Kuangyin came alone to Southern Tang. On his first night in Jinling, he lodged at Andong Temple north of the city.
At dawn, several lay disciples who had not yet shaved their heads came out to sweep the grounds, part of their daily work. Zhao Kuangyin opened the door and saw someone beneath the corridor dressed in coarse cloth. The eighteen- or nineteen-year-old face was unfamiliar, yet around his wrist was that red sandalwood bracelet.
Zhao Kuangyin could hardly believe it, but he still called out. The young man raised his head in shock. Their eyes met, and neither spoke for a long time.
Seeing the disbelief on his face, Zhao Kuangyin took the wooden bracelet from those years out of his robes. Its workmanship still carried the immaturity of childhood. Though Zhao Kuangyin had later carved and refined it more carefully, it could never be called a fine piece.
Just like the bracelet on the young man’s wrist, it still carried the childish thoughts of the boys who had once sat upon that tree stump.
After so many years apart, Guangyi, the “idiot” Zhao Kuangyin had always called him, had finally returned.
They talked throughout the day. Some things were already difficult to remember clearly, yet together they recovered many memories from their early years. Then one day, a military official Zhao Kuangyin had hoped to serve after coming to Southern Tang recommended him to Li Hongji. At first, Zhao Kuangyin did not know Li Hongji’s identity. He only found the urgency and unrestrained madness in the man’s eyes amusing. Those were not the eyes a wise man should possess. Li Hongji was too impatient and did not understand how to conceal his edge.
Even so, Zhao Kuangyin still worried about Guangyi. Claiming he had nothing tying him down was only a disguise. They had only just reunited. How could Zhao Kuangyin allow his younger brother to be placed in danger again? Lying on the bed, Zhao Kuangyin took the old wooden bracelet from inside his robes and slowly rubbed it. Red sandalwood had always carried unusual meaning for him. And on this journey into the Southern Kingdom, he had never imagined he would become so strangely entangled with that fragrance again.
Or rather, entangled with him. The splendor of a single wrist had somehow been enough to startle Zhao Kuangyin’s heart and eyes. Thinking carefully about what happened earlier, he really had been… mad.
He had actually felt that impulse. He could not explain it. He simply could not stand seeing Li Congjia worried and preoccupied over something else. Zhao Kuangyin found it difficult to imagine that a man as gentle and polished as jade would also run about anxiously for the sake of his beloved wife’s wishes. He always seemed to forget that Li Congjia was a married man with a household of his own. And though Zhao Kuangyin did not necessarily think the two perfectly matched, perhaps no one besides a woman like Ehuang, a peony in full bloom and brilliant as a phoenix, could possibly be worthy of Li Congjia.
One clear and peerless, the other brilliant to the extreme. They could indeed be called a beautiful story of the human world.
Zhao Kuangyin closed his eyes in a daze. He had intended only to rest for a while, yet thought after thought continued to rise. Zhao Kuangyin could not have known that in the years to come, he would often lie sleepless within golden halls. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he would be afraid to dream.
Always afraid that in the dream, it would still be the two of them from that year, drinking wine against the wind in midair.
An entire untroubled lifetime held inside a single embrace.