The Song envoy returned to court. “The Ruler of Jiangnan pleaded illness and declined. He said only that the Buddhist rites for his late Empress have not yet been completed and that grief has left him unwell. This subject made our court’s position perfectly clear: the wise recognize the circumstances. If the Son of Heaven is angered, he will send the armies across the river and sweep their halls clean. At the farewell ceremony at the Jiangnan crossing the other day, the Ruler again claimed illness and did not appear. His conduct on this mission was disrespectful in the extreme.” The envoy’s voice was full of indignation. His resentment toward Jiangnan was obvious.
Zhao Kuangyin was plainly angered. “Unwell?”
“From what this subject and the others saw, the Ruler’s movements were unusual, though his spirits seemed sound. Everyone in the southern kingdom says that since Empress Zhaohui’s death the Ruler has been dispirited for months and is now wasted almost to skin and bone.” The envoy reported honestly, then suddenly remembered something. “The Ruler even recited poetry in the hall. It seems a southern campaign is now unavoidable.”
“What lines?” Clouds seemed to stir beneath Zhao Kuangyin’s voice. The man in imperial yellow beneath the nine dragons had such killing force between his brows that the entire hall fell dead silent. No one dared speak carelessly again.
The pressure was unmistakable.
“Her slender shoulders seemed carved away, too slight to bear a few silk ribbons. Heavenly fragrance lingers at the phoenix tail; warmth still remains upon the sandalwood pipa.” With every word he recited, the anger in Zhao Kuangyin’s eyes deepened. By the final line the envoy’s voice was trembling, and he dropped to his knees in fear.
Daqing Hall remained utterly silent for a long time. Outside the palace a faint wind happened to rise. Late autumn had come. Zhao Kuangyin suddenly stood. Each word struck the hearts of the assembled ministers. Sun and moon hung in the heavens. Once these words were spoken, three thousand nights of rain were severed forever.
From Yellow Springs to the blue vault of heaven, beneath a sky stained with blood, today he gave Li Yu a charge clear enough for all to hear. “The Ruler of Jiangnan has defied the imperial command and stubbornly refuses to attend court. Order Cao Han, Training Commissioner of Yingzhou, to lead troops out from Jiangling immediately!”
Everyone in the hall bowed to receive the command. More than a few finally released the breath of frustration they had been holding, hoping only that Jiangnan would be taken quickly and the realm unified beneath one dominion. And now, who still remembered that once a long sword had flashed with a force like a rainbow, while one man laughed drunk beneath March’s spring wind? What harm had there been in raising wine to the breeze, lightly gathering green vines as scarlet blossoms dyed the white paths?
The moment Zhao Kuangyin’s command went forth, dragon cries seemed to shake the four directions, and red leaves drifted upon the Qinhuai River.
Buddhist teaching says that all conditioned existence is suffering. Yet I say butterflies come in pairs; I say swallows fly together. Watching the souls of flowers and crane-shadows dance lightly, the mortal heart cannot help but yearn.
At Guangliang Temple, after these days of recuperation Li Yu’s eyes had improved slightly. In darkness he could make out the general outlines of the room. Dizziness still accompanied his vision, but so long as he did not encounter light, he had gradually grown used to it.
Liuzhu came again that day to visit him. Seeing how much thinner the Ruler had become, she nearly began to cry again. Li Yu could make out only the movement of her lotus-colored skirt. “Liuzhu, now that I have received such consequences, perhaps Ehuang leaving first was not entirely a bad thing.”
Liuzhu froze, her voice choking. “Why must the Ruler think that way? Liuzhu followed the late Empress from childhood, but I am not someone who fails to understand the Ruler’s feelings. Please do not let your thoughts run wild. Yesterday we secretly asked a physician. He said that if your eyes can still occasionally make out shapes, then the blood vessels have not been irreversibly damaged. Once the Ruler passes through this period and the cause is found, proper treatment should surely restore them.”
Li Yu did not particularly fear whether his eyes would recover. After considering the matter again and again, he had ultimately decided he could not go north. Zhao Kuangyin should have received the news by now. If he had truly decided not to spare Jiangnan, then the answer would come within these few days.
“Liuzhu, if one day Jiangnan’s territory truly cannot be preserved and this imperial palace is destined to cease existing, then…”
With the clear sound of skirts brushing the floor, Liuzhu solemnly knelt. “The Ruler has never spoken empty nonsense. Liuzhu is only a servant and knows nothing of state affairs, but even I understand the urgency before us. The Ruler must not exhaust your spirit over this… You should also think more about yourself.” She had followed him all the way into the depths of this imperial palace, beginning from the day Ehuang married him: Duke of Anding, Crown Prince, Emperor, Ruler. Every step she had watched with her own eyes and engraved into her bones. The man before her had once stood beneath night rain in robes of blue-green, beautiful enough to overwhelm a kingdom. Then that blazing imperial yellow had bound him, until today he had no support left at all. Stripped of everything, he was so pale it frightened her. “The vegetarian meals here are too plain. The Ruler’s body cannot endure it. Shall Liuzhu have some soft, pleasant pastries sent over? I cannot remember how long it has been since the Ruler ate mist cakes. You used to love them.”
Li Yu only sighed quietly. “I cannot remember how long… it has been since I burned red sandalwood.”
Tears were already spilling from Liuzhu’s eyes. She hurriedly wiped them away, afraid the sight would make him sadder, and only after drying them remembered that the Ruler could no longer see. Her heart ached even more. “Ruler…”
“Think of myself… Perhaps I was too selfish, and that is why I have come to this. Elder Brother Hongji once told me to live as my heart pleased. I always thought I was not someone who could indulge himself so easily, but now I wonder whether I clung too stubbornly to everything I believed. There were many storms before as well, but then I was not alone. When I turned around, I believed she would always remain proud as a phoenix. I do not know how to say it properly. It was simply a habit that had seeped into my bones over the years. When I was young and there was struggle over the throne, Elder Brother Hongji pressed me relentlessly. It was never as smooth as ordinary people imagined. Yet once I met her, I believed that no matter how difficult life became, I would never again have to face an empty wind alone.” He paused, then added, “Speaking of Elder Brother Hongji, it was I who insisted on letting go and retreating from the world. With his temperament, how humiliated must he have felt? People saw only the bearing of the Duke of Anding and said he would not even spare his own younger brother.”
It was almost as though he could foresee something. Now the wind and rain were gathering. When he looked back across his life, he discovered there was not a single person he could face without guilt.
That was the most absurd thing of all. In the eyes of everyone beneath heaven, he had always been a serene immortal. Yet immortals too could feel guilt, and perhaps carried it even more heavily than ordinary people.
Liuzhu remained kneeling and listened in silence. There were truly very few people left beside him to whom he could speak of such old matters.
“I will say this only once, Liuzhu. You know I do not speak useless words lightly. If I say something, then I have considered it seriously, so there is no need to persuade me.” His tone became solemn. “If one day Jinling truly falls, regardless of where I am then or what the situation has become, you and Piaopeng must remember one thing.”
Liuzhu clenched her fingers. “Ruler… rest for a while. I will go have food brought.” Panic entered her movements. She tried to rise too quickly and nearly tripped over her skirt.
“Liuzhu!”
In all the years she had served him, she had never heard him use such a tone with her. The call nearly brought her tears spilling out again. He almost never allowed emotion into his voice. “Yes, Ruler.”
Li Yu drew a deep breath. He realized his words had probably frightened her. After a long silence, his tone softened. “You must remember that Empress Zhaohui treated you like her own sister throughout her life and never wronged you in the slightest. So if one day Jinling falls… take Nüying and leave the palace.”
Liuzhu finally could not restrain herself and burst into tears.
A smile remained on his face. Following the arrangement of the room he had memorized over these days, he slowly walked toward Liuzhu. When he came close and heard her grief-stricken crying, he bent down. Though he could not see clearly, he still took a plain white handkerchief from his sleeve. “Why are you crying?”
Elio’s Notes: The raw says Li Yu walks toward “Nüying” here, but the surrounding scene is unambiguously with Liuzhu, who is kneeling and crying directly before him. FD treats this as a source name slip and follows the scene continuity.
Liuzhu only shook her head again and again. He sighed, reached out, and quietly pressed the handkerchief over both her eyes, holding it there without moving.
She closed her eyes. The warmth of his hand felt as cool as Guangliang Temple itself. He maintained that gesture without moving or speaking, and suddenly a memory from Liuzhu’s childhood flashed through her mind. She too had been born in Jiangnan, originally to a scholarly family that lived comfortably enough. Then a flood unseen in a century changed everything. By chance, the Zhou Residence’s merchant caravan passed through and selected her to become maidservant to the eldest young lady. Liuzhu still remembered the last scene before leaving home. Her mother had forced down all her grief and refused to look at her, carrying instead a basket of gauze she had to wash for someone else and walking toward the stream.
Behind their country house ran a small creek.
The water flowed cold and clear, murmuring onward.
Liuzhu stopped crying.
In the darkness, she thought that he always found it easy to persuade everyone else, yet could never persuade himself.
One quiet gesture like this could make another person feel safe.
Li Yu slowly withdrew his hand. “When everything around you becomes utterly silent, what do you remember?”
Liuzhu wiped away the last traces of tears. “My father and mother when I was little, and many things from home.”
Li Yu rose with one hand resting on the wooden chair beside him. His bearing remained as elegant as ever. Liuzhu hurried to support him. He sighed quietly. “In profound silence and darkness, a person loses the intrusion of all the senses. What you remember then is what your heart truly holds. So Liuzhu, remember what I said. If that day truly comes, take Nüying with Piaopeng and return to your home village. I imagine that no matter how little Zhao Kuangyin cares for worldly sentiment, he will not slaughter ordinary lives without restraint. Villages far from the fighting may escape the flames of war. Forget these old affairs and let them end.”
“Ruler, do you know whether the Queen wants to forget?”
“An empty dream, nothing more. What is there to say of forgetting or not forgetting? Liuzhu, go back for now.”
Seeing that he did not wish to say more, Liuzhu could only withdraw. After taking several steps, however, she turned back. “Ruler…”
He turned slightly toward her voice. Liuzhu asked, “This question is disrespectful, but I… truly want to know. When the Ruler is in utter silence and darkness, whom do you remember?”
His smile was extraordinarily beautiful, his brows and eyes pale and clear. “I remember him.”
Liuzhu did not know whom that him meant. She slowly withdrew.
The room remained silent for a long while. Then the Young Elder stepped out from behind the black gauze. “This monk has been discourteous.” He had been sitting quietly behind the veil all along and had not had time to avoid Liuzhu when she entered. He had heard everything clearly.
Li Yu waved it away. “It does not matter. They were all old words.”
“Now that the Ruler has decided not to go to Bianjing, do you regret it?”
Li Yu shook his head. “I have never regretted it, neither now nor in the past.”
The Young Elder sat on a meditation cushion. The wooden fish sounded in a steady rhythm. Li Yu sat opposite him and spoke with quiet certainty. “Elder Brother Hongji, Ehuang, both came to unhappy ends because of what I held in my heart. Unfortunately, I have never liked regret. Everything I have done in this life followed where my heart led. Back then I did not want to fight, so I did not fight. And as for everything between him and me, even before her I could still say I do not regret it.”
The white-clad figure murmured to himself, “I watched her leave with my own eyes… In the end… what does it truly mean to live as one’s heart pleases…?”
Why did everything he did seem wrong? Everyone said so. Had no one ever thought of him? Was it because everything he possessed had always seemed too natural, too inevitable? They placed him upon the clouds and demanded that he remain cold and detached. Now that he finally tottered at the edge of falling, they had begun to watch for amusement. Han Xizai’s one sentence, You do not treat yourself as human, had summed up more than twenty years of his life.
“I have decided not to go to Bianjing. The world is full of turmoil, and eventually there must be an end… Today I no longer have the standing, much less the ability, to change his intentions. Since I cannot guarantee that going there would truly preserve Jiangnan, then if it failed, would Jiangnan not collapse without a fight?” He listened quietly to the measured striking of the wooden fish, almost as though speaking only to himself. “Besides… even if I went, what would it change? I already… cannot see him.”
He could no longer remember how long it had been since he burned red sandalwood.
The Young Elder opened his eyes slightly and looked at him. This man… against his will, he actually felt a trace of pity. Since he could not openly harm Zhao Kuangyin, he had come to harm this man instead. Yet now that he had truly done it, the feeling was nowhere near as satisfying as he had imagined.
Hurting another person also required enormous resolve. Not everyone could do it.
“Fragrant chrysanthemums brighten the grove; green pines crown the ranks of cliffs. Cherishing this pure and steadfast grace, they stand as heroes beneath the frost.” The chrysanthemums grew in dense clusters. Autumn wind had scattered frost-bitten leaves throughout the city, yet outside the city north of the river, the autumn chrysanthemums had not withered at all.
Elio’s Notes: These lines come from Tao Yuanming’s In Reply to Registrar Guo, No. 2 (《和郭主簿·其二》), where chrysanthemums and pines endure the frost as images of steadfastness.
A-Shui no longer traveled back and forth between the northern and southern banks of the river. Every day he stayed in a small hut he had built on the northern side.
He was waiting for the chrysanthemums to fall.
That man’s words still sounded beside his ear.
“The condition is this: you must swear that so long as Li Congjia lives, you will not throw your own life away.” Jiangnan’s grace, sky and water turning blue-green. Some people needed no pose or display to become a startling vision.
The chrysanthemum petals before his eyes were beginning to droop, yet still clung tightly around themselves. Another dusk fell, and distant lamplight rose from the town. He remained there, foolishly waiting.
Several days later, an imperial order appointed Pan Mei, Military Governor of Shannan East Circuit; Cao Han, Training Commissioner of Yingzhou; and Liu Yu, Chief Inspector of the Palace Guards’ Cavalry and Infantry, to lead a naval force eastward from Jiangling along the Yangtze, while Cao Bin, Military Governor of Yicheng Circuit, and Li Hanqiong, Chief Inspector of the Palace Guards’ Cavalry, led troops south.
Cao Bin led the forces out from Jiangling first. In Bianjing, Zhao Kuangyin held a banquet to send the commanders off. After the farewell wine had been drunk, Zhao Kuangyin looked toward the four horizons. Late autumn was nearly over and the forest leaves had grown desolate. Although the army’s morale was magnificent and its shouts shook the fields, he felt no ease in his heart. The best days had already passed.
In March, pear blossoms had only begun to open on the branches. That Jiangnan of painted beams and hanging pearl curtains. Once this army departed, there would be no turning back. Zhao Kuangyin secretly took out his imperial sword and handed it to Cao Bin. “In this campaign against Tang, you must not kill indiscriminately, nor may you plunder wantonly. Anyone who disobeys military orders may be executed, Pan Mei and everyone below him included.”
He cared so much about human life. Even about a single flower.
Thus is spoken the mantra of the Perfection of Wisdom: Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha.
Li Yu quietly listened as the memorials from the various regions were read aloud. “The Elder has worked hard.” The Young Elder was almost grateful for Li Yu’s double pupils. They allowed him to keep everything perfectly within his own control. With Li Yu in this state, he no longer dared casually trust anyone else.
“The armies are advancing by both land and water. Their destination is Jiangning Prefecture.” Li Yu’s voice remained calm. “A thousand warships had already been built in Jiangling during the campaign against Liao. Now they have truly come into use for him.”
The Young Elder studied his expression carefully but could detect nothing. “What does the Ruler intend to do?”
“We can now rely only on the navy. The struggle for Jiangnan is nothing more than a struggle on the water.” Something suddenly occurred to him. “Order Lin Renzhao to go to Chizhou immediately.”
The Young Elder slowly closed his eyes. “The Ruler does not know. Half a month ago, Lin Renzhao died in his residence, said to have taken his own life out of fear of punishment.”
Li Yu was genuinely shocked. “Why did no one mention this?”
The Young Elder sat quietly to one side and performed a Buddhist salute. “Amitabha. The Duke of Zheng’s journey north must have gone extremely badly. He was nearly detained in Bianjing by the suzerain. After returning, he used the matter of Lin Renzhao to vent his resentment and acted in secret. The ministers considered the bond between the Ruler and your brother. Who would have dared say too much? The matter has in truth circulated outside the temple and within the palace for some time. This monk did not wish to involve himself and was also concerned for the Ruler’s illness, so I never told you.”
At those words, blood and anger surged through Li Yu so violently that for a moment he could not speak. He bent forward over the couch, his voice hoarse. “Then Jiangnan has no commander left capable of fighting. Congshan truly…”
“Amitabha. Ruler, matters have already reached this point. General Lin cannot return from the dead. Another way must be found.”
He said it so lightly. “Does the Elder understand the present situation? Why did you not tell me sooner?”
The Young Elder showed not the slightest panic. If anything, he became even more serene. “If the Ruler wishes to blame this monk, there is nothing to be done. I am a man who has left the world. Buddhist teaching says the five aggregates are all empty. Such secular affairs should never have occupied this monk’s heart. If the Ruler wishes to punish me, say so plainly.”
Li Yu had no answer. Truly, what could he do? What did a monk understand of such matters? To Guangliang Temple it was merely another general killed amid the schemes and struggles outside. Whether the Young Elder spoke or remained silent, nothing could bring the dead man back. Li Yu gazed into the gloom. Within the dark Buddhist hall he could just make out the shimmer of the gold-threaded kasaya. The Young Elder had actually seated himself on a meditation cushion and begun chanting for the dead man’s soul.
The low sound of Buddhist chanting drifted through the hall. Li Yu bowed. “Congshan… do you know what consequences your action will bring…?” He released a long sigh. Yet how could he truly blame Congshan? The northern journey must have humiliated him badly. Li Yu had expected difficulties when he sent him, but had not expected Congshan to act with such impulse.
“Transmit my order. The Duke of Zheng is to return to his fief immediately and may not enter Jinling again.”
“All phenomena bear the mark of emptiness: neither born nor destroyed, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing. Therefore in emptiness there is no form; no feeling, perception, formation, or consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, or mental object; no realm of the eye, up to and including no realm of mind-consciousness.”
Elio’s Notes: This passage is from the Heart Sutra. The chapter title lifts the phrase “no feeling, perception, formation, or consciousness” from its teaching on emptiness and the five aggregates.
“There is no other way. Have Yang Shou and Sun Zhen lead troops to Caishiji. We can only see what Heaven decides.”
At first light, violent wind swept the land and layers of black cloud churned across the northern horizon. A-Shui had fallen asleep outside the chrysanthemum garden. When he opened his eyes it was already morning. He dusted off his rough robe and rose, thinking the sky looked unusually ominous today. Just then the gale struck him head-on. He turned to take shelter in his hut, then suddenly stopped.
The chrysanthemums had fallen.
He clenched the bright-yellow sword tassel in his fist. It was time to set out.