Elio’s Notes: The chapter title comes from Li Yu’s Lang Tao Sha Ling beginning “Beyond the curtain, rain murmurs.” The lyric is quoted near the chapter’s end; the title line is followed in the received text by “Flowing water bears fallen blossoms away as spring departs; heaven above, the mortal world below.”
Fire.
The unmistakable sensation of fire.
Li Yu’s entire body turned cold as though he had fallen into an ice cavern. That heart-rending cry struck straight into him. What had happened?
He froze on the long jade steps, unable to move. What had happened to Piaopeng?
That child who had followed him ever since his teens.
And that cry… it was Liuzhu! Why had they come back?
Ignoring everything else, Liuzhu ran back toward Weiyang Hall. The firewood had long since been drenched in oil in preparation for death; once ignited, the flames instantly surged toward the sky. She collapsed before it, utterly helpless, able only to call Piaopeng’s name again and again.
Nüying followed close behind, clutching the pipa tightly as the fire grew fiercer before her eyes.
Outside the palace, Zhao Kuangyin had just steadied the army when cries suddenly erupted from within the palace gates behind him. The Song troops immediately stirred. Two separate fires had burst up among the splendid halls, and fear spread through the ranks. “The Li house knows the state cannot be saved, so they have set themselves ablaze to atone before All-under-Heaven!”
Never in his life had Zhao Kuangyin found it so difficult simply to turn around. He used all his strength to look back. Flames towered beyond the palace gates.
“Li Congjia!” His horse nearly trampled straight through the battle lines. His Majesty charged alone into the sea of fire, and the entire army fell silent. For the first time, even Cao Bin had no idea what to do.
He had never seen His Majesty in such panic, almost as though he had lost everything.
And yet this should have been the moment Zhao Kuangyin finally achieved his long-held wish and took Jiangnan into his hands. Where had everything gone wrong?
Figures ran everywhere throughout the Jinling palace. Some knelt on the ground determined to set themselves alight and die with their state; others saw the flames growing and, terrified, had nowhere to hide. Zhao Kuangyin rode in without knowing which way to turn. He saw where the fire burned brightest and raced toward it like a madman.
Li Congjia, Li Congjia, do not do this.
He thought he had never been this afraid in his life. If he truly united All-under-Heaven and established a legacy for the ages, but from then on could never again see that man drenched in night rain, sky and water turning blue-green, then what would become of him?
He had asked himself many times whether everything he had done was for ambition or to trap Li Congjia. Again and again, the answer changed. He admitted that his ambition was enormous. He also admitted that he had been half-mad with wanting to see when Li Congjia would finally show weakness. But today, when everything he wanted seemed within reach, when both Jiangnan and the lands north of the river would be his realm and his people, why, Li Congjia, would you still refuse to step down from that shrine? Why could you never… become someone I could actually hold in my grasp?
Was I the one who overestimated myself? Yet without ambition, Zhao Kuangyin would have died long ago somewhere in the wilderness, displaced and fighting from place to place.
I only want what I want.
I simply refuse to become one more pile of white bones no one remembers.
Despairing, he stared at the fires behind Weiyang Hall and remembered his own words: “If you dare break your promise again, I will burn Jinling to the ground.”
“Li Congjia, I take that back! I take it back, do you hear me?” He threw back his head and roared, true qi surging through the cry until dragon-like echoes rolled in every direction. Seeing flames soaring from the hall ahead, Zhao Kuangyin did not hesitate. He drove his horse straight into Weiyang Hall.
The heat inside burned at the eyes, and the acrid smell of scorching wood struck him at once. Zhao Kuangyin dismounted and shouted Li Congjia’s name in every direction. Suddenly he saw a figure collapsed on the floor. His heart seized. “Li Congjia…”
A roof beam came crashing down. He twisted aside and still moved toward the figure. “Li Congjia… I take it back. I do not want it anymore. I do not want Jinling, I do not want any of this. Only you… live properly. Do you remember? I told you to live properly…”
The figure suddenly turned around, wearing a smile so wild it was almost deranged. “Big Brother, you really are loyal and righteous! Your own younger brother is about to burn to death in a sea of fire, and you still have time to reminisce about old feelings!”
Black smoke had filled Zhao Guangyi’s lungs, leaving him coughing violently. Bent over on the floor, he looked coldly at the distraught man. He had never despised Zhao Kuangyin more.
All this hesitation and obstruction for private feelings, and in his panic he had let Zhao Guangyi hear every word from the bottom of his heart. That painting was the knot in his heart; that person was the demon in it.
Zhao Kuangyin jolted back to himself, rushed over, and hauled him upright. “Guangyi! Guangyi, why are you here…?”
Zhao Guangyi turned his face away. “Li Yu is not in Weiyang Hall.”
Zhao Kuangyin pulled him onto the horse and lashed the reins again, charging out of the hall just before it collapsed. The blaze was already too great for anyone else to enter. Cao Bin had brought only a small detachment of Song soldiers into the palace to protect the Emperor. Seeing the Prince of Jin injured, he hurried forward. Ash drifted constantly from the burning buildings while terrified palace attendants fled in every direction. Zhao Kuangyin seized one of them. “Where is the Ruler?”
The young attendant answered through tears, “The Ruler was still at Yuxiao Pavilion just now… but Weiyang Hall has caught fire, and the Ruler may have…”
Zhao Kuangyin released her. “Cao Bin! Take the Prince of Jin out of the palace and summon the army physicians! The Prince has old injuries. Nothing else can happen to him!” He swung down from the horse and handed the reins to Cao Bin. “Get him out quickly!”
“Your Majesty cannot remain here any longer… On my way in, I saw flames at the Buddhist temple beyond the stone bridge. If this continues, the entire palace will be destroyed…” No one was coming to save Guangliang Temple. By now everyone inside was surely trapped in the smoke, and only a few would be able to escape. Zhao Guangyi clenched his teeth in fury. Piaopeng must have realized something. After hearing that old monks in the temple intended to burn with the Ruler and his palace, he had deliberately set things in motion. Now the people inside Guangliang Temple could barely save themselves, much less come out to harm the Ruler.
“Send some men into the palace to fight the fire! We cannot let it spread beyond control.”
Zhao Guangyi had gradually recovered his breath. Suddenly he said, “Weiyang Hall may be burning, but Li Yu truly is not inside.” That sentence finally gave the sovereign of an entire dynasty a sliver of hope. Zhao Guangyi broke into harsh coughing again. “Big Brother still remembers that Guangyi has old injuries… ha. I thought Big Brother had forgotten long ago.”
Zhao Kuangyin could waste no more time. He turned toward Yuxiao Pavilion. “Guangyi! Leave the palace and get treatment first!”
At Yuxiao Pavilion, the figure in white had not yet finished descending the long steps when someone abruptly stopped him. The voice was female, vaguely familiar, yet he could not place it. “Ruler, you cannot go to Weiyang Hall now. The Young Elder… he was sent here by the Song court…”
Li Yu shuddered. It was not that he had never suspected it, but hearing the truth aloud still hurt. In the end, perhaps he had clung too stubbornly to his faith in the human heart. “You… who are you?”
The woman was silent for a long while. “The Ruler surely does not remember Jingchan.” She too wore white today, her hair simply pinned up. She had bitten her lip until it nearly bled. How long had she wrestled with this decision? Only when she saw Weiyang Hall truly erupt in flames did she finally understand that the Prince of Jin had chosen the wrong person.
She could not harden her heart.
Especially when she had already harmed him this badly.
Only then did Li Yu remember that this was the maid he had given Nüying. “You have not been in the palace long. Why have you not left? Nüying…” He suddenly remembered hearing Liuzhu’s voice just now. Then Nüying… “Why did Weiyang Hall catch fire first?” At last anxiety appeared in him. And absurdly, Jingchan felt almost relieved. So many people had wanted to see what he looked like when that effortless serenity finally broke. Now, with the palace fallen and the fires rising through this ghost-haunted night, she alone had seen the Ruler like this.
Those pale eyes, almost amber, were frighteningly empty.
“Why did Weiyang Hall catch fire? Tell me.” He still insisted on returning. “I said I would live and die with this palace. There is no use persuading me now. I can no longer see, my state is lost and my family ruined. What use is there in lingering pointlessly in this world?” He said it in only a few quiet phrases, showing no grief at all. Jingchan knew her own sins ran deep and did not know what to do. He should have been such a beautiful sight. Even if, as the Prince of Jin said, he deserved Heaven’s punishment, he had already passed through enough calamities. This should be the end. He should not be tormented any longer.
Jingchan had struggled for so long. Ever since leaking the news that Nüying had been sent from the palace, she had been unable to rest easy.
Jiangnan should have been nothing more than a brief dream for her. Somehow the longer she dreamed it, the less willing she was to wake. Once, when she and Liuzhu had been idle, they had talked about earlier days. Liuzhu said the Ruler had once loved Tianshui Blue, and that the sight of him in the Mountains-and-Rivers Brocade had astonished the whole world. Jingchan had imagined that scene countless times. Now every glimpse of the present seemed to strangle that vision a little more.
In the end, she could not bear it, even though there was no turning back.
He stubbornly pushed her hand away.
“Ruler, you cannot die.” With no other way to stop him, Jingchan finally blurted it out.
Li Yu paused. “Why… can I not die?”
“So long as even one person still hopes for you, you cannot die.” There was no grand grief or profound anguish in her voice, only very simple words, yet they suddenly flooded Li Yu with sorrow. “Why can I not die… At this point, there is no hope left anywhere.”
Jingchan knew she could not stop him no matter what she did, so at last she released him.
Were the most perfect things always the most fleeting? He was a rarity across the ages, so perhaps he too had to pay a greater price.
Li Yu moved with difficulty. After descending two flights of stone steps, he suddenly sensed someone else approaching from below.
But this time, the feeling was strange.
Jingchan suddenly cried out. The person below drew a sword in warning. Li Yu only felt Jingchan hurry away from his side, almost fleeing without choosing a direction.
He continued downward, drawing closer and closer to that person.
Zhao Kuangyin stared at him in white, so thin and pale that the sight was shocking. He hardly dared speak, as though even a single word might make him collapse.
Yet his bearing remained as graceful as ever, composed and distant, without the slightest trace of self-pity.
His long hair hung loose. Zhao Kuangyin could not make out his eyes.
He had rushed beneath Yuxiao Pavilion like a madman, caring about nothing else. Zhao Kuangyin had imagined countless versions of this reunion, but never this. A moment ago his heart had been filled with terror. Now, in an instant, all of it fell away, and suddenly he had nothing to say.
As long as he is still here. As long as he is still here.
He simply watched Li Yu descend slowly. That white figure seemed clearly to have seen him, yet why did he say nothing either? His face was so calm it was almost impossible to believe.
Step by step.
Li Yu reached the bottom of the long white-jade staircase and stopped directly before him. Neither joy nor sorrow showed on his face, just as always.
For an instant his steps faltered. He sensed something, but the firelight tonight was far too bright and he could make almost nothing out. Dizziness washed over him. He had clearly been forcing himself to remain upright until now.
For only a second, Li Yu sensed someone there. When the person did not step forward or speak, he assumed it was merely a palace attendant too frightened to know what to do. He was about to pass when the man suddenly spoke.
Zhao Kuangyin watched him walk quietly past, take several steps, then turn slightly. In that same calm tone untouched by joy or sorrow, Li Yu asked him, “How bad is the fire at Weiyang Hall?”
Zhao Kuangyin could scarcely believe it. He stared at him for a long while. Black smoke drifted everywhere, yet before him was the only patch of clarity. Beneath a pear-blossom-white cloak, the figure looked barely able to hold himself together, as though at any moment the wind might scatter him away forever.
What happened to you? Such a simple question lodged in his chest and would not come out. He stayed silent. Watching Li Yu about to walk away, he somehow still managed to answer. Zhao Kuangyin said slowly, “The fire is spreading. It cannot be contained.”
Those eight words made the figure stop abruptly.
Scorching air rushed against him. Li Yu knew there had to be some hidden reason Weiyang Hall had caught fire first. He knew Nüying’s party might already have returned to the palace. He knew he himself had sworn to set fire to the palace and die once the state fell. He knew he should be walking toward the final fate he had chosen. Yet the moment he heard those eight words, he forgot even to breathe.
So much time has passed…
That man’s voice.
So much time had passed. So much that he almost… no longer knew what there was left to say.
Dusk closed in from every side. In an empty high tower, someone had once smiled beside a window and spoken with quiet certainty, wrapped in the rain-mist of Jiangnan while soft, pale light fell across him. For a moment, Zhao Kuangyin had been afraid he might truly ride the wind away.
Now every trace of pale blue-green had faded from him. He wore only pear-blossom white. Only the grace written into his bones and blood remained unchanged.
How I want, how I want to see you once more drenched in night rain, turning back with that faint smile, smiling upon the wild geese crossing the mortal world, cassia blossoms of three autumns, lotus stretching ten li.
With his back to Zhao Kuangyin, Li Yu stood there for a very long time, so long he began to wonder whether this too was one of his hallucinations. Clinging to the final thread of hope, he turned slightly but refused to lift his eyes. His lashes lowered, and the firelight made half his face look even more exquisitely beautiful.
“You… came.” In the end, those were the words he gave him. Then he turned away again and began moving in the direction he had intended to go, as though the words meant nothing, as though everything that had happened today could be dissolved by his lightest touch.
As though you, Zhao Kuangyin, were not particularly important either.
Zhao Kuangyin suddenly rushed after him and seized his arm. Li Yu almost could not bear it and bent forward beneath a wave of dizziness. The sword-browed man finally understood that something was seriously wrong. He lowered himself and supported Li Yu’s back, helping him upright. “What happened to you?”
Li Yu covered his mouth with his sleeve and kept shaking his head. Only after his chest rose and fell violently did he manage to steady himself. “Let go of me.” His voice was cold enough to allow no argument. Zhao Kuangyin released him. Li Yu turned again toward Weiyang Hall, but by now sparks had become a prairie fire. The blaze had reached Chengxin Hall, where the palace books were stored. Ancient books and classics were old, dry paper; once they caught, there was no saving them. Li Yu took several more steps past a shallow lotus pond and was nearly about to walk straight into the sea of flames.
“Come back.” Zhao Kuangyin sighed. “You are still exactly the same… Do not go any farther.”
“I stopped being the same long ago. His Majesty is now the true Son of Heaven. Forgive this guilty subject for his discourtesy, but today I cannot kneel to welcome you.” He walked slowly, without the slightest hesitation.
“Li Congjia.”
He laughed. “Li Congjia died from your arrow.”
Zhao Kuangyin knew he meant the arrow by the river. Anger flared instantly. He surged forward and dragged Li Yu back, gripping his shoulders hard. Beneath his hands were bones so sharp from emaciation that he could feel them clearly. Startled, he loosened his strength. “Do you know how long I have waited for you? What did you promise me… You promised you would never break your word again!”
Li Yu did not argue or even respond. “Let go.” The black smoke had already become almost unbearable for him. His voice was hollow and weak, as though he were exhausted beyond measure. “Enough. It is all past. Today the Ruler of Jiangnan has lost his state here. I swore before the court, and All-under-Heaven heard it. I must die. Zhao Kuangyin, let go.”
He looked as though nothing in the world could still be redeemed.
“No… no! I told you to live, do you hear me?” Zhao Kuangyin felt as though every time he saw this man he went mad. Every word Li Yu spoke seemed to tell him that all his schemes and struggles had been for nothing. Zhao Kuangyin would not accept this exhausted fatalism. He had never allowed helplessness to belong to him. His arms slowly tightened. He was the one who had won. He had won All-under-Heaven, yet now, amid blazing fire in an empty city, he buried his face against Li Yu’s shoulder until the bones beneath it hurt him.
I almost truly thought crossing all those mountains and rivers, passing through armies without end, had been useless. I almost thought there would never again be a Li Congjia in this life.
Li Yu stood there as if floating, without even an expression. His first thought upon hearing Zhao Kuangyin’s voice had been selfish enough to make him forget everything else. He had simply remembered all at once that he could no longer see him. That proud, brow-raised bearing. He could not see it anymore.
Zhao Kuangyin’s voice was muffled against his shoulder, his breath brushing Li Yu’s neck, full of bitterness. “I do not want it anymore. All right?”
Li Yu smiled. “Let me go.”
The flames drew closer. Li Yu insisted on going forward, and Zhao Kuangyin held him back with everything he had. “I do not want it. I do not want this realm anymore.”
“What does it matter to me whether you want the realm? Whatever His Majesty decides today cannot reverse what has already happened. Li Yu has lost his state and his home. I have long lamented that this body is not my own. Even if I failed you, I have already paid the price. We owe each other nothing. Perhaps this is simply Heaven’s will… You… let go now.”
“I have never believed in fate. You know I have never believed in fate!” Driven to desperation by him and seeing the fire draw closer, Zhao Kuangyin wrapped an arm around his waist and sprang upward. In several steps he kicked off the jade stairs and carried them back atop Yuxiao Pavilion.
“Zhao Kuangyin!” The white figure was suddenly furious. The instant Zhao Kuangyin released him, he saw Li Yu sway and reached out to help, only to be shoved away. “What more do you want? If I die now to atone, what more could you possibly want?”
“I told you. You have to live.”
“Live? You are still as ridiculous as you were back then! You came to kill me with poisoned wine, yet lectured me about the value of life. Now you killed my elder brother, harmed my wife, destroyed the foundation of my state, and you still stand here telling me to live properly! Which one of us is mad?” The hollow color of his eyes was nothing like before. Unable to support himself inside those deathly white robes, Li Yu staggered backward step by step, the trailing fabric breaking across the floor like scattered moonlight. He only wanted to get farther away. The broad, elaborate robe was embroidered in white thread, pure and otherworldly. Suddenly his back struck a qin stand. A string rang sharply. Li Yu fell against the instrument without warning and began coughing uncontrollably. Zhao Kuangyin slowly came closer and bent down. “Your… eyes. What happened to them?”
Still covering his mouth with his sleeve, Li Yu gave the faintest smile, amber light resting in those pale eyes. “Can you not tell? I cannot see.”
This man had killed countless people in his lifetime and had not trembled even when forcing a palace coup and seizing a throne. Yet now his hand was unsteady. He raised it slowly, almost disbelieving, and laid it over Li Yu’s lashes.
“Why… why did you suddenly lose your sight?”
“Karmic retribution.”
Zhao Kuangyin had poured the whole world at his feet for the sake of one lowered-head smile, but Li Yu… could no longer see him.
“Karmic retribution… ha… You call this your karmic retribution… Do you regret it? If you regret it, Zhao Kuangyin will leave this palace now, turn the army around, and give up Jiangnan. From this day onward, you and I will rule on opposite sides of the river and never see each other again until death. For as long as I live, I will not touch a single inch of Jiangnan. You only have to tell me that you regret it.”
How could an empire for the ages be won by walking the path of an asura?
Li Yu was silent beneath his hand.
It was only a brief moment, not even a full minute, yet Zhao Kuangyin was so tense he could barely control himself. The instant the words left his mouth, he knew he should never have offered Li Yu that choice.
Yuxiao Pavilion stood empty, and the passing wind made no sound. Who was born with such peerless brilliance, flashing once like a startled swan, crossing rivers and mountains until the smoke of war was extinguished?
Li Yu shook his head. “I do not regret it. I have never regretted anything I chose to do. My conscience is clear.”
Zhao Kuangyin released a long breath.
“But you do not know… I watched her spend the pride in her bones one breath at a time! I watched Ehuang die in front of me with my own eyes! Zhao Kuangyin… you are truly merciless!” Suddenly he seized Zhao Kuangyin’s armor. Every word struck into the sword-browed man’s heart. Startled, Zhao Kuangyin searched his memory again and again and found nothing. “I did not… I do not know why Ehuang died…”
“You lie! No matter what, she was the wife I married with my own hair bound to hers! Yet you made me watch her die!” With the last of his strength he shoved Zhao Kuangyin away and forced himself upright. His wrist flashed at his side. Zhao Kuangyin saw it clearly, a long, narrow scar.
In the end, he had still hurt him. Such a beautiful wrist, bones so unusually fine and elegant, now marked by a scar. Zhao Kuangyin remembered asking him once, Has anyone ever told you how beautiful your wrist is?
The answer had once stirred ten thousand acres of blue-green waves.
The four walls of Weiyang Hall were hung with precious pearls, their radiance flashing, but Li Yu’s eyes could no longer bear such light. Dizziness grew unbearable. He staggered backward, forgetting where he even was, until wind suddenly struck his body and he realized he had retreated onto the broad open platform, the place where he had once ascended the throne.
Elio’s Notes: The JJWXC raw names Weiyang Hall in the preceding sentence even though the scene has already moved back to Yuxiao Pavilion and Weiyang Hall is burning. FD preserves the location name as written rather than silently relocating the scene.
He gave a desolate smile.
Now iron cavalry filled the city. Li Yu remembered his father’s final words and suddenly felt as though he understood something.
“Zhao Kuangyin… do you still remember? I once asked you.” That deathly pale figure insisted on moving away. Everything he possessed had been destroyed completely tonight. Zhao Kuangyin watched him retreat step by step, yet no longer had the strength to reach out.
“Congjia…”
The sound tore through him as though it cost him enormous strength. Suddenly he cried, “Do not call me that name again!”
The figure on the verge of collapse slowly retreated without any sense of direction. “I asked you… if you could do it all again, would you still jump from Shengding House? Would you still save me…?” A faint smile appeared, just like the first time they met, when even his magnificent robes could not hide that air of night rain. That pale, almost demonic purity was bewitchment at its most extreme.
Zhao Kuangyin snapped awake in terror. Li Yu was only a step away from Yuxiao Pavilion’s gold-and-jade railing.
“Beyond the curtain, rain murmurs. Spring is fading. The silk quilt cannot withstand the fifth-watch chill. In dreams I forget that I am a guest, stealing one brief moment of pleasure… Do not lean alone against the railing. Boundless rivers and mountains. Parting is easy, meeting again is hard. Flowing water bears fallen blossoms away as spring departs…” The figure in the wind seemed to shake heaven and earth itself. Thunder rolled and clouds surged across one side of the sky. “Heaven above… the mortal world below…”
Behind him, tier upon tier of palace buildings collapsed. Flames blazed across a killing ground steeped in a dream of intoxication and death. Pear-blossom-white brocade. Zhao Kuangyin looked up at him in horror and suddenly saw that his sleeve was spattered all over with blood. Li Yu had kept that sleeve over his mouth and nose the entire time, refusing to let anyone see his decline.
In life, his bearing had been peerless. In death, too, he would stand unmatched through the ages.
From this day onward, he could be imitated, but never displaced.
Perhaps being unable to see was better. At least what I will remember forever is not the ferocity with which you led armies across the river and swept kingdoms clean. I will remember you saying that peach blossoms were bitter, and the sword scar on Phoenix Terrace that never faded.
That commanding presence no common cloth could ever hide, standing there with brows proudly raised.
Li Yu’s fingers lightly touched the ice-cold railing. Looking back, a lifetime had already passed. His hair scattered in the freezing night wind. That pure white figure stared directly toward Zhao Kuangyin, one pale double-pupiled eye emptied of everything.
He leaned backward from the hundred-zhang-high pavilion and let himself fall.
“Parting is easy, meeting again is hard…”