[You have saved more people than you can count in this lifetime. It is only natural that you would forget him.
But you were the only person who ever saved that servant in his entire life. It is only natural that he remembered you until the day he died.]
…
Gongsun E had not dreamed of Wei Xiao in a very long time.
In the years when they had stood together at court, they had fought openly and schemed in secret, pressing each other at every turn, each considering the other the most difficult enemy he would ever have to eliminate. So many nights, Gongsun E had awakened with a start and sat upright in bed, his pillow still damp with cold sweat, fearful of the death traps that man might have laid for him.
Yet after the man died, he had never appeared in Gongsun E’s dreams again.
Deep within the imperial sleeping chambers, the young emperor slept. The last light of approaching dusk seeped through the canopy overhead. A cool breeze slipped through a crack in the window, and the dark bat patterns embroidered on the gauze curtains appeared and vanished in its ripples, as though they might spread their wings and fly away.
Gongsun E could not remember what he had dreamed. He only remembered someone standing far away, watching him through layer upon layer of gauze curtains. The figure was indistinct, like a wisp of smoke on the verge of dispersing.
He thought the silhouette looked a little like Wei Xiao, though he knew that was impossible.
That man had been executed by the late emperor long ago. His remains had been crushed and scattered as ashes, leaving him without even a grave.
Corruption, perverting the law, forming factions and usurping power, persecuting loyal officials, secretly hoarding weapons: there had been thirty-two capital offenses in all. Each charge was enough to pin the once-all-powerful eunuch in the mire forever.
The figure in his dream remained where it stood. An intangible breeze lightly lifted its crimson robes, dark as congealed blood. The brim of its black gauze hat was pressed so low that it concealed the entire face, leaving only a narrow glimpse of a pallid jaw.
Gongsun E’s brows drew tightly together in his sleep. Without realizing it, he called softly, “Wei Xiao…”
The shadow trembled. It instinctively took half a step forward, then forcibly stopped, not daring to draw any nearer. A voice drifted through the curling incense smoke into the emperor’s ears, carrying a note of deference:
“Your Majesty.”
Gongsun E’s eyes flew open.
The palace was silent. The Biji incense had long since burned out, leaving only a layer of cold ashes inside the bronze censer. He sat dazed for a moment, then heard an attendant outside lower his voice and call respectfully again:
“Your Majesty, it is the hour of Mao. Time to rise.”
“…”
Gongsun E did not answer. He stared at the dark patterns fixed in the bed canopy. Every flicker and movement from the night before now seemed no more than an illusion hovering between dream and waking. Only after a long while did he slowly sit up.
Midsummer nights were short, and daylight already flooded the world outside. The dense branches of a crabapple tree spread shade across the ground beneath his window.
The palace servants filed in, attending to his washing and dressing as usual.
The late emperor had had three sons, but Gongsun E was not one of them.
He had been born into the Gongsun family of Luzhou, whose members had adjudicated cases for generations and redressed injustices suffered by the poor. Known for his intelligence from a young age, he had often been summoned to the palace by the late emperor.
At fifteen he had traveled the realm alone, only to witness entrenched abuses in the prefectures and counties, greedy and corrupt officials, and commoners enduring untold misery. Upon his return he defied his family’s ancestral rule against involvement in court politics. At twenty-five, he entered government without holding official rank and accepted the newly created post of Criminal Investigation Commissioner, charged specifically with trying major cases and overturning wrongful convictions.
He occupied that office for seven years.
In those seven years, he had investigated more corrupt officials than could be counted and cleared innumerable wrongful convictions. But the case that had caused the greatest uproar was the one from three years earlier.
Crown Prince Xiao Shen had raised an army in rebellion. After his defeat, the late emperor had personally ordered his execution.
Wei Xiao had been the crown prince’s confidant. As commander of the Eastern Depot, his power had extended across the court and the countryside, and the people had called him the “Nine-Thousand-Year Lord.” The late emperor had long intended to get rid of him. After the crown prince’s fall, he ordered Gongsun E to investigate Wei Xiao’s corruption and uproot the Eastern Depot faction. More than a hundred heads fell in a single night.
The day Wei Xiao died was precisely the day Gongsun E’s reputation reached its height.
Everyone else applauded, but Gongsun E felt as though he were in a dream.
That enemy who had battled him for years, one or the other destined to die, was really gone just like that?
In the spring of the following year, the late emperor fell gravely ill and made his final edict known throughout the realm:
[When We traveled to Luzhou in former years, We fathered a son. His mother passed away before she could enter the palace. To avoid disputes within the imperial household, We secretly entrusted him to the Gongsun family of Luzhou. All Our other sons are now dead; only this one remains. His name is Gongsun E, and he is of Our own blood.
The Gongsun family has remained upright for generations, adjudicating injustices throughout the realm. Raised in their household, this son has grown into a principled man of sound judgment, capable of inheriting the throne. He is hereby ordered to ascend the imperial seat without delay. May all Our ministers support him faithfully and not disappoint Us.]
Just like that, an entire realm and its imperial throne had dropped out of the sky into Gongsun E’s lap.
It was absurd enough to make a person laugh.
Summer afternoons made people drowsy. Even his recollections grew long and meandering. He remained immersed in them for quite some time before finally drawing himself back to the present.
Sitting at the imperial desk, Gongsun E had unconsciously stopped moving the vermilion brush with which he was reviewing memorials. He rubbed a vivid fleck of red ink that had accidentally stuck to his fingertip and watched it spread and fade. Then, without warning, he asked the elderly eunuch beside him:
“That man still refuses to confess?”
The young emperor possessed a beauty as flawless as carved jade, with a small beauty mark beneath his right eye. He favored white dragon robes. In the past, his extraordinary reputation as a judge and his exceptional bearing had earned him the epithet “the Jade-Carved Gentleman.”
Yet the calmer and more detached he appeared, the more terrified the people attending him became.
The elderly eunuch froze. He had not expected that the first person the newly enthroned emperor would ask about was a eunuch partisan who had served under Wei Xiao and had only just been purged.
“Reporting to Your Majesty, we have tried every method. That man still refuses to confess.”
Gongsun E said nothing.
The old eunuch waited uneasily. Thinking that Gongsun E did not seem satisfied with the answer, he added, “The men in the imperial prison say… if he is tortured any further, he probably will not survive.”
The old eunuch kept his eyes lowered, not daring to look at the cold, composed face behind the imperial desk. He had spent forty years in the palace and had watched this man rise, step by step, to where he stood today.
He still remembered how, seven years earlier, when Gongsun E had first joined the Criminal Investigation Office, he had regarded torture as the greatest taboo in an investigation.
But now?
Wei Xiao had been dead for almost a year. His very bones had long since gone cold, yet Gongsun E insisted on pursuing one of his former confidants, sending interrogators into the imperial prison in wave after wave and allowing every conceivable method to be used. It was as though he were determined to pry something out of the man’s mouth.
That dragon throne…
The old eunuch sighed inwardly. Everyone who sat upon it slowly grew coldhearted.
The sun was still merciless. Gongsun E watched its shifting shadows beyond the palace gates, his expression impossible to decipher.
At length, he spoke quietly:
“Prepare the imperial carriage. We are going to the imperial prison.”
The elderly eunuch abruptly raised his head, as though he wanted to offer advice. In the end, he dared say nothing. Bowing deeply, he answered, “Yes, Your Majesty.”
The imperial prison never saw the light of day. Few who entered ever emerged alive.
Thick layers of rust and bloodstained filth coated the walls on both sides of its passageway, bleeding together into a dark brown crust. As guards passed with torches, their shadows stretched and twisted across the stone, making the place even more sinister.
Black Hawk was imprisoned in the deepest cell.
Once Wei Xiao’s most trusted subordinate, he had countless deaths on his hands. Nobody could have imagined that one day he, too, would be locked inside, barefoot and disheveled, drenched in blood, no different from the prisoners he had personally sent there before.
When Gongsun E approached, Black Hawk, suspended from the wall by iron chains, stared hazily for a long while before recognizing him. He opened his mouth to speak but suddenly coughed up a mouthful of dark scarlet blood. His body convulsed, rattling the chains.
Gongsun E neither flinched nor stepped aside. He merely looked down at him in silence.
“Still unwilling to talk?”
His tone was mild, as though asking an idle question. But only Black Hawk, imprisoned here for days, knew just how obsessed Gongsun E had become with the answer. Every day and every night, he had been interrogated, with one form of torture after another, as though Gongsun E would never stop until he obtained something.
Black Hawk’s pale face carried the gray pallor of approaching death, and his expression was almost numb. He struggled for several breaths, then forced a self-mocking smile.
“Your Majesty… cough, cough… what is it you want to know…?”
“If I had not stolen the evidence of the Chief Eunuch’s corruption and bribery and handed it to you, then testified against him, how could you have brought him down so easily? Even if I earned no merit… surely I suffered for it… Why lock me here and torment me like this…?”
“The evidence you stole?”
Gongsun E repeated the words faintly. Whatever meaning he drew from them, he sounded as though he were questioning Black Hawk and, even more, his own former self.
“Wei Xiao was suspicious by nature. He commanded the Eastern Depot for more than ten years. Even the spies planted at his side by the late emperor could never find anything to use against him… Yet he let you steal evidence?”
Black Hawk said nothing. His chest rose and fell, each breath ragged and noisy. He stared at Gongsun E and suddenly smiled.
“If Your Majesty has already guessed, why ask?”
“…”
Gongsun E remained silent. His eyelashes trembled ever so slightly, while the hand hidden inside his sleeve clenched uncontrollably. After a moment, he slowly released it, leaving several deep, bloody imprints in his palm.
Black Hawk spoke no more. His head drooped weakly, as though every last ounce of strength had left him.
After a long silence, he heard Gongsun E’s low voice echo through the dungeon.
“Do you wish to die or to live?”
Black Hawk did not raise his head. He said hoarsely, “A man who betrays his master has no face to go on living. I beg Your Majesty to grant me death.”
A long silence followed before Gongsun E finally uttered one word.
“Granted.”
He turned to leave, but just as he reached the cell door, a hoarse scream erupted behind him. It held the desperate grief of a dying man, so raw it barely sounded human:
“Your Majesty! Do you know that the Chief Eunuch never, from beginning to end, intended to harm you in the slightest?!”
Gongsun E halted. He slowly turned, looking at Black Hawk in bewildered suspicion. The man suddenly burst into laughter, laughing until tears streamed down his face, the relief of release mingling with overwhelming sorrow. He said something nobody else could understand:
“The Chief Eunuch gave me a second life. How could I ever betray him?”
With those words, he violently coughed up a mouthful of black blood. His head dropped and never rose again.
A guard stepped forward to test his breathing, then approached Gongsun E with clasped hands.
“Your Majesty, he is dead.”
Black Hawk was dead.
To outsiders, he had been Wei Xiao’s attack dog, a remnant of the eunuch faction, a lowly servant.
Only Gongsun E knew
that this man had remained loyal to Wei Xiao all along.
Black Hawk had never confessed what truly happened that year, not even at the moment of death. Yet his final words were enough to give shape to Gongsun E’s suspicions and assemble an answer as absurd as it was undeniable.
Wei Xiao had done it deliberately.
That year, Wei Xiao had deliberately gone to his death. He had deliberately arranged for Black Hawk to feign betrayal, then deliberately placed the fatal evidence in Gongsun E’s hands, allowing him to bring Wei Xiao down completely.
But… why?
The question lingered in Gongsun E’s heart, splintering and collapsing it inch by inch, until it seemed to fall into an abyss nobody could see.
He could find no answer. After Wei Xiao’s death, he desperately searched through the passing years for every trace the man had left behind. It was not until his guards searched the entire Chief Eunuch’s residence and found a secret casket in Wei Xiao’s room that his willing death seemed finally to make sense.
The casket was a little dirty, but its smooth, worn edges made it obvious that its owner had handled it frequently. Inside, everything had been folded with meticulous care: a white cloak. It was neither gold nor jade nor precious jewels, so it had not been listed among the seized property when the Imperial Household confiscated the residence’s property.
The cloak was made from excellent fabric, though it was clearly old. Its lining bore a subtle pattern embroidered in silver thread, shaped like a folding fan half opened: the Snow Fan insignia unique to the Gongsun family.
Gongsun E’s fingers paused almost imperceptibly. Only then did he recognize it as an old cloak he himself had worn in his youth.
Years earlier, he had entered the palace by imperial summons in the height of summer. A family servant had specially prepared this cloak of cooling silk, saying that it felt cool to the touch and would shield him from the brutal heat. At some point he had misplaced it and never bothered to look for it. He had not expected to find it here.
Holding the cloak, Gongsun E remained silent for a long while before finally speaking.
“…Everyone, leave.”
The palace doors shut softly, leaving him alone in the bedchamber.
Gongsun E slowly sat on the edge of the bed, lost in thought.
The cloak had been made many years ago. White cooling silk would yellow at the slightest exposure to damp if not cared for properly, yet this garment was spotless, without even one stain. Someone had evidently tended it with meticulous care, year after year, without ever stopping.
Only now did Gongsun E begin seriously trying to remember the cloak’s past.
Or rather, the past he had shared with Wei Xiao.
At fifteen, while entering the palace, he had passed a corner of the palace walls and happened upon a crowd of palace maids and eunuchs. The steward eunuch’s shrill, cutting scolding rang out above them.
“The box was full just a few days ago, and now there’s only half left! You smell of it! If you didn’t steal it, who did?”
A young eunuch lay face down across a long bench, his torn trousers pulled down to his knees. The flesh of his backside had been beaten into a bloody mess. A crowd of palace servants gathered to watch his punishment, grinding the last shreds of dignity of a mutilated servant into the dirt.
Sweat covered the young eunuch’s forehead. His black eyes were fixed fiercely on a paving stone beneath him, yet he gritted his teeth and refused to confess. Crimson blood seeped from his pale, cracked lips, while beads of sweat dripped one by one onto the blue-gray bricks.
Gongsun E stopped without realizing it. An attendant behind him was about to speak, but a slight lift of his hand silenced the man. After watching a while from the turn in the palace wall, Gongsun E approached.
“What was lost?”
The steward eunuch was startled. Although he did not know who the newcomer was, his clothing and bearing made clear that he was not someone to provoke. He hastily offered a fawning smile. “Reporting to Your Excellency, it’s Biji incense, reserved for imperial use. This little servant has sticky fingers…”
Gongsun E ignored him. Taking the half-empty incense box, he lowered his head to inspect it. “I hear it has been raining a great deal in the capital these past few days?”
“Y-yes, it has been raining…”
Gongsun E flicked his wrist and tossed the damp incense box back with casual ease. “As the man in charge of the incense storeroom, you should know Biji incense contains borneol and shell-derived aromatics. Both soften when damp and deteriorate further when exposed to moisture. The capital has had days of rain. Humidity seeped into the box, reducing its weight. Nothing was stolen.”
The steward opened his mouth, wanting to argue. Failing to store the incense properly was his own mistake. But if he did not make some lowly eunuch take the blame, then he would be the one to suffer.
Gongsun E seemed to guess his thoughts and raised his eyes to him.
There was nothing imposing about that glance. His gaze was mild; there was even a smile on his lips. But the steward suddenly remembered who this youth was: the gifted young man most favored in the emperor’s presence, the Jade-Carved Gentleman, a judge of almost supernatural acuity.
There was no reason to make an enemy of him.
“Y-yes… Young Master is right. This servant was foolish…”
Gongsun E paid him no further attention.
He looked down at the young eunuch who was nearly at death’s door.
The boy had fallen from the bench. His thin servant’s tunic was soaked in blood and stuck to his mangled flesh. He looked barely alive, yet his eyes were dark with ferocious resentment, like a stray dog ready to turn and bite at any moment.
His right eye seemed blind. The pupil was an unnatural bluish-gray, and the sunlight shining through it made it resemble a fine piece of translucent blue-green jade.
Gongsun E undid his own cloak and laid it over the boy.
The snow-white silk was cool against the skin. Spread across his bloodied wounds, it felt like a gentle handful of water.
The young eunuch went rigid.
Gongsun E crouched and smiled softly. His eyes came to rest on an old sachet tied at the boy’s waist. It had fine stitching and a carefully embroidered gourd-with-young pattern, a common folk design that mothers often made for their children to wish them safety.
Gongsun E reached out and gently removed the sachet.
“Did your mother give this to you?”
The young eunuch clenched his jaw and said nothing.
Gongsun E did not rush him. “Where was your mother from?”
Perhaps the voice was too gentle, or perhaps nobody had asked him such a question in a very long time. The boy’s throat moved, and at last he replied hoarsely:
“Jinzhou.”
Gongsun E smiled again. In the sunlight his expression was as warm and lustrous as white jade.
“Jinzhou produces rare incense. Its female incense makers are famous throughout the realm.”
He lightly swung the sachet in his hand.
“I hear they set aside a little Biji incense for themselves before they marry. It is worth a thousand pieces of gold. Your mother must have saved for years to collect even this small amount, and she gave all of it to you.”
The young eunuch raised his head to look at him.
Those eyes were frighteningly red, as deadened and numb as the eyes of most servants in the palace. Yet deep within them, a glimmer of tears flashed.
Before the boy’s eyes, Gongsun E tucked the sachet into his own sleeve, then stood.
“This is too precious a thing. Within the palace, only members of the imperial family and high nobility are permitted to use it. Keeping it on you will bring harm rather than good fortune. Go to Imperial Physician Liu at the Imperial Medical Office. He will treat your injuries.”
With that, he turned to leave.
To his surprise, he had gone only a few steps when a broken, rasping voice sounded behind him, the words forced painfully from the boy’s throat.
“Your Excellency… what is your name?”
Gongsun E looked back. The young eunuch still lay on the ground, covered in blood, but was struggling to lift his head and look at him, as if determined to remember his face.
Gongsun E did not answer.
The young eunuch tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Does Your Excellency think this servant’s life is too lowly to deserve to know your honored name?”
Gongsun E chuckled. With no other choice, he raised a hand and pointed toward the sun overhead.
“Zhuming.”
It was the courtesy name his mother had given him, known only to the elders of his family.
Then he left.
He never thought of that incident again.
Perhaps he still remembered the young eunuch. What he no longer remembered was that he had once helped him.
To Gongsun E, it had been nothing more than a cloak. Hardly worth mentioning.
He had been fifteen then. Each day he met too many people and judged too many cases. A young eunuch by the roadside was just one among the countless faces in the world.
But he had forgotten, while the boy had not.
Wrapped in that cloak, Wei Xiao lay battered on the ground and watched the man’s retreating back disappear into the blinding sunlight of midsummer.
He did not know what affection was, or gratitude, or what it meant to be unable to forget someone for the rest of his life.
He only thought that the man had a beautiful name.
Zhuming.
He repeated it over and over.
Then he quietly put away the cloak, hiding it where nobody would ever find it.
He knew the name meant “pursuing the light.”
What he had not expected was that the palace would swallow him little by little in the years to come. He was forced to kill, forced to claw his way upward. Lust for power corroded his already battered heart. He grew greedier and more ruthless than anyone, filling the emptiness within himself with power he wielded without restraint at court.
Thus, when they met again, even though he had climbed to a position that everyone else had to look up to, surrounded by luxurious food and clothing and an entourage at his beck and call, never had he understood more clearly that he and Gongsun E could no longer walk the same road.
They were enemies, opposites of righteousness and evil, two sides divided into pure and sullied.
When nobody was watching, Wei Xiao had hated, resented, raged, and nearly lost his mind.
He hated the filth that covered him and resented Gongsun E’s spotless purity. He hated the chasm between them and the stark division between black and white. Why did the world insist on sorting human beings into the pure and the impure?
He battled Gongsun E openly and secretly at court. At the height of his madness, a vicious impulse even flashed through him: what if he dragged that man into the mire with him?
But each time night grew quiet and he sat staring at the old cloak, he could no longer bring himself to act.
How desperately he wanted to reach out and touch something.
In the end he could only watch as time slowly turned the cloak into a worn and aging thing, just like the road from which he could never turn back.
Later he received the retribution he had earned, dying at the hands of the person he most wanted to be the one to kill him.
For a powerful eunuch stained with every imaginable evil, it was hardly a good ending.
But for the young eunuch he had once been, it was a very, very good ending.
* * *
Gongsun E sat beside the bed for a long time, clutching the cloak.
He remembered the day Wei Xiao died. It had been a summer just like this one, with the cicadas outside shrilling until his nerves frayed. He had knelt on the cool golden floor tiles of Qianyuan Hall and heard the late emperor’s vermilion decree pronounce the man’s death sentence.
When he raised his head, he saw Wei Xiao being escorted away outside the hall. From the boundary where sunlight met shadow, Wei Xiao turned and looked at him.
There had been no hatred in that glance, not even surprise. Only perfect calm, as if everything had finally been settled.
Gongsun E had never understood what that look meant. He had thought about it for a very long time without finding an answer. After that day, he had never seen Wei Xiao again, nor had Wei Xiao appeared in his dreams.
Last night, as he gazed at the hazy figure beyond the gauze curtains, he had wanted to ask one question: Do you hate me?
But he had awakened before they ever met face-to-face.
Perhaps the man simply did not wish to see him.
Darkness filled the sky, and cold seeped into every part of his body.
Everyone praised Gongsun E for his extraordinary, almost unfathomable methods and his ability to see into other people’s hearts. But there were things even he did not understand.
Right now, for instance, he could not understand why a eunuch who had clung to power more fiercely than anyone would ultimately be willing to give his life to clear a path for him.
Gongsun E lowered his head and closed his eyes in silence, his fingers slowly tightening around the folds of the cloak. His Adam’s apple moved. It was a very long time before he spoke hoarsely.
“Wei Xiao… Is this what you wanted?”
Wei Xiao, is this what you wanted?
Gongsun E would be remembered through the ages as an illustrious emperor.
And you would be cursed for ten thousand years as a treacherous minister.
The great hall stood vast and empty. Nobody answered. Only the gauze curtains swayed softly in the breeze, their shadows shifting across the floor.
Gongsun E tried to think back, and kept trying, wondering whether he had ever given the man a cold look, whether he had treated Wei Xiao with the same indifference and contempt as everyone else. But the more he thought, the more hollow his heart felt, as if a great hole had opened there and only cold wind remained to blow through it.
That eunuch was already dead.