Chapter 25

Perhaps there are those in this world who are born strong, carrying tyranny and slaughter in their very genes. They know no fear, for there is nothing in this world that can truly wound them.

Kinship, memories, suffering—nothing can harm them. They are kings forged of steel, ever-victorious, standing apart from the common lot of mortal men. If such a person truly existed, perhaps from the moment they gained understanding, they could treat all living beings as mere chess pieces, playing their game at leisure, while the bones of countless souls would be nothing more than a passing jest, a fleeting flick of the finger.

But Zhao Luming was not that kind of player.

She feared too many things. For instance, the darkness of the Baolu Palace.

The night is silent and formless. In a place so sacred, guarded by countless immortals, even the night would not spawn the ghouls and demons that children fear. What it spawned instead was a city of Bianjing she had never truly seen.

The city was saturated with a strange, bloody sweetness, everywhere touched by an inexplicable, sticky grime. As the carriage wheels crushed forward inch by inch, the muck beneath them emitted a creaking, groaning sound, occasionally accompanied by a faint, human-like moan.

"There are no longer any servants to clean the streets," the eunuch had said.

"There are no longer any commoners peddling their wares or stopping to buy goods on the roadsides," the eunuch had said again.

"Where did the people go?" In the darkness of the carriage, she seemed to ponder the question, or perhaps she had voiced it aloud.

And so the eunuch replied, "Imperial Princess, Imperial Princess, they are right there under the wheels."

The Imperial Princess was transported out of Bianjing, helped from the carriage, and treated like spoils of war. They appraised her age, height, hair, and teeth with wanton scrutiny, examining her features with care, and based on these factors, ranked these spoils in order of value for distribution.

How tragic a thing that was. Yet, looking back, looking at that dead city strewn with corpses, looking at the peddler who had once held aloft a catalpa leaf and asked her with a smile if she wanted to buy one to shade her head—even his corpse was twitching in the raging flames! Looking at her!

Look at the daughters of Bianjing!
Look at the subjects of Bianjing!
Look back once more at those fully armed men approaching her—

"Those are the famed generals of the Jin Dynasty," the eunuch said.

No! No!

They were far more than famed generals! They were war gods, born to conquer, to crush all life, invincible! Each one of them stood like an unshakable mountain; as these mountains loomed before her, their shadows naturally cast the entire Great Song under their feet. With a mere stretch of a hand, the high and thick walls of Bianjing would crumble to dust; with a single breath, the thousands of tightly packed houses in the city would collapse into a sea of fire.

They destroyed that city!

It didn't matter, it didn't matter, she told herself timidly; she could still flee! She could flee to the ends of the earth, to a corner where they could not find her—

But where could she flee?

She fled to the Qinling Mountains, only to see them rising above the vast, misty peaks; she fled to the Kunlun Mountains, only to see them rising above the pristine snow; she fled into the sea, only to see them driving their unparalleled heavy cavalry, rising from the depths of the ocean!

And so, her final act of resistance was to struggle to lift her head, trying to memorize their faces, every single one of them. She strained to look up—kneeling on the ground, lying prostrate, weeping, screaming, wailing—but every one of their faces remained hidden in the night.

That was her night.

She had been haunted by this night for so long that she could no longer distinguish whether it was a hallucination or a life she had truly lived. But she knew one thing: she was afraid! She was paralyzed by a desperate, soul-crushing fear!

She stood on the precipice of that night, at the edge of a future despair. As she gazed around, lost and adrift, amidst her endless weeping and wailing, from the very depths of that terror, something more solid than the night began to grow.

It was her cold hatred and her rage—
The hatred and rage of her sisters!
The rage of countless subjects rotting and burning within the city of Bianjing!

She hated those people she had never met—those who, for now, were still considered "allies"—with a hatred so profound that she could not share the same sky with them until she had devoured their flesh and slept on their skins.

Her body remained in the tranquil Baolu Palace and the Lingying Palace, but her soul was on that burning carriage, advancing into the vast, dark night. Until she saw them laid in their graves with her own eyes, her night would never end.

Her fear would never end.
Her rage would never end.
To the death, without cessation.

"Imperial Princess?"

She rested her chin on her hand, appearing to have been lost in thought for a moment.

The boundless night receded like a tide. She was still in the Lingying Palace, in a study kept simple and elegant. Bright, lovely birds stood upon branches as beautiful as gold, tilting their heads, watching her with curiosity.

It was a flawless painting, as elegant and noble as the clan princesses standing in the front hall. She smiled at the carefree birds.

"Whose turn is it?"

"Master Yuwen," Jilan replied.

When an Imperial Princess first arrives at the Lingying Palace, local officials are expected to send congratulatory gifts to welcome such a noble neighbor. After the assassination attempt and the ensuing chaos, the gifts had been delayed. Now that she was safe, everyone had seized the opportunity to come bearing gifts under the guise of celebration.

The gifts were all precious: Shu brocade, jewelry, exquisite handicrafts, and many high-end versions of Song Dynasty children's toys. For instance, the markets of Bianjing sold wooden and clay dolls, dressed in painted clay garments, depicting men, women, young and old in various forms, sold individually. Many people sent these as gifts, the difference being that these dolls were made of at least glazed glass, and they came in sets of several, or even hundreds. The craftsmanship evolved from glass to gold and silver, inlaid with tortoiseshell, pearls, mother-of-pearl, and gemstones. Some even went to the trouble of providing sets of a hundred glazed dolls, not only representing every trade and profession but also including pavilions, towers, shops, and marketplaces, so the Princess could play house to her heart's content.

The Princess had looked at them with genuine fascination for a long time before setting the glass dolls down one by one.

"Record who sent these," she said. "When I make sand table models in the future, I will go to their houses."

The young girl working nearby looked confused. "Imperial Princess, what is a 'sand table'? What is it for?"

Yuwen Shizhong did not send such crowd-pleasing items. He sent a scroll.

A young girl quietly covered her mouth and whispered to her companion, "Master Yuwen is a bit too stingy."

"It doesn't matter, he just didn't inquire," the companion whispered back. "No matter which painter he found, how could it compare to the Emperor’s own brush?"

Zhao Luming ignored these whispers and said, "Open it and let me see."

The girl unfurled the painting, and someone gasped in shock.

"Master Yuwen once lectured at the Zishantang," another said. "How could he be so absurd and reckless!"

The painting was not of flowers, birds, fish, or insects, nor was it of idyllic spring scenery, pavilions, or gardens.

The painting depicted the displaced commoners.

They were driven from their fields, driven from their villages, driven from their mills, driven from their docks.

Those were the Imperial Princess's properties! Those were the properties of the White Deer Lingying Palace!

They were fleeing into the vast mountains, but even those mountains had owners! Those mountains, too, belonged to the Imperial Princess!

The Imperial Princess sat before the painting for a long time.

"Ask the Prefect Liu to come to the Lingying Palace for me."

"Imperial Princess?" Peilan was puzzled. "This is Master Yuwen's..."

"I know," she said. "I must find a way to invite the people back before I can see him."

"I have a request," she said, looking sincerely at Liu Jingwang, whose dark circles were fading, making him look human again. "I wish to find the commoners who were driven from their gardens and lands by the eunuchs."

The magistrate was startled, looking as if he could no longer sit still. "What are your instructions regarding them?"

She waved her hand quickly. "No instructions, no instructions. It is only that according to Song law, the Lingying Palace should have only been granted barren mountains, yet now it has occupied their land. I truly want them to return. The autumn wheat is ripe, and their hard work for the entire year is all in this harvest."

The magistrate shifted uncomfortably in his chair, wondering what the chairs in the Lingying Palace were made of—every one of them felt burning hot!

The limit of land a Taoist temple could own in the Song Dynasty was fixed: no more than fifty *qing* in the capital, and no more than thirty *qing* elsewhere, and they were not permitted to be exempt from labor corvée or tax transport duties.

But Emperor Huizong himself was so obsessed with Taoism he was nearly ready to ascend to the heavens; with a wave of his hand, he had granted his daughter a thousand *qing* of land—a gift given all at once, combining her fief and dowry. He did not think it unreasonable, but to a local official, it was explosively absurd! How could such vast land be managed? The only way was to include barren mountains, mills, docks, and other people's land alongside it.

Now that the eunuchs had finished this ruinous and wicked task, the Princess’s possession of this thousand *qing* of land was a fait accompli. The magistrate weighed the situation: on one side were the commoners, and on the other was the Imperial Princess, who had also shown him kindness. He was in a difficult spot and did not know what to say.

"Prefect?" she asked again, seemingly oblivious to his distress.

He struggled for a long time before deciding to be honest. "When the eunuchs from the Western City Office collected the land for you, the public resentment was... quite high. If you bring them back now, the people will see their homes returned to them, but surely they will not be willing to let go again? It will be difficult if you wish to change tenants in the future."

"Then don't let them let go!" she replied quickly. "As long as it is a system of permanent tenancy, they only need to pay me the taxes that should have gone to the government! I will never make them change their rent!"

The chair suddenly felt as if it were on fire!

The magistrate’s heart was a mix of emotions—moved, yet amused. He thought of the Emperor's grace in sending such a pure and kind-hearted Princess, but the way things were turning out was not at all what he had expected!

However, he could not tell the truth. He had been submissive before the eunuchs and had betrayed the people of Xingyuan Prefecture once. If he were to stop the Princess now, not to mention what she would think of him, he himself would view himself as the most despicable of villains, complicit with the eunuchs.

He would never be able to step foot in the Lingying Palace again!

In any case, it didn't matter, he thought. At worst, the Princess would just get a little dust on her nose, which could easily be wiped away.

"If that is the case, why doesn't the Imperial Princess issue an order, and I will arrange for the documents to be posted everywhere?"

For now, there was not a speck of dust on the Princess’s fair nose.

She looked delighted. "Just as the Prefect says!"