Xie Jing was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the government’s main hall with his back to the door. Before him sat mountains of memorials, case files, and ledgers; by his feet lay a stack of untouched food boxes.
Below the hall stood a group of Ministry of Revenue officials, each looking utterly overwhelmed with their brows tightly furrowed as they let out repeated sighs.
Since the winter famine had passed and this spring’s floods had slightly eased, Wang Chu and his son had made their comeback. Their first order of business was to stir up public sentiment for a grand reform. As it was impossible to change land ownership, they could only tinker with the tax system, calling it “granting the people’s respite.”
Reforms are usually piloted first and rolled out step by step—but tax reductions are nothing like those inconsequential policies. They bear directly on whether people who have just struggled through great disaster and displacement can survive. For those fortunate enough to fall within the tax relief, even sparing a mere fraction from what little they have might become the grain that saves an entire family; for those less fortunate who miss out, it is far more than simply adding frost to snow.
The reforms were overseen by the Prime Minister’s Mansion, and naturally, the first to qualify for tax exemption was Kuaiji Commandery—the place that had received the largest share of relief funds the year before, and the main base of the Wang family’s holdings after their southward migration. Next in line was Langya Commandery, the ancestral home of the Wang clan.
The matters involved were numerous and complex. Xie Jing had moved his desk to the Ministry of Revenue to oversee the work personally on Wang Chu’s behalf. Above him, Lu Lingzhang had waved his hand and tossed every memorial; whether a direct protest or a subtle jab criticizing the irrationality of the pilot sites, into Xie Jing’s lap, leaving him to deal with them. Furthermore, officials would pop up every few days, fishing for information with circuitous questions. After half a month, the tangled mess of tasks had become utterly exhausting.
Xie Jing’s hair at his temples was disheveled, and his eyes were aching. Just as he was forcing himself to focus on his calculations, he suddenly heard the soul-summoning voice of a subordinate official from below, “Lord Xie, Lord Xie…”
Normally, they wouldn’t dare disturb this “ancestor” sent down from above unless there was a situation they truly couldn’t handle.
Whether Xie Jing didn’t hear or simply didn’t want to respond, he remained slumped there without moving for a long while. Before the subordinate could call out a second time in distress, the “situation” in question had already stridden up behind Xie Jing.
Xie Jing felt a sudden tightening at his throat as he was hoisted up by his collar. He turned back with an angry glare, only to pause and blink his lashes when he saw Lu Lingcong looking down at him from his superior height.
“Whatever it is, we can talk it out. Put me down first.”
Lu Lingcong released his grip. Xie Jing straightened his lapels, stumbled half a step back, and said, “In the past few days, the Ministry of Revenue Hall has been receiving a constant stream of distinguished visitors, has Your Highness also come to see me about the reforms?”
“Since Lord Xie and I agreed to split the ‘spoils’ of Luoyi and Chen Commandery, why are you only acting as a steppingstone for the Prime Minister’s Mansion instead of planning for yourself?”
Hearing this, Xie Jing turned to look at the expressions of the officials, finding them all staring blankly while waiting for his instructions.
Lu Lingcong let out a cold laugh. “I have never feared gossip when it comes to seeking tax exemptions for the people of Prince Zhao’s fief or seeking fortune for my own family. Since you want a piece of pie, are you actually afraid of people finding out?”
Xie Jing indeed wasn’t afraid of people knowing; as long as it didn’t involve official politics, Wang Chu didn’t care about his personal “wealth accumulation.” He replied, “Your Highness, may I have a word with you in private?”
Lu Lingcong first turned back, sweeping his gaze over the Ministry of Revenue officials, then pointed at them in warning. “Watch your tongues.”
At once, everyone present fell silent before nodding rapidly like chickens pecking at grain. Only then did Lu Lingcong head into the inner hall. Xie Jing followed close behind, catching a low, muttered curse from somewhere at their backs.
As the door curtain of the inner hall dropped, Xie Jing immediately leaned in toward Lu Lingcong to sniff around. “Hurry up, I can already smell the fragrance!”
Lu Lingcong pulled a paper bundle from his robes and handed it to him. “I figured you wouldn’t have time to eat.”
Xie Jing frowned. “Why hide it in your clothes? If it gets greasy, you’ll have to wash it, and that’s such a hassle.”
Lu Lingcong laughed. “It’s not like I’m asking you to wash it for me.”
This was a habit Xie Jing had picked up during those three years. Back when he was the Princess Consort Zhao, he naturally never had to lift a finger, let alone understand how to wash out stains or handle different fabrics. Fortunately, Yongzhou offered no fine silks or brocades for him to spoil; no matter how he scrubbed those rough cloth garments, there was simply no way to make them any worse.
Inside the oil paper was golden-fried and steaming beef potstickers. Xie Jing’s eyes lit up. “I haven’t had these in so long. Did you buy them from that shop?”
Lu Lingcong nodded. “They’re just not as crispy as when they first come out of the pan.”
There was a tiny, inconspicuous shop that specialized in beef potstickers and beef tripe soup not far from the Prince’s Mansion in the marketplace along the Qinhuai River. Lu Lingcong had originally bought some on a whim while passing by to satisfy a craving. At that time, Xie Jing had just given birth to Lu Shuning and was tired of bland, watery food; after a few bites, he had become hooked on the flavor.
Watching Xie Jing settle down to eat, Lu Lingcong brought up the real reason for his visit. “News has come back from the Xuanshi that the commanderies of Wuxing and Xin’an are already in an uproar. The prefects’ memorials requesting instructions will be delivered to the palace tomorrow morning.”
Xie Jing said indistinctly, “This is only the beginning. Kuaiji alone was enough to stir up a thousand waves; once the full list of provinces and commanderies for the pilot reform is released, the real chaos will start.”
The regions that had received the most disaster relief funds previously were, in fact, almost entirely identical to the regions now being the first to implement tax cuts. The reason there was no resistance back then, but frequent riots now was precisely because the disaster had just passed, and the people finally had a moment to catch their breath.
Lu Lingcong said, “Xin’an Commandery governs Huizhou and its surrounding areas. Every household there is involved in trade, so they fear heavy taxes most. Furthermore, because fewer people remain in the fields, they can’t even benefit much from agricultural subsidies. That is why they are protesting the most violently.”
Xie Jing nodded, thought for a moment, and asked, “As for Wuxing Commandery… is that thanks to Jun’er’s mediation?”
The aristocratic clans of Wuxing, such as the Yao, Shen, and Shi families, had always been closely knit and shared the same interests. Xie Yan’s marriage into the Yao family was a win-win strategy; it was both a means for the Xie clan of Chen Commandery to establish firm roots among the local Southern clans and a way for the Wuxing gentry to gain influence in the capital. They had remained tightly attached to the Xie clan’s side throughout the Jianning and Zhenyou eras.
After the Xie family’s downfall from power, all their in-law families were implicated as well, leaving them to tread carefully and conceal whatever prominence they once had. Now that there was a chance to revive their family prestige and change their political allegiance, they were naturally watching closely in the shadows.
Lu Lingcong nodded to confirm Xie Jing’s hypothesis. Since Xie Jun was both a direct descendant of the Xie clan of Chen Commandery and a maternal relative of the Wuxing gentry, his identity made him the most suitable person to appear at this time to lobby, persuade, and establish secret ties.
“Last winter, everyone had felt their lives hanging by a thread; hardship was the same on both sides of the river, north and south. The common people had neither the strength to rebel nor any sense of being treated unjustly. However, as soon as life becomes even slightly easier, if you implement reforms then, the disparity between the wealth and poverty of various commanderies becomes immediately apparent. Xin’an and Wuxing are both adjacent to Kuaiji. How could the people’s hearts not be stirred seeing their own lives shrouded in gloom while their neighbors right next door are gradually prospering?”
“That is exactly it,” Lu Lingcong sighed. “I explained it to Qing’er before, and even he understands that the reshuffling of the officialdom throughout history is nothing more than ‘private schemes for one’s own clan’.”
Xie Jing was slightly surprised. “You actually talk to him about these things? I thought the two of you only talked about food and play.”
Lu Lingcong couldn’t help but laugh. “Be reasonable, we often spoke of serious matters even in the past, didn’t we? It’s only when I’m with ‘you’ that we only talk about food and play! Besides, it’s not as if he doesn’t understand; why shouldn’t I tell him? It’s you who is always overthinking and treating him like a small child.”
Xie Jing gave him a sharp look. “He doesn’t even know how to add clothes when it’s cold, he seeks out the chill when it’s hot, he refuses to get out of bed in the morning if no one calls him, and he still cries for his mother when he trips. How is he ‘not’ a child? If you want him to start learning these dark schemes and political maneuvers now, I simply won’t have it.”
He packed up the empty paper bundle, wiped his fingertips with a handkerchief, and habitually smoothed back the hair at his temples; only to unexpectedly pull out a large handful of strands. Seeing them lying in his palm was a startling sight.
Both of them froze for a moment. Xie Jing clicked his tongue. “I really have been exhausted lately; so much is falling out.”
Lu Lingcong brushed the strands from Xie Jing’s palm onto the floor and picked up the conversation as if nothing had happened. “He simply isn’t willing to grow up in front of you; I thought you realized that.”
Xie Jing sat down beside him at the desk while listening as he spoke slowly. “Before you left, didn’t you instruct Uncle Zhou to burn all traces of your handwriting?”
Back then, Lu Shuqing hadn’t understood the deep significance of that action, nor did he realize that his parents hadn’t truly broken up, so he had picked a fight with Lu Lingcong. After the cold war ended, father and son were still putting up fronts and hadn’t quite returned to their usual heart-to-heart talks. One day, while Lu Lingcong was sitting beside him to accompany his studies, they happened to be reading Cai Yan’s [Poem of Indignation]. “I didn’t dare say a word, but Qing’er remained perfectly composed, not a trace of disturbance on his face as he recited, ‘People say that my mother must depart, how could there ever be a time of return again…’”
Xie Jing felt a chill run through him, and in his heart, he silently completed the lines: Mother was always kind and compassionate; why is she now so heartless? I have not yet reached adulthood, so why does she not care for me or think of me?
After Lu Shuqing finished reading, he looked up. Lu Lingcong was speechless for a long while before finally asking him, “Do you blame your mother for not taking you with him?”
“I was the one who told Mother not to take me,” Lu Shuqing said, mentioning this to his father for the first time. “Taking me on the road would have been far more dangerous than if Mother and Ningning traveled alone. Besides, without me in Jinling, Grandmother and Aunt would have become the Prime Minister’s Mansion’s primary choices for exerting leverage over Father. I couldn’t push them into the eye of the storm.”
Seeing his son’s look of long-held deliberation, Lu Lingcong was struck dumb. “What if your mother had left and never been heard from again? What if there truly was no time of return…”
Lu Shuqing gazed blankly at him. “Father hasn’t had news of Mother either, have you? If he and Sister could live safely and soundly, I would accept never seeing them again for the rest of my life. If, if they…”
He couldn’t continue; the rest of the words choked in his throat. Jolted to the core, Lu Lingcong pulled his eldest son into his arms. Lu Shuqing buried his face in his father’s shoulder and said muffledly, “I thought about the worst-case scenario long ago. I thought about what I should do if Mother were gone a long time ago.”
After hearing this, Xie Jing remained silent for a good while before suddenly saying, “…But I never thought about it.”
He propped his arms on his knees and covered his face, his voice muffled coming through his fingers. “I never thought about what I would do if I didn’t have my children.”
His father and brother had instructed him “not to seek revenge,” in prison and it wasn’t that Xie Jing hadn’t listened. He understood perfectly well that his family’s sacrifice was not intended for him to foolishly throw another life away. But even so, as the saying goes: what is meant to be in one’s life will eventually come to pass.
To put it bluntly, doing this now was neither for the deceased nor for themselves. When a person dies, their lamp is extinguished; no matter how upright and unblemished their reputation may be, it can never bring back a living loved one. As for himself, Xie Jing had grown accustomed to the twisting and tearing of the power struggle over these years. Even if he truly had to spend the rest of his life living cautiously and scrambling for survival, he would have accepted that fate.
But they were not just themselves. They were parents. To ensure that Lu Shuqing and Lu Shuning would never again have to endure the separation of flesh and blood and would not have to live in terror of a precarious future, this task had to be done.
“Even if Qing’er is sensible and can understand these ruses and plots, it is merely understanding. He is nowhere near ready to leave the protection of his parents and test his own wings.”
Xie Jing spread his palms, speaking somewhat incoherently: “My children cannot protect themselves yet. My daughter is still so small! How long has she even been in this world? How many days and nights was she separated from me? If anything; even the slightest thing, happened to them, I… I—”
Lu Lingcong softly finished the sentence for him: “How could I go on living?”
They looked at each other, knowing deeply that those were no idle words.
Lu Lingcong suddenly recalled a distant scene from years ago. On the day Lu Shuqing was abducted by Ding Yu, the whole family had kept watch in the main hall of the Prince’s Mansion all night. At that time, he thought that if anything happened to Lu Shuqing, it would be the end for him and Xie Jing.
At this moment, the feeling was only more intense. If any harm befell their children, it wouldn’t just be that the couple couldn’t stay together as if nothing had happened; neither he nor Xie Jing would have a hope of a decent life for the rest of their days. They would either go mad or die.
“The only consolation is that the Wu family and Uncle are trustworthy; at least a secure backup plan has been arranged.” Xie Jing sighed.
Lu Lingcong voiced what was in his heart: “But I haven’t seen them grow into adulthood yet. I’m not resigned to dying.”
The list found among Empress Dowager Xiao’s personal effects was still vivid in their minds. To this day, they did not know the fates of those hundred-plus “weaknesses” on the list, nor did they dare to imagine them.
Xie Jing unconsciously cracked his knuckles and said, “Before Qing’er was even born, I quietly schemed and made arrangements for him by fully believing that I had thought enough and looked far enough ahead. Looking at the situation we face today, I resent myself for muddling through and bringing them into this turbid world in the first place.”
Lu Lingcong smiled. “By that logic, if we were to trace it to the root and nip it in the bud, you and I should never have met that once in the palace when we were children.”
Xie Jing turned his face to gaze at him. “That meeting was in the deep winter of the eleventh year of Jianning, just before the New Year.”
In Yongzhou, he often dreamed of the Eternal Alley of Taichu Palace. In the dream, time and again, he would make his way along that endlessly stretching stone-paved road with no visible end. He would be hurrying to bid farewell to his father and elder brother, hurrying to take his children to Shenlong Hall for court greetings, hurrying to attend the Qionglin Banquet for newly ranked jinshi scholars; and, of course, in childhood, hurrying behind his mother to the Western Palace for an audience, where he first met Lu Lingcong.
In the winter of the eleventh year of Jianning, Xie Jing stayed in Jinling for over a month and experienced many things that counted as “adventures” in his young life. He met Lady Yao, who was then still unmarried and visiting with her elders; he was led by Xie Yan to Confucius Temple to burn incense and pray for his studies; he even did a good deed by helping a wife he chanced upon in the street deliver a message to her husband, from whom she was struggling to reunite… All of these things, including his chance encounter with Lu Lingcong, had become blurred and faded with time.
The eight-year-old Xie Jing, who had once begged his mother to take him into the palace, could never have imagined that one day he would become part of it himself—nor that Taichu Palace would go on to consume his family, separate him from the one he loved, and then, like a frog slowly boiled in warm water, take control of his children as well.
This palace complex had clearly always been a monster, and his fate had been sealed from that very moment.
Just as there was nothing left for them to say to each other, a report suddenly sounded from outside the hall. Recognizing the voice, it turned out to be one of the subordinates who often carried letters for them in the Xuanshi.
He had no time to explain why he had taken the risk of coming directly to the government hall. He simply handed over a folded note and said in a low voice, “It’s a personal letter from He Gao, the Prefect of Yongzhou; sent on urgent courier duty. He says there is a matter of great importance that must be confirmed with the Princess Consort.”
Xie Jing and Lu Lingcong exchanged a look before hurriedly tearing the letter open. He Gao’s wording was surprisingly brief, merely asking if the enclosed manuscript was a letter written by Xie Jing to Lu Lingzhen.
Sure enough, another thin sheet of paper was tucked inside. Xie Jing took it out and gave it a single glance; instantly, his scalp went numb. The handwriting was, once again, that “Quxia Style” capable of passing for the genuine article—just like the note that had once exposed the whereabouts of the true imperial edict.
He shook his head and murmured, “I didn’t write this… I never wrote this.”
Lu Lingcong focused on the content of the manuscript. After reading intently for a moment, he suddenly asked in a chilling voice, “Was this delivered into the Eldest Princess’s hands?”
The subordinate nodded and explained, “At the same time Lord He sent men to verify the authenticity of this writing with the Princess Consort, he also immediately dispatched scouts to pursue the Eldest Princess and the Hewei, who have already begun their journey back to the capital.”
Lu Lingcong’s brow was now completely knit in a frown. “Did they catch up?”
The subordinate hesitated. “This humble one does not know. From Yongzhou… no news has yet been sent back.”
