In the dead of night, on the wilderness outside Baishui Pass, the sound of war drums abruptly tore through the howling wind.
“Boom—boom—boom!!!”
The drumming was not particularly rapid, yet it carried a rhythm that made one’s heart tighten. At regular intervals, it came from the outskirts of Dasheng’s Right Army camp. Combined with the occasional flare of torches and several deliberately prolonged blasts of the horn, it kept the nerves of Baishui Pass’s defenders stretched taut as bowstrings.
Inside the Right Army’s main tent, Pei Yi stood before a rough wooden sand table, clad in iron armor. As a general who had guarded the northern frontier for many years, his gaze was as sharp as an eagle’s.
“General Pei, the second wave of cavalry sent out to harass them at night has returned.”
A deputy general lifted the tent flap and entered, bringing with him the chill of the night dew. “There are twice as many torches on Baishui Pass’s walls now, but they still haven’t fired a single arrow. They haven’t even made a move at the city gates.”
Pei Yi gently rubbed the wooden carving representing Baishui Pass with his rough fingertips. He was not anxious in the slightest. In fact, the corner of his mouth curled into a faint smile.
“Too steady.”
The deputy general was puzzled. “They’re defending a strategic position. Isn’t it only natural for them to remain steady?”
“It would have been natural before. Now, it’s deliberate.”
Pei Yi raised his head and pointed to several markers along the outer perimeter. “For the past month, we’ve been making a great show of constructing siege engines, while our scouts have been moving around right under their noses every day. In the past, their patrols rode out of the pass to see what we were doing. But over the last two days, the number of their patrols has increased, and yet they only circle within the range of their own city walls.”
A flicker passed through Pei Yi’s eyes as he exposed the crux of the matter in a single sentence.
“Their patrols are no longer trying to see what we’re doing. They’re trying to make sure we see them. They’re following the rules so precisely that it’s as though they’ve memorized their military orders.”
“Does the general mean that the Northern Di commander has ordered them to hold the pass at all costs?”
“More than that.”
Pei Yi walked over to the weapon rack, casually drew a long saber, and slowly wiped it with a cloth.
“Yesterday, I deliberately had the engineers push a siege ladder cart forward another two hundred paces, bringing it dangerously close to their defenses. Half a month ago, the defenders of Baishui Pass would have sent light cavalry out to burn it immediately. But yesterday, they merely added three more rows of crossbowmen to the city walls.”
“He Lian Cang is afraid of something.” Pei Yi slid the saber back into its sheath with a crisp metallic ring. “He isn’t afraid that we’ll really attack Baishui Pass. He’s afraid that the people inside Baishui Pass will make a move.”
Baishui Pass had now become a shield nailed firmly in place.
He Lian Cang wanted that shield to remain there, drawing all of Dasheng’s attention and troops toward it.
As they were speaking, a personal guard hurried in and handed over an urgent secret letter.
“General, a message has arrived from the central army at Yan Guoyuan. Northern Di spies poisoned the water upstream, and an outbreak of illness has struck the central army camp. Several hundred men are suffering from vomiting and diarrhea, and their combat strength has been severely weakened.”
The deputy general was shocked. “Something has happened to the central army? Should we return immediately to reinforce them?”
“What are you panicking for?”
Pei Yi merely glanced at the letter before tossing it into the brazier. He watched the flames devour the paper, a knowing smile appearing in his eyes.
“If several hundred men had truly collapsed at once, the central army would be desperately short of manpower and medicine right now. How would they have the spare capacity to let this sort of news travel all the way to us without a hitch? Besides, Military Adviser Su is with His Highness. The central army has always been extremely strict about epidemic prevention and water quality. How could they allow an outbreak to spread to this extent?”
“Does the general mean… the message is false?”
“The water contamination is probably real, and a few men falling ill is probably real, too,” Pei Yi replied calmly. “But as for the ‘several hundred’ being talked about outside… it isn’t the illness that’s false. Someone wants this news itself to become a battlefield. Since the rumor has made its way all the way to our ears, it means His Highness has already seized upon the situation and is luring He Lian Cang into taking the bait.”
Pei Yi traced the terrain on the sand table with his fingertip, moving from Yan Guoyuan past Duanyun Fortress before finally stopping at Baishui Pass. His gaze grew utterly steely.
“If He Lian Cang insists on using Baishui Pass as a shield, then we’ll turn that shield into a massive boulder that they can never afford to put down.”
Pei Yi issued his orders in a deep voice.
“First, construction of the siege engines must continue without interruption. Tomorrow, push two more trebuchets to the front lines and let them get a good look.
“Next, add two more variations to the nighttime drumming and horn signals. Mix up all the timings and directions. I want the defenders of Baishui Pass to be unable to close their eyes even for a moment.
“Finally, send light cavalry to strike at the least conspicuous supply convoys on their outskirts. Don’t make a big show of it. Raid them once every three days, targeting only the carts carrying timber and stone. We don’t need to wipe them out. Take just one or two carts from the outermost part of the convoy, then let the rest return to the city.”
The deputy general’s eyes lit up. “Take only a small portion, ensuring they lose something every time while forcing them to send more men to protect their supplies?”
“Exactly.”
Pei Yi’s gaze blazed. “I want the first thing the commander of Baishui Pass thinks about every morning to be, ‘Will Dasheng attack the city today?’ And when he closes his eyes each night, the last thought in his mind should be, ‘Will Dasheng launch a night raid tonight?’
“When a fortified city begins exhausting itself over a siege that might never happen, that’s when our opportunity arrives.”
The following morning.
Dense fog shrouded the towering walls of Baishui Pass.
In front of Dasheng’s Right Army formation, three enormous siege engines loomed through the mist like silent beasts.
Just then, a deep, grinding rumble shattered the morning’s stillness.
The heavy city gate of Baishui Pass, which had remained tightly shut for days, slowly opened inward, revealing a gap two zhang wide.
A hundred or so elite Northern Di cavalrymen filed out through the opening.
They did not immediately charge. Instead, they formed ranks beyond the moat, their forest of spears pointed directly at Dasheng’s camp.
“General!” The deputy general stood on the watchtower, gripping the back of his bow. “They can’t hold back any longer. They’re coming out to test us!”
Pei Yi stood at the front of the formation in full armor. Watching the provocative cavalry in the distance, he raised a hand coldly.
“No rush.”
The commander defending Baishui Pass was no fool.
He was using these hundred cavalrymen to test Pei Yi’s hand: Do you actually dare to attack?
Pei Yi neither ordered the entire army to advance nor retreated a single step.
He took a heavy bow from a nearby personal guard and drew an unbarbed heavy arrow from the quiver. Then, riding alone, he advanced several dozen paces before stopping just beyond the point where the opposing archers could threaten him, but not necessarily aim at him with certainty.
Pei Yi raised his bow and nocked the arrow, drawing the bowstring into a full moon.
The heavy bow required considerable strength to draw, but Pei Yi was stronger than most men. His usual weapon was an eighteen-jin great spear, so pulling this bow was hardly a challenge.
Whoosh!
The heavy arrow tore through the morning fog with a piercing whistle before embedding itself deep in the muddy ground less than three paces in front of the Northern Di cavalry formation. The arrow shaft quivered violently in the wind.
The Northern Di warhorses were startled, causing a brief commotion among the riders.
The Northern Di knew the name of Prince Su, but Pei Yi’s reputation was equally renowned among them. The deeds of this general, who had guarded the northern frontier for years, were still fresh in their minds.
Seated on his horse, Pei Yi did not draw a second arrow. Instead, he gathered his strength and called across the opposing formation, his voice booming like a great bell.
“Go back and tell your commander! Now that the gates are open, don’t be in such a hurry to close them. Once I’ve pushed my siege ladders up to your walls, I’ll personally come inside and have a drink with your commander!
“But for now—don’t bring these few men out here to die. What I want is this pass, not a handful of worthless heads!”
His words were impossible to decipher as either bluff or truth, and utterly arrogant.
The Northern Di cavalry commander’s face turned ashen. He stared at the unbarbed arrow in the ground, then glanced at Dasheng’s siege positions, barely visible through the fog behind him. In the end, he gritted his teeth and yanked the reins.
“Withdraw!”
The hundred cavalrymen slowly retreated into the city.
The heavy gate groaned again with a harsh grinding sound before closing tightly, leaving not the slightest gap.
The deputy general let out a long breath. His eyes were filled with admiration as he looked at Pei Yi.
“Brilliant, General. That single arrow must have tormented them more than killing a hundred of their men would have.”
“This is the way of a standoff.”
Pei Yi turned his horse around and looked at Baishui Pass, which had once again retreated into its shell like a tortoise. A cold smile flickered in his eyes.
“Now that the gates are shut, the strings in their hearts are drawn even tighter.”
Over the following days, not even half of Baishui Pass’s gates opened again.
The number of torches on the city walls multiplied several times over. Night patrols were relieved one after another without pause, crossbowmen dared not leave their positions behind the battlements, and cartload after cartload of timber was hauled up to the walls for repairs.
Pei Yi never launched another genuine large-scale assault. Yet every day at Baishui Pass felt like a grueling battle that would never end, but could erupt at any moment.
◇◆◇◆◇
Xiao Ying had been at the Imperial Clan Court for several days. On the surface, he appeared carefree and unserious, but in reality, he had already quietly taken stock of the entire place, from its most obvious features to its hidden intricacies.
On the first day, he had behaved himself, consulting only a few records concerning the imperial harem and several old cases while familiarizing himself with the locations of the court’s various storerooms.
By the following day, he had memorized precisely where the imperial genealogies were kept, where the records of imperial consorts’ appointments and deaths were stored, which old archives from the previous emperors required the Director of the Imperial Clan Court’s approval before they could be viewed, which documents were genuinely sealed, and which were merely “forbidden by the rules” but could, in practice, be accessed with a little silver.
He recorded the names of every official, great and small, along with their habits and personalities, using the information as a reference for future plans.
He developed a method of investigation that was entirely his own.
Rather than searching for a single murderer, he pieced together the causes and dates of death of successive generations of imperial princes’ birth mothers, then compared them with the subsequent rise and fall of their maternal clans.
In which years had a certain prince just begun to distinguish himself, only for his maternal clan to suddenly lose its noble title, have its officials dismissed, or suffer confiscation of its property on charges of embezzlement or rebellion?
After which princes had died unexpectedly did their once-powerful maternal relatives wither like trees drained of water, swiftly vanishing from the political stage?
And in certain seemingly unrelated cases involving the sudden deaths of imperial consorts, were the same groups of imperial physicians and palace attendants somehow involved?
The more he organized the records, the more a chill crept up Xiao Ying’s spine.
He had not found a specific name, nor had he uncovered any concrete evidence. Yet he had indeed discovered the traces of an invisible hand.
Someone had been acting with extraordinary patience and methodical precision over the course of centuries, ruthlessly “pruning” the bloodlines and maternal clans surrounding the imperial family.
To find the earliest source of this hand, Xiao Ying followed the genealogies and old archives further and further back.
He went all the way to the prosperous Dasheng eras of four and even five hundred years ago, and eventually to the founding reign of the Great Ancestor, six hundred years in the past.
But deep within this seemingly bottomless sea of old documents, he had yet to find the origin of the “pruning.” Instead, he stumbled upon another anomaly, one that sent a chill down his spine.
There were scattered, inconspicuous records hidden in supplementary notes and miscellaneous accounts:
“In the first year of the Great Ancestor’s reign, the Su clan presented an unusual device. The emperor ordered the Ministry of Works to reproduce it, but none could master its principles. The Su clan stated that the device was not the product of ordinary craftsmanship.”
“In the second year, the Su clan presented a new method of locust control and instruments for measurement…”
At first, Xiao Ying assumed these were simply examples of ingenious inventions from the founding era whose techniques had since been lost.
But when he connected all the scattered records, he discovered a glaring contradiction.
Six hundred years ago, during the early years of Dasheng, a remarkable number of objects and methods had appeared that simply did not conform to the craftsmanship or common understanding of the time.
Moreover, none of them had left behind any lasting tradition in later generations.
Some had been unsuccessfully reproduced by craftsmen. Others had inexplicably disappeared. A few were mentioned only in vague historical notes, with statements such as “so-and-so witnessed it,” and nothing more.
If so many extraordinary devices and revolutionary methods had truly existed, why had not a single one survived into later generations?
Pursuing this question, Xiao Ying turned his attention to the “Golden Age” of five hundred years ago, where he discovered a remarkably similar pattern.
It was there that he finally noticed two surnames that appeared repeatedly, intertwined as closely as twin-born siblings: the Su clan and the Sheng clan.
When his gaze fell upon the characters “Su clan,” his fingertips paused almost imperceptibly.
The Su clan.
He thought of the physician serving with the northern army.
That mysterious man had proposed methods for preventing and treating epidemics and had since gained considerable renown along the northern frontier. He had accompanied Prince Su northward and transitioned from physician to military adviser.
Then there was the medical sect he had heard of, the Guichen Medical Sect.
It was an obscure medical organization that supplied special medicines and unusual equipment exclusively to the Tingxue Pavilion of Prince Su’s residence, doing so discreetly and never readily releasing such things to outsiders.
At the time, Xiao Ying had assumed it was some secretive and unorthodox school behind Military Adviser Su, one that preferred to remain hidden from public view.
But now…
He lowered his head to look at the words “Su clan” in the six-hundred-year-old records, his brows drawing together slightly.
The same surname?
Or merely a coincidence?
The Su clan submitted blueprints for agricultural tools, while the Sheng clan oversaw the expansion of commercial routes.
Physicians from the Su clan entered the palace to present medical prescriptions, while the Sheng clan managed the transportation of medicinal materials throughout the empire.
The Su clan proposed new systems, while the Sheng clan administered regional tax revenues and money houses.
As Xiao Ying studied these records, his gaze gradually grew still.
The Su clan controlled knowledge and technology, while the Sheng clan controlled distribution, commerce, and finances.
Five hundred years ago, these two families had been like two enormous gears driving the entire machinery of Dasheng’s golden age.
He asked no further questions. He simply committed the information worth remembering to memory.
Late that night, after returning to his residence, Xiao Ying sat before a table covered with scattered documents and picked up his brush. On a blank sheet of rice paper, he drew an extremely simple table.
He listed “Era,” “Su Clan,” “Sheng Clan,” “Northern Frontier,” “Imperial Family Incidents,” and “Anomalous Records and Unusual Methods” in separate columns.
When he finished the final stroke, the tip of his brush pressed heavily against the paper, spreading a blot of ink.
In the first half of the table, the Su and Sheng clans appeared frequently throughout the golden ages, helping propel the empire to the height of its power.
But four hundred years ago, the records of the Su clan came to an abrupt halt.
At the end of the table, the Sheng clan remained as powerful as ever, while the Su clan had become an unspeakable blank in the archives.
Vast quantities of documents showed severe gaps and omissions dating from that period.
Xiao Ying stared at the empty space, his expression growing increasingly somber.
For the first time, a dangerous thought surfaced in his mind, one capable of overturning the entire history of Dasheng.
“The Su family didn’t simply disappear.”
“Someone… made them disappear. Someone even tampered with the traces of their very existence.”
He had been investigating the “pruners,” yet had unexpectedly laid his hands on the deepest roots of this great tree—roots that had rotted and been hollowed out long ago.
Where had the missing documents gone?
As Xiao Ying recalled his explorations of the Imperial Clan Court over the past few days, he suddenly remembered an absurd detail.
There was precisely one room in the entire Imperial Clan Court about which no two people gave the same explanation.
The room lay in an inconspicuous corner at the very back of the compound, sealed off by a thick, ancient ironwood door. A large copper lock, mottled with rust, hung from it.
When he had made discreet inquiries, the answers had varied.
An ordinary clerk said, “That room? I think it’s always been empty.”
The official in charge of the storerooms looked away. “All I know is that the key isn’t kept at the Imperial Clan Court.”
An elderly clerk spoke evasively. “I heard they used to keep things in there, but everything was moved out later.”
Even a senior member of the imperial clan had changed color at the question.
“Your Highness, you’d be better off not asking about that place.”
Why would a room within the Imperial Clan Court be so mysterious that even those responsible for its management could not agree on whether it was empty, forbidden, or once used to store something?
Perhaps the missing history, along with the deepest secrets the imperial family of Dasheng least wanted anyone to discover, had once been—or still was—hidden behind that door.
The following afternoon.
With his usual frivolous smile, Xiao Ying sauntered over to Prince Gong, Xiao Yi, the Director of the Imperial Clan Court.
He settled down leisurely and spoke with a grin.
“Imperial Uncle, I’ve more or less familiarized myself with all the rooms in the Imperial Clan Court over the past few days. There’s only one at the back that everyone seems to describe differently. What exactly is that room for?”
Prince Gong’s hand paused slightly as he turned the pages of a register. He raised his eyes to look at this nephew who seemed so unconcerned with everything.
The two stared at each other for a moment. The study was so quiet that the only sound was the dripping of water from the clepsydra.
Prince Gong set down the register. His tone was utterly calm, yet carried a weight that was difficult to detect.
“You’ve found your way there.”
It was not a question, but a statement.
The smile remained on Xiao Ying’s lips. “Imperial Uncle knows about that room?”
“I know it exists.”
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know.”
Xiao Ying was momentarily taken aback. He dropped his carefree façade.
“Even you don’t know, Imperial Uncle?”
Prince Gong looked at him. In those eyes, which had witnessed every storm that had swept through the imperial family, lay a profound inscrutability.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t say I didn’t.”
“Then why can’t anyone enter?”
“Because of the rules.”
“Whose rules? Which former emperor left them behind?”
Prince Gong fell silent for a moment before slowly uttering a few words.
“That person from long ago.”
He did not give the emperor’s posthumous title.
Instead, he referred to him only as “that person from long ago.” The deliberate evasion made Xiao Ying immediately commit the detail to memory.
Xiao Ying did not press him further.
From his imperial uncle’s eyes, he understood something.
Prince Gong knew the room existed, and he knew it had once been important enough that people were not supposed to ask about it. But perhaps he genuinely had no idea what it contained now.
Perhaps it was a historical black hole that even successive Directors of the Imperial Clan Court had dared not touch.
“Since Imperial Uncle doesn’t know, then your nephew won’t ask any further.”
Prince Gong slowly closed the register beside him. His gaze settled on the faded ink characters on its cover, and his voice dropped so low that it sounded almost like he was speaking to himself.
“You’ve read quite a few old records over the past several days. Have you paid attention to the handwriting?”
Xiao Ying’s eyes flickered slightly. “The handwriting?”
“The ink in the Imperial Clan Court varies in darkness. Some documents are written in the neat, formal style of the Hanlin scholars; others in hurried cursive.” Prince Gong’s withered fingers gently brushed the cover. “You can see whose hand put the brush to paper, but you cannot see whose hand was pressing down on the one holding it.”
The smile at the corners of Xiao Ying’s mouth remained, but it gradually faded.
“You think that by entering the Imperial Clan Court, you’re simply opening the old accounts of your ancestors and walking across the bricks of your own home.”
Prince Gong raised his eyes. His expression was undisturbed, yet his gaze carried the chill of deep winter.
“But the one thing the Imperial Clan Court has never lacked is plausibility. Dying of illness is plausible. An accident is plausible. A missing page in a file is plausible.”
“Imperial Uncle, I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Good. Not understanding can sometimes be what keeps you alive.”
Prince Gong reopened the register and no longer looked at him.
“There are some shelves whose dust you must not wipe away. Do that, and the dust will blind your own eyes. My eyes have been blind for decades, which is why I’m still sitting here, drawing breath.”
He turned a page. The paper made a dry, raspy sound.
“Some doors remain closed not because there’s something inside. It’s because everyone who knows why they’re closed understands one thing… those who insist on pushing them open usually end up being locked inside.”
As Xiao Ying looked at this imperial uncle who never involved himself in court affairs and seemed almost like a withered tree, an indescribable chill suddenly ran up his spine.
He understood.
Prince Gong did not simply lack knowledge. He dared not know.
His words were not a warning that something dangerous lay behind the door. They were a warning that the Imperial Clan Court had never been a safe haven.
Every brush that wrote within these walls was not necessarily held by the person who appeared to wield it.
Xiao Ying drew a breath and forced his usual unserious smile back onto his face.
“Imperial Uncle, you make everything sound so mysterious. Your nephew can’t make heads or tails of it.”
For the first time in front of Prince Gong, he set aside some of his habitual flippancy. His tone remained casual, but his gaze had grown more solemn.
“Your nephew went to sleep, only to wake up and discover that someone had set fire to his backyard. The flames have already reached the foot of the wall. Am I supposed to pretend I can’t smell the smoke and simply go back to sleep?”
Then he put his smile back on and stretched lazily.
“Still, I was only asking out of curiosity. The old records concerning the imperial harem are much more interesting anyway. I won’t disturb you any longer, Imperial Uncle.”
He turned and left, his steps still light and carefree.
But the moment he rounded the corridor and moved completely out of Prince Gong’s sight, the coldness in Xiao Ying’s eyes became unmistakable.
He suddenly thought of the old cases he had organized over the past few days.
Those people had died for plausible reasons.
Those cases had been closed in entirely plausible ways.
The reasons for the demotion and reassignment of maternal clans had all been impeccable.
But when hundreds of years of “plausibility” were piled on top of one another, they formed something suffocatingly implausible.
Xiao Ying’s steps slowed for a moment.
A question suddenly occurred to him, one that seemed absurd yet sent a shudder through him.
What if the “pruners” he was searching for and the hand that had erased all traces of the Su clan four hundred years ago were, in fact, one and the same?
What if the force that remained was not a group of ancient monsters who had lived for four hundred years, but a network whose members had been replaced over and over again, a network that had already sunk its roots deep into the very lifeblood of Dasheng?
What if Military Adviser Su and the Guichen Medical Sect were merely surviving strands of that network, not yet completely strangled?
He suddenly remembered Prince Gong’s veiled warning.
You can see whose hand put the brush to paper, but you cannot see whose hand was pressing down on the one holding it.
Xiao Ying stopped in the shadows of the corridor and gazed toward the wooden door deep within the Imperial Clan Court, the door that had remained firmly shut.
Until today, he had believed that what lay behind it was a piece of history that someone had erased.
Now, he suddenly felt that perhaps the truly terrifying thing was not what the door concealed at all.
It was how many people, within this vast Imperial Clan Court—or even throughout the entire imperial capital—knew that the door must never be opened, and whom they were all protecting by guarding its secret.
Tomorrow, he would enter the Imperial Clan Court again.
The clerks would still smile and bow to him. The palace attendants would still serve him hot tea. The officials in charge would still carry out their duties according to the rules. Prince Gong would remain the same taciturn man he had always been.
But Xiao Ying knew that nothing was the same anymore.
He could no longer look at these people and see them simply as “imperial relatives” and “servants of the royal household.”
Once he had peeled away the illusion called “safety,” what he saw was an enormous, invisible spiderweb.
And he had only just realized that he was standing right at its center.