The Muddy Water Clears

Puyi wrote "yes" for fourteen years, while he carved "no" into his pocket watch for fourteen years. Uya Yongjin, a down-and-out young master of the Plain Red Banner, followed Puyi to the puppet state of Manchukuo and secured a sinecure managing furnishings and signing grain requisitions. Others thought he was just muddling along, but in every scheme he secretly sabotaged the Japanese—in the Tongde Hall, a Kwantung Army colonel knelt and burst a frozen pear; in the commercial port, grain requisition forms were switched with bean cake columns; Manchu pinyin was secretly engraved on the watch cover, and for fourteen years not a single secret account was missed. Yoshioka flipped the watch but couldn't read Manchu; Ono, greedy for credit, was fed false intelligence by him; Puyi sat on the commode approving memorials and drew ten thousand "yes"es, finally sighing at him: "You're cleaner than this palace." In 1945, the Soviets came. He handed over the pocket watch and became Old Yong, selling cigarettes on the streets of Xinjing. Three years later, Fang Xue returned in a gray cadre uniform, saying the Manchu script had been deciphered, the defense map had been useful, and the original had entered the archives. In the winter of 1948, the amnesty list was read over the broadcast, and Puyi was first. Squatting in front of his cigarette stall, he couldn't even pick up a cigarette and said: "He wrote 'yes' for fourteen years; it's time to write a 'no'." The great devil of the world isn't really a devil—he's the line of ink on the Japanese ledger that can't be erased. The muddy water has cleared, the loach has turned over, basking in the sun, the living have returned. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: The Muddy Water Clears — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠