The north wind howled, sweeping up a blizzard of snowflakes in a wild, chaotic dance.
The heavy boots of the imperial guards struck the hard bluestone pavement with a sound like clashing iron, shattering the twilight gloom.
At the end of the street, crowds of common folk pressed in from both sides, shoulder to shoulder, murmuring in disbelief until their voices rose into a swelling uproar.
Loyal ministers, valiant generals—men who had defended the realm—now condemned, their entire household seized this very day.
The people wavered between outrage and doubt. Some read aloud the imperial edict on yellow paper, spitting curses; others shouted in protest, refusing to believe. Yet all were drowned out by the shrill cry of the wind and the thunder of hooves.
The guards split into two columns and encircled the residence at a run. The gates crashed open, and soldiers fierce as wolves and tigers stormed inside.
The commander let out a long cry, raised his hand, and with a metallic clang gave the order.
The mansion he had once entered with reverence was, in an instant, reduced to chaos.
Cries, shouts, screams, the pounding of feet—all tangled with the roar of the storm, until the whole scene dissolved into turmoil. And then it vanished into the dusk.
Midwinter. The snow still fell thick and heavy.
By imperial decree, every male of the Xie clan had been executed.
The women and children were sentenced to exile at the frontier, consigned to military servitude. That very day, they were transferred from the city prison to Tiekan Temple’s outer gaol—the matter settled, the dust laid to rest.
Young and old alike, women and children, were bound hand to hand with a long hemp rope, driven in a line down the main street.
Gu Wan’s embroidered shoes, thin-soled, pressed against the frozen ground. A chill shot up from her feet into her very core, making her shiver uncontrollably.
The children fared even worse, sobbing and wailing. From the eldest sister-in-law to the third, each clutched her child tightly, wiping away tears, their voices breaking in the wind: “Don’t cry, little one. If you cry more, your face will chap… and it will hurt even worse.”
It would only hurt more later.
Gu Wan saw her third sister-in-law suddenly set her child down. With desperate strength, she tore at the rope, pulled free, and dragged the child toward the corner of the street.
“Father! Mother! Save us—save Wan’er, save Wan’er!”
The storm roared, muffling her cries. Through the blur of snow she glimpsed a middle-aged couple, their hair streaked with silver, weeping as well. The woman covered her mouth and fell to her knees. Snatches of broken words carried on the wind:
“Your parents can do nothing…”
“The imperial decree… the sentence is passed…”
“The case was overseen by Commander Liang Mingjing…”
No more could be heard.
For half a month, the capital had been gripped by terror. Families dragged into the case were stripped of titles, their homes confiscated, their men thrown into prison. The panic spread even to the markets. Now, households along the street dared not open their shutters. The long avenue lay in silence, broken only by the howl of the storm. That her sister-in-law’s family had braved the risk to bid farewell was already a rare act of courage.
The bailiffs stood watching for a moment, then stepped forward to wrench them apart.
The cries echoed down the street, but soon were swallowed by the wind and snow. Bound together by the long rope, stumbling step by step, the prisoners were driven to the outer gaol of Tiekan Temple. With a creak, the doors swung open, and they were cast inside.
Tiekan Temple’s outer prison lay east of Yun’gang’s temple, rebuilt from the old drill grounds of the Eagle Guard. Rows of half-decayed barracks, honeycombed like a beehive, now served as cells. At least there were walls and brick beds—cold, but enough to keep out the wind and snow.
Perhaps out of some small mercy, the young bailiff had left behind a tattered curtain in their cell. Gu Wan pulled it down, shook the dust from it, and after a moment’s thought, sighed. She tore it in two: one half she draped over her mother-in-law, Madam Xun, already past fifty; the other she handed to her third sister-in-law, Madam Zhang, who held her two-year-old daughter.
“Wrap Niuniu in this.”
She herself was freezing, but as the youngest, she could not bring herself to take it.
Such was their lot now.
The Xie clan had been loyal and upright for generations, producing ministers and generals. Descendants of the founding hero Xie Guanshan, ennobled as Marquis Zhongyong, their title had passed down without break.
The original self knew that in every generation, the Xie family had lived up to the title of Zhongyong.
In this generation, the patriarch Xie Xinzhong had guarded the frontier for thirty years. Time and again, he had averted disasters from beyond the borders, and within the realm he had marched a thousand miles to aid the throne, quelling the “Miliang Rebellion” that had swept across the empire ten years before. He saved the dynasty, protected the people, and his military achievements were resplendent. In the end, the Ministry of War memorialized his deeds, and he was elevated to Duke Zhongyong.
The second uncle of the Xie clan had died in battle at the frontier, as had the third. Now the eldest and second sons had followed their father into service, defending both the borderlands and the imperial capital for more than a decade. The third son had chosen the civil path, winning first place in the imperial examinations, studying under the upright Minister Pei, and had just been appointed as a junior scholar. He was the only one of the Xie family to serve in the civil ranks. That very night, his father had taken him to the ancestral hall, where he knelt before the forebears. There, he was sternly admonished: never to idle in office, never to be corrupt or negligent. As an official, he must devote himself wholly to the people.
Xie Sanlang bowed his head to the floor and solemnly vowed his obedience.
But in the blink of an eye, everything collapsed.
In his later years, the emperor had grown fond of elixirs. Midyear, he suddenly fell ill during court, and thereafter lay bedridden for months. This sparked open and hidden struggles among the princes and their factions, and the capital was thrown into turmoil.
The Xie family had always been loyal to the throne. The Crown Prince had several times acted as regent, and the Xies had obeyed his commands. Later, at the emperor’s own order, they had supported the heir apparent. Whether by intent or circumstance, they were already branded as belonging to the Crown Prince’s faction.
Now, with the princes rising in concert against the heir, the emperor gravely ill and his attitude uncertain, the Crown Prince was forced to sacrifice his allies.
What had once been obedience to imperial command was now twisted into suspicion. The “Lantian Treason Case” erupted, sweeping through the capital and the frontier alike. Countless officials, civil and military, fell. The prisons of Zhongdu overflowed. And the Xie family stood at the very heart of the storm. Falsely accused, the entire household was thrown into prison. Tried by the Three Judicial Offices, within half a month the verdict was declared: “The evidence is conclusive.”
The emperor, in fury, issued an edict in open court: Duke Zhongyong’s household was to be stripped of rank and confiscated, all male members executed, the rest exiled to the frontier as penal soldiers.
As for how Gu Wan knew all this— It was because the original host had lived it once before. She had been reborn.
Before her eyes, Madam Xun sat dazed on the edge of the brick bed, clutching her little grandson.
Madam Xun was a good woman. She was the daughter of an old friend of the Xie family. Her father and brothers had been captured, her mother and sisters killed, leaving only a lone orphan. Hidden in a haystack, she survived until the young officer Xie Xinzhong found her. The Xie family, remembering past friendship, honored the promise in his letter and arranged a marriage. Xie Xinzhong pitied her hardships and cherished her for more than thirty years, showering her with affection until she grew younger in spirit with each passing year, living a life of quiet happiness. So when her cousin suffered misfortune and traveled a thousand miles to entrust her child, she did not hesitate to take the girl in.
The original host was Princess Yongjia’s granddaughter. But her maternal grandfather had been implicated in the Miliang Rebellion, stripped of rank, and executed along with his household. Her father divorced her mother, who then took her to seek refuge with kin. Fortunately, the relatives were kind. Madam Xun, recalling her own past, treated the girl as her own and never despised her lineage. When she came of age, Madam Xun fulfilled the old promise, marrying her to the fourth son, so she would have lifelong support.
It had only been a childhood betrothal, a playful vow without even an exchanged token. Yet scarcely half a month after the wedding, her husband’s family was dragged into the “Lantian Treason Case.” Their titles stripped, their household confiscated, her father-in-law executed, the family exiled. Her new husband died in prison. She journeyed a thousand miles, only to be forced years later to marry her brother-in-law. By the time the family finally received the imperial decree of pardon from afar, she herself had already reached the time of her “death from illness.”
Good people did not meet good ends.
The Xie family had served the realm for generations, a house of loyal martyrs. Yet every male was branded a traitor, condemned to the blade, heads rolling, the city spitting curses.
There sat the eldest sister-in-law, weeping uncontrollably, beside her twelve-year-old son who stifled his grief to comfort her. At twelve, he already understood. His father was dead; he could not bear to lose his mother too. But on the road to exile, the boy secretly fetched clean water for his family. A bailiff kicked him into the river. He returned shivering, caught a chill, and with no medicine to cure him, died along the way.
The eldest sister-in-law lost her mind.
The second sister-in-law, born to a noble house, was strong and resilient. Yet life as a convict’s wife on the frontier was too cruel. She struggled to hold the family together, until one day her fourteen-year-old daughter vanished. When found, the girl—her beauty just beginning to bloom despite the harsh winds—lay on the old bed in the garrison commander’s side house, her clothes torn, her body bruised, her eyes staring lifelessly.
The commander, a man in his forties with a brutish face and yellow teeth, had a fierce wife who cursed as she dragged the naked girl out the door. With a slam, the gates shut before the frantic second sister-in-law.
That night, the second sister-in-law of the Xie family drew forth the sword she had hidden away. Scaling the wall, she broke into the garrison commander’s courtyard, smashed open the doors, and cut down his entire household—thirteen souls in all. She herself was felled by a storm of arrows.
The third sister-in-law had been born into a noble house, delicate and refined. Yet she sacrificed the most. In that frontier garrison town, where rain fell only a few times a year, many noblewomen preferred to dash their heads against a wall rather than endure its degradations. For pampered ladies of high birth, with skin soft as silk, such places were no different from the brothels of the capital.
A fallen phoenix fares worse than a barnyard hen. The more splendid one’s past, the harsher the fate in such a place. After Commander Zhu Mingyou was replaced, the Xie family’s situation worsened drastically.
In the end, the third sister-in-law’s plight concluded with her being taken into the private residence of the new commander, Yan Shichong.
Even Madam Xun, past fifty yet still well-kept, her skin smooth and her charm intact, was not spared from harassment and lewd advances.
As for the original host—
Outside, food was delivered. A bailiff carried a bucket down the long row of prison cells, slammed down a wooden tray, ladled in a scoop of nameless gruel, then shoved it through the low hatch beneath the bars. A bundle of coarse cakes followed.
A boy of about ten rose at once, dragging the basin and bundle over to set before his mother, his sister-in-law, and his nephew.
This was Xie Xinzhong and Madam Xun’s late-born son, Xie Wulang. Perhaps because his parents were older, or because his birth had been difficult, he seemed slow compared to his brothers. Yet he was brave. In protecting the original host, he was struck on the back of the head and fell unconscious.
The third sister-in-law summoned a physician, who diagnosed him as “locked in stupor”—what we would now call a vegetative state. By then, the original host had grown older, beset by suitors and dangers at every step. Xie Wulang required constant care—feeding, cleaning, turning his body. In the end, the original host remarried. She became the wife of Xie Wulang. It was both forced and chosen.
Five years later, a new emperor ascended the throne. The Lantian case was reopened, and the Xie family’s innocence was finally restored.
When the imperial decree reached the northern frontier, the Xie clan wept bitterly.
Madam Xun, the mother, bought arsenic. First, she fed a cup to her unconscious youngest son lying on the bed. Then, upon the square table, she poured out four more cups.
“Drink,” she said through tears. “Drink, and let us enter the ancestral tomb of the Xie family together.”
The wind and snow lashed outside. Only four women remained of the once-glorious house, their faces weathered beyond recognition. They had at last lived to see the day of vindication. But they would not allow the Xie name to be dragged back to the capital, to suffer the stares and whispers of shame. Better to wash away the stain with their own blood, to be laid clean in their coffins, reunited with their husbands and children.
Gu Wan wiped her face. Step by step, it was nothing but footprints of blood. She had already walked through the hardships of exile once, in the memories of the original host.
As for escape—there was no hope. If it had been possible, the Xie sisters-in-law would long ago have fled with their children. They could sacrifice themselves, but they would rather trade their lives to keep the children alive.
On the road to exile, names were called daily, and the law of collective punishment bound them to their kin.
The bailiffs were seasoned, experienced men. Women and children could never slip away unnoticed.
Even if one or two managed to escape, the rest would suffer grievously. And no member of the Xie family would ever let their kin pay the price for their own flight.
Most crucial of all, the Great Qing court had only last year updated its household registers. The system was strict, and certainly not something a sheltered young woman like Gu Wan could easily manipulate.
Without household registration or travel permits, discovery meant immediate punishment: flogging and exile to the mines as slaves.
If branded a fugitive, execution was carried out on the spot. Exile to the mines meant tattooed faces and ears cut—far worse than military garrisons.
At least in the army settlements, one was registered as a military household: hard labor, forbidden to leave, but granted land to till.
Gu Wan touched the wooden basin, still faintly warm. She sighed, rose, and fetched several old bowls stacked in the corner. She ladled out the thin gruel, handed it to the children, and pressed a cake into each small hand.
“Eat first. Whatever happens, fill your stomach.”
Otherwise, once the food cooled, even the faint warmth would vanish.
Not for herself—but at least for the children.
The Xie family wiped their tears, fed the little ones, and stuffed the coarse cakes into their own mouths.
Gu Wan herself picked up a cake, sat hugging her knees on the pile of straw, and gnawed at it. The half-rotted stalks, long without sunlight, gave off a sour stench, while the chill seeped up from the ground into her bones. She longed to cry out to the heavens—what kind of cursed fate was this?
Still, living was better than dying. After surviving one blow, she cherished life all the more. But the question remained: how to break this deadlock?
Gu Wan thought it over and found no escape better than exile. At least by following the original path, she knew who was friend and who was foe. She touched her disheveled hair.
Yes… Perhaps her only chance of salvation lay with that husband—once famed as the foremost youth of Wuling, brilliant in both pen and sword, celebrated across Chang’an—yet now hovering on the brink of death.
The family’s later tragedies stemmed in part from being left weak and defenseless, only women and children. Had there been even one grown man among them, even exile to a garrison town would have been far less dire. Many families sent to the frontier as military households had managed to settle and survive. So—no matter what—he must not be allowed to die.