She merely stood quietly, looking at Jiang Linming with closed eyes. After a long while, she spoke softly, Thank you for the charcoal. Winter is approaching, and Grandmother is old and cannot endure the cold.
She did not say whether she herself could endure the cold.
A pang of distress clutched Jiang Linming’s heart, and she whispered in a low voice, Your Highness’s regular allocation will be delivered this afternoon. If Your Highness experiences any further shortages, you may send someone to the Records Office with a message.
Xiao Wangshu nodded slightly, saying no more.
The atmosphere suddenly grew somewhat stagnant. Granny Zhang looked at her own princess, then at Jiang Linming, looking as though she wanted to speak but stopped herself.
Jiang Linming knew it was time to take her leave. She had already done enough today; any more, and she would arouse suspicion.
This servant still needs to inspect other areas, so I must take my leave first. She bowed in salute.
Xiao Wangshu said nothing, merely nodding lightly.
Jiang Linming turned and walked toward the courtyard gate. As she reached the entrance, she could not help casting a glance back.
Beneath the withered tree, the moon-white figure still stood quietly. The autumn wind swept up fallen leaves, making them spin around her ankles. With her eyes closed and her face tilted upward, she seemed to be watching the daylight, yet also seemed simply to be standing there, feeling the single thread of weak warmth in this cold world.
That scene was etched deeply into the bottom of Jiang Linming’s eyes like a painting.
She pulled back her gaze and stepped out of the courtyard gate.
The door closed softly behind her, cutting off the inner and outer worlds.
Standing on the small path outside Jingyue Pavilion, Jiang Linming looked up at the high, distant autumn sky and let out a long breath.
The initial meeting was over.
It had gone more smoothly than she anticipated, yet it was also more complex than she expected.
The Seventh Princess, Xiao Wangshu, was by no means a simple, easily bullied blind princess. There was a profound stillness about her, and beneath that stillness lay something Jiang Linming could not yet see through.
That did not matter.
In this lifetime, she had plenty of time.
Jiang Linming tidied her official uniform, resumed the proper bearing of a female official of the Records Office, and walked back the way she came.
Her steps were steady, and her back was straight.
Starting from today, Jingyue Pavilion and that seventh princess would formally enter her life.
And she had made all the preparations necessary.
The autumn sun grew higher, casting her shadow onto the bluestone slabs, extending firmly forward.
Ahead lay a brand-new path, chosen by her own hands.
The night grew deep.
In the duty room of the Records Office within the Palace Directorate, the candles had burned past the halfway point. Melted wax piled into small hills on the candle stands, and the wicks occasionally snapped and popped, extraordinarily clear in the silent night.
Jiang Linming sat at her desk, refusing to sleep.
Before her lay an unwritten booklet, and the brush held in her hand hovered above the paper. Ink pooled at the tip, on the verge of falling. Outside the window was a late-autumn night without a moon; only a few sparse stars hung against the ink-blue sky, casting a cold light over the sleeping imperial city.
Four hours had passed since she returned from Jingyue Pavilion.
In those four hours, she had methodically completed her afternoon inspection, organized the usage records for various palaces, and even reported to Consort Rong, as for the preparations for the Third Princess’s birthday, she had said not a single word, mentioning only that she was still familiarizing herself with the affairs of the Records Office. Although Consort Rong was somewhat surprised, she did not ask further.
Everything had been done with absolute flawlessness.
Yet only she knew that the pool of water within her heart had long been churned into towering waves by a single pebble.
That pebble was named Xiao Wangshu.
Jiang Linming put down her brush and raised a hand to rub her brow. The skin beneath her fingertips was smooth and taut, the body of a seventeen-year-old, yet what churned in her mind were the memories of a thirty-six-year-old soul.
Those fragmented memories concerning the seventh princess had originally slumbered in the corners of her past-life memories, covered in thick dust. Today’s encounter was like someone violently ripping off the dust cover; amidst the flying dust, the fragments began to piece themselves together automatically, gradually revealing a blurred yet astonishing outline.
She closed her eyes, letting the memories rush over her like a tide.
The first piece of memory came from the autumn of the sixteenth year of Tianqi.
Jiang Linming had only entered the palace two years prior and was still a low-ranking palace maid doing odd jobs in the Palace Directorate. One day while delivering documents and passing by the imperial garden, she overheard a group of palace attendants whispering from afar.
Have you heard? The seventh princess’s eyes are truly blind.
The imperial physicians have confirmed it; they said it was poison, and it cannot be cured.
Tsk tsk, such a child of only eight years, what a sin
Consort Lin has wept herself to fainting spells several times, yet His Majesty hasn’t been to see her even once.
Jiang Linming’s steps had not halted at the time. Such things were all too common in the palace; a daughter born to a disgraced imperial concubine, poisoned and blinded, was not even worth counting as fresh gossip in this man-eating place.
She only remembered that the wind was very strong that day, blowing the fallen leaves of the imperial garden into swirling eddies across the ground. A woman dressed in plain white robes was holding a little girl, kneeling along the path leading to the Hall of Mental Cultivation from morning until dusk. The guards tried to drive them away several times, but the woman merely kowtowed until blood seeped from her forehead, while the little girl in her arms kept her eyes tightly shut, neither crying nor making a fuss.
Only later did Jiang Linming learn that those were Consort Lin and the eight-year-old seventh princess.
Much later, the news of Consort Lin’s death by illness arrived, occurring almost back-to-back with the seventh princess losing her sight.
The second piece of memory came from the winter of the nineteenth year of Tianqi.
Jiang Linming had already been promoted to an eighth-rank female scribe in the Records Office, tasked by imperial order to verify the charcoal allocations for each palace in the Imperial Household Department. When she turned the roster to the page for Jingyue Pavilion, the eunuch in charge sneered and raised his brush to cross out the seventh princess’s allocation entirely.
A blind girl, what does she need charcoal for? Save it for masters who have use for it.
What had Jiang Linming said back then?
She could not clearly remember. She had probably only remarked in an official, matter-of-fact tone that it violated the regulations, and then watched as the eunuch arbitrarily halved the amount before leaving with the roster.
Thinking back now, that meager allocation list for Jingyue Pavilion, behind those cold numbers lay a fourteen-year-old blind princess enduring one long night after another in a freezing winter without charcoal.
And she, someone who could have spoken up, had chosen to remain silent.
The third piece of memory came from the spring of the twenty-fifth year of Tianqi.
By then, Jiang Linming was already a trusted confidante of the Third Princess, Xiao Qingyan, and was busy laying out strategies for the impending battle for the succession. During a late-night secret discussion, the Third Princess, having drunk too much wine, dismissed her attendants, sat alone by the window, and suddenly uttered an unprompted sentence to the night sky:
If the seventh sister could see, this throne might not be mine.
Standing by in attendance, Jiang Linming’s heart had skipped a beat, but she dared not respond.
The Third Princess turned back, her gaze hazy with drink yet revealing a bone-chilling clarity: Linming, do you know who the most terrifying person in this palace is?
This servant does not know.
It’s those people you think are harmless. The Third Princess smiled, her smile carrying an indescribable eeriness. Because they hide in the shadows, and you cannot see what they are thinking or what they are plotting. Just like the seventh sister a blind girl should be the most harmless of all, but do you know? Every time I go to Jingyue Pavilion, I always feel she is ‘watching’ me.
Jiang Linming remembered a chill running down her spine at that moment.
The Third Princess continued, My birth mother feared Consort Lin the most while she was alive, saying she looked gentle on the outside but harbored a knife in her heart. Now that Consort Lin is dead, leaving behind such a blind daughter I always feel that the place called Jingyue Pavilion has too much gloomy yin energy.
Not long after that conversation, the Third Princess secretly intensified her surveillance of Jingyue Pavilion. Yet after half a year of observation, nothing was found, every day, the seventh princess simply read books, played the zither, and strolled in the courtyard, accompanied only by a deaf old granny and a dull-witted little maid, quiet as stagnant water.
Consequently, the surveillance gradually slackened, and the Third Princess shifted her attention to more pressing political rivals.
Later still, as the struggle for succession entered its white-hot phase, who still remembered the blind princess in Jingyue Pavilion?
The fourth piece of memory came from the summer of the twenty-sixth year of Tianqi.
It was the scene Jiang Linming saw right before her death, the lotus pond in the imperial garden, where fifteen-year-old Xiao Wangshu was pushed into the water by a palace servant, struggling and sinking. Yet hiding behind the rockery, she had chosen to remain indifferent.
That was the last time she saw the seventh princess.
Three days later, the body floated to the surface and was buried hastily. Not a single person in the palace wore mourning for her, because the Emperor had long since forgotten he had such a daughter. Only the old granny in Jingyue Pavilion wept herself into fainting spells before the seventh princess’s grave, and passed away alongside her that very night.
In the court of that time, this incident did not even kick up a ripple.
Everyone was busy taking sides, placing bets, and plotting a path to survival amidst the impending power shuffle. An insignificant princess had died, just like an autumn wind blowing down a leaf, silent and traceless.
Jiang Linming snapped her eyes open.
The candle flame flickered, casting swaying shadows in the depths of her eyes. Feeling her palms grow cold, she looked down and realized she had unknowingly clenched her fists, her fingernails biting deep into her palms and leaving several crescent-shaped red marks.
So so in her past life, there had been so many clues, so many traces, and she had ignored every single one of them.
No, she hadn’t ignored them.
She simply hadn’t taken them to heart at all.
In her understanding from her previous life, the Seventh Princess Xiao Wangshu was merely a tragic symbol: a mother who died early, blinded in childhood, abandoned by the Emperor, and finally dying quietly in a pond. How could such a person ever be tied to political power, the imperial throne, or those astonishing plots?
Yet the Third Princess’s drunken remark, recalled at this moment, felt like a thunderclap splitting her chaotic thoughts.
If the seventh sister could see, this throne might not be mine.
Who was the Third Princess? She was the ultimate victor who ascended to the supreme seat of sovereignty, a meticulous strategist who never spoke idly. For her to say such a thing was certainly not without foundation.
Unless she had seen something Jiang Linming had failed to see.
Jiang Linming stood up and walked over to the window. The night was thick, and distant palace lanterns flickered in the wind like pairs of prying eyes. She pushed the window open, letting the late-autumn night wind rush in, shaking the candle flame violently until it was nearly extinguished.
The cold wind cleared her head somewhat.
She began to re-examine those memory fragments, this time adopting an entirely new perspective,
Was being blinded at age eight truly an accident? Was Consort Lin’s death by illness that same year truly a coincidence?
Did the Emperor ignore the seventh princess because of disdain, or out of some deliberate pretense of neglect?
Did the Third Princess fear Jingyue Pavilion merely because of gloomy yin energy?
And the seventh princess herself. Today in Jingyue Pavilion, that straight-backed, closed-eyed maiden standing quietly; that composure surpassing her years; that ultimate restraint and forbearance in the face of humiliation; and that unerring gaze.