The Commander of the Northern Pacification Bureau (Embroidered Uniform Guard), Zhang Yao, had a peculiar habit. Whenever condemned prisoners were executed at Pichang Temple in the eastern part of the capital, he would change into a meticulously tailored mourning outfit, carry a nanmu wooden bucket, and stand beneath the statue of the Earth God with a cold expression, watching blood splash across the execution platform.
The families of the condemned would wail to the heavens as they carried away the bodies of their loved ones, severed heads and all. When life ended, the execution ground itself sometimes seemed to change with it. A few drops of bone-chilling cold rain would suddenly fall, driving away the spectators with its icy dampness.
Once the crowd dispersed, Zhang Yao would pick up his polished, lacquered wooden bucket and effortlessly blend in with the old laborers splashing water and scrubbing the bloodstained ground.
The land around Pichang Temple was considered ominous. Even the Earth God enshrined there wore a fierce and terrifying face. Young people refused to come, so the cleaners working before the temple were all elderly men well past fifty. Zhang Yao was the youngest among them. His white mourning clothes were the finest, his kneeling prayers the most devout, and he scrubbed the ground with the greatest diligence.
The enforcer washed the execution ground.
Among the rumors circulating through the official circles of Great Liang, this habit of Zhang Yao’s was merely regarded as one of his personal eccentricities.
Yet this was clearly not his only one.
Zhang Yao loved fine timber—Xuanyuan cypress, Phoenix pine, Second General cypress, Huangshan Welcome Pine, and countless others. Whether transported by river or by land, every valuable log entering Shuntian Prefecture had to pass before his eyes.
In the third year of the Fengming era, he sold his own residence just to purchase a single piece of fragrant huanghuali sandalwood. Even now, he still clung to that pile of timber and slept in the duty room of the Northern Pacification Bureau.
Or rather…
He slept on various coffin boards stacked inside the duty room.
The office stood in the western part of the city, where fierce winds blew almost every night, rattling the doors and windows again and again.
A bean-sized oil lamp burned beside the coffins. The white burial shroud fluttered gently, dust rose silently from the old wood, and the screams heard during the day faded into hoarse echoes as the commotion died away.
Zhang Yao would remove his official robes, lie down inside a coffin, close his eyes beneath the burial cloth…
And desperately wish he were dead.
The previous night had been another night of violent winds. During the third watch, Zhang Yao dreamed he was locked in a life-and-death battle with a ghost. In the dream, he delivered a merciless kick, striking the ghost’s vital point and killing it instantly.
When he awoke, however, he discovered that his own kick had punched straight through the coffin board beneath him.
It was a cedar coffin. The wood was excellent, the dimensions perfect—one in ten thousand.
For the past two years, it had been the coffin he was most accustomed to sleeping in.
Zhang Yao sighed. Pulling his leg out of the hole, he rolled up his undergarment trousers and found a long cut across his calf. Two wooden splinters had pierced into the flesh of his leg. Looking up again, he saw that the hole in the coffin board was as large as a bowl.
His mood immediately worsened.
“Yaoyao.”
Outside, dawn had only begun to brighten the sky when Zhang Min called to him beneath the window.
Zhang Yao was busy pulling splinters from his leg and had no desire to respond to the woman who stubbornly insisted on calling him by his childhood nickname. Unfortunately, she had no intention of giving up.
“Yaoyao, Yaoyao, Yaoyao, are you awake?”
Straightening his back with a sigh, Zhang Yao walked barefoot to the window, pushed it open, and asked, “What is it?”
Zhang Min was completely unfazed by his indifference.
“They’re going to execute someone at Pichang Temple in the next couple of days.”
“I know.”
“Your mourning clothes…”
“I had a new set made at the coffin shop. They delivered it the day before yesterday.”
After saying that, Zhang Yao was about to close the window when he heard her speak again.
“Yaoyao… I want to go too.”
Holding the window open, Zhang Yao leaned halfway out.
“What would you go for?”
“I want to bring one final meal to the Right Assistant/Vice Minister of Justice who’s about to be executed.”
It was an absurd idea, yet Zhang Yao maintained his usual patience and said nothing harsh. After all, the two siblings had depended on each other for over a decade. He had long grown accustomed to indulging his older sister whenever he could.
“Will it cause you trouble?” Seeing him remain silent, Zhang Min asked cautiously.
“Not really.”
As he spoke, Zhang Yao closed the window and turned around, tossing his undergarment onto the coffin board.
Then, remembering something, he added,
“Today she’s only accompanying the execution. Her death by slicing is tomorrow.”
Zhang Min immediately replied,
“Then I’ll go with you tomorrow.”
Zhang Yao took the mourning clothes from the coffin board and shook them open.
“Do you know her?”
The silhouette reflected on the window lowered its head.
“No.”
“Then why bother? The execution ground is filthy, and you’re afraid of ghosts.”
“She’s… a woman.”
Zhang Yao interrupted her.
“So what if she’s a woman?”
Zhang Min fell silent.
The shadow on the window drooped its head beneath the bright sunlight, looking lonely and dejected.
Zhang Yao tightened the mourning sash around his waist and sighed helplessly.
“As for the meal, forget it.”
“She likes peaches.”
…
It was the thirteenth day of the eighth month.
After raining continuously for an entire month, the skies over the capital suddenly cleared.
The brilliant sun shone overhead, the heavens were blue and cloudless, and the leaves of the Chinese tallow tree beside the execution platform had begun turning yellow. Beneath its canopy, the blood-soaked scaffold that had witnessed countless killings was now dappled with shimmering light, almost gentle and beautiful.
The Court of Judicial Review posted an official notice:
Pichang Temple would hold executions over two consecutive days, with two women convicted of grave crimes to be subjected to death by slicing.
The first woman had set fire to her husband and killed him.
The second woman had violated womanly virtue, served as an official, deceived the Emperor…
The charges listed on the notice clearly declared her a criminal woman, guilty of defying moral order and committing unforgivable sins.
Yet from Zhang Yao’s sparse interactions within officialdom, he had only one impression of this young Assistant Minister of Justice.
Years ago, at a grand banquet gathering the renowned officials of Shuntian Prefecture, the hall had been overflowing with literary brilliance.
The seats were filled with distinguished officials dressed in magnificent robes. Cups were raised, brushes moved across paper, and ruler and ministers alike celebrated the flourishing age of Great Liang.
Zhang Yao, meanwhile, sat nailed to his seat, quietly wishing to die.
In the corner opposite him, the newly appointed young Assistant Minister of Justice simply sat there…
Eating peaches one after another.
Her surname was Yu.
That much Zhang Yao knew.
She was elegant in appearance and gentle in temperament, earning countless flattering titles. The official circles of Great Liang had long since abandoned the ancient designation for the Ministry of Justice, yet everyone still called her the Young Minister of Justice.
But what exactly was her given name?
Having changed into his clothes, Zhang Yao sat on the coffin board and thought for quite some time before finally remembering.
Yu Lin.
Courtesy name: Bufu.
She had drafted the Code of Great Liang, achieving fame almost overnight.
As the beloved disciple of Zhao Heming, she had successively served as Vice Director, Department Director, and finally, at the age of twenty-six, risen to become Vice Minister of Justice.
She had served in government for ten years, possessing an exceptionally kind temperament, and the entire court praised her.
Until one day.
In order to protect a female prisoner who was about to be tortured into giving a confession, she removed her own robes in open court and shielded the woman with her body.
Only then was the truth revealed—
She was a woman.
Before countless witnesses, she clung desperately to the female prisoner. Her clothes were in disarray, her hair completely undone. She looked utterly insane, as though she had willingly humiliated herself.
In doing so, she also humiliated every judicial colleague present who had failed to recognize her true identity.
She humiliated the men who had entrusted her with drafting the Code of Great Liang.
And so…
She was to be executed.
For two consecutive days, Pichang Temple would carry out death by slicing.
Today’s victim was Madam Liu, convicted of murdering her child.
Yu Lin was merely accompanying the execution.
To execute a woman before the public.
To execute a beautiful woman before the public.
Whenever such spectacles occurred, the common people crowded below the scaffold while scholars and officials watched from the upper floors of nearby teahouses and restaurants, carefully avoiding the masses.
Yet no matter how refined these men pretended to be, the scene soon to unfold upon the execution platform was the very spectacle they had long been waiting to feast their eyes upon.
Dressed in his carefully prepared mourning clothes, Zhang Yao carried his bucket and entered the crowd.
By noon, the two female prisoners had already been brought onto the scaffold.
Minister of Justice Zhao Heming sat in the chief supervisor’s seat.
Madam Liu was tied onto the execution frame.
The crowd below became increasingly restless, pushing and shoving one another as discussions grew louder.
Madam Liu had long abandoned any hope of survival. Before the eyes of countless spectators, she submitted to every command, staring sorrowfully at the surrounding crowd, unable to utter a single word.
Had Yu Lin not been present, the scene would simply have become another morbid display for the city’s enjoyment.
But she absolutely refused to grant these spectators their entertainment.
Though tightly bound, she stubbornly refused to kneel upon the execution platform.
For ten years as an official, her long hair had never once been worn loose.
Now, to publicly reveal that she was a woman, even though it would have been more convenient to bind her hair for imprisonment and execution—as had been done for Madam Liu—she still let it hang freely.
The wind blew through it, and the strands drifted softly across her face.
From the supervisor’s seat, Zhao Heming gazed at his student, now tortured until she was little more than skin and bones, yet still behaving with almost mad defiance.
Throughout it all, he remained silent.
The spectators grew indignant.
“This woman still refuses to admit her guilt!”
“She dared deceive her teacher and deceive the Emperor. Someone that arrogant would never confess. Tomorrow, once she’s death by slicing, that’ll settle it.”
“That’s right! Slice her! Slice her!”
The crowd’s emotions surged.
Compared with watching Madam Liu’s execution, they were far more eager to witness the humiliation of the once-revered Young Minister of Justice.
The Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review could no longer sit still.
Standing up, he shouted at the guards,
“She’s an imperial death-row prisoner! Why are you still treating her so gently? Make her kneel immediately!”
“Yes, sir!”
A thick staff, as wide as the mouth of a bowl, came crashing down onto Yu Lin’s knees.
Bound tightly, she had no way to keep her balance.
Her knees struck the ground, and her entire body pitched forward, collapsing against the edge of the execution platform.
Instead of retreating, the crowd surged even closer, shouting louder and louder.
“Shameless woman! She deserves to be sliced apart!”
“Slice her! Slice her! Slice—”
“Pah.”
“Huh?”
The shouting stopped abruptly.
Zhang Yao raised his eyes.
Through the curtain of disheveled hair, he saw a calm face.
She had spat directly at the crowd.
Behind the crowd, Zhang Yao raised an eyebrow. At the very front, the Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review stood frozen in disbelief. It took him a long while before he managed to say,
“How outrageous…”
The bailiffs present no longer dared show any mercy to their former superior. They rushed forward, yanked Yu Lin to her feet, grabbed her by the throat, and forced her head upward. Then they stuffed a strip of white cloth into her mouth, twisting it tightly around her tongue.
Biting down on the cloth, she turned her head and looked toward the execution platform, where the finely dressed officials sat in judgment.
The Chief Justice felt deeply uncomfortable under her gaze and instinctively looked away.
“Bufu.”
The man seated in the principal chair of the execution tribunal called her by her courtesy name. His voice was young and gentle.
Bound in heavy restraints, she slowly shifted her eyes toward him.
Zhao Heming looked at her calmly.
“If you do not wish to kneel, then don’t.”
The Chief Justice frowned.
“Don’t kneel? Minister Zhao, this is an execution ground…”
Zhao Heming interrupted him.
“If there is any fault, I will personally answer for it.”
After speaking, he pushed himself up from the desk, stepped down from the tribunal seat, lifted the hem of his official robe, and climbed onto the execution platform. He walked straight to Yu Lin.
His tall, slender figure cast a shadow over her, shielding her from the blazing midday sun.
“You may refuse to accept justice for this woman, and you may feel wronged for yourself. But your former colleagues and today’s executioners have not wronged you.”
As expected of her former teacher, he struck directly at the heart of the matter with a single sentence.
Yu Lin turned her head and glanced at the bewildered executioners and bailiffs. These people all knew her. Now that they were forced to treat her this way, many of them already felt uneasy. Swept by her gaze, most lowered their heads in shame.
“If disorder breaks out at the execution ground, then after you and Madam Liu are executed, more than a hundred people will also be punished.”
He looked at her again.
“Bufu…”
Calling her courtesy name once more, Zhao Heming said softly,
“Calm yourself.”
Yu Lin slowly turned back to face him.
Then, all at once, she let out a miserable smile.
Zhao Heming raised a hand and gestured to the bailiffs.
“Release her.”
The Chief Justice slammed his hand against the table and stood up.
“Minister Zhao!”
Zhao Heming spun around in anger.
“I already said that if there is any fault, I will answer for it myself!”
The highest officials of the two judicial offices confronted one another over a condemned prisoner, and the discussions beneath the platform erupted once again.
This time, even the officials serving as execution supervisors could no longer hold back.
“This is simply outrageous.”
“Exactly! Minister Zhao doesn’t even care about his own reputation anymore for her sake. I’d like to see how the Chief Censor of the Censorate criticizes him at tomorrow’s grand court session!”
Amid a sea of curses, Zhao Heming remained silent.
He watched as Yu Lin, enjoying the brief freedom he had granted her, walked toward Madam Liu’s execution frame.
A wind rose beneath the statue of the Earth God and swept across the execution ground.
Hundreds of trees rustled mournfully.
Over everyone’s heads, it felt as though a thousand blades hung suspended.
The scorching heat of this brutal world, the cruel punishment, and the frail, lonely woman all melted together into a hazy blur before Zhang Yao’s eyes.
Unable to help himself, he squeezed several steps deeper into the crowd.
He wanted to hear what words this woman, standing at death’s door, would leave behind.
Yu Lin stopped before Madam Liu.
The two women looked at each other for what might be the last time.
Madam Liu gently shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Assistant Minister. I’ve dragged you into this.”
From the moment she had been imprisoned, through repeated interrogations and torture, Yu Lin had never shed a tear.
Yet these words, which contained not a trace of bitterness, suddenly made her eyes sting with tears.
“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry, young lady.”
Madam Liu panicked. Even the way she addressed Yu Lin changed from “Assistant Minister” to “young lady.” Her voice soon choked with emotion.
“A woman cannot save another woman.”
Yu Lin stared at her in astonishment.
Madam Liu tried to lift her arm, only to discover that she could not move at all.
“Young lady, I can’t wipe away your tears, but I’m truly grateful to you, and my heart aches for you. You’re still so young, yet you’ve already done so much for women like us.”
“I understand in my heart. I never killed anyone. I’m innocent.”
“When I die… I’ll go to Heaven and become an immortal.”
“Young lady, let me go first. Only after I get there can I watch over you.”
“Truly, young lady, I don’t want to be human anymore. I want to become an immortal.”
“Wait for me.”
“If my death lets me ascend, then tomorrow I’ll surely descend again and perform a miracle. I’ll come to this execution ground and save you.”
After hearing those words, Yu Lin nodded through her tears.
“Don’t watch me die. If you see what I look like when I die… then I won’t be able to perform a miracle for you anymore, all right?”
Yu Lin nodded again.
Madam Liu did her best to steady her voice and gently persuaded her,
“Turn around, young lady. Tomorrow, wait for me to come save you.”
“…Mm.”
With all her strength, Yu Lin managed to force out a muffled “Mm” through the white cloth stuffed into her mouth.
Madam Liu let out a long sigh of relief.
On the execution platform, shadows from the leaves swayed as the wind stirred the branches, echoing the countless sighs of the two condemned women.
The crowd continued to shove one another.
Zhang Yao lowered his head to steady his wooden bucket, which was nearly kicked over by the jostling masses.
The clanking sound of dragging shackles reached his ears.
When he looked up again, he saw something he had never witnessed in his life:
A condemned prisoner sitting on the edge of the execution platform.
Her scar-covered legs, bound in heavy fetters, hung absurdly over the side, swaying above the heads of the spectators below.
The crowd looked up at her.
She looked down at the crowd.
But no one enjoyed meeting the eyes of someone condemned to die—
Except someone who wished to die himself.
Thus, although tens of thousands of people filled Pichang Temple, in the end there was only one person whose eyes met Yu Lin’s.
Zhang Yao.
Her eyes were bloodshot.
But she was not crying.
Suddenly, Zhang Yao felt an inexplicable sense of exhilaration.
He planted himself firmly among the crowd. Although his face still wore its usual funeral-like gloom, his hand unconsciously spun the cleaning rag in a perfect circle.
The cicadas shrieked irritably from the Chinese tallow tree.
The timing incense burned through its final segment.
Then, from behind Yu Lin, came a loud cry:
“Carry out the execution!”
Amid the deafening roar of the crowd, the woman condemned to death let out a mournful cry.
Within that single cry, she fixed her gaze upon Zhang Yao in the crowd.
Zhang Yao grabbed the rag that had almost spun out of his hand.
Inside his heart—silent and lifeless as an ancient temple—a funeral bell suddenly tolled.
If a gaze could be a blade, then at that moment, Zhang Yao felt that he had already been stabbed to death.