After the crowd dispersed from the execution ground, a few more drops of rain fell over Pichang Temple. Ants and insects scattered frantically across the muddy ground, weaving between the chaotic footprints left behind, crawling as fast as they could.
The authorities brought over a water cart, and the cleaners who had long been waiting by the roadside rushed forward with brooms and rags. In less than half an hour, every trace of blood on the execution platform had been washed away.
Night quickly approached, yet the setting sun peeked out once more from behind the mountains, illuminating the side of the Earth God’s statue. It stared gloomily into the dusk, where the lonely execution frame stood in silence.
One by one, the cleaners reported back to the authorities and returned home.
Only Zhang Yao remained kneeling on the ground, stubbornly working at an old bloodstain.
Suddenly, a pair of finely crafted black official boots stepped into his view.
Without even waiting for the newcomer to speak, Zhang Yao said first,
“Don’t bother me at a time like this.”
“What am I bothering you for?”
The speaker had been suffering from a cold for the past two or three days, and his congested nose made his voice noticeably muffled. But Zhang Yao knew him too well. Just by looking at those boots, he recognized him as Du Lingruo, the Supervising Secretary of the Directorate of Ceremonial.
“So,” Du Lingruo said, “just how obsessed are you with Pichang Temple in this lifetime?”
The black boots blocked Zhang Yao’s path as he scrubbed the ground. He straightened his back but remained kneeling.
“Move your foot.”
Du Lingruo chuckled and hopped aside.
He was young and not particularly tall. He had been castrated at the age of fourteen. Thin and sharp-tongued, his words were harsher than those of the censors from the Six Offices. Yet it was precisely that quick and merciless tongue that, within only a few years, had allowed this once utterly insignificant young eunuch to establish himself among both palace eunuchs and court officials.
From the Forbidden City to Tianshou Mountain, wherever a banquet was held, Du Lingruo always seemed able to claim a share of the feast.
The reason he dealt with Zhang Yao so openly was simple:
He had always believed that Zhang Yao was the one who had wielded the knife that changed his fate.
That single cut had nearly taken half his life. Even after years of recuperation, he remained a frail man who coughed up blood whenever the wind turned cold.
Yet it was also that same cut that had miraculously allowed him to survive the great treason case involving the former Crown Prince.
Although Zhang Yao had explained countless times that, on that snowy night in the capital during the twenty-second year of Pingyang, he had merely been one of the guards sent to kill people at the Eastern Residence, and that the person who had truly swung the knife to alter Du Lingruo’s destiny had already left before Zhang Yao arrived—
Du Lingruo never believed him.
All he remembered was that after passing out from the pain for an unknown number of days, he finally opened his eyes to find Zhang Yao’s perpetually mournful face hanging above him like the face of a Buddha, shining with golden light.
From that day on, he constantly spoke of “repaying the favor,” forever grateful for that completely imaginary “one knife” that Zhang Yao insisted had nothing to do with him.
At first, Zhang Yao found it utterly speechless.
After enough years, he no longer cared.
He had spent his entire life surrounded by death. Because of that, he held a certain fondness for people who still wished to live.
“That’s enough already. You’re just cleaning the ground, yet you’re kneeling so properly. People always say that three feet above your head, the gods are watching.”
Du Lingruo tilted his head back and looked at the yellowing sky.
“At a place like this, three feet above your head are all ghosts. Even if you’re the King of Hell himself, do you really expect your ghosts to bless you?”
Zhang Yao said nothing.
He had finally scraped away the bloodstain. Too lazy to stand, he shuffled forward on his knees toward the execution frame and began tackling another old stain.
Du Lingruo squatted beside him, rolled up his sleeves, and carefully reached out, using his fingernails to help scrape at the blood while asking,
“Don’t your knees hurt, doing this?”
“I’m not like you.”
“I rarely kneel.”
“Heh…”
“What Commander Zhang says is always right.”
Du Lingruo loved bickering whenever he met Zhang Yao, but he never truly got angry with him. At worst, he would laugh awkwardly, admit defeat, and finally get to the real matter at hand.
“Oh, right. The peaches Sister Min asked me to buy—I got them.”
“Move your foot again.”
“Ah, certainly.”
Holding up his robe, Du Lingruo obediently stepped aside once more.
“She came to ask me first thing this morning. I changed clothes and rushed over to see Liang Jingming without stopping. Guess what? Liang Jingming actually cried poverty to me. These days, even for someone like him, the Transport Commissioner of Lianghuai, it’s not easy to get a few jin of ‘Li Gong Peaches.'”
Zhang Yao casually replied,
“The canal transport isn’t running smoothly. It’s the same everywhere.”
Du Lingruo laughed.
“The moment you start commenting on state affairs, every third-rank official in the capital starts trembling and hurries over to bribe me. Brother Yao, if you’d only speak a little more, I could probably get Sister Min another two baskets of peaches.”
Zhang Yao remained silent.
Du Lingruo didn’t care what he was thinking and simply continued talking to himself.
“Sister Min certainly knows good food. The ‘Li Gong Peaches’ around the Mid-Autumn Festival are the sweetest. But just like you said, transportation along the Grand Canal has been terrible. It’s not only fruit—even the government offices in Huaiyang have created a complete mess of the grain and salt shipments. Just wait. Once autumn passes, your imperial prison will probably be filled with even more dead bodies.”
“Why is your mouth so annoying?”
Zhang Yao interrupted him.
Du Lingruo had grown tired of scraping the hardened bloodstains. Years of dried blood had become almost stone-like, and even after damaging his fingernails, he still couldn’t remove them.
He sighed and straightened up, rubbing his sore waist.
“Fine, I won’t say another word. Anyway, the only thing I can get for Sister Min now is this one basket. I’ve left it at the foot of the Earth God’s statue. Remember to have the Imperial Guard carry it back.”
“Mm.”
Zhang Yao glanced at him before adding,
“Drinking tonight?”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Du Lingruo waved his hand.
“The wine you hide inside your coffins is either soaked with poisonous snakes or scorpions. It’s far too strong for someone like me who’s had his roots cut off. Last time, if Sister Min hadn’t brewed medicine to save me, I’d have died in your house.”
Zhang Yao had always been puzzled.
How could Du Lingruo joke so casually about having “his roots cut off,” speaking of it without the slightest sadness?
“You…”
Before Zhang Yao could finish, Du Lingruo had already jumped down from the execution platform.
Without even turning around, he waved his hand behind him.
“I’m leaving.”
“Wait a moment.”
“Hm?”
Zhang Yao straightened himself on his knees.
The sun had disappeared beyond the horizon. There was no one else around. A gust of wind swept across the execution ground, lifting the long hair draped over his shoulders.
Standing upon this deathly silent platform, he said something that, to Du Lingruo’s surprise, made him seem unusually alive.
“Do you have any connections inside the Ministry of Justice Prison?”
“Connections?”
Du Lingruo raised an eyebrow.
“We’re both in judicial offices. Your Northern Pacification Bureau has more connections than I do. Besides, yours are official channels. If the Imperial Guard carries your written authorization inside and the paperwork is processed properly, is there really anyone in the Ministry of Justice Prison that you can’t bring out?”
“It’s a personal matter.”
Zhang Yao lowered his head and casually splashed a ladle of water onto the ground.
“I don’t want to use the proper channels.”
“The Ministry of Justice Prison? A personal matter? An improper method?”
Du Lingruo fired off three questions in succession before revealing a meaningful smile. Lowering his voice, he edged closer.
“Who are you trying to see?”
Zhang Yao did not answer.
At that moment, an utterly absurd idea had taken root in his mind.
So absurd that he had no idea how to explain it to Du Lingruo.
He wanted to seek death…
At the hands of a condemned prisoner.
Seeing that Zhang Yao remained silent, Du Lingruo grew even more curious and refused to let the matter go.
“We’ve known each other for so many years, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard that the Commander of the Northern Pacification Bureau has a ‘personal matter.’ Come on, tell me. Tell me, and I’ll help you.”
Still, Zhang Yao said nothing.
He lowered his head and continued washing the ground.
But the bloodstain beneath his hands had likely been there for countless years. Though he was already scrubbing with enough force to sever a man’s head, he still could not erase it.
…
“Yu Lin.”
The cells of the Ministry of Justice Prison were dim.
To prevent condemned prisoners from committing suicide, an entire row of candles had been lit, yet even so, they failed to illuminate people’s faces.
Beneath the weight of her heavy cangue, Yu Lin slowly raised her head.
She saw only three dark figures standing before her.
And hanging from one man’s hand, gleaming under the candlelight, was a pair of comparatively slender shackles.
“Get up.”
“Someone has come to see you.”
The fine shackles rattled as they were looped around someone’s wrists. The sound drove the female prisoners to shrink deeper into the corners of the cell.
Having spent years in the Ministry of Justice, Yu Lin recognized those shackles. She also knew exactly what the women were afraid of.
“It’s alright, I…”
She was exhausted. After a full day of torture, the wounds on her body had split open and bled again. Every injury felt as though it were being sliced by knives. Her voice was hoarse as well. After only a few words, it cracked, sounding incapable of comforting anyone.
So she simply straightened herself and looked toward the prison warden.
“Wang Shaolian.”
Hearing her call him by his full name, Wang Shaolian was momentarily stunned. It felt as though his soul had nearly left his body, and his ears suddenly burned hot.
Using her knees to barely support the heavy cangue around her neck, Yu Lin gently blew the loose strands of hair away from her face.
“You sold my last night?”
Only then did the warden recover himself. He sneered.
“Didn’t expect that, did you?”
“Didn’t expect what?”
Wang Shaolian circled around and stopped in front of her, looking down at her from above.
“Didn’t expect the money-making road you destroyed nearly ten years ago would open up again. Now I can do business in prison flesh once more. When you inspected the prisons back then, have you forgotten how you humiliated me?”
“Mhm.”
Yu Lin let out a faint laugh.
“I haven’t forgotten.”
The satisfaction in Wang Shaolian’s heart was overwhelming. He could not help laughing aloud.
“Tonight, everything’s reversed. What great Vice Minister of Justice? In the end, you’ll still be stripped naked and sold off by me—”
“What do you think people are?”
Yu Lin interrupted him.
But Wang Shaolian only laughed more wildly.
“People? Of course people are people. But women… women are nothing. Especially criminal women. They’re just a pile of meat worth a little more than pork or beef. No, no, that’s wrong—not a little more. Much more. Assistant Minister, guess how much your final night is worth.”
“How much?”
Wang Shaolian stepped closer.
“Twenty taels! A full twenty taels! My yearly salary is only ten taels. Ha…”
Still laughing, he swept his gaze across the other women in the cell.
“Look.”
His finger pointed crazily from face to face.
“Twenty taels. Another twenty taels. Ah, this one is young—thirty taels. If I do the math, in less than two years, I’ll be able to donate enough money at the Ministry of Personnel to buy myself a fifth-rank official post.”
The female prisoners huddled together in terror. Some of the younger ones had already started crying.
The warden picked up the fine shackles and threw them at Yu Lin’s feet.
“Take off her cangue. Chain her hands and feet and bring her out. I’ll be waiting in the punishment room. This place has too many people crying and not enough people laughing. Stay here too long and it’s bad luck.”
“Yes, sir.”
The warden left.
The cell was filled only with weak sobbing.
The sorrow of one kind touches another; even autumn birds cry in sympathy.
Leaning against the icy wall, Yu Lin felt the heavy cangue that had nearly crushed her shoulders over the past several days. Even removing it now was difficult. She wanted to use this time to comfort the women, but she realized that in a place like this, no matter what she said, it would only hurt them further.
She felt miserable herself.
At that moment, however, a slender hand timidly grasped the sleeve of her prison uniform.
The genuine warmth of another human being briefly pushed back the coldness of the torture instruments.
Yu Lin lowered her head.
“What is it?”
“Sister, let me help you.”
The voice was soft and gentle.
The words pierced straight into Yu Lin’s heart. Something stirred within her, though her own voice remained hard as ice.
“I don’t need help. And I don’t know you.”
“My name is Yinsheng.”
The young woman brushed the tangled hair away from her face.
“You were the one who sentenced me…”
Yu Lin was somewhat surprised.
Of all places, in this land of shared suffering, standing before death itself, the person who wanted to help her was actually a former prisoner who had once stood before her court.
She blinked, trying to see the woman more clearly.
Unfortunately, the candle flame flickered too violently. Though the face was right before her eyes, it constantly faded in and out of the shifting light.
Halfway between consciousness and haze, Yu Lin found herself recalling the ten years she had spent in the courtrooms of the Ministry of Justice.
Over those ten years, countless people had knelt before her.
Unfortunately, her eyesight had never been very good. In darkness, she could not see clearly. In brightness, everything became blurred. She could barely remember what those people looked like, what their surnames were, or what they were called.
But she could remember the countless different emotions they carried.
Those had not been ten years of peace and prosperity.
The Emperor had been suspicious and cruel, building the towering walls of Chongyang and imprisoning hundreds of imperial clansmen.
Inside the court, eunuchs manipulated power.
Outside, Qinglong Temple in Shandong had rebelled against Liang rule. Four cities in Shandong repeatedly fell amid seas of blood and raging war.
The Northern Pacification Bureau slaughtered people throughout Liangjing.
The literary world had become an elegant stagnant pond. Empty and ornate writings were published across the empire, while words powerful enough to awaken the deaf never spread beyond a single character.
Yu Lin no longer wished to read literature.
Nor did she wish to write.
Fortunately, the courtroom remained a place as fierce as oil and fire.
Instruments of punishment trapped the body, but the hearts and souls of prisoners remained alive.
She remembered the ecstasy of those whose wrongful convictions were overturned.
The relief of victims whose great grudges were finally avenged.
The remorse of criminals.
The acceptance of those awaiting execution.
Over ten years, different people stood up from the courtroom, bid her farewell, and departed. Those sentenced to imprisonment entered the prisons. Those sentenced to exile journeyed into distant lands. Those acquitted returned home.
As the only woman in Great Liang who practiced the Law and sought enlightenment through it in the mortal world, she had truly lived up to the judgment Zhao Heming once gave her:
“Her discernment surpasses all the gentlemen of the Three Judicial Offices.”
Now those gentlemen still sat in court.
Yet she herself was dying because of that very discernment.
But why should a judicial official die for being discerning?
The gentlemen could offer no answer.
Only Zhao Heming had seen through it long ago.
“She” surpassed all those “gentlemen.”
And so, when the gentlemen of the Three Judicial Offices stripped Liu’s clothes in open court, when all those amused gazes pierced through the legal code that Yu Lin herself had once drafted and openly settled upon the naked female prisoner—
At that moment, seated among those officials, Yu Lin could no longer bear wearing her own beastly robes and ceremonial crown.
The others remained in their positions.
Only she removed her official robes in court, protected the prisoner, went mad, and spoke words deemed treasonous.
She had spent ten years building a life that was nearly impossible for a woman to obtain.
In the end, she overturned it with her own hands.
She had climbed from commoner to high official, only to fall into the register of convicts.
A ruined life.
A miserable ending.
She did not regret it.
But she was unwilling to accept it.
Even after being sentenced to death by slow slicing, she still did not want to die.
“What sentence did I give you?” Yu Lin asked Yinsheng.
“Three years’ imprisonment.”
After answering, Yinsheng’s eyes unexpectedly reddened.
The hand gripping Yu Lin’s sleeve turned white at the knuckles.
She, too, seemed unwilling to let Yu Lin go to her death like this.
Yu Lin smiled.
“I was your judge. I imprisoned you. Why are you crying for me?”
Yinsheng raised her head.
“You protected me in court, Sister. You’re not my judge. You’re… a Bodhisattva.”
The word “Bodhisattva” had only just fallen when the heavy cangue around Yu Lin’s neck hit the floor.
A prison guard picked up the fine shackles Wang Shaolian had thrown down and yanked her arm.
“Get up. Come with us.”
Yu Lin rubbed her wrists and forced her numb legs apart, preparing to stand.
Unexpectedly, the young woman beside her suddenly dropped to her knees before the two guards and grabbed their sleeves.
“I can do that business too… I’m sixteen years old. I’ve already come of age…”
One of the guards clicked his tongue impatiently and was about to shake her off.
Yu Lin stood and stepped in front of them.
“Officers, please show some mercy. Let me persuade her.”
“Time waits for no one. The night watch has already begun.”
The guard’s tone was unfriendly.
Yu Lin nodded.
“I know. But I’ve worn these restraints for too long. My body is terribly stiff. If I go over there like this, how will your Lord Wang conduct his business? Let me rest for a moment and say goodbye to her.”
After speaking, she quietly said to Yinsheng,
“Let go first.”
The young woman obeyed.
The two guards exchanged glances.
Though cold-hearted, they still possessed some measure of sympathy.
They gave no verbal permission, but each took a step back.
Yu Lin pulled down her sleeve to cover the wounds on her wrists. Then she turned and walked to the young woman, bending down to wipe away her tears.
“When can you leave prison and go home?”
“Next… next winter.”
“That’s wonderful.”
As she said those words, she looked at the young woman’s youthful face and smiled sincerely.
“Then you’ll get to see the snow.”
“Sister…”
Yu Lin drew Yinsheng into an embrace.
“You called me a Bodhisattva. Honestly, that makes me very happy. The manifestations of a Bodhisattva are countless, bringing salvation to the world. Life is death, and death is life. I’ve always been an arrogant person. I took the imperial examinations, became an official, stood shoulder to shoulder with men. I’ve never prayed to gods or worshipped Buddhas. I was born wanting to hold an umbrella over others, wanting to become one of the gods and Buddhas of this world myself. So don’t be afraid.”
She looked down at the tear-streaked face pressed against her chest.
“After I die, I’ll still watch over you. I’ll bless you so that you safely live to see the first snowfall in Liangjing next year.”
“The snow…”
“That’s right. Promise me. After I’m gone, don’t cry so easily anymore. If you get to see next year’s first snowfall, come to Pichang Temple and burn a stick of incense. Tell your sister that you’re safe and free. I’m a Bodhisattva—I will definitely hear you.”
“I’ll remember. On the day it snows, I’ll go to Pichang Temple…”
Before she could finish speaking, Yinsheng was already sobbing uncontrollably.
Now it was time to part.
Yu Lin gently pushed her away.
She rose and slowly walked to the cell door, extending both hands toward the guards.
“I’ve persuaded her.”
Then she turned back to look at Yinsheng one last time.
Suppressing the pain throughout her body, she faced the guards and performed a formal woman’s salute.
“Her emotions aren’t stable right now. Please be kind to her. After I’m gone, let her eat something, or at least give her some water.”
The guards looked into the cell.
Every female prisoner was staring sorrowfully at Yu Lin’s retreating figure.
Yet she herself remained calm.
Beyond observing every proper courtesy, there was not a trace of extra emotion on her face.
“Take me away.”