That was Bizi Tang, also known as Suiguizi—A-Pan knew this well.
She had studied the recognition and use of poisons at Qianjimen, and had learned much over these past months.
She knew that drinking Suiguizi would invigorate the blood, shatter the bones, and induce labor to abort a child.
A place like Qianjimen housed all manner of people from every walk of life, and all manner of strange and wondrous things besides—producing a dose of Suiguizi was a trivial matter indeed.
A-Pan lowered her eyes and gently touched her belly, which had not yet begun to swell, her entire being sinking into desolation.
There—there had actually been a child in there.
When had this child come to be? Thinking carefully, it must have been in October of last year.
In October of the third year of Huai Wang’s reign, winter had arrived especially early. At the border between Zhongshan and Wei Guo, heavy snow had begun to fall as early as the end of September.
That winter, the snow piled a foot deep—it was truly cold.
She remembered the snow falling without end, eighteen-year-old A-Pan and nineteen-year-old Yun Jiang clinging to each other for survival, driven day after day to keep moving.
Driven to Wei Ying, driven to the front lines. She still remembered how the shackles locked around her wrists and ankles day and night had bitten into her flesh with bone-piercing cold.
The Weiren had treated them poorly—but how could even the Zhongshan people treat her so badly too?
No—her nose stung with sudden acidity as a person came to mind. There was one person who had treated her somewhat well.
The father of this child.
After that entire winter had passed, a child had suddenly connected her once again to that Noble of Wei Guo.
The Noble had given her a gentle kiss that winter, had given her a child, and this child had accompanied her through that unbearable year’s end within the coffin.
She remembered his broad palms and long, slender fingers. She remembered the faint scent of cedarwood on him. She remembered his low, beautiful voice that could beguile the heart.
Though he had pressed close to her through the nights without rest, he had nonetheless been gentle with her.
And he had not given her Bizi Tang.
No, he had not.
That was the only warmth she had known in the bitter winter of Huai Wang’s third year—no, it was the only warmth she had known up through the fourth year of Huai Wang’s reign as well.
In this ice-cold secret chamber, where hearts had gone cold through and through, she found herself especially longing for that man in Zhongjun Dazhang.
But Lu Shang understood none of this—she lived a very simple life.
Lu Shang’s eyes and heart held only her master Xiao Yannian, only a burning loyalty willing to walk through fire. And so, for anything else that displeased her, she had only contempt and scorn.
Just as she said now: “Actors and camp women—they’re the lowest of the low. At a moment like this, when your life hangs by a thread, you go and carry a Weiren’s bastard seed. Do you deserve even a shred of our master’s kindness? If you ruin our master’s great plans, even a thousand cuts and ten thousand slices wouldn’t be enough!”
A-Pan thought: yes, she did not deserve it.
But her child was not a bastard seed.
Lu Shang laughed still, laughed with a kind of madness: “A criminal’s daughter, carrying a Weiren’s offspring—that sliver of a chance you had in our master’s heart will never come again!”
A-Pan thought: yes, it would never come again.
She knew this child would not be kept. She strained to lift the bowl of medicine, but her body had no strength, so her hands trembled and shook as she raised it.
But she would drink it. She would beg no one.
Yet Lu Shang could not wait any longer. She snatched the bowl away, pried open A-Pan’s mouth, and began pouring the medicine down her throat, her cold face twisted in savagery. “Drink! Drink it! And remember—the crime of colluding with the enemy, you will never atone for it!”
The copper bowl clattering against her lips and teeth—how it hurt. And the taste of Suiguizi was truly bitter, truly a pain with nowhere to hide.
A-Pan’s abdomen twisted as if cut by knives—knives—and soon the pain spread through her entire body, reaching into every inch of skin and every joint of bone.
She gritted her teeth and endured, endured, but could not help thinking: was this medicine, inch by inch, also shredding the child in her belly?
She curled into herself, drenched in cold sweat. The icy blue bricks made her shiver uncontrollably. She thought of how the Noble of Wei Guo had once favored her waist and belly.
Did that Noble know he had left a child in the belly of a Zhongshan Yingji?
With tears brimming in her eyes, she thought: if only someone would gently stroke this knife-wrenched belly of hers right now, how wonderful that would be.
But there was no one.
She clutched her abdomen, which ached beyond endurance, and propped herself up to speak with Lu Shang: “Senior Sister is a hard-hearted person, but Senior Sister will have children of her own someday…”
Lu Shang laughed too. She rose slowly with a smile, her seemingly imposing figure drifting like a wandering ghost in this dim, sunless secret chamber.
That ever-sharp and caustic woman seemed possessed by some strange spell now. She spoke softly, sighed softly: “Don’t trouble yourself with such worries. Me? I’ll never have any.”
Before the words had even faded, she laughed to herself—laughed like an owl crying out suddenly in the dead of night.
Perhaps so.
A-Pan did not ask why Lu Shang would never have children. At this point, no one could look after anyone else.
A great gush of warm blood burst forth like a breached dam, flowing down between her thighs in a torrent, instantly soaking through her undergarments and the thin robe she wore.
A-Pan’s face went deathly pale. Tears and blood rolled out together.
The child who had accompanied her through the darkest of times—already three months along—was now gone.
She gazed at the sliver of daylight and spoke gently to her child, “It has been four years since Huai Wang’s reign.”
In the first month of the fourth year of Huai Wang’s reign, A-Pan, having suffered a miscarriage, was granted a rare opportunity to recuperate.
Xiao Yannian, disgusted by her, no longer bothered to deceive her, nor did he come to see her.
Even Lu Shang showed unexpected kindness, allowing her to rest in bed for nearly a month without coming to admonish her.
At the end of the first month, news arrived that the Daliangzao of Wei Guo was scouring the entire nation for beauties, to be sent to Dongbi in the third month of spring to serve.
The world whispered that the Father of the King of Wei indulged in wine and women, often carousing day and night, and so such an affair was hardly surprising.
The opportunity Qianjimen had been waiting for had arrived.
The people before Xiao Yannian were clearly far busier than before—at least Fan Cunxiao and Meng Yafu had not been seen for quite some time.
It was said the two were tracking and maneuvering over the Daliangzao’s selection of beauties, no doubt quietly networking, pulling strings, and even having to activate the hidden agents previously planted in Wei Guo.
On reflection, to find a Weiren whose build and appearance resembled A-Pan’s without arousing suspicion was a tangled, nearly impossible task—by no means an easy one.
In less than half a month, the carriage to take her away arrived.
This was the last time A-Pan saw Xiao Yannian before leaving Qianjimen.
She was brought to the main hall on a moonless night.
She remembered that night had little moonlight; the distant mountains loomed dark and oppressive, pressing down on one’s heart, and the sky over Qianjimen was equally dark and heavy, filling one with dread.
Xiao Yannian sat upright in the main seat. Though he was still the seemingly refined and frail young man of before, once seated on the soft mat, the unyielding authority of a superior bore down upon her.
A-Pan lowered her head and walked to the table, prostrating herself in greeting before him.
He did not bid her rise; only a servant beside him pushed a bundle of bamboo slips across the table.
So she knelt before Xiao Yannian and carefully read the scroll, which contained all the information on the Father of the King of Wei.
Xie Xuan.
Age twenty-five.
No wife, concubines, or children.
Violent and cruel by nature, a killer without number.
The supervising commander who campaigned against the various states, the supreme leader of the three hundred thousand Wei Wuzu.
Two years ago, he orchestrated a military coup, supporting a young ruler onto the throne, and was appointed by King Hui as the Father of the King, holding military and political power over Wei Guo, dominating the court and overshadowing all others.
The rest was unknown.