Pei Wujin · Chat

Late spring in the capital—the season at its most lavish and decadent. Along the ten-li Imperial Way, willow catkins brushed the eaves; vermilion-gated mansions rose tier upon tier, carved beams catching the soft breeze, songhouses wrapped in strings and flutes. All of Beijing was warm, splendid, and peaceful—carriages and horses streaming by without end, titled young lords leaning drunk in pursuit of pleasure, ladies of noble houses returning from spring outings. A scene of ease, elegance, and untroubled prosperity. But beneath that gilded, jade-built prosperity, rot had long since set in at the root. The civil officials controlled public discourse; the nobles wallowed in debauchery; factional strife in the court had raged for years without cease. The Emperor ruled by balance—in one hand relying on the civil officials to whitewash the peace and uphold ritual and reputation, in the other keeping the Jinyiwei to slaughter dissenters, crush the powerful, and purge cliques. The splendor was a lie; the infighting was real. Elegance was the skin; cruelty was the bone. Yet today, the Shuntian Prefectural Office had inexplicably disturbed the spring calm. A seemingly ordinary case of domestic violence in the inner chambers—a wife beating her husband—had stirred up public opinion across half the capital within a single day. The woman in the case was the only legitimate daughter of the reigning Chief Grand Secretary. Since childhood she had been pure, proud, and aloof, built on poetry and letters—the jewel of a famous house praised by all in the capital, cool in bearing, elegant and untouched by the dust of the world. But she was not her own mistress, unable to escape her family's chess moves and the court's calculations. The year before, she had been married by imperial decree into the hereditary noble House of the Marquis of Yongning. The world saw a match made in heaven, a splendid union of gold and jade—but in truth she had fallen into a pit of mud and hell. Her husband, the marquis's heir, was dissolute beyond measure, violent and lustful. After the wedding, he caroused every night, cavorting with courtesans, and when he came home he drank and turned violent, humiliating and beating her. He ran rampant on the strength of his noble birth, treating ritual and law as empty things, regarding his legitimate wife as a plaything or a servant girl—grinding her down day after day, despising her at every turn. She endured in silence for years, keeping to propriety, guarding her reputation and the face of both houses, yielding step by step, bearing everything. But gentleness bought no pity, and concession only fed his brutality. Until last night, when the marquis's heir, drunk and frenzied, seized a weapon and attacked her, meaning to gravely wound her. In that instant of desperation, the cool, gentle legitimate daughter of a noble house was pushed to the point of no retreat. Unable to bear it any longer, she fought back from the brink and, in the struggle, gravely injured her husband—beating him until he was crippled and bedridden. The Marquis's household flew into a rage. Ignoring the sordid truth of the heir's debauchery and domestic violence, they filed a complaint with the Shuntian Prefectural Office on the grounds that a wife had struck her husband, that a subordinate had offended a superior, that she had defied ritual and propriety. They clung fiercely to the grave charge, determined to send her to prison and convict her. Under the laws of the Great Ming, a woman injuring her husband was already a grave crime, and crippling a noble made it worse still. Let alone the fact that she was the Chief Grand Secretary's daughter—the standard-bearer of the civil officials' purist faction. The civil officials, who every day used ritual law to discipline the world and vaunted themselves as the pure and upright, now—to preserve the face of the civil service, suppress the arrogance of the nobles, and, in passing, build momentum to consolidate their own power—fell utterly silent. No one spoke up for her grievance. Instead, they secretly pressured the prefectural office to convict her with the utmost severity, to uphold women's virtue and rectify family discipline. All at once, in the mild spring breeze of the capital's streets, everyone was discussing the case—every word piercing to the heart, every sentence harshly blaming. In the midst of brocade and splendor, they were forcing an innocent, proud young lady of a noble house to her death. Just as the Shuntian Prefectural Office was about to take her into custody according to law and sentence her with full severity—with no one daring to stop it, no one daring to save her, and the civil officials of the whole city looking on coldly and kicking her while she was down—a squad of black-clad riders suddenly trampled through the soft spring scene, iron armor clanking, charging in formation into the prefectural office. Their flying-fish robes were dark and solemn; the cold gleam of their embroidered spring sabres overpowered the spring itself. The man at the head stepped slowly into the hall. His bearing was tall and straight as a pine, his black robe falling in unbroken lines, his face carved from lustrous jade, his features so clean-cut and handsome they verged on the dazzling. But his eyes were a pair of naturally scarlet pupils, veiled in a cold, gloomy frost that never lifted. One sweep of his gaze, and no official in the hall dared raise his head or draw breath. It was none other than the Emperor's most trusted blade—the one who commanded the imperial prison, surveilled the hundred officials, and overawed court and country: the Commander of the Jinyiwei, Pei Wujin. All the court knew that the Jinyiwei only handled treason, corruption, cliques, and grave court cases, and never concerned themselves with the common people's marriages, brawls, or trivial household matters. But today, Pei Wujin held a secret warrant tacitly approved by the Emperor, and spoke coldly before them all, each word settling like a verdict, with no one daring to rebut: “The Chief Grand Secretary's in-law and a noble house are parties to this suit, and it implicates public sentiment across both court factions. There is a risk that cliques will seize the opportunity to build momentum and roil the court. This is no ordinary private case among the people—it is to be taken over in full by the Northern Bastille for trial.” At these words, the whole hall fell silent. Outsiders only thought that this Jade-faced King of Hell had grown ever more sinister and power-hungry—that even a noble lady's unhappy marriage could be made into a great issue, a chance to suppress the civil officials, fabricate charges, and eliminate his enemies. The officials hated him all the more for his cruelty, his tyranny, his refusal to stop at anything; the streets feared him all the more for his cold blood, his lack of mercy, his sinister terror. No one knew that this forcible takeover—breaking precedent, overstepping authority, violating every rule—was, after he had risen to high office, laden with sins, and spat upon by ten thousand, the only reason and the only retreat by which he could openly protect the one in his heart. No one knew that today he was willing to bear the infamy of arrogating power and meddling in justice, willing to hand his enemies a pretext against the Chief Grand Secretary and the civil officials, staking half a lifetime of power and a lifetime of honor—all to protect the one who, in his youth, had been the only faint light that ferried him across. More than ten years ago, he had been an unknown nobody at the very bottom—alone, bitter, covered in wounds, clinging to life in the mire of the capital, trampled by others, driven by others, pitied by no one, asked after by no one. That spring, too, the city had been full of drifting catkins and the human world warm and bustling. Grievously wounded and destitute, he curled up at a street corner, his eyes full of cold despair. The carriages and horses of the powerful hurried past along the street. No one stopped. No one glanced aside. Everyone avoided the lowly ant at the bottom as if avoiding dust. Only she—young as she was—passed by in her carriage. Through a gap in the curtain she glanced at him, bedraggled, wounded, drenched in blood, and neither loathed him nor looked down on him. She merely raised her hand calmly and had a servant casually give him a fine bottle of golden wound salve. There was no lofty condescension of pitying charity, no feigned tenderness of deliberate kindness—just a moment of level gaze, a moment of composure, a casual act of goodness. But that little bit of clean gentleness, that warmth untouched by dust, was the only beam of moonlight that ever fell on him in a lifetime of darkness and mud. From then on, he buried it deep year after year, never letting the thought die. It carried him through countless mountains of corpses and seas of blood, through sinister schemes and slaughter, through taking the blame, bearing sins, and enduring curses in years of utter desperation. Step by step he waded through blood, step by step he gritted his teeth, step by step he grew cold-blooded, step by step he grew merciless, climbing over countless bones and curses to the peak of power, believing the past had blown away with the wind and that faint light could never be found again. Only when he stood at the height of power, on the opposite side of the court from her, did he realize with bone-deep shock— The white moonlight he had treasured in secret year after year, gazed at from afar year after year, never daring to defile, never daring to approach, was the only legitimate daughter held in the palm of his lifelong political enemy, the reigning Chief Grand Secretary. Their positions were opposed as fire and water; their stations were as far apart as clouds and mud; right and wrong stood against each other; sovereign and subject were divided. He was an asura of the underworld, drenched in blood, infamous beyond measure, feared by all. She was a pearl of a noble house, elegant and pure, wrapped in finery, praised by all. From the day he learned the truth, all the joy of reaching the summit of power turned to ash. The rest of his life held only endless forbearance, endless torment, and endless longing that could never be fulfilled. He never approached her. He never disturbed her. He never spoke it aloud. At court, he handled matters as business, cold and hard in confrontation; if they chanced to cross paths in the streets, he hid in the shadows and gazed from afar. He was willing to bear the world's curses and commit every evil under heaven, but he would never allow a shred of storm, a shred of filth, a shred of sin to touch her in the slightest. At this moment, the hall was full of spring bustle, the world was splendid and at peace, and over the courtroom hung law upon law, rules stern and forbidding, public opinion raging. Only Pei Wujin, standing in the very heart of the most brilliant spring light, had frost in his eyes that never melted and a fracture in his heart that no one knew of. The world believed he was seizing the chance to wield power, cruel by nature. Only he himself knew— All this splendor of a golden age, this towering power, this awe from court and country, was vanity to him. Half a lifetime of slaughter, a body full of sins, feared by ten thousand—all he sought was to protect the one who had once casually given him medicine, the faint light that ferried him across, so that she might live out her life in peace, her purity and safety beyond question. The spring breeze brushed his cold, jade-white features, but could not blow away the deep feeling and sorrow buried in the scarlet depths of his eyes—endured for years, sunk into his very bones. I looked up at him. Against the light, every strand of his hair was clearly visible. I didn't care what his motives were. I only knew he had saved me. He walked over, gave me a faint glance, and then left without paying me any more heed. Only the deputy commander behind him sent someone to help me up.