Leaden clouds pressed down over Luoyang City. At first, the snow fell in scattered flecks like crumbs, melting into wet marks the instant they touched the bluestone streets. Within half an hour, they had become goose-feather flakes swirling across the sky, wrapping the entire Capital in a boundless white haze.
Dingding Avenue lay cold and deserted that morning. The vendors who usually hawked their wares had long since vanished. Signboards clacked under the battering north wind, and shop banners were blown askew. Occasionally, a few pedestrians hurried past, bundled tightly in padded robes, muttering a word or two before the wind and snow swallowed their voices.
News of the assassination attempt on the emperor had arrived faster and more urgently than the snow, flooding every household.
People argued in streets and alleys. The old Chancellor Ding Fengyuan had enjoyed an excellent reputation among the common folk for reducing corvée labor and taxes, so many sympathized with Ding Feiyong, even as they were shocked that he had acted in such a perverse, outrageous way. All manner of speculation arose...
In teahouses, some whispered that the young master of the Ding family had been bewitched by evil spirits. Others slapped the tables and lamented how the old chancellor, upright all his life, could have raised such a rebellious son. In taverns, drunken patrons whispered into one another's ears that the old chancellor had once crossed an imperial taboo, and the emperor himself had bestowed poisoned wine upon him.
These rumors had barely raised their heads before the iron boots of the Five-City Military Command smashed through doorsteps, and the chains of the Six Fan Gate rattled across the snow. In the blink of an eye, loose-tongued idlers from several streets had been dragged into holding cells.
For a time, Luoyang City was