Jinghe Year Fifteen, Third Month, Twentieth Day
Beyond the walls, footsteps never ceased. Guards changed shifts, plates of armor striking one another, each answering the next with a ringing clang.
The East Gate, the West Gate, the North Gate.
All three were guarded, day and night without respite.
Only the South Gate, overlooking the river, stood unguarded, yet he dared not open it.
It was an opening Wei Zi had deliberately left.
To step through was to acknowledge defeat.
To refuse was to endure until he withered away.
Within the Suzhou Weaving Bureau, the air was still and quiet. Only hurried footsteps sounded outside the door...
They hurried closer and closer, bringing glad tidings with them.
Junior Eunuch's voice carried through the paneled doors, unable to contain his overflowing delight.
"Old Ancestor, someone's here!!"
"Who could be here? Wei Zi has spread a net over heaven and earth to trap me. Who else could possibly..."
"Old Ancestor, someone from the capital! Someone from the palace!"
At those words, Li Jin's eyes flew open. He sprang from his reclining chair, staggering as he nearly knocked over the corner of the desk.
The capital!!
His Old Ancestor, Wang Cheng, had sent someone!
Light shone into a place of utter despair; a dying fish had found water.
A surge of heat shot straight to Li Jin's Baihui point. All four limbs trembled, and the gloom that had gathered between his brows for days vanished in an instant.
Li Jin rushed to the door and thrust both hands against it, flinging it wide.
A young eunuch stood beneath the covered walkway, perhaps twenty years old, his face pale and beardless.
He wore the blue-gray robes of an Imperial Attendant, his clothes laden with the dust of travel. One glance made it clear he