Chapter 3

Green Micro Temple, in the southern outskirts of Chang'an City, had originally been a summer retreat built by Emperor Taizong, named Cuiwei Palace. In the fifth month of the twenty-third year of Zhenguan, Emperor Taizong had suddenly died while recuperating in its Hall of Containing Wind. The retreat had become a place of ill omen, and successive emperors had ceased visiting it. With that legendary sovereign's death, the taboo surrounding the fifth month as an evil month had grown still deeper in Great Tang.

Whatever those above favored, those below hastened to follow; the reverse held true as well. Cuiwei Palace had gradually fallen into neglect. Even after its conversion into Green Micro Temple, few came to burn incense, and visitors were scarce. The resident monks could not even keep their cooking pots supplied and had left to seek other livelihoods. After the Tianbao rebellion, crumbling walls and wild grass covered the grounds. Not a trace of its former imperial splendor remained.

Wei Xun settled the princess in a meditation chamber behind the main hall whose roof was still intact. Though alive, she had spent days sealed inside a coffin without food or drink and remained unconscious. Only after he wiped the thick powder and rouge from her face could he see how haggard she was, with barely a breath left in her. Had a master with profound internal power not sustained that last breath at the brink of death, even Bian Que and Hua Tuo reborn might have failed to save her.

Wei Xun tended her carefully. On the first day, he could only pour a little hot broth into her mouth through a reed tube. On the second, she could take fermented grain water, and only on the third could she drink thin rice gruel.

At first, Thirteenth Son rather resented this royal daughter who had escaped death. He felt she had delayed his eldest senior brother's work at a moment when life and death hung in the balance. Still, he could not stand by and watch a girl die for no reason, so he helped carry broth and water.

When Princess Wanshou had enjoyed imperial favor, the palace's sycophants had proclaimed her the greatest beauty in the capital region after the Noble Consort. Now that her true face was visible, she could certainly be called delicate and lovely, but in fairness, she remained some distance from that foremost title.

Her skin, however, was creamy and smooth as jade, utterly flawless. Her black hair was dense and thick, glossy enough to mirror a face, like a length of sleek, shining black brocade. Such hair and skin could only have been nurtured by endless pampering and meticulous care deep within the palace. They were beyond the reach of ordinary households.

On the third day, the princess gave a faint murmur, her starry eyes half opened, and she slowly regained consciousness.

The first thing she saw was a bare, dilapidated meditation chamber. Its door panels had long since vanished, leaving the doorway wide open. The window leaked, the walls were broken, and several earthenware basins sat in a corner to catch rainwater. Beneath her was a shabby, narrow couch, half collapsed and propped up with bricks. It had no bedding whatsoever; the robe she lay on and wrapped around herself was her own, stained with dirt.

After a long struggle, the princess barely managed to prop herself upright. Her throat felt dry and hoarse, and her hands and feet were numb, as though they did not belong to her.

"Oh, she's alive! She's alive!"

Two people stood beneath the veranda: a bald young novice monk and a slender, fair-skinned man in a blue-green bamboo-cloth robe, with a malt-sugar stick in his mouth. They stared at one another, speechless for a moment.

Thirteenth Son asked Wei Xun quietly, "Senior Brother, do you think she'll report us to the authorities and have us arrested?"

Wei Xun replied with a smile, "The authorities might not believe her."

Princess Wanshou thought she was still dreaming. Dazed, she asked, "Who are you two? Where is this? Are you the thieves who abducted me?"

"Thieves, yes," Thirteenth Son said. "Abductors, no. Strictly speaking, my eldest senior brother is your lifesaver."

Wei Xun entered the chamber, leaned against a pillar some distance away, and slid down to sit on the floor, looking perfectly at ease. He then briefly explained how the princess had supposedly died of a sudden illness, been buried alive in an underground tomb, and happened to be lifted from her coffin when he broke into the grave to rob it. He omitted only the human sacrifices.

The story was too shocking for the princess to accept at once. Still recovering from her grave illness, her mind was a blank haze. She wore a ceremonial robe patterned with pheasants, of the highest rank-not something worn in everyday life. How could she have been abducted from the palace dressed like this and remember nothing?

The princess asked blankly, "Who exactly are you?"

Only then did Wei Xun spit out the sugar stick and sit upright. Cupping his hands, neither servile nor arrogant, he said, "My name is Wei Xun. This is my junior brother, Thirteenth Son."

"Are you of the Jingzhao Wei or the Wuxing Wei?"

Both were great aristocratic clans that rivaled the Five Surnames and Seven Houses. At her innocent question, Wei Xun burst into laughter, shaking a shower of dust from the roof.

"Ha ha ha ha ha! Look at these plain clothes. Which Wei clan do I look like?"

The princess blushed, realizing her mistake. After this undeserved calamity, her head swam, even sitting upright was difficult, and her thoughts were as simple as a newborn infant's. The man looked not yet twenty. Though dressed in plain cloth, his eyes shone like lightning, and his bearing was wild and unrestrained, nothing like that of a lowly servant.

"Rest for another couple of days before deciding what to do. These are the ornaments you were wearing when you came out of the ground. Make sure you keep every last one."

Wei Xun placed a heavy bundle beside the couch and strode out with Thirteenth Son. The cloth wrapping it was a prayer banner covered in talismanic writing, just as he had described.

For the next two days, Wei Xun was nowhere to be seen. Each day, the young novice brought simple gruel and noodle soup, without a trace of meat in the bowl. As Bai Letian's poem said: "In hunger, hemp porridge smells sweet; in thirst, cloud broth tastes fine." Having starved for so many days, the princess had no other food to choose from and could only eat whatever came.

From birth, she had known fine clothes and exquisite food, surrounded by servants. Even while she slept, several palace maids stayed beside her footstool. Now she was alone in a deserted temple, so weak that every step was a struggle, with only two strangers of dubious identity to see. Frightened and bewildered, she kept feeling that she had yet to wake from that murky, dreadful nightmare.

When she could finally get up and walk, the princess found her clothes loose and her sash slack. Her delicate body had wasted away until she could scarcely bear the weight of her garments. Fortunately, she had always been well nourished and enjoyed riding and playing polo, which had allowed her to survive so many days without food or water. A frail woman with the slender figure of a flying swallow would have starved to death in the stone coffin long ago.

Over those days, no one else had visited the deserted temple; only birds, insects, and ants occasionally ventured in. No message came by fish or wild goose, and wherever she looked, there was no one she knew. With no other choice, the princess had Thirteenth Son summon Wei Xun. Arranging her clothes and sitting upright, she said solemnly, "Green Micro Temple was my ancestor's retreat, and it is not far from Chang'an. If you two escort me safely back to the palace, I will reward you generously."

Wei Xun asked with a grin, "How generously?"

Born to gold and jade, Princess Wanshou had never handled a single transaction in her life. Apart from wagering gold coins while playing dominoes and leaf cards, she had never even touched copper cash. What notion could she have of money? She remembered only that, at some banquet, a scholar had apparently said an ordinary house in Chang'an City cost three hundred thousand cash. Hesitantly, she said, "A reward of one thousand strings of cash."

Wei Xun shook his head.

"Then five thousand strings."

Thirteenth Son's heart soared. In his eagerness, he kept poking Wei Xun. Living in Chang'an was no easy matter, but the vast sum the princess promised would more than suffice to build a mansion with painted beams and carved rafters even in Pingkang Ward. Yet Wei Xun shook his head again.

The princess also found this troublesome. Seeing that wealth could not move him, she tried another approach. "Shall I secure an official post for you?"

Wei Xun remained unmoved.

"I'm an unregistered wanderer with no fixed abode. What official post could I hold?"

The princess asked in surprise, "Then what do you want?"

Wei Xun said with a smile, "Robbing an imperial tomb is an unforgivable crime, punishable by beheading and exposure of the corpse in the marketplace. This head of mine may not be worth much, but I'm still reluctant to sell it."

Princess Wanshou suddenly understood. "So you're afraid of punishment. That is no obstacle. Whenever I ask Father for something, he never refuses."

Wei Xun's smile faded. "Not necessarily. Whoever buried you probably wanted you never to be reborn." He then recounted, one by one, the strange and sinister things he had seen in the underground tomb, and produced the Exorcism Mask that had covered her face as evidence.

The princess saw a blue-faced, fanged mask carved with four eyes, so grotesque and bizarre that she had never seen its like even on a stage. A single look sent a chill through her whole body. Frowning, she asked, "What is this thing?"

"An Exorcism Mask. People commonly use them in rites to drive out evil and suppress spirits. When I opened your coffin, this was covering your face."

Naturally, the princess did not believe him.

Witchcraft and curse charms had always been strictly forbidden in the palace. Anyone implicated would, at best, be banished to the cold palace; at worst, their family and household would be destroyed. There was never any pardon. She took the heavy wooden mask, only to find traces of white powder and rouge clinging to its inner surface. Rubbing a little off with her fingers, she examined it. Its texture and color were indeed those she usually wore, and her certainty began to waver.

Thirteenth Son was still young, with some innocence left in him. He told the princess, "When illness puts someone into a deathlike state, their body goes cold and their breathing grows faint. It isn't all that rare for their family to mistake them for dead, put them in a coffin, and hastily bury them. Perhaps you were buried by mistake that way too."

The girl did not answer, silently turning the hideous mask in her hands. Though she had never personally overseen a funeral, she had attended many imperial mourning ceremonies. With all the elaborate procedures-attending the moment of death, calling back the soul, preparing the bier, bathing the body, changing its clothes, placing rice and a jewel in its mouth, issuing the death notice, reporting at the palace, the lesser encoffining, choosing an auspicious date, beginning the funeral procession, the greater encoffining, and returning to mourn-it was hard to imagine that no one would discover she was merely in a deathlike state.

Besides, even if such a one-in-ten-thousand coincidence had occurred, no one would have dared commit such sacrilege by secretly placing a curse object like this in her golden coffin.

Wei Xun said, "The custom of covering the dead person's face with thin white silk exists precisely so that the faint breathing of someone only apparently dead can be detected in time. But with a heavy cypress-wood Exorcism Mask like this on your face, no one could have noticed even if you were breathing."

Still unwilling to believe it, the princess raised the Exorcism Mask with both hands and put it over her face to test it. Yet its oppressive weight and the distinctive smell of cypress immediately made her fling it away in terror.

Yes! Four eyes were carved into the mask. In that long nightmare from which she could not wake, she had dimly seen light through four ill-aligned gaps before everything sank into darkness and silence. No matter how she struggled, she could not move, as though a nightmare demon were pinning her down.

Though she had not been fully conscious then, even in a dream the terror of being buried alive had seeped into her bones. The girl's face turned deathly pale, and her cherry-red lips trembled.

Thirteenth Son felt a little sympathy for her at this. Wei Xun picked up the Exorcism Mask, covered it with cloth again, and handed it to his junior brother, telling him to hide it out on the veranda, somewhere she could not see.

Once her emotions had settled a little, Wei Xun began asking about the most suspicious matter. "What exactly happened on the day before you 'died'?"

Distraught, the princess murmured as she recalled it, "Nothing unusual... The day before, I had arranged to hunt deer in Daxing Park. While dressing that morning, I found that the pleats in the silk skirt I was to wear had not been properly pressed. I told a maid to fetch another, but the little servant actually brought me a pomegranate-red skirt. It made me so angry."

Seeing the confusion on Wei Xun's and Thirteenth Son's faces, she explained, "My mother loved wearing pomegranate-red skirts when she was alive. She was a beauty who could topple cities and kingdoms, so no one in the palace wanted to wear red, afraid of looking like common painted faces beside her. After Mother died, the sight of a pomegranate-red skirt reminded Father of her. He would either sob so hard he could not speak or fly into a rage, so no one dared wear a red skirt before him anymore."

The two fellow disciples knew absolutely nothing about women's clothing. Hearing her explanation, they merely found these inexplicable matters within the palace obscure and tiresome.

With a faintly contemptuous sneer, Wei Xun said, "Such a trivial thing, and the ruler of an entire country is that capricious."

The princess snapped, "You little thief, how dare you! You dare speak of the Son of Heaven that way!"

Wei Xun smiled carelessly. "Robbing tombs already carries a death sentence. I have no parents or family for him to punish along with me. What can he do, kill me twice?"

The princess was momentarily speechless and deeply astonished. Though this man's name was Wei Xun, there was nothing "obedient" about him. He was neither compliant nor respectful, only filled with fearless arrogance. Unfortunately, she was alone now and truly had no way to deal with him. She could only swallow her anger for the moment.

Taking stock of her situation, the princess merely said, "It is all the fault of those unorthodox alchemists. Father used to have a very mild temper. Over the past two years, they have tricked him into taking many elixirs of unknown origin, and only then did his moods become somewhat unpredictable..."

She paused, thinking that illness must have made her foolish indeed, to confide these private palace matters to two strangers. As a daughter, she could only be moved by the emperor's unwavering devotion to his late beloved consort, whom he thought of day and night, weeping even at the sight of a pomegranate-red skirt. What grounds did she have to blame him? She merely had some complaints about those alchemists whose mouths were full of absurdities.

She therefore returned to her earlier account. "I thought the maid had not served me long and was still young, so perhaps she had yet to understand these unwritten palace rules. I only scolded her a little and had someone fetch another silk skirt. Once dressed, I hurried out of the palace on horseback. The hunt went very well that day. I took two deer, a gazelle, and some smaller game."

Wei Xun and Thirteenth Son exchanged a glance, neither quite believing she possessed such skill at hunting. They supposed it was probably the drive hunt so beloved by royalty and nobles: guards forced large numbers of animals into gullies and traps, then let their masters take the shot. Even firing a few arrows at random with their eyes closed would yield a catch.

"So nothing unexpected happened during the hunt?"

The princess shook her head. "Everything went smoothly. I returned from Daxing Park at a quarter to four. The heat was unbearable, so I had the servants prepare water for a bath. Since I still had an evening banquet to attend and might have to stay up until dawn, I ate a little and lay down to rest."

Wei Xun immediately asked, "What did you eat?"

The princess thought carefully. "I drank pomegranate cordial and ate chilled sweet melon."

"Did anything taste strange?"

The princess shook her head. "I know what you suspect. My meals are always supplied by the imperial food bureau, and a portion of every dish is set aside for a palace attendant to taste for poison first."

"And then?"

"I don't know how long I slept. It was already quite dark when I suddenly felt a twisting pain in my stomach, then began vomiting without stopping. The maids were terrified and ran out shouting, 'The princess is vomiting blood! The princess is vomiting blood!' My younger brother Li Yuanyi came back from his lecture and was stunned to see me like that. Afraid the fright would give him nightmares, I had a palace matron take him to stay with Dowager Consort Song."

"Did you summon physicians and take medicine?"

The princess frowned, as though the question were pointless. "Of course. The imperial physicians arrived shortly afterward, prescribed a decoction, and performed acupuncture and moxibustion. But the pain in my stomach would not stop. After taking the medicine, I vomited several more times. Before long, everything went black before my eyes, and then... I kept drifting through confused dreams. I cannot remember clearly. After that, you brought me to Green Micro Temple."

Thirteenth Son interjected, "But sudden abdominal pain and vomiting blood usually mean either a severe internal injury or a long illness in an elderly person. A young person vomiting blood like that sounds more like poisoning."

Wei Xun added, "I tested the princess's mouth for poison that day, but found nothing."

The princess covered her chest and shrank back, exclaiming, "You even tested me for poison?!"

Untroubled by such niceties, Wei Xun answered frankly, "You were unconscious, and I had nothing else to do. Failing to detect poison could mean there was none, or that too many days had passed and you had already swallowed it all."

"If it was poison, how did the culprit get around the imperial food bureau? And who would poison me? Now that I think more carefully, after I came back from hunting, I did not see the little maid who had brought me the skirt that morning. I only scolded her and did not punish her. Perhaps a palace matron punished her separately, making her resentful? But how would she dare..."

The princess continued recalling events. There had indeed been some strange details on that chaotic evening. For instance, the imperial physicians who usually came to Phoenix-Resting Hall to take her pulse were Chen Yuange and Shen Lexian. Yet of the three men who had come that night, she recognized only two, and did not know them well. The other, a young imperial physician, she had never seen before.

Wei Xun gazed at her and said slowly, "Whether it was a sudden illness or accidental poisoning, the strange thing is this: the princess died suddenly in the palace, yet the emperor not only failed to investigate thoroughly, he hurried to bury you and used all sorts of rites to suppress your spirit. Almost as though he feared you would become a ghost and take revenge."

Hearing Wei Xun plainly voice the suspicion she had buried deepest in her heart, Princess Wanshou turned ashen. She wanted to rebuke him sharply for spouting nonsense, but could not utter a word. Last year, when her much-favored elder brother, Prince Shao, Li Yuanying, had been slandered and banished to Youzhou, that question had already quietly taken root and sprouted within her.

A thousand tangled threads, and no end in sight. The girl rose unsteadily, her eyes reddening, and said in a trembling voice, "If you won't escort me, I'll walk back to Chang'an myself."