Chapter 4

Princess Wanshou staggered to her feet, her eyes red-rimmed, and said in a trembling voice, "If you won't take me, I'll walk back to Chang'an myself."

Thirteenth Son tried to step forward and support her, but Wei Xun held him back.

This was a thorny matter indeed. In principle, the emperor's beloved daughter returning from the dead and going back to the palace should have made everyone happy. Yet suspicions surrounded both her life and her death, suggesting this had been no accident. They had told her all the facts without concealment. The princess knew where matters stood, and Wei Xun had no grounds to stop her.

Her outer robe was already stained with grave dirt, so the princess set off wearing only her close-fitting, chest-high skirt and short jacket.

As the saying went, every road led to Chang'an, and finding the right direction was easy enough. Not far beyond the gates of Green Micro Temple, she reached the official road into the city. But this was the first time in her life she had ventured out alone, without guards or servants, and she was utterly at a loss. The upturned silk shoes on her feet, inlaid with gold and jade, were burial shoes made to match her ceremonial dress. They did not fit, and before she had walked three li, the pain became unbearable and she began to limp.

Riding high on spring's favor, a horse's hooves flew; in a single day, one could see all the flowers of Chang'an. Thirty li would have passed in a flash on the back of her beloved Jade-Hoofed Black Steed. Even taking a fragrant carriage and leisurely admiring the flowers along the road would have been delightful. But traveling on her own two legs, the road seemed so far, so long.

The pain was nothing compared with the truth hidden in the fog, which weighed far more heavily on her heart. Why had Father treated her this way? Her death had been so bizarre-why had he not pursued the true culprit, merely giving her a lavish burial and leaving it at that? And there was that soul-suppressing Exorcism Mask... The princess was seized by an inexplicable terror and dared not think further. Wiping away her tears, she forced herself to lower her head and keep walking.

Wei Xun and Thirteenth Son followed at a distance. They watched her sit by the roadside, take off her shoes, and continue in nothing but silk stockings. Passersby all turned to stare in astonishment at this beautiful young woman trudging along without shoes, looking utterly bereft.

Thirteenth Son muttered, "This princess is pretty stubborn."

Wei Xun said nothing.

Thirteenth Son asked again, "We still didn't find that thing this time. What are you going to do, senior brother?"

Wei Xun sighed and lifted his chin toward the girl ahead. "What else can I do? If I'm lucky, collect a reward. If I'm unlucky, wait to die."

Thirteenth Son lowered his head, crestfallen. "You won't necessarily die."

"There's still time to go join Second Brother and the others. Seventh Brother's gang would do too. You have no future following me."

The boy shook his head. "At least eldest senior brother doesn't beat people." He paused, then murmured to himself, "Eldest senior brother only missed his chance to find the thing because he was rushing to save someone. That's a great deed, doing good and storing up virtue. By rights, you shouldn't have to wash your hands in a golden basin and quit."

Wei Xun did not agree. He shook his head. "Honeyed words."

Thirteenth Son asked, "If it isn't for money, and you've already saved her, why are you still following her?"

Wei Xun sighed. "Ah, curiosity killed the cat. You know I can't let strange things like this go. If I don't get to the bottom of it, the itch in my heart won't be scratched."

Chatting on and off, the two followed Princess Wanshou all the way to Anhua Gate on the southwestern side of Chang'an City. Crowds of people waiting to enter the city stood in line before the gate to have their identities checked. Examination candidates, traveling scholars, peddlers carrying shoulder poles, wandering Buddhist monks and Daoist priests, servants, laborers, and countless others gathered there. Oxen and horses pulling freight carts crowded together with foreign merchants' camels, giving off waves of animal stench.

Thirteenth Son suddenly remembered something important. "Does the princess have travel papers?"

Wei Xun thought for a moment. "At least, she isn't carrying any."

The boy gave Wei Xun a sidelong glance, wanting to say something but holding his tongue.

His eldest senior brother had always been clueless about matters between men and women. When he brought the princess back to Green Micro Temple for treatment, he had carried her, held her, pressed her acupuncture points, and traced her meridians without either restraint or embarrassment. Open and straightforward, Wei Xun had treated her as nothing more than an object. And she was so pretty, too...

Now, standing amid the crowd, Princess Wanshou did not know what to do with herself. Whenever she passed through a city gate in the past, her guards would already have driven away the bystanders and cleared the streets in readiness. Surrounded by maids and eunuchs, she would ride straight through without ever needing to stop.

The gate official inspected each person's identity papers and travel permits in turn. When Princess Wanshou's turn came, he immediately grew suspicious and looked her up and down.

The girl wore no makeup, yet her almond eyes and peach-blossom cheeks made her bright and lovely. But her cloudlike hair was disheveled, she wore no shoes, and her silk stockings were covered in mud. The fabric of her clothes was clearly excellent, but they fit poorly and were covered in dust and creases.

Was she a runaway slave? Or a girl from a respectable family abducted by a trafficker?

The gate official immediately asked her to step out of line and questioned her separately. "Young lady, where have you come from? What is your name? Why are you alone?"

Princess Wanshou stammered, "I'm... I'm from the palace. My name is Zhu'er."

"Do you have travel papers on you?"

"I accidentally lost them..."

"If you're from the palace, where is your ancestral home, and when did you enter service? Which noble person do you serve? Who did you leave the city with? And why have you returned alone?"

Princess Wanshou had prepared a set of lies, but she had spent her life deep within the palace and knew nothing of the world. The official at Anhua Gate had worked there for years, honing his eyes until nothing escaped them. He saw at once that the girl's story was riddled with holes, and a few questions left her floundering.

When she could not answer, the gate official assumed she was some powerful household's beautiful runaway slave. With a cold laugh, he called over several Imperial Guards and asked them to take the woman into custody and bring her to the county office for questioning.

The princess had intended to bow her head and submit, then find a way to meet the Governor of Jingzhao once she reached the county office and decide what to do next. But the burly men in round-collared robes reached out and grabbed her body. The light, soft fabric of her summer clothes revealed every curve, and one hairy hand squeezed her breast. The man even said with a leering grin, "You smell so sweet, little lady!"

Since the day she was born, Princess Wanshou had never heard so much as a harsh word. How could she bear such groping humiliation? She shook all over with rage and cried out uncontrollably:

"Don't touch me! Do you know who I am?"

"Who are you? Go on, tell us!"

"I belong to the princess! You mustn't touch me!"

The gate official and the Imperial Guards exchanged silent looks, their minds racing. None wanted trouble, but none dared let this unidentified woman spout nonsense at the city gate either. One of the Imperial Guards stepped forward, covered her mouth, and dragged her sideways to the ground.

The princess struggled desperately. Her hair came completely undone, and she took another heavy kick. She rolled along the ground, trying to escape the men, only to roll straight into the cluster of livestock and smear herself with horse dung and cow manure. Now none of them wanted to touch her.

By then, a large crowd had gathered to watch. Seeing that the moment was right, Wei Xun stepped forward with a broad smile, bowing repeatedly. "This is my master's young lady. She's not quite right in the head. Her family wasn't paying attention today, and she slipped out. She's been talking nonsense here and disturbing your duties, gentlemen. Please forgive her."

Then he leaned close to the gate official and whispered with an air of mystery, "Her fiancé broke off the engagement. That's what drove her mad."

In those days, everyone from court officials to beggars wore their hair in a topknot. Anyone with hair loose over their shoulders was either a convicted criminal or a mad fool.

The gate official frowned at the woman. With her hair hanging loose and filth all over her, she certainly looked less than sound of mind. So she was a madwoman. Though he very much wanted to learn whose daughter she was, the southern outskirts were filled with villas and estates belonging to the powerful. Questioning her in public and offending any one of those households would leave him with more trouble than he could stomach.

He immediately barked, "Take her home! Keep her properly locked up, and don't let her out again!"

Under the laws of the dynasty, even fools and mad people brought before an official for a crime could be treated leniently. Besides, no one wanted to touch her. Since a household servant had come to claim her, they were naturally glad to be rid of the trouble.

Wei Xun pulled the bedraggled girl to her feet and took her back along the same road to Green Micro Temple.

On the return journey, the girl said nothing. Her steps were unsteady, as though her soul had left her body, yet she did not cry.

Thirteenth Son nudged Wei Xun with his elbow and whispered, "We didn't collect a reward, and we didn't get beheaded. What are we going to do with her?"

Wei Xun shook his head and remained silent.

It was nearly dusk when they returned to Green Micro Temple. Clouds billowed and blazed across the horizon, red light spreading like fresh blood from west to east-an unsettling expanse of fiery clouds. As they entered the temple gate, Thirteenth Son stretched and complained under his breath, "We spent the whole day running back and forth without earning a single coin. It's as though we deliberately rushed to the city gate just to get beaten."

The filth on Princess Wanshou had already dried in the wind. As she passed the Life-Release Pond, she deliberately leaned over to look inside and saw weeds growing wild where the water had long since dried up.

Suddenly, she gave an order: "Fetch water!"

Her voice was not loud, yet it carried the natural authority of someone accustomed to standing above others. The two fellow disciples instinctively hurried to obey, finding wooden buckets and drawing water from the well behind the rear hall.

The princess did not go to the meditation room. Instead, she knelt upright in the front courtyard, with the sky for her canopy and the ground for her mat, and washed herself fully clothed. The water from the deep well was icy cold. There were no maids now to heat fragrant bathwater for her. She poured dipper after dipper of cold water over her head, sending shivers through her whole body.

Wei Xun watched coolly. Her movements were solemn, her expression sorrowful but composed, and a resolve to die had already entered her eyes. This is bad, he thought.

Once she had rinsed away all the filth, the princess bowed with her forehead to the ground in the direction of the imperial throne, then rose and went to the meditation room to find a rope with which to hang herself. She searched everywhere but found nothing. Her floral-patterned stole was made of fine gauze, thin and translucent, and would surely not bear her weight. If she used her sash, her skirt would fall down, which would be most undignified.

As she hesitated, she saw Wei Xun standing nearby with his hands tucked into his sleeves. The princess called out, "Do you have a knife?"

Wei Xun nodded, drew a gunmetal-gray dagger from inside his robe, and drove it into the wooden pillar before her. Its blade reflected her pale, haggard face.

By now, even Thirteenth Son could see she wanted to kill herself. Scratching his head and tugging at his ears in agitation, he shouted, "She asks for a knife, and you actually give her one?!"

Wei Xun smiled. "If someone else kills herself, the law holds neither of us responsible. Once she's thoroughly dead and no one claims the body, we'll wash away the blood, find a buyer, and arrange a ghost marriage. We can get a dozen or so strings of good coins, then go into the city for wine, meat, and malt candy. Wouldn't that be lovely?"

Thirteenth Son stared at his senior brother in shock, only to see a crafty expression on his face as he winked at him. The quick-witted boy immediately understood his intention and picked up where he had left off:

"You're asking too little, eldest senior brother. A fresh corpse of a beautiful unmarried girl would fetch at least twenty strings of coins at the Ghost Market. Plenty of lonely old widowers would fight over her."

He then rattled on about the prices for ghost marriages: how much ashes fetched, how much old bones fetched, and how much the rotting corpse of an elderly woman fetched. In short, the fresher and younger, the more expensive.

These two grave robbers were actually discussing the price of her corpse to her face, even talking about selling her into a ghost marriage with an old man. Shock, fury, anger, and fear flooded the princess all at once. Suddenly, she burst into loud sobs, tears tumbling down like pearls from a broken string.

Her crying shook heaven and earth and startled birds into flight, its heart-rending force soaring into the clouds as she poured out all her grievances and fear. Even if she endured the humiliation and entered the city, what could she achieve by meeting the Magistrate of Chang'an County? Even if he reported it immediately and she gained an audience with the emperor, what then?

In the eyes of the law, Princess Wanshou was already dead, and hers was a death that had fulfilled some expectation of imperial grace. Even if her heart still beat and breath still passed her lips, everyone beneath heaven, to the farthest shores of the realm, could only regard her as a dead woman. On the road to Chang'an, she had dimly begun to realize this, but she had been too frightened to think it through.

Now that she had been humiliated in public, what choice remained except to kill herself and preserve the imperial family's dignity?

After listening to her cries for a while, Wei Xun asked calmly, "Princess, have you regretted my bringing you back to the world of the living?"

The princess cursed through her tears, "You lowly thieves! Don't you dare set your sights on my corpse! Even as a ghost, I won't let you off!"

Wei Xun felt somewhat reassured. What he feared most in someone seeking death was an unshakable resolve. Once she could cry and curse, once she had an outlet, she would be less likely to rush toward death.

After crying for a long while, the girl's throat was hoarse. She looked at herself in the dagger's reflection and saw tangled hair, red, swollen eyes, and gaunt cheeks. Never had she looked so ugly and strange-she was practically a ghost already. If they're going to sell my corpse, I must slash my face to pieces before I die. I can't let these thieves get a good price. But that would be even more undignified...

While she wrestled with these thoughts, Thirteenth Son brought her a dipper of cold water to soothe her throat. She took it without thinking and drank it all.

She sobbed quietly for a little longer, until everything around her had gone completely dark. Looking up, she found the two young thieves gone. When she went outside to look, she saw the fellow disciples squatting beneath the covered walkway, happily slurping noodle soup.

She might have been all right had she not looked. The moment she did, hunger blazed within her.

By now, the princess's desire to die had eased a little. Having calmed down, she began to understand. If Wei Xun had wanted wealth, casually taking any single object from her underground tomb would have given them enough to live in comfort for half their lives. He had even returned every piece of jewelry she wore. Why would he care about a corpse? All that talk of ghost marriage had merely been nonsense meant to provoke her.

Once she understood, the two immediately became much easier on the eyes.

She had traveled sixty li back and forth from morning to night without eating a single grain of rice. Now she was almost too hungry to stand.

"Boy, go serve me a bowl!"

Thirteenth Son answered and hurriedly swallowed the noodle pieces in his bowl. They only had two bowls altogether; unless he emptied one, there would be nothing for the princess to use. He had resented the girl over his eldest senior brother's predicament, yet she seemed born with a gift for ordering people about. With a narrowing of her eyes and a lift of her chin, he found himself running errands for her before he even realized it.

Thirteenth Son carefully washed the bowl and chopsticks with well water, then presented her with the noodle soup.

And so Princess Wanshou, a scion of the imperial blood, precious as gold and jade, endowed with the revenues of three thousand households and famed as the greatest beauty of the capital region, sat barefoot with her hair loose, holding a chipped bowl and noisily slurping noodles in plain water seasoned with nothing but a little salt. Beside her sat two grave robbers who ought to have been dragged to Dog-Spine Mausoleum and publicly executed.

Wei Xun wore a crafty smile that made one want to hit him. "Hungry, were you?"

The girl's face reddened. She wiped the tear tracks from her cheeks. "Hmph. Even if I die, I'll be a well-fed ghost."

Half teasing and half sincere, Wei Xun praised her. "Such a free spirit, Princess! Such great wisdom!"

After eating and drinking her fill, Princess Wanshou felt weak and sore all over, too sleepy to think about anything. She collapsed onto the couch and slept until the sun was high. When she woke naturally, bright sunlight spilled across the couch. Looking again at the dagger embedded in the wooden pillar, she suddenly no longer wanted to die.