Cao Ming had not initially intended to truly weep and kneel... he had agreed to come because he knew Zhang Xing was right. These loyal servants of Great Wei had no need to sacrifice themselves at this point, and if he could save them, he ought not refuse.
Empress Dowager Xiao agreed as well, or she would not have stayed up late specifically to write so many letters.
Yet when he returned to the Eastern Capital, where he had lived for so long from adolescence into adulthood, when he saw Su Wei with his hair white as snow, and thought of Gu Yi, who had died not long ago, of all the sins his father had committed, and of the dreamlike splendor of the Eastern Capital in days gone by, countless emotions surged into his heart. He truly could not hold himself together, and his tears streamed down unstoppably.
His legs, too, went weak entirely beyond his control.
No one, Su Wei included, thought the two were pretending to cry. Even among those who wept along with them, many had undeniably begun merely to suit the occasion, but as they cried, grief truly welled up within them and would not cease.
This was the Eastern Capital. Su Wei and Cao Ming were hardly its only survivors of the old dynasty. Who among them did not feel as though waking from a dream?
This bout of weeping drew everyone's attention. And it was not just these two weeping, nor just one ward. Hearing of what had happened, countless people came to see the "Prince of Qi." The Prince of Qi also had to carry out the task assigned from above, so he wept his way from Niu Hong to Duan Wei, then on to Ziwei Palace and the Western Park.
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