How miraculous. There’s a dead man here with the same name as my san-ge. 

Xi Ping said to himself: Such a fated meeting. Should I pay my respects? 

But for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. 

His feet seemed to be set into the ground, and his heart beat faster and faster. A thin layer of sweat rose on his back. He couldn’t even avert his gaze from that skeleton. 

The skeleton had his head slightly tilted, the index and middle fingers of his left hand curled and held together, propping up his cheekbone; the thumb was laid against the edge of his jaw. An exasperated gaze seemed to be coming from those empty eye sockets, looking at Xi Ping across a distance of several paces; he seemed to be alive. 

Xi Ping practically had the feeling that any moment this skeleton would open his mouth and say, “What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?” 

He abruptly averted his gaze and bit down fiercely on the tip of his tongue, turning away so he couldn’t see the skeleton. He sat down crosslegged on the ground and focused, his mouth full of blood. 

What was he thinking…? There was something strange about this damned place! 

Luo-shixiong had taught them that the senses arose from the body and were easily invaded by illusions, so you had to avoid acting rashly when you were agitated and unsettled. First you had to seal your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body, concentrate inward on your spirit, examine everything you had just thought, and remember that the origins of many illusions were only want or fear. “Want” didn’t concern him; he had never known the pain of wanting something he couldn’t have in his life. What about fear? 

Right—Xi Ping quickly found a reasonable explanation for his “illusion”: it must be because he had heard that there was trouble brewing everywhere lately, and he had always been faintly uneasy about Prince Zhuang on his inspection tour of the south. 

Thinking of this, Xi Ping relaxed slightly—not long before he had fallen into the sea, he had received san-ge’s report of his own well-being. 

Since he had opened his spiritual eyes, it had been easy for Xi Ping to distinguish the aura of the person writing. Though the handwriting was similar, Xi Ping could tell at a glance which letters san-ge had written himself and which he had made Bai Ling write for him out of laziness. 

The bare “all’s well” had certainly come from him directly—Bai Ling-da-ge would at the very least have written some plausible-sounding exhortations. 

Somewhere among the inscriptions that covered the ground, there had to be ones for illusions. Sadly, he didn’t recognize a single character. He wished Xi Yue were here. 

Though Xi Ping had “worked out” that this was all an illusion, for some reason, he still unconsciously avoided that skeleton named “Zhou Ying.” He turned his head to inspect another skeleton next to him. 

This skeleton was named “Zhou Qi.” The figure was tall, with broad shoulders and a narrow pelvis. Xi Ping sensed that it was likely this person had been a man in life. The skeleton was standing, its skull tilted down slightly, silently “looking” at Xi Ping sitting at his feet. For no reason, he gave Xi Ping a feeling of gentleness and sadness. 

This place was truly strange. How could a pile of bones be so full of emotion? 

Xi Ping met his eyes for a moment and couldn’t resist touching the skeleton. He felt very faint spiritual energy flit across his fingertips, then scatter in the wind like fine sand. 

Then a deep masculine voice sounded in his ear: “A-Qing, Kun, er-ge is going now. You two, be well…” 

When he spoke, the dimly flickering radiance around the skeleton that seemed carved of white spirits dispersed, revealing the ghastly whiteness of ordinary bone. 

As if the dead man had let out his very last breath. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That sense that he was alive had also vanished altogether. 

But these seemingly ordinary last words were like a bolt of lighting out of a clear sky, frightening Xi Ping, who feared neither god nor man, so much that his face turned ashen—Princess Anyang’s name was “Qing,” His Majesty Emperor Taiming’s name was “Kun”…

He thought he knew who “Zhou Qi” was now! 

In a panic, Xi Ping pulled the Notes from a Progress to the West that Pang Jian had forced him to read from his mustard seed. This wasn’t a proper book. It was a history primer for young cultivators used in Great Li to the north, using the style of travel notes to describe the sights and traditions of each country and incidentally mentioning each country’s great events and important people in recent generations. 

Xi Ping quickly flipped to the Southern Wan chapter and consulted the record of imperial kinsmen in the appendix—because this book was somewhat old, it only recorded up to Emperor Taiming’s generation… 

Qi, second son of Xianzong, died young in Wan’s twenty-fourth year of Zhaoxi, posthumously conferred the title of Prince of the First Rank Rui in Wan’s second year of Taiming. 

Prince Rui Zhou Qi was His Majesty’s full blood older brother who had died young. 

Emperor Taiming waved a hand and somewhat wearily said, “Withdraw.” 

“Your Majesty! Guzhou is in a state of emergency. Today, a mob besieged the yamen of Guzhou’s Yunshan County. They’ve staged an uprising. Without a tiger tally, the commanders of Suling and Guzhou don’t dare to act on their own authority. This matter…” 

“We told you to withdraw.” The emperor abruptly looked up. The slack skin of his eyelids folded into sharp arcs, as if he were an old wolf king who still had his influence and his underlings. “The court will discuss this tomorrow.” 

The old courtier scraped his head against the ground. Seeing His Majesty unmoved, he ultimately didn’t dare to repeat himself. He withdrew in silence. On leaving, he looked at the Marquis of Yongning, standing upright off to one side, minding his own business. The courtier all but sprayed the word “sycophant” from his eyes to plaster it onto the Marquis’s face. Ancestors above, what time was it? How could His Majesty still be in the mood to drink and make merry with this old boy toy?! Granted that Xi had once been a renowned beauty among men, what charms could he still have at his age? 

It was simply unbelievable! 

The Marquis of Yongning stood there composedly, acting as an ornament, and didn’t so much as raise his eyelids. 

Having dismissed the interlopers, Emperor Taiming closed his eyes and massaged his temples for a long time. Then he permitted the Marquis of Yongning to take a seat. 

The Marquis sat when he was told. He wasn’t the least bit apprehensive. He didn’t even take the time to counsel His Majesty with a perfunctory “serious matters should take precedence.” 

The eunuchs brought warmed up wine, then withdrew from the heated room—every year on the eighteenth day of the first month, His Majesty spent half the night drinking with the Marquis. At such times, he didn’t let anyone disturb them. 

In past years, there had been much gossip and slander about the relationship between the emperor and his subject. When tainted with imperial power, it seemed that anything could turn into a palace scandal and provide people with a subject to chew over with relish for a long time. 

But the old personal servants knew that His Majesty had never been interested in men, and the Marquis of Yongning was no standard sycophant, either. He wasn’t even very good at complying in order to please. Good looks aside, he was a dull and taciturn middle-aged man—and anyway, however charming he had once been, that had been a couple of decades back. Once a mortal passed his fifth decade, he could be called a Pan An¹ as long as he had hair and no belly. 

When these two drank, it was purely drinking. They didn’t even exchange any meaningless pleasantries. And their drinking was very restrained. The two of them would split a single small jar. Once they had finished drinking, it was “This subject requests leave to withdraw. Take care, Your Majesty.” It was like this every year. No one knew what kind of ritual this was. It passed the understanding. 

But this year, the rules of the “ritual” had changed slightly. 

After dismissing the eunuchs, Emperor Taiming took out a brocade box, which he gave to the Marquis of Yongning. There was a set of hair ornaments inside, with a big, brilliantly colored pearl arranged in the center. Apart from the pearl, the Marquis of Yongning knew at a glance that the rest had been produced by his wife’s family, and that they were somewhat antiquated one-of-a-kind products. Even he had never seen them. They had been very meticulously preserved. 

“What is…” 

“I’ve heard that now, this set could be exchanged for a big mansion on the west of the Lingyang River.” Having dismissed the attendants, His Majesty’s tone relaxed considerably. “These were recently sent back by Anyang. My si-jie was extremely arrogant and willful when she was young. She got up to quite a bit of the wretched business of snatching other people’s treasures. Now that I think about it, she really shouldn’t have done that. You can take these things back to your wife. Si-jie asked me to have them returned to their rightful owner and compensate for the fault in her place. She encountered this pearl in the East Sea. She valued it tremendously and could never bear to have it set. She sent it as a form of apology.” 

How could someone ask the emperor compensate for a fault? The Son of Heaven was always right. 

The Marquis of Yongning didn’t know what had gotten into him. He could only say, “Your Majesty and the princess overwhelm my humble wife with flattery…” 

Emperor Taiming waved a hand. As though half-grumbling, he said, “This wasn’t the only thing she sent back. She wanted me to deliver each one in turn… Alas, at our age, many old acquaintances are no longer living. Where should I go to deliver them? It puts me in an awkward position. But what can I do? In all her life, her only happy years were when she was a young girl. She wanted to make arrangements for her cherished memories before she went. I had to agree.” 

Hearing this, the Marquis of Yongning was startled: what did he mean? These words sounded extremely ominous. 

Then he saw the emperor narrow his dim eyes and look towards a corner of the heated room. “Today, those peonies in the heated room that haven’t shown any growth in years suddenly bloomed. Do you think that peonies can bloom in the first month? So I knew…that Anyang must be gone. This is her coming back to have a look at me.” 

The Marquis of Yongning looked in the direction of his gaze and saw that there was indeed a potted peony bush that had bloomed. Beside the big, bleak desk clock, the peonies were unsuitably colorful. 

It was just reaching the full hour. The desk clock tolled to report the time, and the flowers shook gently at the sound of the tolls, making an observer tremble with fear for no reason. 

As if senile from age, the old emperor gazed at the peonies and murmured, “You also chose today, the same as er-ge. Were you worried that I was too old and wouldn’t be able to remember so many dates?” 

The Marquis of Yongning’s thoughts moved quickly: did he mean that Princess Anyang was dead? But she was a half-immortal, still far from the end of her lifespan. And in the southern mines, there was no need for her to spend all day contending in wits and valor with evil cultivators… What had happened? 

“Your Majesty…” 

But before he could ask, the old emperor interrupted him again. “Oh, yes, the Imperial Consort has been somewhat unwell the last few days. Go and have a look at her when you have the time.” 

The Marquis of Yongning said, “Of course, I will have my wife come to the palace tomorrow to pay her respects to the Imperial Consort. Your Majesty, just now…” 

“I said you. I didn’t say your wife.” 

The Marquis of Yongning was silent a moment, then respectfully said, “Though we are brother and sister, men and women must still keep a distance. Take it as avoiding suspicion.” 

What would be the point of having a look? He wasn’t a doctor. Wouldn’t the best thing for her be to drink a little less snow wine? When he went into the palace, nothing would happen apart from the two of them staring helplessly at each other; they had nothing to say. Then she might go and get herself dead drunk from the stress of holding back. One of these days, she might drink herself into a living corpse, and that would be the end of it.  

“At your age, what suspicion are you avoiding?” the old emperor said. “Xi Zhengde, you old fool… Tell the truth, seeing her upsets you—you can’t forgive yourself. I know, I know… We’ve all been there.” 

The Marquis of Yongning’s heart jumped. He felt that the topic was sliding in a dangerous direction. What the hell had happened to Princess Anyang to upset the old emperor like this? 

Then the old emperor said, “After all these years, you’re the only one lao-san has a good relationship with. It’s because he knows, too.” 

The Marquis frowned: His Highness Prince Zhuang? What did he know? 

“He knows that you colluded with evil cultivators from Northern Li, brought your family to the brink of ruin, planned to betray your country and flee,” Emperor Taiming said with emphasis. “You would rather have taken your whole family, young and old, into exile in the Beijue Mountains, let him die in the womb, than languish on a bed of riches bought by the spiritual bones of an unborn child.”

The Marquis of Yongning’s face instantly went blank. 

For a time, no one spoke inside the heated room. Only the radiator and the desk clock went on clamoring obliviously. 

After a moment, the Marquis of Yongning flexed his stiff knees and slowly knelt beside his seat. 

“You really did silently pierce the sky. Today’s brats, they all bluster to their heart’s content, but which one among them can measure up to your ruthless decisiveness back then?” Emperor Taiming waved a hand. “Get up already. It’s been over twenty years. If I had wanted to investigate you, would I have waited this long? Back then, I…actually wanted to let you go. Xi Zhengde, you have courage. You did what generations of us have dared to think without daring to do.” 

The Marquis of Yongning said, expressionlessly, “I am petrified.” 

Emperor Taiming gave a laugh. “It’s true that a sister’s son takes after his uncle. When I exposed your nephew’s secret, his display was just the same as yours is now.” 

The Marquis of Yongning, undaunted, considered: Prince Zhuang already had his independence, anyway, and Xi Ping was in Xuanyin’s inner sect, part of the Dignitary of Fate’s lineage. Could the old emperor still choose this moment to settle old accounts? Even if the emperor had gone crazy in his old age, he could only take it out on him. He didn’t believe that the emperor would dare to make a big fuss and drag in his whole family. 

In that case, the Marquis had nothing to fear. He was too lazy to even think up the words needed to go through the motions of admitting his guilt and quibbling. He simply obeyed the imperial command, stood up, and even poured himself a cup of wine. 

Indeed, Emperor Taiming didn’t accuse him of rudeness. He sighed softly and said, seeming very regretful, “But in the end it was Ziyi who backed out at the last moment. Because of this, you haven’t said a single word to her in private ever since, am I right? Hey, why are you drinking on your own? Give me a refill.” 

Accordingly, the Marquis of Yongning poured him a cup. Emperor Taiming picked it up and downed it in one gulp. He quietly said, “Stop blaming her. She wasn’t weak. It was because a new month had started just then, and the palace’s half-immortal private physician told her that her child not only bore spiritual bones, he also just happened to have an inborn paramount spiritual sense. Being like a half-immortal the moment you open your eyes…isn’t something a mortal body can bear. If one of those things wasn’t removed, he wouldn’t have survived.” 

This time, the Marquis of Yongning was truly shocked. “What?!” 

“She never told you, right?” 

“Why did she…” 

If it had been for the sake of protecting the child, then it was a whole different matter. Did Xi Ziyi have the spirit of a mouthless bottle gourd? Never mind anything else, how could she have concealed this, too? 

Emperor Taiming was watching him with interest. “If she had told you, what would you have done?” 

The Marquis was a little blank. He pondered for a moment, then said frankly, “Followed my original plan. If it was possible to save the child, we would have saved him. If not, then he would have reincarnated wrong. Children who are sick in the womb not surviving is in accordance with nature. Anyway, there are secret arts there. There could be masters in the north who would have known how to remove the spiritual bones. If he had begun cultivating when he grew up, we would have given them back to him. If he didn’t make anything of himself, we’d have used them as an ornament to repel evil. At least it would have been clean.” 

Emperor Taiming clapped his hands and laughed. “Betray your country and flee with innate spiritual bones that not one in a hundred million people has, then use those spiritual bones to repel evil. Xi Zhengde, you’re as stubborn as a smelly rock in a latrine. You really are something else…but your sister is an ordinary mortal. She was worried about her old mother going into exile in the wilderness in her failing years, worried about what to do if the child who might not even live turned from a child of royalty into an evil cultivator betraying the nation, worried about the future of your whole family.” 

The Marquis of Yongning didn’t laugh. His unease grew stronger and stronger: while he couldn’t approve of the Imperial Consort’s preoccupations, he still thought she could be excused for having them. Blood is thicker than water, and he wasn’t an absolute despot like Emperor Taiming. Why hadn’t she explained herself over two decades later? 

Something must have happened afterwards to make her regret abandoning their original plan. 

The Marquis couldn’t resist asking, “Your Majesty, I have never heard of innate spiritual bones and a paramount spiritual sense being united in a single person; may I ask, Your Majesty, what happens to such a person if he survives?” 

Emperor Taiming said softly, “A connection will remain between the spiritual sense and the spiritual bones even after they are parted.” 

The Marquis of Yongning was shaken. He knocked over his wine cup. 

“The possessors of innate spiritual bones before him didn’t know that they were that generation’s sacrifice for the Zhou family. They only thought that they had been born frail,” the emperor said. “Only Ying… A first class spiritual sense is comparable to being a half-immortal, but a paramount spiritual sense—it’s said that it can naturally see through all things, perceive the energy of all creatures—I’m not sure. Ying has never told me how the human world appears in his eyes. A person like that, even when his spiritual bones have been removed, will still be connected to those bones in thought if not in body. In other words, for over twenty years, while his body was in the mortal world, his mind…half of it was always held far below in the Impassable Sea.” 

As the old emperor spoke, he poured himself more wine, three cups in a row, knocking back each in one gulp. On the strength of the alcohol, he seemed to recover a bit of boyish spirits. “You’re right, Zhengde. Even if the child had gone to herd sheep at the feet of the unpeopled Beijue Mountains, dragging around a sickly body—even if he had spent his whole life as a wanted criminal—even if he had never been born—he still would have been better off than as a child of royalty in Jinping.

“Innate spiritual bones are a curse passed down from our forebears. Originally, they occurred only once every few hundred years. Later, they began to appear practically once every generation… Do you know why that is?” Before the ghastly pale Marquis could speak, Emperor Taiming answered himself, smiling, “Because again and again a useless full blood brother of the one carrying innate spiritual bones would be chosen to be the next Crown Prince. The bloodlines converged. With generation after generation chosen like this, the innate spiritual bones increasingly became an ulcer on our bones… Those whose spiritual bones were carved out could only eke out a living with false bones substituted by a secret art. Virtually none of them lived to the prime of life. My mother was the daughter of a fifth-rank official. Under this throne of mine lie the flesh and blood of my own full blood brother.” 

The Marquis of Yongning picked up his toppled wine cup and set it heavily on the table. He said, coldly, “Forgive my rudeness, Your Majesty, but if just one generation had wanted to be rid of that ulcer, it wouldn’t have been handed down to the present.”