It was the strangest scene imaginable.
A princess who had died long ago politely asked a notorious, cruel official to investigate the cause of her death. Even Cui Xun — who had long ago learned not to be shocked by oddities — paused for a beat. He collected himself, raised an eyebrow and asked, “You are a ghost?”
Li Ying nodded: “Yes.”
Seeing a ghost in daylight might have toppled a lesser man; Cui Xun only showed the faintest flicker of interest. He asked flatly, “You’ve come to ask me to investigate your case?”
Li Ying nodded: “Yes.”
“Your case already has a conclusion. It was the doing of Prince Consort Zheng Yun.”
Li Ying shook her head: “It wasn’t Zheng Yun.”
“Why not?”
Li Ying said, “Because for these thirty years, I have been unable to reincarnate.”
Her words hung in the dim air like a cold breath. She had died at sixteen; if Zheng Yun had truly killed her and been executed for it, she should have found rest. That she had not meant one thing only — the wrong hand had been punished, while the true hand remained at large. Her grief had rooted her spirit to the pond and to grievance.
She explained how she had lingered under water for thirty long years: watching lotus stems writhe and wither, marking days to the rhythm of palace drums; seeing palace girls scoop algae and laugh, unable to touch her; feeling her transparent fingers slide through living limbs again and again.
Then, one evening, a man in white fox fur had come to the Lotus Pond. His gold cup slipped and fell. He reached in — and her hand, for the first time in decades, met a living palm. Flesh met flesh. Warmth returned. The pond seemed to hold its breath. When a eunuch called the man away, Li Ying found herself free of the water at last.
“Because you rescued me from the Lotus Pond,” she told him simply.
Cui Xun’s stare was a well of cold light. “Why should I help you? Help a princess who has been dead for thirty years?”
This refusal struck Li Ying like a physical blow. She flushed with embarrassment and anxiety. She wrung her hands. “If you help me, I will repay you.”
Cui Xun’s laugh was thin and detached. “What do you have to repay me with?”
“I…” Li Ying faltered, helpless. She had nothing — only the hollow wish to be freed from her endless waiting.
Cui Xun’s impatience sharpened. “You should leave. I have no interest in helping a ghost.”
Li Ying’s voice trembled, “But apart from you, I don’t know who else to ask…”
Cui Xun’s lip twitched as if amused. “Before you came to me, didn’t you inquire about what kind of person I am?”
Her question from before haunted her; she had sought the one man whose eyes had acknowledged her. Cui Xun, inscrutable and cruel, said, “I’m going to the Investigation Department to interrogate a case. If you want to follow, then come along. But nine times out of ten, you’ll soon change your mind.”
He moved as he spoke; Li Ying could not help but follow him. To everyone else, the Investigation Department’s prison in Yining Ward was just stone and iron — to her, it was a chorus of suffering she had never known.
“Greetings, Junior Minister.” The jailers bowed as Cui Xun entered, the brazier heat licking at the cell walls. The air inside was thick with the metallic tang of blood and the harsher smell of boiled salt and shackles. Jars of instruments glinted like small wicked moons. The prisoners’ howls made a chorus of torment that rose and fell in the hot air.
Cui Xun, wrapped in his black crane-feather cloak as if cold, walked to the innermost cell. Li Ying followed, stunned into silence by what she saw. On a rack lay what little remained of a human — white ribs exposed, limbs broken and twisted by clamps, flesh seared and slit. The sight of such mutilation sent Li Ying to her knees; she covered her ears, unable to bear the wails.
Cui Xun paid her no mind. He extended a pale, bony wrist and methodically sorted the red-hot tools in the brazier as if selecting ink brushes: branding irons, pliers, long needles. The jailers dared not breathe.
At last he chose a red-hot branding iron, watched the ascending white smoke with an almost aesthetic calm, then approached the prisoner and asked, “I’ll ask you one more time: is Prince Han Yang planning a rebellion?”
The prisoner — Chief Secretary Wang — rasped through bloodied lips, his eyes swollen, his jaw mangled from tongs. “Cui Xun… I am a descendant of the Wang clan from Taiyuan, serving as Chief Secretary to Prince Han Yang. You arrested me without an imperial edict, intending to extract a false confession. Aren’t you afraid of being exposed and punished by His Majesty?”
Cui Xun’s expression did not flinch. “I’ll ask you one last time: is Prince Han Yang planning a rebellion?”
Wang coughed, a terrible, rasping sound. “Prince Han Yang is not planning any rebellion. But you, framing court officials and extracting confessions through torture, will certainly meet a bad end!”
Cui Xun’s patience snapped. He pressed the branding iron into the already shredded flesh of Wang’s chest. A scream tore out — animal, raw, and then a black slide into unconsciousness.
Li Ying, curled on the ground, covered her ears so hard her fingers hurt. When Cui Xun flung the iron aside, he barked, “Salt water. Wake him up.”
The jailer obeyed. Salt water stung and the prisoner choked, coughing blood onto the floor and onto Cui Xun. A handkerchief was proffered; Cui Xun wiped his bloodied hand with deliberate disgust. The jailer warned, “Junior Minister Cui, the prisoner is nearly finished…”
“If he dies, then he dies. Doesn’t he still have a son?” Cui Xun replied coldly.
Wang, eyes bulging, spat a last curse: “Cui Xun, you will die a miserable death…”
“How I die is not Chief Secretary Wang’s concern,” Cui Xun said, detached.
He stepped close, voice dropping so low only Wang could hear. “Wang Liang, six years ago, you served under Pei Guanyue, didn’t you? You must know about what happened at Falling Goose Ridge. If you tell me everything in detail, I won’t touch your son.”
Wang’s pupils widened with terror. “Falling Goose Ridge… Falling Goose Ridge… so that’s why you came…”
He mumbled and could not speak coherently further. Soon the jailer checked and cried out, “Junior Minister Cui, he… he died of fright…”
Cui Xun’s hand curled into a fist under his sleeve for the briefest instant. He looked down at the corpse with a chill calm and said, “Throw him out. Feed him to the dogs.”
After that day, Li Ying—no doubt shocked by Cui Xun’s distortion of truth and his ruthless extraction of confessions—never sought him out again. Yet two days later, the summons came: the Empress Dowager required his presence.
Penglai Hall smelled of incense. A phoenix-shaped censer breathed gentle smoke that drifted through the pearl curtain. Beyond it, the Empress Dowager reclined on her couch, head propped on a hand, eyes half-closed. She had taken to burning incense to soothe the headaches that plagued her; perhaps that was why she had quietly kept her audience until now.
Cui Xun knelt on the ebony floor. Though he kept his posture exact, sweat beaded on his forehead. The Empress Dowager toyed with the delay, keeping him waiting until she spoke: “Cui Xun, you’ve grown increasingly bold.”
Cui Xun lowered his head: “This subject acknowledges his guilt.”
A thin, contemptuous laugh escaped the Empress Dowager. “Acknowledge guilt? You took advantage of Wang Liang’s return to Chang’an to visit his family, sent Investigation Department spies to arrest him, tortured him to death, and then discarded his corpse in the wilderness. Do you know that what the Wang family recovered was an incomplete body? Now the Wang family is clamoring to submit a complaint to the Emperor, demanding an explanation.”
Cui Xun remained unmoved, answering only, “This subject is guilty.”
“Of course you are guilty!” The Empress Dowager’s voice sharpened with anger. “Though Wang Liang was only the Chief Secretary to Prince Han Yang, he was still a descendant of the Wang clan from Taiyuan. How dare you!”
Cui Xun bowed his head and said, “Prince Han Yang harbors dissatisfaction toward the Empress Dowager and intends to gather nobles to rebel. This subject was only thinking of the Empress Dowager’s welfare when arresting Wang Liang, hoping to make him reveal Prince Han Yang’s crimes. I didn’t expect Wang Liang to be so fragile, dying after just a bit of torture.”
The Empress Dowager gave a cold, humorless laugh. “Cui Xun, Cui Wangshu, do you think I’m old and confused? Do you think I don’t know what position Wang Liang held six years ago?”
Cui Xun pressed his lips together; his eyes were mirrors of calm. He touched his forehead to the ground and mechanically said, “This subject is guilty.”
The Empress Dowager laughed again, colder still: “You need not confess your guilt. Since you became Junior Minister of the Investigation Department, this sort of thing hasn’t been unusual. Now that the Emperor rules personally and the noble clans are powerful, I must give him and the Wang clan of Taiyuan an explanation. You shall kneel outside Zichen Hall until court is dismissed.”
The sentence was a clean humiliation. Zichen Hall was the center of court; to be made to kneel there was to be exposed to every official’s gaze. Cui Xun did not plead. He accepted with a single, measured kowtow: “This subject accepts the imperial command.”
As he rose, the Empress Dowager—eyes still closed, hand beneath her cheek—allowed a quiet, weighty remark to fall: “Cui Xun, some matters have already been settled. What should be forgotten should be forgotten. Otherwise, you’ll not only harm others but also yourself.”
Cui Xun’s expression flickered for an instant, then smoothed. He bowed: “This subject thanks the Empress Dowager for her guidance.”
With stiff movements and a leg that had once been injured, he limped away toward the exit. The pearl curtain swayed; the Empress Dowager watched his thin silhouette until, after a long while, she sighed and let her eyes close again.
That morning, a heavy snowfall had blanketed Chang’an. Snow lay thick outside Zichen Hall. By law, officials of the fifth rank and above attended morning court; they came in small groups and halted when they saw a solitary figure kneeling before the hall.
He had his head bowed; crimson robes darkened with wet snow clung to his frame, emphasizing how gaunt he had become. Snow collected on his lashes, melting into cold tears that tracked into the lines of sweat on his brow. Strands of hair drooped from his official hat, clinging wetly to his pale face. His hands, outside his sleeves, had turned raw and red. Though his body trembled with fatigue and cold, his back remained rigid—perfect and unyielding against the whiteness.
A murmur rose among the officials. “Isn’t that Cui Xun? What happened?”
“I heard he tortured Wang Liang to death, and the Empress Dowager punished him by making him kneel outside Zichen Hall until all officials disperse from court.”
Academic Lu, who had earlier flaunted his scorn for Cui Xun, bristled anew. “For anyone else, being punished to kneel in front of all officials might be a real punishment. Someone with any sense of shame might commit suicide after such humiliation. But does Cui Xun have any shame left? How is kneeling any punishment for him?”
“Exactly! He beat the Chief Secretary of the Prince’s mansion to death, and yet he doesn’t even have to resign his position—just has to kneel for a while. The Empress Dowager is truly exceptionally kind to him!”
Another voice whispered, “Alas, poor Chief Secretary Wang. I heard that when his body was found, it had been eaten almost beyond recognition by wild dogs.”
Academic Lu clenched his fists. “Heaven’s principles are clear. Cui Xun will surely have his day of disgrace! When that time comes, we will have him cut into a thousand pieces to console the spirits of those wronged souls!”
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