IN THE RUSTLING NIGHT wind, Mo Xi left the palace, but he didn't return to Xihe Manor. The clues he'd discovered in the Time Mirror were still on his mind. As his long strides took him away from the Great Hall, he resolved on three questions to which he must have answers.
Firstly, the black-garbed man. Before defecting, Gu Mang had met with a man in a mask. That man had spoken of Chonghua's inequities and urged Gu Mang to turn traitor, and Gu Mang hadn't said a word to oppose him. So who was that black-garbed man?
Secondly, Warrior Soul Mountain. The black-garbed man had brought Gu Mang to Warrior Soul Mountain just before his defection. When Gu Mang visited the graves there with Mo Xi, he'd told Mo Xi the restricted area felt familiar. There was a good chance Gu Mang had done something on the other side of the barrier there. But what? What exactly was inside Warrior Soul Mountain's restricted area?
Lastly, the prison. After speaking to Lu Zhanxing inside the Time Mirror, Mo Xi was certain Gu Mang had secretly visited this man in prison before defecting. What had Gu Mang spoken to Lu Zhanxing about?
If he could get to the bottom of these three mysteries, he was sure the truth from eight years ago would surface.
But all of these events had occurred under a veil of extreme secrecy. Of those who had witnessed them, aside from Gu Mang himself, one person's identity was unknown, and the other was a dead soul beneath the Yellow Springs. Mo Xi didn't expect to loosen Gu Mang's tongue, so two paths of investigation remained.
The first was to turn back time. The second was to find the history scrolls from that year.
Turning back time required the Time Mirror, but the power of the ancient godly mirror was tremendous. Mortal bodies could only enter it once per decade; enter again, and the mirror would devour them and crush them to dust. The Time Mirror was no longer an option.
Mo Xi's footsteps slowed, and he glanced northward in the direction of the Imperial Censorate, where his hopes of answering these three questions lay.
A piece of history stone was embedded in each of Chonghua's palace halls and imperial pavilions. From the day an emperor ascended the throne, he wore a string of pendants made of history stone, not to be removed until the day he died. These stones faithfully recorded all that happened in the empire, and court historians gathered them each month into a volume that was stored in the Imperial Censorate.
There were sure to be secret records within the Imperial Censorate related to Gu Mang's defection. The issue with them was the possibility of falsehood. The royal family had always proclaimed the truth and reliability of the history stones to outsiders, but everyone knew that even if the stones couldn't lie, their keepers could destroy sections of the records. If the nation's ruler ordered historians to expunge some segments of history, who would gainsay him?
It was dark now; night had swallowed the final glimmer of sunset. The stars in the sky shone as bright as the lamps on earth. Mo Xi gazed at the faraway Imperial Censorate. In the distance, some palace maidens on night patrol wandered with lanterns like a winding snake, passing by the carved white jade railing one after another.
Yes, the scrolls inside the Imperial Censorate could be tampered with, but at least there was a chance. The emperor was ill tonight, so the imperial guards were mostly concentrated around his private quarters. It was the perfect opportunity to infiltrate…
Mo Xi watched the string of lanterns disappear into the darkness. After a moment of thought, he turned his steps toward the Imperial Censorate.
The compound had two points of entry and exit, each set with barriers, as well as layer after layer of guards. This was hardly a hindrance for the top general of the empire. Mo Xi made it into the main hall without much effort
In contrast to the sumptuous extravagance of most palace buildings, the structure of the Imperial Censorate was unusual. It was more accurately described as a tomb rather than a hall. A lofty monument stood at the entrance, carried on the tortoiseshell back of a statue of Bixi, as was traditional for mausoleums. Four words were engraved upon its stone surface: THE PAST IS DEAD.
These words were the work of Chonghua's second emperor. Soon after Chonghua was established, its founding ruler suddenly perished of complications from a wound he incurred in battle. He died without penning any posthumous edict. There was no named successor, nor had it been decided whether the successor would be the eldest son, the one of most merit, or whether this new nation would use the system of fraternal seniority or patrilineal inheritance. Everyone had greedily eyed the empty throne, from brothers of the royal family to powerful officials and noble relatives.
The bloody power struggle that followed devastated Chonghua for a full fourteen months, during which countless citizens were unjustly imprisoned and loyal souls perished with unresolved grievances. The storm only died down after the seventh son of the founding emperor finally ascended the throne.
But even sitting on the throne couldn't guarantee a ruler peace under these conditions. Chonghua's second ruler lived day and night tangled in schemes and conspiracies; plots targeted his empress, his sons, and even the emperor himself. He could never rest easy.
In the end, his paranoia escalated to compulsion—he visited the Imperial Censorate at frequent intervals to look through the records over and over again. Where did a certain imperial brother go today? Whom did a certain important subject visit yesterday? If he caught wind of the slightest aberration, he traced it like a man possessed, unearthing every detail and demanding the lives of all who thought to plot against him.
This second emperor was exhausted by such a life. It was only after he grew old and passed the throne to his son that he understood the past died with the passage of time, and that bygones should be left as bygones. He'd come to this palace hall that was so familiar to him and so significant to Chonghua, and set down a monument at the doorway, leaving behind these four words: The past is dead.
What was dead was dust; why obsess over it? Why look back? The third ruler was greatly moved upon seeing this monument. As a gesture of mourning for his imperial father and in honor of the late emperor's final wishes, he had the Imperial Censorate rebuilt in the style of a tomb. In this singular palace hall, the building was a cemetery and the past was the deceased, warning all those who visited to forgive and let go. If it wasn't important, they shouldn't pursue it. Even if it was, they shouldn't allow it to possess them.
In the time since, few came to the Imperial Censorate in search of the past. There were many guards, but they were relaxed and idle. Mo Xi entered without alerting them.
His steel-toed military boots clicked on the stone, echoing in the silence. The Imperial Censorate was cavernous, structured like a real mausoleum with twelve tomb beasts lining the path. The deepest passages delved at least a hundred and fifty feet into the ground. "Tomb rooms" lined either side of the main path. Within them, scrolls recording the history of the empire were filed by year and stored with a seal stone outside, carved with the dynasty and the generation.
Mo Xi swiftly reached the room with records from eight years ago. As he gazed at the glimmering gold inscription upon it, he hesitantly raised a hand and sensed a powerful barrier. The tomb beast carved atop the stone door rumbled to life and spoke. "Who…" Who… The sonorous voice echoed endlessly down the passage. "… goes…there?"
This was a talisman seal set down by the second emperor. The Imperial Censorate held the official records of the empire and should reasonably be open to the public. But if anyone could go in and investigate the pasts of others as they pleased, palace affairs would become even more of a bloodbath.
Thus the second emperor put down this barrier with a strict condition: anyone who entered the chamber must truthfully report their name to the tomb beast. If any incident occurred as a result of the information divulged here, they could be investigated. The emperor himself was not excepted from this rule.
This was a grave mistake, Mo Xi knew. But it was a measly price to pay to learn the truth. He put his hand over the spirit stone inlaid in the tomb beast's forehead and spoke clearly: "Xihe Manor, Mo Xi."
The beast's red spirit stone eyes shone as if to lay bare the truth of Mo Xi's words. After a moment the glow faded, and the giant seal stone made a thunderous noise. A voice that seemed to ring across the ages sang out. "The—past—is—dead—"
With this final warning from the second emperor to his descendants, the door swung open, revealing to Mo Xi's eyes a stone room with three hundred and sixty-five coffins emanating a bone-chilling cold.
Each coffin represented one of the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. All that occurred in Chonghua each day was collected within a jade scroll, cataloged, and placed within its coffin. Mo Xi knew which days he needed to investigate as well as he knew his own hands; he walked without hesitation toward a row of coffins in the depths of the room.
The truth was so close. His heart raced. Mo Xi stopped in front of a coffin, his dark eyes flashing. Yet as he stretched his hand toward the wood of the lid, he suddenly tensed—
Mo Xi's eyes darted to the side of the coffin, where the dust had been disturbed. Someone had opened this coffin before him. When he pushed the lid aside, his galloping heart dropped like a stone into a ravine, tumbling endlessly downward…
It was complete disorder inside the coffin. The jade scrolls that held the records of the past were destroyed, some of the narrow slips more or less shattered to powder.
Even before he arrived, he hadn't expected this escapade to go smoothly. But Mo Xi felt he had taken a great blow upon seeing the state of things with his own eyes. He braced both hands on the side of the coffin, closing his eyes and forcing himself to calm.
The scrolls in the coffin were made of Kunlun spirit jade; they should be near impossible to destroy. If they had been shattered, it was with intention—someone who knew the secrets from that year didn't want them exposed. And this person was certainly someone who wielded great power in Chonghua.
Under his strong brows, Mo Xi's eyes flickered beneath his eyelids. Shadows flashed through his mind—
Murong Lian. Censorate officials. Or the emperor. Perhaps even Gu Mang himself, before he defected. All kinds of guesses flooded his thoughts.
In this moment of torment in which he felt his insides were splitting apart, a clamor sounded from outside, hauling Mo Xi back to the present. Footsteps and shouts rang out in the distance.
"Someone's trespassed into the Imperial Censorate!"
"Quick, find them!"
Mo Xi glanced toward the open stone doors, then down at the coffin filled with shattered jade scrolls. He might never get the chance to come back after today. Acting on impulse, Mo Xi waved a hand and summoned all the jade scroll fragments into his qiankun pouch, uncaring of whether they could be repaired.
The cultivators guarding the Imperial Censorate had assembled in the hall, weapons drawn. Mo Xi had planned to hide here, then quickly leave this chaotic scene before the cultivators spread out. But on second thought, he remembered he had already given up his identity to open this tomb; the guards only needed to question each tomb beast. It would take at most a shichen before news of him sneaking into the Censorate made its way to the emperor. What could he possibly accomplish in that time?
Mo Xi took a deep breath. He adjusted the fall of his robes before slowly stepping out from the depths of the room. Although the guards were still far off, the instant the captain noticed Mo Xi, he raised his sword and cried, "Thief! How dare you bypass the imperial guards and trespass—"
In the next moment, the words died in his mouth as a figure strode slowly out from the shadows. Moonlight fell upon his finefeatured face, and the clamorous imperial cultivators froze in shock. Some even fell to their knees out of habit.
"X-Xihe-jun!"
"This subordinate deserves death! This subordinate didn't realize the honorable Xihe-jun was here—this subordinate misspoke!"
Mo Xi's prestige in Chonghua was unmatched, and his image as a righteous and honorable man was deeply impressed in people's hearts. Had anyone else appeared unannounced in the Censorate, the imperial guards would assume they were here for some nefarious purpose. But because it was Mo Xi, the guards automatically assumed Xihe-jun had accepted some mission too sensitive for their ears. No one imagined Xihe-jun would defy heavenly will for anything or anyone.
He was depending on this; he gambled on his thirty years of spotless reputation as he walked in front of these dumbstruck guards, his sharp gaze sweeping over their youthful faces.
"There is no thief," he said. "A secret order from the Bureau of Military Affairs requires me to investigate records from these years."
The captain was stunned. "Does Xihe-jun have His Imperial Majesty's command token…?"
"I've already said it's a secret order." Mo Xi's pale lips parted, his frosty expression accompanied by an equally cold statement. "What command token?"
"But—"
"This is a military matter; it's highly classified. I'd hoped to keep it quiet, but I see the diligence of you gentlemen is to be commended." Mo Xi gazed at their leader. "If the captain suspects me, you may come with me to His Imperial Majesty's quarters to confirm the facts."
Who didn't know that the emperor had been severely ill the past few days? Asking for confirmation would not only offend Xihe-jun, it would earn the captain a tongue-lashing from the emperor and swift expulsion from the palace. Moreover, the man standing before them now was Mo Xi. The most upright and honest general of Chonghua, the empire's most decorated commander, fourth in a line of pureblooded generals. What was there to suspect?
The captain of the imperial guard lowered his head and cupped his hands. "Xihe-jun, forgive me. This subordinate was only following procedure. I beg Xihe-jun to pardon any offense!"
"No harm done," Mo Xi said lightly. "You must only remember to tell no one what you saw here tonight."
"Understood!"
Calm and aloof as ever, Mo Xi left the Imperial Censorate. Only after stepping outside and feeling the night wind upon him did he realize sweat had soaked through his robes. This matter was dealt with for the moment, but there was no wall on earth that blocked every draft; the news of his visit to the Imperial Censorate would leak sooner or later.
Mo Xi lifted his face to the moon hanging above the capital, casting its frosty glow on city roofs. His fingers inside his sleeve curled around the qiankun pouch that held the fragments of jade scrolls. Such badly damaged scrolls could only be repaired by the finest master artificer. Mo Xi had not a minute to lose; he needed to somehow find an extremely powerful, extremely trustworthy artificer…
Almost as soon as the thought occurred to him, a suitable person came to mind.