GU MANG SHOOK violently. How could he not tremble? What he had was so little. Even as a famous general, he'd always had to shamelessly beg the nobles for favor and acknowledgment. Now the emperor was offering him everything he had so painstakingly asked for, promising him all of it, crushing him beneath its weight—how could his spine stay straight? Unbreakable pride was a privilege of the likes of Mo Xi or Murong Lian. It had never been his.
Perhaps the emperor was well aware of this; he was in no rush. He stood, hands behind his back, waiting for Gu Mang to calm down, to submit, to take the first slow step onto the path of no return. Waiting for the Beast of the Altar to see he had no other choice, to take up the bridle himself.
It was only to be expected when, after a long while, Gu Mang lifted his head, those tear-filled eyes, black as pitch, fixing on the ruler in front of him. His face was serene; it was only that the light in his eyes had become embers, his heart like ashes. "Then, I ask Your Imperial Majesty," Gu Mang murmured, "to please grant one more request."
"Tell me."
"Zhanxing… He shouldn't be kept in the dark. Allow me to go personally to the prison and tell him the truth."
The emperor closed his eyes and sighed. "Subject Gu, why bother—"
"Because I have a guilty conscience."
"It is better for him to never know the truth—for you, for us, and for Chonghua."
"No. He must know. He has sacrificed enough. I implore you, just this once…have some consideration for him." Gu Mang closed his eyes in torment, tears trickling between thick lashes and slipping down his face. "He's been wronged. And I can't…can't save him. But at least I can tell him…" Those final words were like a red-hot iron branding his heart. "At least I can tell him he did nothing wrong. At least I can prevent him…from dying in ignorance…"
As he finished speaking, his voice weakened, and his silhouette gradually became transparent. The scene before Mo Xi's eyes dimmed, and darkness swallowed the Golden Terrace; the last thing Mo Xi saw was Gu Mang slowly kowtowing, lowering his head at the emperor's feet. It looked nothing like a pledge of loyalty, but rather an exhausted prostration.
Night descended before his eyes. At the same time, a sharp agony exploded in Mo Xi's limbs. The history-recording jade scroll fed on his strength, but Mo Xi felt that what flowed from him wasn't spiritual energy—his very soul seemed to be drawn out, pulled from his body and ground to fine powder.
But it didn't seem to hurt.
The words spoken on the Golden Terrace eight years ago echoed in his head. Gu Mang's harrowed expression lingered before his eyes.
One rainy night, one scheme, one sacrifice, deceived the world for eight years.
"General Gu, we need someone loyal enough, brave enough, and clever enough. We need this person to infiltrate the Liao Kingdom and send information back to us—to become the poison in the bellies of both Liao and those old nobles."
"Are you willing to endure a difficult mission as Chonghua's right hand?"
Are you willing…? From now on, in all the world, only one other will know the truth. The countrymen you protect will spurn you, your former subordinates will misunderstand you, all the friends you've ever had will become your enemies.
You will gouge out a blazing heart, offer up your lifetime's worth of passion, yet the world will only remember your treason and infamy.
Subject Gu, General Gu, Gu Mang. Are you willing?
Each question seemed to thunder from the depths of the storm clouds, like heavenly sound piercing the sternum, like a sharp awl boring through the heart. The scene swam before his eyes, the colors seeming to scatter like snowflakes only to coalesce once more. Mo Xi fell helplessly among these fluttering fragments as if tumbling into a bottomless chasm. He opened his eyes; only when scalding tears burned at the corners did he realize he was crying.
His body didn't feel like his anymore; his soul felt like it had been cut into separate halves locked in heated combat within the dispersing vision. His past conversations with Gu Mang resurfaced one by one in his mind, crushing him into dust—
Gu Mang said, "They are my blood, my eyes, my arms and my legs, my family, and my life."
Yet Mo Xi had once rebuked him furiously, "As you bathed your hands in blood and killed your own comrades—Gu Mang, when did you ever feel the slightest bit of regret?!"
Gu Mang said, "How far would I have to be pushed to defect to the nation that has slaughtered countless of my comrades and stirred the flames of war across the Nine Provinces?!"
Yet Mo Xi had once said, "There was more than one path before you, and more than one country you could have fled to. Yet you went to the Liao Kingdom. You wanted revenge. For your dashed prospects, for your dead comrades-in-arms, for your own advancement. You didn't care whose blood you spilled."
Gu Mang said, "They will have a tombstone in my heart. I will remember every one of their names, every one of their faces, until the day I join them in death. They will never become rubble."
And Mo Xi had once slapped him, had stabbed a single word through Gu Mang's heart. He'd called him… As that word rose to mind, Mo Xi began to shake uncontrollably, horrified by the malice in what he'd said.
He had actually called him dirty.
Gu Mang had lost his memories, but he instinctively longed to wear the forehead ribbon bestowed upon Chonghua's heroes. He instinctively yearned for the day he would be exonerated, once more able to openly and honestly don his uniform and ride into battle, stand before the soldiers of three armies and watch the sun glinting off their armor. In all the years he had spent undercover, this thought was perhaps Gu Mang's only comfort. All he had was this empty illusion, this sentimental imagining.
Yet Mo Xi had scorned him as dirty.
"I should have it… I should have it, too…" The blue-eyed Gu Mang who had lost his mind had fought him for the ribbon. That voice filled with stubbornness and sorrow seemed to grate again in Mo Xi's ears through the flow of time. The vicious slap his past self had landed on Gu Mang's cheek seemed to whip across his own face, stinging sharp and hot.
How dare you. How could you be worthy…?!
Mo Xi was surprised he'd kept from sobbing, that he could somehow bear this. He was unsure whether his pain had subsided into numbness, or if his heart had been forged into stone by the weight of despair.
Naught but one among the heavens and earth knew the events that had played out upon the Golden Terrace.
He felt his limbs were about to be torn from his body. The jade scroll gnawed at his soul, but in the depths of his skull, a voice spoke faintly, circling him, interrogating him without cease.
Do you wish to keep reading? Mo Xi, Xihe-jun. What are you made of? Can you face this bloody past, this bloody truth?
Each word, each phrase was like a sharp knife cutting open his heart, but his body no longer seemed to belong to him. Fresh blood filled his chest, but he couldn't feel it.
He opened blank eyes like a walking corpse. Pain? Death? Shattered core? None of that matters anymore. He murmured—Blame me for being stone or ice. Let me keep reading. I want to know everything, these truths that have been hidden away, swallowed up, painted over.
Why did you hide it from me… Why… Before you stepped onto this path… You pushed me away… You kept me in the dark… Why! Why…
"Since thou hast decided," the jade scroll intoned, "offer up thy flesh and blood unto me—to soothe your heart's regret—"
His chest throbbed with pain, as if an invisible claw covered in barbs had torn through his chest and seized his heart. The spiritual flow from his core fluctuated as if it would explode. Jiang Yexue had warned him: reading these half-repaired jade scrolls required one's vital spirit and spiritual energy; he would suffer excruciating agony. But at that moment Mo Xi only marveled that the pain was no more than this… It couldn't outweigh even a fraction of the pain brought on by these buried truths.
Innumerable years swirled and remerged like clouds as he watched. The Golden Terrace vanished. What appeared in its place was the Chamber of Ice in the imperial prison.
This was the cell he had seen in the Time Mirror, where Lu Zhanxing had been kept. The jade scroll had returned him to that ghastly hell bereft of light. As the scene in front of him came into focus, the taste of copper surged in Mo Xi's throat. He endured waves of dizziness, lifting his eyes to watch the truth surfacing once more.
In that prison cell eight years ago, one lamp cast a weak glow. It spat out listless flames, as if its light would shrivel and burn out at any moment.
Lu Zhanxing sat on the narrow and icy stone bed. This Lu Zhanxing, who hadn't yet seen Gu Mang, seemed a completely different man from the calm and guilt-free Deputy General Lu in the Time Mirror. He leaned against the wall, despondent, his face buried deep in the shadows. Strands of matted hair fell in front of his eyes, and his entire body emanated a sense of misery. Right now, he was truly a wretched prisoner.
The prison doors creaked open.
"Bastard Lu, the interrogation official sent by His Imperial Majesty is here!" the warden called out. "If you have any grievances, speak them; if you have any requests, make them; but remember to behave! You'd better not go crazy!" He put on a flattering smile and said to the man standing outside, "Your Excellency, if you please."
"You may withdraw."
The masked interrogation official stepped into the cell. Magic came to his fingers, and he closed the door with a wave of his hand. Within the cramped room, no one could hear their conversation—save for Mo Xi, who was invisible as he watched.
Lu Zhanxing showed no stir of emotion at the arrival of this interrogation official—many such people had come in the past few days, but not a single one had brought him hope. He kept his head down, resting his sturdy arms on his knees. He dully repeated the request he had perhaps already made thousands of times. "I want to see Gu Mang," he said flatly.
No one answered him.
"There's nothing else I want. I have no grievances to report, I have nothing else to appeal," Lu Zhanxing muttered without the slightest spark of life, as though he had been stripped of all vitality and left with a singular obsession. "I want to apologize to him in person. Afterward, you can kill me…drawn and quartered or death by a thousand cuts or boiled alive, whatever. I won't cry foul."
The interrogation official didn't speak. He knelt before Lu Zhanxing's dirty bed and kowtowed three careful times.
Lu Zhanxing finally reacted, somewhat stunned. "What…does this mean?"
"Before the battle at Phoenix Cry Mountain, we were playing dice. We hadn't finished ten rounds before I had to leave. We promised to keep playing after we returned victorious." The visitor produced a pair of wooden dice from his qiankun pouch. "We can no longer have victory. But I brought the dice."
Two wooden dice, with a red lotus mark in place of the sixth dot.
Lu Zhanxing seemed to have been struck by lightning. He leapt off the bed, grabbing this interrogation official by the lapels before the man finished speaking, before the mask even came off. These two brothers who had grown up together had the familiarity of siblings. Lu Zhanxing stared into the black eyes behind the mask. In his entire life, he had never seen anyone with eyes brighter or livelier than his dear brother, his Mang-er. Lu Zhanxing was a strong and sturdy man, but he immediately choked up. He looked into Gu Mang's eyes and cried, "Mang-er! It's you?!"
The interrogation official reached up and slid off the mask that hid his features. Gu Mang's face, soaked with tears, was revealed to the dim light.
The last time these brothers saw each other, they were a mighty and invincible general and a heroic and courageous commander. In the blink of an eye, one had been demoted to a commoner, and the other was condemned to die.
"It's me." Gu Mang's voice was terribly hoarse, the rims of his eyes red. "I'm sorry, it's been so long…and I've only just come to see you now…"
Reunited at last, they wept piteously in each other's arms. Eventually, Lu Zhanxing wiped away the tears on his face, tightly gripping Gu Mang's hand. He had so many questions to ask—how did you get here, why have you come, how are you now—but as Lu Zhanxing gazed into his brother's face, the first tear-thickened question that rose to his lips was: "Mang-er, the battle at Phoenix Cry Mountain… Do, do you blame me?"
"Zhanxing…" Gu Mang squeezed out between sobs.
But Lu Zhanxing was mired in his guilt; he had stifled these words in his heart for so long, they had long since flooded their confines. He couldn't stop himself from muttering, "I was impulsive, I don't know what happened… It was like some demon took hold of my mind. I suddenly thought shedding blood and offering up my head for this nation wasn't worth it at all; I suddenly thought nothing we've done was worth it… But… But…that's not how I really felt… Perhaps I wondered about these things here and there in the past, but that's really not how I felt! I let down my seventy thousand brothers at Phoenix Cry Mountain… I don't know what happened to me, Mang-er. I betrayed your trust; I betrayed our brothers' trust…"
Each word and sentence was heartrending. Lu Zhanxing was the picture of woe and regret. Those red-rimmed eyes, wet with tears, were like hooks viciously driving into Mo Xi's flesh. How could the Lu Zhanxing in front of him, so remorseful for the great wrong he had done, be the same person as that sloppy and careless man in the Time Mirror? Everything Lu Zhanxing said in the Time Mirror had been insane—
"Having me ruin his life is still better than seeing him ruin his own and the lives of others. His Imperial Majesty was right…to strip him of his power!"
No…
No, no, no, that wasn't true! None of it was true. The truth was nothing like that.
Mo Xi watched Lu Zhanxing kneel before Gu Mang, choking on his unbearable regret and agony. His ears were ringing… It was wrong…all wrong! He heard Lu Zhanxing apologizing to Gu Mang over and over, he heard Lu Zhanxing say to Gu Mang: "Mang-er, I'm sorry."
Bitter cold coursed through Mo Xi. In hindsight, the Lu Zhanxing in the Time Mirror had already known his death would save thirty thousand lives, which was why he'd embraced his guilt. He wasn't a lunatic who destroyed his brother's dream and thought himself infallible. Rather, he was keeping this secret from Mo Xi all the way to his death, never letting on that he was a hero cast in the mold of a villain, a loyal subject falsely accused.
To protect Gu Mang, to protect his remaining comrades, the emperor handed him the mask of a guilty subject, the mask of a reckless brute, and he wore it until death. But in truth, Lu Zhanxing had never betrayed Gu Mang. He was Gu Mang's true friend; he was Gu Mang's worthy second-in-command. They were much the same, these brothers, both willing to die for their ideals.
With great difficulty, Gu Mang calmed Lu Zhanxing and helped him sit on the edge of the stone bed. Voice breaking on sobs, he said to this man racked with guilt, "Zhanxing… You never betrayed us. From beginning to end, you've always been our brother."
Though Lu Zhanxing had recovered himself somewhat, at this, he broke down again. He buried his head in his hands, kneading his face. "No… I was the one who killed that Rouli envoy. I was the one who lost control, who was blinded by my selfishness."
The rims of Gu Mang's eyes were a vivid red as he interlocked their hands tightly. "It wasn't like that."
Lu Zhanxing said nothing.
Gu Mang's next words were like lightning breaking through the heavens, piercing through heavy clouds—
"Listen to me. What blinded you wasn't your selfishness, but the Zhenlong chess piece the Liao Kingdom planted in your body."