The final lesson in the Imperial Study was a somber affair. The room, once a place of tense but stimulating intellectual exchange, was now heavy with the silence of defeat. Weng Tonghe moved about the room like a ghost, his face pale and drawn, his movements slow and unsteady. He was packing his personal effects: a few treasured books, a set of worn ink brushes, a small, carved brush pot. Each item he placed in his modest wooden box was a reminder of the life that had just been stripped away from him.
He had been dismissed. The news had already swept through the Forbidden City's rumor mill. He was no longer the prestigious Imperial Tutor, a man who shaped the mind of the Son of Heaven. He was now Weng Tonghe, the disgraced scholar, the fool who had allowed his student to become entangled in the dangerous games of princes. He believed his reassignment to the archives was a cruel joke, a slow death sentence. He would be isolated, forgotten, and when the time was right, quietly disposed of—a convenient illness, a tragic accident. Such things were common in the palace. He was a dead man walking.
Ying Zheng sat at his small table, watching the broken man with a calm, unreadable expression. He understood the tutor's fear. He also understood that Cixi's move, while clever, had created a new set of opportunities. He had to act quickly to preserve his new, valuable asset.
"Your Majesty," Weng Tonghe said, his voice cracking as he approached for a final farewell. He bowed low, his body trembling. "This humble servant has failed you. I was not wise enough, not strong enough, to protect you from the storms of the court. Forgive my incompetence."
Ying Zheng looked up at the man who had been, for a brief time, his most important tool and his most frustrating jailer. He felt a flicker of something almost akin to pity for the scholar's predictable weakness, but it was quickly suppressed by the cold demands of strategy.
"A good teacher does not fail," Ying Zheng said, his childish voice carrying a strange, cryptic authority. "He merely graduates his student."
Weng Tonghe looked up, confused by the odd turn of phrase. Before he could respond, Ying Zheng gestured to a beautifully wrapped box on his table.
"A parting gift," the boy-emperor said. "So that you do not forget your student in your new, important work."
A eunuch brought the box to Weng Tonghe. With trembling hands, the scholar opened it. Inside, nestled in a bed of rich, yellow silk, was an inkstone. But it was not just any inkstone. It was a masterpiece, a flawless piece of deep purple-black Duan stone, a type famously quarried from the riverbeds of Guangdong and prized above all others by scholars and calligraphers. It was smooth and cool to the touch, its surface seeming to drink the light. A corner was intricately carved with a subtle image of a lone pine tree clinging to a cliffside—a symbol of resilience in the face of adversity. It was an incredibly valuable, thoughtful, and respectable gift for a scholar.
Tears welled in Weng Tonghe's eyes. In his moment of disgrace, the child he had been tasked with teaching was showing him a kindness and respect that had been stripped away by everyone else. "Your Majesty… I am unworthy," he whispered, his voice choked with emotion. He accepted the gift with the reverence due to a sacred object, his heart filled with a mixture of profound gratitude and deep, hopeless despair. What good was a fine inkstone to a man awaiting his own death? He bowed one last time and departed the study, clutching the heavy stone as if it were his only friend left in the world.
After the tutor was gone, Ying Zheng allowed a small, cold smile to touch his lips. The inkstone was a beautiful gift, yes. But it was also a threat, a tool, and a lifeline. It was a masterfully crafted piece of espionage equipment.
His plan had been set in motion the moment he had learned of Cixi's decision. A series of urgent, coded messages had flown between his operatives. Liang Wen, his treasury clerk, had procured the raw materials. Shen Ke, his new recruit from the Hanlin Academy, had been the key. As a master calligrapher, Shen Ke was also an expert on the Four Treasures of the Study: brush, paper, ink, and inkstone. More importantly, his classical studies had given him knowledge of obscure chemical formulas and forgotten artisan techniques.
Following Ying Zheng's precise instructions, Shen Ke had treated the beautiful Duan inkstone. It was not poisoned in a conventional, detectable way. He had used a complex process involving a heated solution of gall nuts and ferrous sulfate, which was then absorbed into the stone's porous surface and polished until it was completely invisible. The stone was now chemically altered.
When a specific type of ink—a formula using a particular ratio of pine soot and animal glue that Shen Ke would secretly provide to Weng Tonghe under the guise of a "sympathetic gift from a fellow scholar"—was ground upon its surface, a secondary, invisible chemical reaction would occur. As Weng Tonghe used this ink to write his official, mind-numbing history of the early reigns, the characters would appear perfectly normal. Cixi's spies could read his work every day and see nothing but the tedious scribblings of a broken man.
But if the paper was later brushed with a second, common chemical—something as simple as weak tea or a solution of rice wine vinegar—a latent chemical reaction would cause the invisible residue to oxidize and appear as faint, brownish writing between the lines of the original text.
The inkstone was a secure, invisible communication device of the highest order. Weng Tonghe, in his quiet exile in the archives, could now become Ying Zheng's most important intelligence analyst. He could write his "history" while secretly embedding reports, summaries of documents he read, and messages within the very fabric of the paper he produced.
Ying Zheng had not only countered Cixi's move to isolate him; he had upgraded his communication network from clumsy, risky charcoal drops to a sophisticated, undetectable system that operated right under the nose of his enemies. Cixi thought she had buried her problem in the archives. She had no idea she had just planted her most dangerous enemy in the heart of the empire's memory.