When Ding Jian led his troops to the mountain pass on the north bank of the Wuding River, dawn was beginning to break. A lone rider already stood upon the stones waiting for him; clad in silver armor with a longsword at her side and mounted on a fine Dayuan steed, it was none other than the Eldest Princess of Qi, Lu Lingzhen.
The two faced each other from a distance in a silent standoff. Lu Lingzhen was entirely alone, neither retreating nor advancing. She sat coldly upon her horse while blocking the center of the mountain path as she watched Ding Jian and the Northern Desert army.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Ding Jian suddenly clapped his canid-skinned palms. From the ranks behind him, a prisoner was shoved forward, bound hand and foot. Blood-soaked and barely able to stand, he staggered toward Lu Lingzhen with unsteady steps.
Lu Lingzhen was taken aback, she recognized the official robes of Great Qi. As she looked closer, she realized he was a subordinate from the Prefect’s Mansion of Yongzhou, a trusted aide of He Gao.
She could not help but demand, “…Was it you who colluded with the enemy?”
Ding Jian smiled with great interest. “The Princess has wrongly accused this righteous man today.”
He turned to the official. “Weren’t you here to deliver a message? The Princess is right before your eyes. Whatever message you have, feel free to deliver it now.”
A roar echoed in Lu Lingzhen’s mind. After her departure, He Gao had also discovered the forgery of the handwritten letter and had sent someone to warn the Hewei! Unfortunately, they were half a step too slow; the messenger had ultimately been intercepted by Ding Jian.
Sure enough, the official glared back at Ding Jian through gritted teeth and said in a trembling voice, “Lord He ordered me to inform the Princess that there is something wrong with the letter from the capital. It appears to be a trap. The Princess must find a way to withdraw your troops and return to Yongzhou City immediately!”
Before Lu Lingzhen could even feel guilty for her slight suspicion of He Gao, she heard Ding Jian ask, “Have you finished delivering?”
Immediately following his words, he hurled his hand halberd, and the official was killed on the spot!
Lu Lingzhen’s cry of alarm caught in her throat; her eyes bulged with fury, yet she forced herself to remain fixed in place, motionless.
Ding Jian walked around the official’s corpse twice before speaking leisurely. “He Gao has grown old over the years; rotted through, even his eyesight has failed him. It’s one thing for a young girl like you not to recognize that surname ‘Xie’ handwriting, but even he failed to recognize it as well.”
Lu Lingzhen said in a chilling voice, “When Lord He left the capital, my sister-in-law was still young. It would be strange if he did recognize it.”
Ding Jian said grimly, “He may have left the capital, but he isn’t deaf or blind. That old man is sharp and clear-sighted; he knows the trends and movements of the capital perfectly well. Do you think that surname Xie was just lucky? As a wanderer in Yongzhou, could he enter the Prefect’s Mansion whenever he pleased and become an advisor just like that? Do you think if He Gao hadn’t known his true name and identity; he would have casually taken in an unknown stranger to be his right-hand man?”
Lu Lingzhen frowned. She had heard Lu Shuqing recount Xie Jing’s experiences in Yongzhou, and she had previously assumed that Xie Jing had taken the initiative to join the Prefect’s Mansion to test He Gao and uncover the truth behind the Xie family’s extermination. According to Ding Jian’s words, could He Gao’s acceptance of Xie Jing have actually been calculated and intentional from the very beginning?
Ding Jian sneered. “What, you don’t believe it? When my father served in the Eastern Palace, he said Lord He was the greatest actor in the entire Crown Prince’s Mansion by playing the fool to eat the tiger, no one was better at it than him. Hasn’t he got you all playing your parts now? I wager your elder brother, and sister-in-law must be moved to tears of gratitude for his ‘kindness in sheltering them’ by promising to welcome him back to the capital to spend his twilight years in comfort, right?”
Lu Lingzhen composed herself and said in a steady voice, “That letter from my sister-in-law was forged by your contact in the imperial court, wasn’t it? The one colluding with the enemy isn’t this man who died in vain, nor is it He Gao. It is you.”
Ding Jian laughed loudly. “My father was discarded like a worn-out bow after the birds were gone and died of illness in a foreign land, my mother and elder sister met violent deaths, and I could not take a single step freely within Qi territory. I was simply choosing another path to survive; why should I follow Bo Yi and Shu Qi and refuse the grain of Zhou? As for you, girl; you were thrown out for a marriage alliance. if you still cling to that court of yours, are the truly ridiculous one!”
Lu Lingzhen remained silent, offering neither rebuttal nor answer, because Ding Jian’s words had struck the very core of her heart. Her status as “Princess” had brought her twenty-odd years of a gilded yoke; any scrap of “freedom” that slipped through the cracks came either from her emperor father’s neglect or her elder brother’s guarantee. Because she lived off the world’s provisions, she had no right to harbor resentment; to do so would be to invite accusations of being ungrateful for her privilege.
I have enjoyed years of fine clothes and delicacies, standing above ten thousand people; perhaps it is only right that I peacefully repay the commoners with my own body? Lu Lingzhen had pondered this question incessantly, never finding an answer. It was a problem her empathetic mother, her indomitable brother, and her omniscient sister-in-law could not solve—none of them shared her circumstances, and none could truly feel what she felt. For the first time in her life, the Eldest Princess had no one to rely on and no book to consult while looking around in a daze upon a desolate path that had never been cleared.
But the innate candor and unrestrained spirit in Lu Lingzhen’s very bones would not be crushed by this moment of bewilderment. She chose to set aside what she couldn’t understand; sitting and debating philosophy was inferior to rising and taking action. Thus, she had requested the marriage alliance to leave her homeland and transform herself into General Jianwei.
Lu Lingzhen simply said, “I left the palace seeking the breath of freedom, not to serve the ‘State’ that sought to lock me away for a lifetime. I only wish to protect and repay the commoners I have never met, who, nevertheless, provided for me; and I will do it in the way I prefer.”
She had no desire to debate these matters further with Ding Jian, yet she sensed a faint, underlying similarity in the roots of their motivations.
Hearing her words, Ding Jian shot a sidelong glance at Lu Lingzhen. “You have more potential than that fool elder brother of yours. It’s a pity your only mistake is having him as a brother; for that, I have no choice but to send you on your way.”
Lu Lingzhen recalled what had been written in that forged letter. Years ago, it was Ding Jian and his young sister—Ding Yu, who had been sold into the Wu family’s Mount Tang Manor as a child, who were commissioned by that nameless figure to kill Lu Shuqing under the guise of “saving Xie Jing.” In the end, the plot was exposed and failed; Ding Yu committed suicide on the spot, and Ding Jian escaped, his whereabouts unknown until now.
Linking this to Ding Jian’s mention of his “mother and sister’s violent deaths,” Lu Lingzhen nudged her horse to circle at a careful distance. While remaining vigilant against an impending assault, she asked, “Is this about avenging your sister?”
A corner of her mouth quirked upward. “Your sister failed in her murder attempt and was forced to take her own life, so now General Ding comes to seek vengeance on me?”
“If your brother hadn’t pressed her so hard,” Ding Jian said sharply, “my sister wouldn’t have had to die to protect my escape.”
Lu Lingzhen snorted as if she had just heard the most preposterous joke in the world. “She shouldn’t have been a hired killer in the first place! I don’t care who was pulling the strings behind the scenes to have you kill Lu Zifeng or kill me. Fine, we were born with this surname, and if we die in a power struggle, we will accept that fate. But my nephew wasn’t even six months old then! To target a defenseless infant… that is an unpardonable sin that earns you a place in the lowest depths of hell!”
Upon hearing this, Ding Jian’s expression turned even more somber. “Whose outrage are you venting, Princess? Your elder brother’s? Your sister-in-law’s? Your nephew’s? Do you realize that the ‘unpardonable sin’ you speak of actually served to consummate a perfect marriage?”
Lu Lingzhen was confused, waiting for him to continue. “Do you know what your brother did after he drove my sister to her death?” Ding Jian asked. “That dawn when you all believed I had fled, and when Lu Lingcong and the Xuanshi failed to capture me; in truth, I never once left Jinling City.”
“How foolish Lu Lingcong is! I followed him all the way back to Prince Zhao’s Mansion, and he never noticed me. And guess what? He was busy comforting his princess consort by baring his heart to the very person who had stabbed my right arm as the family enjoyed their domestic bliss! I watched quite a grand performance of deep affection; it almost moved me to tears!”
He turned back and fixed Lu Lingzhen with a piercing stare. “My sister and I, in order to repay a life-saving debt and acting on someone’s commission, sought to kill Lu Lingcong and Lu Shuqing; we long ago cast aside honor and disgrace, so you may question us however you wish. But my parents were innocent victims, and in the Jianning twelfth year arms case, hundreds of officials and their families were wrongly slaughtered, becoming buried, nameless wronged souls for the sake of your Lu clan’s imperial foundation. Tell me, has any member of the imperial clan ever stepped forward to pay for their blood?!”
Lu Lingzhen froze while murmuring the words, “…The twelfth year of Jianning… the Arms Case?”
Ding Jian laughed wretchedly. “You think I am only seeking revenge for my sister? Eldest Princess, you truly know nothing of the past!”
The morning light was now fully bright. He spurred his horse closer while maintaining a distance where their weapons could just barely meet. He began to speak as if recounting an otherworldly rumor:
“Back then, to control the late Emperor, your grandmother, Empress Dowager Xiao, selected a group of commoner scholars who weren’t from the great clans to enter the Eastern Palace; which was my father and his colleagues. Then, she ordered the Xiao family to round up all of us—the families and kin of those Eastern Palace officials and keep us under house arrest. We were only allowed to reunite once a year, just before the New Year. I was only four years old when I was separated from my father.”
“After the late Emperor ascended the throne, his friction with Empress Dowager Xiao grew deeper and deeper. Finally, in the twelfth year of Jianning, in order to seize back real power, he privately promised my father and his colleagues that if they defected and helped him eradicate the Xiao clan of Lanling, he would guarantee their reunion with their families afterward. They agreed.
“Then the arms case happened. My father, together with Xu Yi; then the Commandant of the Capital Garrison, led the metropolitan forces in rebellion. The Wang and Cui families joined hands to seize back control of the Yulin Guards. Empress Dowager Xiao was defeated.”
“We fully believed we could finally be a family again. Who could have guessed that the Wang clan and Cui clan, unable to agree on how to divide the spoils and both wanting to hoard the merit of ‘supporting the dragon’ without relinquishing power, would memorialize the late Emperor? They suggested he adopt Empress Dowager Xiao’s methods—to keep using the house arrest of our families to control my father and the others, never giving these common scholars a single chance to rise and take their place at court.
“However, the Xiao family decided to burn their bridges. Before fleeing the capital, they intended to ‘dispose’ of all of us. My sister and I had practiced martial arts since childhood; with our mother covering for us, we managed to escape against all odds; and we even picked up Zhong Zhao, who was sick with only a breath left in him and abandoned halfway. Only then did we find my father and bring him the news.
“These old Eastern Palace officials begged the late Emperor to fulfill his promise and help find their kin, but the late Emperor chose to compromise with the great clans—he remained indifferent, refusing to lift a finger to save them.
“Naturally, my father and the others were consumed by a towering rage. But what is the fury of a band of powerless, low-born subordinates worth? A few copper coins? Before long, they were forced to submit to imperial authority. Those willing to endure stayed in the capital to continue their service, though their futures were bleak; those who couldn’t swallow the resentment were demoted or resigned, all wandering far from home. My father died of illness on the road. Over a decade of studying by the cold window, and in the end, it was all for nothing—water drawn in a sieve.”
After a long silence, Lu Lingzhen asked with great difficulty, “So, those family members… besides you siblings and Zhong Zhao, did anyone else—anyone else escape at all?”
“None,” Ding Jian said with a bluntness that bordered on cruelty. “My mother, Zhong Zhao’s mother, the daughter of He Gao and his wife… over a hundred people; including the elderly, the weak, women, and children, were locked in a cellar of a warehouse in the west of the city for seven full days. In the end, every single one of them starved to death.”
Lu Lingzhen was left utterly speechless. The image of He Gao’s pale hair and deeply lined face flashed through her mind, along with that expression of exhausted, unspeakable bitterness he always wore whenever she brought up “securing honors for one’s wife and sons”—as though he were recoiling from a venomous snake.
She instinctively whispered to herself that these were the sins of her father and ancestors, the sins of the great clans who covered the sky with a single hand, the sins of imperial power itself. It was not her debt to pay. Yet, her fingers could not stop their slight, uncontrollable trembling.
“One last question.” After a long pause, Lu Lingzhen tightened her grip on her sword. “The person who was kind to you and commissioned you to kill Lu Shuqing…is that the same master behind Zhong Zhao?”
Ding Jian raised his dual halberds. “Since the end is near, I can send you to your grave with a clear mind.”
With that, he moved his horse closer to Lu Lingzhen before leaning in to whisper a name in a voice only the two of them could hear. Lu Lingzhen shuddered while staring at him in disbelief. In that instant, she understood exactly why Xie Jing’s personal seal had appeared on that forged letter and how the ‘Quxia’ style had been faked to such perfection.
But Ding Jian gave her no more time. His hand halberd swung out in a flash. Lu Lingzhen instinctively raised her sword to meet it. Before her thoughts had even fully returned to the present, her body reacted on instinct, and she found herself locked in a fierce struggle with him.
This was not a battle between armies but a duel. For a fleeting second, Lu Lingzhen felt as though she were back in the courtyard of Mingluan Hall; except her opponent was no longer Lu Lingcong, and every strike and parry carried a lethal intent that allowed for no turning back. Behind Ding Jian, the Northern Desert soldiers began to close in. They might not have understood the grievances between their commander and the enemy general, but they knew all too well how much of a threat this foreign woman posed on the battlefield.
Lu Lingzhen’s strength was no match for Ding Jian’s; she had always relied on the lightness and speed of her weaponry to overcome her enemies. Now, her sword’s afterimages fused into a continuous, shimmering blur, concentrating every strike on Ding Jian’s right arm as she twisted the reins to pivot her mount, weaving through the gaps between his halberds.
However, she had been marching day and night for several days, and she hadn’t closed her eyes all of last night while traversing mountains and launching raids. Combined with the psychological shock she had just endured, her disadvantage became inevitable after hundreds of exchanges. The premise of “speed as the ultimate weapon” requires a quick kill; it only works if the enemy’s head falls before the rhythm is broken. Ding Jian, however, was not an opponent who would grant her such an opening.
Lu Lingzhen knew that if she didn’t make a desperate gamble for her life now, she would likely lose herself without dealing the enemy a heavy blow. Her eyes turned cold. She leapt from her horse after she made a split-second decision. Gripping the hilt with both hands, she twisted in mid-air and hacked downward from an angle his swinging arms could not reach. Blood splattered instantly; that single strike managed to sever Ding Jian’s right arm completely and carve a long, deep gash into his waist.
But in that same instant, Lu Lingzhen’s defenseless back was inevitably exposed to him. Ignoring his grievous injuries, Ding Jian did not hesitate for a heartbeat; he gripped his halberd with his left hand and smashed it into her back, sweeping her violently from her horse.
“My sister took a sword strike from Lu Lingcong before she ended her own life. Today, I will return it in full.”
Lu Lingzhen lay in the dust while struggling to prop up her upper body and crawl forward. She strained to reach her sword, but her body was faltering, barely able to support itself. Ding Jian completely disregarded his severed limb. She was only a blink too slow; Ding Jian snatched up her longsword and thrust it downward without hesitation, burying it into her back, straight through her heart.
“Tie her to the horse.” Ding Jian looked down indifferently at Lu Lingzhen’s suddenly rigid torso. His subordinates followed his command by binding her hands tightly to the warhorse’s hind legs, leaving her body to drag behind, face-up toward the sky.
Ding Jian lashed his whip with cold indifference without a word. The warhorse let out a startled, piercing neigh and bolted while dragging Lu Lingzhen behind it as it lunged into a frantic gallop down the mountain.
At first, her senses failed her. The dizziness of blood loss and the raw agony of torn flesh had not yet registered. In that suspended moment, she only let out a faint, ghostly sigh. She remembered the bracelet on her wrist; the one her sister-in-law had woven from colored threads when they were young. The coarse hemp rope was grinding against it; she feared it would snap. If her sister-in-law knew, he would surely weave her a new one; but would she ever see her sister-in-law again?
The mountains of the frontier were jagged and unforgiving. Hot, surging blood poured from her back, and a delayed, searing sensation finally arrived as if she were lying atop an open flame. The grinding pain of bone and muscle being pulverized felt as though she were being hoisted high into the air. Even the hallucinations before her eyes became vivid and sharp, refusing to let her drift into unconsciousness through this final, cruel torture.
In that span of time, Lu Lingzhen saw many faces and remembered many things.
Her first thought was of her mother. The guilt she felt toward Lady Wu surged into her heart with a domestic intensity she had never felt before. Lu Lingzhen gasped for air, but each breath was becoming labor. From small acts like sneaking out of the palace to play to the grand defiance of trading her wedding gown for a suit of armor—with every rebellion, no matter how determined she felt, she couldn’t help but worry: Am I making things difficult for my mother? Yet, Lady Wu had always simply said, “Go,” and never once told her to “Come back.” Now, she truly could not return.
She thought, of course, of Lu Lingcong and Xie Jing. This time, her heart was clear, and her spirit felt triumphant. Had they heard? Had they seen it in the military reports? Her talent, her achievements, the way she had brilliantly fulfilled her mission in this grand scheme involving the survival of their entire family. She had not let their teachings or expectations down in the slightest. Her only regret was that she was too late and now unable to tell them the name of the traitor in the imperial court. But her elder brother and sister-in-law loved her as parents love a child; Lu Lingzhen had no doubt that one day, they would settle her final grievances and settle the score on her behalf.
She also thought of her still-young nephews and nieces; her “laughing jujubes,” her “forget-me-nots,” and little Ningning, who since birth had been like a soft cloud burrowing playfully in her arms. Lu Lingzhen had promised that this year she would return to the capital to celebrate Lu Shuqing’s birthday; Qing’er had always been a child who valued promises and kept his word. If she failed to appear then, the child would surely blame his aunt for breaking her vow. When would she ever hear them call her “Aunt” again?
She even thought of her quiet, wooden, and distant younger brother. She thought of everyone. In truth, those distant, trivial details couldn’t even be called a “rotating lantern” of memories; she simply wanted to carve every face deeper into her mind at the moment of parting, fearing she wouldn’t recognize them in Yellow Springs or wouldn’t be kin in the next life. In truth, once she started thinking of her family, she didn’t dare continue.
In the true, final moment, Lu Lingzhen thought only of herself.
On that afternoon in the ninth year of Zhenyou, she had picked out a wild goose kite from the storehouse of Prince Zhao’s Mansion. She had pestered her brother and sister-in-law to go to Bailu Isle, where, amidst the intoxicating spring air, she flew it recklessly high and far. Her youthful, lighthearted heart; one unburdened by anything in the world, rose with the wild goose as it split wind and clouds, soaring straight up into the ninth heaven.
But even at that height, at that distance, the kite string remained firmly anchored in her palm, refusing to snap no matter what. At the time, Lu Lingzhen had secretly hoped it would break. Even if it were just a goose made of paper and ink, she could not bear to watch it bound to the pavilions, never to see the light of day.
But it simply would not break.
It was as if the moment the craftsman’s brush touched the paper, its fate and tribulations were already inscribed in the Ledger of Life and Death. How could a mortal body defy destiny? Her free-spirited nature was not omnipotent or unbreakable. She had exhausted her mind to cast away all thoughts by fleeing the doors of Hanzhang Hall, the gates of Taichu Palace, and the walls of Jinling City, only to realize at the very end that she had never once escaped the life gate called “Eldest Princess.”
Lu Lingzhen kept her eyes wide as she gazed at the blue sky that blurred before becoming crystal clear. She faintly saw that goose flying back—or perhaps, for over a decade, it had been hovering relentlessly above her head, never having flown far at all. Just as in the end, she still could not touch that distant, ethereal “Zhen”, which is the Truth within her name and her fate.
The blue sky then froze.
In the spring of the fifth year of Jingyu, Lu Lingzhen, the General Jianwei and Eldest Princess of Qi, passed away. She was not even twenty-four yet. In her final moments, she had used herself as bait to enter the enemy ranks alone; she was dragged alive by a warhorse for thirteen li before her breath finally failed.
Her eyes remained open even in death.
