QYT - 34

Jiang Cizhou said, “At that time, everyone considered it a great honor to ascend the Xijintai. Scholars who were selected for this honor would be highly regarded in their future official careers. Xu Shubai was young and could still pass the imperial exams, so he was surely destined for a bright future.”

Fudong said, “Yes, if my teacher could ascend the Xijintai, the matron on the estate would certainly grant him a favor and release me to him. However... at that time, what I cared about wasn’t whether he would ascend the platform...”

The room at the Piaoxiang Estate was filled with a scent of perfume, yet the newly copied poetry on the table smelled cleanly of ink.

Fudong just stared at Xu Shubai. “Why do you want to buy my freedom?”

“I...” Xu Shubai looked down. “I have no students. You are my only student. A teacher for a day is a father for life. I can’t bear to see you fall into a life of vice. As long as there’s a way, I will certainly take you out of here.”

Fudong said, “But I heard the other girls on the estate say that someone who is willing to buy our freedom must genuinely like us. Do you really see me as a student, or is it as the girls say... you like me?”

Without waiting for Xu Shubai to answer, she continued, “If you like me, then don’t buy my freedom. In the future, if the estate sells me, whether I end up as a servant or a concubine, I’ll be able to handle it. But I don’t want to be your concubine.”

However, upon hearing this, Xu Shubai said nothing. He only said, “Leave the matter of buying your freedom to me. You just need to wait.”

“How many days did I wait at the Piaoxiang Estate after he left? Maybe ten days, maybe two months; I can’t remember exactly. Later, even Xu Tu came less often, until the day the Xijintai was about to be completed. He suddenly came. He came secretly, alone. He said that he would have to handle the matter of buying my freedom later because he had to go to the capital immediately...”

Fudong was stunned. “The capital? But the Xijintai will be completed the day after tomorrow. Aren’t you going to ascend the platform?”

Xu Shubai’s eyes were somber. He flicked his sleeve and said, “That Xijintai, I won’t ascend it!”

He paused, then explained a bit more to Fudong. “The reason I’m going to the capital is because of the Xijintai. I’m going to ring the Dengwen Drum to report a crime to the emperor. This case is of great importance, and there’s no time to lose...”

Qingwei was surprised. “Reporting a crime to the emperor? Did he say why he wanted to report it?”

Fudong shook her head. “I asked him, but he said the situation was too serious. Knowing too much could bring a murderous disaster. He told me it would be best for me to act as if I knew nothing.”

Fudong asked, “You’re in such a hurry to go to the capital. Do you have enough money for the journey?”

Without waiting for Xu Shubai to answer, she unfolded a piece of silk, poured all the hairpins and jewelry from her cosmetics box onto it, and then took out the twenty taels of silver she had hidden under the bed. She carefully wrapped it all up and gave it all to Xu Shubai, saying, “Take these.”

Xu Shubai looked at her but didn’t accept them.

After a long while, he put the silk pouch back on the table and unfolded it. His gaze swept over the many hairpins and finally landed on a pair of swallow-shaped jade hairpins.

The jade hairpins were a pair. He picked up one with his finger and gave a faint smile. “This is enough.”

He paused, unclipped a plaque from his waist, and handed it to Fudong. “My family is poor, and I have no valuables. The only thing I can rely on is my knowledge of poetry and classics. This plaque was bestowed by the government when I passed the provincial exam. I love it very much and have always kept it on me. You keep it safe and wait for me to return.”

But after he left, he never came back.

Fudong remembered clearly that Xu Shubai left on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.

It was the seventh day of the seventh lunar month in the thirteenth year of Zhaohua, two days before the Xijintai was completed.

Fudong didn’t wait for Xu Shubai to return; instead, she received a shocking piece of bad news.

The Xijintai had collapsed, and many scholars, artisans who built the platform, and common people had died under it.

It was as if the sky had changed in an instant. The area around Chongyang County, Lingchuan, was filled with sorrow. The court was shaken. Emperor Zhaohua personally rushed to Baiyang Mountain with his officials and ordered a thorough investigation into the cause of the collapse.

The first thing they found was the problem with the wood. The news that He Zhongliang from the Ministry of Works had colluded with Prefect Wei Sheng to use inferior materials shook everyone. Emperor Zhaohua ordered them to be beheaded while they were still at Baiyang Mountain. Xu Tu, who sold them the inferior iron pear wood, committed suicide out of guilt. All twenty-seven members of his family were killed, leaving no one alive.

The Piaoxiang Estate was also in chaos.

The matron on the estate was on high alert, as He Zhongliang, Xu Tu, and others had been regular patrons there before the Xijintai incident. Fearing that disaster would strike them as well, they began selling off the courtesans on the estate one by one and fled overnight.

Fortunately, He Zhongliang and his cronies had other places to seek pleasure besides the Piaoxiang Estate. The Xijintai disaster was a complicated case, and the officials didn’t investigate these low-class courtesans. And so, amid the chaos, Fudong left the Piaoxiang Estate and was sold to a wealthy family’s home.

She was unable to keep her purity as Xu Shubai had hoped and returned to her fate of being passed from one person to another. In those homes, she was pampered and then gradually abandoned. In the end, she was treated like an object, to be sold for a good price to the next owner.

Only occasionally, in places where even the moonlight couldn’t reach, would she remember what Xu Shubai had said to her.

The young, naive scholar would always blush when he spoke at first:

“That’s not right. Some deals can be made, and some cannot.”

What kind of deal couldn’t be made? Over the years, Fudong had a better understanding.

If that fleeting moment of brilliance and prosperity was obtained by selling oneself, it would only be like a reflection of the moon in the water.

A person is a person precisely because they are not an object to be sold.

After realizing this, Fudong decided she would buy her freedom and then go to the Xijintai to collect Xu Shubai’s body.

She didn’t know why he had gone back to the Xijintai in the end. Six months after the platform collapsed, she found his name on the list of deceased scholars.

When Fudong went to Baiyang Mountain to collect Xu Shubai’s body, it was already the spring of the second year of Jianing. It was called collecting the body, but after the great fire to prevent a plague, only the personal belongings of the deceased were left.

When Fudong saw Xu Shubai’s belongings, she was stunned.

It was a plaque with his name, his hometown, and his scholar’s title engraved on it.

It was identical to the one Xu Shubai had given her.

Fudong quickly realized that the plaque the officials had given her was a fake. The real one was with her.

Remembering all of Xu Shubai’s actions before he left Lingchuan, Fudong felt a chill run down her spine in that instant—

“That Xijintai, I won’t ascend it!”

“The reason I’m going to the capital is because of the Xijintai! I’m going to ring the Dengwen Drum to report a crime!”

“This case is of great importance, and there’s no time to lose.”

“Knowing too much could bring a murderous disaster. Just act as if you know nothing and don’t tell anyone you know me before the situation calms down.”

Xu Shubai was a man of his word. Since he had said he wouldn’t ascend the platform, he wouldn’t have gone back on it.

This meant that Xu Shubai had disappeared on his way to the capital, and the news of his death at the Xijintai was a deliberate fabrication by someone with a hidden agenda.

Fudong said, “I now had both the real and fake plaques. I knew something was wrong, so I didn’t tell anyone and went back to my place. Looking back, the whole thing was strange from the beginning. Others might not have known about Xu Tu, but I knew him very well. He was always greedy for fame and profit, and terrified of death. When the Xijintai collapsed, why would he commit suicide out of guilt instead of escaping? And even if he did commit suicide, why would he drag his entire family of twenty-seven down with him? The most important point, however, was something I had always overlooked.”

“What?” Qingwei asked.

“An official position,” Jiang Cizhou said.

“Yes, an official position,” Fudong nodded. “Young Master Jiang is a noble, so he is familiar with the workings of the court and must have immediately seen the strangeness in this. But at that time, I was just a courtesan at the Piaoxiang Estate. I didn’t pay much attention when I heard the patrons say that my teacher would soon go to the capital to become an official.

“Later, after I carefully inquired and asked around, I learned that to become an official in the capital, unless you come from a powerful family and get a sinecure, you must at least be an imperial scholar. At that time, my teacher was just a provincial scholar. Even if he ascended the Xijintai, and with recommendations from people like He Zhongliang and Wei Sheng, his official career would only be a little smoother. How could he become an official in the capital so quickly?

“Or, was there a more powerful person in the court who could bypass all the rules and rituals to promote a provincial scholar, allowing him to become an official first and then slowly work his way up?”

After Fudong figured this out, she found the old matron from the estate and asked her about it.

The matron had not fared well since leaving the estate. In just a few years, she had been afflicted with a serious illness and was nearing her deathbed. Perhaps people speak kindly when they are close to death. She said, “You’re asking about that scholar. He was a good boy. In all my years, I’ve seen very few good people, and he was one of them. But I advise you, don’t look for him anymore. He can’t be alive. The person Xu Tu offended was very powerful.”

“Who was it?” Fudong asked.

The matron said, “I don’t know either. I just heard them mention him once. It was like a ‘He’ something... Oh, He Zhongliang. He was a distant relative. They called him Old Master He or Young Master He? They said he was very powerful and could get the scholar an official position.”