Chapter 5

The Third Princess had a fiery temperament. I sent her to my father to learn how to be a commander in chief.

Xingyue was a gifted battlefield general, capable of leading a charge.

But she needed to serve the right supreme commander.

That person could never be the crown prince.

The Fifth Princess was the most rebellious and unrestrained of the three. Her appetite for reform was the greatest.

With her in charge, there would be no fear of restoring the belief that men were superior and women inferior.

I told Grand Tutor Pei to teach her carefully: temper her sharp edges, teach her to plan before acting, and bring about change as gently as a spring breeze and rain.

She would be a wise ruler one day, but first she had to learn patience and strategy.

The Seventh Princess was subtler, adept at turning others’ strength to her own advantage.

I put her into my intelligence network under a concealed identity, starting at the very bottom.

Throughout history, public opinion had marched ahead of armies. A war needed a cause people could believe in.

I wanted my youngest girl to learn how to gather information and spread it, to help her sisters win the battle for public opinion.

Before the Third Princess’s army advanced, before the Fifth Princess’s reforms began, the Seventh Princess had to wage the first battle—a battle of ideas.

Make the common people accept that a women’s army was no less capable than a men’s.

Make officials young and old accept that women could serve at court.

Then take up arms. Then reform. With persuasion and force, establish a flourishing dynasty for the three sisters.

By the time I finished, my mouth was dry.

All three gazed at me with burning eyes, then bowed their heads to the floor as one.

“Can you do it?” I asked, smiling.

“We can!”

I ordered three jars of Daughter’s Red brought in, broke their clay seals, and poured cup after cup of strong wine.

“These three jars were buried when you were born, meant to be drunk at your weddings. That will no longer be necessary.

“You will not marry into men’s households. You will stand at the summit of power and wait for men to marry into yours.

“I want families everywhere to stop celebrating the day their daughters marry!

“I want this Daughter’s Red raised only to celebrate women’s achievements!”

That night, the schoolroom blazed with light.

The three sisters drank until they were utterly drunk.

I opened my eyes, perfectly clearheaded.

Grand Tutor Pei emerged from behind the curtains and watched me quietly.

“Your Majesty, if you have such ambitions, why not take the Dragon Throne yourself?”

I sighed softly. “You know why. I don’t have much time left.”

A thousand years later, society was developing rapidly, and technology changed by the day.

It was an age Grand Tutor Pei could not comprehend. Material life had become abundantly comfortable, yet old beliefs still clung on.

Deep in the remote border mountains, there had been a volunteer teacher.

She tried to persuade a stubborn parent that his daughter should go to school instead of entering a factory so young.

The parent agreed, then detained her and sold her as a wife to a bachelor in the same village.

After five years of torment, the teacher finally succeeded in killing herself.

Before she died, she wished for another chance, a chance to escape the misery of being a woman.

She received it at last, but a thousand years in the past.

She had only five years.

Five years of suffering had bought her five years of a new life.

It seemed fair, in its way.

“I may never see the day when women rule their own lives. But I’ll lay the foundations for them. Qingyi, live on. When that day comes, remember to visit my grave and open a jar of Daughter’s Red for me.”

I rose on tiptoe and removed Grand Tutor Pei’s jade hairpiece.

Dark hair fell loose, flowing down.

Who could have imagined that the former top scholar, now Grand Tutor Pei, would reveal such a breathtakingly beautiful face when the lifelike mask came off?

And before she removed it, who would have admitted that the scholar whose dazzling essays had defeated thousands upon thousands of men to win first place was a woman?

Yet under neither the previous dynasty nor this one could Pei Qingyi achieve distinction openly as a woman.

She could display her gifts only under her worthless elder brother’s name.

The night deepened.

The bright moon hung high.

Pei Qingyi and I walked side by side through the moonlight.

Within the sternly ordered palace grounds stood hundreds upon thousands of magnificent halls. Not one offered freedom.

The many women of the harem could only keep company with solitary lamps, enduring the long nights without hope as they watched their flowerlike beauty slowly wither.

But they did not know that a new day was coming. The morning sun was about to rise.

Not every woman would passively wait for the sun and moon to rise and fall.

Someone would always be willing to turn her body into mountains and her blood into rivers. If she could not touch the sun herself, she would build a tower reaching to heaven so those who came after could pursue it.

One day, the sun would linger for us.