Chapter 9

Chapter 9

I collapsed onto the cold riverbank, gasping for breath, my throat filled with the taste of rust.

The icy river water soaked through my trouser legs, yet something scorching surged inside me, something that felt as if it might burst through my chest.

Fifteen years.

I scooped up river water and scrubbed hard at the soot and mud on my face.

The reflection in the water was blurred: a pale, gaunt stranger with sunken eyes.

There was no time for sorrow.

I quickly got to my feet and, while the sky was still dark, followed the riverbank downstream.

Near the hut of an early-rising fisherman, I found the other set of coarse cotton clothes we had hidden in advance.

I changed, then sank the eunuch’s clothes and the unnecessary odds and ends from the bundle to the bottom of the river.

Now I looked like any ordinary village woman hurrying along the road at daybreak.

At first light, I blended into the earliest group of farmers carrying vegetables into the city to sell.

The gate guards were bleary-eyed with sleep and only gave the travel permits a perfunctory check.

That yellowed slip of paper read: Chen Xiuniang, native of Wujiang County, Suzhou Prefecture.

My heart hammered wildly in my chest, but my face remained wooden.

The soldier waved me through. I lowered my head, shouldered my empty carrying pole, and walked into the capital just as it was waking.

I did not head south right away.

Sometimes the most dangerous place was the safest.

In the chaotic, mixed Western Market of the capital, I used a little broken silver to rent a low, cramped hut by the river and settled there.

Every day, I went to teahouses, restaurants, and the docks, listening to travelers from north and south make idle conversation, piecing together news from inside the palace through street gossip.

The new emperor had ascended the throne. The Imperial Consort had suddenly fallen gravely ill and died after the late emperor’s passing.

The Empress had become Empress Dowager, but rumor said her health had always been poor.

Power now rested in the hands of the new emperor’s birth mother-the former Consort Shu, now the Holy Mother Empress Dowager…

The palace was gradually purging its old servants and issuing silver for their dismissal.

But the effort was focused mainly on palace maids and eunuchs with official posts in the various halls.

As for forgotten corners like the Cold Palace, no one mentioned them at all.

Three months later, after I confirmed that all was calm and there was no sign of anyone investigating missing persons from the Cold Palace, I finally set out for real.

The story of the West Third Institute, along with the three dead women, evaporated like a drop of water beneath the blazing sun of the deep palace, leaving no trace behind.

Many years later, in a misty little town in Jiangnan, I opened a small embroidery shop that also sold a few antique-style paintings and calligraphy pieces.

The embroidery master at the shop was surnamed Liu. She was quiet and reserved, but her Su embroidery was nothing short of miraculous.

She was especially skilled at restoring damaged old embroidery. Any piece that passed through her hands seemed to come alive again.

The accountant was surnamed Wu. She was meticulous by nature, exceptionally skilled with the abacus, and knew a little medicine as well.

She often treated the neighbors’ headaches and fevers without taking a single coin, so she was well liked by everyone.

We never spoke of the past.

Only occasionally, after closing for the day and settling the accounts, the three of us would sit together and brew a pot of clear tea.

Looking at the fine drizzle beyond the window, or at the osmanthus tree in the courtyard as its branches gradually grew lush and full, we would exchange a smile.

In that smile was the calm of surviving catastrophe, and an understanding that needed no words.

News from the capital would still occasionally arrive with the carts of traveling merchants.

I heard the new emperor was young and capable, and had begun reforming the bureaucracy.

I heard the palace had taken in new women, and with them came new grudges.

I also heard that the grounds of the West Third Institute were later haunted several times. Some said they heard women whispering and weeping there at night.

Someone had once picked up scraps of paper covered in strange symbols. Unable to understand them, they burned them as wastepaper.

I listened while carefully separating silk threads, splitting a single strand of gold thread into sixteen finer strands.

Sunlight passed through the carved wooden window and fell across the smooth satin, reflecting a warm, gentle sheen.

The air carried the damp scent of grass and trees, mingled with the steady fragrance of incense.

That well in the deep palace, along with the buried years inside it, the heart-stopping secrets, and the names and former lives of three women…

At last, all of it was completely buried beneath the silt of time. No one would ever remember it again, much less speak of it.

Perhaps true clarity was not about seeing through every scheme and calculation, but about knowing clearly:

When to feign madness and stupidity, when to endure and lie low, when to weave the net with painstaking care.

And when the moment finally came, having both the ability and the resolve

to leave that gilded cage without ever looking back.

And walk toward the vast world that belonged to me.