Chapter 1

Xie Shijing and I were supposed to marry at the end of the year.

I was already nineteen. To delay any longer would have been quite improper.

The reason we had waited so long was simple: he did not like me.

His grandfather had forced the engagement on him, and Xie Shijing was rebellious to the core.

When he was fifteen, some madness seized him. He renounced his family’s hereditary title and declared that he would earn distinction for himself through the examinations.

He usually spent his days at cockfights and with his hunting dogs. No one believed him.

Then he took a pair of scissors and hacked his hair into a ragged mess.

Unable to show his face in public, he had no choice but to stay home and study.

By the time his hair had grown back, he had passed the provincial examination.

Others studied ten years for that honor. He skimmed his books for three months and nearly placed first.

The next step was the metropolitan examination, yet he made no move to pursue it.

After resting a while, he left a letter behind and ran off to enlist on the frontier.

Xie Shijing was the family’s only male heir in three generations. They could hardly risk anything happening to him. They wrote to General Cui, who commanded the frontier garrison, asking him to keep an eye on the boy. The general replied promptly: not only had he never seen the eldest young master of the Xie family, but there was not a single soldier named Xie in his army.

The news threw the whole household into turmoil. In the end, Shijing’s second uncle traveled to the frontier himself, had all the new recruits line up, and examined them one by one until he finally found his nephew.

Xie Shijing had taken the name Zhao Wuge. Concealing his identity and making no use of his family connections, he had enlisted as an ordinary soldier.

Fearless in his youth, he had already become a commander of a hundred men by the time his uncle found him.

Had his uncle arrived any later, he might have risen to command a thousand.

When Xie Shijing returned to the capital, his family enforced their household discipline and beat him half to death.

But how could a young man that defiant ever be frightened by a beating?

His wounds had scarcely healed when he announced that, of the four occupations—scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants—merchants ranked last. He intended to find out exactly what made them so lowly. He was going into trade.

This time he truly infuriated his mother. So you want to do business? Then go ahead. He was driven out of the house, with two changes of clothes and five taels of silver thrown after him.

Xie Shijing took no offense. He shouldered his bundle and set off for Yangzhou. More than half a year later he returned. His first act on entering the capital was to spend a thousand taels on the tallest restaurant on Chang’an Street, rename it Moonwatch Tower, and present it to his mother for her birthday.

Everyone knew that the mistress of the Xie household had been named Yujian before marriage—a name evoking the bright moon in the heavens.

By then, opinion in the capital had begun to turn in Xie Shijing’s favor.

Shangjing had no shortage of reckless young gentlemen, but how many excelled at everything they tried, as he did?

He came from a distinguished family, was handsome, and had ability to match.

Perhaps even if he took to begging, he would beg his way to a mountain of gold.

Xie Shijing had everything in his favor. Everything except his engagement.

His grandfather had arranged it while still alive, betrothing him to the young lady of the Song family of Luochuan.

At the time, the families had been equals and old friends. It was an excellent match. But within a few years, every male member of the Song family had died in battle. Of that once mighty household, only an orphaned girl, Song Baizhi, remained.

The Songs had fallen into decline. Their daughter, it was said, had learned nothing of her ancestors’ skill with saber and spear. Frail and sickly, she had not visited the capital once in all those years, living in remote Luochuan and growing up in the countryside.

Though descended from a great family, the orphaned Miss Song was reaching rather high if she hoped to marry the Xies’ eldest son as matters now stood.

The Xies said nothing outright. Yet whether by design or by chance, the mistress of their household had grown particularly close to the wife of Minister Zhang of Revenue. Minister Zhang controlled the realm’s finances and had only one daughter by his principal wife, a young lady celebrated for her painting and her playing of the qin zither, one of the capital’s finest noblewomen.

Perhaps one day a new engagement would be arranged.

I had been hearing such talk since we were eighty li from the capital.

Of course, those were all the schemes of parents and elders.

As for Xie Shijing himself, he was a young man enjoying his success and his pleasures, riding past slanting bridges while women leaned from upstairs windows to beckon him.

As we entered the city gates, I happened to hear of his affair with Li Pengpeng.

Liu Qingshan, who was driving our carriage, could not restrain himself. He kicked a dead tree beside the road.

The trunk was thick enough to fill a man’s embrace. He put all the strength of his martial training into that kick, and the tree snapped with a crack.

Looking at the clean break, I thought it was just as well.

Some things needed to be broken off.

It was noon, the hottest part of the day. Even the roadside seller of cooling tea had retreated beneath the eaves.

Our worn carriage stopped outside the Xie residence. The vendor glanced at it, then went back to chatting and fanning himself.

Until a young woman in a pale green gauze blouse stepped down.

Like an orchid in a secluded valley, untouched by the dust of the world, she left him momentarily speechless.

I struck the knocker on the Xie family’s door.

“Who is it?”

“Baizhi of the Song family.”

“The Songs? Which Songs?”

In the heat, the gatekeeper was in an ill temper. Seeing the pretty young woman outside, he made an effort to hold his irritation in check.

A stir rose behind me. A well-informed vendor had recognized the emblem on our worn carriage.

It showed the blazing sun becoming a sea of fire, its radiance fierce as flame.

It was the old crest of the Song family.

I smiled at the gatekeeper. My voice was quiet, but my words sent ripples through the crowd.

“Please inform the head of the Xie household—

“The Song family of Luochuan has come to break off the engagement!”