latelenovela 009 Grace and Burden are One
009 Grace and Burden are One
The window paper of the Honglu Temple Library filtered through a layer of fuzzy twilight, falling onto the blue brick floor like an open, warm, old book with curled edges.
The air smelled of damp, aged paper mixed with the faint scent of pine from the beams.
As Zhen Xiaosi closed the scroll of "A Compilation of the Chaos in Youzhou," the back of her hand brushed against the rough edge of the paper, as if touching the rough skin of history itself. A cool sensation crept up her palm, carrying the astringency of the frontier winds and sand.
"What, did Registrar Zhen dig up some fresh remains from that pile of old papers and graves again?"
The sound was seeping from the shadows of the two Taiping Guangji bookshelves.
Xia Linyu's body was half-hidden in the twilight, with only the unused bronze tablet at his waist occasionally catching a sliver of light and flashing eerily.
He was the most thorn in her side as she vied for the position of Registrar of the Court of State Ceremonial. At this moment, the usual light, lingering hook in his voice was hovering over her slightly furrowed brow.
Zhen Xiaosi didn't look up, but pushed the book to the side of the table. The pages rubbed together, making a rustling sound, like autumn insects gnawing on the last leaves.
"It's just to see how people are ground into juice little by little in the millstone of the times."
"Zhang Shougui?" Xia Linyu stepped out, his clothes stirring up dust as he floated anxiously in the light and shadow.
He caught a glimpse of the ink-written characters, and a semi-permanent, theatrical smile curved his lips. "That 'Northern Gate Lock' who used lies to cover up his defeat? History's pen is like a nail, it has long since nailed him to the pillar of shame, what's there to see?"
He's always like this, Zhen Xiaosi thought, eager to use a ready-made coffin lid to cover up all the questions that are still breathing. But tonight the twilight is too heavy, so heavy that it seems to be pressing out the restless things buried in people's hearts. She suddenly didn't want him to close that coffin lid so easily.
“Beneath the nail,” she looked up, her gaze clear and bright, like the first melting snow flowing over his nonchalant exterior, “is the imprint of a living person, dried inch by inch by the wind.” Her voice was soft, yet it seemed to silence the dust in the room for a moment.
Xia Linyu's eyebrows twitched, as if jolted by the snowmelt. He sat down on the elm stool opposite her, his posture relaxed, but the knuckles of his hand resting on his knees unconsciously curled. He wondered what juice she could squeeze out of that dried corpse. His gaze, however, involuntarily swept over her tightly pursed lips—where a rare, almost stubborn warmth was held back.
"The border regions of the Kaiyuan and Tianbao eras," Zhen Xiaosi's voice deepened, as if unfolding a vast and cruel scroll painted with light ink and ochre, "were an alchemical furnace that used military merit as its sole fuel."
The court wanted the auspicious clouds rising from the furnace to adorn the sky of its prosperous age; the emperor wanted the golden elixir refined within to nourish his immortal fame. She paused, the words carrying weight, "Zhang Shougui was once the one who added the most fuel to that furnace's fire."
She saw Xia Linyu's hand resting on his lap, his index finger tapping very lightly. He was listening, despite his seemingly unyielding demeanor.
“Because he had seen the firelight illuminate the heavens,” she continued, her words slow and clear, like raindrops about to fall from the eaves, “that he was more afraid than anyone of falling back into the cold ashes. A defeat.”
She unconsciously traced the grain of the wood on the table, as if stroking an invisible crack, "enough to turn all past achievements into ashes that can be blown away at the bottom of the furnace. Official robes fade, future prospects are ruined, and the family's name may also be eaten away in the merit book. Standing by the fire that 'can only burn, never go out,' describing a smoldering fire as a spark becomes... a way to breathe and survive."
Xia Linyu let out a soft breath, which sounded like laughter, but also like a sigh: "What Clerk Zhen said sounds like he's trying to give that defeated general a way out. Military law is like a furnace, and it never recognizes any 'breathing method'."
“It’s not about finding a way out,” Zhen Xiaosi shook her head, a stray hair slipping from her forehead and swaying in the twilight with her movement. “It’s about the stove itself. When the stove only recognizes one kind of flame and cannot tolerate even the slightest bit of wet wood, ‘falsely reporting the stove temperature’ becomes a shadow forced out of the stove itself. What he fears is perhaps this stove that cannot tolerate even the slightest temperature difference.”
“Moreover,” her fingertip paused on the page with the gnarled words “Youzhou Jiedushi,” “he is no longer the warrior who only knows how to charge into battle. The Jiedushi’s insignia is a rope that binds his blood and the empire together. He has to use half his mind to watch the dust and smoke beyond the border, while the other half has to be tightly tied to the eaves of the palace in Chang’an, calculating which cloud will bring rain and which gust of wind will change direction.”
Xia Linyu sat up slightly, almost imperceptibly. This principle, he might have been splashing around in the waters of the Honglu Temple, touching a different temperature, but weren't those invisible ropes everywhere?
“So when the battle report came,” Zhen Xiaosi’s gaze was like a fine needle, trying to lift the layer of nonchalant fog in his eyes, “the first thought that probably didn’t be ‘how to fight again,’ but rather ‘how to clean up the mess.’ Concealment, in that critical moment, became the seemingly easiest bead to play—moving it might stop the mudslide that might follow. He chose the familiar path of ‘stopping the damage’ in officialdom, abandoning the old spirit of ‘fighting to the death’ on the battlefield.”
"Very good at accounting," Xia Linyu commented, his tone calm, yet like a pebble thrown into a deep pool, it resonated deeply. In this world where officials have the power to control everything, how many people are so "good at accounting"?
“People are always easily deceived by the lamps they've lit.” Zhen Xiaosi’s tone turned cold, like the night air rising. “His past victories were like those lamps that were too bright, making him think he could carry them through any darkness. He probably thought that he would first extinguish the wick of this defeat for a while, and after he had enough breath, he would light another one that was bigger and brighter, and then he could completely forget the darkness he had just experienced.”
She suddenly fixed her gaze on Xia Linyu, her eyes shining with an astonishing light in the dim light: "But can a defeat involving millions of lives really be extinguished as silently as a bean lamp?"
Xia Linyu met her gaze without looking away.
“From deputy general and military advisor to courier and military supervisor,” her voice lowered, but became clearer, like water flowing beneath the ice, “how many ears heard the strange noises? How many hearts harbored doubts? A tangled web of vines, with the commander-in-chief as its trunk, had already entangled itself tightly.”
When the tree falls, the vines wither and die, turning to ash in the sun.
And so, a silence, like moss, slowly grew on the tongues of all those in the know—each person became a dark spot on the shadow of that lie, their collective silence nourishing a fragile, dark tranquility. Zhang Shougui's lie was a deformed fungus, nurtured by this entire 'mossy ground.'
The library was utterly silent, so quiet that you could hear the faint rustling of bookworms crawling deep into the pages. Xia Linyu's usual frivolous, glazed expression finally faded with these words, revealing a more grounded and grounded nature beneath.
He remained silent, his fingers that had been tapping his knees had long since stopped, but were now loosely clenched, as if weighing something intangible. She had actually seen through this murky water to its very core.
A ripple of surprise mixed with a certain secret admiration spread deep within his heart. This was no longer just the analysis of a long-forgotten case, but a calm and ruthless excavation of the vast and dark roots of power.
Zhen Xiaosi's last words, as if she had exhausted her strength, floated in the murky air: "When the Kaiyuan era reached its most prosperous point, the stitches on the back of the brocade had already begun to loosen secretly."
A trend of infatuation with smooth surfaces and a thirst for boisterous accolades, like lukewarm dampness, seeped into the pillars of the city. What Zhang Shougui did was nothing more than a twisted drop of rust that condensed on the iron armor of the border.
They cared more and more about how neatly the reports of victory were folded and how beautifully they were copied when they were presented to the emperor; far more than about how many corpses lay hidden behind those reports, how many nights were left unlit in the tents. He had been assimilated by this theatrical troupe that was putting on a show of 'golden age,' believing that maintaining the boisterous performance on stage was more important than ensuring that things didn't collapse backstage.
After she finished speaking, she let out a long, silent sigh, as if slowly expelling the metallic taste from thousands of years ago that had been accumulating in her chest. Her gaze drifted out the window; the twilight was so thick it seemed to melt away, like spilled ink.
After an unknown amount of time, Xia Linyu's voice rang out again, its edges smoothed by the twilight, leaving only a deep, resonant quality: "So, after going around in circles like this, what you want to say is...?"
Zhen Xiaosi turned her face back, her features seemingly emitting a soft, resilient glow against the dark background: "Zhang Shougui's choice is like a piece of ice that has been crushed into countless cracks by immense pressure."
Within each crack lies a different shadow: the struggle of a person scorched by the fires of fame and fortune, the process by which the bureaucratic machine grinds loyal bones into speculative powder, and the magnificent decay that has already begun to spread beneath the brocade robes of a prosperous era.
In Gao Shi's poem "Yan Ge Xing," the line "I still remember General Li" refers not only to Li Guang's benevolence, but also to the simple, straightforward humanity that hadn't yet been completely swallowed up by this complex machine.
She paused, her voice as soft as if afraid to disturb the sleeping dust on the beam: "What he wanted to cover up with lies was not only the bloodstains of defeat, but also the scalding wind in his chest when he first mounted his warhorse."
But history and poetry, being the most unforgiving of these things, forever remember only the covered blood and the image of the original, authentic 'person' blurred by the mists of lies.
“And all of this,” Xia Linyu suddenly continued, his eyes gleaming faintly in the shadows, like the pupils of a nocturnal animal, “wouldn’t have been possible without that high-ranking Prime Minister Xiao, would it have been impossible to stage such a spectacle?”
Zhen Xiaosi was slightly surprised, then nodded: "Yes. Xiao Song was the most unruly wind in his life—the wind that pulled him out of the mire of Guazhou and blew him up to the clouds in one breath; but it was also the invisible rope tied to the kite string, preventing him from ever truly swaying freely."
She meticulously dissected how Xiao Song transformed the emperor's desires into concrete, suffocating pressure, and how he wove a web of officialdom that valued the outward appearance of "victories" more than the actual "costs."
"When news of the defeat at Huangshui arrived, the chill that seeped into Zhang Shougui's bones was not only due to his fear of the Emperor's wrath, but also his guilt over Xiao Song's patronage and his fear of implicating the entire 'Xiao Clan's faction. His lies served as a shield for himself, but weren't they also a desperate attempt to plaster gold leaf onto the monument of merit that Xiao Song and he had jointly built, a monument that had to be dazzlingly glorious?"
“The water is from the same well,” Xia Linyu slowly concluded, the usual curve of his lips returning, but no longer empty, now filled with a profound understanding. “The bondage is also a rope on the same vine. So, when Gao Shi uttered that ‘remembering,’ he was probably remembering not only Li Guang, but also those bright days before he was suffocated by this deep well and this rope.”
Zhen Xiaosi gazed at him, and for the first time, in his eyes, which always seemed shrouded in the night mist of the capital, she saw an unhindered spark of thought quietly burning. The almost instinctive, icy barrier between them was, at this moment, silently melted away by something deeper. They seemed to stand side-by-side on the edge of a cliff, together looking down into the bottomless abyss of history, hearing the wind howling from the valley floor, a sound mingled with metal and sighs.
Night completely enveloped the library, turning the beams, bookshelves, and desks into patches of ink of varying shades. Xia Linyu stood up and casually placed the bronze tablet on the cool table with a soft "tap."
“After today,” he looked at her, his voice muffled yet unusually clear in the darkness, “it will be difficult to see you as just a rival for a seat again, Zhen Xiaosi.”
Zhen Xiaosi's heart felt as if it had been gently struck by that "thud," the echo rippling through her chest. Her face remained calm, like a still lake: "History is like a mountain, but the human heart is nothing more than an ant trudging along its path."
“The mountain path is icy and slippery,” he turned around, his shadow stretched long by the dim light filtering in from the doorway, his words lingering behind him, “which makes it all the more important to see clearly whether we are companions or adversaries, we are all treading on the same frozen ground.”
The footsteps faded into the distance, disappearing into the deep night air of Honglu Temple. Zhen Xiaosi sat alone in the same spot, her hand once again stroking the three characters "Zhang Shougui" on the scroll. The sensation emanating from her fingertips was no longer a simple coolness, but a complex, raw, and undulating feeling that belonged to life itself.
Outside the window, the myriad lights of Chang'an City had already lit up, their warm, soft glow comforting the back of this colossal beast that had swallowed countless secrets.
She knew that the long night of conversing with the spirits of the past would never end, and the next person to listen to the whispers of history with her in such a long night, whether they liked it or not, was already silhouetted against the lamplight...