Chương 173: Chapter 170 Inlterlude 26

Lianhua stops in front of a house in one of those alleys of the lower zone of the Imperial Capital, where the roofs almost touch one another and the hanging laundry substitutes for the sky. The house is no great thing. It has the facade chipped in several places, a wooden door someone has repaired more than once with planks of different colors and, above the lintel, a faded sign that in its day must have announced something and that now is only an empty rectangle of wood no one has bothered to remove.

She is dressed in a discreet outfit, of the kind that draws no attention in a neighborhood like this, and for a moment she limits herself to looking at the facade with a concentration that has nothing to do with the architecture, since it is, probably, the last time she will see it. And also, probably, the last time she will see the people who live inside. The certainty does not weigh on her as it should.

Or perhaps it does and she has simply had years to learn to carry that kind of weight without it showing on her face. Because the fact that this is the last night is precisely the reason why tonight she can, at last, lay the foundations of a better future for them. A future in which they don't have to keep hiding, not because of the vague words the Guardian Beast of the Empire once dedicated to her about how sacrificing her ideals would someday lead the Wang family to prominence.

Lianhua knows all too well what that would take. And she also knows, with the same clarity, that she does not intend to do it, because what she does know is what it takes for the Wang family, without need of any prominence at all, to simply be able to prosper in peace. She has known it for a long time. What she has never had, until tonight, is the possibility of doing it without dragging Zhāohuán Wen down with her if they were ever to discover her. But from tonight on, that possibility no longer matters.

Lianhua discards the thought with the same ease with which she brushes a dry leaf off the path, because she has only tonight to tie up all the loose ends she has left pending for years, and lamenting what she could have done sooner is not going to give her back the lost time, so she advances and enters the house. Upon crossing the door she enters a small courtyard, of packed earth, where half a dozen paper lanterns hang from a rope strung between two posts.

Beneath their light, a couple of men and close to a dozen women toil at different tasks, folding cloth, cutting paper into regular sheets, grinding something in a stone mortar at which two of them take turns. And all of them, without exception, share something with Lianhua in their features.

The same line of the jaw, the same way of narrowing the eyes, a resemblance that in some is barely perceptible and in others turns out almost unsettling in its exactness, as if the same mold had been used a dozen times with minor variations. They are her brothers and sisters. Not on the side of the same mother, but all of them on the side of the same father, and all of them, also, survivors of the same house from which Lianhua escaped years ago and whom she has been, one by one, rescuing ever since.

The moment they see her come in, they all stop.

"Sister!" says one of the younger women, and the greeting spreads immediately to the rest of the courtyard, among smiles and heads that incline with an affection that has nothing ceremonial about it. Lianhua returns their greeting with a gesture of her hand and a brief warmth that only appears on her face in places like this, but she does not stop to converse.

"I'm in a hurry", she tells them.

"I need to speak with Xun." One of the men, with his hands still stained with ink, points toward the interior of the building with his chin.

"He is in his office, sister", he tells her. Lianhua nods, crosses the courtyard and enters the building with the step of one who knows every corner of that place by heart while she travels a narrow hallway, turns a corner without thinking too much and reaches a plain wooden door before which she stops an instant before knocking. From inside, a man's voice answers immediately.

"Come in", says the voice. Lianhua opens the door and enters a small office, lit by a single oil lamp, with the walls covered in shelves where scrolls of paper, brushes and flasks of ink pile up ordered with a meticulousness that only someone who has spent years doing accounts can have. Behind the desk there sits a man of about thirty who shares with Lianhua the same resemblance as the rest of the house, although in him, as in all of them, it manifests in a different way.

Upon seeing her come in, he crouches, rummages beneath the desk and takes out a small cloth bag that he leaves on the table with an almost ceremonial gesture.

"These are all the spirit stones we have managed to exchange so far", he tells her as he pushes the bag toward her. Lianhua takes it and notices, by the weight, that it is a good quantity, although that is not what matters to her tonight.

"Thank you, Xun", she tells him.

"But I have important things to tell you." Xun looks at her, and something in the tone of her voice must have put him on alert, because his expression changes immediately.

"Has something serious happened?" he asks. Lianhua sighs before answering.

"No", she tells him.

"But I have to tell you that, due to certain circumstances I cannot tell you about, this is going to be the last time we can meet." The man turns pale upon hearing her.

"What do you mean, the last time?" he asks, and the words come out of him in a rush.

"What has happened? Are you in danger? If it is about money, we can…"

"It is not serious", Lianhua interrupts him, with a calm that admits no discussion.

"But I cannot tell you anything, although probably, with time, you will end up finding out the reason why I am not going to be able to return." Xun opens his mouth again, clearly disposed to keep asking, and Lianhua raises a hand to stop him before he manages to articulate the next question.

"I cannot stay long", she tells him.

"And I still have to give you my last instructions. So listen to me." Xun closes his mouth and nods, although the tension does not disappear from his shoulders.

"The first thing", Lianhua begins.

"I want to ask you to look after my mother's grave. I am no longer going to be able to do it." Xun swallows his saliva, but nods again, more slowly this time. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Lianhua brings her hand to her shoulder, where she carries a threadbare cloth bag hanging, and begins to take out of it, one after another, several smaller bags that she goes depositing on the table under Xun's ever more bewildered gaze.

When she finishes, there are five of them lined up beside the one he himself gave her moments before.

"Those are my savings", she tells him.

"In the near future I am not going to need them, so I leave them to you to finance the expenses you are going to have. And as for the talismans that have not yet been sold, keep also everything you get out of them."

"Lianhua…", says the man named Xun.

"I have not finished yet", she cuts him off, and takes from among the folds of her clothing a sheaf of folded papers, which she leaves on the table beside the bags of money with the same care with which she has placed everything else.

"In these papers is the proof that you are the eldest surviving male son of our father", she tells him.

"With them, go to the functionary indicated on the last sheet and request the post of head of the Wang family. And do it tomorrow without fail, before it occurs to one of our cousins to do the same." Xun looks at the papers without touching them, as if he feared some kind of reaction if he grazed them, and when he lifts his gaze toward her, the alarm has returned to his face with more force than before.

"And what happens with Ling?" he asks. Lianhua listens to him and answers him without a single muscle of her face being altered.

"Don't worry about Ling", she tells him.

"After tonight, he will no longer be the head of the Wang family and that post is going to be left vacant." She then takes the bag with the spirit stones from on top of the table, puts it away among her clothes and turns around to leave. But before she takes the second step, Xun gets to his feet all at once, with such abruptness that the chair scrapes the floor behind him.

"Don't do anything crazy", he tells her, and his voice comes out louder than he intended.

"Whatever it is you are thinking, it could cost you your post at court. And it could drag the Zhāohuán down with it, with the consequences that would bring, you know that better than anyone." Lianhua stops a moment, with her back to him, letting the silence settle between the two of them before answering.

"The same reason why I am not going to be able to return is the reason why I do not fear those consequences", she tells him.

"You will understand it with time." And without adding anything more, she leaves the office while, at her back, she hears how Xun lets himself drop into the chair again with a weight that has nothing to do with tiredness. Lianhua travels the hallway to the courtyard, and there, in the threshold, she stops an instant to look for the last time at the people who keep working under the light of the paper lanterns, as if she wanted to memorize each one of those faces before time carries them off.

"Take care of yourselves", she tells them as she crosses the courtyard, and several voices return the words to her among smiles that do not know they are farewell smiles. And then she leaves the house without looking back. Lianhua quickens her pace as she crosses the city, and her steps carry her toward the noble quarter, to an estate situated right on the outer edge, the one that is farthest from curious eyes and the one that, precisely because of that, her father always preferred.

She stops in front of the outer wall and contemplates it a moment. The deterioration is evident. There are cracks that run up and down the stone, patches of moss there where no one has bothered to clean the damp and an entire stretch where the mortar has come away leaving the stone bare. And that decay, far from making her hesitate, confirms to her that what she is going to do tonight is necessary, so she closes her eyes and activates the Vision of Horus.

Her perception separates from her body and rises, and although the night is deep, her Adept rank in the technique permits her to see in the darkness with the same clarity with which she would see in broad daylight, so she runs her gaze along the wall until finding a concrete point, farther from the lights of the main entrance, and she confirms that there is no one on the other side who could see her.

She approaches that point, takes out of her bag a rope with a hook at the end and activates the Myriad of Hands Technique. The hook rises through the air, silent, and catches with precision on the upper part of the wall. Lianhua pulls carefully to check that it holds, and then she climbs without making the slightest noise, with the same efficiency with which she does everything else. Once up, she gathers the rope, coils it and puts it away again in the bag so that no one finds a trace of how she has entered.

The Vision of Horus continues to show her no guard nearby, so she lets herself drop to the other side of the wall in silence and begins to venture into the residence of the Wang family. And with each step she takes, something inside her grows indignant. The residence is worse than she remembered. The gardens, which in their day someone maintained with care, are invaded by weeds, and several of the more distant pavilions have their tiles broken and unrepaired.

It is a deterioration that should sadden her, and in a certain way it does, but above all it makes the determination of that night take firmer hold in her. Because, in spite of the years that have passed since the last time she traveled these hallways, she still remembers every one of them. Every passage, every shortcut, even the ones only a small girl could use and in which she, now, no longer fits. But knowing the way, added to the Vision of Horus and to her night vision, is more than sufficient.

Lianhua avoids everyone she crosses paths with, without a single shadow noticing her passing, until reaching the official residence of the head of the family, the place where it is most probable to find her brother, and she slips inside without drawing anyone's attention. The interior, in brutal contrast with the ruinous appearance of the exterior, continues to be excessively luxurious.

The hallways are covered with thick carpets that muffle her steps, and the walls sport tapestries whose cost could easily have paid for the repair of some buildings of the residence. Lianhua travels those hallways to the principal bedroom, and there, before anything else, she stops to listen through the door. She makes out the breathing of several people, deep and regular, clearly asleep, so she opens the door carefully and enters.

The room is presided over, as in her father's times, by an enormous bed in which several people fit with room to spare, and on it she makes out three silhouettes lying down. Before approaching, she activates a privacy talisman she takes from among her clothes, just in case, and only then does she approach the bed where, among the sheets, is her brother Ling asleep beside two women. For an instant, something in Lianhua wishes to wake him.

She wants him to understand what is about to happen to him, she wants to see his face at the moment in which he dies, she wants him to know, even if only for a second, who has come to settle this account. But she discards the impulse almost as fast as it appears, because it would be an unnecessary risk and tonight there is no place for unnecessary risks.

She takes a small incense burner out of the bag, lights the stick of incense it carries inside while holding her breath as she does so, and the smoke rises, thin and silent, while Lianhua waits. Time passes slowly, with the only sound of three breathings that, little by little, begin to change rhythm. They become deeper, slower, until Lianhua recognizes in them the effect of the sleeping draught mixed with the incense, and she knows the moment has arrived.

She puts her hand into the bag again and takes out a dagger, the one she has brought specifically for this occasion, and on whose edge, only as a precaution, she has smeared a fast-acting poison because she knows, with the same certainty with which she knows her own name, that her brother has never bothered to open the Water Gate. And without that gate open, he has no resistance whatsoever against poisons.

Lianhua concentrates, and with all her strength, drives the dagger deep into Ling's heart, so the effect is immediate. Her brother dies on the spot, with a single muffled death rattle that, thanks to the effect of the incense, does not manage to wake the two women sleeping at his side. Lianhua stays a moment motionless, checking that he has truly stopped breathing, and while she does so there come to her memory some words she pronounced years ago, before her mother's grave and directed at this same man.

That one day he would lie down never to wake up again. She does not remember having felt, back then, that that promise was going to be fulfilled in such a literal manner. And nevertheless, here she is. Only when she is sure that he is no longer breathing does she put out the incense burner, because she needs those two women to wake before dawn and raise the alarm.

If Xun were to appear to claim the post of head of the family before anyone knew that Ling has died, it would raise suspicions that no proof in the world could entirely dispel. She gathers the remains of the privacy talisman, puts the incense burner away in her bag along with everything else, but leaves the dagger driven into her brother's chest.

Then she leaves the room and travels the building in reverse, while she thinks, with a strange mixture of regret and gratitude, that Ling's stinginess with the maintenance of the residence evidently also extended to the hiring of guards, and that that has made the whole process much simpler than it should have been. She leaves the Wang residence by the same point through which she entered, leaps the wall, gathers the rope one last time and disappears into the night.

And as she moves away from the estate, with the weight of the bag of spirit stones striking softly against her side, Lianhua sets course for the Imperial Palace since there still remains much to prepare before, the following day, Zhāohuán Wen, Xia and she herself leave never to return.