chapter 1

The door to Yizhuang funeral home¹ opened, a lone paper lantern entering along with a pair of feet.

Look at those small bow shoes², curved three inches at the top. Embroidered on the white were lotuses of the same color. The owner of the shoes paused at every passing coffin, as if searching for something. Eventually, they stopped for good.

“Those that are kept here, who are they?” she whimpered. “A stranger who died in foreign lands, the poor who cannot afford a burial. The dead prostitute. Sister, how can we meet again in such a place?”

With life as thin as paper, naturally coffins shared the same fate. Yizhuang had definitely seen better times. Still, a cheap coffin was better than nothing. Stronger than a straw mat at least. Without a burial, these corpses were basically worm food.

“They all said you were not qualified to be buried in our ancestral graves. That you were to lay here in this wretched place.” The speaker reached out toward the coffin, her pale arm gently resting on the lid. “I won’t believe their words. Sister, I want you to tell me the truth from your own lips…”

smashing coffin

Crash!

Following the sudden loud noise, a chaotic flurry of footsteps approached the sad excuse for a funeral home. The door of Yizhuang burst open.

The first thing that caught the eyes of the crowd was a raised axe, seconds from crashing down once more.

“Yingluo! Stop!” screamed a middle-aged man.

But iron collided with wood again without hesitation, splitting the lid of the coffin open.

“You—what are you doing?” The man took a second to compose himself, to dig himself out his shock. “This is your sister’s coffin!”

A young woman in white stood with her back towards him, towards the crowd. From her hand dropped the iron axe. She bent over, carefully lifting the cold corpse.

“You told me before that my sister died from an illness. Later you said she was involved in a scandal in the palace and took her own life out of humiliation. But look.” She slowly turned around with a smile. Leaning on her was the female corpse from the coffin. And on that corpse’s neck were dark marks the shape of butterflies. Upon closer inspection, they were the bruises left by a pair of strong hands. A painting illustrating the true story: murder.

“Do you see this?” The young woman in white, Wei Yingluo, smiled once more to the crowd with the corpse hugged tightly in her arms. The truth was closer than ever. But she hated the fact that she could not scream it to the world. “Look at these fingerprints on her neck. How could that be from suicide?”

The crowd remained silent. No one dared to let their gaze chance upon her or the one in her arms. Wei Yingluo and Wei Yingning. Their faces were nearly identical. Because of their beauty and aura, the sisters had been likened to lotuses. Now the lotus that still lived observed the lotus that had passed on, wondering what sort of panacea she had taken to keep her lovely appearance even in death. Wei Yingning was still dressed in the uniform of the palace maids, and as her still body leaned on her sister’s, the quiet quirk of her lips could be mistaken for a smile.

Wei Yingluo stared at the crowd before her, her eyes dark and cold. Like the eyes of the dead.

“Could a ghost have possessed that girl?” This was the thought of more than one person in the room.

“Father.” She swept her gaze through the crowd until it finally landed on the previous middle-aged man. Slowly forced out a smile. “Who murdered my sister?”

“That…” Her father seemed like he wanted to say something, something that might shed light to her question. But in the end he gritted his teeth. “How could there be a murderer when she took her own life!” The rest of the crowd snapped back to their senses and shouted along, rebutting her as well.

“Yes, she killed herself.”

“If an unclean woman expelled from the palace does not take her own life, wouldn’t that bring shame to her whole family?”

“It’s better to die. It’s better to die.”

“The elder sister had bad conduct, and the younger sister actually goes around breaking coffins. Wei Qingtai, you discipline your daughters well!”

Wei Qingtai, the middle-aged man and Wei Yingluo’s father, reached his daughter in a few quick steps and slapped her across the face. “It’s my fault. I’ve failed to teach them!” He placed a hand to the back of Wei Yingluo’s head and pushed down hard. “You’re still not begging your aunts and uncles for forgiveness?”

Seeing her lack of response, he shouted, “Kneel!”

But she was like a stalk of bamboo, straightforward and refusing to bend.

“Kneel now!” Under the strict scrutiny of the crowd, Wei Qingtai felt more and more self conscious, losing face at a rapid rate. Anger flaring in his chest, he lifted a foot and kicked her squarely in the knee. “Are you deaf?”

Although she was knocked down, Wei Yingluo would not stay there for long. “Father, you only tell me to kneel.” One hand grasping her sister’s body and the other pushing against the dusty floor, she slowly but surely rose to her feet. Long, dark hair framed her face like a curtain, hiding her expression from the world if only for a moment. Voice as cold as winter. “But did you know? I kneel, and they still snatched away the hairpin mother left to me before she died. I kneel, and they still ignore the fact that we are cousins, touching me without consent. It’s my sister who helped bring back my hairpin, and it was my sister who stopped Wei Xuedong.”

Her father frowned. “That hairpin? It’s only plated in gold, not worth much. There’s no reason to strain your relationship with your cousin sisters over it. And Xuedong… He was just joking with you. Your sister was way too serious and almost gave him a concussion.”

“So you also knew about it…” Wei Yingluo lifted her head. A face clear like water and reminiscent of a hibiscus in full bloom. Eyes moist and dripping with tears. “You knew about everything, yet you still order me to kneel.”

The one who was robbed of everything and insulted was her, and the one who must beg for forgiveness was also her.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” Wei Qingtai gruffly said. “Must you cause a ruckus for such a small thing—”

Small? All at once it were as if something snapped. “No! The only one who treated me well was my sister!” Wei Yingluo interrupted him with a sneer. “I have been waiting for sister to return. She had promised me she would before leaving for the palace. She would take me away from the Wei clan, find a new place where we can settle down with our new lives. Never again would we need to kneel for someone for no reason—”

“In the palace, you have to kneel at a moment’s notice, reason or not!” This time, it was Wei Qingtai who interrupted.

The imperial harem.

Once past the deep palace gates, just as mountains had peaks and bases, and water had varying depths, so too were the women in the palace divided between those who stood and those who knelt. Because the Wei clan wasn’t large or powerful, when Wei Yingluo’s sister entered the palace, she could only start as a servant. In other words, kowtowing was a common occurrence.

“It’s better to be able to choose whom to kowtow to.”

Inside and outside the palace were two different worlds. Wei Yingluo was not aware of her sister’s circumstances. She only knew that her sister left when spring blossomed and returned cold as winter. And on her neck, a dark bruise the shape of two hand prints.

Whom did the hand prints belong to?

“I want to enter the palace.” Wei Yingluo closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her gaze was heavy with resolve. “You won’t tell me who the murderer is. Fine. I’ll enter the palace myself and unearth the truth!³”

Wei Qingtai trembled. “Must you follow your sister’s footsteps?”

Wei Yingluo couldn’t help but look at her sister out of reflex. Ever since she was a child, in terms of intelligence and bravery, her elder sister overshadowed her in both categories. In contrast, Wei Yingluo trailed behind her like a shadow, a follower who needed to be protected.

Even her sister couldn’t survive the palace laws, so what about her? She would definitely survive. And she would claw the truth out with her own hands… And perhaps enact revenge.

“Enough. This matter ends here,” said her father, reaching out a hand to her. “Let your sister rest in peace.”

Rest in peace? She shuddered. Whether from rage or anguish was anyone’s guess.

As Wei Qingtai made to hoist her sister’s body back into the casket, a scream erupted. A scream so horrifying it sounded like a blade had been stabbed into someone’s chest. Some of the Wei clansmen swiftly brought their hands to their ears, as though any later and blood would start flowing out of them.

Since Wei Qingtai was the closest to the corpse, he had leaped back a few steps out of terror. Then he whipped he gaze at the screaming Wei Yingluo. Stuttering, he said, “You, what’s wrong with you?”

”Peace? There will be no peace…” After screaming, her voice had become rather hoarse. Embracing the cold body of her sister that had started to emit a faint odor of the dead, Wei Yingluo sobbed. “If my sister can’t rest in peace, neither can I…”

In front of the eyes of the crowd, her sobs did not cease, and she repeated that one sentiment.

“I want to enter the palace. I must avenge her so that she may have peace… So that I may have peace.”

Like a lotus, life and death was the way of the world. Wei Yingluo bit her lip until it almost drew blood. And since you have died, even if I still breathe, I am a just a husk of a person.

An elderly Wei clansman approached Wei Qingtai, whispering into his ear with a hand covering his lips. “Mad talk, this is all mad talk! If we allow her to enter the palace like a lunatic, it’ll be better to bring disaster to our family.”

As he listened, Wei Qingtai’s expression grew stormy. Then he sighed and nodded. A few others made their way to his side.

She looked up from her sobs, staring at the crowd as large hands stretched her way. “What are you doing?”

A few days later, several people on the upper floor of a restaurant sipped wine as a wedding procession passed by.

“Which family’s daughter is getting married?”

The guests leaned over the railings to take a better look. The loud crackle of firecrackers filled the streets.

Mounted on a large horse, the groom was all smiles. Behind him trailed a small sedan. As a breeze rolled along, one of the restaurant guests brought a hand to his face. He rubbed at his eyes.

A customer next to him asked, “Did you get something in there?”

“I think I’m getting drunk. My eyes are definitely playing tricks on me,” he said, face the picture of confusion. “Just now, as the wind blew the curtain open, I caught a glimpse of the bride… And she was all tied up.”