He is Xiao Ce, the God of War of the Dayin Empire. For twenty years, he protected Xiao Heng, from a swaddled infant to a young emperor. The arrow wound in his chest was his badge of honor; the peace charm at his waist, his deepest attachment.
But when he returned victorious from Yanmen, there were no welcoming rites. Instead, he was framed with false evidence of treason, beaten with palace canes, and pierced through the chest by the broken spear in Xiao Heng's own hand. “Your merits are so great they threaten the throne, Imperial Uncle. I cannot let you live.” With his dying breath, he saw the boy who once clung to him, begging for the peace charm. Now, only cold suspicion remained in the young emperor's eyes.
Xiao Heng thought he had eliminated a threat, but regret gnawed at him through countless sleepless nights. Then, at Yanmen Pass, he encountered Su Qingyan, a sickly scholar whose features bore an eight-tenths resemblance to Xiao Ce's. Treating him like a treasure, Xiao Heng imprisoned him at his side and forced him to wear the old armor and imitate Xiao Ce, making him a stand-in for the man he regretted losing.
But a shadow could never be more than a shadow. Su Qingyan's aloof integrity and the freedom in the sound of his bamboo flute were utterly unlike Xiao Ce. When conspiracies struck again, suspicion once more consumed Xiao Heng. He raised the bloodstained broken spear and drove it through his stand-in's chest.
“You killed two people who truly loved you with your own hands.” As Su Qingyan fell, he hurled the peace charm, stained with both their blood, at Xiao Heng.
From then on, Xiao Heng was utterly alone. He abdicated the throne and kept watch over a solitary grave. Amid the wind and snow at Yanmen Pass, he held the broken spear and the shattered charm, repenting day after day. Red plum blossoms covered the gravestone. For the rest of his life, he atoned for the deaths of two bodies reduced to bones, yet he could never win back a single “Imperial Uncle” or hear one more “Qingyan.”
This is an emperor's self-destruction, a lifelong funeral bought with the devotion of two lifetimes and two lives.
