Courtly scheming | Cross-dressing as a man | Mystery and investigation | Joy and sorrow intertwined | Subverts expectations
The Magnolia Blooms Again
Yun Shu, an orphan from Qingzhou, disguises herself as a man and enters the capital under an assumed name.
She takes first place in the palace exam, earns the title of top scholar, and fights her way from the Hanlin Academy into the Grand Secretariat.
She says, “I didn't come to the capital to prove anything. I came to read out certain people's names, one by one.”
And so
At court, she is sparing with words, but never leaves anything unsaid;
In the archives, she uncovers a list of people marked for silencing among the records of “silted waterways”;
Along the Grand Canal, she follows copper buttons and charcoal circles, piecing together the lives of seventeen people erased from history.
Zhou Xuanling, Minister of War, sits beside an ice basin, sweating through his official robes.
Pei Jingyuan, a hundred-household commander of the Wild Goose Feather Guard, keeps muttering “The numbers still aren't complete” as he dies.
Shen Heting, second in rank in the Grand Secretariat, solemnly slips date-paste pastries into her sleeve.
Han Yingzhen, Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, takes an unhurried sip of tea.
“Could Lord Zhou repeat what he just said? I was listening, but it didn't sound like human speech.”
Until that day,
in the Hall of Supreme Harmony,
she takes seventeen copper buttons and an old bowl with a line drawn across its base from her sleeve.
Then she reads out everyone's names, one by one.
The entire court falls silent.
Once her work is done, Yun Shu resigns and returns to her hometown.
In the courtyard behind her old home, the magnolias bloom again.
She spends her days farming and reading, with a heart as clear as the breeze.
Someone asks her: Was this journey hard?
She doesn't answer.
She simply lays the string of copper buttons, which had pressed against her wrist for years, gently before her father's grave.
