In the fourth year of Zhenyuan, the empress gathered nine hundred girls born on the same day, in the same month, and in the same year from across the country, and raised them in a compound west of the city. They had fine food and clothes, ten years of schooling, and, every Mid-Autumn Festival, the empress would pat their heads and reward them with flowers, saying, “A few more years, and you’ll be just right.”
In the nineteenth year of Zhenyuan, those nine hundred girls died in a pit outside the city.
Yin Huaixu was the only one who had not yet breathed her last. She crawled out, unable to remember who she was, with nine souls wound around her bones, leaving her writhing in pain at night. She pieced her name back together, one fragment at a time, then went to the capital, sat the imperial examinations, and took a seat opposite that chair.
When she arrived, all she wanted was to “find out the truth.” Later, she wanted to know, “What gives you the right?” In the end, she discovered that she and the person sitting in that chair might have been made from the same thing.
