The Thirtieth Year: A Moonlit Night

[The entire story has been polished and carefully edited. Please support the official version. Thank you.] In the thirtieth year, on a bright moonlit night, the land was splendid, and the lotus pond was filled with moonlight. Princess Li Ying of Yong'an was gentle and kind. Yet at sixteen, she mysteriously drowned in the lotus pond in the palace. The emperor was inconsolable. Upon investigating, he discovered that the princess had been pushed into the pond and drowned by her husband. Enraged, the emperor executed the entire family of the princess's husband. He came from a powerful aristocratic clan, and the incident gravely weakened the great families. Men from humble backgrounds began rising to positions of power, and the Taichang reforms were set in motion. After the emperor's death, history called him the Sage Ruler of the Restoration because of the Taichang reforms. Li Ying's mother, Consort Jiang, also rose from palace maid to noble consort, then empress, and ultimately ascended the throne herself because of Li Ying. She was hailed alongside Emperor Taichang as one of the Two Sages. Everything the two of them gained had begun with their beloved daughter, Li Ying, who died young. Thirty years later, the empire was peaceful and prosperous, with flowers blooming everywhere. People mourned the princess's early death even as they counted themselves fortunate that she had died young. Meanwhile, the little princess's spirit wandered the mortal world. Still wearing the green silk dress she had drowned in, with a lovely, delicate face frozen at sixteen, she found Cui Xun, a vicious, notorious but chronically ill assistant minister of the Court of Investigation, and said, "I want to ask you to investigate a case for me." She said, "I want you to find out who killed me." When people are more wicked than ghosts, and you have already become a demon, why bother becoming a Buddha? - Cui Xun, assistant minister of the Court of Investigation, is a sycophant who sells his looks, a cruel official who frames the innocent, and a surrendering general who fears death. His crimes are too numerous to list. The people of the land would love to eat his flesh and drink his blood. As usual, after he loses power, he will be bound and dragged to the execution grounds to be slowly dismembered, his flesh divided among the people until not a trace of his remains is left. But in prison, battered and bruised, he saw that green silk dress from when they first met. Half-conscious from torture, he rasped, "Why haven't you left?" She simply said, "I have unfinished business." "What business?" "To change your fate." Reader's notes: Dual redemption, alternate history, with a Tang-inspired setting - Currently updating: Fireflies Return at Night The signs of chaos were clear. Pei Yan, a hostage prince from Shuobei, killed his brother and murdered the emperor, plunging the land into chaos and leaving the people destitute. A year later, Pei Yan was surrounded and killed. Perhaps his crimes were so grave that even Heaven thought he shouldn't be allowed to die so easily. Nineteen years after his death, his corpse was dug up again. By some mysterious sorcery, flesh grew over Pei Yan's bones and he returned from the dead. He had no soldiers, no power, only a notorious reputation and a body wracked with illness, leaving him to suffer in the mortal world. The one who dug him up was a frail young woman. She said her name was Qi Shuangzhao. She was a disgraced princess driven to the edge of despair. - Her father and brothers had been murdered, and the stunningly beautiful Princess Shuangzhao was being forced into a political marriage. Unless something changed, she would die in a foreign land and never return to the old capital. But she never imagined that even in such a miserable state, those who wished her ill would still refuse to let her go. They planned to kill her on the road and leave no loose ends. In her moment of despair, she saw a skeleton burst through the earth, flesh growing over its bones. The flesh became a handsome, haughty young man carrying a long saber. He said his name was Pei Yan. He was a villain who had killed his brother and murdered the emperor. - Pei Yan had returned from the dead, but felt there was nothing left to live for. His wish was to die once more and be buried beneath the date tree in his hometown. Shuangzhao had escaped death, but refused to settle for mere survival. Her wish was to fight to stay alive, return to the old capital, and avenge her father and brothers. One wanted to die, and the other refused to. Though their wishes pointed in opposite directions, they accompanied each other on the road beneath the falling snow. Later, the one who wanted to die wielded his long saber, carving out one escape route after another for the one who refused to die. The one who refused to die reached out to the one who wanted to die and said: "Pei Yan, let's go home." PS: The story is inspired by the Guiyi Army, Zhang Yichao, and Guo Xin of the Tang dynasty. I hope it helps more people learn about their stories. My upcoming story. Add it to your library if you're interested: Plucking the Aloof Beauty from Her Perch: In the twentieth year of Jinghe under the Great Liang, the emperor died suddenly without an heir. That night, a troop of Flying Fish Robe-clad Embroidered Uniform Guards rode straight to a villa outside the capital. Inside the villa was Xiao Wan, the emperor's daughter by a disgraced consort, a princess who lived in constant danger. Perhaps she sensed what was coming. When the guards broke down the villa's gate, Xiao Wan fell to her knees, weeping and begging them to spare her life. Outside, heavy snow fell. A young man in a black cloak and bamboo hat walked through the snow. When he entered the room, he removed his hat. His celestial beauty shone like a pearl, filling the room with brilliant light. He looked down at Xiao Wan, who was crying so hard her nose was running, and said his name was Xie Heng, the chief minister of Great Liang. He also said he had come to take her back and make her the emperor of Great Liang. - Xie Heng was a young top-ranked candidate in the imperial exams, a heaven-blessed genius who became Great Liang's chief minister at just twenty-three. After two years in the post, his iron-fisted reforms had made him a powerful minister everyone feared. Just then, the emperor died without a son. The throne was about to pass to a collateral branch of the imperial family, and the new reforms were on the verge of being abandoned. Xie Heng turned his attention to Princess Xiao Wan, imprisoned outside the palace and born to a disgraced consort. He took a dangerous gamble, making Xiao Wan disguise herself as a man and become the emperor of Great Liang. Perhaps out of gratitude for the late emperor's patronage, he planned to wait until Xiao Wan became pregnant and gave birth to the late emperor's child, then have her die suddenly and install the young prince on the throne. That way, the throne would remain in the late emperor's line. Everything went smoothly. A month later, Xiao Wan was enthroned. Xie Heng watched the nervous young emperor on the throne in the Golden Hall, thinking only that he would have her die suddenly after she gave birth to a prince. Meanwhile, Xiao Wan, who appeared timid and useless, sat on the dragon throne, her hand resting on the cold seat. Her face performed anxiety, but inside she was laughing. She told herself: Now that I've taken this seat, I'm never giving it up. She gazed at the elegant, refined minister below the Golden Hall, dressed in a crimson official robe embroidered with cranes and cinched at the waist with a jade belt. She thought: The chief minister's slender waist, just begging to be bent. Theme: Justice will ultimately triumph over evil