Chapter 124: Four Deaths

"When I established my fourth son, Wang Lin, as Crown Prince, it happened to coincide with the calamity of the fierce gale. Following the mandate omen of the Purple Pavilion Chart, I then appointed him as King of Tongyi Yang. I did not expect that he would fail to receive its blessing and die young. Alas, what sorrow! Examining his conduct, I bestow the posthumous name 'King Miu' and bury him with the rites of a feudal lord."

Miu is an evil posthumous name. According to the Rules for Posthumous Names compiled by Liu Xin's father, Liu Xiang, "when name and reality diverge, it is called miu." The Emperor was delivering a final verdict on Wang Lin even after his death, utterly repudiating those ten-odd years he spent as Crown Prince, deeming it all a mistake born of misinterpreting the mandate omen.

The Emperor, for once, did not hold court, merely sending a palace eunuch to read the decree aloud. The assembled officials were as silent as cicadas in winter. Some stole cautious glances toward State Preceptor Liu Xin, who stood near the front — he was Wang Lin's father-in-law. Last year, he could still energetically fashion earthen dragons to pray for rain for the Emperor; now, in a matter of days, his hair had turned completely white.

After court was dismissed, Liu Xin was summoned alone into the Proclamation Chamber. When he emerged, he who had still managed to hold himself together moments before now seemed like a guttering candle in the wind. Descending the steps, he nearly fell, and it was only thanks to his son, General of the Gentlemen of the Five Offices Liu Die, hastily supporting him that he stayed upright.

"Father, His Majesty..."

Liu Xin shook his head and simply staggered out of the palace. Only after boarding his carriage did he lower his head to look at his own trembling hands.

Who would believe that Wang Lin died of "grief"? When Liu Xin went to offer his condolences, Wang Lin's wife, Liu Yin, weeping in private, told her father: "His Majesty bestowed poisoned wine, but my husband refused to drink it. Instead, he took a blade and stabbed himself to death. He said that when his two elder brothers died, no blood was shed. This time, he had to make sure the Emperor's hands were truly stained with his own son's blood!"

Just now, Liu Xin had learned even more from the Emperor.

"What a fool. Wang Lin, what did you take yourself for? To actually conspire with the Empress's personal attendants to commit regicide and patricide?"

Beyond the common people's resistance, palace coups had been frequent. Even before Wang Mang usurped the Han, there was the Chamberlain Zhang Chong and others who secretly plotted to abduct Wang Mang and install the King of Chu as emperor. After they were discovered, the six ringleaders and dozens of accomplices were all executed, and the Emperor conveniently launched a purge against the Han princes, thoroughly sweeping away all obstacles.

Wang Lin's attempted regicide was foiled before it could happen. He was stripped of his title as Crown Prince and expelled to an outer residence, growing more terrified by the day. Then, in a message passed to the Empress, he made resentful remarks, prompting Wang Mang to order the Master of Fates of the Five Majesties to conduct a thorough investigation. The affair was thus exposed. Judging the heart to determine the crime, Wang Lin was already certain to die. But Wang Mang claimed that, out of consideration for his wife, he had kept it secret and held back — until the day before yesterday, when he finally sacrificed family for righteousness and, with great pain, dealt with his treacherous son.

From Wang Huo, who was ordered to commit suicide for beating a slave to death; to Wang Yu, who obstructed Wang Mang's regency by splashing dog blood on his gate and was thrown into prison; to the imperial grandson Wang Zong, killed for inexplicable reasons; and now today — His Majesty the Emperor has already forced four of his own sons and grandsons to take their own lives.

As the reforms failed and the Emperor, his friend of forty years, grew ever more estranged and obstinate, Liu Xin had once placed his hopes on Wang Lin. He had urged Wang Lin to keep a low profile, while he himself shut his door and rarely inquired about court affairs. He simply thought that when Wang Mang eventually passed away and Wang Lin succeeded to the throne, they could reverse the disastrous course.

He had so many talented men to recommend to his son-in-law: Yan You and Huan Tan, who were neglected and unused, and Diwu Lun, who was gradually making a name for himself.

Now that hope had shattered along with Wang Lin's death. Liu Xin was filled with utter despair, but Heaven seemed unwilling to let the old man off, and an even greater blow followed swiftly.

In the Proclamation Chamber just now, Wang Mang had actually said to Liu Xin: "According to the thorough investigation by the Master of Fates of the Five Majesties, Wang Lin's regicide plot was set to strike at the astrological moment of the 'White-Clad Gathering.' Wang Lin never understood virtuous astrology. This matter originated with his wife, Liu Yin!"

These words struck Liu Xin with immense terror, yet when he opened his mouth, he was as if struck dumb. He dared not utter a single word of entreaty for his daughter, because his old friend patted him on the shoulder and said: "I have always known Uncle Ying's loyalty. This matter has nothing to do with you. It stops with Liu Yin and will absolutely not implicate anyone else!"

Liu Xin even had to kowtow repeatedly to His Majesty, expressing boundless gratitude for his mercy.

After returning home, Liu Xin, as had become his habit, shut himself in his room and continued cutting the circle. Over these past two years, he had abandoned the circumscribed polygon method and switched to the inscribed polygon method. Day after day, he had cut it to over two thousand sides. Calculation rods and draft diagrams filled several rooms. Though he had reached the point of racking his heart and draining his mind, Liu Xin's pride would not allow him to humbly go and ask Diwu Lun.

And his value for pi was drawing ever closer to that standard figure.

In Liu Xin's view, mathematics was easy. His talent was there for all to see. As long as his approach was correct and he was willing to put in the hard work, he would always eventually arrive at an answer.

But human affairs were different, full of unpredictable accidents and absurdities. The human heart was far harder to fathom than numbers.

Today, Liu Xin lifted his wooden rod and calculation rods, but no matter what, he could not bring himself to calculate. His mind was a tangled mess, and he sat as if on a bed of needles. The glorious ideals of the past decades and the brutal reality of the present waged a ceaseless war in his mind.

Until the door was pushed open, and his nephew, Liu Gong, entered sorrowfully to report: "Uncle, my cousin, she... has followed the King of Tongyi Yang!"

The calculation rods in Liu Xin's hand dropped. The tears he had held back for so long finally streamed down the deep furrows and wrinkles of his aged face.

His most beloved daughter, brilliant since childhood, had often held the brush and prepared the ink while he calculated. On midsummer nights, Liu Xin had held her in his arms, looking up at the stars, pointing to each one and telling her its name.

His daughter could have been carefree. It was he who had ruined her, insisting on a marriage alliance with Wang Mang for self-preservation, never imagining he was pushing her into a pit of fire.

"I understand."

Liu Xin turned his back and waved his hand, telling Liu Gong to arrange the funeral. Alone, he hunched over and pounded his own chest, letting that heart-rending agony sink deep into his lungs, unable to cry out and curse aloud.

Liu Yin was not the first child he had lost. During the Zhen father-son treason case in the Shijianguo era, Liu Xin's second and third sons had been implicated and were also forced to commit suicide. Now only his eldest son, Liu Die, remained.

"Wang Jujun, is it not enough that you slaughter your own sons and grandsons? Must you not even spare mine?"

Liu Xin raised his head and suddenly reached out, wiping the circle on the sandy floor completely smooth, as if erasing decades of ideals, trying to start anew.

"Wang Mang, you have your Purple Pavilion Chart."

"I, Liu Xiu, also have my own prophetic texts!"

Then, using his own finger, he began writing characters in the sand, bit by bit. This was the Red Talisman that Liu Xin had obtained from the alchemist Ximen Junhui!

"Liu Xiu raises troops to seize the unrighteous."

"The four barbarians gather like clouds, dragons battle in the wilds."

"At the turn of four and seven, fire shall be master!"

In early second month, outside Wancheng in the Vanguard Commandery, there was a small thatched hut hidden among the hills and waters. A tall, gaunt old man with a white beard and long, aged brows cupped his hands and bowed to three visitors.

"Back then, had Sir Liu and Sir Deng not rescued me, this old man would long ago have been arrested by the General of the Five Majesties and exiled to the frontier."

This man was named Cai Shaogong, a native of Rang County in the Vanguard Commandery. In his early years, he had studied the arts of prophecy and omen in the north. In the early years of Wang Mang's reign, presenting auspicious omens was in vogue, and many were enfeoffed as marquises for it. Cai Shaogong also rushed to follow the trend and present one, but unexpectedly, Wang Mang had just issued a decree that any mandate omen not issued by the Master of Fates of the Five Majesties was illegal. This left Cai Shaogong with his enthusiasm met by cold rejection, fleeing in utter disarray from the authorities. He was fortunate to receive help from two daring young gallants.

One of them was Liu Yan, Liu Bosheng; the other was Deng Chen.

As for Liu Xiu, he was still young at the time, absorbed in leading the servants in farming at home, and did not participate.

But today's visit to Cai Shaogong was Liu Xiu's suggestion. After the new year, his elder brother Liu Yan had grown restless again. To hold him back, Liu Xiu proposed that they find a diviner to calculate whether raising a rebellion would be auspicious.

"I do not believe in fate."

Liu Yan, who styled himself a second Emperor Gaozu, was powerfully built. Before they arrived, he had openly told Liu Xiu: "If the nonsense spouted by alchemists could be believed, then wouldn't that pretender emperor Wang Mang be ordained by Heaven? Even if it is truly as he says, that the Han's allotted fortune is exhausted, I will still defy Heaven and change fate!"

"Elder Brother may not believe it, but the common people do." Liu Xiu earnestly urged Liu Yan: "I have heard that back when Chen Sheng and Wu Guang raised their banners against Qin, they too hesitated. The diviner, however, taught them that they must divine through the spirits."

"Thus came the affair of the message in the fish's belly and the fox's cry by the bonfire."

Liu Xiu said: "This Cai Shaogong is an elder of the commandery. In astrology and divination, he is thoroughly skilled. The prophecies he has made throughout his life have often come true and are spoken of as divinely accurate. As it happens, he owes Elder Brother a life-saving debt from years ago. If we can obtain a line or two of prophetic verse to aid us and spread it abroad, then when the time comes to do great deeds, perhaps we too, like Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, will see the commanderies and counties rally to us like gathering clouds!"

Liu Yan was persuaded. He brought his brother and his brother-in-law Deng Chen to visit Cai Shaogong. After the group entered and sat down, they saw that while the little dwelling was plain and humble on the outside, the interior was elegantly appointed. Cai Shaogong, with his long beard reaching his chest and the air of an immortal sage, truly had the appearance of a recluse.

They certainly could not ask outright, "What day is best to rebel?" Deng Chen first exchanged pleasantries and caught up with Cai Shaogong. Liu Xiu sat below his elder brother without saying a word. Moreover, since Liu Xiu's reputation was not prominent, Cai Shaogong did not even know his name, taking him only as Liu Yan's younger brother, courtesy name Wenshu.

Cai Shaogong first took an interest in reading the three men's physiognomy. He was full of praise for Liu Yan, saying he had the bearing of a hero and was no creature confined to the small pond of Nanyang. For Deng Chen, he predicted great wealth and honor, a restoration of his ancestors' glory. Only for Liu Xiu did he merely glance once and casually remark: "You, sir, should be good at farming and able to increase your property."

This meant he was destined to be nothing more than a country squire his whole life, without great prospects. Hearing that it was not Bearer of the Gilded Mace, Liu Xiu could not help but feel somewhat disappointed, but he only smiled and said: "Master Cai, your discerning eye is indeed like a blazing torch."

As they chatted idly, rain suddenly began to fall outside, soon turning into a torrential downpour. The storm lashed the roof tiles like leather whips. The sky grew ever darker, and they had to light the lamps.

Liu Yan, having listened to Deng Chen and Cai Shaogong ramble on for half the day, was gradually losing patience. He smiled and said: "Master Cai, a single man's petty fate is not worth asking about. As you yourself said earlier, when doing good meets with evil, it is not what one hoped for. When one encounters misfortune or fortune from external circumstances that human strength cannot resist, that is called 'circumstantial fate.'"

"Now that the world is in turmoil, we do not know what lies ahead. We merely wish to ask about circumstantial fate."

Cai Shaogong smiled and said: "What you gentlemen truly wish to know is: in this vast realm, whose house shall it be in the days to come?"

Liu Yan was immediately overjoyed: "We earnestly hope you will not begrudge us your instruction."

It was only natural. With the world in such a state, all discerning men could see that the Xin was on the verge of collapse, and the ambitious were beginning to stir. The Li clan of Wancheng, the foremost great house of Nanyang — Li Tong and Li Zhi — had also secretly come to ask him the same question.

But toward the Li family, Cai Shaogong was evasive. Toward Liu Yan and Deng Chen, however — after all, they had once saved his life, and besides…

Cai Shaogong's attendant came to tell him that the gifts from the Liu brothers were extremely lavish.

"Then this old man will speak in reckless conjecture, and you gentlemen may listen in reckless amusement."

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Cai Shaogong revealed a prophecy that his teacher had once issued to his fellow disciples back when he studied apocryphal divination in the north. Although the "Crimson Talisman" had been entrusted to Ximen Junhui alone, Cai Shaogong still knew a few fragments. He closed his eyes and intoned: "Liu Xiu shall be the Son of Heaven!"

Usually, when diviners made prophecies, they favored obscurity and ambiguity, their words veiled in clouds and mist, allowing for as many interpretations as possible to increase the odds of fulfillment. But this prophecy of Cai Shaogong's named a specific person, categorical and absolute, leaving himself no room to retreat. The moment the words left his mouth, the whole gathering was stunned.

Then came a great roar of laughter, leaving Cai Shaogong utterly baffled.

Liu Yan looked at his own younger brother Liu Xiu, who wore a face of complete bewilderment — the same Liu Xiu whom Cai Shaogong had just assessed as having no great promise in his physiognomy — and shook his head. "What Lord Cai means must be the State Preceptor, Liu Xiu, Liu Yingshu, surely?"

Cai Shaogong was incensed by their unrestrained laughter; he felt his wholehearted sincerity had been met with mockery. Instantly angered, he simply acted as though he had not heard, shut his eyes, and gave no answer.

Liu Xiu, for his part, upon hearing the State Preceptor mentioned again, recalled his own experience of being forced to change his name at the Imperial Academy, and felt a twinge of displeasure. He pointed at his own nose and said wryly, "How do you know the gentleman did not mean this 'Liu Xiu' out in the wilds?"

…

It was not until the day of Empress Xiaomu's funeral that Diwu Lun learned Wang Mang had actually built no mausoleum!

Was this the prelude to seeking immortality? In any case, the Empress could only be buried west of the Longevity Garden at the Wei Mausoleum of Emperor Yuan of Han, her tomb named "Yi Nian," so that she might eternally attend the Empress Dowager of Wenmu, Wang Zhengjun.

Diwu Lun knew that Wang Mang had renamed the tomb of Emperor Yuan of Han as the Wenmu Mausoleum, and had even gouged a gully between the burial mounds of this old couple who had thought they would be reunited in the netherworld.

Now it was stranger still: the Empress of the Xin Dynasty was being buried together with the Empress Dowager of the Han Dynasty. This was truly seeing the cuckoo's occupation of the nest through to the bitter end.

"So where do you plan to be buried later?" Diwu Lun could not fathom Wang Mang's thinking. In any case, as a newly promoted Grand Master, he was required to participate in the Empress's funeral rites from start to finish. Today was going to be an ordeal.

On this day as well, Diwu Lun once again saw the Princess of Huanghuang.

And Wang Mang's sole surviving son by his principal wife: amid the solemnity of the funeral procession, heedless of all decorum, weeping like a child — the simple-minded prince, Wang An.

…

PS: Chapter 2 at 18:00.