FENG XIAO HADN'T TOSSED the emperor into a hole for no reason. He knew the alliance between Xiao Lü and Kuhezhen was tenuous. They were united by their shared desire to overthrow the Sui dynasty, yet the closer they came to their goal, the more unstable their partnership would become.
This was an opening he could exploit. One side might easily turn on the other—or they might not. But Feng Xiao's faction was exposed, out in the open; any move they made would be observed. All he could do was wait.
During their initial discussions, almost everyone in the Zuoyue and Jiejian Bureaus had agreed it would be better to take the initiative: They should search the city and cancel the Buddhist ceremony, not sit on their hands and pray for their enemies to destroy each other. Ultimately, it was Cui Buqu who commanded everyone to lie low and refrain from taking reckless action.
After the incident at the Prince of Qin's banquet, the Jiejian Bureau had discovered several key clues to the case. They acted as if they'd found nothing and put on a show of being confused and panicked in order to coax the enemy into letting down their guard—until today.
Cui Buqu's grasp of human nature, Feng Xiao thought, was indeed unmatched. Tu'an Qinghe and Xiao Lü might not have made names for themselves in the jianghu, but they were undoubtedly peerless martial artists. Xiao Lü's injuries had yet to heal, which put him at a slight disadvantage, but if he and Tu'an Qinghe worked together, even the arrogant Feng Xiao dared not claim he could achieve a decisive victory.
The impostor emperor thus became the key. The impostor was crucial to Xiao Lü's plan. He couldn't let anything happen to him. The moment the impostor was thrown into the pit, Xiao Lü abandoned Feng Xiao and rushed forward to rescue him.
***
The emperor had never thought there was such a vast world beneath Daxingshan Temple.
The bottom of the pit was pitch-black; still crushed under the weight of the fake emperor, he groped at the muddy ground beneath him. The soil was tightly packed, almost certainly the work of some bygone construction project. As far as the emperor could recall, Daxingshan Temple had undergone renovations twice: once before Emperor Wu banned Buddhism, and once again after Great Sui's establishment. But both had concerned only the buildings on the surface, reinforcing the temple without delving down into the foundations. These packed-earth passages had to be older than the Zhou dynasty.
He shoved the body on top of him aside and struggled up. The man seemed to have passed out. Even in the dark, the emperor could tell this was the fake—but he couldn't make out the man's true identity.
His first thought was to kill him. But he had no weapon to hand, and he was exhausted. All he managed was a couple dull kicks. The emperor panted harshly, his anger still simmering. How was he supposed to escape this place? Could Feng Xiao extricate himself and save him? What was even happening up there?
His mind was in a fog; there was too much he didn't know.
He waited a long time, but no one else dropped down from above. He had no choice but to take matters into his own hands: Using the wall to support himself, the emperor straightened with great effort and began to slide himself along the rugged stone.
He groped along for a while before noticing something. When he paused to carefully explore the wall a second time, he realized that what he'd touched wasn't merely rough earth. It was a carved mural.
By touch alone, he guessed that it depicted galloping horses. Some people were leading them, while several others stood with cupped hands. A bodhisattva sat upon a throne of lotus flowers.
This was no construction tunnel—it was an underground labyrinth.
The emperor knew a fair amount about Daxingshan Temple thanks to his friendship with Master Lingzang, but he'd never known there was a maze like this underneath it. If it stretched out under the entire temple complex, the labyrinth must be massive, and was probably riddled with traps and dangers.
Cold sweat sprang up on the emperor's back. He stopped walking. Perhaps it would be more prudent to go back aboveground and confront Xiao Lü. But he didn't know the way back, and there was no guarantee anyone would come to rescue him.
Haaa… Haaa…
A familiar sound echoed around him, coming in starts and stops from all directions at once. It resembled the wail of an infant or the howl of a wildcat, filled with deep resentment and boundless hatred. The emperor froze, straining to discern the source of the noise.
A hand landed gently on his shoulder.
All the blood rushed to his head as he twisted away, trying to shake off the hand gripping him. A voice cut through the darkness—one that was exceedingly familiar. "It's me, Your Majesty."
The words were followed by several coughs. Cui Buqu!
The emperor's heart was pounding so fiercely that when he tried to speak, he also choked and began to cough. The sound echoed in the darkness. How big is this place? the emperor wondered.
Another voice rang out. "Your Majesty."
This was a familiar voice as well: the deputy chief of the Zuoyue Bureau, Zhangsun Bodhi. The emperor calmed his racing heart and gasped, "They—"
"Shh!" In an incredible breach of propriety, Zhangsun Bodhi clapped his hand over the emperor's mouth, cutting him off mid-word.
"There's a monster in here, Your Majesty. It's best to speak as little as possible," Cui Buqu said in a low voice.
The emperor's heart leapt into his throat once more. "What kind of monster? How did you get down here?"
In fact, before the ceremony, Cui Buqu had instructed Qin Miaoyu and Ming Yue to enter the palace and search the library for Daxingshan Temple's building plans.
The palace library housed a vast collection of books, some as old as the Han dynasty. Although many of the oldest scrolls had been lost to various wars, a sizable number survived. Locating the plans for a three-hundred-year-old temple in a single night was no simple task.
But Ming Yue and Qin Miaoyu had succeeded, locating the plans of the temple amid a pile of old papers. They weren't the originals from the Jin dynasty, which had presumably been lost sometime during the wars and the Jin dynasty's move south. The earliest preserved versions were from the Later Qin dynasty, and detailed the temple's construction history and architectural design. As Daxingshan Temple had been renovated several times since then, these preserved plans differed greatly from the temple as they now knew it.
Qin Miaoyu hadn't understood why Cui Buqu went to such lengths to acquire the plans. She thought he was grasping at straws—until he pointed out a particular passage in the documents: When the temple's construction began, the emperor ordered the workers to dig an underground labyrinth to protect the eight treasures. This underground palace is much larger than Mahavira Hall. It connects the inside to the outside, uniting above and below.
Just a few stilted lines, short and without context, but they left her scratching her head. What were "inside" and "outside"? And what did it mean to "unite above and below"?
Cui Buqu knew the emperor would be in the Mahavira Hall during the morning and afternoon ceremonies. He'd be listening to sutras and engaged in worship while his attendants and ministers stood to the side praying and offering incense. Xiao Lü's attention was sure to be completely focused on the emperor during this time. Thus, earlier in the day, Cui Buqu had brought Zhangsun and the others to quietly search the area around the temple. All their efforts paid off when they discovered a hidden tunnel beneath a pile of debris in a narrow alley bordering Jingshan Ward.
There were several layers of earth beneath the bricks—the passage hadn't been used recently. It seemed Xiao Lü's faction hadn't noticed it at all.
Upon entering, they discovered that the labyrinth below was just as expansive as Daxingshan Temple above. It had a series of branching connections arranged according to the bagua, a Daoist symbol consisting of eight trigrams arranged in an octagon. Each of its eight sides held a chest containing the sarira of a high monk from the past. All manner of venomous creatures surrounded these precious chests, guarding the treasures within.
Cui Buqu and Zhangsun Bodhi plunged into the labyrinth and navigated the various obstacles together. Between them—thanks to both Cui Buqu's expertise in arrays and mechanisms as well as Zhangsun Bodhi's martial prowess—they managed to evade all the traps and reach the emperor.
But the emperor no longer remembered where he'd fallen down, and now there was an even greater danger skulking nearby: a monster glowering at them from the darkness, ready to pounce and tear into its prey.
"We're not sure what kind of creature it is, only that it's dangerous," said Cui Buqu. "It's bizarre yet intelligent. Even Zhangsun was not its match; we fled from it. We must prevent it from finding us again."
Zhangsun bit his lip but said nothing. Cui Buqu's description was cryptic. He hadn't told the emperor that the creature wasn't just ferocious—its appearance was horrifying. Even Zhangsun had no desire to recall what he'd seen. He was acutely aware of the great danger they were in, and less confident than ever that he could bring them all out to safety.