Chapter 22: The Number Nine
Since ancient times, China has been called the “Middle Kingdom.”
“Wu silk, Shu paulownia, Zhang Gaoqiu’s autumn, empty mountains, still clouds refuse to flow. River nymphs cry amidst the bamboo, the Goddess of Pure Love grieves, Li Ping plays the konghou in China.”
This ancient civilization led the first industrial revolution. In the year when the productivity of the land was driven to the cities by roaring machinery, the year Grand Tutor Zhang passed away, the year the internal relations of production within the Ming Empire were shattered, an unprecedented catastrophe struck this land and its people. Some say that the true Ming Empire perished at that time, and what remained was merely another super dynasty called Shenzhou.
Many old and undesirable customs were abolished at that time. Zhu Xi heard that before then, the people of China still practiced gender discrimination. If an ordinary family had a baby girl, they would drown her in a ditch in the dead of night. She also heard that foot-binding was prevalent then, from the royal family to the commoners, women had to have their feet bound, just to live up to the reputation of “three-inch golden lotuses.”
This country had changed in many ways, but the cultural tradition of ancestor worship remained unchanged.
Zhu Xi walked to the narrow gate of the ancestral hall and nodded to the old mute gatekeeper. Ever since she could remember, the old mute had been guarding the ancestral hall, his daily task to sweep away the dust in front of the threshold. The Zhu family had many ancestral halls, in Hengli, Shazhou, and Tongling. There were no less than a hundred recorded in the family archives, but this one was special.
She pushed open the wooden door. Zhu Xi had to bend down to enter.
“Sister Xi.” A young woman about her age greeted her with a slight bow. Zhu Xi’s eyes flickered. This woman was dressed in a colorful, narrow-sleeved robe and embroidered shoes with raised heels, as if she had stepped out of an ancient painting. She looked seven parts similar to Zhu Xi, both in appearance and figure. But she lacked Zhu Xi’s sharp temperament, more like a delicate wildflower by the roadside, gentle and obedient.
“Xiaoqiao. Is Grandma here?” Zhu Xi softened her usual cold expression, her voice unusually gentle.
“Grandma is burning incense.” Xiaoqiao happily moved closer to Zhu Xi. “Sister Xi, can you tell me about the outside world again? Grandma confiscated the phone you gave me, and I haven’t been online for a long time… Um, how’s the epidemic in Mulan City?”
“That was last year’s news.” Zhu Xi gently flicked Xiaoqiao’s nose. “I’ll go find Grandma first, then I’ll come back and talk to you.”
Xiaoqiao’s face crumpled. She was a young woman of seventeen or eighteen, but her behavior was no different from a child’s. Zhu Xi’s heart stirred. She didn’t understand the meaning of all this – confining a girl in this small ancestral hall for seventeen years, a confinement that would last until Xiaoqiao’s death, a fate that would continue for generations to come… Xiaoqiao, her own younger sister, wasn’t officially recognized and could only live in this unknown corner under the name of “Zhu Qiao”… What was the point of all this?
Zhu Xi took a step forward and saw Zhu Qiao pouting, tears welling up in her eyes. She softened and took her sister’s hand. “There, there, Xiaoqiao, don’t be sad. I’ll give you a surprise later, a surprise so good that you’ll be laughing in your dreams!”
“Okay, Sister Xi is the best~” Zhu Qiao’s tears turned into a smile, her childlike nature evident.
Zhu Xi walked through the long wooden corridor, catching a whiff of sandalwood. She continued walking and saw Grandma kneeling before a blank portrait in the main hall. A plaque hung outside the hall: “Zhengyuan Hall.”
Grandma also had the surname Zhu. She heard that Grandma Zhu was her father’s younger sister, her aunt, the former eldest princess.
“Grandma.” Zhu Xi stopped under the Zhengyuan Hall plaque. This was a place she was once very familiar with. There was a time when she would escape to this ancestral hall to avoid the oppressive and decadent atmosphere of the royal family, chatting with Zhu Qiao and basking in her younger sister’s adoring gaze. “I found it.”
Grandma didn’t turn around. “What did you find?”
Zhu Xi tossed the heart-shaped pendant she had dug up from Shanzhu Village onto the floor. Grandma still didn’t turn around, just focused on burning incense and paying respects to their ancestors. She had been doing this for decades and would continue to do so, even if the world outside turned upside down.
“Zhu Xi, do you know the significance of this ancestral hall?”
“You only said it was to worship our ancestor.”
In the Zhu family, there was only one person referred to as “that ancestor”: Emperor Zhu Zhengyuan, who saved the Ming Empire from collapse.
—This was a lie.
His name wasn’t Zhu Zhengyuan, and it wasn’t even certain if he was a descendant of the Zhu family.
No official records about him remained, only fragments of letters and hearsay. What was his name? What was his posthumous title? When was he born? Where was he buried? No one knew. It was as if he was cursed by heaven, unable to leave any trace in this world.
Even his achievements were pieced together by later generations based on the oral accounts of the elderly.
Such an ancestor was clearly not suitable to be enshrined in the main ancestral hall for future generations to worship.
Zhu Xi’s gaze shifted upwards. A wooden box, exquisite and precious, was placed in front of the blank portrait. She had opened the box before. Inside were crystals, just like the ones in the heart-shaped pendant. As a princess of the Zhu family, she had seen countless crystals and diamonds, but only two remained vivid in her memory. One was the crystal in the wooden box, said to be passed down from Zhu Zhengyuan. The other was the pendant in the hands of the Chu family’s son-in-law…
Only these two crystals were different. But she couldn’t explain the difference.
“That ancestor only left one sentence.” Grandma said slowly. “It was something along the lines of, ‘This country will face a new disaster, and this object will save the people once again.’”
Zhu Xi remained silent. She never believed in such vague prophecies, especially since all the information about this ancestor came from unreliable rumors. She found it a bit ridiculous that generation after generation of princesses had to sacrifice their youth in this ancestral hall just because of a rumor.
She was a woman who believed in human agency. This country was indeed riddled with problems, but she believed that changing it wouldn’t rely on some jewel enshrined in a wooden box, but on practical methods and strategies.
The reason she snatched the pendant from the Chu family’s son-in-law wasn’t because of some Zhu family legend, but for her pitiful younger sister – Zhu Qiao.
“You promised me that after finding all the Colored Stones, you would let Zhu Qiao leave the ancestral hall and live with me.” Zhu Xi said seriously.
Grandma Zhu picked up the pendant from the floor with trembling hands, her eyes darting around. “It is indeed the Colored Stone mentioned in the records, identical to the ones in the wooden box… This is fate… I should have known this day would come…”
Grandma Zhu had always been a superstitious old woman, and Zhu Xi was used to her cryptic words. To be honest, Zhu Xi didn’t care about the legend of the Colored Stones. In her opinion, it was as absurd as the rumors spread by ancient emperors to consolidate their power, like the phoenix descending upon the Western Palace or the crane flying from the East. The legend of the Colored Stones was probably no different.
“Zhu Qiao,” Grandma called out.
Zhu Qiao skipped over. “Grandma, Sister Xi~”
“Xiaoqiao, from today onwards, you can leave the ancestral hall and live with your Sister Xi.” Grandma Zhu held the pendant and turned towards the wooden altar.
Zhu Qiao was stunned, then looked at the smiling Zhu Xi, her face lighting up. “Grandma, is it true?”
Zhu Xi answered, “Silly girl, of course it’s true. Come live with me. I’m going to Mulan University next year, and you can come with me.”
Zhu Qiao was overwhelmed by the sudden surprise. “I, I’ve never been to school before… Is it really okay?”
“Of course.” Zhu Xi led Xiaoqiao out by the hand, describing the wonders of the outside world to this girl who had been confined for seventeen years. “Not only can you go online freely, there are also all sorts of delicious food. By the way, Qiao’er, have you heard of amusement parks…?”
The two girls’ voices faded away. After they were gone, Grandma Zhu slowly opened the ornate wooden box.
“As the ancients said, ‘The Dao is fifty, the heavens derive forty-nine, and humans escape with one. Thus, nine is the ultimate number. Only when the Colored Stones reach nine can fate be changed.’”
Outside the box, Grandma Zhu held four broken crystals in her hand. Inside the box, there was one broken crystal at each corner. But at the center of the box, there was a ninth crystal.
A complete and intact Rebirth Crystal, shimmering under the light.
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