The Golden Hairpin

Chapter 10: Beautiful Coloured Glass (Part 1)

The call of a Chinese francolin bird reached her ears. The weather in June was warm and pleasant, even the wind was gentle like water, like the lightest yarn passing by one’s ear, tickling the skin , like the lingering song from far away of a girl picking lotus.

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In the season where heaven and earth blended, 12-year-old Huang Zixia heard the voice of her father calling her. She turned her head to the water’s edge; the sunlight was beaming against her eyes, and the red color resembling blood or agate covered the world in front of her.

In this bright red light, she saw the young man standing beside her father, his old clothes and downcast expression could not hide his pale skin and dark hair. He looked at her nonchalantly with that pair of eyes, lacquered with black like the most silent, far-reaching dark night. Since then, as if with a knife edge engraved in her heart, forever could not be erased.

She stood barefoot in the pond, and all the stalks fell from her hands into the water unknowingly.

She saw a faint smile in the eyes of the young man. He walked up to her slowly and helped her pick up the budding lotus in the water. He must have seen the mud spots splashed on her legs and the grass scraps sticking under the gauze skirt. But he just laughed and held the flowers to her. 

When he gazed at her, his eyes did not have the usual expression one would have towards a little girl, but the tender look of a boy towards a girl that she had never seen before.

Sometimes, it only took a single look from the opposite gender for a girl to grow up.

“Yu Xuan…” Huang Zixia suddenly sat up from the bed and reached out to grasp the residual scenes in front of her, only to find that it was just a dream in the illusory night.

In the dark night, heavy wind was howling outside the window, and a chilly spring invaded deep into the bones. Huang Zixia held a brocade quilt in the dark night, as she watched the dream of the past drift away from her grasp.

She forced herself to steady her breaths and laid down slowly, drowning herself in the silk quilt. After she broke the four directions case, she was already a famous person in Chang’an. Therefore, as a little eunuch. The manor of Prince Kui treated her very well. All her daily expenses were met well, even higher than when she was the daughter of an imperial official’s family in Shu county.

However, lying in her warm and soft bedding, she found it more difficult to sleep than when she trudged through the rain in the wilderness. She opened her eyes and listened to the wind outside in the dark. For a long time, she lifted the quilt, got up, dressed, opened the door and went out.

The manor was surrounded by dark shadow trees, she followed the path as she remembered vaguely that led through to the Kui manor’s courtyards. The bodyguards patrolling on the road turned a blind eye to her. She was a popular person in the Kui manor lately, so she could come and go freely without any restriction.

When she went to the prince’s residence, Virtuous Valley hall, she saw the moonlight streaming over the flowers and trees, and there was silence everywhere. But on the fourth watch (2:32am) of the night, Li Shubai should be still sleeping.

It suddenly occurred to her that no matter how anxious she was because of her bad dream from before, how could Li Shubai, the Prince of Kui, get up at night and take care of her mood?

So she could only find a stone to sit down under the flowering tree outside the hall, rest her face on her bent knees, as she prepared to sit quietly for a while, and then go back to wait for his call.

She didn’t know for how long she sat there like that; the moonlight was dim, and the sky also appeared a faint dark blue. The spring dew was heavy and stained her dress. She was staring at the grass sprouts on the ground when she saw a pair of black leather boots stepping on the tips of the bud.

From the boots, her gaze trailed up to his face. He was wearing a purple dress embroidered with dark blue dragon patterns, which was tailored to look extremely slim and straight. At the waist was a celestial purple jade pendant tied with nine knots and eighteen turns of blue silk ribbon. The cuff and collar were simple with a narrow squared sleeve, which is the style that Chang’an and the central government were striving to follow.

Prince of Kui, Li Shubai’s white sidecap, and the clothes he wore, a few days later, it would become popular in the city. Looking at his appearance alone, this man was really like a pampered child of the royal family who was rich in brocade garments and living an extravagant life. 

Huang Zixia put her face on her knee and looked at him, pondered.

Li Shubai stood in front of her and looked down at her. Seeing that she was looking at him and not speaking, he turned towards the palace lantern on the flower tree and asked, “What flowers has the little eunuch come to enjoy in the early morning?”

Huang Zixia spoke in a soft and low voice, “I had a dream last night. I… I’d like to ask about what you entrusted me with, and whether I can finish it quickly and return to Sichuan as soon as possible.”

Li Shubai looked at her with the light of the palace lantern. Without speaking, he went past her side and walked to the corridor beside her.

Huang Zixia stood up, followed him to the corridor, and saw that nobody was sitting next to him, but she just stood there waiting for him to speak.

The palace lantern hanging on the porch swayed, and the night wind came slowly. The palace silk lantern with the painting of the fairyland in the fabled island was flying and spinning in the wind. Li Shubai’s face, which seemed to blend into the night, was hard to distinguish.

Li Shubai didn’t pay attention and was not in a hurry to reply to her. He just looked up at the lantern hanging under the cornice and gazed at it for a long time. Huang Zixia grew restless after standing under the lamp for a long time, she finally felt something was wrong. She turned her head and looked at the lantern. It was an ordinary octagonal palace lantern, the frame was made of red lacquered wood and had been finely painted with fairy mountains and a sea of clouds, and there were nine pavilions on it where immortals frequented.

She couldn’t see anything special about this lamp. When she turned her head, she found Li Shubai looking at her. In the dim light, his eyes were as dim as a star in the far sky.

She touched her face, and before she could ask questions, she heard Li Shubai said slowly, “What a coincidence. Just now, I had a dream. I was standing on the Xuzhou tower and looking at the thousands of houses below. When I woke up, I couldn’t go back to sleep. “

Huang Zixia sat on the railing by the water and looked at him in silence. He saw her eyes as bright as the stars and the moon, seemingly like a wave of light.

“For many years now, there is something about me that is extremely strange and difficult to explain. I’m in it and I’m at a loss. So I’ve been looking for someone to help me solve this mystery.” Looking at the misty fairy mountain on the lantern with a calm expression, he asked, “Do you know why I give you ten days?”

Huang Zixia shook her head and looked at him in the flickering light, her eyes carrying a questioning gaze.

“Because ten days later, it is the day when I’d choose my consort. And in regards to this matter, I hope you could do something to help me.” He sighed heavily and leaned his back against the veranda railing. The bright and dim lights flickered on him, making him feel particularly entranced on this spring night.

“That year when I was in Xuzhou, I received a piece of paper, the things written on it made me very concerned.”

‘In Xuzhou’. Huang Zixia suddenly remembered an event that had shocked the whole world, and her expression slightly changed. And Li Shubai continued, “Yes, Xuzhou was the turning point of my destiny. Everyone says it is my lucky place. But no one knows that on the last night before I returned to Chang’an after I pacified Xuzhou, when I looked down over the city from the tower, something happened, and that incident is still unfaded in my memory.”

At this point of time, he finally turned around and looked at her while taking out a piece of paper from his sleeve.

The paper was thick and yellowish, about two inches wide and eight inches long. It was shaded with cinnabar* weird patterns that looked like snakes and insects. On it were written with the six characters “(鳏-guan) widowhood, (残-can) disabled, (孤独-gudu) loneliness and (废疾-fei ji) sickness” in thick black ink. Among them, there were two blood colored circles on the characters of “widowhood” and “loneliness”, which seemed these two fates delineated by the curse blood, and extremely repressive.

(cinnabar – a bright red consisting mercury used as a pigment)

Li Shubai’s finger ran across the fine red coloured lines of cinnabar that resembled insects and snakes in the shading, and said, “This background shading of insects and snakes prints, and what is written are the ‘day and hour chart’* of my birth.”

(生辰八字- ‘sheng chen ba zi’ it is the day and hour chart of one’s birth, example born in day 18 Jan at time 10.15pm. In terms of superstition, witchcraft can cast black magic/spells on a person by knowing their day and hour chart.) 

Huang Zixia looked at the six ominous characters written on the ‘day and hour chart’ of his birth and the two circles like blood. She felt an ominous feeling creeping into her heart.

Li Shubai put the paper on the railing, pressed it gently with his hand, and said, “The night this piece of paper (talisman*) appeared just when I was standing on the wall of Xuzhou and overlooking Xuzhou City. It seemed to appear suddenly on the arrow stack beside me. When I got it, there were only six characters on it. The two red circles were not on it. There was only a faint red circle on the character indicating “loneliness”.” 

(Talisman) https://newtalk.tw/news/view/2019-03-02/214351

Huang Zixia stared at the piece of talisman, pondered in silence. 

His finger touched on the word “loneliness”, as if he was caressing his past life. “When I was young and had lost my parents, that pointed out the character “loneliness”. At that time, my imperial father had passed away, but my imperial consort-mother was still around, so I didn’t care. I thought the talisman was an ordinary curse of my opponent, so I left it like that and prepared to go through the people around me to see who would dare to bring this thing to me. Who would have known…”

His eyes turned to the palace lantern beside him. In the still night, the lantern cast a slightly flickering light. Huang Zixia only felt that in this moment, the whole surrounding seemed to be blurred.

“That night, I had a lot of nightmares. The six characters indicating “widowhood, disabled, loneliness and sickness” tossed and turned in my dream. When I woke up, I wanted to set the talisman on fire. When I took it out to look at it, I found that the circle which was originally a faint red mark on the character “loneliness” suddenly intensified and became what it is now.” His finger points on that word, under the stars and the moon, the red circle beside his fingers stood out like a strange, blooming red flower, and it was like the trace of blood smeared out, it’s shocking. “It was also on that day and at that moment that an urgent message was dispatched from Chang’an eight hundred miles away. I opened it and found that it was the news of my mother’s death.”

On the day when the red circle delineated the term “loneliness”, he became an orphan and had no parents.

Huang Zixia saw that his hand drew back from the paper and unconsciously clenched it into a fist. His beautiful hand, because it was held too tightly, even the knuckles, had turned pale. 

She can’t help it but comfort him. “Perhaps, it’s just a coincidence. Your Highness doesn’t need to think too much about it.”

Li Shubai glanced at her but he didn’t dismiss her word nor agreed with her, he just let out a slow and long sigh.   

“On the way back from Xuzhou to Chang’an after receiving the news of my mother’s death, I encountered an assassin. I was stabbed in my left arm. Although the wound was not deep, the weapon was poisoned. All the military doctors who accompanied me said that my arm could not be saved. If I wanted to live, I had to amputate my left arm,” He stroked his left arm with his right hand, as if the pain was still on his body, “At that time, I took out the talisman, and saw that the bright red circle was looming out, and the word “disabled” was delineated.

The night was silent and the wind suddenly blew. The lantern suddenly turned around in the wind, and the light faintly hit them. The lower corner of the talisman with scarlet circles was fluttering in the wind, as if fate was fluctuating.

Li Shubai looked at her with a calm and almost stiff expression. “You, do you know what I did at that time?”(Please read original translation from cloudmanor.wordpress.com)

Huang Zixia, held out her hand and pressed on that piece of paper, stood under the fluttering palace lanterns, staring at him for a moment, and said, “I guess Your Highness must have arrested the military doctor and tortured the culprit.”

Li Shubai’s face, which had been taut for a long time, relaxed slowly, and even, under the faint red lantern light, the corners of his lips seemed to float a trace of smile. 

His face, which had always been cold, suddenly showed a soft and clear smile like the spring breeze. Even though that was just a faint smile, yet, it couldn’t cover up the content of his heart. He said, “Huang Zixia, you are just like me. You do not believe in fate.”

“In my years in Shu County, I have handled 26 homicide cases, and eight of them had rumors of ghosts and gods. But in the end, the truth came to light. It was only the people who had the intention to play tricks. Another example is that of the recent ‘four directions case’ which also involved a false pretense of ghosts and gods.” Huang Zixia stabbed her forefinger on the piece of talisman and said, “For example, this piece of talisman, which the prince said before, is enough to reveal the intention of the people behind the scenes.”

Li Shubai looked at her and his mouth curved into a smile, “Well, tell me about it.”