Chapter Two: A Gate That Does Not Open From Within
Gu Qi-xin boarded the cart.
It wasn't a carriage in any true sense—just an open wooden cart pulled by a gaunt horse, the kind used to ferry sacks of grain or vegetables to the market. The floor was bedded with a layer of old straw that had long since lost its color and scent, flanked by low wooden planks that barely reached the waist of a seated person.
Qi-xin sat on the straw at the rear, his back pressed against the tailboard and his legs stretched out before him. The stout middleman sat up front beside the driver—a thin, silent man with a face so flat it held no expression—and the horse began its trek.
Qi-xin did not turn around.
Not because he had forgotten what he left behind, but because he chose not to look.
Yet his eyes—those dark, heavy eyes—were fixed on the road retreating behind the cart. And the road was showing him exactly what he didn't want to see.
He watched the roof of the mud hut grow smaller.
It was slightly tilted—it had always been tilted; his father would say every season, "I'll fix it before winter," and never did. Now, that slanted roof looked like a small, hesitant finger pointing at the sky before shrinking away.
It grew smaller still.
He saw the tree in front of the hut—the lone tree he had sat under a thousand times—turn into a tiny green speck, then into nothing.
The entire village shrank.
The scattered mud houses. The dry, yellow fields. The shallow stream that glinted for a moment under the morning sun before vanishing. The dirt path he had walked every dawn carrying buckets. Everything was retreating. Shrinking. Fading.
It was as if his entire life—sixteen years of dust, labor, silence, sidelong glances, and blistered hands—was being erased with every revolution of the cart's wheels.
Then the village vanished behind the hills.
And it did not reappear.
Time passed.
The road changed slowly. The fine yellow dust Qi-xin had known his whole life began to turn into darker earth, then gravel, then roughly paved stone. The arid fields flanking the road gave way to wider, greener expanses—paddy fields flooded with water, shimmering under the sun like shattered mirrors. Larger houses appeared. Higher walls. Finer carriages passed in the opposite direction.
The middleman spoke to him only twice throughout the journey.
The first time was to say: "You'll eat when we stop at the rest station," tossing him a roll of dry bread and a piece of dried meat without looking back.
The second time was to say: "Don't try to run. Not because I'll catch you—I won't bother. But because there is nowhere for you to go."
Qi-xin did not reply either time.
He ate the bread and meat slowly, chewing every morsel until it lost its flavor. Not because he was savoring the food—but because his body was trembling from within in a way he couldn't control, and slow chewing was the only way he knew to hide the tremors.
A day passed. Then two. Perhaps three. Qi-xin lost his sense of time amidst the monotony of the cart's movement and the constant swaying that began to make him dizzy.
Then one morning—while the fog still hung over the land like a translucent gray curtain—he saw something that made him catch his breath.
Walls.
No... not walls. They were mountains of stone.
The walls of the Imperial Palace of the Tianning Empire rose before him like the very edge of the world. Massive gray bastions towered over everything—over the trees, over the rooftops, over the fog itself—and atop them, golden roof tiles glinted under the first rays of the sun as if forged from frozen fire.
"Its roof shines like gold..."
Grandpa Lao Li's words suddenly flooded back to him. The old man had seen this sight only once in his life, from a distance. But Qi-xin was standing right before it.
And the gate...
The gate was a mouth.
That was how it appeared to him. A massive black maw yawning in the stone wall, with teeth of serrated iron above and below, swallowing all who entered and never spitting them back out.
To enter here is to never return.
Unless you become someone of consequence.
The thought settled in his mind quietly. It wasn't hope, nor was it heroic resolve. It was a mathematical fact. A simple equation: Entry without status equals annihilation. Entry with status equals survival. Therefore... he must create status.
How?
He didn't know yet.
But he would. He was certain of it with a cold conviction that felt less like confidence and more like the absence of an alternative.
"Move it!"
A coarse, gruff voice cut through his contemplations.
A guard at the side gate—not the massive main gate used by princes and nobles, but a small, lateral entrance almost hidden in the shadow of the wall, the gate for servants, slaves, and new eunuchs—stood gesturing inward.
The guard was a portly man. Not the kind of portliness born of luxury and fine dining, but the lazy, sagging fat that comes from years of sitting still. His face was broad and flat like a loaf of bread, his eyes small and sunken like raisins buried in dough. He wore the dark blue uniform of the Inner Palace guards—frayed at the sleeves and stained at the collar.
"Move! Don't just stand there like a statue!" the guard barked with the tone of someone repeating the same command twenty times a day.
The stout middleman handed papers to the guard. They exchanged a few low words Qi-xin couldn't catch. Then the middleman turned to him for the last time.
"You're here. From now on, you're not my responsibility," he said with complete indifference, like someone delivering a crate of goods and walking away.
And walk away he did. He returned to his cart without looking back. Qi-xin heard the clink of the silver pouch tied to the man's belt—clink... clink... clink—fading as he distanced himself until it disappeared.
"Follow me," the fat guard said.
And Qi-xin entered the side gate of the Imperial Palace.
The first thing he noticed wasn't the opulence. It wasn't the gilded ceilings, carved pillars, or manicured gardens he had heard of. Because he saw none of that. The side gate led to a narrow, dark corridor between two high walls—the servants' passage—then to stone stairs descending downward.
Downward.
Beneath the palace.
Into the cellar.
The smell hit him first.
The scent of ancient dampness mixed with a sharp metallic tang—old blood that hadn't been cleaned well, perhaps—and concentrated human sweat trapped in an enclosed space. The air was heavy, cold, and moist, entering the lungs like a liquid rather than a gas.
Then he saw the place.
It was a vast cellar with a low ceiling supported by thick stone pillars. The lighting was dim—a few oil lamps hung on the walls, casting shadows that danced with the drafts. The stone floor was cold and wet with droplets leaking from somewhere in the ceiling.
And in the center of this cellar, on the cold stone floor, were boys.
Many boys.
Qi-xin's eyes widened slightly. His brows rose slowly.
They were of various ages—the youngest perhaps ten, the oldest his age or slightly older. Some were sitting, some were sprawled on the floor, and others were standing, swaying like ghosts. Their faces all bore the same expression: Fear.
Raw fear. Animalistic fear. The fear of those who know what awaits them and cannot flee.
They were like him. Poor boys from distant villages, sold, gifted, or stolen, brought here for a single purpose.
Qi-xin counted them with a quick glance. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Twelve boys waiting.
Some had eyes red from crying. Some were trembling. One in the corner was muttering something incessantly—perhaps a prayer, perhaps the names of his family. Another was clutching his knees, face buried between them, motionless.
Qi-xin sat on the cold floor in a spot off to the side. He spoke to no one. He looked at no one directly. He simply sat.
And waited.
Then he heard it.
A scream.
A sharp, muffled scream coming from behind a heavy wooden door at the far end of the cellar. A scream not of fear—but of pain. Real, physical pain that could not be faked. The scream of someone whose body was being subjected to something irreversible.
Everything in the cellar stopped.
The boys who had been moving froze. The one who was muttering went silent. Even the air seemed to stop moving.
Then the wooden door opened.
And a boy came out.
Or rather, what had been a boy came out.
He was pale—a pallor that had nothing to do with natural skin tone. White as wet cloth. His eyes were closed, and his head hung forward. His mouth was half-open, a thin thread of saliva dangling from the corner of his lip. His clothes—the simple gray tunic worn by all the boys here—were wet at the waist with a dark stain.
Two men carried him—men in stained white clothes, with rough hands and indifferent expressions. They carried him by the armpits, his legs dragging on the stone floor as if they were made of fabric.
The boy was unconscious.
Or perhaps he was conscious but unable to do anything but be carried.
The two men passed the waiting boys without looking at them. As if what they were carrying was not a human being, but a sack of grain.
They disappeared into a side corridor.
Silence.
A heavy, oppressive silence fell over the cellar like a shroud of iron.
Then one of the boys began to cry. A silent, muffled sob—hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking.
Another began to vomit in the corner.
And another began to tap the wall with an open palm in a repetitive, unconscious rhythm—thud. thud. thud—as if trying to wake himself from a nightmare.
Qi-xin looked at their faces.
Apprehension. Anxiety. Terror. Despair. Everything was written on those young faces with painful clarity. They were like open books on a single page—the page of a slow death.
Qi-xin clenched his hand. He dug his fingernails into the flesh of his palm until it stung. He felt the sharp, small pain and focused on it—using it as an anchor to keep his mind present and his body steady.
Then he gritted his teeth.
He heard the sound of his teeth grinding in the silence—a sound only he could hear.
Think. Think. Think.
Do not feel now. Do not fear now. Think.
Time passed.
One by one, the boys were called.
An assistant in stained white clothes would come, point a finger at a boy, say "You. Come," and lead him to the wooden door. Some walked with trembling legs. Some were dragged as they pleaded. One tried to run; the assistants seized him and pulled him forcefully by his arms while he screamed words Qi-xin couldn't distinguish.
And every time the wooden door opened and closed, Qi-xin heard the sound.
The scream.
Then the silence.
Then the assistants would emerge with another pale, unconscious boy. They carried him like a sack of wet rice and vanished into the side corridor.
Every time. The same scene. The same sound. The same pallor. The same indifference on the assistants' faces.
It was like a machine. A human machine that took in boys and turned out eunuchs.
The number dwindled.
Twelve. Eleven. Ten. Nine. Eight.
With every decreasing number, the fear in the eyes of the remaining boys grew denser. And Qi-xin grew calmer.
Not the calm of bravery. It was the calm of someone who had shut down everything else inside—all fear, all anger, all grief—leaving only the Mind. The mind that calculates. That observes. That searches for the breach.
Seven. Six. Five.
He watched the assistants. He watched their movements. How much time they spent inside with each boy. How long the screaming lasted. How long the silence followed. He watched how they carried the exiting boy—always by the armpits, always the same way, always with the same vacant expression.
Four. Three. Two.
Then he was alone.
"You. The last one. Come."
Qi-xin stood up.
His legs were steady. His hands were steady. His face was steady. Only his heart—somewhere deep behind his ribs—was thumping with a speed he had never known.
He walked toward the wooden door.
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
The door opened.
He entered.
The room was smaller than he had expected.
A square stone chamber, low-ceilinged, lit by two oil lamps that cast a sickly yellow light on everything. In the center was a long wooden table—wide enough for a boy to lie on—its surface marred with old dark stains and varying shades of discoloration that told a long history of pain.
Beside it, a smaller table held tools: scissors, blades, rolls of cloth, a bowl of water, and something resembling a large iron tong.
And behind the small table, on a wooden chair, sat the Doctor.
He was not a "doctor" in the conventional sense. He was a eunuch. A man who had once been a man and was no longer. His face was unnaturally round and smooth—hairless, with cheeks full of a flabby, watery puffiness—and his voice when he spoke was irritatingly high-pitched, like the creak of a rusty door.
But his eyes were not those of a victim.
They were the eyes of someone who had found in the agony of others a compensation for his own. Bright, mocking, cruel eyes that looked at Qi-xin the way a cat looks at a cornered mouse.
"The last one..." the eunuch doctor said in his thin voice, dragging the word out as if savoring it. He looked Qi-xin up and down with slow, deliberate evaluation. "A relatively sturdy young man. Sixteen? Seventeen?"
"Sixteen."
"Sixteen..." the doctor repeated with a mock tone of regret. "In the flower of youth. Pity. Truly a pity."
Qi-xin did not respond.
The doctor smiled. A slow, wide grin that revealed yellow, uneven teeth.
"Do you know what will happen to you?" he asked, rising slowly and walking toward the tool table. He picked up one of the blades—a thin, gleaming blade—and held it up until the yellow light reflected off its surface. "Allow me to explain. Sometimes boys don't understand what will happen until it does. And I am a man... or... what was once a man..." He gave a short, high-pitched laugh. "I am someone who likes everyone to be fully informed."
He turned the blade slowly in his hand.
"First, we strap you to this table. Hands and legs. Then we clean the area. Then..."
He brought the blade close to Qi-xin's face until its tip almost touched his nose.
"...One piece."
Silence.
Qi-xin looked at the blade. Then he looked into the doctor's eyes behind it.
A normal look.
Not a look of defiance. Not a look of fear. Not a look of forced bravery. Just a normal, calm look, as if he were looking at a wall, a ceiling, or a bowl of water.
And this angered the doctor more than any scream or plea ever could.
Because the eunuch doctor fed on fear. The terror of the boys was his daily meal. He needed to see the horror in their eyes to feel that he had power—he, from whom all power had once been stripped. He needed to see them tremble, beg, and cry to feel that he was not the only victim in this cellar.
And this boy... this boy looked at him as if he were nothing.
The doctor swallowed his anger. He pulled the blade away and returned to his seat with an affectation of laziness.
"Silent, eh? A brave boy. I like brave boys. Their bravery vanishes quickly on this table."
Qi-xin did not reply.
But then, he spoke.
"You have children."
Everything stopped.
The eunuch doctor froze in place as if someone had poured ice water down his back. The two assistants standing by the door exchanged a quick, confused glance.
"...What did you say?" The doctor's voice lost its mocking lilt.
"I said you have children," Qi-xin repeated in the same calm tone. "And you have a letter."
"How—"
"The ink on your middle finger," Qi-xin said without gesturing. "Cheap ink, the kind used for personal letters, not the ink of official manuscripts. The amount suggests a long letter—too long for someone writing to a superior. That is the length of a letter from someone writing to their family. And family, for a eunuch..."
He left the sentence hanging.
The doctor's face transformed. Something broke in his mocking, condescending expression. Something ancient, buried under layers of cruelty, sadism, and years.
"And having a letter means you are still in contact," Qi-xin continued. "Which means they know where you are. And that you... did it before the castration."
Silence.
The doctor stared at him. His jaw was tight. The muscles in his neck were strained.
"You were a young man," Qi-xin said with cold calm. "A young man like me. And before they took what they took from you... you made a girl—now a woman—pregnant. With twins. You've only seen them once, perhaps. Or perhaps not at all."
A strike.
The eunuch doctor's fist slammed into Qi-xin's face.
It wasn't a powerful punch—the doctor was no warrior, and his hands were the hands of someone who held blades, not swords—but it was enough to knock Qi-xin to his knees.
Qi-xin coughed. A sharp pain spread through his left jaw and shot up to his eye. He tasted something warm and salty in his mouth. He spat—red droplets fell onto the stone floor, spreading like small stars.
He raised his head and looked at the doctor.
The doctor was trembling. Not just from anger—but from something else. Fear, perhaps. Or an old pain suddenly reawakened.
"A question," Qi-xin said, wiping the blood from his lower lip with the back of his hand. "Were there laws or rules that punished your kind... for what you did before castration? Or did they not exist at all?"
The doctor shuddered.
"Whether they exist or not... it doesn't matter now," Qi-xin continued as he stood up slowly. He brushed the dust of the floor from his knees. "Let me strike a deal with you."
"A deal?!" The doctor's voice rose. His anger returned to mask everything else. "What do you even have to dare—"
"I am good at calculation," Qi-xin interrupted.
The doctor paused.
"And reading. And writing. And swordsmanship."
Silence.
Qi-xin smiled inwardly—a smile that did not reach his face.
The negotiations have begun.
"I..." Qi-xin began with a steady, measured voice—the voice of one offering a precious commodity who doesn't want to seem desperate to sell it. "If I rise quickly within the palace—and I will, because I possess what no other eunuch here possesses—I will have money. And when I have money..."
He looked the doctor directly in the eye.
"I will buy your freedom. And I will shower you and your family with so much wealth... it will be suffocating."
The doctor fell silent.
His mouth was slightly agape. His eyes were fixed on Qi-xin with an unreadable, complex expression—a mixture of astonishment, doubt, anger... and something else. Something like a combative hope trying not to show itself.
"Sir... why the delay?" the voice of one of the assistants came from the door.
"Shut up! I am working!" the doctor screamed in his sharp, thin voice without turning around.
The assistants went silent.
The door closed.
The doctor returned to staring at Qi-xin. His anger hadn't vanished—it had shifted. He was no longer the anger of an insulted man; he was the anger of a man offered something he desperately wanted but was terrified to believe.
"You are a poor boy from a village no one knows," the doctor said in a low, raspy voice. "No money. No name. No family of consequence. You enter the Imperial Palace as a eunuch—the lowest creature in this place. And now you tell me you will rise and buy my freedom?"
"Yes."
"If you are discovered..." the doctor's voice dropped further until it was a whisper. He leaned close to Qi-xin's face until he could feel his hot breath. "If anyone in this palace discovers that you haven't truly been castrated... you will be executed. You."
He raised a finger to Qi-xin's face.
"And all your family."
A second finger.
"And likely... all your relatives."
A third finger.
Qi-xin was silent.
He closed his eyes.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw a single moment—a small hand reaching out to him. Mi-lin's hand.
Then he opened his eyes.
"I don't care."
He said it with a tone as flat as a stone tablet.
Then he added:
"But do you gamble?"
The doctor blinked.
"I am not telling you to trust me," Qi-xin followed up. "Trust is a luxury people like us cannot afford. I am telling you: Gamble. Gamble on a better life instead of rotting here in this cellar, cutting the members of boys day after day until you die."
Something in the doctor's eyes changed. Something flickered.
"As for your member..." Qi-xin added in a dry, practical, emotionless tone—the tone of an accountant discussing figures, not a boy talking about genitalia. "If you want more children... as long as... the rest is intact. And if you are lucky. You will be able to in the future. I don't promise you will feel pleasure or anything of the sort. It will be limited to... extracting what is necessary. But it is possible."
The doctor stared at him with a stunned expression.
"Impossible. You are bluffing."
"Do you have proof that I am lying?" Qi-xin countered. "Just as I have no proof that I might succeed in curing you. But..."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Look. Think about it. You've been cutting here for how long? Ten years? Fifteen? And what have you gained? An underground room and the smell of blood. I am offering you a possibility. Just a possibility. But it is more than anyone else has offered you in your entire life."
A long silence.
A silence in which Qi-xin heard the thumping of his heart in his ears. He heard the droplets leaking from the ceiling. He heard the doctor's heavy, irregular breathing. He heard the assistants moving behind the door.
Then the doctor said:
"You lost, boy."
Qi-xin's heart sank.
"Y—"
"Scream."
Qi-xin blinked.
"Scream," the doctor repeated in a low, urgent voice. His eyes were different now—not those of the savoring sadist. The eyes of a man making a decision he knew might kill him. "Scream as the others screamed. They must hear. Everything must be normal."
Qi-xin understood.
He understood in less than a second.
He opened his mouth.
And he screamed.
A sharp, harrowing scream rose from the depths of his lungs—a scream that wasn't acting, but half-truth, because what he felt in that moment—fear, hope, pain, and the gamble—was enough to forge a real cry.
And at that same moment, the doctor seized his blade.
Then the assistants entered.
They found them as they expected—the boy sprawled on the table, eyes closed, face pale, and the doctor finishing his work. A cloth soaked in blood was wrapped around the boy's waist.
One of the assistants sighed with a mixture of pity and slight mockery.
"Another one passed out crying," he said indifferently.
"They all do," the other replied.
They carried Qi-xin by the armpits. His head hung forward. His body was completely limp. His legs dragged on the stone floor.
But Qi-xin was not unconscious.
His eyes were closed, yes. And his body was in pain, yes—because the doctor had done something. Not castration. Something else. A superficial wound in a nearby spot—enough to produce blood, pain, and soaked bandages, but it did not touch what must not be touched.
A painful wound. A wound that would bleed for days. A wound that would leave a scar. But it was not the wound everyone expected.
He was carried through the side corridor. He heard the sounds of the assistants' footsteps on the stone. He heard the sound of a door opening. He felt himself being placed on a soft surface—a thin cotton mat, far better than anything he had slept on in his life.
Then he heard the sound of the door closing.
Then silence.
Gu Qi-xin opened his eyes.
A white ceiling. Not gray stone like the cellar. White. The ceiling of a small room—very narrow, barely enough for one person, but it was a room. It had a door. It had a roof. And a mat.
The room of a new eunuch in the back wing of the Imperial Palace.
His room.
Dizziness swirled in his head. The pain in his lower abdomen was sharp and throbbing—the wound the doctor had made was real and agonizing, even if it wasn't what everyone thought. He felt nauseous. He felt cold. He felt the taste of blood still in his mouth from the punch.
But he smiled.
A small smile that no one saw in that narrow, dark room.
A smile that did not reach his eyes.
I am not castrated.
Four words circled in his head once with complete clarity.
I am not castrated.
Then came the next thought:
...Yet.
Because he knew this wasn't the end of the danger, but the beginning. The doctor had gambled today. But the gamble could flip at any moment. If the doctor became afraid. If he regretted it. If someone discovered. If another doctor examined him. If...
A thousand "ifs" swam in his head like fish in a dark tank.
But he closed his eyes and pushed them aside. Not now. Now he needed to recover. To stand on his feet. To begin.
The Imperial Palace.
He was now inside.
Inside the iron mouth that swallows and does not spit.
But Gu Qi-xin had not been swallowed to be digested.
He had been swallowed to infiltrate the vitals.
And on his thin cotton mat, in a room smaller than a closet, in the depths of the Imperial Palace of the Tianning Empire, the sixteen-year-old boy closed his eyes and slept.
A dreamless sleep.
Because dreams are a luxury.
And Gu Qi-xin no longer possessed the luxury of luxuries.
End of Chapter Two