The ancestral temple — also called the Sacred Temple — stood connected to the imperial mausoleum, not far from Lin'an. It was the place where the dragon qi of the Great Song gathered, and it housed the spirit tablets of every generation of the imperial house and of the Saints of the Great Song, blessing ten thousand generations to come.
The solemn column set out at first light and reached the ancestral temple at noon.
It was a vast, towering edifice, built and carved entirely from blocks of black and yellow stone, rough-hewn and massive. The officials had not yet crossed the threshold before a sense of majesty and antiquity struck them full in the face.
Heads bowed, the hundred officials passed under the weather-beaten stone arch, halted on the open plaza before the temple, and bowed three times toward it.
Zhao Bing stood on the stone steps in his dragon robe, side by side with an Empress of matchless grace.
With his back to the assembly, he too knelt and pressed his forehead deeply toward the temple, and sighed: "We… have an heir at last."
He glanced at the Empress, cold and remote as ice. He had meant to say something, but by the time it reached his lips it had turned into a sigh so faint no one could catch it.
Then Zhao Bing turned around, and his eye went straight to the woman official in the dark-red python robe, a crane among chickens. Only then did the smile return to his face. He nodded to her, then raised his voice: "Today is a day of national rejoicing. This ancestral temple shall have a new tablet added to it at last."
"Long live Your Majesty! Ten thousand years, ten thousand times ten thousand years!"
The cry rolled up from the assembled officials like thunder off a mountain, congratulating the Song Emperor.
"But it is not one alone who shall be welcomed into the ancestral temple today. Two joys arrive at the same door!"
Zhao Bing's smile spread wider as he dropped the news.
The words fell like a stone into a lake, throwing up a thousand waves. A stir ran through the ranks.
"Surely it isn't… a dragon-and-phoenix pair? Twins, a boy and a girl?"
"Felicitations, felicitations…"
At that moment a eunuch stepped forward, unrolled an imperial edict, and read aloud in a ringing voice:
"By grace of Heaven and by mandate of destiny, the Emperor decrees: We hold that an age of order is governed by the civil arts, and disorder quelled by the martial. Our minister Li is cultivated alike in talent and in virtue, complete in both letters and arms — truly a pillar of the court, a bulwark of the state. As Prison-Warden Chiliarch she has striven with all diligence, burning her lamp until dawn, and made the authority of the court respected; she has likewise carried the physician's gourd to succor the world, sought out grain and bred new seed, profiting realm and people alike, her merit proclaimed across all Huaxia. We therefore invest her as Saint of Merit and Virtue. Let it be proclaimed under heaven, that all may hear of it. Strive on, Our minister, and do not fail the trust of the altars of state. Respect this."
Invested as a Saint?
In that instant every official, civil and military, went still. Across that whole great expanse, not a bird or a crow made a sound.
Even the tassels hanging beneath the Empress's phoenix coronet trembled.
"This subject accepts the edict!"
Li Fei was the first to recover. She went up the stone steps in long strides and took the edict in both hands, her pulse hammering.
Praise and honors moved her far less than solid, tangible profit — but this time was different.
The moment she heard the edict, her Transcendent intuition leapt in her chest, as though some unseen blessing had settled upon her.
Li Fei understood at once: an investiture of sainthood might draw on the dynasty's Fortune, and that was of genuine use to a Transcendent. An unexpected gain.
She tucked the edict carefully away, looked with warm satisfaction at Zhao Bing, who was smiling as well, and gave a small nod.
You — you always have some new trick to spring on your humble servant!
"Your Majesty, this must not be!"
"How can a woman be invested as a Saint? This is absurd, Your Majesty!"
"It violates the precepts of the ancestors! We beg Your Majesty to withdraw the command!"
The court had caught up at last, and a few old pedants began hopping in outrage.
A Saint was not merely a mainstay of the state. It was rank and prestige beyond measure, a glory that would outlast a thousand years.
A woman's proper portion, meanwhile, was to serve her husband and raise his sons, to tend the incense at a scholar's elbow; merely showing her face in public counted as a blot upon her virtue. In a certain sense, "woman" was the very opposite of "Saint." In truth, across every reign of the Great Song, women officials raised by special exception and women martial artists who had set foot in the Innate stage could be counted on a single hand — not because women were dull, but because the limited resources of teaching and of cultivation were monopolized down to the last scrap, so that they never had a day to lift their heads.
To invest a female Saint out of a clear sky was to split stone and startle heaven.
Yet after shouting a few times, the opposition discovered that not only was Zhao Bing unmoved, but most of their colleagues had chosen silence. There was none of the boiling uproar they had expected — indeed, the officials of the Nine Thousand Years' faction, who not long ago had stood with drawn blades against Li Fei, held their tongues now, as if giving the matter their tacit consent.
Something dawned on them, and their voices thinned away.
Even Zhao Bing found the sight a little surprising.
As a master of smoothing things over, he knew the old principle well: the first roll of the drum rouses courage, the second lets it flag, the third exhausts it.
He also knew that this was the ancestral temple, the most solemn and sacred ground under heaven. However enormous their grievance, the officials could hardly make a scene here; they could only swallow it.
That was precisely why he had announced the matter today. He wanted the occasion and the moment to nail it down first; as for the objections of his ministers, once they had been shelved and shelved again, they would naturally come to nothing.
Now that the opposition proved smaller than he had imagined, Zhao Bing was more than content. He assumed Lu Qianfan had softened toward Li Fei — his obstetrician, after all — over the Surrogate Birth business. Choking back a smile, he swept his sleeve. "Whatever the matter is, we shall discuss it another day."
The opposition looked left and right, signaling frantically to their colleagues with their eyes, and found themselves ignored to a man. Knowing the tide had gone against them, they shut their mouths in sullen resentment — though still unreconciled, glaring at Li Fei with bloodshot eyes as though at the murderer of their fathers.
We are men, upright between heaven and earth. How can we bow our heads and call a mere woman a Saint?!
Once the rite is finished, we will impeach her without mercy and tear that tablet of hers down!
— The struggle tactics she'd worked out back in Loxibrook really did come in handy.
Li Fei took no notice whatsoever of the hostile stares. She only slid them a sidelong glance and sneered soundlessly to herself.
In the young Chiliarch's eyes, that pack of objectors below looked exactly like the dim young masters of House Metis — utterly blind to the shape of things, forever bent on shaking a great tree like ants, on stopping a chariot with a mantis's arms.
The nominal ruler, and the minister whose power tilts the whole court — this official has bought both of them! The noble ladies of the inner palace are being reshaped into this official's shape one after another! Nie Yunyi is still openly on this official's side! Even the Mountain-Moving Sect wants something from this official!
What, exactly, do you propose to fight this official with?
"Minister Li, come inside with Us."
Zhao Bing called out amiably and pushed the stone door open with his own hands.
"Yes."
Li Fei obeyed, moving briskly forward, and crossed into the temple shoulder to shoulder with the Empress.
By the laws of the Great Song, the ancestral temple was ground of the utmost purity and sanctity, and eunuchs had no standing to enter. Only members of the imperial house and the emperor's most trusted senior officials might accompany him inside on days of special observance.
Besides Li Fei and the Empress, the party that followed the Song Emperor in numbered eight great ministers and one Reverend.
The ministers were Chancellor Liu, of the first rank; Li Fei's father-in-law, Consort Hui's own father, Minister Wen of Ministry of Rites; and six of the Nine Thousand Years' adopted sons — one had only to look at the imperial family banquet and at this rite to see just how far Lu Qianfan's grip on the court extended.
The Reverend, naturally, was Perfected Ge.
Clack, clack — thud.
In that muffled report the heavy doors drew shut, sealing off the inside of the temple from the world without.
Li Fei tilted her head back, letting her gaze travel over the vast, high, empty hall.
Firelight flickered inside. The four walls were mottled stone, and the greater part of them hung full of jade tablets inscribed with names — close to a thousand of them.
The tablets varied in size and material. The largest were the fewest, and every name upon them Li Fei had met in books: the emperors of every generation of the Great Song, and three Saints.
Of the smaller ones she recognized only a handful — imperial princes and lords of that sort, and the mistresses of the Empress's palace, which is to say empresses and Empress Dowagers.
The smallest belonged to consorts of Imperial Noble Consort rank and to other members of the direct imperial line, mostly princesses and princes of unhappy reputation. Dowager Consort Tong was among them; Li Fei had heard a few stories from Chancellor Liu about this consort renowned for her gentleness and goodness.
One detail could not be overlooked: the overwhelming majority of the jade tablets were dull and lightless, meaning the person they answered to had died. Only a few still gave off a faint green glow, and all of them were people she knew — Zhao Bing, the Empress, Prince Rong…
"This old servant greets Your Majesty…"
An aged voice drew Li Fei's attention around.
A group of people in long white robes stood there, men and women, old and young, every one of them pale to an unnatural degree, as though they had gone years without sunlight.
At their head was an old man whose face was a mass of gullies, kneeling and knocking his forehead low before Zhao Bing.
"Those are the temple-keepers."
Someone had drifted over to explain things to Li Fei. "Generation after generation, their line has guarded, repaired and maintained the ancestral temple, and presided over its rites great and small. In a thousand years, not one temple-keeper has set half a foot outside these walls."
"My thanks for the instruction, Lord Chang."
Li Fei cupped her hands toward the powerfully built man beside her, whose smile was mild and warm.
His name was Chang Bin. He had once been an old subordinate of Nie Yunyi's, serving as strategist, devoted to laying plans for the great general. He had no cultivation base of his own, but he was dependable in his work, and Nie Yunyi had trusted him deeply.
Unfortunately, when power changed hands in the Demon Suppression Bureau, Lord Chang had abandoned Nie Yunyi without hesitation, pledged himself to Lu Qianfan, and become the ninth adopted son. In the years since, with the Nine Thousand Years' position secure, there had been no rush to take in new sons — which left Chang Bin still the youngest of the brood.
Chang Bin was about to say something more, but Zhao Bing cut him off.
"You will first assist Minister Li in completing the rite… Three hundred years. Our Great Song has waited far too long for a new Saint to come into the world."
"This old servant obeys the edict."
The old temple-keeper's cloudy eyes shifted, and he gestured to Li Fei. "Lord Li, please follow me."
Li Fei did as she was told, and before long they stood at the center of the temple.
There she saw a great pitch-black cauldron. The ground around it was cut with a dense network of grooves, weird and intricate lines interlacing into a pattern very like a coiling dragon.
"Please seat yourself within the cauldron, my lord."
There was something faintly skin-crawling about the old man's smile, but Li Fei did not hesitate for an instant. She hopped straight in.
At once the temple-keepers, men and women, old and young, set to work with practiced speed.
The old keeper scattered a handful of grain seed into the cauldron with his own hands. The others hoisted bronze vessels and poured a black-red liquid steadily into the grooves, then set a sword, a book, a pig's head, and an ingot of gold at the east, south, west and north.
Last of all they took up instruments of strange and crooked shape, circling the cauldron, dancing and gesturing without pause, playing as they went and humming a melody of bizarre construction:
"Cuan — cu — fa — nang — shuo — long — mi — ji — fan…"
Within that hoarse, ill-fitting melody, the liquid in the grooves began to boil, and Li Fei felt with perfect clarity that some unseen power was working upon her.
She pulled open the System Panel and saw, in the Achievements column, a line of characters sharpening out of a blur:
False Saint of Merit and Virtue: Luck +3, Command +3 (within the borders of the Great Song, an additional Luck +10 and Command +10)
Fortune!
The word came bursting out of Li Fei's mind.
Her guess was that being invested as a Saint by this thousand-year-old kingdom had drawn some hidden endowment of Fortune down onto her, and that was the source of the benefit. This rite was simply the Transcendent ceremony by which that Fortune was poured into her body.
Even at the Magic Academy, however, Fortune was a highly advanced subject. Its laws and its modes of influence were fiendishly complex, and the upper-year courses only skimmed the surface of it.
Li Fei let the question rest, closed her eyes, and waited for the rite to end.
An hour later it was over, and the liquid in the grooves had vanished away to nothing in that short span.
Li Fei sprang out of the cauldron. Even the dim yellow lamplight seemed brighter now — that feeling of being favored by all creation was something she had previously only ever gotten from drinking a Potent Luck Potion.
"Minister Li, Our rivers and mountains will look to your care in the years to come."
Zhao Bing stepped up and patted her shoulder, his tone one of complete confidence.
"It is no more than this subject's duty."
Li Fei inclined her head, and her eyes went dark and deep.
"Good. Now the rite must be performed for Our imperial child."
Zhao Bing turned and gave the order.
"This old servant requires a drop of blood from Your Majesty, and from Her Majesty the Empress."
The old temple-keeper bowed and held out a needle.
At the sight, the five of Lu Qianfan's adopted sons other than Chang Bin all went a little stiff about the face, and even held their breath.
Because what came next was the secret art that would test whether the bloodline growing in the Empress and the blood of the Son of Heaven sprang from the same source…
"Such tedious formalities may well be dispensed with."
Zhao Bing flicked his sleeve airily. "Whose flesh and blood is in the Empress's belly? Do We not know that ourselves?"
"Your Majesty, the law of the ancestors cannot be altered."
The old keeper's bearing was all humility, but he did not draw the silver needle back.
"Very well, then…"
Zhao Bing sighed and was reaching for the needle when Li Fei cut in.
"Your Majesty, before the rite, permit this subject to work an immortal art first — a blessing to be laid upon the dragon fetus."
Li Fei smiled prettily. "By happy coincidence, this art of mine is named 'Dragon's Strength.' It should assure the dragon child's Flourishing Growth hereafter, free of every care and sorrow…"
Su Wen's hand closed into a fist. She sighed, low and faraway, and a thread of grief entered her eyes.
"Oh? Such a fine thing as that — why did you not say so sooner, beloved minister?"
The dragon countenance was instantly delighted.
"So as to prepare a surprise for Your Majesty and Her Majesty the Empress."
Li Fei's smile was not quite a smile.
"Good, good, good."
Zhao Bing laughed aloud. "Beloved minister, you truly are Our lucky star! Do as you see fit."
"Your Majesty, in this subject's humble view, there would be no harm in waiting until the rite is concluded and we have returned to the palace before Lord Li bestows her blessing."
Chang Bin stepped forward suddenly and cupped his hands. "The rite requires an auspicious day and hour, after all. It cannot be delayed—"
"If Minister Li has chosen this moment, she has her reasons."
Zhao Bing waved the suggestion away before Li Fei needed to open her mouth, every word of it steeped in his trust for her.
"Ninth Brother, is it you who understands medicine, or Lord Li?"
Even Xu Yuzhong, a fellow adopted son of Lu Qianfan, came forward to smooth things over. "When has Lord Li ever disappointed His Majesty? Step back at once, and don't spoil the proceedings."
At those words, the back of Chang Bin's robe went damp with cold sweat.
During the investiture just now, when his own faction had stood silent, he had felt the wrongness of it.
Now Xu Yuzhong was speaking up for Li Fei personally, and the concern in his tone came down on Chang Bin's heart like a hammer.
— When did the immortal maiden get so close to Foster Father?! Why am I the only one who doesn't know?
Dread welled in him. Chang Bin understood that his years of swallowing his pride and biding his time, and of passing word to Nie Yunyi, had in all likelihood been exposed.
He set his teeth and meant to press the point again, but Su Wen herself spoke.
"Begin, then."
"This subject obeys."
Li Fei gave the emperor one long look, then smiled at Su Wen, and began to chant:
"Magnus et nobilis draco deus…"
In a dragon's cry that hovered at the edge of hearing, mana began to boil. It was as though a slumbering divine dragon had opened its eyes, and the terrible presence rising from it set sun and moon shivering.
"An immortal art such as this…"
Even Zhao Bing felt that lofty, mighty aura. His legs shook beneath him; he wanted to fall down and worship.
Yet his eyes only shone brighter as he looked at the red-robed woman official with gratitude and satisfaction.
To guard the dragon fetus she was unleashing an art that shook heaven and earth — the cost to her must be enormous.
Once this business was done, she must be rewarded, and richly!
Chancellor Liu, who had not said a single word from first to last, frowned thoughtfully and slid his hand quietly into his sleeve.
"Draco Power!"
As the last syllable left her lips, a dragon's roar answered it, and a waterfall of pure, mighty mana poured out of the spell model and drenched Li Fei.
In that same instant the battle qi vortex began to turn, an ominous red glare gushing from it, staining the peaceful, solemn ancestral temple the scarlet of blood.
"Beloved minister."
Zhao Bing could not wait. "That blessing of yours—"
He was about to step forward, but as Li Fei turned her head, the emperor stopped where he stood.
Because he had never seen Li Fei look like this.
Her face was flushed, the line of her lips curling upward, her breath hot as it went in and out; and her pitch-black eyes were an abyss — scalding, mad, hungry for blood, and at once brimming with cold cruelty, contempt and mockery, every evil in the world writhing together in them.
In the single instant their gazes met, Zhao Bing plunged into an ice cellar, as though a huge black hand had reached out of that abyss, seized his heart, and would never let go.
But he heard it clearly — a delicate cry, laced with bliss:
"Lord Chang means to assassinate His Majesty! Guard the Emperor, quickly!"
Before Zhao Bing could gather his wits, a deep crimson blade-light filled his vision.
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