To Embers We Return — Chapter 46
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Shen Ni had not slept well in the last few days, and the dark circles under her eyes were more pronounced than ever. She hadn’t felt like bothering with makeup, so she’d simply slipped her sunglasses on to hide them.
In her crimson robes of office, her futou and those dark glasses, she cut a striking figure: young and beautiful, with the air of a maverick unfettered by the shackles of convention. Excitement rippled through the watching students as she made her way to the front of the stage.
Shen Ni, peering at the audience through her sunglasses, found their mood to be completely different from what she’d imagined. She’d been expecting to see drawn, anxious faces, but what greeted her now were row after row of smitten expressions.
Well. It seemed she’d underestimated the resilience of the youth of Chang’an.
Without much in the way of preamble, Shen Ni retrieved a recording from her memory module and projected it onto the screen beside her. ‘This is something I encountered soon after I arrived in the north,’ she told the audience. ‘Take a look.’
The recording began to play. An old woman in tattered rags hobbled towards the camera through the murk of the night, using a tree branch as a crutch. Behind her limped a dog so skinny that its ribs were showing through its skin. As she came closer to Shen Ni, she stretched out a withered hand. ‘My lord,’ she croaked, ‘some food … please…’
Shen Ni paused the recording. ‘What would you do in this situation?’ she asked the audience.
An eager young man in the front row was the first to respond. ‘That would depend on how much food I was carrying with me. If I had more than enough for myself, there should be no harm sharing some of it with the old lady.’
The classmate sitting next to him, a soft-spoken, scholarly-looking young man, added, ‘The old lady must be a very kind person, I can tell. Even in her desperate state, she’s kept her dog alive as a companion instead of eating it. We couldn’t possibly allow someone as caring as that to starve.’
A low murmur of discussion rose from the crowd. Shen Ni gave no comment on the students’ answers; she simply continued playing the recording.
In the projection, Shen Ni held out a piece of hardtack to the old woman. ‘Here, this is for you. Come and get it.’
This seemed to put the old woman on her guard against Shen Ni. Her hand tightened around the branch; her features were shrouded in darkness. She did not step forward. The dog, meanwhile, had flopped down next to her and now lay completely motionless on the ground. It did not twitch a single muscle.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Shen Ni in the projection. ‘Don’t you want it?’
Because the memory had been recorded from Shen Ni’s perspective, her face was not visible, and the audience could only hear her. Her voice was warm and kindly, with a hint of a smile to it. It sounded like a trap
The old woman raised a trembling hand and waved feebly at Shen Ni. ‘Please, I beg you … some food … we’re so hungry, me and the dog…’
‘You don’t want to come over here? That’s all right. I said I was giving this to you, and so I shall.’ Shen Ni tossed the piece of hardtack towards the old woman. ‘Here. Catch.’
Then, as the old woman looked up, Shen Ni lunged towards her. The old woman’s face filled the screen in extreme close-up, and now the audience could see every detail of it. Her eyeballs were vibrating wildly in their sockets, and her expression was frozen in shock. It was clear that her life force was being siphoned away by some unseen being: there was a shrivelled cast to her features, and she was so thin that she looked like nothing more than a layer of skin wrapped around fleshless bone. Her face was so bloodless that it had taken on a tinge of green. She seemed barely human.
A good half of the audience cried out at this terrifying sight. Some even turned their faces away from the screen, or clapped their hands over their eyes.
In the recording, Shen Ni showed no sign of hesitation. She brought her battlestaff down on the old woman’s skull, shattering it into pieces. The old woman collapsed limply onto the ground, and Shen Ni’s gaze shifted to the dog. Strictly speaking, it was only half a dog: the lower part of its body was nothing but a few bones and some ragged scraps of flesh. The rest was long gone.
A student blurted out, ‘The dog—’
‘Dead,’ Shen Ni replied. ‘It was no more than a piece of bait. All of you will have realised by now that the old woman’s speech patterns were very simple and limited, and she was only capable of repeating the same request over and over. That’s because her body had already been taken over by the Black Box, and she was no longer human. What makes the Black Box most dangerous is its ability to consume: it will swallow up the most powerful creature in its vicinity to grow its own strength. Acting on instinct, it was wandering around the wasteland with the dog as bait, fishing for victims. Whichever soft-hearted fool was senseless enough to approach it would become its next victim.’
Another student exclaimed, ‘The Black Box knew to use the dog as bait?’
‘Exactly,’ said Shen Ni. ‘The Black Box had a rudimentary ability for mimicry, and was able to imitate the behaviour of humans to some degree. Note that I say had and was: that is no longer the case.’
The audience sighed in relief. ‘Is that because of the government’s efforts to contain the virus?’ asked one of the students. ‘Is that why it has lost the ability to mimic humans?’
‘No,’ said Shen Ni. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. Through its very own efforts, the Black Box has been able to evolve intelligence.’
Gasps of shock rippled through the crowd. The smitten expressions were instantly wiped from the students’ faces, replaced by looks of fear.
That drew a smile from Bian Jin, who was watching from the back of the room. She found this turn of events rather amusing. Now that her attention was fully absorbed in Shen Ni, the strange ache in her chest was beginning to dissipate. Shen Ni’s charm had captivated her utterly.
Li Shan, meanwhile, was observing the proceedings from a corner of the stage. Instead of retiring to one of the academic offices, she’d chosen a spot where she could see Shen Ni throughout.
At the bluntness of Shen Ni’s last remark, Xue Pi, the Principal of Chongwen Academy, flung Li Shan a meaningful look. Li Shan couldn’t help feeling rather embarrassed. After all, she was the one who had talked Xue Pi into inviting Shen Ni here, by praising Shen Ni fulsomely to his face. She’d painted a picture of Shen Ni as both an engaging speaker and an experienced official with a steady head on her shoulders — someone who could be relied on to keep the situation under perfect control. But now, in just a few brief sentences, Shen Ni had exposed the Black Box’s biggest secret to the assembled listeners, risking mass panic.
Xue Pi, of course, would never dare criticise a royal prince openly. But his aged eyes were full of unease.
Shen Ni, however, did not allow the audience to descend into chaos. Her direct, almost brutal words had swept away the air of frivolity that had pervaded the room just moments ago. Now, the lecture theatre was so silent that one could hear a pin drop. Shen Ni eyed the terrified students in front of her. Very good, she thought. Now she could finally begin her lecture in earnest.
Briefly but concisely, she sketched out a compelling picture of the devastation she’d seen when she had first arrived in the north. The students listened with something akin to reverence. There was a preternatural composure to Shen Ni, born from the extreme cruelties she’d witnessed during her time on the battlefield; it made her seem far older than her years. The listening students found it difficult to imagine how many times Marquess Jing’an — who was, after all, around the same age as them — must have walked the fine line between life and death. The charnel pits of the north had been her training ground.
‘In any case,’ Shen NI continued, ‘the Black Box is no longer what it once was. It has developed intelligence, making it even more unpredictable than before. While our previous experiences with the Black Box might still serve as useful points of reference, they can no longer be relied on as the absolute, life-saving truth.’
‘Then do we have any chance of survival left?’ asked a student, his voice trembling.
‘All things are possible,’ said Shen Ni gravely.
‘That’s a rather glib answer, isn’t it, my lord?’ another student protested. ‘Isn’t there anything reassuring you can tell us?’
Shen Ni surveyed the audience over the rims of her sunglasses. ‘Sooner or later, everyone dies,’ she said. ‘It’s just a matter of time. So there’s no need to be afraid when you find yourself confronting death. Was that reassuring enough for you?’
The students exchanged glances.
Shen Ni’s words had been far from comforting, of course. But at the same time, they gave one a strange sense of calm that could only have come from extreme despair. It felt oddly liberating.
After that baptism of fire, the mood in the lecture theatre became livelier again. Bian Jin watched as Shen Ni continued her lecture, pausing every now and then to take questions from the students. Shen Ni really had grown up quite a lot during those years she’d spent in the north, thought Bian Jin. When it came to navigating court politics, she was fully in her element; now, as a lecturer, she’d gone straight to the heart of her subject, and had the audience practically eating out of her hand. She was so captivating, so charming, that it was no wonder so many people were drawn to her.
Bian Jin glanced quietly at Li Shan, who was standing in a corner of the stage. She recalled the day Li Shan had forced her way into Shen Ni’s residence with the officials of the Court of Judicature in tow, and how imperiously she’d swept into the room. But now, Li Shan’s eyes were fixed on Shen Ni. Her gaze was intent, and full of admiration.
That was only to be expected. Shen Ni and Li Shan were both machinists, and Shen Ni was unquestionably the most outstanding one of the current generation. Given the dizzying heights of her Talent, there was every chance that her name would pass on into legend. It was hardly surprising that Li Shan should look up to her.
And as for whether her earlier determination to prove Shen Ni’s new wife guilty of treason had been motivated at least in part by her personal feelings … well, only Li Shan herself knew for sure. Given Shen Ni’s youth, her many achievements, that air of confidence that bordered on arrogance, and — of course — that beauty so great it left a lasting impression on anyone who laid eyes on her, it was no wonder that even a royal prince like Li Shan would have lost her heart to her.
It all made sense. Bian Jin understood the logic of it very clearly. But for the first time in her life, reason held no sway over her; it did nothing to dispel the ache that surged through her heart.
As a young girl, Shen Ni had always had something of the pampered child about her, so closely had she been guarded by Bian Jin, who could not bear the thought of her shimei being exposed to the merest trace of hardship. All that had been worn away by the trials she’d faced and overcome in the intervening years. The innocent child Bian Jin remembered had become a woman, as competent and reliable as she was charming. So much had changed, and Bian Jin found herself missing those years when she and Shen Ni’s lives had revolved entirely around each other, with nothing and no one to disturb their idyll. Those years when she had been Shen Ni’s only lodestar.
On stage, Shen Ni had finished telling the audience everything about the Black Box that she’d come to say. She was about to make her farewells when one of the students said, in a heavily accented voice, ‘Don’t go yet, marquess jiejie. Isn’t there a question-and-answer session after this?’
‘Marquess jiejie’? thought Shen Ni. What outlandish term of address is that?
‘What would you like to ask?’ she said.
The student had clearly come from one of TangPro’s vassal kingdoms. His shock of reddish-brown hair made him stand out from the crowd, and his newly grown moustache had been tended to with obvious care. Having successfully provoked a response from Shen Ni, he stood up amid the envious gazes of his fellow audience members.
‘May I ask a personal question, marquess jiejie?’
Shen Ni was about to reply with a firm, ‘No,’ when, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a figure who looked like Bian Jin. For a moment she thought she’d overstrained her eyes so much that she was seeing things. She blinked rapidly a few times, then looked back at the same spot. Bian Jin really was standing there at the back of the room, pushed so close against the doors by the press of the crowd that she was in danger of being squeezed out. If not for her tall, graceful figure and the fact that Shen Ni was keenly attuned to her presence, she might have gone completely unnoticed.
The student, taking Shen Ni’s silence for assent, launched enthusiastically into his question. ‘When it comes to romance, marquess jiejie, do you have a type?’
Well, thought Shen Ni, that certainly is a very personal question. She could scarcely imagine anything more so.
Fan Sen’s words drew jeers and groans from the rest of the crowd. ‘How could you ask such a rude question, Fan Sen?’ chided another student. ‘Don’t you know that our marquess jiejie is already married?’
‘What?’ exclaimed Fan Sen, looking incredulous.
In her corner of the stage, Li Shan smirked to herself. There was no way Shen Ni would ever answer such an inane question, she was sure.
Shen Ni’s gaze flitted over the heads of the crowd and, amid the assembled stares of the audience, fixed itself firmly on Bian Jin. ‘I like sophisticated older women,’ she said. ‘Like my wife.’
A chorus of admiring exclamations rose from the crowd. Meng Chu, standing just beside Bian Jin, clapped a hand to her mouth and let out an inward shriek of excitement. What a good idea it had been to bring Bian jiejie with her, she thought. Now everyone in the room had the chance to witness this momentous public display of affection! Her gaze crept admiringly up and down Bian Jin’s profile.
On the surface, Bian Jin looked as calm and composed as ever, but the tips of her ears were already burning. ‘Please stop looking,’ she said with as much iciness as she could muster.
Li Shan’s expression had stiffened. She followed Shen Ni’s gaze, and it was then that she realised Bian Jin was in the lecture theatre. The two of them were looking at each other through the crowd as if they were the only ones in the room. She could never have imagined that she would one day see Shen Ni — cold as steel, sharp as a blade — flirting openly with her wife under the curious stares of a huge audience.
Li Shan saw, too, that a single glance from Bian Jin had been enough to bring a smile to Shen Ni’s lips; her entire demeanour had softened. Overcome with a suffocating sense of embarrassment, Li Shan’s head drooped, and she left the lecture theatre silently.
Fan Sen had first come to TangPro as a student two years ago, and had gone home the year before. He had returned to Chang’an for the second time just days before the Black Box’s invasion. When he realised he was the target of the crowd’s ridicule, his astonishment redoubled. ‘Inconceivable!’ he declared. ‘She’s already married? But she’s so young!’
Shen Ni didn’t even have to open her mouth; a helpful member of the audience was already responding on her behalf. ‘Not only is she married, but the match was decreed by Her Majesty the emperor herself!’
‘Don’t any of you have academic questions to ask?’ Shen Ni interposed.
‘But marquess jiejie, you seemed quite happy to answer my question,’ said Fan Sen.
‘Yes,’ another student piped up. ‘You looked like you were enjoying yourself.’
‘If I ask an academic question, will that help me win a wonderful wife?’ a third student wanted to know.
Never before had quick-witted, sharp-tongued Shen Ni found the ground cut out from under her feet quite so swiftly. For the first time, she understood how it felt to have one’s protestations fall on deaf ears.
Bian Jin, seeing that the official part of the lecture had come to an end, slipped out of the building. Shen Ni hastily wrapped up her concluding remarks, then followed Bian Jin outside.
She found Bian Jin and Meng Chu just a short distance away from the academy. As soon as Meng Chu laid her eyes on Shen Ni, she immediately took her leave. ‘Bian jiejie, I’ll wait for you at Lantai,’ she told Bian Jin. ‘Though you don’t have to go back there, of course.’ Her eyes flitted back and forth restlessly between Shen Ni and Bian Jin.
Bian Jin tried not to think about the lurid imaginings that were no doubt filling Meng Chu’s mind.
Once Meng Chu had left, Shen Ni subtly shuffled a little closer to Bian Jin. ‘How did you know to look for me here?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t here especially to look for you,’ said Bian Jin. ‘My colleague wanted to attend the lecture, so I came along with her. I wasn’t expecting to find both you and Prince Yong here.’
Shen Ni looked at her quizzically. Why had Bian Jin brought up Prince Yong all of a sudden? And perhaps it was her imagination, but she couldn’t help fancying that the way Bian Jin pronounced Li Shan’s title had a distinct acidic tang to it.
It probably is just my imagination, Shen Ni told herself. She knew her shijie well. She could imagine Bian Jin enduring all manner of physical violence, but indulging in jealousy? That was impossible.
‘Then did you mean what you said earlier about having lunch together?’
Now that Shen Ni was standing right in front of Bian Jin, smiling so sweetly and gazing intently at her and her only, that unaccountable ache Bian Jin had felt just moments ago was no longer rearing its head.
‘What would you like to eat?’ she asked.
‘Whatever you’d like me to.’
Bian Jin smiled. ‘And just like that, you’ve gone back to being the obedient shimei again, now that you’ve finished teasing me.’
‘When did I ever tease you?’
‘Isn’t that what you were doing just now, when you said in front of all those people that … that your wife was your type?’
Shen Ni took a sudden step closer to her, and their eyes met. ‘Do you think I was just teasing you when I said you were my type?’
A hint of tension flashed through Bian Jin’s eyes, but she did not draw back or move away from Shen Ni. That tiny detail did not go unnoticed by Shen Ni. Her gaze travelled downwards and lingered on Bian Jin’s lips.
‘To be perfectly honest,’ Bian Jin began. She paused for a moment, then went on, ‘The reason I was looking for you was to ask whether you had time to go to the Civil Affairs Bureau with me, to see about activating the spousal module.
Shen Ni stared at her in astonishment.
***
As the two of them sat side by side in a small room at the Civil Affairs Bureau, Shen Ni hastily submitted their activation request through the department’s digital portal.
The official in charge of the procedure was a kindly-looking older woman. She cheerfully took them through the steps of setting up the module, completely unflustered by the fact that she had the most famous couple in the capital sitting in front of her.
She looked down at the activation request, studying it for a few moments. Then she looked up again, seeming somewhat at a loss. ‘Your intimacy score is too low,’ she said. ‘I can’t complete the activation process for you.’
‘Intimacy score?’ Shen Ni and Bian Jin exclaimed in chorus.
***
Author’s Note:
So, how should they go about increasing their intimacy score…?
***
