Jade Still Cold, Crimson Strings Run Deep - Chapter 1

Wen Zhuxian came in among a group of women, her eyes lowered and her manner demure. I spotted her at once.

I couldn’t help it. There was something unmistakable about her: a stillness and reserve unlike anyone else’s.

Her grandfather, Wen Ting, the Left Chancellor, had placed first in the provincial, metropolitan, and palace examinations. People said the Star of Literature himself must have descended to earth. Zhuxian came from a scholarly family and had always been his favorite grandchild. He had taught her himself.

Wen Ting had been tutor to the emperor, to the Crown Prince, and to the princes at the Academy of Letters. When he had no time to mark his students’ assignments, Zhuxian often did it for him. She was only eight then.

Her handwriting looked remarkably like his. But a child’s wrist lacked the strength to keep up the disguise, and she was soon found out.

The princes made an uproar in the imperial study. They felt humiliated at having their work marked by an eight-year-old girl.

His Majesty read her comments and burst out laughing, clapping his hands. “Every word is incisive and to the point. Her breadth of vision and the originality of her judgments surpass yours. What has she done wrong?”

Beside him, Wen Ting stood with his hands folded. At the emperor’s words he bowed. “Your Majesty is wise.”

The princes were so furious they could only laugh. From then on, they bore Zhuxian a grudge. They dared not blame the emperor or reproach Wen Ting, so they picked on the person who seemed most vulnerable.

Zhuxian paid no heed to their barbs. Her grandfather gave her too much schoolwork to waste time on them.

At ten, she took part in a gathering where eminent scholars debated philosophy. Under her grandfather’s proud gaze, she made a name for herself. From that day on, the name Wen Zhuxian meant more than “Wen Ting’s granddaughter.” She was a rising star, a future giant of letters in the making.

With her family, looks, learning, and talent, if she didn’t marry a prince, only an emperor would do. But every prince disliked her. She had outshone them since childhood; none wanted her around.

The emperor worried himself sick over whom she might marry. In the end, the Crown Prince seemed the only one who could just about match her.

Everyone thought her future would be smooth. Then Wen Ting died.

The Wen family fell into bitter infighting. Wen Ting had been the one person holding them together. As soon as he was gone, the rabble beneath him fought like gamecocks over petty gains.

The Crown Prince seized the opportunity to destroy the whole family. He had never wanted to marry Zhuxian. Years ago, she had torn his assignments to shreds with her comments, and he had nursed the insult ever since. He would sooner see the entire Wen clan dead than wed that old pedant.

In the blink of an eye, Zhuxian’s relatives were gone. She was alone, with nowhere to turn. The Crown Prince had left her alive on purpose. Hadn’t she once written on his work, “A lone claim cannot stand, nor a single tree support a house”? Let her discover what it meant to stand alone.

He meant to make her taste every hardship the world could offer. He imagined that this noble girl, raised in comfort high above everyone else, would soon break beneath the grime and petty worries of ordinary life. He waited happily for news of her suicide.

Instead, Zhuxian found lodgings in a bookshop and began marking essays for candidates who had come to the capital for the examinations. With her guidance, their writing improved, and their rankings visibly climbed. More candidates came, offering large sums just for a few lines of her comments on their work.

When it looked as though she might become known as the “Teacher of All Under Heaven,” the Crown Prince smashed the porcelain in his palace.

Soon Zhuxian was thrown into prison on false charges. The Crown Prince heaped every accusation a scholar would dread upon her: leaking examination questions, bribing examiners, plagiarizing essays. To my surprise, many believed him.

“How could a mere woman possess such learning? Of course she was cheating!”

The curious part was that most of those joining the chorus had never studied, much less written an examination essay. Of the candidates whose work she had marked, some burned their essays. Others stayed silent. Only a handful offered feeble objections: “Lady Wen isn’t what you say. She really is learned.”

Their voices were too few and too faint. The tide of condemnation swallowed them.

The emperor was gravely ill and had not held court for almost a year. No one dared tell him what the Crown Prince had done to Zhuxian. Everyone pretended not to hear or see.

When it seemed she would die unjustly in prison, I reached out and pulled her free.

The day she emerged, the sky was clear and the sun struck her full in the eyes. She squinted for a long while before she could bear the light. Then at last she saw me.

I had been watching her all along. In plain, pale clothes, she walked slowly toward me, each step steady. Her eyes were clear and bright, like pebbles washed by a stream, gleaming in the sun.

Zhuxian’s spirit was as firm as stone. It had carried her this far. But unless she recognized her situation and stopped opposing the Crown Prince, that same resolve would take her straight to the grave.

I stayed inside my carriage and lifted the curtain only halfway, so she could not see all of me.

“Wen Zhuxian, leave the capital. Go as far away as you can. The Crown Prince is petty and holds grudges. You won’t be able to make a living from your scholarship here again.”

I gave her a packet of silver and a travel permit, then set off back to the palace.

I thought that was the last I would ever see of her. Yet half a month later, there she was again, standing before me among a group of women.