by Jeremy Han
Eliminate all threats to the Dragon Throne.
Ji Gang was ushered through the maze-like buildings until he reached the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the throne room where the long yi ‘the seat of the Dragon’ stood before the eunuch left Ji Gang alone to contemplate the reason why he was here. Whenever Ji Gang entered the palace he wondered if he would walk out of the Eastern Gate, or be carried out headless. Interestingly the East Gate, the gate designated for officials to enter the palace, was also known as the Ghost Gate because it was the gate where those who died in the palace were carried back out again.
Ji Gang hated this place. All of its grandeur would never disguise its dark secrets. He was only too aware how much blood had been shed inside the magnificent palace that was said to hold nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine rooms. The Forbidden City never failed to chill his spine.
Originally built by the Yong Le Emperor, the great hall was the heart of the empire. With no court session, the cavernous room was empty that day. The rows of ministers and princes who reported to the emperor on all affairs of state were absent, as were the eunuchs who surrounded the monarch during court. The golden throne mesmerised him, as he felt the power radiating from it like the sun. Officials would come forward to this throne to submit their reports to the emperor before they debated affairs of the state. It sat on a raised pedestal like an island with three stairways leading to the emperor’s seat. A huge plaque with the words ‘Honourable and Righteous’ painted in gold hung over the throne. Before it, life and death were decided, wars were declared, and history was made or erased. From where Ji Gang stood the Long yi looked too big for a child. The halls, the pillars, the empire, the enemies, all of them outsized the young boy. He clenched his fist, as he guessed why he was summoned. Dark clouds were surrounding the throne indeed.
“Commander,” an elegant, female voice said, breaking his reverie. Ji Gang turned and knelt with his forehead touching the ground. He recognised the voice.
“Your Majesty.”
Empress dowager Zhang, the mother of the emperor came out of the shadows in slow, measured steps. Her hips swayed in the way a woman who’s feet were bound would. He wondered how long she had stood there. There were so many pillars that she could have been watching him from behind any of them.
“Rise, Commander Ji Gang. Thank you for coming.”
As though I had a choice, Ji Gang thought.
The empress dowager wore a dark red silk dress that radiated power. Her hair was elaborately combed and studded with beads. Powder covered her skin, and she was strikingly beautiful with oval eyes and a rosebud lip. As the second wife her son should not have sat on the throne, but there she was, regent to the boy-emperor. Ji Gang sized her up. This woman was as dangerous as a bear defending her cub. She could have summoned him to several different places where it was more conducive to talk, but she had arranged for him to be sent to the throne room. The place was meant to remind him he was not talking to a mere woman. She had planned this meeting well. It was not casual, no meeting with the most powerful woman in the Ming ever was, and already the hierarchy was firmly established between ruler and ruled.
“Come, Commander.” She turned, and though he was the most dangerous man in the empire, he followed her like an obedient dog. She led him to a quiet pavilion in a garden behind the great hall. There were Jinyi Wei ‘imperial bodyguards’ everywhere, and they bowed as she walked passed them, their heads remaining low until the tall and bald commander passed them as well. Ji Gang was a legend. Formerly a Jinyi Wei himself, he was tasked by the then Yong Le Emperor to head the newly founded Eastern Depot. He turned the fledging intelligence agency into the deadliest in the entire Ming. Ji Gang was no longer young, but he kept his broad muscular frame. Nothing sagged on him, and the very fact that he lived into his fifties as the deadliest man in the empire was a testament to his ability.
Where they sat they could see the boy-emperor playing with his eunuch companion, a castrate called Wang Zhen. The boy was chasing a butterfly as the eunuch followed him to make sure the Son of Heaven did not fall and hurt himself. Their laughter floated over like music to her ears. The empress dowager sat there silent for a while, watching her son play with obvious love and joy on her face. Slowly, her bright rose-red lips curled and a smile blossomed over her features. She turned to the commander after a maid had poured him a drink.
“See how my son, the emperor, enjoys himself,” she remarked as she unconsciously tapped her nails on the table. She had the look of the envious. With her bound feet, she could not run in the gardens with her son and she sounded almost wistful, as any mother who could not scamper with her own flesh-and-blood would. She could only sit and watch, while servants did what her heart yearned to do.
“Yes Majesty,” he replied blandly. You did not summon me here to watch your son play.
He looked at the woman’s hands. Her nails were long in the traditional fashion and elaborately painted, beautiful, but to him they looked like claws. Ji Gang respected her abilities. For a concubine to become an empress dowager was not easy. An emperor had more women than nights to spend with them, and only the fortunate ones ever got noticed. The luckier ones bore him children, but only the clever, scheming ones became empress dowager after outwitting those who also gave him sons. It was a known fact that concubines lived boring, unloved lives, and the only way to break out of that was to gain the emperor’s favour. Concubines went as far as to bribe the eunuchs who were in charge of assigning women to the imperial chamber. These eunuchs would put their favoured ladies ahead of others in the queue to give their lord pleasure.
She reminded him of an eagle, a hunter. As regent, she was the real power. How could an eight year-old govern an empire as vast as the Ming? It was like a child trying to tame a tiger. How could a child protect something as coveted as the Dragon Throne? Fixing her brown eyes onto his, she spoke.
“Do you think there are threats to my son’s reign?”
Ji Gang raised an eyebrow before he replied. “Threats, Majesty? What made you think that?”
“Surely you have heard about the unrest in the south.”
“The killings?”
She nodded slowly, eyes never leaving Ji Gang. Of course the agent had heard of them. Nothing ever escaped the Eastern Depot’s ears.
“What does the Dong Chang make of that?”
“The Eastern Depot does not hunt demons and ghosts, your Majesty.”
“I am afraid, Commander.” She pointed to the pond the pavilion was built over. “On the surface it looks so calm, but who knows what lurks beneath?” At that moment, a dragonfly hovering over the water disappeared as a fish launched itself out of the murky green like a sea monster and gulped the insect. The ripples died, and there was no trace that the dragonfly had ever existed.
She said with grave concern, “A demoness with many hands murders my greatest generals and my garrisons get wiped out by this man from hell. How, Commander, could I not worry?” She fixed him with a sidelong glance, trying to see if he was mocking her. His eyes fixed on her red nails again and he noticed a nervous tremor.
“The Eastern Depot will never allow any harm to befall the House of Zhu,” Ji Gang said firmly.
“What do you know of this man Zhu Wenkui?” she asked again. She flitted a glance at her son as he ran laughing past the pavilion.
“He was supposed to have died at the age of two, thirty-three years ago.” Ji Gang remembered the entire unfortunate incident when the then Prince of Yan Zhu Di staged a rebellion against his nephew the Jian Wen Emperor. The prince won and had become the Yong Le Emperor. Zhu Wenkui was the two year-old crown prince, son of Jian Wen who perished that night with his mother and sibling. Only the Jian Wen Emperor had escaped, and he knew that he still lived. However, Ji Gang did not want to resurrect the past. He did not want to reveal too much. The empress dowager was too young to know the truth of that night and the subsequent bloodbath that followed.
“A man by that name had surfaced in t
he south, claiming to be the rightful heir to the throne,” she continued, probing to see how the commander would respond. Ji Gang waited until she sighed pitifully, playing the woman in distress. Ji Gang had to say something,
“He is dead, Majesty. It is recorded in the Ming Shi ‘Ming Histories’.
Her eyebrows almost touched each other as she frowned. “Do not treat me as a dumb woman, Ji Gang. I know what the official documents say. What I want to know is the truth. Could this man, if he is alive, be a threat to the throne?”
“If he is Majesty, we will present his head to you in a box so that your Majesty would be able to sleep with no worries.” Ji Gang’s eyes fixed firmly on hers. He did not blink. The Eastern Depot had heard of the rumours of the emergence of the long dead prince, who claimed he was going to regain his position and eventually become emperor. Just a year before, floods and famines had struck the southern provinces and amidst the problems there came the rumour of the supposedly dead prince’s re-emergence. Yet, no one had actually seen him. The Ming was vast and news was sketchy. Rumours of fake princes and long-lost kings were common, and unless they had any evidence the Eastern Depot would not take action, leaving the issues to the local authorities to deal with the imposters and the insane.
“Do not underestimate the danger I am in, Ji Gang. It is not uncommon for someone of my circumstances to be suddenly found dead, and my son removed.” Ji Gang realised she knew more about regicide then she looked. She added, “If only someone, a male relative who is truly virtuous, could sit next to my son on the throne. His position would be more secure.”
“You want me to find that someone?” Ji Gang queried. His stomach tightened. This woman knew too much, and she was subtly guiding him to a conclusion she had planned for. Her reference to Zhu Wenkui was no coincidence. She had known that the Dong Chang were not after him yet, but knew that the mention of his name would stir something.
“Someone who is close to Zhu Wenkui?” he asked with a frown. “It will be a double insurance. If Zhu Wenkui is a real trouble-maker, he would easily be dealt with if the person you seek sits as co-regent with you.”
She smiled coyly, and at the edge of her lips a little powder started to flake. She knew the commander could read minds. She had studied him, his track record, his many successes and his only failure, which was now her only hope. How things happen for a reason!
“Yes, Majesty, I will approach the former emperor Jian Wen on your behalf,” he said with a bow.
“Thank you, Commander. I know my son is in good hands with you helming the Dong Chang.” She then stood to leave, calling to her son, the Zheng Tong Emperor, and together with their retinue of colourful servants in tow, went into their quarters. He had been dismissed.
As Ji Gang left the Forbidden City for the headquarters of the Eastern Depot he glanced backward at the retreating East Gate and breathed audibly, once more relieved that he came out with his head on his shoulders. His razor-sharp mind went through their conversation again. He had no doubt that the empress dowager was all iron below the velvet, unlike Yong Le whose brutality was open and obvious like a war hammer. She had more finesse though. She knew how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when giving orders that were impossible to fulfil. She was much unlike Yong Le, who had ordered the outright assassination of his nephew. She, on the other hand, wanted to deal with the threat of Zhu Wenkui on a more sophisticated level by using the banished father to subdue the son. Ji Gang had no doubt that if persuasion failed she would unleash the Eastern Depot on them once again, and that was a battle he did not want to relive. On the surface the mission looked harmless, but Ji Gang had guessed correctly about something. There was a lot about the threat in the south that she had not revealed – enough for her to dig into the unofficial past and try this unorthodox solution. And where had she gotten the information from if even the Dong Chang had not heard anything concrete?
Strange indeed. And how does the demoness fit in?
If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that nothing about this encounter had been coincidental.
6
The complex of the Dong Chang was located at the north of Dong-an ‘Eastern Peace’ Gate. It had several buildings, all utilitarian and harsh, designed specifically to instil fear. To Ji Gang it was home. To the rest of the empire this was hell on earth. There were two detention centres where torture was carried out: the one outside the wall of the compound was used to hold minor criminals where the one inside was the subject of ominous gossip and rumours as the place where enemies of the state were held and disposed off. Ji Gang walked past the well in the open yard and into the main hall, where a huge plaque hung at its entrance with the words Chao Ting Xin Fu ‘Heart and Bowel of the Imperial Court’. He walked absentmindedly, not noticing the wall filled with carvings of tigers and dragons. Not even the floor-to-ceiling portrait of the legendary general Yue Fei, which normally filled him with awe, caught his attention. He instead went straight into his office.
“Summon my deputies. I do not wish to see anyone else for the rest of the day,” He said to his secretary, The man bowed and went off to fulfil his commander’s wish.
Meng Da and Yong Ju, his zuoshi ‘left deputy’ and his youshi ‘right deputy’, marched smartly into his room. They bowed to the big man whose legs stretched out on the table. Ji Gang’s was not an extravagant man, and his room had always been sparse. Besides the shelves for storing documents and the commander’s desk, there was little else.
“Commander,” they greeted dutifully.
In response, Ji Gang slammed his fist on the table and screamed, “You bloody idiots! What are we doing regarding the cases in the south? What are our spies saying about it?”
The two men remained silent and braced themselves like fishermen facing a storm. They knew their commander well enough to know that his anger would pass and once the tempest of his outburst blew itself out, they would answer him. Ji Gang, for all his ruthlessness knew that his agents were good and he often gave them a free hand to conduct their investigations and offer their conclusions. But today, he had been out-manoeuvred by the empress dowager and it could drag the Dong Chang into deep trouble if indeed there was more than was meeting the eye. He pointed at Meng Da. Meng was from Nanjing, a clean-shaven, handsome man who’s eyes shone with intelligence.
“Speak!”
“Commander, all we know of are the three mysterious instances where military commanders were brutally killed by a female spirit with several arms. There was no instability to the region, so the Dong Chang did not investigate. We do not deal with the supernatural, Commander.”
“Woman with many hands, eh? I would like to fight her, and see if she cannot be killed,” Ji Gang fumed.
But what Meng had said was true. The Eastern Depot did not investigate ‘supernatural’ matters, but his instincts and experience had already alerted him to the fact that there was a lurking danger here. Turning to his other deputy, he continued
“Yong Ju, a ghost of the past has returned to haunt us. The Empress Dowager is concerned about the re-emergence of the man known as Zhu Wenkui.”
Yong’s mouth opened a fraction at that name. Yong was a young agent, Ji Gang’s very own protégé during the hunt for Jian Wen. It had been Yong’s first mission directly under Ji Gang, and was defeated by Jian Wen’s bodyguards on the night of their escape out of the Minge to a land where the Eastern Depot could not reach them. Damn this family! They keep coming back from the dead! The thought flashed across Yong’s mind as he vividly remembered the chase from fifteen years ago.
“But Commander, the Crown Prince’s comeback was only a rumour. Our spies reported that there was a man with that name who roused anger against the court in rural areas during the floods in the coastal provinces, claiming that the Son of Heaven had lost the mandate to rule. But when constables went to look for him, he was never found. Some of the places where he was said to have caused trouble did not even exist.”
Ji Gang retorted, “Just be
cause he was never arrested does not mean he does not exist. I want you to find out everything you can about him and the cases of his appearance and disappearance.” He turned to Meng Da. “Dig all you can into the murder case. I want to know everything about it. Talk to the magistrate’s office in those provinces, lean on them if you need to.”
“The army may not like it if we dig into their affairs,” Meng replied.
Ji Gang lectured the both of them, revealing what the empress dowager’ had said. “This is big. The Empress Dowager is worried. She is like an eagle defending her nest. From the sky, she sees downward on everything. Do not underestimate her.”
“Yes, Lord Ji!” they replied in unison.
As the commander stood, he added, “I will go and find the man her Majesty seeks. When I return in a few moons time, I want your reports.”
That night Ji Gang pondered the issue. What is the empress dowager afraid of? And who is feeding her information that even the Dong Chang had no access to?
He could only arrive at two answers – The War Ministry, which controlled the military, or the Office of Ceremonies, ran by powerful eunuchs who were the eyes and ears of the empress dowager. Both agencies were influential, but the two agencies were often rivals, so where did the secret service fit in?
