Zheng E

Zheng E has never forgotten his first meeting with Shen Yilun. The scrawny boy stood in the corner of the schoolroom, whispering his ambition to the teacher: "As long as I have enough to eat, I'll do anything..." Such a seemingly aimless dream was met with sneers from classmates. Zheng E did not laugh. He thought of Kaifeng's mansions wasting food while corpses froze in the streets, of the recent Khitan invasion that had starved the city. Suddenly, he found his own purpose. "Then let us ensure everyone has enough to eat. Let there be'Ever-Normal for All! No hunger for the people'!" Zheng E kept his word, and his deeds matched it. He truly wished for everyone to survive, never imagining that his kindness would be repaid with a massacre of utter savagery. The bandits stormed into the estate, slaughtering all in their path and looting every grain in sight. Flames and wails soon merged into a single, consuming tide, swallowing the boy's naive and fragile idealism in an instant. "How could this be? ... I only wanted to save them... so why... why did it end like this...?" He knelt before the bodies of Zheng Ruan and so many loved ones, his spirit shattered. Trying to save one good man had empowered a horde of villains, dooming the innocent. If he let good people suffer, both the virtuous and the wicked would die, but others might survive. But how could those who stood by be called innocent? Was I wrong from the start? he wondered. Is there no place for kindness in a chaotic world? "You were not wrong. Doing good is always right." It took Zheng E months to hear the swordsman's words over the roar of his grief. By then, the riot had left Withershade Mound crowded with new graves. "If kindness were a sin, we would never have met." The swordsman gazed at Zheng E kneeling before the graves, his voice resolute. Zheng E turned slowly, his gaze lifting from the tombstone to rest upon the swordsman. He studied the man intently, as if searching for further proof to trust him, until at last, his eyes settled on the sword clenched tightly at the warrior's side. "You can act on your kindness because you have power. But I can't, because I don't have a sword?" The swordsman hesitated. She had never questioned why she drew her blade to fight, she just did. Before she could think, the boy knocked his head three times on the ground, begging to be her disciple. He refused to let such tragedy happen again, he would not lose his original heart. But kindness in troubled times is a luxury. A decade later, when even the swordsman fell to the tide of corruption, Zheng E spiraled into doubt again. If power is the prerequisite for goodness, why did the swordsman and my family die? What position of power allows one to stay kind forever? "No, it's not about power. It's about the evildoers. They create tragedies, they destroy kindness. As long as they live, good people have no choice but to die." The grown Zheng E stared at Gracetown, Heqing Army... at the villains. He tightened his grip on his sword.

The moment the "sacrifice the plum for the peach" scheme was completed, Feng Ruzhi had already wondered: Would Zheng E turn back? She knew how absurd this speculation sounded at first glance. After all, from that bloody night of the marauder uprising, to the "Dawn-to-Dusk Plague", and the catastrophic floods... over the past twelve years, he had endured far too much. Yet according to her late mother Zhu Yu's accounts, Zheng E had never been a heartless man. The "A'zheng" who existed only in stories was righteous and kind, a man who shared a deep bond with Shen Yilun. Their ideals had once embraced all of Kaifeng commoners, including the townsfolk of Gracetown. As their mission neared success, her unease grew. Pretending to transport supplies, she risked taking a small boat through black markets and dark rivers to the underground Ever-Normal Granary, hoping to gauge her brother's resolve. But she was no good at hiding her feelings, and the worry on her face gave her away before she even spoke. "I won't waver," Zheng E said bluntly. "No peace for the good until all evil is eliminated." "But... what if the Song court returns the land, and Gracetown repents..." "I won't waver," he repeated. "Evil doesn't repent. A wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf. It will always hunt sheep." "But..." Feng Ruzhi opened her mouth to speak again, but this time, Zheng E cut her off without hesitation. "Ruzhi! A'ruan is dead, Zhu Yu is dead, everyone is dead... *coughs*..." After saying this, Zheng E was suddenly seized by uncontrollable coughing. When he finally regained his breath and spoke again, each word seemed to carry a deathly chill. "I have few loved ones left. They deserve to live. They must live. That's why I can't waver." Zheng E fixed his gaze upon her, and Feng Ruzhi flinched as if pierced by its sharpness. She fell silent, startled by the despair that had seeped into those few words. An irrevocable sorrow, and a resolve past the point of no return, quietly took root between them. "Do not come again." His voice was curt, final. "If even you were to succumb to the cold poison... I could never face Master Zhu Yu again." With visible effort, Zheng E pushed himself upright, his bones emitting the faint, grating creak of a palsy patient. Yet not so much as a flicker of pain crossed his face. Wordlessly, he shouldered open the heavy iron gate and strode into the shadowed corridor beyond without a backward glance. He wore a white cloak, but the silhouette was swiftly devoured by the gloom cast from the massive Dawn-to-Dusk Blossom. Feng Ruzhi stared long after he had vanished before finally lowering her eyes. Once more, she thought of the youth her mother had so often described, a boy who clung fiercely to his dream of "Ever-Normal for All", surrounded by comrades who shared his cause, by kin who loved and believed in him, his heart brimming with untainted hope. "What a pity," she mused. "If only he could have lived. I would have liked to meet that version of him."