My father ordered me to kill the emperor, but His Majesty bestowed a princess upon me instead.

After the hearing, Zhou Qi did not return to prison. She requested a supplementary statement, and her first sentence was: "Qian Fang is not me."

"What about Zhou Qi?" "That's not her original name either." "Then what is it?" "A record maker."

This was the first time she had said those words without any room for negotiation.

In the past, many people thought Zhou Qi was a woman, a face, and a lineage that continued from the Wang family to the present day. But she admitted that at least one person had used this name. She herself had used Qian Fang and Zhou Qi; the whereabouts of the real Qian Fang after being impersonated are unknown.

"Your original name?"

She remained silent, and I didn't urge her. After a while, she said, "I'll pay you back later."

"This time it won't work." "Why?" "Because you've already used someone else's name to convince people three months ago that Qian Fang is still alive."

She looked up at me.

She participated, she made her choice. She saved lives, and she allowed the false accounts to survive for eleven years. I asked, "Why was the fifth page removed after thirty days?" "The late Empress was seriously ill." "Wang began the purge of the palace." "Once Lan Yue's name was restored," "Everyone involved would be exposed." "And then?" "Later, Wang Song took charge of the Imperial Treasury." "And then?" "Bai Song died." "And then?" "There was no suitable time." "Not even once in eleven years?" She remained silent. "You always found a reason to continue the false accounts." "Because the danger was always there." "Or because," "Once the false accounts were restored," "it would prove that what you did back then wasn't just a simple verification of accounts?"

"You can remember the username for now, leave the original name blank," Bai Zhi said from the side. "Leaving it blank doesn't mean it's exempt."

Zhou Qi looked at me, her eyes calm. "Shen An." "You think I'm afraid to admit I saved someone?" "You're afraid to admit it." "You saved someone." "But you also prevented her from calling herself for eleven years." "You're afraid that both things are true at the same time." "It's not fear." "Then what is it?" "It can't." She finally gave the real answer. "The accounts can't be written like this." "Why not?" "Write it like this." "Every forger will have a reason." "Every person who covers up an account will also have a reason." "Every murderer can say they saved someone." "So you deleted all the reasons?" "Only the results."

Zhou Qi then nodded.

She then admitted to the second thing: Bai Song only wrote the fake death account of Liu Yue to the extent that it would allow Lan Yue to escape. Later, in order to make it pass the Wang family's core, she personally added several dates and witnesses.

She admitted to more than just "correcting a few things." There were three obvious errors in the death certificates from that year's plague that the gatekeepers could easily spot: the time of death was later than the departure of the hearse; Bai Song mistakenly used a winter seal; and the ashes were heavy and half a corpse was missing. He Xiu moved the time forward, changed to a summer seal, and wrote "dehydrated plague corpse" instead of "heavy ashes." If she did nothing, Lan Yue's coffin might very well have been opened at the south gate. Yet she still insisted, "I'm fixing the tent, not saving lives."

"So you also participated in saving Lan Yue." "I participated in altering the accounts." "And you saved her." "That's the result."

Lan Yue asked her on the spot, "If you don't want to save her, you can reveal it." He Xiu didn't answer. She could admit that she had changed the seal and altered the time, but she refused to admit that the outcome was related to her choices. Because once she admitted "I did save her," she would also have to admit another, even more painful fact: she had later imprisoned the same person in the Nameless Village for eleven years. For He Xiu, having both outcomes true at the same time was more difficult than admitting to one crime.

"You hate it when others write your motivation?" "Don't you?"

I didn't answer; the third matter was more serious. She admitted that she knew the "30-day name return" order hadn't been carried out, yet she had kept that page and hadn't made it public. She feared that if it were made public, Wang Song would use Lan Yue's name to find even more people. I asked, "Since you could leave another page for the unidentified female corpse, why couldn't you set a clearer deadline for Lan Yue?"

The initial postponements were all due to specific dangers: Wang Song checking the loose-leaf manuscripts, the late Empress's serious illness, and Bai Song's loss of power. But later, the reasons became shorter and shorter, until finally only "still dangerous" remained. He Xiu herself couldn't say in which year the review would be conducted to see if Lan Yue would still die because of the name change. Once the protection was no longer reviewed, it would transform from a temporarily closed door into a prison where only those outside had the key.

"Back then, Wang Song might be waiting for every deadline." "So you removed the deadlines." "Yes." "And then Wang Song died?"

She didn't answer immediately; that's the truly difficult part of those eleven years to write about. The initial danger might have been real; later, the danger changed, and the postponement didn't lead to a renewed assessment. The door protecting the person remained locked from the outside in the end.

She entered the bureau in the twelfth year of the Chengxi reign and died in a carriage accident in the fifteenth year. Her left leg was broken, and her body was burned. Wang Heng examined the second document. Bai Song was an apprentice in the accounting office and entered the old accounting office in Changning in the tenth year of the Chengxi reign. He was skilled in verifying seals and the time of day, and his original name was left blank. The third document had no date, only "Account Inspector". He did not recognize faces or years. He did not recognize men or women, only the five knots. "Zhou Qi is not a name?" A-Liu asked. "Maybe." Bai Zhi said, "It's also possible that the first two documents refer to the same person." "The third document is a position." Wang Heng said she knew Zhou Qi and had taught her. Bai Song had also taught her, so at least there was a specific person at the time. But did "Zhou Qi" continue to refer only to her later?

"You saved him," the mother said.

"And keep people's names in your hands as well," Bai Zhi added.

Zhou Qi looked at her: "You can finally speak like a human being." Bai Zhi lowered her head and continued writing, ignoring her.

The sentence on page five in Bai Song's book, "The unidentified female corpse is to be investigated separately and must not be covered by Liu Yue," wasn't actually written by Bai Song herself. He Xiu admitted that she discovered two names would crowd into the same death position and forced Bai Song to fill it in. She knew long ago that one position couldn't hold two people at the same time, and that false accounts must leave room for restoration. Later, however, she removed her own original name and repeatedly delayed the deadline for restoring others' names. It wasn't because she never understood, but because she increasingly only trusted what she could control.

For the first time, she explained more clearly how "Zhou Qi" had transformed from a name into a position. Initially, there was indeed a specific person to verify the accounts, but later the five knots, clothing tags, scars, and jargon were broken down into markers that could be passed on to the next person. Users could change, but the four characters "Zhou Qi verified" remained valid. Over time, even she herself considered her original name superfluous. But her mother only asked one question: "Since the name isn't important, why are you afraid to return it?" He Xiu didn't explain the rules anymore, only saying that she would find her father. At that moment, she herself dismantled the previous logic.

The name was important, of course, so important that she would rather sever herself for eleven years than let others find He Cheng through that name. It wasn't that she didn't have personal feelings, but she was used to packaging them into a set of auditing logic that everyone had to obey. What others did to protect their relatives was called breaking the rules in her eyes; but when it came to herself, she could let the word "postponed" live for eleven years.

After giving her statement, Zhou Qi was transferred to a third-party detention center. She was not allowed to access the original old account documents, nor could she examine any page individually using the five-hole and five-knot methods; however, she could correct her statement, but each correction required her to state her name and the time. Before leaving, she suddenly asked me, "Do you still want to know who Chunlan is?"

The detention page specifically includes a "This person may correct this" section, which has drawn criticism. Some feel that allowing someone like Zhou Qi to repeatedly change her testimony only gives her more opportunities to manipulate her statements. I didn't remove it; even the first statement can be wrong, and bad people have the right to point out errors in their statements. What can be prevented is the method of transmission: three-way copying of the correction page, the person's real name, and the time of writing; no longer allowing a single five-hole document to turn an entire statement into "verified."

I stopped.

"The late Empress's mausoleum is located to the west of the clothing storehouse," she said. "The real clothing tokens are there. The ones you have now only indicate the account details, not the person's identity."

He Xiu added a final detail: the number 41 wasn't simply a box number. The Imperial Clan Court's supplementary register, the original imperial mausoleum register, and the Changning Wardrobe Record all used different ways to write the same "41." She said, "If you only find one, don't rush to open it," not to be deliberately mysterious, but because someone had already used the similar terms "box," "cabinet," and "location" to split one item into several records. That night, when Xiao Lingyi unfolded the mausoleum map, we discovered that the western ward's wardrobe was indeed missing a window.

"What's the relationship between Chunlan and Gu Qinghe?" "She wore her clothes." "It was her?" "No."

"Who is that?"

Zhou Qi looked at her mother.

"Who do you like to write the name of someone who has worn your clothes?"

She walked to the door, then turned back and added, "The forty-first box in the imperial tomb. If you only find one, don't open it yet."

That night, Xiao Lingyi brought the construction plans for the late Empress's mausoleum. There was indeed a forty-first box in the register of the western wardrobe storeroom. But on the same page, in the corner, there was a second box with the exact same number. Looking at the plans, the Emperor only asked me, "Should we open it or not?"

"Can Chunlan still have her name restored?" "She's dead." "If she's dead, she can't have it restored?" "Yes." I said, "First, find out who she originally was." "Then separate everything she did." Lan Yue looked at the interlocking page. "What if she really impersonated Madam Gu?" "Write it down." "What if she also saved someone?" "Write that down too." "What if she harmed someone?" "Still write it down." Lan Yue nodded; this was the fifth answer Zhou Qi least wanted to leave behind. Not innocent, not guilty. Not just acknowledged, not completely nullified. It's about restoring someone's name even after they've done something wrong.

"Open it." "How long should it be?" "Write down the parts that can't be opened too."

He looked unwell, but still picked up the pen.