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

The wardrobe storehouse on the west side of the imperial mausoleum was opened for the first time, with all six parties present.

Feng Jing, the tomb keeper, had been guarding this place for nineteen years, and was missing a section of his right ring finger. Bai Zhi, as usual, checked his identity first, but Feng Jing was very unhappy: "I'm only opening one storage room today, why do I need to check my finger?" I said, "Because recently, people have been borrowing other people's old injuries on every road." Nineteen years is certainly an experience, but not proof of identity. Only when the old records of the Ministry of Works and the stone gate on the east side matched the record of his severed finger were they tentatively agreed upon.

The Imperial Clan Court, Princess Zhaoning's residence, former palace maids of the late Empress, the Censorate, witnesses from Jiangbei, and Lan Yue were all present. The Emperor did not go; he only left the inspection area in the capital: only the guarded wardrobe, the forty-first box, and related identification pages were to be checked; the coffin would not be moved, the burial would not be altered, and the opening of the mausoleum would not be expanded based on the discovery of similar items. Sure enough, there were two "forty-first" boxes in the wardrobe.

More precisely, there are only forty normal boxes at present. The Imperial Clan Court's supplementary register records "the forty-first box," while the original register of the Imperial Mausoleum records the new items added on the same day as "the thirty-seventh box, a supplement." The wood of the thirty-seventh box was only nine years old and cracked, clearly indicating that it was replaced later. The repair register inexplicably lists "Lin Ping'an" and "Chen Ping" as the handlers, both of which are titles that can be used to identify deceased individuals. The so-called forty-first box was very likely not stolen, but rather covered up by layers of records.

Lan Yue remembered that the Changning Wardrobe and the Imperial Wardrobe were built according to the same blueprint. The west wall should have had two ventilation windows, but there was only one in front of her. After knocking down the bricks, the middle was hollow. After removing the outermost layer, there was no solid wall behind it, but a wooden false door. Behind the door was a narrow box, without any number, only forty-one copper nails. This "forty-first" was not a word, but a number.

The front box was neatly made, with brass clasps, serial numbers, and sealing wax all present. Inside were only a few sets of the late Empress's old clothes and records of repairs to ceremonial robes. Another number was hidden behind a narrow wooden compartment on the side wall, so narrow it seemed unsuitable for clothing. Lan Yue tried opening the second box three times with the genuine clothing tokens. Inside were not clothes, but forty-one return pages.

Inside the box were also a bronze clothing plaque and a wooden plaque. The wooden plaque looked more like the pass for the "Zhou Qi Rules," while the bronze plaque matched the mold of the late Empress's button-down collar and the blue pearl and silver setting. Bai Zhi had both plaques made into rubbings, instead of destroying the fake plaque first. The fake was also evidence; if only the real one was kept, years later someone would say that there had never been only one type of plaque in the box.

Forty-one pages are not forty-one neat lines of life.

Some of the papers were old, with brittle edges; some were clearly replaced later; some had complete original names, while others only had a surname left; and several pages had "status" written as "location," as if whether a person was alive or not was unimportant, as long as the location could continue to function. Bai Zhi told everyone to stop and not follow the story according to the numbers.

Page 41 is roughly divided into three categories: the earliest nine people whose names were temporarily changed to protect witnesses; twenty-six people whose names had already been changed by Wang and were being prepared to be changed back; and six people whose identities and origins were unclear and could only be temporarily fixed. Later, the list of military casualties also included "forty-one people," but the list was not the same; the numbers were the same, but the people could be constantly replaced. He Xiu did more than just change people's names; she could even repackage the "list" itself.

"First check if the papers are from the same batch."

The result was not so, which means that the so-called "list of forty-one people" was never a sealed roster, but a box that kept putting people in and taking people out.

Some people wrote their original names, others only numbers; some were already dead, others had blank statuses. The pinholes in the margins, the age of the paper, and the inconsistencies in the handwriting indicated that this wasn't a group of people created all at once, but rather a set of identity positions that were constantly added to, subtracted from, and replaced. Bai Zhi didn't read the names in order; she first looked at the bottom column of each page: Who has verified them?

Five pinholes appeared most often, Zhou Qi.

The "Lin Ping An" on page eighteen is not a fixed person, but an identity that can be used during the repair and file transfer of the Imperial Clan Court. As long as you have the corresponding work ticket, a living person can enter and exit the warehouse under the name of a "Lin Ping An" who has already died. Bai Zhi is writing on the side: Lin Ping An's position on page eighteen, source and person to be verified.

The first page was actually Lan Yue's, and it was more complete than Bai Song's fifth page: alias Liu Yue, old injury to the right eye, blue glass bead, the person was aware of the situation, and the name would be returned in thirty days. The unidentified female corpse was on a separate page pending investigation. Lan Yue only pressed her fingerprint on the few items she could confirm, without endorsing the entire page simply because her name was on it. She said she had never seen this name-returning page before and didn't know anyone had set a thirty-day deadline for her. "The person was unaware" was also written on it.

Further on, another type of page appears: instead of "what someone's original name was," it lists "identity positions." Lin Ping'an and Chen Ping could be temporarily used by multiple people for tasks like repairing archives and relocating old files. Zhou Qi even criticized, "People can be replaced, but positions cannot be returned." Thus, the forty-one boxes gradually evolved from a system that used names as tools into a system of returning names. If these weren't separated first, the total of forty-one would be misleading.

She didn't read page twenty-three.

"Why did you jump?" Ah Liu asked.

"It hasn't been tested yet."

Later, it turned out that this page should have been reserved for someone who truly needed to have their name restored. Leaving it blank for now actually prevented a mistake. Page 41 is the thinnest, with the original name column cut off, leaving only the used name: Zhou Qi. The physical record states an old injury on the web of the left hand, burn marks on the right wrist, and the ability to recognize the five orifices and five knots. The place of origin column only contains the four characters "He Family of Qingfeng".

There were twenty-six people in total, belonging to the third category. Their identities and origins were unknown, requiring temporary identification. There were six people in total, but the red circle on the supplementary register for those who died in the army also indicated forty-one. The number was the same, but the individuals were not entirely the same. Some overlapped, and some were added later. The forty-one people in her father's army were not the original forty-one sent to the southwest in one batch. Zhou Qi gradually combined the forty-ones from different years and of different natures into a single number. Once the number was fixed, everyone would assume that "forty-one people" referred to the same group. This was easier than changing the names; even the list could be dressed up. Bai Zhi separated each page, without first summing the totals.

The original name wasn't blacked out; it was cut out along with the paper, and then backed with thin paper of the same color, making it appear naturally blank from the front. Hidden in the loose stitching of the old cuff of the grey-blue garment was a piece of burnt paper, only half of the character "He" remaining. Bai Zhi hadn't bothered to fill it in as "He Xiu"—many people have the surname He, and the remaining character might not necessarily be the surname. The only independently verifiable information on the page is the body record, the origin of the Qingfeng document, and its usage history; the name must wait for the person and other old documents to return.

The description of the body on this page does not match Wang Heng's previous description of "Zhou Qi, who is lame on the left": there is no old fracture in her left leg, there are two burn marks from lamp oil on her left wrist, there is an old needle piercing wound behind her right ear, she cannot embroider, and she dislikes the bitter fragrance of cypress leaves. We split the three questions and asked He Xiu in prison to three different messengers, and none of them knew the other two questions. Her answers about the burn marks from lamp oil, the needle piercing, and "embroidery like insects" only prove that she knew this page, and we cannot identify the original name simply because the descriptions match.

After looking at it, the mother said, "This isn't Zhou Qi's face; it's a location."

"It could also be one of the people who used the location before," Bai Zhi said.

At the bottom of the box was a genuine clothing tag. The front bore the late Empress's record of guarding the garment, while the back was engraved with a small character "Su," next to which were traces of inlaid blue glass beads. Lan Yue recognized it: "Chunlan wore this."

The examination documents were only allowed to be "verified," not "moved." Once the genuine clothing token was found, it remained in the imperial mausoleum, sealed with six different colored seals, one for each side. Six copies were made, each intentionally missing a different corner, so that the six copies together formed a complete set. Some complained about the hassle, but Xiao Lingyi simply said: In the past, because a single genuine token could be taken away by one person, "who has seen the genuine token" became a new power. Finding evidence doesn't mean it should be immediately moved to another, more easily controlled cabinet.

She said that eleven years ago, when the late Empress was seriously ill, a woman named Chunlan wore Gu Qinghe's old clothes and deliberately took a different route to distract the investigators. Later, all the records referred to her as "Gu Qinghe's double," and then the word "double" slowly changed back to "Gu Qinghe." I looked at my mother.

The mother only asked, "What was her original name?" There was another page in the box: Su Xiaochun. A native of Qingfeng Nanqiao, her father was Su Musheng. She fractured her left arm in childhood and did not suffer the same injury as Gu Qinghe in her lower back. She could imitate Gu Qinghe's writing style, but could never quite write the last stroke of the character "禾" correctly. Chunlan was not Gu Qinghe. She was simply Su Xiaochun.