Yilang suddenly raised his voice. Yang Wan was taken aback, then heard him continue: “You’re like my mother’s consort, you’re both my family. Won’t you stop being a servant?”
Yang Wan knelt, “If not a servant, what should I be? Does Your Majesty want to grant me a title?”
“Mm.”
Yang Wan smiled, “But I don’t want one.”
“Why?”
“Because I only want to be Your Majesty’s aunt. Though bound by palace rules, I call myself a servant, but in my heart, Your Majesty is my most cherished younger relative. Being able to interact with Your Majesty like this makes me feel very at ease. Does Your Majesty know? I’m not as afraid of you as before.”
Yilang released Yang Wan’s hand, “Aunt, did you fear me before because I made you kneel and ordered the beating of the Depot Official?”
“No.”
Yang Wan reached out to fix his collar that had been blown askew by the wind, “It was because Aunt didn’t quite understand you then.”
After speaking, she folded her hands on her knees and looked up at Yilang, “We all need to spend time together to understand the hearts of those around us.”
“I understand.”
Yilang looked down at Yang Wan and suddenly said in a formal tone: “I will help the Depot Official.”
Yang Wan said: “His crime carries the death penalty.”
Yilang shook his head, “On the path of justice, besides the Great Ming Code, there is also the sovereign’s conscience.”
Yang Wan was startled, “Who taught you these words?”
“The Depot Official.”
After speaking, he turned around saying: “I’m going to hear the Cabinet Ministers’ report. You sit in the side chamber. After the Imperial Physician examines you, have him wait. I’ll come to ask personally.”
As he spoke, he walked toward the front hall. After a few steps, he turned back saying: “Aunt, you must not be sad anymore, understand?”
“I understand.”
She not only heard Yilang’s words, but she also heard a voice contrary to history.
But she wasn’t sure if this was a voice reversed because of her, or if this was how it originally sounded.
In the “Record of Hundred Crimes,” Yilang wrote for Deng Ying, there was no mention of the crime of forging an imperial edict. Even the historical fact of the Ceremonial Office forging an edict wasn’t recorded. He Yixian was punished for the crime of embezzling state funds. The actual crime that caused Deng Ying to suffer death by slow slicing was “conspiracy against imperial clan members.” This charge was extremely deliberate, so deliberate that later generations couldn’t even find historical evidence to verify it, and could only make indirect guesses about the death of the second prince.
The Ming History records that the second prince died before the edict was issued, yet at this time until the edict’s issuance, the second prince had not died of illness.
This erroneous record in Ming History corresponds exactly to the period of the Three Departments’ joint trial, which wasn’t historically Deng Ying’s fatal tribulation.
But if this wasn’t Deng Ying’s fatal tribulation, then where was the final deadly trial?
Thinking of this, Yang Wan couldn’t help but feel a chill down her spine.
Bai Huan’s gift of a coffin, Yang Lun’s letter.
These two historical facts don’t appear in the Ming History.
But they did indeed acknowledge Deng Ying.
Perhaps at the time, it wasn’t just them who acknowledged Deng Ying. Yilang, Qi Huaiyang, Bai Yuyang, all the Cabinet Ministers, and all the officials who participated in the Golden Terrace Great Discussion, even Chen Hua and Song Yunqing from the inner court, the students from both Chu Mountain and Lake Peaceful academies… none of them were foolish. Everyone gradually came to understand what that person standing between the civil officials and eunuchs was truly doing.
But why was he still subjected to slow slicing for three full days in the end?
Among all those standing at the execution ground, did not one person speak up for his innocence?
Why were no written words left to plead his case at the time? Why in the end was his life story so completely distorted beyond recognition?
Yang Wan closed her eyes, recalling the passage she had read in her senior sister’s notes:
“The emperor at the time merely used this person’s body as a symbol of guilt, using extreme punishment to declare to the world his attitude toward the eunuch faction, explicitly showing the baseness of the eunuch group, demonstrating the absolute control of imperial power over palace servants. When they executed Deng Ying in front of the palace gates, perhaps not one person remembered that this eunuch dying tragically had once been the builder of this imperial city.”
Symbol of guilt, attitude toward the eunuch faction, absolute control.
As Yang Wan pondered these words, she suddenly felt an intense pain in her chest and lungs.
This passage, which wasn’t included in serious academic papers, seemed to have hit upon the fatal point of Deng Ying’s fate.
Yang Wan pressed her chest and sat down supporting herself on a chair.
Her hand touched the notebook she had long carried with her, so she took it out and spread it open on her knees.
She had been writing in this notebook for three years.
The previous “Biography of Deng Ying” had consumed nearly ten years of her youth. During that time, she constantly corrected historical correspondences and carefully weighed her words, truly pouring her heart and soul into it. This notebook, in comparison, was like a scattered account book, containing her not-yet-mature views about this era. Even so, every word in it was authentic first-hand material. It recorded three years of Deng Ying’s life after his punishment, the delicate and elegant life of the inner court, and also the complex official struggles and brutal political realities of the late Zhenning era. Compared to the content of the “Biography of Deng Ying,” most of Yang Wan’s textual research was correct, but she hadn’t seen the hearts of the people during the Zhenning era. She had originally thought people were ignorant, failing to recognize Deng Ying’s virtue, but now it seemed the human heart wasn’t necessarily ignorant.
Historical materialism had never deceived Yang Wan.
This wasn’t a problem of “people,” but a problem of social form and class structure. Everything had its inevitability.
“How difficult it is, Deng Ying.”
Looking at the portrait she had drawn of Deng Ying, Yang Wan said to herself: “I used to think publishing the ‘Biography of Deng Ying’ was difficult enough. I didn’t expect writing this notebook would be even harder than academic work.”