Rivers scour through the earth and run toward the ocean. The snows fall, and trees cover themselves with leaves. Palaces crumble, paths disappear, wheat sprouts up and transforms deserts into fields. God is the source of all movement, inexhaustible life, eternal energy. God had made me and sent me here to demonstrate his might: He creates and destroys, erases and renews. Even at the heights to which I had risen, I remained dust in the palm of his hand.

THE JOURNEY BACK to Luoyang was gloomy. I lay huddled in fur coats inside my carriage surrounded by fires crackling in braziers, but still shivering with cold. The strength was being drawn out of me like an ebbing tide. My ears were filled with a buzzing sound. My eyesight became hazy, and I ordered my officials to write their political reports in larger characters. Once I had dictated the commemorative hymn that would be engraved on the stela erected at the top of Mount Song, I accepted the idea of dying.

One evening the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen asked to speak to me in secret. He was brought to the palace along an underground passageway. As he threw himself at my feet, I noticed a feverish red flush on his pale cheeks. His wolf-like eyes glowed with something akin to joy. My wildcats seemed to have picked up the scent of blood on him; they roared and paced agitatedly. The judge was surrounded by dogs and leopards, but he showed no fear. He took from his sleeve a scroll of paper and held it aloft in both his hands to offer it to me. I unrolled it in the candlelight to reveal a diagram in which the First Magistrate had traced the networks of conspirators from the time of Wu Ji, Shang Guan Yi, and Pei Yan right up to the present. There were hundreds of names, all written in large characters and connected to form a tree whose branches reached as far as provincial governments and the encampments of those who had been banished. Every enemy of the State was inscribed there: The dead were ringed with red ink, the exiled with blue, and prisoners in green, and there were black circles hovering threateningly around those who were still free. At the very end of the scroll, I found Miracle, Moon, Future, Piety, and Spirit.

Lai Jun Chen’s voice quavered slightly. Miracle, the Emperor who had resigned; Future, the deposed emperor; Piety, the King of Wei; Spirit, the King of Liang; Moon, the Princess of Eternal Peace; and her husband, Tranquility, the King of Jian Chang were secretly planning a coup and preparing to share the kingdom between them.

“Lord Lai,” I sighed, “I have taken note of your observations. You may leave.”

“Majesty,” he said, edging forward on his knees, “the King of Wei has been restless the whole time you have delayed appointing an heir. He is weary of waiting; he is preparing to resort to force and will call on his cousins who command your guards regiments. The Princess of Eternal Peace is secretly scheming to establish an agreement between her brothers and her husband’s clan. Majesty, the time has come, an uprising in the Court is imminent!”

“Let me think!” I said, silencing the prosecutor with a wave. He disappeared through the partition. Lai Jun Chen had an acute sense of smell like an animal, which meant that he could identify the ideas that people were harboring and the longings they themselves had not yet formulated. While other judges were happy simply examining the facts, he projected himself into the future. The plot he was imagining was one I had already lived in my nightmares. Men’s strengths go hand in hand with their weaknesses. That is why there is no such thing as an invincible warrior, and why heroes die.

Two days later during the morning audience Piety, King of Wei, asked to speak. His powerful voice reverberated around the hall: He charged the magistrate Lai Jun Chen with corruption, exploiting his influential position, and attempting to usurp power. My Great Ministers and my nephews Spirit and Tranquility stepped forward and unanimously upheld his charges. In keeping with Palace codes, Lai Jun Chen had risen from his seat and prostrated himself as soon as his name was mentioned. I was surprised by this violent attack and remained silent. Someone had betrayed the prosecutor by warning the King of Wei, who had responded with an adroit riposte: Piety had pointed the finger at Lai Jun Chen for the crimes of which he himself was accused. The entire government had joined him and was declaring war on the most feared man in the Empire. How was it that the prosecutor, who saw plots in every direction, had been unaware of this one, like a soothsayer blind to his own fate?

I silenced my own irritation while my ministers pressed me for a response, and Lai Jun Chen asked to speak. Either I would hand the magistrate over to the Court, or I would let him explain himself. He would denounce the conspiracy: With one hundred members of both my families in prison or condemned to death, I would become the laughing stock of the entire world. I would be the senile emperor sinking the very ship on which she sails. What authority would I have left to reign? Who would be heir to the throne? Piety had played his part very cleverly. On the chessboard of the Forbidden City, he had just checkmated his opponent. I did not grant the judge the right to defend himself, but pretended to be furious and ordered that his cap and official’s tablet be removed and that he be thrown in prison.

A wave of hatred rippled through the Court. I created a special court made up of high-ranking magistrates and Great Ministers, and while they were deliberating the charges brought against the accused man, the kings and dignitaries and the Princess of Eternal Peace filed past me begging me to apply the law. A stack of thirty scrolls, listing 1,500 charges, was laid before me. A petition bearing hundreds of signatures was brought to me. The entire Court was asking for this torturer to be put to death. Ten years earlier, I would have firmly defended Lai Jun Chen. But now my soul, which had embraced God himself, was weary of human quarrels, and my policies were restricted to engineering compromises. A sovereign is never entirely master of his kingdom. I was constrained to abandon thoughts of exiling him and to concede that he should be put to death.

The wind picked up, and the mountains whispered. Migratory birds crossed the sky with anguished cries. The chrysanthemums in the Imperial Park exhaled their bitter fragrance and dropped their petals into the River Luo. I watched the moon wax: It would soon be the mid-autumn full moon, the date set by the ancestors for public executions.

The night before the fateful day, I tossed and turned in bed before falling asleep. In my dreams, I climbed up to the observatory. The Forbidden City at my feet steeped in shadows, like a cemetery where the red lanterns of night watchmen on their rounds danced like will-o“-the-wisps.

All of a sudden someone stepped out of the darkness and threw himself to the ground.

“I have come to prostrate myself at your feet one last time,” Lai Jun Chen told me, his voice echoing as if from the depths of a well and his iron chains rattling. “Before leaving this world, I wanted to tell you that all the accusations are false. I have never betrayed Your Majesty’s trust.”

“Lord Lai, you made only one mistake: You criticized my family.”

“Majesty, they are plotting against you!”

“I am tired. I no longer have the strength to unravel all this hatred and to cause bloodshed. In a kingdom everyone except the king is a conspirator. There is always an intelligent way of making peace with enemies. Why did you not realize that? Why have you forced me to sacrifice you?”

“Majesty,” he said, prostrating himself, “I am not yet beheaded. So long as there is breath left in me, I shall fight for you. Majesty, you must choose! Either you shall reign for ten thousand years, or the Zhou dynasty will be overthrown, and you will be betrayed for all eternity!”