The Martial Arts Stunt Double of the Entertainment Circle – Chapter 1
by Little PandaTuoba Yan knelt before the shrine, her face resolute and cold, her spine straight. Were it not for the black-and-grey Buddhist Robes she wore, no one would have thought she was in lay Buddhist practice, chanting sutras and praying for the people she had “killed.”
The small Buddhist Shrine held only an offering table, a Gilded Buddha Statue, and a worn, cold, hard Meditation Mat. Tuoba Yan knelt on the Meditation Mat, her knees long since numb with pain. She gazed at the compassionate-faced Bodhisattva within the shrine, as though Dai Jinzhong—the powerful eunuch standing beside her holding the Imperial Edict—simply did not exist.
“Tuoba Clan Surname1, receive the edict.” Dai Jinzhong knew that this former Grand General of the Northern Pacification, this Empress who had once been mother to the realm, despised eunuchs like him most of all. The contempt and arrogance in her eyes had never been concealed—unlike the concubines, including Noble Imperial Consort An, who curried favor by addressing him as “Eunuch Director Dai.”
Tuoba Yan had never given him a second glance. But what did it matter? Was she not about to die at his hand?
Dai Jinzhong repeated himself: “Tuoba Clan Surname, the Imperial Edict has arrived.”
The Deposed Empress lowered her lashes and performed a flawlessly formal obeisance before Dai Jinzhong: “Guilty woman2 receives the edict.”
Dai Jinzhong regarded Tuoba Yan’s thin spine beneath the Buddhist Robes. This was his last chance to torment her. A sense of lofty superiority swelled in his chest. He pointedly ignored the Deposed Empress for a long while before slowly unrolling the bright yellow Imperial Edict:
“By the mandate of Heaven, the Emperor decrees: The Deposed Empress Tuoba Clan Surname is harsh and jealous, vain without substance, and has harmed concubines and imperial heirs. Her crimes warrant execution. I, mindful of her considerable past merits, cannot bear to impose the extreme penalty. I bestow one jug of Poisoned Wine, preserving her whole corpse, to be buried at the Consort’s Mausoleum with the rites of a Noble Concubine. Let this be obeyed.”
He gave a sinister smile. “Tuoba Clan Surname, please receive the edict.”
The Deposed Empress accepted the edict with respectful demeanor and unrolled it to read.
Dai Jinzhong, failing to witness any undignified display from Tuoba Yan, found it rather dull. He beckoned the Junior Eunuch waiting outside: “The Poisoned Wine.”
The Junior Eunuch carried in the Poisoned Wine. Dai Jinzhong swept his Horsehair Whisk: “Please drink, Empress.” He deliberately emphasized the title “Empress.”
The Deposed Empress’s gaze, sharp as a blade, swept across Dai Jinzhong’s face, startling the Eunuch Director into stumbling back two steps and shrieking: “Guards! Guards!”
The Imperial Bodyguards who had been lying in wait outside the hall immediately rushed in and surrounded Tuoba Yan. Though she had been confined to the inner palace for over ten years and had not led troops in battle, as the former Grand General of the Northern Pacification—whose name struck terror into the Xiongnu and could stop babies from crying at night3—the bodyguards still dared not underestimate her by even a fraction.
Tuoba Yan did not so much as glance at Dai Jinzhong, who scrambled out of the Buddhist Shrine. She read the Imperial Edict once more, then closed her eyes.
In those years, she had campaigned on the battlefield, feasting on Hu flesh and drinking Xiongnu blood4 alongside her fellow soldiers, so full of vigor and valor. Every frontier household enshrined her longevity tablet. When she returned victorious to the capital, she was nearly pelted to death by the fruits admiring maidens threw at her along the route.
The Emperor, believing slander and fearing her merits that overshadowed the ruler5, summoned her back to the capital and took her as Empress.
In the early days of marriage, there had been sweetness and tenderness. But at some unknown point, the two drifted apart. Tuoba Yan did not know how to coax and flatter a husband with gentle attentions; she could only watch helplessly as the Emperor wandered through a garden of flowers, endlessly favoring other concubines.
Then she conceived, and gave birth to a child. The Emperor appeared overjoyed and immediately named this only legitimate son Crown Prince. And so the Crown Prince became Tuoba Yan’s entire world.
The Crown Prince perished before he was a year old. He died under mysterious circumstances—that morning he had been laughing happily in her arms, and by afternoon he was a small, cold corpse.
Tuoba Yan’s heartbreak drove her to madness. She traced the matter to Noble Imperial Consort An, who was then Consort Xian An, and confronted the woman in grief and fury. The Fourth Prince, registered under Consort Xian An’s name, bit fiercely into Tuoba Yan’s leg. Tuoba Yan shook him off in pain, but who could have known that sharp stones would inexplicably appear on the grass of the imperial garden, which was tended and maintained daily by palace servants? The Fourth Prince’s head struck a stone, and he fainted, his head covered in blood. When he woke, he had become a simpleton.
She had tried to explain, to say it was not intentional, but the Emperor struck her across the face without so much as a hearing: “How can a venomous woman be mother to the realm!” He deposed Tuoba of her position as Empress and forbade her from taking a single step outside the Buddhist Shrine.
At this memory, Tuoba Yan opened her eyes and gave a cold laugh, surveying the ring of Imperial Bodyguards around her. She lunged forward and effortlessly snatched a sword from one of them.
She held the Three-Foot Green Blade in a reverse grip, her head raised in cold, proud laughter: “No need to waste the Poisoned Wine either.”
She raised the sword and slit her own throat.
Bright red blood sprayed across the Bodhisattva within the shrine.
Tuoba Yan found herself, in a daze, in a strange place. The buildings all around were square and rectangular, the short ones three or four stories tall, the tall ones piercing the clouds, enough to make one’s heart race. She touched her neck—intact—and the dark Buddhist Robes on her body had also transformed into the old set of armor she used to wear in her campaigning days.
The pedestrians passing by were dressed shockingly immodestly. Young women’s skirts were so short their entire thighs were exposed, and some wore nothing but cropped tops, baring bosoms so pale they were blinding. Tuoba Yan quickly averted her gaze, thinking: how could there be such brazen women? Even the foreign girls at the border passes had never dressed like this.
But the streets were full of pale thighs and pale bosoms, and it was Tuoba Yan who stood out.
She stood in bewilderment on the ground, gradually realizing that the pedestrians around her seemed unable to see her. She deliberately stepped in front of a young woman, who walked straight through her body without changing expression and continued on her way.
Tuoba Yan discovered that she might have become a ghost.
Tuoba Yan wandered aimlessly for an entire day. At dusk, she drifted beside a massive building. A bizarre iron vehicle with a red cross emblem on its side came roaring up, and people in white clothes and white masks carried out an unconscious, blood-covered young woman.
Tuoba Yan glanced at the young woman inadvertently and froze.
She looked nine-tenths identical to herself!
Only, this girl of seventeen or eighteen was skin and bones, her cheeks sunken, her complexion sallow—like a famine refugee from years past.
Several women in white coats pushed the small cart bearing the young woman forward at great speed. A middle-aged woman with disheveled hair kept crying out: “Yanyan! Yanyan!” She was likely her mother.
Yanyan? A flash of surprise crossed Tuoba Yan’s face. Her own milk name was Yanyan.
Tuoba Yan felt as though some unseen force was guiding her, and she followed the young woman deeper into the building. Inside, it was brilliantly lit, the floor so smooth and polished it reflected one’s image. Tuoba Yan was nearly dazzled, almost left behind by the swiftly moving cart.
A man who appeared to be a physician, dressed in white, swiftly stanched her bleeding, shone a light-emitting iron rod into the young woman’s eyes, and then said: “Her condition is not good. Prepare for surgery.”
Outside the operating room, Qiao Chunyi wept with heart-rending anguish. She sat alone on a peculiar-looking chair, tears streaming ceaselessly, her eyes red and swollen.
Qiao Chunyi sobbed as she murmured to herself: “Mom is so sorry, Yanyan. Mom is so sorry… It is all Mom’s fault, always busy with work, letting you take your own medicine… Yanyan… What is Mom going to do…”
Tuoba Yan no longer cared to puzzle over why precious steel was used to cast chairs, or why flawless transparent glass was casually set into doorframes. She regarded the weeping woman with sympathy. She too had been a mother; she understood the pain all too well.
For a moment, Tuoba Yan’s own heart grew heavy. She tried to pass through the glass door and made her way into the innermost room. The young woman lay motionless on the central bed, a strange transparent mask over her mouth. Several physicians in green clothing were intently working on her mangled wrists, and a bag of bright red blood plasma in a transparent pouch flowed continuously through a thin tube into the young woman’s body.
Suddenly, the gleaming iron boxes arranged around them began to sound alarms. Tuoba Yan heard someone cry out: “The patient has stopped breathing.”
Caught off guard, Tuoba Yan’s entire body felt as though her bones were being crushed. She felt as if she had been stuffed into something narrow and constricted, and abruptly lost consciousness.
The author has something to say:
I am going to take this idea seriously! Working hard on stockpiling chapters~
A new story I am planning to open, if you are interested, little angels, click in and add it to your collections~
Footnotes
- In imperial China, addressing someone by their clan surname alone was a formal and derogatory practice that stripped the individual of their personal name and titles.
- In imperial China, a condemned woman would adopt the legal status of 'zuìfù' (guilty woman) as a self-referential, replacing her former title.
- A Chinese idiom describing a fearsome reputation so terrifying that even children are afraid.
- A parody of Song dynasty general Yue Fei's famous poem 'Man Jiang Hong.' The original reads 'feasting on captive flesh and drinking Xiongnu blood'; the source novel substitutes 'plundered Hu flesh,' shifting the meaning slightly from 'captive' to 'plundered.'
- A key Chinese political concept: when a subject's achievements become so great they threaten the ruler's authority, often leading to the subject's downfall.
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