The foundations of Ying's world had been shattered. The interrogation, if it could be called that, had not been an assault on her body, but on her soul. The Emperor's strange, quiet questions, Lotus's terrified, sincere testimony, and the simple, impossible fact of Meng Tian's existence had created a series of cracks in the monolithic loyalty that had defined her entire life. Her defiance, once a wall of unbreachable granite, was now just a pile of rubble.
She sat slumped in the chair, the ropes that bound her now feeling more like a comfort than a restraint, the only thing holding her exhausted body upright. The sneer was gone, her face pale and slack with confusion. She had been a blade, perfectly forged and tempered in the fires of the School of the Silent Orchid. Now, she was a broken blade, her purpose and her certainty gone.
Ying Zheng watched her, his expression patient. He knew the moment of conversion was near. He gestured to Meng Tian, who stepped forward and, with a single, sharp tug, unfastened her bonds. The girl, Ying, flinched but did not move, rubbing her chafed wrists.
"You have made your choice," Ying Zheng stated, not as a question, but as a simple fact. "Now, you will prove your new loyalty. You will answer my questions. You will tell me everything you know about the School of the Silent Orchid."
Ying looked from the small boy to the hulking general, and finally to Lotus, who gave her a slight, encouraging nod. The old world was gone. The only path forward was this new, terrifying one. She took a deep breath and began to speak, her voice low and hoarse.
She confirmed much of what Lotus had already told them, but her knowledge was deeper, her rank within the school having been higher. She had been a senior student, on the verge of becoming an instructor herself.
"Lotus is right," she began, her voice gaining a bit of its old confidence as she fell back on the familiar territory of facts and details. "There are three paths for students. The 'Shadows,' like me, are the instruments of direct action. We are the assassins, the kidnappers, the enforcers. We are taught to be ghosts who kill."
She looked at her hands. "The 'Willows,' mostly girls, are trained differently. Their weapons are not blades and poison, but charm and seduction. They are taught to be the most graceful dancers, the most attentive servants, the most enchanting companions. They are placed as maids, as concubines, as teahouse girls in the households of powerful officials. They are the eyes and ears, gathering secrets from pillows and private conversations."
"And the third path," she continued, "is the 'Scholars.' They are the most intellectually gifted. They are trained to become clerks, secretaries, and junior officials. Their task is to control the flow of paper, to alter records, to create forgeries, to rise through the bureaucracy and become a hidden network of influence. They are Cixi's most subtle and perhaps most dangerous weapon."
This was a massive revelation. Ying Zheng and Meng Tian exchanged a look. They had been fighting a single serpent, when in reality, Cixi had cultivated an entire ecosystem of them, each one perfectly adapted to its environment. Her clandestine network was far more sophisticated, more deeply embedded in the fabric of the court, than they had ever imagined.
Ying Zheng then pressed for the most vital piece of information, the question that had been burning in his mind. "The location of the school. The Hidden Valley. You will tell me where it is."
A flicker of the old fear returned to Ying's eyes. "I cannot, Your Majesty. I swear on my life, I do not know its name or its precise location. None of us do. It is the school's most protected secret. We were always brought there blindfolded as children, on a journey that took many days. To leave was to die."
"But there must be clues," Ying Zheng insisted, his voice gentle but firm. "Think. Nothing is a perfect secret. There are always seams. What did you see? What did you smell? What did you hear?"
Ying closed her eyes, her mind traveling back to the only home she had ever known. "The air," she whispered. "It was always thin and cool, even in summer. And it always smelled of pine and a particular kind of mountain flower, a small, white blossom they called the 'ghost orchid.' The water from the streams was always pure and icy cold."
She opened her eyes. "And once a year, always in the deepest part of winter, a special shipment would arrive. It was the only contact we had with the outside world. It brought rare medicinal herbs needed to treat our training injuries—the broken bones, the deep sprains. Our instructor, a cruel old man, once boasted that the herbs came from the farthest reaches of the empire, grown only in the high, misty mountains of western Sichuan province."
Meng Tian's head snapped up. Sichuan. The far west.
"This shipment," Ying Zheng pressed, his own excitement growing. "How did it arrive?"
"By a train of mules," Ying answered. "They were always led by the same men, rough-looking men who were not part of the school. They never spoke to us. And the crates they carried… they were all stamped with the mark of a trading company. A stylized image of a coiled serpent." She thought for a moment, dredging up a detail from the depths of her memory. "Once, I overheard the handlers speaking when they thought no one was listening. They mentioned returning to Chengdu before the spring thaws made the passes impassable."
The final pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. The school was located in the high mountains of western Sichuan. Its supply line ran through a specific, serpent-branded trading company based in the provincial capital of Chengdu. And the supply runs happened in the winter.
Ying then provided one final, critical detail. "The new recruits," she said. "They are brought only once a year, during the Spring Festival. They are taken from orphanages in several of the major southern cities. It is a time of chaos and celebration, when a few missing street children will go unnoticed."
Ying Zheng now had everything he needed. He had the what—a secret school of assassins. He had the where—the mountains of Sichuan. And he now had the how—the supply lines and the recruitment methods. He had a way to find the nest. He had a way to destroy it.
He looked at the broken assassin before him, a young woman whose entire reality he had just dismantled. He saw not an enemy, but a new, valuable asset. Her knowledge was priceless. She and Lotus together could help him identify other graduates of the Silent Orchid who might be hidden within the palace.
"You have done well, Ying," he said, his voice holding a note of approval. "Your past loyalty was to a woman who used you. Your new loyalty will be to the empire itself. You will have a true purpose now."
For the first time, a flicker of something other than fear or defiance appeared in Ying's eyes. It was a faint glimmer of the hope that Lotus had described. The hope of a new beginning.