Fall of the Loyal

D aji watched the king fret over a broken spell, and she told him what the throne truly wanted was a way to silence anyone who spoke against it. Then she described the thing to build. A hollow bronze pillar, some twenty feet tall and eight around, with three iron fire-doors set down its length; you packed it with charcoal until the metal glowed red, stripped the condemned man, and chained him against it, and the heat did the rest — skin, then sinew, then bone, and at the last a little ash. She called it the paoluo, the roasting pillar, and said it was meant for those who spread rumors and slighted their lord. The king had it cast at once. He thought he was buying quiet. King Zhou, seeing that Daji had been badly frightened, was at a loss. Daji then set out a punishment: it stood about two zhang high and eight chi around, cast in bronze like a copper pillar, with three fire-doors — upper, middle, and lower — and charcoal burned red within. The condemned would be bound against it until skin, sinew, and bone were scorched away. This punishment she named the paoluo. King Zhou was delighted and ordered it made.

The first to burn on it was Mei Bo, a high officer of the court, and he did not soften a word. To heed Daji over your own ministers, he told the king, is to break the bond between a ruler and the men who serve him; the death sentence you are handing down does not fall on one condemned official — it falls on every soul in Zhaoge. A younger man might have found a gentler road to the same warning. Mei Bo took the direct one, knowing where it ended. The king gave him to the new pillar. He cried out once and was gone, and what was left on the bronze of the nine-bay hall was a stench no one could stand; by the time the fires cooled there was nothing to bury. The high officer Mei Bo came forward and rebuked the king to his face: "You benighted ruler, heeding Daji's words, have lost the duty between lord and minister. To execute Yuan Xian today is not to execute Yuan Xian — it is to execute the ten thousand people of Zhaoge." The king, enraged, condemned him to the paoluo. Pitiable Mei Bo cried out once, and his breath was gone; upon the nine-bay hall his skin, sinew, and bone were seared past all bearing, and in a little while he was reduced to ash.

Chapters on, the grief reached the oldest man in the government. Shang Rong had served the house of Shang the better part of a lifetime — he was seventy-five — and he had watched the whole slow ruin: the wine, the shuttered palace, a kingdom he had helped hold together coming apart in the hands of a man no argument could reach. Benighted lord, he said, your heart is drowned in wine and women and the governance of the realm run to waste; you have thrown it all away, clean and entire. He did not say it expecting to be heard. I do not grudge my death, he told them; what shames me is that I have failed the altars of the state, that I could not set my king right, and that I must go down and face the former kings with empty hands. Chapters afterward, the aged chief minister Shang Rong came before the king and rebuked him: "Benighted ruler! Your heart is lost to wine and lust, the governance of the state fallen into ruin — you have squandered it away, utterly and completely." And he said: "I do not grudge my death. Your old servant has this day failed the altars of the state and could not save his ruler; truly I am ashamed to face the former kings."

“He drew out his heart with his own hand, closed his robe, and walked from the hall without a word — bloodless, upright, and for a little while still alive.”

Then, before the whole court, the old man wheeled around and drove his own head into a stone pillar carved with coiling dragons. Seventy-five years of loyalty ended in the space of a breath — his skull broke open, the blood soaked the front of his robe, and a man who had been a faithful minister all his life and a devoted son for half of it lay dead on the palace steps. The book does not pretend the sacrifice moved the king. It says only that he dashed himself dead below the golden steps that morning, and that the name he left kept its fragrance for ten thousand years. In a court where speaking plainly now meant the bronze pillar, the old man had found the one death still his own to choose. Then Shang Rong swung about and dashed his head against a coiling-dragon stone pillar. Pitiable, this seventy-five-year-old minister: rendering his full loyalty this day, his brains burst forth and blood dyed his robe. A loyal minister a whole life long, a filial son for half of it — his death this day, the text says, was ordained by a former existence. A closing verse runs: dashing himself dead below the golden steps this morning, he left behind a name whose fragrance endures ten thousand years.

The last of the three was the king's own uncle. Bi Gan was blood of the royal house and the most senior loyal voice left in it, and Daji had every reason to want him gone — so she arranged to need him dead. One morning, at breakfast on the terrace, she cried out and dropped to the floor, bringing up blood, her face gone purple, her eyes shut: a heart seizure, sudden and wholly convincing. Her fellow fox, the girl Hu Ximei, had the remedy ready. The only thing that would save her was a broth boiled from a rare kind of heart — a heart with seven openings, the seven-apertured exquisite heart. And by a reckoning that surprised no one paying attention, the single man in the kingdom said to carry such a heart was Bi Gan. The last of the three was the king's own uncle. That day, as the two demons took their morning meal on the terrace, Daji suddenly cried out and fell to the ground; King Zhou, alarmed to a sweat, saw her spit up blood and water, her eyes shut, her face all purple. Hu Ximei then explained that only a broth boiled from one exquisite heart — a heart of seven apertures — would cure her, and by divination the matter pointed to Bi Gan.

They summoned him and told him what the king required: one slice of his heart, boiled for the queen. Take a piece of my heart, Bi Gan said, and I die on the spot. I have done nothing that warrants cutting out a heart — how do I come to suffer this, guilty of no crime? He knew already that argument was finished in that hall. What he had that the burned men before him had not was a sealed note. Years earlier Jiang Ziya had read his fortune, seen the danger coming, and left him a slip to be opened only at the last extremity, when there was no way forward and none back. Bi Gan opened it now, burned the talisman inside to ash in a bowl of water, and drank it down. They called Bi Gan in, and the king said only: "It is no more than the loan of one heart — no harm in it; why so many words? Guards, take him down and fetch the heart." Bi Gan said: "Take one slice of my heart and I die at once. I am guilty of no crime that merits cutting out a heart — how do I meet this undeserved calamity?" Now years before, Jiang Ziya had read Bi Gan's fortune, called it ill, and left a sealed note against a moment of no advance and no retreat. Bi Gan opened it, burned Ziya's talisman to ash in a bowl of water, and drank it down.

Before he did it, he cursed her by name. Daji, you vile creature — when I go down among the dead I will meet the former emperor with nothing to be ashamed of. Then he took up the sword, bowed eight times toward the ancestral temple, drove the blade in below the navel, and opened his own belly, and no blood ran. He put his hand inside, drew out his heart, and threw it to the ground. He said nothing. He drew his robe shut over the wound, his face the color of pale gold, and walked down out of the hall on his own two feet. Outside he mounted his horse and rode for the north gate — a man with no heart in his chest, upright in the saddle, and for a little while longer, alive. Bi Gan cursed her: "Vile Daji! When I die and go below, I shall face the former emperor without shame." Then, sword in hand, he made eight great bows toward the ancestral temple, thrust the blade in at the navel, and cut open his belly — and his blood did not flow. He put his hand into his belly, drew out his heart, and flung it down. Covering himself with his robe, he said nothing; his face was like pale gold, and he went straight down from the hall. Bi Gan mounted his horse and rode away toward the north gate.