At dawn the day after Dong Zhuo’s decision came down, flames rose simultaneously above each gate of Luoyang. One strand at the eastern gate of the Southern Palace (南宮), one at the western gate of the Northern Palace (北宮), one at the Ancestral Temple (宗廟) outside the palace wall. Within a single shichen (時辰), three strands of flame laid half the capital under one vast sheet of red cloth. The place that had been the Son of Heaven’s capital for two hundred years was settling, at a stroke this morning, into a black heap of ashes.

Lü Bu (呂布) meanwhile carried Dong Zhuo’s separate order and rode toward the imperial mausoleum (陵園) outside Luoyang. Along that ground, the tombs of the Han’s successive emperors and consorts stood in a single line. Lü Bu’s men took up spades and dug each tomb down. Gold and jade came out from beneath the caps. Pearls came out from beneath the waists. One bright pearl flashed inside a soldier’s palm.

Lü Bu stood at a distance and watched the scene. His fingertips lingered long upon the shaft of the Sky-Piercing Halberd. The cold sweat of yesterday evening had returned above his brow this morning. It trickled silently down the back of his neck.

A retainer ran up and bowed. “General. From Emperor Ling’s (靈帝) mausoleum, scores of bushels of gold and a chest of jewels have come forth.” Lü Bu nodded. It was the kind of nod he had given, for the first time in twenty-six years, not before a living person but above a dead man’s head.

Along the great avenue inside Luoyang, already several hundred thousand people were being driven westward. Dong Zhuo’s order was short. “Move every man and woman of Luoyang to Chang’an (長安), not one left behind.” Li Jue (李傕) and Guo Si (郭汜) led their iron cavalry and set one line of soldiers behind one line of people. Those slow in their motion were cut down upon the road beneath the rear soldiers’ blades. The two strands of this road ran eight hundred li to Chang’an. Upon those eight hundred li, the corpses of this spring would remain, one after another.

On another side, under the name of “rebel party” (逆黨), Dong Zhuo drew several thousand wealthy households of Luoyang outside the walls. Upon their heads he set banners first, with four red characters — “rebel officers, rebel party” (反臣逆黨). Then he beheaded them all at once. Upon the bodies, wealth was moved in carts. The fortunes of several thousand households entered Dong Zhuo’s treasuries in a single day.

Around the time Lü Bu dug down the emperor’s last tomb at the outer mausoleum, south of Luoyang’s gate a single line of horse-dust rose upon the plain. The army of Sun Jian (孫堅) had reached south of Luoyang. Dong Zhuo’s rear guard had already withdrawn westward. Sun Jian stepped into the ruins of Luoyang. His horse’s hooves broke through the surface of the ash; beneath the broken crust, things long hidden came up in small glints — bits of melted bronze, a half-burned scroll, the corner of a lacquer box whose painted dragon still carried its blue. He did not stop for those things. His two eyes rested upon a single well above the black heap of ashes. Above the mouth of the well, a thin steam rose. The grain of that steam differed from every other grain of ash around it.

Sun Jian ordered a retainer to check the inside of the well. When the retainer lowered a rope, a woman’s body came up from the bottom. Around her neck one silken pouch was tied. Inside the pouch was one red seal (印). Upon the top, handles of five dragons were carved; at the base, eight characters were engraved: “Received from Heaven, its years shall last long” (受命於天, 旣壽永昌).

It was the Imperial Hereditary Seal (傳國玉璽). Sun Jian’s two eyes narrowed. He tied the pouch’s knot again and placed it inside his own bosom. He spoke no line. The one who burned Luoyang this morning, and the one who drew an old seal from a well inside Luoyang’s ashes, stood beneath the same sky. The weight of the seal inside the bosom was heavier than the weight of the spear at the waist; and that single weight would, by next season, mark the parting between Sun Jian and the alliance more clearly than any word he might have spoken aloud.

The twenty-fifth morning of Book 1 deepened quietly across two seats: the ashes of Luoyang, and a well. The three characters Bunnagyang (焚洛陽, the seat of burning Luoyang) were planted as a seed — the breath in which half a capital was laid under one red cloth, while a thin steam rose from the mouth of one well. The two strands of Day 24’s Chojeonbi were, this morning, separated into two seats: the seat of a capital’s fire, and the seat of a seal set inside one bosom.

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