I traveled back to the Southern Song Dynasty and was actually outmaneuvered by Yue Fei.

The 9th day of the first month of the 12th year of Shaoxing.

Zhao Bocong had a dream.

In his dream, he became a child from Xiuzhou. His biological father was Zhao Zicheng, a sixth-generation descendant of Emperor Taizu, who was a minor official in Xiuzhou.

At the age of six, he was led into a large palace by an old nanny.

Sitting in the hall was a man in his thirties, with a thin face and deep dark circles under his eyes.

The man stared at him for a long time before saying something.

"This child resembles me."

Then the scene changed to the outside of the main hall on the day of entering the palace.

A person in armor squatted down and patted his head.

The man's hands were rough, with thick calluses on the base of his thumb, and he spoke in a very low voice, as if afraid of being overheard.

"Your Highness, I have something for you. Please keep it safe."

The man stuffed something into the lining of his shirt.

He was about to see what it was when he woke up.

At first, everything was pitch black, then three dim lights appeared, until my vision began to clear.

What place is this?

Zhao Bozong tried to sit up, and a sharp pain shot through the back of his head.

He then realized that the three dim lights were just three oil lamps lined up on a bronze candlestick.

The flame flickered slightly in the winter chill.

The bed curtains were crimson purple, embroidered with dark floral patterns, and the bed beneath was hard, covered with several layers of cotton mattresses.

Zhao Bozong then realized that what he had just experienced was not a dream, but rather a recollection of his life.

He was Zhao Yuan, courtesy name Bo Cong, a seventh-generation descendant of Emperor Taizu.

In the second year of the Shaoxing era, at the age of six, he was selected to be raised in the palace. His adoptive father, Zhao Gou, was the current emperor.

If he is Zhao Yuan or Zhao Bocong, then who is Lin Yue?

The 27-year-old doctoral student majoring in Song Dynasty history was looking for his supervisor to discuss his dissertation, "The Shaoxing Peace Treaty and the Political Ecology in the Early Southern Song Dynasty."

Who was the person who spent seven whole months in the library's ancient books section, turning the spine of Volume 143 of "Chronological Records Since the Jianyan Era" until it was cracked?

Or perhaps he is both Lin Yue and Zhao Bocong, only a modern soul has been implanted into this body.

Zhao Bozong rolled out of bed, his bare feet stepping on the cold stone bricks, and quickly walked to the head of the bed, lifting the pillow.

There was a wooden bird under the pillow.

It's about the size of a fist, with a dark, somber wood color. The carving isn't particularly fine, but there are two dark red objects embedded where the bird's eyes should be. They're not gemstones, but probably some kind of lacquered wooden beads.

He turned the bird over to look at its belly. The wooden bird's wings were carved folded up, with the inside of the wings close to the body. The gap was very narrow and hard to see with the naked eye. There was an extremely fine gap at the bottom, as if it had been opened and then closed.

Zhao Bocong pried along the seam with his fingernail, and found that the wooden bird's belly was empty, with nothing inside.

He held the wooden bird in his palm.

In the original owner's memory, this wooden bird followed him for nearly ten years, from Xiuzhou to Lin'an, from the imperial palace to the Duke of Jianguo's mansion.

He didn't remember who gave it to him; the original owner was seven years old, and he didn't remember many things to begin with.

But every time we move, every time we change our residence, this wooden bird is placed under my pillow, as if it were an instinct.

Zhao Bocong put down the wooden bird and walked to the bronze mirror.

The mirror reflected a young man's face, with delicate features and a scholarly air, though his cheekbones had not yet fully developed.

He had seen this face countless times, not in the mirror, but in historical records.

The opening of the "Annals of Emperor Xiaozong" in the History of Song states, "Emperor Xiaozong, whose personal name was Shen and courtesy name was Yuanyong, was a seventh-generation descendant of Emperor Taizu."

The second emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty.

He was a champion of Yue Fei's exoneration, a supporter of Yu Yunwen and Zhang Jun's Northern Expedition, and a loser of the Longxing Northern Expedition.

Zhao Bozong looked at his face in the mirror. It was the ninth day of the first month of the twelfth year of Shaoxing, ten days after Yue Fei's death.

History told him that Yue Fei's remains would be secretly carried out of Dali Temple by Wei Shun and buried next to Jiuqu Congci.

After his death, Kui Shun took this secret to his grave, telling only his son.

Twenty years later, Emperor Xiaozong ascended the throne and issued an edict to search for Yue Fei's remains. Kui Shun's son stepped forward.

This is the version recorded in historical books.

What is not recorded in historical records is what happened during those ten days.

"Your Highness."

The eunuch's voice came from outside the door, low and cautious.

Zhao Bozong put on his outer robe, and the door opened a crack. A thin old eunuch stood outside, his hands tucked into his sleeves, his back bent low.

"Your Highness is awake? This old servant heard a noise..."

"What is it?" Zhao Bozong remembered that the old eunuch's surname was Chen.

Eunuch Chen hesitated for a moment, "News has come in from outside the palace; something has happened outside the Dali Temple?"

Zhao Bozong paused in tying his belt.

"What is it?"

"Yue Yinping, the daughter of the Yue family, has been kneeling outside the Dali Temple for three days, carrying an empty coffin. She went there again before dawn today, kneeling as she has for the past few days, neither eating nor drinking, nor speaking."

Zhao Bozong's hand stopped on his belt.

Yue Yinping.

The biography of Yue Fei in the History of Song only contains six words: "The woman embraced a silver bottle and threw herself into the well, dying."

The Qing Dynasty novel "The Complete Story of Yue Fei" tells the tale of how she sought justice for her father and brothers, traveling tirelessly until she finally jumped into a well with a silver bottle in her arms.

But that's fiction, not history. Historically, the whereabouts of Yue Yinping are almost entirely unknown; historians left no mention of her.

Now the old eunuch told him that Yue Yinping had been kneeling outside the Dali Temple for three days, carrying an empty coffin.

No water was thrown into the well.

"Were there many onlookers?"

"Many," Eunuch Chen's voice lowered, "The entire Imperial Street is blocked, and there's still no movement from Prime Minister Qin's side. But the spies from Lin'an Prefecture are all watching."

Zhao Bozong was silent for a moment. "I understand, you can go now."

The door closed, and he stood in the room, still clutching the wooden bird in his hand.

After a while, he put the wooden bird back under his pillow and started getting dressed.

The Dali Temple was located in the west of Lin'an City, within Renhe County, and was separated from the Lin'an Prefectural Government by two streets.

It took Zhao Bozong the time it takes for an incense stick to burn to stand at the entrance of the alley before he could see the entire building clearly.

The walls are white and the tiles are black, and above the door hangs a plaque with the three characters "Dali Temple" in gold on a black background, so upright that it is almost rigid.

The snow has stopped. According to the Lin'an County Annals, the weather in Lin'an in the first month of the year is characterized by "east winds, rain and snow, and cold air."

It snowed for three days in a row a few days ago. This morning the sky cleared up, but the cold air had not subsided. A thin layer of ice had formed on the bluestone pavement, and it crunched when you stepped on it.

The irrigation ditch in front of Dali Temple was covered with ice, and the cracks between the bricks along the ditch were filled with remnants of snow, making it look dusty and gray.

The crowd stretched from the main gate of Dali Temple all the way to the end of Yujie Street.

Zhao Bocong stood on the periphery of the crowd and roughly estimated that there were at least three hundred people.

There were porters in short brown clothes, clerks wearing turbans, teahouse women with headscarves, and a few spies from Lin'an Prefecture dressed in fine clothes but deliberately standing in inconspicuous positions.

Zhao Bozong recognized their posture: their backs were slightly hunched, their hands were tucked into their sleeves, and their eyes were not fixed on the gate of the Dali Temple, but rather scanning the crowd.

He is watching them, and they will see him sooner or later.

Zhao Bocong shifted his gaze to the center of the crowd.

Yue Yinping knelt on the bluestone slab outside the main gate of Dali Temple.

She was dressed in plain white mourning clothes, with a coarse hemp overlay and a straw rope tied around her waist.

Her hair was tied into a simple bun, without a hairpin, just bound with a strip of white cloth.

Before the girl lay a thin coffin, made of cedar wood, unpainted, its grain exposed, gleaming grayish-white in the snowy light.

The coffin was empty; the lid was leaning to one side, and there was nothing inside.

She knelt there quietly, waiting for a coffin that would never be allowed to be carried in.