She sacrificed herself, not just for him but also for the Tang Empire. It was the ‘right thing,’ as she had told Judge Dee in the prison cell, for her to do – to protect the prince, and to ensure the continuation of the Lis on the throne of the Tang Empire – even at the expense of her life.

For her, there seemed to be meaning in the loss of herself. It was understandable for a poetess who had been searching for ‘meaning’ all her life.

But was the prince really such a ‘true-hearted lover’?

Not too long before his meeting with Xuanji, Judge Dee recalled, the prince had landed himself in trouble for an affair with a palace lady.

To say the least, the prince then made no effort to help Xuanji in prison.

No effort whatsoever to visit her or even send her anything.

After all, it would have been seen as unacceptable for the prince to get involved with a disreputable courtesan like Xuanji, let alone to cast his lot with her.

Consequently, a total erasure of the relationship between the courtesan poetess and the prince was the order of the day. No traces of it should have been left detectable under the Tang Dynasty sun.

Hence the fatal ambush by the black-attired horseman on the road so close to the nunnery. It was to recover anything potentially incriminating the prince that might have been left behind in the nunnery.

Regarding the murder of Wei, it was not likely the prince had directly given the order, but it was far more likely that the people under him had done so – with the prince’s tacit approval. As for the message with the stab wound at Wei’s groin, it could have been done deliberately as a sort of camouflage, but there might also have been another distorted rationalization for it: whatever Xuanji had been, she was one that had been touched by the prince, and, consequently, was untouchable to others. And of course the black-attired horseman could have been sent by Minister Wu for a different purpose.

And such an ending for Wei was acceptable to the people who were aware, or not, of the conspiracies revolving around the nunnery, in which Wei unwittingly played a shadowy role in his way, wearing the black fox spirit costume in the neighborhood at night, or carrying the cloth bundle out of the nunnery on the last morning of his life. He was nobody. A good-for-nothing nobody missed by no one.