Judge Dee was not so sure about the flower girl, though. She was innocent, and so young. But as an old saying goes, the fire around the city gate means the death for the fish in a pond at quite a distance, too. People have to put out the fire by draining out the pond water, harmless as the fish there might be. So the young girl came to an untimely end. Things like that happened; it was nothing new or strange to Judge Dee.

Ironic as it might appear, such a conclusion was also quite acceptable to Judge Dee, he thought, with another wave of unpleasant taste in his mouth. To begin with, he had made an excellent show of the investigation to Minister Wu, who could no longer find any fault with him. On the other hand, Xuanji expressed her heartfelt gratitude to the judge for the ‘investigation’ into her case. It’s the least he could do for the poetess, whose poems he really liked.

And as a Confucianist, Judge Dee did the ‘right thing’ for the Tang Empire as well.

After all, there are things a judge can do, and things a judge cannot do. It came like an echo redolent of a Confucian maxim his late father had taught him.

There were questions he could not avoid asking himself, though. For one, what had he, the celebrated Judge Dee, really done for Xuanji?

Or was there nothing he had really done for her?

Out of the blue, the flying-knife note flashed back to his mind: ‘A high-flying dragon will have something to regret!’ The particular hexagram in the Book of Changes, when used as a sign in fortune telling, means that for the people in high positions with soaring ambitions, they could suffer a turn of luck and have something to regret. It could have come as a warning from the divine yet inscrutable providence for Judge Dee to behave himself. And for the prince, too. And then the next sign – ‘A hidden dragon should be careful in its movement’ – perhaps more explicit as a warning, meaning ‘at this stage, it’s too early for the dragon to move, so it won’t hurt to stay put.’ For him as well as for the prince? Ultimately, it had a bearing on the fate of the Tang Empire …

Judge Dee was getting confused again. A Confucianist, he did not believe in supernatural phenomena, but the Book of Changes had been considered as a Confucian classic, and those recurring dragon signs, along with intricate images or patterns in the last couple of days, had proven to be so penetrating into the opaqueness of nemesis.

Perhaps there were more things than were dreamed of by a bookish man like the so-called Judge Dee, particularly with his brain worn out as old age approached.