The Shadow in the Pagoda

The year was 1436, in the young reign of the Ming Emperor Zhengtong, with the Forbidden City still shiny with new gold and the empire as long as the mind could see. But long beyond palace walls, deeper in the misted mountains about Hangzhou, there existed a pagoda that had no mark on the imperial records — the Pagoda of the Shadow Bell.

They said the bell within rang automatically only when one told a lie within the walls.

The pagoda had been closed for thirty years, since the disappearance without explanation of the last monk charged with protecting it. On a rainy night, however, a scholar named Liang Shen came to the pagoda gate carrying a silk-wrapped compulsory book — The Book of Hidden Moons.

Liang had once been the emperor’s historian. His job had been to inscribe truth in the imperial annals. But in court, treason lived in the word true. The emperor wanted a history buffed to gleam like polished jade, free of rebellion, of blood, of ghosts. So Liang wrote what he was instructed, and the true stories seethed in his ink.

When his wife died in the course of a famine that the emperor’s officials had never happened, Liang ceased to write. He ran from the city, pursued as a traitor. But first, he stole the Book of Hidden Moons — a book that had it recorded not the ascensions of emperors, but their transgressions.

Now he stood in front of the mute pagoda, his robe sopping wet, his heart in a ball of terror and faith.

The heavy wooden doors slowly creaked open by themselves. Mirthful moonlight streamed through paper windows. The scent of dust, oil, and recollection was in the air. The bell suspended therein blackened with years, the edge etched with names — the names of the people who had attempted to silence the facts.

Liang bowed once and said into the silence. “I am looking for the keeper of the bell.”

A voice responded — gentle, womanly, old. “Truth-seekers pass and go. Few remain. Fewer live.”

Out of the darkness came a woman dressed in grey robes, with one silver pin holding her hair in place. Her eyes shone with the damp stone look. “You bear the Book,” she said. “Why bring it here?"

“Because,” Liang said, unwrapping the silk, “truth has to be told before it perishes.”

She eyed him long, then nudged toward the bell. “Speak, and it will judge if your truth is true.”

Liang knelt, his knees throbbing on the hard floor. “I wrote falsehoods for a living,” he admitted. “I blotted out the dead’s names, starvation to harvest, and murder peace. Bloodshed was rewarded with gold. Survival, I told myself. And yet my starved-for-wives. what they showed me what my ink had erected — a world with no recollection.”

The bell shook, a hum lowered the room.

He went on. “This book contains the emperor’s real history — his battles, his viciousness, his fears. I can publications it, I die. But if I don’t, I’m already dead.”

The hum grew deeper. The bell tolled once — sharp, mournful.

The woman nodded. “Then you are ready.”

She brought him to the core of the pagoda — a tiny room with stone tables that had inscriptions on them with bits of illegal history. She pointed to a vacant area. “You can put yours there.”

As Liang was setting up his brush, she whispered, “Do you recognize who I am?”

He shucked his head.

“I am Mei Lian,” she replied. “Formerly, the emperor’s concubine. When I accused his reign of founded on lies, he had me sealed alive within this pagoda. The bell, however, elected me to be its keeper. And so, I am unable to depart until that which I saw as the truth is penned by someone else’s hand.”

Liang’s brush stammered. “Then we bear the same chain.”

“Then smash it,” she whispered.

Liang recopied all the Book of Hidden Moons' secrets over the pagoda walls during three nights — the massacres, the bribes, the false treaties. The bell tolled with each row, the sound fading louder, more human, as though with the sigh of reliefs.

The fourth night, the thunder rent the skies. Soldiers came — torches flickering between the trees. The emperor’s soldiers had found him.

Mei Lian stroked Liang’s hand. “When the gods arrive, the bell will safeguard what you've penned. However, it will request a cost.”

Liang gazed at her with intensity. “What price?”

“The same one you took from me.”

As the troops rushed in through the doors, Liang faced the bell. They ordered him to hand over the book, but he could only weakly smile. “The book is gone now,” he explained. “It’s penned where no flames touch.”

The captain lifted up his sword. The bell hummed.

Blinding sound flashed the pagoda — no fire, but noise. When the echo died away, the troops found nothing but stripped stone and quiet. The bell had split cleanly in two.

Centuries later, monks reconstructing the site uncovered hazy lettering beneath the grime: the tale of an emperor’s secret sins, signed Liang Shen. They reassembled the bell, though the bell no longer rang. But voyagers passing the pagoda on nights under the moon still insist that they can hear a whisper — a man’s voice, even-toned: "Truth, no sooner spoken, dies not. It sleeps awhile; waiting to be repeated."