In the middle of the snow, yue steps forward and knocks on the door of the emperor's chamber. He tells yue to change into his outer clothes and to wait for him in the yard. yue tells him that the emperor is having a roll call and that he should hurry to avoid suspicion. He then tells him to put on his cloak and wait outside the city gates. Xinhua tells him about the relationship between yan and xiao. The couple is going well, Xinhua says, and yue asks where they are going. The emperor says that they are outside the boundaries of the imperial city and that they must go three kilometres south to get there. He also tells them about the northern kingdom and its temple, where the northern emperor keeps the remains of his ancestors. He says that after the southern kingdom was defeated by the northern king, yan killed himself and used the sword as a trophy. After his death, the sword was placed in the royal ancestral hall for future generations to revere. The narrator tells Xinhua that the sword belongs to yue and he is only returning it to yan. In the novel, after yan's attack on the northern city, he used half the city as a bloodstained battlefield and searched for the sword.