At dawn the next day, before the Northern Yimen (北掖門) of Chang'an, a halberd rose slowly toward the throat of one man — a beat later than the children's rhyme of the evening before.

Dong Zhuo set out for court with his retinue before daybreak. Along the road stood a lone Daoist priest. He wore a blue robe and a white head-wrap, and held a long pole. At the pole's end was tied a cloth perhaps one zhang long, with the character "kou (口)" written large at each end. Dong Zhuo glanced and turned to Li Su (李肅). "What does this priest mean?" Li Su answered low. "He is mad of heart, Your Grace. Pay him no mind." Soldiers drove the priest aside. Yet when the pole's cloth unfolded in the wind, the two "kou" overlapped side by side, briefly forming the shape of the character "Lü (呂)," and then vanished.

The carriage reached the front gate of the court. Li Su, holding a treasure-sword, clung by the carriage's wheel and walked Dong Zhuo in. At the Northern Yimen, the soldiers halted outside the gate. Only about twenty beside the carriage entered together.

Before the hall-gate, Dong Zhuo raised his eyes and looked ahead. Wang Yun (王允) and a company beside him stood to the left and right of the hall-gate, each holding a treasure-sword. Dong Zhuo's face set. "What does it mean that you hold treasure-swords?" Li Su did not answer. His hand only pushed the carriage's wheel a single step forward, quietly.

Wang Yun cried out in that moment. "The traitor has arrived. Where are the warriors?" From behind the pillars on both sides of the Northern Yimen, some hundred warriors swept round together. Spears and shuo halberds were raised all at once. The spear-points thrust toward Dong Zhuo's chest together.

Inside Dong Zhuo's court robe lay a double layer of armor. The spear-points caught upon the armor and bounced back. Still, a wound was drawn upon one of his arms. The strength of that arm broke, and his body tipped from the carriage and fell to the ground. A great cry from his mouth rang upon the stone floor of the Northern Yimen. "My son Fengxian, where are you?"

Before that line had fallen, from the rear of the carriage one man walked out like a shadow. In his hand a halberd was held. On the inside of his left wrist, a red line flashed cold under the dawn's light. It was Lü Bu.

He stepped in front of Dong Zhuo. His voice pushed low and clear across the stone floor of the Northern Yimen. His eyes did not meet the eyes of the fallen man; they met instead the shape of the halberd's own tip. "There is an edict. I strike the traitor." The halberd thrust straight toward Dong Zhuo's throat in a single beat. Its tip pierced that neck. In that motion, three weights left Lü Bu's shoulder together: the weight of two fathers changed, the weight of a halberd cast by its own master, and the weight of a woman's single step upon a railing.

The air before the Northern Yimen this dawn ceased entirely. Li Su's sword flew from behind, and at a single stroke struck off Dong Zhuo's head and lifted it upon his hand. Lü Bu, halberd in his left hand, reached with his right into his breast. An edict rose upon that hand. He lifted it wide and cried with a great voice.

"By the edict, we strike the traitor Dong Zhuo. The rest shall not be asked." The officers and officials cried as one, "Wansui! (萬歲, long live)." That cry rang loud from within the corridor of the Northern Yimen to the eastern palace eaves.

In the streets of Chang'an that followed, shops set their doors wide; old men and young women came out together; and songs of celebration rose from every corner. People placed what small gifts they could upon one another's shoulders. Some took up torches in the daylight simply to watch the fire move. Some brought out their best spirits and drank in public without fear. For years a single name had weighed upon the throats of this city; this morning, that name was off. The air of Chang'an knew at last what it felt like to be lifted.

Within the palace, Wang Yun sat down at last upon a low step beside a pillar. He did not speak. One of his sleeves was stained with a thin line of blood not his own. He looked down at it and did not wipe it off. Some stains a minister chooses to keep for a day. This one, he chose.

The ninth dawn of Book 2 opened quietly upon the stone floor of the Northern Yimen. The three characters Bukaegil (北掖一, the single thrust of the Northern Yimen) were planted as a seed: the breath on which the neck of one great Grand Preceptor of a capital ceased beneath the tip of a halberd. The two characters of Day 38's Cheolicho had become, this dawn, the reality of a single halberd-thrust.

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