After the single thrust of the halberd at the Northern Yimen had ended, the troops from Chang'an rode toward Meiwu. Lü Bu stood at their head. In his hand he held one more edict. The characters of that edict would cross first before the gate of Meiwu.

Upon the walls of Meiwu, the four captains of the guard — Li Jue (李傕), Guo Si (郭汜), Zhang Ji (張濟), and Fan Chou (樊稠) — saw Dong Zhuo's head borne forward upon the spear-tip before the gate. The four faces paled together at a stroke. Li Jue spoke first. "Our Lord is gone. From this seat, we must turn back." Through the small postern at the back of the gate, the four fled toward their native Xiliang (西涼). The defense of Meiwu broke all together.

Lü Bu led the troops and entered the front gate of Meiwu. A few sentinels above the walls tried to resist, but were overcome in a single stroke. The inner court opened entirely. At the far end of that court stood a woman. Diaochan.

Diaochan's face came into Lü Bu's two eyes again. The thickness of one sheet of window-paper, the distance of one step, the distance of one cun — this morning they had all vanished. Diaochan walked slowly toward Lü Bu. Lü Bu set down his halberd, held out his two arms, and embraced her. Their two breaths overlapped at last, as a single grain.

One lamp in the palatial rooms of Meiwu went out. Then another lamp went out. The lamp of the granary went out; the lamp of the tower went out. The rhythm of lamps going out, one by one, was the breath of Meiwu that morning. Twenty years' grain, eight hundred beauties, and the heaps of gold and jade were settling, one by one, into shadow behind the lamps.

A minor officer bowed before Lü Bu. "Lord of Wen. The storehouses of Meiwu are opened. Two hundred thousand catties of gold, hundreds of chests of jewels, eight hundred beauties, twenty years of grain. Let Your Lordship give the order: move it all to Chang'an, or burn it."

Lü Bu turned his head and drew, from afar, the face of Wang Yun. The grain of rebuilding the court's order was set inside that drawn face. "Do not burn. Move it to Chang'an. Gold, jade, and grain to the court's storehouse; the beauties shall each be sent home to their own places."

The punishment of Dong Zhuo's household took place that evening. His mother, his younger brother, and his nephew were beheaded. His body was cast upon the streets of Chang'an; a wick was set into his navel and lit as a lamp. That folk-memory-turned-record of the city that evening lay quietly within the pages. The body of one great Grand Preceptor had turned into a single small lamp.

On the evening the lamps of Meiwu had all gone out, Lü Bu took Diaochan's hand and returned to Chang'an. Wang Yun stood at the center of the court and wrote down the first line of a new order of the court. Around him, the ministers who had known the plan gathered; those who had not known it gathered more cautiously. A court that had bowed to one name for years now had to learn how to bow to no one name at all. That is a harder learning than the first; and it was the learning Wang Yun's next months would have to teach.

Within the carriage that carried Diaochan back into Chang'an, she did not open the blind. She had entered these gates under a blind once before with a name written upon her. She left these gates under the same blind with the name gone. The grain of her two feet, which had stood upon two separate roads under the moonlight of Day 31, was now standing upon one single road. Where that one road led, she could not yet see. Wang Yun had freed her from two men; yet no minister had yet taught her which road a freed woman walked. Learning that road alone would be, in the days to come, her own first road.

One last lamp of Meiwu went out behind them. A distant drum sounded in the city of Chang'an: not a war drum, but a court drum, ordering the first morning of a court without Dong Zhuo. Somewhere on the western road, four captains were already turning their horses in a direction that would, in a few weeks, become another storm. Yet this evening, the sound of that distant drum was the only sound the city chose to hear.

The tenth evening of Book 2 deepened quietly above the extinguished lamps of Meiwu. The three characters Odeungjin (塢燈盡, the lamps of Meiwu have all gone out) were planted as a seed: the breath in which the lamps within great walls went out, one by one. Behind the thrust of Day 39's Bukaegil, this evening the going-out of the great city's lamps followed. The seat of Book 1's Bunnagyang (Day 25, the burning of Luoyang) now stood as a mirror against the going-out of Meiwu's lamps tonight.

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