Lizheng Hall. That's the symbol that's been haunting me since I finished these chapters. Prince Zhao goes to his mother's former residence — a hall that has been preserved exactly as she left it, eleven years after her death. Every item in its place. Spotlessly clean. Completely empty of life. The text tells us he has few memories of this place because his mother only lived there for half a month. She married at seventeen, gave birth at twenty-nine, was already dying two years before her husband became emperor, and died three days after being crowned. Eleven years of preservation for a woman who was only present for a fraction of that time. And Prince Zhao? He sits in this perfectly maintained empty space because he "simply wanted to find a quiet place in the palace to sit for a while." The parallel to Gu Ningxi's situation is almost too sharp to ignore. She is also preserving something — her true identity, her sense of self — in a space that isn't really hers. The marquis household, the court, the Crown Prince's faction: these are all rooms she's been assigned to occupy, maintained according to someone else's design, while her actual self remains hidden beneath the surface. And like Lizheng Hall, her preservation is fragile. The dream shows us what happens when the preservation fails — when the truth is discovered and the consequences are violent. The crispy cakes scene operates as a counter-symbol: something preserved through active, loving practice rather than frozen in place. Gu Ningxi's mother kept the memory alive by continuing to eat the cakes, and now Gu Ningxi continues it. One is preservation as stasis (Lizheng Hall). The other is preservation as practice (the cakes). The novel seems to be asking which one actually survives, and more importantly, which one is worth surviving for.
