Lin'an, seat of the Southern Song court, was a city meticulously designed, its every district, canal, and garden reflecting the intricate hierarchies and cultivated aesthetics of imperial power. Within the vast, labyrinthine Forbidden City complex, beyond the bustling outer courts and ceremonial halls, lay hidden enclaves – secluded gardens, private pavilions, quiet retreats meant for contemplation or imperial leisure. One such place, however, lay shrouded not just by high walls and locked moon gates, but by decades of deliberate neglect and uneasy silence: the 'Garden of Unfettered Dreams'.

  Built generations ago by Emperor Huizong, a ruler more renowned for his artistic passions than his political acumen, this garden was conceived as a masterpiece of landscape design, a microcosm of Taoist ideals. Rare, exotic plants gathered from the empire's furthest reaches bloomed amidst strangely shaped rocks resembling mythical beasts, miniature waterfalls tumbled into jade-green pools, and elegant pavilions with names like 'Listening to the Pines Pavilion' and 'Moon-Viewing Terrace' offered vistas of curated perfection. It was Huizong's private sanctuary, a place where he composed poetry, painted landscapes, debated philosophy with favoured scholars and Taoist adepts, and perhaps, sought refuge from the growing storms on his northern borders. But after the catastrophe that befell his reign, the Jurchen invasion and the southward flight of the court, the Garden of Unfettered Dreams, tainted by association with the fallen emperor's perceived extravagances and perhaps darker rumours of esoteric rituals performed within, was sealed off, its memory allowed to fade, its existence becoming a footnote in palace history.

  For decades, the garden lay undisturbed, hidden behind its high walls, overgrown, forgotten. Until recently. Guards patrolling the perimeter wall, a lonely beat skirting this neglected corner of the vast palace grounds, began reporting strange occurrences. They spoke of phantom music drifting over the wall on still nights – the ethereal notes of a guqin or the clear, high tones of a jade flute, melodies both beautiful and profoundly melancholic. They smelled impossible fragrances – the heavy sweetness of night-blooming jasmine out of season, the sharp tang of exotic herbs not known to grow elsewhere in the palace gardens. Disembodied sighs, soft as falling petals, were heard when the wind was still.

  These were initially dismissed as tricks of the mind, echoes carried on the night air from other parts of the palace or the nearby city. But the phenomena grew more persistent, more localized. Guards felt an inexplicable pull towards the main sealed moon gate, a heavy, ornate structure now half-obscured by ivy. Some heard faint whispers seeming to call their name, promising peace or beauty just beyond the wall. The air near the gate felt different – cooler, denser, carrying a profound sense of stillness and longing. Then came the incident with young Guard Liu. Patrolling near the moon gate just after dusk, he vanished. His frantic comrades searched, finding no trace. Hours later, near dawn, Liu reappeared near the same gate, dazed, shivering, his eyes wide with bewildered wonder. He spoke disjointedly of walking through a breathtaking garden bathed in perpetual moonlight, filled with strange, beautiful plants and soft music, before finding himself abruptly back outside the wall, with no memory of how he got there or how much time had passed.

  Panic, muted but pervasive, spread through the palace guard detachment responsible for this sector. Men grew reluctant to patrol near the forgotten garden, their disciplined steps hesitant, their eyes constantly drawn to the silent, ivy-choked wall. Captain Lin, their commander – a pragmatic soldier more concerned with intruders and fire hazards than restless spirits – found his authority strained. He couldn't deny the genuine fear in his men's eyes, nor the unsettling consistency of their reports. He doubled the patrols, ordered lanterns kept burning brightly near the wall, yet the phantom music, the strange scents, the psychic pull towards the gate persisted. He knew he had to report it, but reporting 'ghostly music' or 'enchanted gardens' to his superiors was a path fraught with ridicule and potential disgrace.

  He found a discreet ally in Head Eunuch Wang, an elderly man whose service spanned several reigns, his face a mask of courtly discretion, his memory a repository of palace secrets and forgotten lore. Eunuch Wang listened patiently to Captain Lin's troubled account, his gaze distant. "Ah, the Garden of Unfettered Dreams," he sighed softly, the name itself seeming to conjure ghosts. "Sealed after Emperor Huizong... misfortunes clung to it. Unresolved sorrows. Powerful energies left untended. It is unwise to disturb such places, Captain, even with neglect." He hinted at stories of Huizong's deep involvement with Taoist alchemy and mysticism, of rituals performed in the garden seeking harmony or perhaps even longevity, of favoured consorts and scholars who met unhappy ends during the dynasty's collapse. "Some energies," Wang murmured, "do not fade easily. They merely... sleep. And sometimes, they dream."

  Recognizing the potential danger and the political delicacy, Eunuch Wang recalled hearing of Xuanzhen, the wandering Taoist whose reputation for handling unusual energetic disturbances had reached even the insulated world of the court, particularly after his involvement in resolving matters like the Emperor's Nightingale Automaton (Chapter 32). Wang saw Xuanzhen not just as an exorcist, but as a potential harmonizer, someone who could perhaps soothe the disturbance without causing undue alarm or requiring politically inconvenient explanations. Through discreet channels, he arranged for Xuanzhen, currently consulting on geomancy in Lin'an, to be brought quietly to the palace.

  Xuanzhen met with Captain Lin and Eunuch Wang in a secluded side hall, the air thick with unspoken anxieties. He listened intently as they described the phenomena surrounding the forgotten garden, the guards' experiences, and the fragmented history Wang provided. He felt the resonance immediately – a place of intense imperial focus and artistic passion, imbued with potent geomantic design and perhaps esoteric ritual, then abruptly abandoned, sealed off with unresolved emotions clinging to it. It was a perfect vessel for stagnant qi to coalesce, for lingering psychic residue to fester and begin projecting outwards.

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  "A garden, like a person, needs to breathe, Eunuch Wang," Xuanzhen observed. "When sealed away with unresolved sorrow or intense, ungrounded energy, its spirit can grow melancholic, restless. It may reach out, not necessarily with malice, but from loneliness, from imbalance, drawing the unwary into its lingering dream."

  He requested permission to enter the garden, explaining the need to assess the energies directly and perform a ritual of cleansing and harmonization. Eunuch Wang, after careful consideration and likely securing tacit approval from higher, unseen authorities, agreed, emphasizing the absolute need for discretion. Captain Lin provided two trusted guards to assist with unsealing the ancient moon gate but instructed them to remain outside the walls.

  As the heavy, rusted bolts were drawn back and the stone gate groaned open on ancient hinges, a wave of cool, damp air flowed out, carrying the overwhelming scent of overgrown vegetation, decaying blossoms, phantom incense, and profound, centuries-old melancholy. Xuanzhen stepped through, followed hesitantly by Eunuch Wang, while Captain Lin and the guards remained outside, their faces pale.

  They entered a world frozen in time, yet riotously alive with neglect. Moonlight, filtering through a canopy of tangled, overgrown trees – some exotic species Xuanzhen barely recognized – dappled flagstone paths almost completely obscured by moss and creeping vines. Strange, luminous fungi clung to decaying pavilion timbers. The air was unnaturally still, yet filled with faint, overlapping sounds – the ghost of a guqin melody, the trickle of a long-dry stream, soft sighs carried on a breeze that didn't stir the leaves. Rare, exotic flowers bloomed in chaotic profusion, their colours unnaturally vibrant under the moon, their scents intoxicatingly sweet yet tinged with decay. The qi was incredibly thick, potent, stagnant – a powerful concentration of Wood and Water elemental energies interwoven with the lingering psychic imprints of artistic passion, contemplative stillness, imperial anxieties, and deep, unresolved sorrow, likely connected to Huizong's tragic end and the loss of his beloved sanctuary.

  It felt like stepping into a dream, beautiful yet profoundly unsettling. Xuanzhen understood how Guard Liu could have become lost here, lured by the melancholic beauty, his sense of time distorted by the stagnant energy. This wasn't a place haunted by individual ghosts; the garden itself was the haunting, a living memory palace dreaming fitfully in its isolation.

  "The energy here is powerful, but stagnant," Xuanzhen murmured to Eunuch Wang, who looked around with wide, fearful eyes, clutching a protective amulet. "Like a blocked meridian in the body. It needs to be opened, cleansed, reconnected to the flow of the wider world."

  The ritual Xuanzhen devised focused on gentle awakening and reintegration. He identified the garden's original geomantic focal points – a dry stone basin that once held a fountain, a crumbling moon-viewing terrace, the base of a unique Taihu rock formation resembling a sleeping dragon.

  At the dry basin, Xuanzhen, assisted by Wang, cleared away debris. Using pure water brought from outside the garden and chanting mantras of purification and flow, he symbolically reactivated the fountain, visualizing stagnant water energy being cleansed and encouraged to move again.

  On the moon-viewing terrace, he lit special incense designed to disperse melancholy and attract benevolent celestial energies. He placed mirrors angled to reflect the moonlight (or sunlight, had it been day) back into the most shadowed corners of the garden, gently introducing clarifying Yang energy to balance the overwhelming Yin.

  At the base of the dragon rock, the garden's heart, he performed the core ritual. He made offerings – not lavish ones, but simple, natural items representing balance: five types of grain, pure salt, clear spring water, a single branch of flowering plum. He spoke aloud, addressing the 'spirit of the garden', acknowledging its history, the passion of its creator, the sorrow of its abandonment. He didn't command, but invited it to release its stagnant grief, to reconnect with the cycles of nature outside its walls, to transform its melancholic dream into peaceful memory. He visualized the high walls becoming permeable to positive qi, the garden gently breathing again in harmony with the rest of the palace grounds.

  As he completed the ritual, a soft breeze stirred through the garden, the first genuine movement of air they had felt. The phantom music and scents seemed to fade, replaced by the natural sounds of the night and the clean scent of damp earth and living plants. The oppressive weight lifted, the stagnant qi beginning to flow, feeling cleaner, lighter, still ancient and powerful, but peaceful. The garden felt less like a haunted dream and more like a sleeping beauty, gently stirring.

  Eunuch Wang let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief. Xuanzhen advised him that the garden should ideally be gradually, respectfully tended – pruned, pathways cleared, perhaps the fountain truly restored – allowing its energy to fully reintegrate. Keeping it sealed forever risked the stagnation returning.

  They left the garden, resealing the moon gate. Captain Lin reported that the unsettling phenomena outside the walls ceased almost immediately. The guards felt the oppressive presence lift, the strange lures vanish.

  Xuanzhen departed the Forbidden City, the memory of the forgotten garden vivid in his mind. It was a potent illustration of how even places of beauty and refinement, when neglected and steeped in unresolved emotion, could become psychic traps, dreaming landscapes capable of luring the unwary. It underscored the importance of tending not just the physical world, but the energetic and emotional landscapes as well, lest forgotten sorrows fester in sealed-off corners, their melancholic whispers eventually demanding to be heard. The Garden of Unfettered Dreams, gently awakened, might now slowly rejoin the living world, its beauty hopefully transforming from a haunting echo into a quiet testament to history, art, and the enduring need for balance.