Xie Queshan returned to Snow-Gazing Retreat, his robes stained with blood, his entire person shrouded in chill like a living King of Hell. The female servants who met him head-on were all startled, each falling to the ground, not daring to make a sound.

He didn’t want to talk either, too lazy to explain, walking straight toward his own room.

“Xie Queshan!”

Then he was stopped by a crisp female voice.

Xie Queshan stopped his steps numbly, turned back to look, and called out: “Second Sister.”

Madam Gantang stepped forward, frowning: “Your clothing is unclean – what kind of appearance is this?”

So saying, she took out a handkerchief and raised her hand to help wipe the blood stains from his hands.

Xie Queshan was very docile, allowing his second sister to fuss over him.

“What happened?” Madam Gantang asked in a low voice, but quickly continued to herself: “Never mind, your affairs aren’t convenient for me to know about.”

“Second Sister.” Xie Queshan’s voice seemed to carry a trace of pleading. Madam Gantang suspected she had heard wrong and looked up at his face.

His face still had that expressionless dead man’s appearance.

But Madam Gantang could feel that her younger brother had encountered something very serious. This appearance of his was already unconsciously revealing a fragility he never showed to others.

They were family connected by blood after all.

“Speak.” Her voice also softened somewhat.

“Could you help me find a few doctors in the city who are best at treating external injuries?” After a pause, Xie Queshan continued: “Don’t let anyone know.”

“Who’s injured?” Madam Gantang’s brow twitched, feeling something ominous.

Xie Queshan didn’t answer, just stood there.

“I understand. I’ll help you handle it.”

Only after receiving her agreement did Xie Queshan leave. Actually, he had no confidence whether making these preparations would be useful.

He walked numbly back to his own room and sat rigidly at his desk until dusk.

If Homecoming Hall backed down, they would definitely send the person back within the day, but not a bit of news came. Xie Queshan’s heart sank into the night along with the setting sun.

He realized his opponent was a gambler even more mad and more perceptive than himself, unwilling to retreat even one step, even staking bigger chips on the table. He hadn’t expected Zhang Yuehui’s hatred for him to be so deep.

The barefoot aren’t afraid of the shod – this world had no shortage of madmen with nothing to lose.

So what about him? He was both a player in the game and someone who could decide the direction of the gamble. Win or lose would depend entirely on his decision.

…But he might not be able to make the right decision.

At this moment, a faint burning smell drifted over with the wind. Xie Queshan came back to his senses. Puzzled, he pushed open the window and saw thick smoke rising from the small courtyard ahead – that was the courtyard where Nanyi had once lived.

Xie Queshan was startled, thinking there was a fire. Without much thought, he leaped directly over the rooftops.

It turned out to be female servants burning things in the courtyard.

Xie Queshan descended from the eaves and sternly rebuked: “What are you doing?”

The female servants quickly stepped back and bowed. The leader said: “Master, a few days ago the Young Madam suddenly fell seriously ill and moved to the estate. Concubine Lu said she was afraid the things in the room might also be contaminated with illness, so she had us servants take out all the clothes to burn them.”

Glancing over, he saw several half-new, half-old garments burning in the brazier. In the time it took to speak, the flames had already consumed the clothes.

Xie Queshan was extremely irritated: “The person isn’t even dead – what are you burning!”

The female servants were scolded into silence, each timidly lowering their heads, not knowing what had suddenly provoked the master’s temper.

“All of you, go.”

The female servants disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving only Xie Queshan alone in the courtyard.

He stared at the brazier in a daze, thinking that if she knew her clothes had been burned, she would be heartbroken.

Xie Queshan looked away. Her room door was wide open, and as if possessed by a ghost, he walked inside. The room had been searched, messy and chaotic, with only traces in the smallest details remaining to show the owner had lived there.

The rouge box on the table corner hadn’t had time to be covered, a few long strands of hair were hidden in the comb’s teeth – everything was quite ordinary, as if the owner would return tonight.

Xie Queshan went around behind the screen. The writing desk was messy, with the four treasures of the study carelessly scattered about. The writing brush was still stained with ink, frozen stiff. Next to the brush rest were two inkstones – one was an ordinary inkstone, but the other was so exquisite it seemed out of place.

Xie Queshan remembered – this was the inkstone Song Muchuan had given her on the day of the spring banquet. But picking it up to look, he saw inscribed on it a line of delicate characters: “May eldest sister-in-law have peace and joy, and live a hundred years.”

Xie Queshan was stunned, only then realizing this couldn’t be Xie Xiaoliu’s handwriting – it should be from Qiu Jie’er, probably thanking her for saving Third Uncle.

But why would it reach Nanyi through Song Muchuan?

Some distant, unnoticed things quietly connected into a line in his mind. Previously curious about the connection between Song Muchuan and Nanyi, he had sent people to investigate and learned that the day before Song Muchuan entered the Torch Bureau, he had jumped into a river and happened to be rescued by Nanyi.

Perhaps it was on that day when Nanyi went out that she carried this inkstone with her, then left it with Song Muchuan? Later when she went to Tiger Kneel Mountain, she was tracking Second Sister and couldn’t possibly have carried an inkstone.

Why would she normally take this thing when going out? And that day, she had also stolen things from Concubine Lu.

An answer was ready to emerge – to raise ready money.

So at that time, she had already made up her mind to leave, but was kept by his words. Because he had promised her he would let her go and let her live peacefully for the rest of her life.

He also knew she might not believe him much, but she was someone with nowhere to go – she could only believe him.

Yet he had never brought her any good things.

Xie Queshan flipped through the pile of rice paper on the desk – crooked and uneven, all characters she had practiced. He could imagine how she looked when practicing calligraphy, sitting all crooked, pouting, ink staining her face, reluctant but still very diligent.

Books were pressed underneath. He casually opened one and discovered several folded sheets of rice paper tucked inside.

Unfolding them, his gaze shook.

It was actually his name – Xie Chao’en.

She had been secretly practicing his original name, written more properly than her other characters, carefully hidden in the book.

He suddenly remembered she had once joked about learning to write his name to curse him.

Those memories became vivid again. He could clearly remember the sunset that day falling on her face, illuminating even the fine hair on her skin until it glowed.

Her eyes held brilliant golden sunlight that could burn his eyes even in memory.

Thinking of the suffering she was enduring, his heart was wrenched, and the wound that was healing began to hurt again, more painful than when she had personally stabbed it into his body.

As she wished, he was cursed.

Admit it – he loved her.

Loved her tenacity, loved her softness, loved her untamed primitive nature, loved everything about her that pierced him. Love was unreasonable, overwhelming in its force.

He was the person in this world least suited to possess love, yet he had fallen in love with someone. He had always thought this insignificant bit of love was under his control. He had been too arrogant.

His footsteps carried him through Snow-Gazing Retreat’s pavilions and towers, finally bringing him to stand before the Buddhist hall on the back mountain.

Tightly closed vermillion doors, airtight guards.

Xie Queshan stood for a long time, his feet seemingly filled with lead, unable to move away.

He very much wanted to ask his sovereign father what he should do.

He was a blade prepared for the emperor, forged through countless temperings, meant to be unsheathed at the most valuable moment – certainly not now.

But from the moment Pang Yu died, a crack had appeared in his body. Now that crack was like a roaring abyss, almost ready to swallow him whole.

Why couldn’t he protect a single person he wanted to protect? What exactly had he established when he swore to “establish hearts for heaven and earth, establish lives for the people”?

Whether to save one person or save the world had never been an isolated contradictory problem – its answer changed moment by moment with circumstances.

He knew that great ship of the dynasty had already sacrificed many people. From an overlooking perspective, one more wouldn’t matter, but human limitations meant he could only rise and fall with the masses, occasionally rising above others but unable to be forever correct, forever wise.

Some foolishness was also precious about being human.

Flesh and blood, love and hate, emotions waxing and waning – this was life’s spark of fire. Perhaps his decision was wrong, but he didn’t regret it.

He always tried every means within his power to save those he could save. If at this moment he allowed her to die, he could never become the person who saved the world from the very beginning.

What Zhang Yuehui had grasped was precisely Xie Queshan’s nature. This was a gamble destined to be lost from the start.

The sky gradually deepened, and the spring breeze blowing over became cold and sharp again. Night was falling.

Xie Queshan slowly knelt before the vermillion doors and solemnly kowtowed three times.

He was a sinner – at this moment he was about to abandon his sovereign. But please let his sovereign forgive him – he was ultimately just a mortal after all.

From the day he surrendered in Youdu Prefecture, he no longer belonged to himself. But tonight, let him be selfish and base once, let him be the willful Xie Chao’en once more.

…

In Huachao Pavilion, the net carefully designed for Xie Queshan had been laid.

The good show was about to begin. Wanyan Jun was already waiting in the elegant room. Since Zhang Yuehui had personally requested him to set the ambush, this matter must be significant – he had to make this trip. Naturally, he was also curious about which major Torch Bureau figure would come today, so he could see what kind of people were causing trouble in Li Du Mansion.

In the dungeon, Zhang Yuehui had just finished checking the mechanisms and was preparing to go up when his gaze suddenly caught a corner of emerald green on a table outside, wrapped in a clean handkerchief, along with women’s pouches, sachets, and several banknotes, carelessly piled in the corner.

The guard noticed his gaze and explained: “Master, these are things searched from the Qin woman’s body.”

Finally, Zhang Yuehui had a certain strange perception. His gaze couldn’t move away from that touch of emerald green, because in that jade, there was faintly a crack.

He lifted that handkerchief to reveal several broken pieces of a jade bracelet underneath.

That crack he had personally chosen, the distance he thought he had created – from the very beginning it was destined that they would miss each other.

Zhang Yuehui’s whole body was as if struck by lightning, frozen in place.

He was a kite flying higher and higher, but there was always a faint string pulling at him, not wanting to let him leave the mortal world. That string tugged at his flesh, cutting him all over with wounds, and finally at this moment, made him crash heavily to the ground.