Zhang Xian was a petty, small-minded man. If he went to the capital, he would certainly find a way to bring her husband down. Chu Linlang had lost sleep for days and had decided to rattle the mountain to frighten the tiger — give him a scare, and stop the crisis before it worsened.

The leverage, however, couldn’t be too serious, lest a cornered animal lash out. So using Zhang Xian’s brother-in-law — a minor grain official and his petty corrupt dealings — as the target was just right.

Of course, Chu Linlang had done all of this behind her husband’s back. Such a daring and outlandish scheme was something a principled gentleman like Zhou Sui’an could never have devised.

Before her marriage into the Zhou household, she had been nothing more than a concubine-born daughter of a salt merchant from Jianghuai, raised on the salt-carrying boats, helping her father deal with porters and traders, and developing no small measure of cunning along the way.

Capable as she was, she was still only a girl — and in her father’s eyes, no matter how sharp a daughter might be, she was still a loss-making liability to be married off. Nowhere near as useful as a son, even a worthless one, by virtue of that extra bit between his legs.

By the time Chu Linlang reached marriageable age, a moment of carelessness had nearly allowed her legitimate older brother to scheme against her. Her own father had been prepared to send her off as a concubine to an aging salt official.

When she had been sinking into that filthy mire, it was Zhou Sui’an who had pulled her free. He hadn’t cared about her origins, had defied his mother’s wishes, and insisted on marrying her as his proper wife.

Such a debt of gratitude could not be repaid even in death. After marrying into the Zhou household, Chu Linlang had devoted herself wholeheartedly to managing what had been a crumbling, ruined estate. Bit by bit, she had built it back up and supported her husband through to his official career.

To match herself to her husband, Chu Linlang had put in considerable effort beyond the abacus — she had spent real time on books, managed to memorize a fair number of classical poems, and rubbed shoulders, at least a little, with the refined and cultured world.

Unfortunately, being an official’s wife looked dignified on the outside but cost more toil than being the wife of any merchant. A few days ago, her husband had gotten into a dispute with a colleague. Proud and unyielding by nature, he refused to apologize to anyone. But Chu Linlang understood people and the world — she knew her husband had brought a serious calamity down on himself.

A few days before, she had gathered some information about old Lianzhou affairs from the wives of minor officials she knew, and had boldly hatched this plan — all without telling Zhou Sui’an — and come to persuade Lin Niangzi to mediate on their behalf.

At the very least, she needed to give Zhang Xian cause for hesitation, enough to stop him from casually going to the capital to make trouble. Besides, her husband had already offended that petty villain Zhang — it was a case of using a dying horse as a living one, and things couldn’t get any worse than they already were.

Just then, Xia He spoke up again: “My lady, didn’t you still need to buy fabric for the senior official’s collar? Where shall we go?”

Making an official’s collar required care and judgment. Chu Linlang reached into her pocket again and gave the tortoise shell a reverent shake — hmm. Southeast brings good fortune.

So she said: “Southeast it is — let’s go to Rongsheng Fabric Shop!”

Xia He was well used to her mistress’s superstitious ways. Even the location where they had intercepted Lin Niangzi that morning had only been settled after Chu Linlang had shaken that tortoise shell eight times.

The tortoise shell had quite a history to it — it had been given to her mistress by an old salt trader, back when she was still a young girl.

According to the old salt trader, this shell was descended from the great divine turtle that had carried the goddess Nuwa through the sky when she mended the heavens — the thirty-two-hundredth generation of its lineage — and its divinations were remarkably accurate.

Chu Linlang believed this without a shred of doubt. After all, her chance meeting with Zhou Sui’an, and her subsequent transformation from an unremarkable salt merchant’s concubine-born daughter to an official’s wife, had all been guided by that tortoise shell. Giving it three shakes before going out was her daily ritual — not to be taken lightly.

Yet today, even this thirty-two-hundredth generation descendant of the divine turtle seemed to have been slacking at its post. For the path it pointed toward was no smooth and open road.

The carriage had barely traveled when it was brought to a dead halt by a group of people. Chu Linlang leaned out to look.

The road, ordinarily wide enough, was now hopelessly blocked. A band of masked men surrounded another carriage, fighting and slashing in the middle of the street. That carriage had its own guards, but with so many wolves and tigers pressing in from all sides, they were clearly struggling to hold their ground.

No need for the tortoise shell this time. Chu Linlang immediately called out without hesitation: “Turn the horses around — quickly!”

The driver had already sensed something wrong and hurriedly began to wheel the horses around to flee the scene of carnage.

But at that very moment, a tall man holding a blade leapt from the besieged carriage — his other hand gripping a slight, scrawny-looking man — and in one bound, both of them landed squarely on top of Chu Linlang’s carriage.

The tall man shoved the slight figure into the carriage cabin, then seized the reins from the driver with one hand and cracked them hard. The horse bolted forward like a creature freed from all restraint.

The group behind them actually chased after with blades raised, with every appearance of seeing this through to the bitter end.

The maid on the carriage was so frightened she couldn’t help but let out a shriek. Chu Linlang alone kept a level head. She and the pale, shaken slight man stared at each other from close quarters, then listened as he spoke to the tall man who had taken over the reins.

The man driving the carriage did not turn around. Even when the slight man inside addressed him with questions, he answered in brief, terse phrases.

The spot where they had been intercepted was right at Lianzhou’s city gate, and by the direction of their carriage, they appeared to have only just entered the city. Hearing the foreign accents in both men’s speech, Chu Linlang guessed they were unfamiliar with Lianzhou’s layout. She called out loudly to the man at the reins: “If you want to save your lives, turn east at the next junction. There is a garrison barracks stationed there — those villains would never dare follow you into military grounds!”

She said this partly as a test. If the man who had jumped onto her carriage was an ordinary law-abiding citizen, he would certainly take her advice and make for the barracks to seek protection. But if he didn’t listen, if he avoided the barracks — that would mean the men who had boarded her carriage were not the kind who could afford to be seen in the light of day.

And of course, she feared exactly what happened next. The man heard her words, reached the crossroads, and without a moment’s pause turned to the west.

But she had been prepared for this. What this scoundrel couldn’t know was that if you went east, you would find Lianzhou’s prefecture office — not a barracks. The garrison barracks were to the west. Whether he was a villain or not, whichever way he turned, he was walking into a dead end.

Once they drew close enough to the barracks, she would raise her voice and cry out — and this reckless hijacker would be caught with nowhere to run.

Just then, the pursuers behind them seemed to realize the carriage was headed toward military grounds and gradually fell back, abandoning the chase.

When word came that his older brother had been cut down, he had been consumed by violent fury. He had directed his men to put on masks and disguise themselves as bandits, tracked their target relentlessly, and in the end gathered men at dawn to storm into Lianzhou, intending to assassinate the imperial inspector in broad daylight on the street — and then pin the blame on roving outlaws.

The Prefect, who had come rushing back on receiving the news, tumbled out of his palanquin and crawled on hands and knees the rest of the way to present himself.

So that villain had grown bolder and bolder here in the border region, until he had worked himself up to the audacity of killing a chicken to warn the monkeys.

Seeing that the soldiers had restrained the ringleader, Chu Linlang finally let her grip relax. She quickly shoved away the scrawny figure she had been holding in her arms, so the soldiers who had leapt aboard could take him into custody.

Before she had time to think further about it, the soldiers turned the scrawny man’s person and discovered on him an imperial dragon tablet — the kind granting access to the palace.

The Sixth Prince had developed a taste for this work, picking out the biggest local fish and going straight for their gall bladders. In the neighboring county alone, he had already executed three corrupt officials in succession.

Hearing the man’s words, Chu Linlang couldn’t help but go still with surprise. She hadn’t imagined this man, speaking with such a foreign accent, could be so intimately familiar with Lianzhou’s internal affairs. Who was this blood-soaked man, and how did he know all of this in such detail?

The moment she caught sight of the barracks gate, Chu Linlang thrust her head out and shouted at the top of her lungs: “Help! Someone has hijacked the carriage of the Prefectural Judge’s household!”

Lianzhou sat at the frontier, far from the Emperor’s eyes. The local people had a wild and bold spirit — the kind described as daring enough to drag the Emperor himself from his horse.

It turned out that the Emperor, in his current drive for reform, had employed sharp and drastic methods for this inspection of frontier affairs. The imperial inspector dispatched was no ordinary figure — he was the Emperor’s sixth son, Liu Ling.

When he looked and realized that the one restraining him was a woman who appeared delicate and frail, he went still for a moment, his eyes narrowing, his gaze growing sharper.

This woman had the nerve to seize a prince by the throat — that was a crime worthy of having her entire family’s heads taken.

In any case, all the officials of the prefecture, in a dark and teeming mass, fell to their knees before the scrawny figure — that is, the slender yet commanding Sixth Prince of the current dynasty.

He looked to be somewhere around twenty, in the prime of manhood. His original white scholarly robe had been soaked through by large patches of blood, giving him the appearance of a blood-drenched demon. Yet his sharp, high-bridged nose and sweeping brows carried the refined and cultured air of a man of letters — not the slightest hint of the bandit about him. Strikingly handsome, truly.

Just then, the man called Situ finally let the ferocity fade from his eyes. He looked her over — a married woman’s pinned-up hair — and said in an even, measured voice: “I was acting in desperate urgency to protect my charge and have disturbed this lady greatly. We are not lawless men. Please, Madam, release him quickly, before this becomes impossible to resolve…”

It was only at that moment that Chu Linlang finally saw the face of the man who had driven the carriage.

The tablet was not especially large, but it gleamed with golden brilliance. The soldier who found it, taking one look at the quality of the metal, instinctively raised it to his teeth and bit down to test it.

He had traveled the whole way under a false name, without revealing his identity as a prince, and yet had left a trail of thunder: cutting down corrupt officials and degenerate underlings one after another.

The lead soldier drew his blade and barked a stern order for those on the carriage to get down.

If that local tyrant had known he was making an attempt on the life of the Sixth Prince traveling incognito, he likely would never have dared stir up such a commotion. But the tyrant had lit the fire, and it was Chu Linlang, an innocent bystander, who had ended up scorched by the flames.

Once she cried out, Xia He behind her came to her senses and added her voice to the shout. The women’s high, piercing voices shot straight up to the heavens. The garrison soldiers on watch recognized the carriage belonging to the Prefectural Judge’s household, and seeing the Judge’s wife leaning out calling urgently for help, immediately struck the bronze gong. A swarm of soldiers came charging out and surrounded the carriage on all sides.

Truly a rare and stunning face… Chu Linlang happened to meet his gaze for just a moment, and she felt that the eyes beneath those brows held none of the vital, springing energy of youth. Eyes that should have been clear and moonlit, composed and elegant, instead carried the chill of a deep, cold abyss — and when they turned on her with that quiet, brooding intensity, the cold seemed to pierce straight to the bone.

After that, every time Chu Linlang looked back on what followed, the only phrase her somewhat limited vocabulary could find for it was: “absolute pandemonium.”

Word had it that the imperial inspector sent from above was heading to a neighboring county to investigate. Early that morning, all the local officials had gone to that county — including Chu Linlang’s husband, Zhou Sui’an.

Only then did Chu Linlang finally breathe a sigh of relief. She said coldly: “Not lawless men? Then why, when I gave you directions, did you turn west instead? Whatever kind of snake or rat you are, a proper interrogation will make it clear soon enough!”

The man driving the carriage had pulled up to a stop the moment the soldiers surged forward. Now, hearing the call from the man inside the cabin, he turned and looked in.

The man at the reins raised an eyebrow and answered coolly: “Madam, you must have been confused in the moment and mistaken the directions. The barracks are to the west — not to the east, as you indicated. Lianzhou’s Prefect is not in his office today. The villains pursuing us were numerous; if we had gone there, I fear the handful of clerks left on duty would not have been able to hold them back.”

The Prefect was certainly at fault for poor governance and a failure of oversight, but the Prefectural Judge’s wife bore an even greater charge.

Zhang Xian, hearing that the Zhou household’s womenfolk had caused a catastrophe, lurked among the kneeling officials with a face full of barely concealed glee.

Yet she kept the grip of her other arm around that other man outside with absolutely no thought for decorum, squeezing hard enough that the scrawny figure’s eyes began to roll back once more.

At that moment, the soldiers had already closed in. Swords, spears, and halberds were leveled at the man’s throat.

The scrawny figure, half-choked, cried out desperately: “Mr. Situ — quickly — stop the carriage — save me!”

As it happened, one of the deceased’s younger brothers was a notorious local tyrant, feared for miles around. This younger brother had run roughshod over everyone in the region, armed with money, connections to the outlaw mountain gangs, and the unchallenged power of a self-made local emperor — the kind that none of the local officials had ever dared cross.

Chu Linlang had long since drawn the hairpin from her hair, clamped the thin, frail man in the carriage, and pressed the sharp tip of the pin to his throat. Then she shouted at the tall man driving the carriage: “Stop the carriage at once, or I’ll have you chopped into pieces!”

The frail man being held felt entirely helpless. He had not expected that a willow-slender, tender-seeming beauty of a married woman would nearly strangle him with the force of those soft-looking wrists.

And there was her husband, Zhou Sui’an, his face iron-dark — upon later hearing that his wife had pressed a hairpin to that man’s throat, he had thudded to his knees on the spot, wishing he could bury his head in the dirt.

Chu Linlang, a married woman, couldn’t possibly hold eye contact with a man who was a stranger to her. She instinctively dropped her gaze and looked away.

—