What had been intended as a plan to make the Third Prince stumble and embarrass himself before the senior officials and the Emperor had instead, through a strange twist of fate, handed him a splendid stage on which to perform.

At the same time, the Crown Prince had developed a thoroughly intense curiosity about this Third Prince — just who exactly was this Old Third who had materialized out of nowhere?

He raised his wine cup, his gaze dark and overcast as he watched Tao Haisheng rise from his seat and walk toward his daughter and his newly minted son-in-law, making his obeisances to the Third Highness.

Another worry surfaced unbidden in the Crown Prince’s heart — now that they had a genuine son-in-law, would the Tao family still stand steadfastly at his side?

With that thought, he couldn’t help but curse that fool Tao Huiru inwardly.

How had he ever listened to his fourth maternal aunt’s nonsense and allowed the Tao family’s eldest legitimate daughter to end up in the Third Prince’s manor?

This had thoroughly backfired — his cousin had married the Third Prince, which was even more disastrous than if she had married his imperial father and become his stepmother.

In that moment, the Crown Prince was so racked with regret his insides were nearly twisting apart, and he could only keep raising his cup, drowning his sorrows in wine.

Meanwhile, Linlang remained at the main seat attending upon the Empress Dowager, incidentally keeping both the Emperor and his mother in cheerful, warm spirits.

The lightness of her glancing eyes and her lovely profile naturally also caught the eye of Tao Zan, the temple official seated nearby.

He had come into the palace today with his maternal uncle and maternal grandfather to broaden his experience of the world, but his seat was situated much further back, where he sat among the younger and more junior guests, listening from a distance to the grand discourse of the princes.

After the last time he and Linlang had jointly presided over the dharma assembly, they had had no contact since. Out of sight, out of mind — a few days should have been enough to dilute those feelings.

But today, watching her seated in a place of honor, accompanying the Empress Dowager and smiling with graceful charm, he suddenly recalled the last time he had helped Niangzi Chu write a letter home — the sweet smile she had given him then…

For a moment, Tao Zan found himself gazing with a kind of entranced absorption, so lost in his own reverie that he did not notice others had noticed him.

Just then, a few young gentlemen nearby laughed softly and said, “You’ve been staring so long — be careful your eyes can’t find their way back.”

A faint flush crept across Tao Zan’s face. He immediately tried to cover it up, insisting that he had merely been staring blankly and was not looking at anyone in particular.

But someone leaned close to his ear and said, “Looking won’t do you any good anyway. Everyone says that Lady of Comfort from New Plum is Situ Sheng’s intimate confidante — she even worked as a steward in his household before. Who knows how long that’s been going on. Besides, she’s right in the Empress Dowager’s favor now. Even if turns were being handed out, yours wouldn’t come around.”

Tao Zan found these young gentlemen’s words cutting and unpleasant to hear, yet he could not refute them — he had heard the same things before.

He glanced over at Situ Sheng, seated in one of the foremost positions alongside the highest-ranking officials at court — a place completely beyond the reach of a minor temple official like himself.

If he were a young woman, of course he too would be drawn to admire a man of such young age and high position.

He and his mother were currently living under his maternal uncle’s roof, dependent on others’ charity. And thinking further of himself, cooped up in the imperial temple, spending his days surrounded by a crowd of monks, with no idea when it might ever end.

For the first time, the young man tasted the bitter flavor of inadequacy and discontent — and drank one cup of wine after another in silence. Before he knew it, he had drunk rather too much.

Midway through the palace banquet, the Empress Dowager grew weary and rose to return to her palace to rest.

The Emperor also called the Third Prince to join him in returning to the inner palace for a private drink between father and son.

Toward this third son, the Emperor felt an inexhaustible sense of debt. Only now did he truly understand the painful lengths Lady Fang had gone to on her deathbed when she entrusted the child to others.

If Consort Jing had not been exposed, Lady Fang’s act — so akin to entrusting the child before death — would certainly have sent him into a furious rage.

But the facts had proven that the consort he had loved and favored for nearly thirty years had been the very one who harmed Lady Fang and her son. Had Old Third not been sent away at the time, without a mother to protect him, whether he could have even survived to adulthood was genuinely uncertain.

The Emperor was so weighed down by guilt that he could not even bring himself to rebuke his son’s adoptive parents.

Moreover, this was not his first time meeting Liao Jingxuan. And yet, at the palace examination, simply because he had been put off by the man’s unkempt appearance, he had given the title of third-place graduate to Situ Sheng instead.

This was yet another layer of debt the father owed the son. Debt upon debt had accumulated, so that every time he saw his third son, the Emperor was overcome by an inexpressible sense of guilt, which naturally made him want to draw closer to him.

But this Old Third’s temperament truly did resemble his birth mother — frank and natural by nature. Even having gone through all these extraordinary circumstances as an imperial son, he harbored not a single complaint. Whether playing chess together or conversing casually, he showed none of the anxious, reverent trepidation that the Emperor’s other sons displayed. The Emperor found this genuinely refreshing.

Taking advantage of the time while the Third Prince accompanied the Emperor back to the inner palace, Chu Linlang — no longer needing to attend the Empress Dowager — was finally able to take a seat beside her dear friend Tao Yashu and have a proper chat.

Chu Linlang had the good sense to know that since the Third Prince had returned to the manor, she had not once gone to look for Tao Yashu.

After all, this was the true meaning of “newlywed bliss” — what business did an outsider have intruding?

And it had only been a matter of days — the young woman who had previously looked like a paper cutout, pale and listless, had blossomed like a flower given water, the corners of her eyes and brows suffused with a quiet sweetness, the very picture of someone immersed in happiness.

Tao Yashu also had much she wanted to say to Chu Linlang. Chu Linlang had been half-expecting her to complain about Situ Sheng’s concealment. But to her surprise, Tao Yashu’s face was full of gratitude — she simply clasped Chu Linlang’s hand and said in a low voice, “How could I dare complain about Lord Situ? If not for him, I… I don’t know how any of it would have ended.”

After saying this, she leaned close to Chu Linlang’s ear and whispered, “…I’m with child. If he hadn’t come back, and the months had gone further along, I wouldn’t have been able to hide it much longer.”

Oh! Linlang was startled by this news, and using the concealment of her sleeve, she quickly glanced at Yashu’s waist — still slender, yet her figure did seem somewhat more rounded than before. Counting the months, it should be over four months along by now?

Then this child must have been conceived before her marriage, a secret that had taken root between her and Liao Jingxuan.

It had to be said — this young Tao woman had breathtaking nerve.

She hadn’t breathed a single word of it to Chu Linlang before. Had she been planning to quietly give birth alone in the ghost-prince’s manor without a sound?

But now, the question of how to explain away the number of months was no longer something Chu Linlang needed to worry about — the child’s father had returned to the manor after all, and would surely find a way to handle it.

When the palace banquet ended, Tao Yashu joined up with the Third Prince, who had come out from the Emperor’s inner chambers, and the two of them returned to the manor together arm in arm.

As Chu Linlang passed through the palace gates, she paused and looked up at the sky with a faint, melancholy sigh.

Today she had heard the news of Tao Yashu’s pregnancy, which made her happy for her friend — and yet it also stirred up her own private sorrow.

If only she too could conceive — she could even imagine how handsome and striking a child would look with Situ Sheng’s eyes. But if the child were a girl, it would be better for her eyes to take after Linlang instead. A little girl with those sharply arched brows and clear, piercing eyes would come across far too fierce…

She was still lost in this wistful reverie when someone stepped up behind her and asked in a low, quiet voice, “What’s wrong? Why are you just standing here?”

Chu Linlang turned and found that Situ Sheng had come up behind her.

By this time, the area before the palace gates had mostly cleared out, leaving only the two of them who had yet to board their carriages.

Situ Sheng seemed to sense that something was off with Chu Linlang’s mood, and simply got into her carriage with her.

Inside the carriage, Chu Linlang quietly told him about Tao Yashu’s pregnancy. Situ Sheng immediately understood exactly why Chu Linlang was feeling so melancholy.

He furrowed his brows and said, “What’s so wonderful about a child? Dribbling snot all day long and crying and fussing behind you everywhere you go. If you want something amusing to keep you company, I’ll have Guanqi bring you a few more nursing puppies.”

Chu Linlang was tickled by Situ Sheng’s words despite herself, and scolded him with a laugh, “I’ve never heard that when a woman can’t conceive she’s supposed to get a dog instead. Are you mocking me?”

Situ Sheng looked at her, and suddenly reached out to pull her into his arms. His voice was low and steady as he said, “There are new developments in the north. In a few days I may need to go there again, and this time I won’t be able to take you with me. You stay in the capital and wait for me like a good girl — when I come back, we’ll get married.”

Chu Linlang held her breath for a moment at those words. “The north… is preparing for a counterattack?”

Situ Sheng nodded. “The Jin kingdom’s peace princess has been delivered, which suggests they’re planning to pursue a policy of appeasement for the time being. But the Jin kingdom has also made a request of the Emperor — they are asking that a princess of Great Jin be granted to them in marriage. You saw what happened today — even given that we haven’t lost ground in defending the north, there are still officials raising the banner of straining the people and depleting the treasury to oppose any military action in the north.”

Collapsing in the face of the Jin people had become a reflex for certain officials at court.

What Situ Sheng was plotting was not merely holding the city walls — he intended to strike a decisive and beautiful counterattack in the north, to thoroughly harden the spine of Great Jin, top to bottom, which had never stood straight again after the defeat at Boshui.

Chu Linlang listened and said with some worry, “But… does the Emperor support your thinking?”

Holding the line and mounting a counterattack were fundamentally different matters. The outcome of a war was even harder to predict, and if the front lines faltered, Situ Sheng, who had championed the campaign, would become the next Yang Xun — a sacrifice offered to heaven.

But Chu Linlang had no intention of trying to dissuade Situ Sheng. She knew where he had come from and where he was going.

Striking back at Boshui, reclaiming the land lost in that battle — this was the conviction that had carried Situ Sheng from that field of corpses to where he stood today.

The two of them fell silent inside the carriage and simply clasped each other’s hands tightly.

Chu Linlang found that her sorrow over being unable to conceive had faded somewhat, replaced only by the quiet melancholy of an impending separation.

As it happened, when the two of them boarded the carriage together, Tao Zan had just come stumbling out through the palace gates in a drunken haze and had seen everything plainly.

Watching Situ Sheng climb into Niangzi Chu’s carriage without the slightest attempt at concealment, Tao Zan could not help but recall what his companions had said at the palace banquet.

Those who achieve fame and success — even if they offer no formal title, women still flock to them.

Nothing like him — a mere minor temple official. No matter how assiduously he tried to please, he would never receive any attention from a woman of quality.

Thinking of how he had found a pretext to speak to Niangzi Chu as the banquet dispersed, only to have her look through him with barely a response, Tao Zan felt his dejection deepen further.

In a moment, the wine gave him courage — and once settled in his carriage, he began to weep loudly to himself.

When he returned to the mansion, Tao Huiru was waiting at the gate as usual to receive her son. One look at his tear-streaked face gave her a fright, and she feared he had caused some trouble at the palace banquet.

When she heard from the manservant that he had simply drunk too much, she felt a slight measure of relief.

In recent days, Tao Huiru had been living in constant dread that the Crown Prince might silence her for what she knew, and she had barely dared to leave the house. Even now her nerves had not fully settled.

On top of that, several new worries had added themselves to her existing troubles. The first was that her niece Tao Yashu had managed to turn her fortunes around — she had actually held on long enough to end up with a husband intact and in one piece.

The old grudge between Tao Huiru and her niece was not something that could be explained in a sentence or two. In short, she had no desire whatsoever to see Tao Yashu’s life going well.

So today, Tao Huiru had been waiting eagerly for her son to come home partly to hear the truth about that couple’s situation at the palace banquet.

Yet as it turned out, her son had drunk himself into a stuporous mess, and was babbling nonsense such as “Niangzi Chu, pay attention to me” — the sort of absurd drivel that made Tao Huiru furiously pinch his thigh, and then ask the manservant whether that Chu Linlang had done something to provoke the young master.

The manservant answered truthfully, “Niangzi Chu did not provoke the young master at all. Rather, our young master tried to speak to her several times, and she didn’t pay him any attention.”

Tao Huiru irritably sent the manservant away, thought it over, and then went to find her brother, who had also just returned from the palace banquet, for a chat.

Tao Haisheng’s face was glowing, and when he saw his sister come in, he smiled warmly and said, “You’ve come at just the right time — I was just telling your sister-in-law how distinguished and impressive Yashu’s husband is. This Third Prince has both exceptional learning and eloquence. He and our Yashu really are a perfectly matched pair, made for each other by heaven.”

Tao Huiru smiled faintly at this, while thinking to herself: We’ll just have to see whether that Third Prince will still think they’re a perfectly matched pair once he finds out that his princess consort had secretly developed feelings for her own tutor before the marriage.

But with her mouth, she naturally had to congratulate her brother on gaining such a fine son-in-law.

Having now confirmed that this Third Prince was indeed a person of real substance, a quiet flicker of satisfaction stirred in Tao Huiru’s heart.

Not because she was happy for her brother, but because Tao Huiru could finally set down one worry — she no longer needed to fear the Crown Prince would try to have her silenced.

In all likelihood, the person in the entire capital who would be most unable to sleep tonight was the Crown Prince himself.

Because he, more than anyone, feared losing the Tao family’s support. And now he would naturally need to work harder at cultivating eyes and ears within the Tao family. A person who was still of use — why would anyone go to the trouble of silencing her?

And so the next day, Tao Huiru finally dressed herself properly and stepped out of the house to head to the Crown Prince’s residence — a place she had previously wanted nothing more than to avoid.

Having heard that the Crown Princess had been in a state of shock and had been shut in ever since, she went with the stated purpose of paying a sympathy visit, and then planned to have a chat with the Crown Prince about the little romantic affair Tao Yashu had carried on with her tutor before the marriage.

But more importantly, this time she was determined to make good use of the Crown Prince to pull out that pair of thorns in her eye — Situ Sheng and Chu Linlang.

Just thinking about her son constantly murmuring that Niangzi Chu’s name made Tao Huiru seethe with inward fury.

That conniving, bewitching woman — wherever she went she ensnared people. She had somehow gotten her perfectly fine Zan’er completely out of his mind.

She simply refused to believe that a mere little merchant woman could go on making waves in a city as vast as this one.

With this resolution fixed in her mind, as she stepped down from her carriage at the Crown Prince’s residence, she saw the chief steward and greeted him with an even brighter smile than usual. “I wonder — is the Crown Prince in his residence today? I haven’t seen him for several days and have been quite concerned about his health.”

The steward looked her up and down and replied in a flat, noncommittal tone, “His Highness has mentioned before, I believe, that he would prefer Madam Tao not visit the residence so frequently.”

Tao Huiru was completely unperturbed. She simply smiled pleasantly and said, “Please tell the Crown Prince that I have important information regarding the Third Princess Consort that I wish to convey to His Highness.”

She knew perfectly well what bait to cast to hook a large fish.

Right now, the Crown Prince probably pricked up his ears at the mere sound of the word “third,” didn’t he?

Sure enough, within moments the steward’s entire demeanor had transformed — he wore a face full of smiles as he ushered Tao Huiru into the Crown Prince’s study.

—