Outside the Imperial Garden, Imperial Guard cavalry combed the surrounding area in every direction for tens of li, leaving nothing to chance.

Not far from the garden — perhaps two or three li distant — a faint irregularity appeared in a patch of undergrowth.

It was a hiding place prepared well in advance. The entrance was a hinged panel, covered with a layer of earth and wild grass, so that when it was set down, it showed no obvious signs to anyone who didn’t walk right up and look carefully.

Now a sliver of the panel had been pushed open. Someone stood inside, peering outward.

The Imperial Guard cavalry thundered past in the distance. The person immediately lowered the panel and retreated into the underground cellar.

The cellar was not small — inside it, a large quantity of provisions and supplies had been prepared. The oil lamp burning within flickered constantly, which meant the air vents were not limited to the panel alone.

There were no few people inside the cellar — several dozen in total — all of them looking somewhat tense, speaking in voices pressed to a near-whisper.

Among them, one stood out above the rest. This person wore a set of black monk’s robes.

“Zen Master.”

The other leader among this group had some measure of renown in the jianghu of Shushu Province — though he had recently found Shu Province too hot to stay in. He had originally been the arch-rival of the Shu Province Horse Trade Association, the greatest bandit chieftain of Shu Province — a man called Li Ci Chuan.

In Shu Province, the only permanent antagonists were always the bandits and the Horse Trade Association. It was an irreconcilable conflict, a fight to the last. Yet before this, a rough equilibrium had been maintained — the Horse Trade Association’s headcount was considerably larger than this bandit force, but the bandits were more covert, more hidden, and they struck with greater viciousness and ruthlessness.

Li Ci Chuan’s outfit was called Lian Feng Stronghold. At its peak, it had commanded three to four thousand fighters — and it had always had the backing of Pei Qi’s Shu Province army.

Pei Qi had little liking for the Horse Trade Association people but couldn’t do without them. To keep pressure on the Association, he had deliberately cultivated Lian Feng Stronghold. Whenever the Horse Trade Association proved insufficiently cooperative, Pei Qi would send Li Ci Chuan and his bandits to raid their caravans.

The two sides had fought many times over the years — though each time the Association had the upper hand, wiping out Lian Feng Stronghold entirely had proved extremely difficult.

That equilibrium had been shattered when Li Chi took Shu Province. The Ning Army had joined hands with the Horse Trade Association to sweep out the great majority of the bandit forces hiding in the ten thousand mountains of Shu Province, and Lian Feng Stronghold was naturally the first to bear the brunt. Under the combined assault of the Ning Army and the Association, Lian Feng Stronghold had been left with no room to survive, forced to flee in every direction.

Relying on their familiarity with the mountains, they had narrowly evaded the Ning Army’s manhunts several times over. But Li Ci Chuan knew this was no way to live — Shu Province was done for them, and they would have to find another way to survive somewhere else.

It was at that point that the black-robed monk Zang Jie found him, saying he could bring Li Ci Chuan and his men to a life of boundless prosperity.

Li Ci Chuan had thought: he was already someone the Ning Army hunted down; now in one turn, he would become a man working for the Chancellor. Of course he was delighted to agree.

Who could have imagined that they would end up in Chang’an — and that what they were being asked to do would be this terrifying?

Had he known from the start, he would never have boarded this pirate ship. Now that he wanted off, it seemed far too late.

Zang Jie had not told them specifically what they were to do when he brought them here — only that they were to help the Chancellor with a certain matter. Who could have anticipated that this black-robed monk would be bold enough to act within the Imperial Garden?

He called out to Zang Jie. Zang Jie hadn’t even opened his eyes.

“Frightened?” was all he asked — his tone mild, yet with a faint undercurrent of contempt.

“Zen Master, are you not leading us straight into a pit?”

Li Ci Chuan said, “Had you told us beforehand we were to do something in the Imperial Garden, I would never have come no matter what.”

Zang Jie suddenly smiled, and the contempt in his voice grew heavier. “Did you truly think the prosperity I promised you — boundless, inexhaustible — would come without cost? Where in this world is there anything so easy? Nothing paid, and you expect riches?”

Zang Jie opened his eyes and swept his gaze over the assembled men. He could see that among these fierce mountain bandits, more than a few were seething with resentment. They were men who killed without a second thought — if Li Ci Chuan gave the word, they might truly come surging forward in a body.

Zang Jie rose and began to pace slowly within the cellar.

“The reason you are frightened is that you have no idea who you are truly working for.”

He walked and spoke in an even tone. “If this truly were only work for the Chancellor, would he dare send you to poison people in the Imperial Garden?”

Li Ci Chuan said, “The poison was yours to administer — what does it have to do with us?”

Zang Jie said, “I administered the poison, yes — but the poison you provided, that is also true, is it not?”

Li Ci Chuan opened his mouth to say that was only because Zang Jie had deceived him, but he saw Zang Jie smile and say, “Then why did I ask you specifically for a poison that does not kill?”

Li Ci Chuan was startled.

Zang Jie said, “Because none of this was arranged by the Chancellor. On the contrary — it was arranged by the Emperor himself.”

The entire cellar stared at Zang Jie in blank astonishment, each face registering pure disbelief.

Zang Jie said, “Court affairs are so intricate — they are not something men who have spent their lives as mountain kings can simply see through.”

“I did not tell you before because I felt it unnecessary, and because the fewer people who know such a matter, the better. If word spread, it would be damaging even to His Majesty’s name.”

“But seeing how frightened you all are now, I have no choice but to explain the whole matter to you from beginning to end.”

He said, “His Majesty has now unified the realm. Tell me — what people does His Majesty still fear?”

Li Ci Chuan and the others looked at one another. These mountain bandits were at home with killing and plunder — asking them to puzzle out affairs of court was like filling a brain with paste. They stared at each other blankly.

Zang Jie said, “The realm has no more enemies. His Majesty has sent all his enemies down to the underworld.”

“But there remains in the realm those whom His Majesty fears — and those are the great generals who helped him conquer it.”

“His Majesty wishes to strip those generals of their military authority, yet he lacks a reasonable pretext.”

“Now, with the Imperial Prince and the Empress poisoned, His Majesty has something to work with. He will first make an example of Xiahou Zhuo, who currently commands the Imperial Guards.”

He swept his gaze around the room. “Do you follow what I’m saying?”

Li Ci Chuan said, “This Emperor’s got some nerve — willing to do this to his own wife and child just to eliminate his generals. If the poison had actually killed them, what then?”

Zang Jie gave a contemptuous grunt. “The poison was mine to administer. Never mind that it was a non-lethal poison — even if it had been lethal, the dosage was entirely within my control. There could not have been an accident.”

Li Ci Chuan asked, “Then… what do we get out of doing all this?”

Zang Jie pointed to one side of the cellar. “There is a chest over there. Go and open it.”

Li Ci Chuan went and opened the chest — and was shocked into stillness.

The chest was filled to the brim with gold.

Even if they divided this chest of gold among all of them, not one of them would need to lift a finger for the rest of their lives.

Zang Jie said, “You are doing this for His Majesty — His Majesty will naturally not shortchange you. The search underway by the Imperial Guards outside is only for show. Remain calm here and stay hidden. Once His Majesty returns to Chang’an, the Imperial Guards here will withdraw.”

Li Ci Chuan exhaled with relief. His men also let out a collective breath — and soon enough, their attention was entirely captured by that chest full of gold.

The chest was large, loaded with all that gold — just looking at it made hearts flutter and hands tremble.

Zang Jie said, “This is only the beginning. Every time His Majesty has a task for you, there will be reward.”

At this, the men of Lian Feng Stronghold all broke into grins, faces wreathed in delight.

Zang Jie found a place to sit and said, “You handled this well enough — though all you did was provide support from the outside, I can see what you are capable of.”

He looked over the group once more and said, “Next time, our target will not be someone inside the palace — so it will be rather easier than this.”

Li Ci Chuan asked, “Who is the target next time?”

Zang Jie smiled, then named four words. Those four words gave Li Ci Chuan and every man around him a proper fright.

They had been buzzing with excitement a moment ago over the chest of gold — now one by one they went pale.

“The Chancellor.”

The moment those words left his mouth, the cellar fell into absolute silence.

Zang Jie smiled. “Look at that courage of yours. Do you truly think we mean to poison the Chancellor to death? What we are doing is only to clear the Chancellor’s name — after all, he has only just returned to Chang’an.”

He looked at Li Ci Chuan. “Give me more of your poison.”

Li Ci Chuan hesitated a moment, then took out a vial of medicine. Before passing it over, he asked with lingering unease, “There really won’t be any trouble?”

Zang Jie said nothing, only looked at him steadily. Li Ci Chuan felt his skin prickle under that gaze, and after a moment passed the vial over.

Zang Jie tucked it into his robes and said, “Stay here and keep out of sight. I’ll be leaving after dark. Don’t let anyone out until I return.”

Li Ci Chuan said, “We won’t go out. Only a fool would go out now.”

After dark, Zang Jie left the cellar with the poison. In the moonlight, the black-robed monk moved at a speed that left onlookers gaping. A dark shadow flickered once, twice — and vanished into the darkness.

—

Meanwhile, at the Imperial Garden.

Li Chi looked at Zhang Tang. Zhang Tang bent his head, a trace of shame in his expression.

Tens of li had been combed again and again in every direction — not a single suspicious person had been found.

The cook at the Imperial Garden had been replaced by an impostor. The real man had been strangled and thrown into the cesspit.

But this false cook had not been exposed — which meant the assassin was also extraordinarily skilled at disguise.

“Your Majesty, there are only two possibilities,” Zhang Tang said, bowing. “First: the assassin’s martial arts are beyond imagination. After placing the poison, they left immediately — and had already fled before we had finished searching the surrounding tens of li.”

“Second: this person is still within the Imperial Garden — perhaps disguised as someone else, or perhaps… they are already among the others.”

Gao Xining looked at Li Chi. “This person did not intend to kill us. Had they wished to, we would both already be dead.”

Li Chi nodded. If the person had used the most potent poison available, they might truly have succeeded. But this was only a possibility — for there was no colourless, odourless lethal poison in the world. Li Chi had never seen one, and even Shen Ruqian had said: potent poison, colourless and odourless, at the current state of medicinal art — it simply could not be made.

So even if lethal poison were used, Gao Xining would likely have detected it.

Strong poison, in any case, was never placed in clear water — it would discolour the water at a glance. To mask the scent, it was generally placed in food.

But if this person truly had no intent to kill — then why had they gone to such elaborate lengths to poison someone?

—