The three black-clad men were climbing fast — they were almost at the windows, and there was no time to cut the ropes — so the ladies scrambled about in a frenzy, grabbing whatever was within reach and hurling it down with all their strength.

For a moment the three climbers were in sorry straits themselves, dodging frantically, left dangling and suspended against the second floor.

Downstairs, Han Linfeng had no sooner seen the flood of black-clad men surge in than he called up to warn Luoyun and the others to watch the windows for attackers. At the same time, he unfastened his belt and pressed a mechanism on its clasp.

In an instant, the belt transformed into a flexible sword.

The man the world had once regarded as a worthless young profligate seemed, all of a sudden, as though a different soul had seized his body. A cold gleam flickered in his eyes; his wrist shook out a flourish of sword flowers, and he engaged the assassins in close combat.

Han Linfeng knew these killers had only this one window of opportunity.

Once the guards trapped in the kitchen battered the door down and broke out, or once the nearby patrol guards heard the commotion and came running, these assassins would lose every advantage — they would either be captured and punished on the spot or scatter in desperate flight.

For the moment he was tangled up, with no way of knowing how things stood on the second floor. He had to finish these men quickly and then go up to rescue Luoyun and the others.

But these men were formidable — far more skilled and seasoned than the attackers who had struck Phoenix Tail Village. They were specialists in assassination.

Men who made their living by killing favored plain, unadorned techniques, yet every slash aimed for a vital spot. The blades they carried were all fitted with barbed hooks — the slightest graze and a pull back would tear flesh from bone.

If Han Linfeng’s guess was right, those blades were all coated with filth or poison, and any wound they inflicted would fester and suppurate, near impossible to heal.

That meant he had to exercise twelve times the caution in this fight.

Meanwhile, things had shifted on the second floor. The Princess’s guards were hacking at the ropes with their blades.

But the ropes appeared to have iron wire woven into them and could not be cut no matter how hard they tried.

The three climbers were no easy prey either. While dodging left and right, one of them — hanging one-handed from the rope — suddenly raised his arm and fired a sleeve-arrow, sending a hidden dart straight at the window. It struck and wounded a guard in an instant, sending the ladies scrambling back from the window in fright, too afraid to continue throwing things down.

When the three assassins — wearing grotesque iron masks — vaulted through the window in one bound, the women trapped on the second floor shrieked in terror, their faces drained of color. They clutched at one another and dove one after another beneath the tables.

The Consort of Prince Zong, slight and slender as she was, got jostled out of the crush — her hairpins scattered and her composure entirely gone.

Princess Yuyang alone remained calm, her face ashen, and she grabbed Su Luoyun and pulled her back toward a corner.

The two remaining guards of the Princess on the upper floor moved forward at once to intercept.

Luoyun could not see clearly — she could only make out a few dark shapes nearby, constantly merging and separating at speed.

Listening to the clashing ring of weapons, her heart lodged itself firmly in her throat.

When she heard the Consort of Prince Zong cry out in fear over and over again, Su Luoyun reached out and clapped her hand over her mother-in-law’s mouth. At the same time she brought her lips close to the woman’s ear and said in a cold, low voice, “Keep quiet. If you must make a sound, bite down on your own tongue. Do you want to distract the guards, or bring the attackers straight to us?”

The Consort of Prince Zong had never in her life had a daughter-in-law speak to her this way. She turned and stared blankly at Luoyun.

Su Luoyun’s expression was ice-cold and utterly composed — none of the panic visible on the faces of the other women. She gave a low, rapid instruction: “I can’t see very well, but I remember there was a roasted lamb leg on the table, and several dishes of chili powder for dipping. You two — collect all that chili powder into handkerchiefs. If the guards can’t hold out and the attackers come at us, wrap those handkerchiefs around their faces.”

Hearing this, Princess Yuyang immediately snatched up a copper basin of freshly served spicy poached fish that had just been brought to the table.

One of the three assassins had not joined the melee with the guards. Instead, he crouched by the window and swiftly surveyed the second floor, then abruptly turned and fixed his gaze on the room full of women.

The employer who had hired them had said: if they met resistance, seize the most beautiful one as leverage.

With so many ladies in the room, identifying the most outstanding among them was not difficult at all — the one standing beside the two middle-aged women, with her black hair and powdered cheeks, was a beauty beyond compare.

Once he had made certain, the assassin snatched up his sword and bounded over.

At this moment, the two guards locked in combat with the remaining assassins also spotted one of the killers breaking away to attack the women.

They immediately rushed back to intercept, raising their blades to block — but the assassin moved like a slippery eel. By some impossible twist of his body, he dropped to one knee and slid straight through, then swept his sword in two quick slashes and opened both guards’ throats.

The Consort of Prince Zong was beside herself with terror. She stared at the blood pouring out and began shaking all over, a scream tearing from her throat. Luoyun slapped her mother-in-law on the back of the head and commanded, “Throw it — now!”

In that same instant, Princess Yuyang, unleashing the same ferocity she used when throwing tantrums before her royal father in the palace, hurled the full copper basin of scalding spicy oil — basin and all — straight down onto the assassin still kneeling on the floor.

The assassin had just cut down the two guards and was rising to his feet when the copper basin came crashing down over his face. The scalding oil sent him howling and shrieking.

By the time he flung the basin aside, three or four women had converged and flung a whole packet of chili powder directly into his face — mixed together with the hot oil already plastered there, he could not open his eyes at all. He could only flail his sword wildly to prevent anyone from getting close.

The ladies, having scored this small victory, retreated quickly and took shelter behind a nearby folding screen.

The other two assassins, seeing what had happened, came surging toward them with murderous intent.

At that very moment, a long whistle blast rose from downstairs.

The two assassins exchanged a glance. Then — perhaps to leave no loose ends — they reached down and stabbed their blinded companion to death, and one after the other, leapt out through the windows and were gone.

* * *

Downstairs, the life-and-death struggle had already found its resolution.

Qingyang and his men had failed to force the kitchen door open, and in the end they kicked a large hole through the flimsy wall boards and poured out to reinforce Han Linfeng.

Taking advantage of the assassins’ distraction, Han Linfeng flicked his wrist — the flexible sword snapped out in an arc and drove straight through one man’s throat. As he pulled the blade back, blood gushed out in a torrent.

Even if that man did not die instantly, he would suffocate and choke to death.

The rest were surrounded by Qingyang and his men, cut down one by one like melons and cabbages, until all lay felled on the ground.

These men were the killers Qiu Zhen had paid handsomely for — vicious and steady in their strikes. But their trade depended on the element of surprise, on decisive lightning-fast action.

Once they lost the initiative, they had only the same limited set of moves to fall back on, and Han Linfeng had long since read them all. When Qingyang tossed him a proper weapon he could put his full strength behind, one clean, powerful slash sheared off half an assassin’s arm.

Their leader had seen enough. This job — damn it all — was a scorching hot coal. Hadn’t he been told it was nothing but a group of official wives? How were there wolves like this hiding among them?

The assassin chief knew he had been deceived. He spat out the whistle he’d been holding between his teeth, blew the signal, and warned his brothers: the wind’s blowing hard — time to bolt.

Han Linfeng’s heart was about to split from urgency. There was no time to catch his breath. He grabbed two tables and was already stacking them to use as a foothold to climb back upstairs when the ceiling above them began to shudder and tilt.

Evidently, some of the main beams below had been shattered by the explosions, and the entire second floor was at risk of collapse at any moment.

Up on the second floor, the people inside also felt the whole building begin to sway, and heard someone below shouting at the top of their lungs: “Look out — the supports have been blown apart and the building is going to fall! Everyone on the second floor, jump now! Below is the river — there are boats waiting to catch you!”

Luoyun, through the boom and crackle of fireworks outside, barely caught the words urging people to jump. She grabbed Princess Yuyang and the Consort of Prince Zong and asked, “The building is going to collapse — we have to jump into the inner river. Can the two of you swim?”

Princess Yuyang was an excellent swimmer.

She had not known how to swim before, but after marrying Zhao Dong, he would always take their son Zhao Guibei out to the countryside to swim in the river, and over time she had learned along with them.

The Consort of Prince Zong was on the verge of tears — she had been raised in the sheltered inner quarters all her life, properly and demurely, and had never learned to swim at all. Yet the Princess told her to jump in along with everyone else and sort it out once she was in the water.

As for Luoyun — she was no great swimmer either, but back in the countryside as a child she had played in the village ponds and learned how to hold her breath, at least a little. Given the circumstances, there was no time for second thoughts. She would jump first and worry about the rest later.

As the building swayed more and more violently, the ladies on the second floor of Tianbao Restaurant began tumbling into the water one after another like dumplings dropped into a pot.

Earlier, when the explosion rocked Tianbao Restaurant, the boatmen on the inner river had all given a startled jolt. One of the more timid among them happened to be holding a lit torch intended for a fuse cord.

In his fright, he accidentally ignited the one-hundred-and-eight-blast firework set called the “Fire General.”

The other boatmen, seemingly dazed, followed suit and lit their own fireworks one after another.

The dazzling fireworks exploding across the sky drowned out the sounds of chaos from Tianbao Restaurant.

The common people watching from the other bank of the inner river had no idea what was happening — they only thought that this year’s Spring Festival ceremony had been extraordinarily lavish.

Not only were the fireworks thunderously loud and dazzlingly brilliant as they burst overhead, but alongside the fireworks there was even a performance of some kind.

For from the windows of Tianbao Restaurant, one after another, ladies in magnificent and colorful gowns were leaping out, waving their sleeves frantically as they fell — a breathtaking sight.

The onlooking crowd cheered in excitement, waving back at the “immortal maidens” plunging into the water like dumplings.

Only the boatmen on the inner river knew that an explosion had just occurred inside that building, and that these suddenly descending celestial beings were in truth fleeing for their lives.

So as the ladies hit the water, the boatmen threw down planks of wood from the boats along with ropes and the like, giving the women something to grab onto.

As for Princess Yuyang — she truly was an expert swimmer. Before jumping, she even stripped off her wide-sleeved outer robe. After entering the water, she hooked her arm around the Consort of Prince Zong’s neck from behind and towed her, stroke by stroke, toward the boats.

But just as everyone was cheering and celebrating, a small boat that had slipped unnoticed onto the inner river came into view. As soon as the person on it spotted Han Linfeng emerging from the restaurant, he swiftly raised a bow and loosed an arrow in his direction.

Han Linfeng was in the middle of grabbing a wooden plank and hurling it with full force toward Su Luoyun’s position, giving her something to grab onto, when he saw the arrow coming. He immediately flung out another plank, deflecting it.

When Luoyun had dropped from the height into the water just moments ago, she felt her head ring with a sudden boom and her vision briefly darken. But as she plunged beneath the surface, instinct took over — she squeezed her eyes shut, drew on the rough dog-paddle she had learned as a child back home, and focused on keeping her mouth clamped shut and holding her breath, letting her body float up through the water.

Once she steadied herself, she groped around with her arms and managed to get hold of a wooden plank. She clung to it and lifted her head above the surface.

And then — how to describe what she saw?

It was as though water had washed her eyes clean, and suddenly the world opened wide before her.

The veil of fog that had always shrouded her vision — gone entirely.

She could see clearly: the crowd on the riverbank waving at the river full of “immortal maidens,” the brilliant streaks of fireworks blazing across the sky overhead, and every frantic, bewildered face of the ladies floundering in the water around her.

Yet she recognized none of these people. Luoyun’s gaze swept around, searching frantically for her maidservant Xiangcao — and for her husband, Han Linfeng.

At that thought, she could not help crying out, “Han Linfeng! Where are you?”

But the riverbank was alive with noise, and the fireworks were still booming overhead. Though she shouted with everything she had, her voice was like a pebble dropped into a rushing, roaring river — swallowed utterly without a trace.

In truth, the moment Han Linfeng had thrown the plank, he had leapt without hesitation into the water and was already swimming toward Luoyun.

But at that same moment, someone also dropped from the small boat that had been quietly drawing close, and was swimming toward Luoyun as well.

That person was Qiu Zhen, who had been watching from the small boat on the inner river all along, keeping an eye on what was happening at Tianbao Restaurant.

Earlier, standing at a distance, he had not been able to see clearly what was going on inside the restaurant — but the moment he saw Han Linfeng come charging out, he knew the assassination had failed. Furious, he ripped off his fake full beard in one yank and loosed an arrow at Han Linfeng.

But then, when he saw that among the people who had leapt from the building and fallen into the water was the Shizi’s consort — that woman of peerless and devastating beauty — the bandit blood coursing through his veins surged up again. He decided that even a thief should not leave empty-handed — at the very least, he would seize Han Linfeng’s wife right before his eyes.

With that decided, he ordered his men to row the small boat rapidly toward the beauty floundering in the water. Seeing Han Linfeng also swimming over, Qiu Zhen simply dove in himself, intending to reach Su Luoyun first and take her hostage.

Luoyun had been looking frantically from side to side and naturally noticed two men both swimming rapidly toward her.

One of them had a face as black as the bottom of a pot, his expression somewhat fierce — and if she was honest, a little frightening.

The other was closer to her, with remarkably handsome features — the kind of face you looked at once and could not look away from. His expression was taut and anxious…

Just then, she caught sight of Xiangcao. The maid had also jumped into the water but had landed lucky — she had jumped close to the bank and had just been pulled out.

Yet when Xiangcao saw what was happening in the river, she shoved aside the people near her in a panic and began jumping up and down where she stood.

Of course Xiangcao was frantic — she could see everything clearly. Two men were swimming toward her young mistress: one was her master Han Linfeng, and the other was the rebel Qiu Zhen.

All she could do was point frantically in Qiu Zhen’s direction and shout as loudly as she could, “Miss, watch out on your left — that rebel is swimming toward you! Get away from him, quickly!”

Xiangcao had no idea that Luoyun’s sight had just been restored. And her leap and pointing gesture gave Su Luoyun exactly the wrong idea.

Luoyun looked again at the handsome face of the man nearby, thought of how the people around her had always described Han Linfeng, and without a moment’s hesitation swam straight toward the handsome, mixed-heritage man.

That man seemed not to have expected her to swim toward him on her own initiative. He blanked for an instant — then a wild, rapturous joy broke across his face, and he swam even faster toward her.

Not far away, the man with the sooty face wore an expression so murderous and savage he looked like a demon risen from the depths.

When he had leapt into the water, he had only his belt-sword with him.

Now he simply raised the blade high above the surface and, summoning all his force, hurled it straight at Qiu Zhen.

Qiu Zhen, with all his focus on getting to Su Luoyun and hauling her aboard the boat to use as leverage against Han Linfeng — so long as he had Han Linfeng’s beloved wife in his hands, even if Han Linfeng had reached some secret agreement with You Shanyue, Qiu Zhen would have the power to make Han Linfeng tear it all apart — barely noticed the approaching blade until it was upon him.

The moment his hand closed around Luoyun, the blade came slicing in. It struck Qiu Zhen squarely on the shoulder. He choked out a muffled grunt of pain.

Luoyun was close enough to hear that muffled grunt… and that voice — it was not Han Linfeng’s.

The realization hit her and she kicked desperately backward through the water. But it was too late — Qiu Zhen, gritting through the pain, clamped his hand around her neck in an iron grip and dragged her toward him.

The inner river channel connected to the outer river. The iron grating separating them had already been cut through in a wide gap by his men. Once he had seized her, they could immediately take the boat and flee Huicheng.

If assassinating Han Linfeng had failed, capturing his family hostage was still not leaving empty-handed.

Luoyun was yanked into his arms.

Seeing him raise his hand to knock her unconscious, Luoyun’s mind raced. She suddenly remembered the hairpin Han Linfeng had given her.

She reached up and pulled out the specially crafted hairpin Han Linfeng had made for her. With one hand she triggered the spring — a steel needle tipped with numbing poison shot out — and she drove it as hard as she could into the hand Qiu Zhen had clamped around her neck.

The numbing agent was even more potent than ordinary knockout drugs — it had been extracted from the silk of venomous spiders from the Miao borderlands. Qiu Zhen’s hand felt a stinging bite, like an insect’s sting. Then his entire arm went slack, unable to grip Su Luoyun’s neck any longer.

Had his men not come swimming hard to his rescue from behind, he might well have gone motionless and drowned in the river.

Luoyun simply released the wooden plank and thrashed away from the man with everything she had.

But when she turned and had swum a few strokes and looked up to see the man coming toward her — his face covered in filth, white eyes gleaming out of the grime — instinct took over again and she brandished the hairpin at him, holding him at bay.

Han Linfeng, not knowing her sight had fully returned, could only shout urgently, “Luoyun, it’s me!”

This time Luoyun heard him clearly. Though this man… bore little resemblance to the radiantly handsome figure everyone had described to her, that familiar, low, resonant voice left no room for doubt.

Yet when sight is suddenly and completely restored, even someone one has lived with day and night can feel strangely unfamiliar through that new visual lens.

Luoyun hesitated for a moment, suddenly shy, not daring to approach.

But Han Linfeng had watched Qiu Zhen’s hand close around her neck and his heart had clenched into a knot. Seeing her go rigid and unmoving, he thought she must have been hurt, so he swam quickly to her and drew her into his arms.

Even in the middle of the river, even being held by this man who looked unfamiliar and was rather filthy, the moment his arms came around her, that sense of deep familiarity swept over her all at once — this was indeed Han Linfeng, the man who held her close every night.

Han Linfeng lowered his head to ask if she was hurt. She quickly shook her head — but her eyes stayed locked on him, as if trying to find some trace of the man she knew beneath all that grime.

Once he was certain Luoyun was unharmed, Han Linfeng immediately called out loudly to the guards on the bank to give chase to the fleeing boat without delay.

Qiu Zhen had a truly audacious nerve — daring to come and cause such havoc in Huicheng, blowing up Tianbao Restaurant and nearly taking dozens of lives. If the soldiers on the bank could give chase in time, there was a chance of capturing this villain and bringing him to justice.

At that point, the guards who had rushed over began jumping into the water to rescue the ladies who had fallen in, while those still trapped in the ruins were pulled out one by one.

The local garrison commander of Huicheng, hearing that Princess Yuyang and the Shizi’s consort and other officials’ wives had been caught in an attack at Tianbao Restaurant, rushed to send men immediately — his own wife and daughter had gone to Tianbao Restaurant that evening as well.

In no time, the whole of Huicheng was placed under curfew. After the last of the hundred-and-eight-blast fireworks had sounded, all citizens were driven back indoors. Soldiers sealed every city gate and began conducting house-by-house searches.

Six or seven corpses were carried out from Tianbao Restaurant — among them the assassins Han Linfeng had killed, a fallen guard, and one official’s wife who had not managed to jump in time before the building came down and had been crushed by a falling beam.

The rest of those rescued from the rubble all bore injuries of varying severity. Some had apparently had their leg bones shattered. Two others remained unconscious.

Those who had jumped into the water in time were shivering with cold but had all been pulled out by the boats without serious harm.

The Consort of Prince Zong had never in her life encountered such a scene of blades and blood. Now, having made it to shore alongside Princess Yuyang, she shook uncontrollably from head to toe, and — throwing all considerations of rank and propriety to the wind — flung her arms around the Princess and began wailing at the top of her lungs.

Luoyun had never heard the Consort of Prince Zong cry with such wild abandon. Listening to the hysterical sobbing, she was uncertain, and pointed at her mother-in-law, asking Han Linfeng, “That one crying there — is that my mother-in-law?”

Han Linfeng said yes. She then asked, “And who is she holding on to?”

At this, Han Linfeng stilled. He finally noticed that something was different about Luoyun. He held up a hand. “How many fingers is this?”

Luoyun suppressed the excitement surging in her chest and said quietly, “Your hands are absolutely filthy — you have the nerve to ask me to look at them?”

Han Linfeng grabbed hold of both her shoulders, his own joy breaking through. “You… you can see everything clearly? When did your sight come back?”

Luoyun answered honestly. “Roughly when I fell into the water — the impact must have jolted something, and suddenly I could see everything.”

Han Linfeng stared at her, overjoyed, and had just begun to smile — when his expression changed all at once, as though a ghost had seized him by the throat.

In the past, Luoyun’s blindness had meant she could not read his expressions, and he could hide his feelings in silence without her ever knowing.

But now, watching his expression shift, Luoyun’s heart gave a sudden lurch. She thought about it briefly and understood at once what he was brooding over.

After all — in those moments when their lives hung by a thread — she had apparently swum toward Qiu Zhen without hesitation, mistaking him for her own husband.

“…Your face was covered in oil and grime. When my sight first came back, I still couldn’t see very clearly…”

Just as Luoyun was struggling to find the words to explain herself, Han Linfeng spoke in a low, flat voice. “You’re soaking wet. I’ll have someone bring you dry clothes and prepare some ginger broth to warm you up.”

And with that, he turned away to ask someone for dry garments and hot ginger broth.

Luoyun watched his tall figure walking away. Setting aside the grimy face she could not quite make out, judged purely by his silhouette — he truly was a man of magnificent, imposing bearing.

Only that same magnificently bearing man, with each step he took across the stone-paved ground, seemed to be stamping down with the weight of a thousand grievances — every footfall carrying the smoldering indignation of a dragon who had been gravely insulted.