Chen Baoxiang reached out and caught hold of his sleeve.

He stopped. Zhang Zhixu’s lashes actually trembled — he thought she had finally decided to explain herself. Or perhaps to apologize.

Instead she opened her mouth and said: “Take me with you. There’s no way I can get out of this encirclement on my own.”

“…”

Zhang Zhixu turned back. His eyes had gone faintly red. “Not handing you over to them is already mercy enough.”

“You said yourself just now — our goals are aligned and so is our target.” She gave him a shameless grin. “There’s no reason to hand me over.”

“Try me.” He looked expressionlessly at the hand gripping his sleeve. “Keep clinging like that and I’ll call for someone right now.”

Chen Baoxiang made a pained face and let go.

She should have known better than to answer every question so directly. If she was going to come clean, she could at least have waited until after she’d escaped the Temple of the Four Deities.

The door was slammed shut behind him — a loud, decisive sound that conveyed precisely the extent of his anger.

Chen Baoxiang lowered her eyes and pulled on the outer robe he’d left behind. She sat on the edge of the bed, a little lost in thought, as though her mind was elsewhere.

The door that had just shut opened again almost immediately.

She looked up sharply — and found it was Xie Lanting.

He stumbled in as if shoved from behind. He glanced back out the door, then turned and looked at her with an expression caught between amusement and something harder to name, and pulled the door shut behind him.

The others present might not have seen which way the intruder fled. But Xie Lanting had been keeping watch from the window the entire time — he clearly knew exactly what had happened.

“How did you manage to kill Lu Shouhuai?” He stepped inside and skipped everything else to go straight to the matter of the crime.

Chen Baoxiang gave a cheerful smile. “My Lord, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb. The fact that you could show up here today already makes your identity as the killer an established certainty.”

“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “Watching the excitement like the rest of you makes me the killer?”

“You still want to argue?”

“I rather admire a certain saying of yours, My Lord: every matter requires evidence.” She looked at him with layered meaning. “Lord Xie — what evidence do you have to prove I came here to commit murder? And what evidence proves that today’s assassin is the same person who killed Lu Shouhuai?”

Xie Lanting’s brow pulled tight.

The Chen Baoxiang before him seemed like an entirely different person — the guileless, innocent air was gone, replaced by something brazen and unyielding.

— Or perhaps this was her true nature all along. Clever as Zhang Zhixu was, even he had become a plaything in her hands.

Xie Lanting shook his head and carried on with his own analysis regardless. “If you wanted to kill someone, you would have had only half an hour’s window of opportunity. But how could you travel back and forth from Huaikou Post Station within half an hour?”

Chen Baoxiang’s expression didn’t shift. She kept smiling. “Want to know the truth? Let’s make a deal.”

“What deal?”

“Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you how it was done.”

“…” Xie Lanting looked out the door, then looked back at the woman in front of him. He laughed despite himself — helpless and a little incredulous — and nodded.

·

The guards swept through the Temple of the Four Deities from top to bottom and inside to out. Anyone unable to produce an invitation was detained and questioned.

Xie Lanting sat in the carriage, perplexed. “What did you say to Fengqing to make him suddenly this angry?”

Chen Baoxiang gave a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Do you even need to ask?”

Even without knowing what had passed between those two, anyone could tell that Zhang Zhixu had caught her out in a lie.

“We’ve left the grounds of the Temple of the Four Deities.” Xie Lanting looked at her. “It’s time to tell me your method and your motive.”

Chen Baoxiang tugged the blanket tighter around herself and said without any warmth, “Keep making assertions without evidence like that and I’ll take you to the magistrate’s office for defaming a court official.”

Having her own official rank to stand on gave her real ground to stand on — the words landed with weight, and even Xie Lanting had to swallow his retort. Resigned, he said, “All right. Then help me work through how the killer could have pulled this off.”

“Simple. Two packets of sedative: drug the constables escorting the prisoner partway along the road, then have someone haul them to Huaikou Post Station.”

Chen Baoxiang said at her leisure, “That way, they’d naturally report that they’d passed the prisoner off at the station before losing consciousness — and wouldn’t be held liable for dereliction of duty.”

Xie Lanting frowned. “But what about the signed transfer documents from the post station?”

“Fifty taels per sheet.” Chen Baoxiang rested her chin in her palm with a smile. “My Lord, our great Dasheng has been rotten to the root for a long time now. Rules and procedures — with money and power, nothing can’t be falsified.”

Xie Lanting was struck speechless. The folding fan in his hand nearly slipped from his grip. “Doing something like that — if discovered, it’s punishable by death.”

“Yes, but My Lord — are things punishable by death in the law really so few?” She tapped the low table in front of her. “Seizing people’s land, oppressing the common people — isn’t every one of those crimes a capital offense?”

When the law was not strictly enforced, people naturally began to take their chances.

Xie Lanting stared at her, and something clicked into place. “Back in the small courtyard — you were dissatisfied with the verdict. That’s why you asked that question.”

Is one life really not enough? — meaning: on what grounds did Lu Shouhuai get to survive after having committed so many capital crimes?

Chen Baoxiang smiled. “I still don’t know what My Lord is referring to.”

“I can’t make sense of it either.” Xie Lanting looked at her steadily. “Are you speaking up for the people?”

“That’s a good framing.” She clicked her tongue approvingly. “Might even be enough to convince Fengqing to stop being angry.”

Isn’t it true, though?

Xie Lanting watched her reaction, and sank back into thought.

If it wasn’t for the sake of the people — then what reason could Chen Baoxiang possibly have that made killing Lu Shouhuai an absolute necessity?

The carriage fell quiet. Only the steady rhythm of the axle turning filled the silence.

Zhao Huaizhu sat up on the driver’s bench outside, glancing back with worry every so often.

The assassination attempt today had failed and, worse, had exposed her lady. She was deeply uneasy about what Zhang Zhixu and Xie Lanting might do.

But Chen Baoxiang seemed at ease. She went back to the room and packed a small bundle of essentials, then turned and pressed it all into Zhao Huaizhu’s arms. “We won’t be able to make any moves for quite a while. While the weather is good, take Han Xiao and go travel around the nearby counties for a bit.”

“I’m not going.” Zhao Huaizhu sensed what she meant. She pushed the bundle back firmly. “Wherever you are in Shangjing, I stay in Shangjing with you. If Lord Zhang blames you for any of this, at least I’ll be here to—”

“Blame me for what? It’s such a small matter.” Chen Baoxiang waved it off. “Zhang Zhixu isn’t as small-minded as you think. We’ve built up some relationship between us, and it’s not as though I’ve done anything to hinder him. Is he really going to haul me out and have me executed?”

“But…”

“No buts. I wouldn’t feel right about anyone else being company for Han Xiao — of all the people around me, only you and the other martial siblings are truly my own.” She pressed the bundle back into Zhao Huaizhu’s arms and said with an easy expression, “I’ve already arranged a carriage. The two of you leave shortly.”

Zhao Huaizhu had no argument left. She kept turning back to look.

Her little martial sister seemed to be in good spirits — there was a smile at the corner of her mouth, her step was light, as though today’s business truly hadn’t amounted to much.

Could it really be that the second young master of the Zhang Family had fallen so thoroughly for her little martial sister that even after discovering he’d been deceived, he would still choose to forgive her?