Time continued to flow, but the bookcase never drifted out of the hidden river.

Having been in the darkness for so long, Shen Zhuxi had nearly lost all sense of time — but her body had not forgotten. The urgent need to relieve herself that had been building since her wedding day had not forgotten either.

Physical suffering and spiritual suffering pressed in on her from both sides. Combined with having had nothing to eat or drink, Shen Zhuxi spent longer and longer stretches drifting in and out of consciousness in the darkness.

Each time she was on the verge of losing awareness, Shen Zhuxi would bite down on the web of her hand.

The space in the bookcase was narrow and cramped. At first her legs would cramp, and then later, they stopped cramping altogether.

To distract herself and lessen the physical torment, she thought constantly whenever she was awake.

She thought about whether her mother consort had thought of her in her final moments, about whether all of this was yet another manifestation of her ill-omen constitution, about whether her imperial father and the Crown Prince — going their separate ways with their two groups — would each follow the will of heaven and survive.

Perhaps one had survived. Perhaps both. Or possibly, not a single one.

Shen Zhuxi leaned against the damp wall of the bookcase and drifted through half-conscious thoughts: if the Crown Prince were dead, her imperial father would surely weep bitterly.

Shen Zhuxi was entirely certain that if she herself were to die, her imperial father would perhaps heave a single sigh — but if the Crown Prince were dead, he would weep and wail with grief.

If there was anyone irreplaceable in her imperial father’s heart, with all its fickle and ever-changing affections, it would be the Crown Prince.

To be fair, the Crown Prince was by no means a man of extraordinary brilliance — he had simply been born into the right womb, born of his imperial father’s first wife, a childhood sweetheart who had passed away in the most beautiful years of her life: the late Empress.

Before her mother consort was confined, she had harbored no small resentment toward the long-deceased late Empress and the Crown Prince she had left behind — the relationship between her mother consort and the Crown Prince had never been harmonious. Yet after her mother consort fell from favor, it was this very Crown Prince who had extended a helping hand to Shen Zhuxi more than once.

Shen Zhuxi could not deny that the Crown Prince’s talents were not as outstanding as his brothers’, and he had his character flaws — a fondness for grand gestures and a tendency to indulge in pleasures. But he had never made things difficult for her the way her other brothers and sisters did, nor had he mocked her for his own amusement. When he sat in the water pavilion or the cool gazebo to listen to music and watch performances, if he happened to see her, he would always invite her to sit down and watch with him, while sharing tea and refreshments.

Shen Zhuxi had always remembered that summer when she was thirteen. The Crown Prince, catching sight of her wearing a silk jacket and skirt the color of gray silk, hooked the tip of his folding fan under her sleeve and frowned: “Sixth Sister is still so young. Why do you always wear these dull and lifeless colors?”

That day, the Crown Prince asked what colors she liked, and the very next day he sent her a set of fuchsia gowns that were exceptionally beautiful. Shen Zhuxi excitedly wore them once — only to run directly into Fu Xuanmiao, who had come to the palace to see her.

She could not forget that set of fuchsia gowns that later disappeared without a word, nor could she forget the cold gaze that Fu Xuanmiao had cast upon those gowns.

From that day on, she never wore bright-colored clothes again — save for one exception: her wedding dress.

And even that wedding dress had been worn for less than half a day before being stained with the dirty black of mixed blood and dust.

Her consciousness gradually grew blurred, and the sound of water in her ears faded. Shen Zhuxi seemed to drift back to that summer, to the imperial garden where the cannas bloomed as vivid as fire. The Crown Prince sat in the gazebo, hooking her sleeve with his folding fan and asking what colors she liked. The Crown Prince’s face swayed in the sunlight, then suddenly became Fu Xuanmiao — a refined young man, warm and gentle as jade, raising his sleeve to set down a chess piece, smiling as he watched her rack her brains over the predicament before her.

In an instant, the figure before her became her mother consort. One moment she was holding her in her arms; the next, she was reproaching her for not being born a son, for being unable to help secure the Emperor’s affection.

After her mother consort came her imperial father. He had certainly once treated her as the apple of his eye — he had held her on his lap, pointed to the full moon in the sky, and said: “There is also a little rabbit up there, but she is not nearly as dear as my little rabbit.”

But one beauty after another entered the palace, the favorites of the inner court changed again and again, and his apple of the eye was exchanged again and again too. Imperial love was shorter-lived than a sneeze.

The little rabbit who had once sat on his lap had also turned to ash in a moment of imperial wrath.

Hovering between waking and dreaming, tears streamed down Shen Zhuxi’s face without end.

Just as she was about to fall into the darkness of unconsciousness, a shaft of sunlight shone into the bookcase without any warning.

Deep in a forested mountain, a swift little stream rang out clear and bright. On a massive boulder beside the stream — one that looked as though it had been sliced at an angle by an axe — lay three men of varying builds. The man lying on the right was a full nine-plus feet tall. He lay barefoot, his large feet like a pair of palm-leaf fans, his waist wide and his shoulders broad, his face heavy with flesh — yet his eyes were wide open and round and bright, and he lay ramrod straight on the boulder, presenting an expression of unguarded simplicity.

The man lying sideways in the middle was the slenderest of the three, his posture also the most refined. He rested his arm across his forehead and eyes, leaving only a handsome jawline visible.

The man on the far left was lean and tall of frame, yet his posture was the most carelessly unconstrained. His face was covered by a fisherman’s bamboo hat, leaving only a length of hair extending from the back of his head visible — black as concentrated ink.

“I’m hungry, Third Brother,” said the hulking man.

“Third Brother isn’t hungry,” said the handsome young man in the middle.

“It’s growling,” said the hulking man, patting his stomach. It let out two dull rumbles.

“I suddenly want to eat watermelon,” said the young man. “The watermelons from last summer were truly sweet. I don’t know what the old farmers watered them with, but each and every one was red and sweet…”

“Big Brother, I’m hungry,” said the hulking man.

“It’s ‘Big Brother, I’m hungry.’ Say it again,” said the man under the bamboo hat.

The hulking man obligingly repeated it: “Big Brother, I’m hungry.”

The man under the bamboo hat rummaged in his cloth garment, and from some hidden pocket that no one could have guessed existed, somehow produced a handful of roasted melon seeds. The hulking man sat up on the boulder and, with great care using both hands, received the handful dropped from midair.

“Ration them out. There are no more,” said the man under the bamboo hat.

The hulking man did indeed ration them, cracking each seed with his front teeth, eating the kernel first, then chewing the shell.

He ate while gazing blankly upstream at the rushing current.

“Big Brother, how come there’s nothing today?”

“The palace fighting is all done. What could be taken has mostly been taken.”

“So when is the next fight?”

“Next year, maybe.”

The hulking man made a pained face: “There’s more fighting next year?”

The man in the middle said: “Go down and dredge around — maybe you’ll find something.”

“You’re tricking me,” said the hulking man.

“That eunuch we picked up a couple days ago — wasn’t he fished out of the river?”

The hulking man thought about it and nodded: “He was.”

“Didn’t he have gold hairpins and silver on him?”

The hulking man nodded again: “He did.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

The hulking man indeed waited no longer. He stuffed the remaining melon seeds all at once into his mouth, then scrambled off the boulder with an agility at odds with his enormous frame, waded into the stream in a few steps, and bent over with both wide eyes fixed in total concentration as he groped around.

“Big Brother, we didn’t find much yesterday either. I’d wager Dongqing County and Yongtian County’s lads have already taken most of it,” said the handsome young man, sitting up.

His looks were indeed exceptionally handsome — though only on the right half. Nearly all the flesh of his entire left cheek was gone, leaving only a thin layer of skin over the bone, making the two halves of his face extremely asymmetrical. Either half on its own looked fine, but taken together, there was an eerie uncanniness that made one’s skin crawl.

“The fighting is over, so finding nothing is normal,” said the man under the bamboo hat. “We won’t come back tomorrow.”

“I already told Du Yanlong. For those things from last time, he’s offering this amount.”

The bamboo hat lifted slightly, and a pair of bright, sharp black eyes glanced at the three fingers the young man held up.

“Three hundred taels?”

“Three hundred taels.” The young man smiled cheerfully. “They’re all the latest palace styles — the prices are high.”

The bamboo hat dropped back down, and the man beneath said: “Even at five hundred taels, he would still be making a profit. Take them to the south of the Yangtze and turn a profit, doubling the price would be no problem.”

“I’ve already collected the silver. It’s stashed in the usual place.”

“In a couple days, come with me to Tongzhou to collect the accounts. Your clothes and Second Brother’s are both worn out — we’ll buy a few new sets in Tongzhou —” the man said: “My treat.”

“Thank you, Big Brother!” the young man said cheerfully. “What you gave me last time —”

“Person! A person! A person!” the hulking man suddenly roared: “I found one!”

The young man turned to look. The hulking man was crouching in the stream with his legs planted wide apart, both arms spread wide, holding fast to a reddish-brown bookcase to keep the current from sweeping it away.

“That’s a cabinet, not a person,” said the young man.

“It’s a person! A person! Really, it’s a person!” The hulking man’s face turned urgent, and he shouted at the top of his lungs: “Big Brother, it’s a person! A woman! Alive!”

The bamboo hat was entirely swept off. The man who had been concealing his face all this time sat up on the boulder, revealing a face tanned to a warm wheat-brown. His brows and hair were jet-black, his eyes bright and clear, the firm muscles of his back and upper arms faintly outlined beneath his cloth garment — spirited and vigorous as the morning sun.

He and the young man exchanged a glance, then he was first to leap from the boulder — like a leopard dropping from a branch, every muscle forming one sweeping, beautiful line.

The hulking man dragged the bookcase to shore and stood there looking up at the man with the expression of a small dog waiting to be praised. The young man peered into the door gap, then looked back at the man, and his expression had already changed.

“…There really is someone,” he said.

The hulking man was delighted: “See! A person — I said so!”

The man crouched down and rapped on the door with his knuckles. There was no response from inside.

“Dead?” said the young man.

“Not dead!” the hulking man said urgently. “She was just talking to me a moment ago!”

Every word outside the bookcase reached Shen Zhuxi’s ears, but she was truly too weak. She spent all her strength and managed to squeeze out only the faintest thread of a voice from deep in her throat:

“Help…”

The moment her voice came out, silence fell outside for a brief moment.

“It really is a woman,” someone said.

Her will had reached its limit. Not only was her entire body numb, her lower abdomen was wracked with cramping pain, and her vision kept going black in waves. Terrified they would abandon her, Shen Zhuxi gathered what little strength she had left and cried out through the gap in the door: “Save me…”

She had used all her strength, yet the sound was as faint as a butterfly brushing its wings.

Fortunately, after a short while, a voice that had not spoken before said: “Don’t move.”

Before Shen Zhuxi could answer, there was a loud crack from outside. She heard the golden lock click and fall to the ground, then the two wooden doors were pulled open from outside. Piercing sunlight suddenly poured in, and Shen Zhuxi could not help but close her eyes.

For a long while, no sound came.

She tried to open her eyes. Through a vision blurred with tears, she saw a man crouching before the bookcase, motionless, looking at her. Shen Zhuxi could not make out his features clearly, but his gaze was like a bright flame — and by reflex she looked away.

Beside him stood two other men. One was terrifyingly tall, like a giant, chewing on something while staring at her with round, wide eyes; the other was terrifying to look at, the flesh on his left cheek nearly entirely gone, leaving only a vivid red layer of skin over the hollow, and he was examining the golden lock in his hand from every angle.

Shen Zhuxi had been shut inside the bookcase for so long that everything below her neck had gone numb. She struggled with great difficulty to clamber out, and the man steadied her as her body began to topple.

“I…”

Her voice was too faint — not only did the man in front of her fail to hear it, the two beside him did not either.

Seeing the gazes of all three men converge on her, the heat in Shen Zhuxi’s face rose higher and higher. Years of instruction told her to keep silent, but the severe physical anguish forced her to speak through her tears:

“I need to relieve myself…”