The rebellion of the Southern Commander of the Military Command in Jianzhou — which had set the city ablaze with upheaval — swiftly came to a close once the imperial guards broke through the gates of the Chancellor’s residence.

The unrest was suppressed. The soldiers who had taken part in the rebellion were thrown into prison to be executed after the autumn harvest. The mastermind, Li Que, was nowhere to be found.

When the first young gentleman under heaven arrived in Jianzhou, riding hard day and night, all he was met with was an expanse of white mourning.

On that day, every person gathered outside the gates of the Chancellor’s residence witnessed the ghastly pale face of the refined, elegant young lord as he stepped down from his carriage.

The Chancellor who had held power over the entire court had been murdered in his own home, and the culprit remained at large. An event that seemed almost unthinkable had happened right beneath the emperor’s feet. Visitors coming to pay their condolences were an unbroken stream, a procession of carriages winding endlessly before the white-draped gates of the Fu residence. Though many came, not a single one spoke up for Chancellor Fu.

Fu Ruzhi’s death was less the work of any single hand than the converging result of pressure from many directions at once.

To demonstrate favor toward this pillar of state, the young new Emperor condescended to visit the Fu residence in person, shared a pot of tea and a game of chess with the man who now stood as the Fu Family’s sole support, offered four or five perfunctory words of sorrow, and then departed serenely for his resplendent separate palace.

The following day, a Grand Tutor who had lived in seclusion for many years emerged and took office as the new Grand Chancellor of Great Yan. All the many policies for the people’s welfare that Fu Ruzhi had worked so painstakingly to put in place were swept away overnight like morning mist.

The gates of the Fu residence, once thronged, suddenly became deserted. The officials and functionaries who had wept in the mourning hall clutching Fu Xuanmiao’s hands — louder and more grief-stricken than anyone else — vanished as though they had never existed, without a trace.

The Fu residence had never been this quiet.

Fang Shi sat like a silent stone effigy, motionless on the luohan daybed in her inner chamber. The prayer beads in her hand occasionally gave off a faint sound.

The quiet outside the window was broken by a flurry of rapid footsteps, which then never settled again.

After some time had passed, Ning Yu came hurrying in.

She supported Fang Shi’s arm and said softly, “Madam, Ning Yu will help you bathe…”

“What is all that commotion outside?” Fang Shi asked.

“Well…” Ning Yu was taken aback, a trace of hesitation entering her voice.

“Who is ill?” Fang Shi asked again.

Ning Yu, belatedly, caught the scent of medicinal herbs drifting from her own hands. She instinctively withdrew them and wiped them several times against her skirt.

“Who is ill?” Fang Shi asked a third time.

Ning Yu hesitated for a moment, then finally answered: “…It is the young master who has fallen ill. Knowing that Madam does not wish to hear news of the young master, Ning Yu has not troubled you with this matter.”

Fang Shi was silent for a long while. No expression moved across her face.

“…When did this happen?”

“This evening,” Ning Yu said. “The young master has been overseeing the funeral matters and has not slept for several days. He must have caught a chill while keeping the night vigil, and he fainted on the prayer mat this evening.”

Fang Shi said nothing. Ning Yu, ever attentive to her mistress, continued:

“The physician from Huichun Hall came to examine him earlier and said it is a case of accumulated exhaustion and stagnant vital energy. He also said…” Ning Yu paused and went on haltingly, “…if it continues like this for long, it will cause serious harm to the young master’s body and may develop into a grave illness. He said it would be best if the young master found a way to ease his spirits sooner rather than later…”

Ning Yu waited for a while. Fang Shi remained as though she had heard none of it. Knowing her mistress’s temperament, Ning Yu did not mention the young master again.

After Fang Shi finished her bath, she lay down on the spacious bed.

Ning Yu walked to the lamp on the table, just about to blow it out, when Fang Shi suddenly said: “Leave it burning.”

Ning Yu started, and instinctively glanced toward the bed.

The figure there did not stir. Only the voice came, still as a stagnant pool.

“Leave it burning… at least with light, there’s something to hold onto.”

Ning Yu left the lamp burning and quietly slipped out of the room.

Fang Shi tossed and turned in bed, and when she finally fell asleep, she was met again by that dream of a night drenched in the smell of blood. She awoke from the dream, the patter of rain in her ears. For a long moment, she lay there blankly with unseeing eyes, uncertain whether she was still dreaming.

The sound of rain would not stop. It grew clearer and clearer, and sleep retreated entirely from her.

Fang Shi rose from the bed, found the embroidered shoes beneath it, and after several attempts managed to fit her feet inside.

She pressed her hand against the cold wall and walked slowly out of the inner chamber.

The rain fell without end, unbroken and continuous, like the undulating calls of summer cicadas.

Without noticing when it had begun, Fang Shi had walked to the entrance of the neighboring courtyard — Rain Cicada Court. She came to herself and stopped, a struggle crossing her face. She turned and walked back a few steps, but then stopped once more, caught in the sound of the rain that fell like a cicada’s cry, like a summons, like a lament.

After standing still for a long moment, she turned and continued walking into the dark courtyard.

Dark or not dark — it made no difference to her.

She had always walked in darkness without light.

Stumbling along in a fog, she had married one of the most powerful men in the empire, her heart full of longing and hope. There had been fluttering, giddy joy, and days as sweet as honeyed fruit. As the years went by and she grew older, she gradually shed the shape he had cast over her, and the good times of the past slowly bared their true and terrible face before her.

For that woman confined in the deep palace, she had once harbored hatred — but in the end the hatred dissolved into smoke. That woman had stolen her husband’s entire heart, yet she herself was still only a drifting leaf on the water of this world, trapped in despair and driven by her own hand into madness.

In the end, she had even come to pity that woman.

For that woman had once possessed something — the most sincere, the most profound love. A love where one person had waited for her in silence through wind and rain and loneliness for many, many years, never opening his heart’s door to another.

To love only once in a lifetime, and that once for none but her.

She had once had such a person. That was her pride. It was the only grace of her pallid life.

Only — no more.

Fang Shi felt her way to the bedside — the only bed in the inner chamber — and with a trembling, hesitant hand reached out to touch the face of the one lying there.

The burning heat scorched her palm, and tears she had long held back could no longer be restrained and fell.

“And you — with stagnant vital energy?” Fang Shi raised a wan, forced smile. “What is there for you to be dissatisfied about…”

Her trembling voice dissolved into the darkness.

What could not be taken away. Only love and hate.

“If you knew who he was… would you still have killed him?”

Fang Shi pressed herself close to the burning cheek, tears cascading without end —

For her child who had committed the unforgivable crime of patricide in ignorance, and for herself, who only dared hold him in this one moment.

“Tell me… that you would not…”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and the tears would not stop falling, dropping onto the jade-green pillow.

The teardrops rolled along the curve of the pillow and fell beyond the edge of Fu Xuanmiao’s dark hair.

“…Mother?”

Something stirred within him, and he slowly opened his eyes, his hoarse voice carrying a note of surprise and bewilderment.

His voice echoed alone through the darkened inner chamber.

The warmth still lingered at the bedside, yet the room held only him.

He lay still for a moment, then turned his head toward the window where the sound of rain did not stop. His pale, refined face was even paler than the moon hiding behind the rain clouds.

When, after all…

Would the rain finally stop…

On the day of the funeral procession, Fu Xuanmiao forced himself up through illness to see his father’s coffin off.

He placed with his own hands the last handful of earth over the casket.

The first gentleman under heaven stood wan and hollow, like a piece of priceless lantian jade that had developed a hairline crack — still beautiful, still beautiful in every way, only now with a thread of imperfection added. And it was precisely that thread of imperfection that gave him something uniquely human in his vulnerability, something that made others unable to help but feel tenderness toward him.

On that day, untold numbers of sensitive-hearted young women shed tears for the first gentleman under heaven, who within two years had lost both his betrothed and his father. Untold numbers of scholars who admired his learning and talent cursed in their hearts the callousness and ingratitude of the court.

The person had gone. Whether the tea had grown cold — only the one who held the cup could know.

Just as the young new Emperor was meeting in secret with the new Chancellor to discuss how to utterly dismantle the Fu Faction — that faction grown so powerful it was difficult to control, one that gave lip service but never compliance — new word arrived from Xiangyang. The court had invoked the pretext that the Military Commissioner of Zhenchuan had been derelict in his duties and had gone missing without explanation, and used this to revoke his military authority and appoint a new commissioner in his place. Led by Deputy General Niuwang — the former commissioner’s most loyal inner circle — five thousand of the former Zhenchuan Army’s soldiers had renounced their allegiance, turned outlaw, and taken up occupation in the lake-covered waterlogged lands of Jinzhou, ravaged by disaster.

The world was, by and large, at peace — but not entirely.

One wave had not yet subsided before the next arose.

All of this, Fu Xuanmiao appeared entirely indifferent to.

On the day he saw his father’s coffin off, he got thoroughly drunk in Fu Ruzhi’s study, played the qin his father had left behind, played through a game of chess on the board his father had left behind, and then with his own hands took his father’s remaining letters and cherished objects, placed them one by one into a sandalwood box that breathed a quiet fragrance, and stored them away with careful, deliberate tenderness.

The morning after the night of drinking, early, he came to Fang Shi’s door.

After offering his respects with a bow, he conveyed through the closed door that he would be departing for Yangzhou that very day. Fu Xuanmiao had never harbored the hope that this door would open for him — and indeed, it did not.

But after he had respectfully bowed and turned to leave, a cool, distant voice came from within.

“Come back safely.”

Fu Xuanmiao stopped short, looked back. The door remained firmly shut. The quiet farewell of just now seemed as though it might only have been an illusion born of longing too long held.

He lingered before the door for a moment, and at last turned and walked away.

As Shen Zhuxi’s convoy made its way back toward Yangzhou, it continued to merge with the remaining two thousand and five hundred Zhenchuan soldiers along the way. By the time they were on the verge of leaving Luzhou, the force had been brought together in full.

Just as Bai Rongling was dreaming of safely delivering Shen Zhuxi to Yangzhou without incident, he was astonished to discover that the convoy had made a circuit of a hilltop in Luzhou — and was now heading back the other way.

When he realized this, he went to Shen Zhuxi in a fury and demanded to know why she had gone back on her word.

“When did I go back on my word?” Shen Zhuxi said, looking genuinely puzzled.

“You agreed to come back to Yangzhou with me — so why are you heading back in the other direction?” Bai Rongling said angrily.

“I agreed to go back to Yangzhou with you — but I never said when.” Shen Zhuxi said with perfect composure.

“You—” Bai Rongling’s eyes went unrecognizable with rage, his nose likewise.

No matter how he looked at her, he felt he was looking at a female version of Li Wu.

But his gentle, obedient, agreeable cousin — how had she turned into a female Li Wu? Was this what they meant when they said a wife takes on the habits of her husband?

“I thought it through again and again, and I do think you made some sense — it’s true that if I stay behind, I probably can’t be much help.” Shen Zhuxi said with a look of complete sincerity. “But I still want to stay. At the very least, I want to deliver these two thousand-odd soldiers into Li Wu’s hands, and then I’ll go back to Yangzhou with you.”

“What use are two thousand-odd soldiers!” Bai Rongling blurted out.

“With nearly two thousand-odd regular troops, how could they be of no use against bandits?” Shen Zhuxi countered. “If close to three thousand regular soldiers couldn’t finish off a mountain stronghold, it would have to have tens of thousands of bandits inside. If that’s the case, then I most certainly need to get these two thousand-odd soldiers to Li Wu at once!”

“I — there’s no reasoning with you — just come back to Yangzhou and that’s the end of it!” Bai Rongling said.

Bai Rongling stamped his foot in fury, his position unyielding.

Shen Zhuxi’s position was equally unyielding.

“I will not abandon Li Wu.”

“I am going back to Shouzhou.”