“The token to leave — it is on you.”

Even after Shen Zhuxi had returned to her own tent, Fang Shi’s words continued to echo in her ears.

The token to leave was on her?

She stood before the bronze mirror and went over every single thing she was wearing: Was it the phoenix hairpin? The gold and jade earrings? Or the jade pendant carved with a phoenix threading through peonies? Surely it couldn’t be the set of clothes Fu Xuanmiao had sent her?

Shen Zhuxi turned the question over and over in her mind and could not work out what item on her person could possibly serve as a token to move freely through the encampment.

Then, all at once, a flash of clarity broke through the fog in her mind.

“What if it actually turns out to be a matched pair?”

The words she had wracked her brains to think of that wedding night with Li Wu came back to her now.

A matched pair!

Her expression shifted in shock. She pulled out the piece of jade tucked beneath the folds of her collar and examined it carefully.

The jade was half-moon shaped, its color a translucent, flawless green — a fine piece of jade at a glance. A faintly etched pattern of silk threads winding through lotus blossoms was carved across its smooth surface.

What if Li Wu’s piece of jade was not a single broken piece — but one half of a matched pair?

Then the other half — if her guess was right — had to be on Fu Xuanmiao.

This was the token that would allow her to leave the encampment safely!

Shen Zhuxi shot to her feet — then stopped herself before she had taken a single step.

No. She needed to plan carefully. Fu Xuanmiao was right here in the camp. If she went to take Bai Rongling away now, she would likely be caught and dragged back before she even made it out.

She had to wait for a moment when Fu Xuanmiao was not in the encampment.

But since the banquet, Fu Xuanmiao had been unusually cautious. Using care for his blind mother as his excuse, he rarely took part in the hunt — it was Shen Suzhuang who was “escorted” out to the hunting grounds day after day under one pretext or another, leaving Shen Suzhuang so convinced that some hidden arrow was waiting for him somewhere that he could not sleep at night. Within just a few days, dark circles had blossomed beneath his eyes.

If she wanted to get Fu Xuanmiao out of the camp, she could not wait for an opportunity to present itself. She would have to create one herself.

After much deliberation, when Fu Xuanmiao came to her tent that evening, Shen Zhuxi did not meet him with her usual cold composure. Instead, with apparent reluctance, she poured a cup of tea and silently pushed it in front of him.

Fu Xuanmiao looked up at her, and a glimmer of surprise flashed in his eyes.

“…Seeing your mother as she is now reminds me of what my own mother was like in her final years.” Shen Zhuxi lowered her gaze and murmured, glancing away, “Why is your mother refusing to eat?”

“Why does Xi’er suddenly concern herself with my mother?” Fu Xuanmiao watched her steadily, then paused and said, “I had thought Xi’er had come to hate everything connected to me along with me… and would never wish to have anything to do with me for the rest of her life.”

“…I don’t know.” Shen Zhuxi said. “I don’t know what I feel anymore.”

She gathered all the courage she had been building up behind her lowered head, and spent it all in this single moment.

Shen Zhuxi raised her head. Her clear, water-bright almond eyes met Fu Xuanmiao’s gaze directly. The startlement in his eyes flashed and passed — and without meaning to, he held her gaze.

“I believe you are guilty of terrible crimes. I believe you destroyed the Shang River Weir. I believe you harmed my husband. As far as I can see, there is no evil you are not capable of. Yet these past days, you have kept me confined here, and you hold great power — every day I have feared you would force yourself on me. But you never have… I cannot read you. From the very beginning, I have never been able to read you.”

Shen Zhuxi kept her eyes fixed on those penetrating eyes that seemed to see through everything, forcing herself to open her heart, looking at him with candid sincerity — as if she were genuinely troubled by this question, wrestling with it, unsettled by it, and had finally been unable to keep from asking.

Like a soft, innocent lamb that could be easily deceived.

The sharpness in Fu Xuanmiao’s eyes softened, just slightly.

He must not have noticed.

Because Shen Zhuxi herself had only just noticed it now. She had never observed his eyes this closely before. Those sharp, cold eyes had always brought her only fear. She had kept her gaze lowered, not daring to look directly into the eyes that seemed capable of seeing straight through a person. Only now, at this moment, did she discover that she was, in fact, able to read him.

She had surpassed her own fear — and he was no longer an unreadable god.

“I told you,” Fu Xuanmiao said softly, “Xi’er, you need not fear me. No matter how many people hurt you, neglect you — I will stand by your side. No matter how the world may change, you are still the same Xi’er as before.”

Shen Zhuxi said nothing. But Fu Xuanmiao seemed to see what was in her heart, and continued:

“I do not care what happened to you among common people.”

He reached out and touched the cup of Da Hong Pao tea Shen Zhuxi had pushed in front of him. Ripples spread across the steaming surface in layered circles. He lightly rubbed the rim of the teacup with the pads of his index finger and thumb, and in a moment of reverie, experienced a sensation almost like sorrow.

As though what he was touching was the warmth of the person across from him — a warmth forever just beyond his reach.

“After you fell to the common folk, I sent many people to search for you, but they all came back empty-handed. There were times when I thought to myself — if we were to meet again only to find that everything had changed, perhaps it would have been better never to meet at all… until I fell into the trap of a treacherous person and wrongly believed you had died in a place called Shouping Village. When I saw the body that had been made to look like yours, only one thought remained in my mind…”

Fu Xuanmiao gazed at the face before him. That guileless face, which had been carved into his very flesh and blood against his own will — beautiful, yet carrying a faintly shy smile. Those eyes, as clear as autumn water, as pure as the eyes of a newborn — utterly unclouded by the world. They belonged to the person who controlled the flow of half his blood.

She could make his blood surge upward — or drain it to his feet.

“Whatever you may have become, I want you alive, at my side.”

Shen Zhuxi was caught off-guard by this unexpected confession and faltered for a moment. That faltering was read by Fu Xuanmiao as being moved.

“Xi’er…” Fu Xuanmiao looked at her hands resting on the table. The fingers that had been rubbing the teacup curled inward, then opened again, gripping the warm cup more tightly. He lifted his gaze to Shen Zhuxi and said, “We have known each other for many years. In your eyes, am I truly the sort of man who has lost all humanity — gone mad and lost all reason? Search your own heart — have I ever done anything to harm you?”

Fu Xuanmiao saw that she said nothing, and seemed to take it as a sign she had no answer. His expression grew even gentler.

“Why do you believe rumors and hearsay over me — someone you have known and kept company with for years?”

“I…” Shen Zhuxi’s expression became hesitant. “If those things were not done by you, then who did them?”

“The Shang River Weir had been in disrepair for years; its collapse was only a matter of time. It just happened to collapse on the very day the two armies clashed, no sooner and no later. When I was young, I once accidentally killed a man who had broken into my chambers intending to harm me. He was one of the old retainers Mother had brought from the Fang family. Mother is devoutly Buddhist by nature, and when she learned of it, she was deeply shaken and fell into a profound rift with me. Ever since, whenever anything bad occurred, she would be the first to leap to suspicious conclusions about me. What happened that day in the Buddhist hall was the same.”

Robes of pale blue-green, a jade crown with silk ribbons — the immaculate young nobleman’s expression was tranquil, his measured tone filled with apparent sincerity.

If Shen Zhuxi had not known the truth, even she might nearly have been swayed by his expression.

She could not understand how a person could commit monstrous atrocities and still speak these words with such composure and equanimity. Was there truly not a single thread of unease within him?

Beneath that calm exterior — what was it that was hidden in his chest? Was it warm? Was it still beating? To what extremity would he carry the evil of his nature before he stopped?

“As for the collapse of the weir — it has caused suffering for a hundred years. In the Buddhist hall, when I did not deny the accusation, it was only because I was brokenhearted that my own birth mother could see me as the sort of person who deserved to die ten deaths over. As for the matter of the former Military Governor of Zhenchuan falling from a cliff — Bai Rongling has already made a full confession. It was the Bai family acting on their own, out of fear that the Princess would remarry and bring Fu family retribution upon them. I did not kill Boren, yet Boren died because of me — I cannot escape my share of responsibility in this, and Chan Yu is willing to do everything in his power to make it up to the Princess.”

“Mother carried me and raised me, yet she suspects me and hates me. I exhaust my every effort in service to His Majesty, yet His Majesty guards against me and resents me. I have offered you my whole-hearted sincerity — Xi’er—”

He said:

“Will you believe me?”

Shen Zhuxi’s jaw clamped tight. She could feel every taut muscle in her face. Suppressing her rage, the hand hidden beneath the table gripped her skirt with all her strength.

“If you agree to do one thing for me, I will believe that you are truly sincere in your feelings toward me.”

“Please speak, Princess.”

“The Summer Cloud Morning Dew you sent me the other day — I was very fond of it.” Shen Zhuxi fixed her eyes on him and said, slowly, “If you collect a vial of morning dew from the Summer Cloud flowers with your own hands and bring it to me, then I will believe you — that when you said you offered me your whole-hearted sincerity… you meant it.”

Fu Xuanmiao was visibly taken aback. He had clearly not expected her request to be a vial of morning dew from the Summer Cloud flowers.

“…You are unwilling?” Shen Zhuxi said.

“I am willing.” The words left his lips before he could think.

He had answered so quickly that even he paused at it. Fu Xuanmiao was still for a moment, then resumed his usual composed and unhurried tone and said:

“As long as Xi’er is pleased — to say nothing of one vial of Summer Cloud morning dew, even a hundred vials, a thousand vials — come tomorrow, I will personally gather them for Xi’er with my own hands.”

Shen Zhuxi lowered her gaze, eyes drifting to the cup of tea in front of Fu Xuanmiao — long since gone cold.

“Once I have brought back the Summer Cloud morning dew,” Fu Xuanmiao said — then paused. An unusual hint of hesitation crept into his typically detached voice, and he ventured carefully, “Would Xi’er be willing to play a piece of music with me?”

“…All right.” Shen Zhuxi said. “When you have personally gathered the Summer Cloud dew and placed it in my hands, I will play a duet with you.”

That evening, from the moment Fu Xuanmiao arrived at her tent until he left, he did not drink a single sip of the tea she had poured for him.

He was this vigilant for no other reason than that he had been abandoned by all and knew that a single misstep was a ten-thousand-foot abyss. Even as he claimed to hold her in his heart, he could not summon the courage to drink a cup of tea in her presence. The first gentleman under heaven, born beneath a halo, raised in the center of all eyes — and yet the only thing living inside his chest was a hollow void…

Pitiable. Despicable.

But not worthy of pity.

He had had countless choices — and had deliberately chosen the narrowest, darkest path of all.

He had no one else to blame.

He would never have the chance to personally place the Summer Cloud morning dew in her hands.

She was going to Li Wu’s side — and no one could stop her.