“Has everywhere been searched?” Xie Yuzhang asked in a low voice.

In her heart burned a great fire of fury she wanted to release. Only years of habit meant that the greater the crisis, the more she forced herself to stay calm.

Jia You’s courtyard was blazing with lantern light, and every room had been turned inside out — even under the beds had been looked. But Jia You had simply vanished.

In the middle of the night, where could she have run off to?

Could she have been abducted, the way Lin Fei had been?

Just as Xie Yuzhang’s heart was burning with urgent anxiety, her handmaid came rushing from the main room, “Your Highness! Your Highness!”

The handmaid leaned close to Xie Yuzhang’s ear and whispered something. Xie Yuzhang’s expression instantly changed.

Without a word, she gathered her skirts and ran toward the main room.

When she returned to the main room, the front door was wide open, and the inner partition door was also open.

Xie Yuzhang had not yet stepped inside when she first heard a sharp scream from Jia You. Xie Yuzhang’s heart clenched, and she cried out “Jia You!” as she charged into the room.

Inside the room she saw several people — Li Gu standing with his hands clasped behind his back, brow tightly furrowed; Hu Jin wringing his hands with an expression of complete helplessness; Liang Chen drenched in sweat, trying to approach Jia You.

On the ground lay a pair of scissors and several shards of broken porcelain.

Jia You sat on the floor, her back pressed against the partition to the inner chamber. Her face was deathly pale, one hand pressed against her shoulder. The arm below that pressed shoulder hung limp and powerless. Xie Yuzhang saw at a glance that her shoulder joint had been dislocated.

Each time Liang Chen tried to get near her, she kicked at him with all her might and screamed.

The urgency had Liang Chen drenched in sweat all over his head.

Xie Yuzhang’s face had gone pale as well. She cried out, “Jia You!”

The handmaid’s earlier report had said it all — Nineteenth Young Miss had attempted to assassinate the Emperor.

She wanted to rush over, but Li Gu stretched out his hand to stop her. He had just been about to say something to her when Jia You, sitting on the floor, ignored the searing pain in her shoulder and struggled to her feet, crossing the distance in a few steps to plant herself between Xie Yuzhang and Li Gu.

The young girl spread open the one arm that could still move, and fiercely shielded Xie Yuzhang behind her back!

For a moment, the room fell utterly silent because of the young girl’s actions.

“It was me! Me — alone!” Jia You had not spoken for so long that whenever she opened her mouth, her voice was hoarse and unpleasant. In her urgency now, it was even harder to hear. “Nothing to do with her! Nothing at all!”

“I — kill you — to avenge my sister!” she said.

Li Gu frowned, completely at a loss as to what she meant.

Xie Yuzhang stood frozen, and then tears began to fall.

Only moments ago, Xie Yuzhang had still been suspecting that Jia You believed Li Gu had killed everyone in the Xiaoyao Marquisate, and had come to assassinate him for that reason.

But she was entirely wrong. Entirely wrong. So that was what it was!

“Jia You!” Xie Yuzhang stepped forward from behind and wrapped her arms around her sister, holding her tightly, tears streaming down her face, telling her, “You’ve made a mistake — it wasn’t him, it wasn’t him!”

……

Li Gu remained in the inner chamber. The partition door was left ajar, and the night was very still. Through it, he could clearly hear Xie Yuzhang speaking to her sister in the side room.

“…By that time, it had already spiraled out of control. It was just that Father was set in his way, determined to carry out the dissolution of the principalities.”

“It was Lin Xiupu who laid siege to the city.”

“It was Huang Yungong who unleashed the soldiers to wreak havoc in the palace and throughout the capital.”

“It wasn’t him. It was only after he came that things finally settled down.”

“You’ve seen how people on the East and West Markets and in the entertainment quarters all have smiles on their faces, haven’t you? It’s because all they want is to live their lives in peace — they don’t care what surname the Emperor above them carries. The Xie family’s time had run its course, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.”

Xie Yuzhang saw Jia You back to her own quarters, settled her in, and then returned.

Li Gu had not yet slept. He had been waiting for her.

When he saw her, he said, “She is very stubborn. Even after I took the scissors from her, she still refused to stop. She picked up the shards of broken porcelain as weapons and would not relent. I had no choice but to dislocate one of her shoulders to immobilize her.”

Xie Yuzhang said nothing. She dropped to one knee and curtsied to him.

Li Gu caught her arm and lifted her up, then asked, “What happened with her?”

Xie Yuzhang smiled bitterly. “It was my negligence.”

As it turned out, all these years, Jia You’s understanding of what had happened back then had been a complete blank.

She had been only nine years old when the soldiers ran amok. She had barely escaped with her life, hiding in the Eastern Palace. But everyone in the Eastern Palace was in fear for their own lives — no one had the heart to look after her. Later, when she became someone who spent her days in silence, even less attention was paid to her. Sister-in-law Yu Shi had only looked after her food and clothing. Given the circumstances, that was already fulfilling her duty as a sister-in-law.

Not a single person had ever sat down with Jia You to tell her, properly and completely, what had actually happened back then.

And so Jia You had grown up in a daze within the high walls of the Xiaoyao Marquisate. It was only after she had come to be at Xie Yuzhang’s side that she had set foot outside those walls for the first time and seen what “the outside world” actually looked like.

Xie Yuzhang had never imagined that Jia You knew absolutely nothing about those events.

When Jia You heard the handmaid mention Li Gu and learned that Li Gu was the current Emperor, she had drawn the most simple and blunt conclusion her limited understanding could reach — Li Gu was the Emperor who had changed the dynasty, which meant Li Gu had started the calamity all those years ago, which meant Li Gu had caused Fukang’s death.

And so she had tucked a pair of scissors into her sleeve and come.

Xie Yuzhang finished explaining to Li Gu, and tears fell again. “It’s all my fault.”

Li Gu wiped her tears away and said, “You have already done far too much for your family.”

Xie Yuzhang nodded and said softly, “Let’s sleep.”

Xie Yuzhang burned the incense and brought the zither close.

Li Gu lowered the bed curtain. Once the curtain fell, the bed became its own small world. He removed his clothes inside the curtain and lay down bare-chested.

She tested a few notes, tightened the strings, then as the notes rang again, they became a melody.

At first, her mood still carried its undulations, but very quickly it settled into calm.

Yet Li Gu’s heart could not calm itself. He stared at the top of the curtain and said suddenly, “You are truly good to your family.”

Xie Yuzhang said, “What can be done about it? It’s the bond of blood.”

Li Gu said, “I had family too, once. Yuzhang, I… am a person from Yuning Town in Qingqu County.”

Xie Yuzhang glanced at the bed curtain, rather surprised. The Emperor had never mentioned his origins to anyone.

Li Gu’s voice came from within the curtain, low and heavy.

“My father was called Li Ping’an. He was not from that area originally — he had fled there with his parents during the great famine. My grandparents both died. He alone survived. He was very tall, with great strength, and every day he walked from village to village carrying a peddler’s pack. He was a traveling merchant, a goods peddler.”

“My mother was a bondservant who had been released from a wealthy rural household. She had sold herself into service during the famine years as well, and she too had no father or mother. Our family was just the three of us — we had not a single relative in the world.”

“But Father was capable, and Mother was hardworking. We ourselves felt that life was quite good.”

But one day, Li Gu’s peddler father was out when a nobleman’s horse trampled him and shattered his leg. The nobleman tossed down a bulging purse and walked away.

Only the local country doctor was no good, and his father’s leg was not properly treated, which in the end meant half his leg had to be amputated to save his life.

“From then on, he could only walk with a crutch and could no longer work as a peddler. The family’s situation took a sharp turn downward, and things became difficult. To make a living, Mother took in mending and sewing for others, and took on washing and laundry work to support the family.”

“But Father fell into despair and spent his days drinking. Not only did he drink himself senseless, he would often take the household’s money to buy wine. And when drunk, he would beat my mother.”

“What I remember most clearly is that my mother often wept in grief.”

“One day, Mother was in high spirits and told me that Xue the butcher had said he would give all his family’s clothes to her to wash. For her, this was a big piece of business. She said Xue the butcher had asked her to come to his home to collect the clothes. And so my mother went, happily and eagerly.”

But the woman did not come home cradling a pile of dirty clothes. When she returned, her hair was all in disarray, and her clothes bore stains.

She had been “violated.”

“You were born noble — you would not understand. In a small place like that, a butcher was already the local tyrant.”

“My mother went weeping to my father. That man did not dare to go looking for trouble with the butcher, so he beat her instead — beat her savagely — and hurled all manner of vile words at her, telling her to go die. I rushed in to stop him and was beaten as well. Though he had lost one leg, he was genuinely very strong. I could not overpower him.”

“After he hobbled away on his crutch, I felt a deep grief, because I had not had enough strength to protect my mother. But Mother told me not to grieve. She said she was used to it. She gave me two copper coins and told me to go buy candy, saying that once I ate the candy, the pain would stop.”

The young boy went. The candy was truly sweet. He held it in his mouth on the way home, and it was sweet the whole way, and the wounds truly seemed to hurt less.

But when he came home and pushed open the door, what he saw were his mother’s feet, dangling in the air…

His father never came home. The neighbors helped to lay his mother out and see to her burial.

He sat there in a daze. He neither spat the candy out nor swallowed it. The piece of candy stayed in his mouth, sweet the whole time.

Later, the neighbors found his father — he had been drinking and fallen into a pond and drowned.

In a single night, Li Gu became an orphan.

Xie Yuzhang was silent for a long while, then asked, “How old were you then?”

Li Gu said, “Eight.”

The eight-year-old Li Gu had pieced together what had happened from the neighbors’ talk — his mother had been “violated” by Xue the butcher. Because the butcher had not bothered to hide it. In fact, he had boasted about it proudly to others. Everyone knew.

On that moonless, wind-swept night, the eight-year-old Li Gu crept into Xue the butcher’s home. At the front was the shop, and behind it was the residence.

Li Gu found a knife in the front shop, and crept into the butcher’s bedroom.

“The knife was used for cutting meat, so it was very sharp,” he said. “It didn’t require much force at all — just one stroke across his throat. The blood sprayed very high. The top of the bed curtain was covered in it.”

“Everyone around me thinks I started killing at the age of eleven. But that is not so. At the age of eight, I had already begun to kill.”

The eight-year-old boy took that knife and set out on a path of flight, wandering from place to place.

He killed the head of a gang of beggars who stole his food. He killed a trafficker who wanted to sell him to a male brothel. He killed a street ruffian who was harassing a lone woman.

He wandered for three years with that knife, until he joined the Hexi army and encountered Li Ming.

From there, his life took a turn, and he walked all the way to the Hanyuan Hall in Yunjing.

“Yuzhang, this is who I am. This is the kind of person I am,” he said.

This background, this past — he had never told anyone before. But tonight, he wanted to tell her.

His father had been a small-town peddler. His mother had once been a bondservant and had been violated. And at eight years old, he had already begun killing.

Now that she knew all this — how would she see him?

The zither gave two soft reverberations.

“Oh,” Xie Yuzhang said. “I see.”

Li Gu’s body suddenly relaxed, as if submerged in warm water. All the tension from just now dissolved away.

“Yuzhang,” he called to her.

Xie Yuzhang said, “Mm?”

Li Gu said, “I have long resented my parents.”

Xie Yuzhang sighed.

Li Gu said, “They were both weak people. One who only dared to use his fists against a frail woman and a child. One who endured beatings without daring to resist, endured violation without daring to report it to the authorities, and in the end didn’t even have the courage to keep living.”

“I have resented such weak people my entire life.”

“Yuzhang, when I was in Hexi, every time I thought of bringing you to a second marriage, I was tormented.”

“I feared you could not endure those hardships. I feared you would not be able to hold on.”

“But I was wrong. You are braver than anyone. When you returned to Yunjing, your brows were full of vibrant life.”

“I have never seen another woman as radiant as you.”

The zither music outside the curtain had been silent for a long while.

Then Xie Yuzhang’s voice came.

“What do you mean by…” she asked, “bringing me to a second marriage?”