The hour was not especially late, but not early either. The physician’s clinic nearest to the Military Commissioner’s residence, tucked in beside the market, had long since closed its doors for the night, and the doctor had gone to sleep. Startled by the sound of knocking at the clinic gate — taking it for some urgent patient come to seek treatment — he climbed out of bed muttering under his breath, lit a lantern, and went to open the door. Recognizing the person standing outside as Military Commissioner Xie Changgeng, he was thoroughly taken aback.

The Military Commissioner’s wife’s medical skill surpassed his own by no small measure — so why would the Military Commissioner come to him for a consultation, and come in person, no less?

The physician pushed down the confusion in his heart and bowed in greeting. Just as he was about to ask what the ailment was and who it concerned, he saw him step inside, produce a packet of medicine, set it on the table, and say, “Tell me what illness this is prescribed to treat.”

The physician grew more puzzled still. But since the Military Commissioner had spoken, how could he presume to ask more? He came forward, untied the packet and opened it, took out the various medicinal ingredients one by one and examined them, then said, “This is a contraceptive and abortifacient preparation.”

Xie Changgeng looked at the herbs. “You haven’t mistaken them?”

His expression was not pleasant. The physician said hastily, “This humble one’s medical skill may be ordinary, but I would not mistake this medicine for anything else. Processed Chinese angelica root, rhubarb, combined with safflower and musk — what else could it be but a contraceptive and abortifacient? My lord, look — this ingredient in particular…”

The physician pinched a small quantity of a black powder between his fingers, brought it to his nose, and sniffed, then touched it with his tongue.

“This is dried and refined cinnabar, also known as Red Maiden Elixir. Its medicinal potency is extreme — even the smallest amount can suppress conception and cause the termination of an established pregnancy. And that is to say nothing of a double dosage, combined further with the other ingredients already named.”

He nodded.

“This humble one can guarantee — this is a contraceptive and abortifacient medicine. I don’t know which physician compounded it, but with such a severe dosage, is that not harm to the patient? The efficacy may be superior, but if taken over a long period, it will certainly cause damage to a woman’s ability to bear children…”

He paused.

“It is only those women of the pleasure quarters who, seeking once and for all to put an end to such concerns and be done with it entirely in the future, would be willing to use a dosage as extreme as this.”

Xie Changgeng snatched back the packet, left the still-talking physician where he stood, turned on his heel and walked out of the clinic. He returned directly to the Military Commissioner’s residence, went straight back to the quarters, and pushed the door open.

Mu Fulan had long since returned from the tea-water room. She had not yet slept, however — she was reclining at the bedside, coloring her nails with flower-juice dye. The candles burned bright.

Two maidservants hovered around her — one busy adding water and alum to a small jade mortar and pestle, grinding the dried flowers into a deep red juice, and the other helping to apply the juice to her nails.

Both her hands were already done. Her ten slender fingers, their tips a delicate crimson, with her skirt gathered up to her knees — a maidservant was helping with her bare feet now, applying the dye to her toenails as well. The maidservant smiled and said, “First application, the color comes out a bit light. Once it dries, if we do it again, it’ll turn a pure rouge red. Leave it overnight, and even washing can’t remove it — it’ll last at least a month.”

“Young Princess, your feet are naturally lovely. When the toenails are done in phoenix-seed red too, they’ll be even more beautiful…”

The atmosphere was light and easy. The two maidservants were busy at their tasks, murmuring and laughing softly — then heard footsteps approaching from behind. They turned, and found that Xie Changgeng had returned.

He stood beside the folding screen. He said nothing, but the two dark eyes fixed on the Young Princess carried a cold fury that was chilling to the bone, and his entire person, from head to toe, emanated a suffocating aura that was very nearly terrifying.

The light, easy atmosphere vanished in an instant.

The maidservants grew uneasy. They glanced at Mu Fulan, stilled the work of their hands, and slowly straightened, turning to bow to him.

“Get out.”

Xie Changgeng’s two eyes were fixed on Mu Fulan as he said this.

His voice was not loud, yet the tone was cold and severe beyond measure.

The maidservants looked again at Mu Fulan. Seeing her nod, they hastily withdrew.

In the inner chamber, only Xie Changgeng and Mu Fulan remained.

He stepped forward to the bedside and thrust the packet of medicine toward her face.

“You have been taking this medicine behind my back?”

He fixed his gaze on Mu Fulan and forced these words out from between his teeth, one by one.

The air thickened at once, heavy as the stillness before a mountain storm.

Mu Fulan glanced at it and made a soft sound of acknowledgment, then blew on her ten delicate crimson-tipped fingers. She sat up, picked up the small brush the maidservant had set down, dipped it into the jade mortar, loaded it with flower-juice, bowed her head, and continued applying it to her toenails.

A lock of long hair slid off her shoulder and fell across her knee.

Her head bowed, she attended to the task with complete concentration — painting her toenails a deep phoenix-red. The long hair that had fallen before her face was black and smooth as silk. Her pomegranate-red skirt was gathered up to her knees, exposing a pair of snow-white, delicate ankles. Her small, neatly formed toenails — half-painted with flower-juice — were tipped with small, sweet flecks of crimson, like pink peach blossoms in the snow, carrying a beauty all their own.

A beautiful woman beneath the lamplight, painting her nails in phoenix-red — red rain in spring mountains stirring the dawn sky into brightness.

What man in this world could look upon such a scene and remain unmoved?

Yet when it fell on Xie Changgeng’s eyes, it was an unbearable irritation. The fury he had been holding in check could be contained no longer, and he hurled what he held down beside her.

The packet struck the mortar and sent it over. The deep, vivid flower-juice inside spilled out and spread across the bedding. The medicine inside the packet also flew out, scattering over half the bed — a scene of utter disorder.

Mu Fulan still did not look up. As though entirely unaware of his fury, she simply looked at the spilled flower-juice, furrowed her brow as though her heart ached over it, and with one hand steadied the mortar while the other raised the small brush and reached toward it, trying to gather the last small bit of juice still remaining.

Xie Changgeng’s eyes were alive with sparks of fury. He swung out his arm and swept it aside.

With a crash, the small jade mortar — carved from green stone — was sent flying off the bed, fell to the floor, and broke into several pieces.

“You have been taking this extreme and dangerous medicine to prevent conception?” He leaned down toward her and demanded again, his voice sharp.

Mu Fulan dipped the brush to find nothing there. The hand holding the brush stopped. She finally lifted her head and met the gaze of the man glaring at her with fury, held it for a moment, then slowly drew her hand back.

“In the words you gave the Empress Dowager, surely passing on the Xie family line did not feature among them?”

“If I don’t take medicine, are you expecting me to bear your children?” She turned the question back on him.

Xie Changgeng’s face went rigid, a faint twitch at the corner of his eye.

“Don’t only be angry. Ask yourself honestly — do you truly want the blood of your Xie family to come into this world from my womb?”

Xie Changgeng stopped short.

Mu Fulan flung away the brush still dipped with flower-juice, smoothed her skirt back down, and sat up straight.

“Even if I were carrying your child, I suspect you would not want it. If that’s the case, why be so angry about this, Xie Lang?”

The color of Xie Changgeng’s face had gone beyond rigid — it was beginning to take on a greenish cast.

“Your anger, I imagine, comes down to the fact that I took the initiative to prevent conception myself, rather than doing so only after obtaining your permission.”

“If you feel this was an offense, I offer you my apology. You have always been magnanimous — can you not overlook it for me one more time?”

Not only her tone, but her entire bearing conveyed an ease that was almost disarming. Her expression, moreover, appeared perfectly sincere as her beautiful eyes looked steadily at him — with the soft, yielding air of someone genuinely seeking his forbearance, as though she truly was asking for his forgiveness.

Xie Changgeng stared at her. After a long moment, gritting his teeth, he finally forced out a single sentence: “Mu Fulan, I have been good enough to you!”

“You have indeed been good enough to me, Xie Lang. But we are a marriage in name only — you yourself acknowledged as much at the outset. And yet here we are, sleeping together — through your generous tolerance, no less, as we both know perfectly well what this amounts to. I take the medicine because I don’t want an unnecessary complication afterward.”

When she finished, she looked at the disordered mess covering the bed, climbed down from it, slipped on her shoes, and started toward the door to call someone in to change the bedding.

She had only taken a few steps when Xie Changgeng’s hand reached out and seized her shoulder, yanking her back to stand before him.

He was visibly at the extreme of his anger — the veins stood out sharply along the back of his hand.

“Mu Fulan, do not mistake my forbearance for your shamelessness!” He ground this out from between clenched teeth, one word at a time.

Mu Fulan’s whole body had been thrown against his. She steadied herself, and then — she suddenly laughed.

“After all that has happened, how could you still think I have any face left to speak of?” she said.

“Enough — stop making such a scene. The bedding is ruined. Let me call someone in to change it.”

She ended the conversation there and, without looking at him, tried to push away the hand that had seized hold of her.

Xie Changgeng stared at the Mu Fulan in his grasp. His eyelid twitched and jumped without stopping. His hand suddenly loosened — but he did not release her. Instead he caught hold of her long hair, driving his fingers deep into it, closing them around the back of her head in a tight hold.

His grip was powerful. The moment she moved even slightly, the pull on her hair made her scalp ache, leaving her no choice but to go still. Forced to tilt her face up toward his.

“Mu Fulan, I will be straightforward with you. I never had any intention of having you bear my children. You are not worthy.”

He gave a cold laugh.

“Only just now I find I have changed my mind. What is wrong with having you give me one child first before you go? It is not as if it would be too late afterward. After all — you are my lawfully wedded wife.”

Mu Fulan saw him finish speaking and felt his gaze drop to her lips, and felt his face beginning to lean downward toward hers.

The number of times they had shared a bed was no small thing. Yet for some reason — perhaps out of some aversion — he had never once touched her mouth. He had not done so even in the previous life. Except in moments when feeling ran extremely high, it had been rare for him to engage in deep, intimate kisses with her even then. And after he became Emperor, never, as far as she had seen, had he kissed the women who came to attend him in his chambers.

It seemed that by nature he had no inclination toward that kind of closeness with others.

She did not care about the pain in her scalp — she turned her face away to avoid him. He seized her face and brought it back.

His mouth pressed against her lips and ground against them heavily for a moment, then attempted to force open her tightly shut teeth.

Her lips were bruised by his teeth, but she still refused to open her mouth, clenching it shut with all her might.

His other hand then reached down to her side, found the point at her flank, and abruptly bent his finger into the soft flesh, pressing against it sharply.

He had come to know her body well enough to understand that this was among the most sensitive spots on her.

A sensation — at once aching and numbing, with a rushing heat — flooded suddenly from her flank. Mu Fulan’s legs went weak. Her concentration broke for an instant, and the barrier of her teeth was forced open.

His tongue invaded her mouth, pressing and curling against hers, which had nowhere to retreat.

Her face grew flushed and hot, and her breath seemed to mingle with his.

Even in those moments when they were joined together in that way, she had never felt the distance between them collapse as it did in this instant — so close it seemed there was no space between them at all, as though each was entangled in the other.

Mu Fulan was seized with a strange horror. Her scalp prickled. Her eyes closed, and she forced herself to endure it for a moment — when all at once a memory flashed through her mind of their first meeting in the previous life, beneath an ancient cypress tree on Junshan Island. Her entire being was suddenly overwhelmed with unbearable anguish, as though she had fallen ill — at once cold and burning, drenched in sweat.

She did not want this — this entanglement of lips and tongues with him. Not even for an instant.

She snapped her eyes open and shoved away the man who had been kissing her with force, then turned and ran for the bathing room.

Before she even reached it, she bent over and retched.

Xie Changgeng stared in bewilderment at her silhouette as she braced against the doorframe, heaving, and walked toward her, stopping behind her. After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

With that feeling — the intolerable intimacy of his tongue inside her mouth — now gone, Mu Fulan felt somewhat better. She straightened slowly, went into the bathing room to rinse her mouth, then came back out, and without a word, simply looked at him.

Xie Changgeng understood immediately.

So it was his kissing her that had provoked this reaction.

The color of his face darkened severely in an instant. A flash of something wretched crossed the depths of his eyes. He stood rigid for a moment, then said, “Listen to me carefully — if I ever see you taking that thing again, I will make you the second Prince Jiangdu!”

With that said, he turned to go. He had walked only a few steps when a voice behind him said:

“Xie Lang — since you have taken things this far, I would also like to tell you why I would take the risk of offending you rather than stop taking the medicine.”

Xie Changgeng stopped. He turned his head slowly.

“I am unwilling to carry and bear a child because you are not my proper husband.” She looked at him and said.

“My proper husband — for all his life, in his eyes and in his heart, there must be only me. If he falls into difficulty and needs me, I would be willing to give my life for him. If I face hardship, I know he would give everything he has, equally, for me.”

“When you first came to ask for my hand, and my father the King consented to give me to you, I did not yet understand these things. Now I do.”

“As for this body of mine — if you still find it worth wanting and have not yet grown tired of it, I can remain here to attend you as long as you wish. When the day comes that you are weary of me, I will leave. Only —”

She pressed harder on the last words: “This medicine — I will take it without fail. Even if tomorrow you were to move against the Kingdom of Changsha, I would not stop.”

She paused, then let her tone ease once more.

“Xie Lang, I know you desire me just now. Come then, if you wish. Only please do not kiss my mouth — it is not that I am unwilling, simply that I am not accustomed to it, and I fear I might retch again and spoil the mood.”

And as she spoke those words, in plain sight before him, she undid the sash at her own waist.

With the faint whisper of cloth shifting, the garments that had been wrapped around her slid to the floor at her feet.

In the candlelight, bare and unhidden, she was radiant — a beauty so arresting that no eyes could turn away.

She got onto the bed herself and lay down, closed her eyes, and lay perfectly still.

Xie Changgeng stared at her. The color of his face grew darker and darker, shadows gathering thick in his eyes.

“Get yourself back to your Kingdom of Changsha.”

He said this, then turned and walked away with great strides, without looking back once.