Xie Changgeng slowly set down his brush and raised his eyes, his gaze falling upon her face — haggard as a wilting flower deprived of water.
The long night was cold and silent. The stillness around him was deep, the candlelight bright within the chamber.
He sat just like that, watching with cold eyes the woman across the table from him — his wife — his thin lips pressed together, not uttering a single word.
Mu Fulan drew a long breath and spoke again. “The Three Miao people border the Changsha Kingdom and have maintained ties with our ancestors since ancient times. There is now a widespread plague of miasma and disease among them, and the people are starving. Some days ago they came seeking help, and within our means, the Mu Family could not turn a blind eye. This trip I made there was to help them, and the reason Yuan Elder Brother accompanied me was twofold: one, to protect me and the physicians, and two, to ensure the grain distribution went smoothly.”
“I am already aware that you had the child Wuji guide you there. The reason the talk of ‘Ba Long’ arose was entirely due to the spread of misinformation. Among the Three Miao people, very few can speak the Han tongue, and because of this language barrier, misunderstandings arose. Please be at ease — before I left, that matter was already clarified. As for the matter between Yuan Elder Brother and me here, I have already explained it before, and there is no need to repeat myself. Whether you believe it or not, I ask of you: adults’ matters should be settled between adults. Whatever you wish, say it aloud — we can discuss it. Please do not take out your anger on a young child. That would be beneath your dignity.”
He listened, and all at once broke into a laugh — his expression cracked like ice giving way, a ripple of spring appearing at the corners of his lips.
He leaned his body slightly forward, looking at her, and said, “I, Xie Changgeng, come from a background of great banditry. What standing do I have that I need to worry about?”
As he spoke, the corner of his lips still carried a trace of laughter not yet faded, but Mu Fulan could see it perfectly clearly — within his pupils, reflected by the faint candlelight, his gaze was deeply, immeasurably dark.
“Then what do you want?” she asked.
Xie Changgeng slowly stood up, paced to her side, and stopped.
He fixed his gaze on her face, studied her for a moment, and said, “A child you only happened to encounter at the start of the year, someone previously of no connection to you — how could you have grown so deeply attached to him?”
His gaze traveled from her face downward, all the way to the hem of her skirt stained with dust, staring, watching for a moment.
“You chased after him all this way for this child’s sake. You must have suffered no small hardship along the road?”
He curled his lip, his gaze falling once more upon that thin and haggard face of hers.
“Mu Shi, you first failed in your wifely duties, then deceived me afterward, treating me as a fool. Every manner of humiliation — if it had remained only between the two of us, I would have let it go. But now you still show no restraint, stirring up talk like this.”
“Whether you did it intentionally or not, things have come to this point. If you still refuse to tell me the truth now, there is no one in this matter who is innocent. That includes the young child you speak of.”
He slowly bent toward her, his lips stopping at her ear.
“That child — he is your own flesh and blood, is he not?”
He asked in a low voice, his tone gentle.
His face was pressed very close, as if whispering intimately to her, coaxing her to speak. His warm breath fell against her soft earlobe.
Mu Fulan suddenly turned her face.
He tilted his head to the side, dodging her face as it swung toward him, then immediately straightened himself, fixing his gaze on her, his expression turning stern, as though layered over with a coat of cold frost.
Mu Fulan closed her eyes for a moment, then slowly opened them.
“Yes. He is my own flesh and blood,” she answered.
“That man — who was he?”
Xie Changgeng’s eyelid twitched once, his face expressionless.
“He died long ago.”
Mu Fulan said.
“Do you remember that I once told you I had someone I cared for? It was that person’s child. Before our betrothal was arranged, I met him on Mount Jun. Later, he died.”
She looked at the man across from her, watching his face gradually stiffen.
“All of it is in the past now. I have no wish to think of it again, and in this lifetime, I had never intended to speak of it to anyone — but you insisted I speak, so I spoke.”
“I have indeed wronged you and brought shame upon you. But when you came to seek this marriage, it was not me as a person you were seeking.”
“In the past, you obtained what you wanted. Now, and in the future — when we are able to part ways and have nothing more to do with each other — this secret will never be known to anyone.”
“If you are still aggrieved, for the shame I brought you in the past, I ask your pardon and beg your forgiveness.”
Mu Fulan kept her gaze fixed on Xie Changgeng, gathered her skirt, and knelt before him on both knees — upright and solemn — and bowed her head to the ground in a deep, formal kowtow.
Xie Changgeng lowered his head, looking at the figure kneeling at his feet, motionless.
His instincts told him that this woman, this time, had finally told him the truth.
Indeed, as she had said, when he went to seek the marriage, it was not her, the Princess of Changsha, as a person, that he had sought. And the reason the two of them were still husband and wife now was only because of the words he had spoken before Empress Dowager Liu last year in order to bring her out of the capital — words that still bound him, and he could not yet cast her aside.
The day of his break with the court would be the day he put her away.
This Mu Princess, who from the very first time he had chased her down to the Changsha Kingdom and laid eyes on her had always made him feel as though a thorn were pressing into his back — today she had finally been seized by the throat and was kneeling at his feet, bowing her head to beg forgiveness.
Respectful. Docile. Abased as never before.
That was, at least, some release from the resentment in his chest. He should be satisfied.
And yet he felt a faint chill in his palms, as though the tips of his fingers had gone numb.
She had lied and deceived him, and he had been aggrieved.
Tonight she had finally been forced by him to bow her head, to kneel, to confess her wrongs — and yet he felt not a shred of the satisfaction he had imagined.
He said nothing. And so she remained like that, kneeling at his feet, her forehead pressed to the ground, unmoving for a long while.
Far away at the edge of the sky, a blinding bolt of lightning split across, and a crack of autumn thunder rolled and exploded in his ears.
Xie Changgeng stared at the submissive back of her head bowed before his feet, his eyelid twitching without end. He slowly tightened his five fingers into a fist, then suddenly — turning in a single motion — his fingers seized the sword resting at the edge of the table, and with a sharp ring of steel, he drew it and thrust it toward her.
The tip of the blade plunged into the thick knot of hair coiled at the back of her head, the cold gleam piercing straight through.
The wrist gripping the sword paused for an instant, then gave a fierce upward flick.
In that instant, a swathe of long hair severed by the blade floated upward like drifting threads, scattering high before his eyes, then swaying and falling to the ground, dispersing in all directions.
A single strand of hair, light as air, clung to the top of one of his boots.
He clutched the sword, head lowered, staring hard at the figure before him — hair disheveled and loose, yet still not moving a single inch — and drew a few uneven breaths. Then, with a clang, he flung the sword to the ground, strode forward, stepped past her, and walked out the door in large strides.
Mu Fulan slowly rose from the ground.
The night rain drizzled for a short while, then quickly stopped.
Early the next morning, the steward who had received her the night before came to find her and said that the young lord was at the horse paddock. The paddock was situated near the Northern Hills, approximately half a day’s ride from here.
“The young lord is perfectly well. Madam, you have traveled far to come here. If the journey has worn you out, please rest easy and remain here. This servant will go to the paddock now and bring the young lord back.”
The steward spoke with a smile on his face, deferentially.
The heart that had been suspended for months suddenly dropped back into place.
Her eyes brightened instantly. The pallor of her face flushed with living color, and her appearance was restored to radiance in an instant.
She could not bear to wait idly here — she wanted to sprout wings and fly there at once, to see that little one immediately.
“I’ll go myself! Please be so kind as to show me the way.”
She said.
The carriage was waiting outside the main gate of the government office. Mu Fulan hurried out and was just about to board when she suddenly saw a fast horse galloping toward her from across the way. It arrived at the gate, and the rider rolled down from the saddle and called out to the steward: “Is the Military Governor in? Something has happened! Last night around midnight, the horse paddock was struck by lightning. The grass fodder caught fire, it spread to the stables, and some of the horses were startled and bolted. The young lord the Military Governor left behind has also gone missing!”
Mu Fulan’s heart lurched wildly. She came to her senses, immediately climbed up into the carriage, and urged the driver to set off at once.
By midday, she had arrived at the horse paddock.
She stood before the stables that had been fully extinguished only an hour ago, eyes wide open, unblinking, watching the stable hands bustle about, raking endlessly through the still-smoking ash and cinders, pulling out the charred and blackened horse carcasses one after another. Her jaw trembled, her entire body shook without cease — until at last she heard a voice call out loudly: “All cleared! Fifty-six in total! No casualties among personnel!” She could control herself no longer. Her legs went soft, and she sank to the ground.
When the stables had originally been built, the possibility of preventing a fire from spreading on a large scale had already been considered, and the stables had been divided into separate sections. Furthermore, the fire the night before had been detected early, and the nearby horses had been moved in time — so only a few adjacent rows of stalls had burned, with limited casualties.
The number of horses that had been startled into breaking through the fences and escaping the paddock had also been tallied — roughly five hundred in total. By that morning, the majority had already been retrieved one by one.
After the steward had finished his report, he knelt and kowtowed in penance: “The fire was truly an accident. A bolt of lightning came down, the fodder caught fire, and the stables went up in flames. The rain that fell afterward was of no use. The horses were terrified, and many fences were broken down. At the time, there was simply too much happening at once. I had thought the young lord was already asleep, and he was on the upwind side, so I did not pay attention to where he was. By the time I came back this morning after putting out the fire, I discovered he had already vanished! I immediately sent people to search the surrounding area.”
“This servant has failed the Military Governor’s trust. I await punishment!”
“What of his foal?” Xie Changgeng asked, his expression grave and somber.
“The foal is also missing. Perhaps it fled with the herd of horses, or perhaps…”
The steward hesitated, then said quietly, “…perhaps the young lord took it and slipped away in the chaos. That is not entirely outside the realm of possibility…”
Xie Changgeng recalled the words the child had spoken to him that night — that he would not run away — and flew into a fury. “He must have met with some mishap! Forget the horses! Mobilize every single person here and go look for him! If he is not found, bring me your head!”
The steward acknowledged the order again and again, scrambling and stumbling as he ran off, calling out loudly to rally hands.
Xie Changgeng summoned a subordinate and ordered him to notify Liu An to swiftly mobilize soldiers for a large-scale search. Once his instructions were given, he turned his head and looked toward the figure not far away — seated on the ground, facing the direction of the collapsed stables. He walked over and stopped at her side. Seeing her face snow-white, her gaze blank and empty, staring at the charred and distorted horse carcasses being carried out one by one, he hesitated, then leaned slightly toward her and said gently: “Put your heart at ease. Go rest for now. Xi’er will be alright. I’ve already sent people to look. Wait for my news…”
Before his words were finished, he saw her scramble up from the ground and say, “I’ll search too,” then, without so much as a glance at him, she walked briskly past him and was gone.