Having dealt with that tiresome Left General, Xiao Nanhui put the curtain back down with a straight face and dropped onto the cushion. The carriage moved on.

After a moment, she sensed someone watching her, and turned to find Zhongli Jing looking at her with his usual mild expression.

Xiao Nanhui pursed her lips. “What? Now that you know I’m only a lowly team leader, you’ve decided I’m not fit to share a carriage with you?”

Zhongli Jing shook his head. “I simply didn’t know until now — it seems you have quite a strong opinion of the current Emperor.”

It took her a beat to realize he was referring to the complaint she had let slip earlier, and she immediately played innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You said it just now, Team Leader Xiao. Have you forgotten already?”

“I have a terrible memory.”

“No matter. Even if Team Leader Xiao doesn’t remember, I do. You said — the Emperor’s eyesight must be poor.”

Xiao Nanhui’s expression froze. She stretched her mouth into something between a grimace and a smile. “Did I? You must have misheard.”

“You also said—” But the second half of Zhongli Jing’s sentence never came. Xiao Nanhui clamped her hand over his mouth.

A woman’s palm is rarely soft and smooth like the petals people poeticize — hers had a thin layer of hardened calluses, rough against the skin.

But the man’s lips were softer than they appeared. The warmth of his breath seemed to scorch her hand, and without quite knowing why, she thought suddenly of that moment by the stream — of him drawing the berry from her fingers with his lips.

Xiao Nanhui pulled her hand back without warning.

A silence fell over the carriage. The half-finished conversation stopped where it stood, and neither of them picked it up again.

The last stretch of road to Quecheng passed quietly and without incident.

Just as the sun dipped behind Xiaoxi Mountain, Xiao Nanhui finally made it back through the city gates of Quecheng, with moments to spare before they closed.

The Huozhou detour had lasted less than a month in total, yet it felt for all the world like returning from a campaign. In the past, whenever she came back to the city after a month or more at a posting — sometimes even a year away — her first stop was always Wangchen Tower to find Yaoyi. Her hair grew quickly, and long stretches of campaigning without attending to it made it unmanageable. Dujuan would absolutely not let her touch it herself, so every time she had to rely on Yaoyi to take care of it.

This time, she was going to find him as well — though not for her hair. It was for what lay inside that box.

“Many thanks to Zhongli for the loan of the carriage and horses. Now that we’ve reached the city, perhaps we should part ways here. I imagine Zhongli has important business to attend to.”

Zhongli Jing glanced at her and nodded obligingly. “Naturally. But we are still near the city gate, where there are too many eyes. Let us wait until we near Dingyu Road before we say our farewells.”

That seemed reasonable to Xiao Nanhui, so she agreed.

The carriage rolled on for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, then gradually came to a stop.

Strangely, outside the carriage the voices were just as thick as they had been at the city gate.

“Are we there?”

Ding Weixiang had already opened the carriage door, signaling that she could step down.

She jumped out and saw that, at some point while they were traveling, stall after stall had been set up all around them. From each stall hung a lantern with pink paper covers, and beneath the lanterns the crowds milled about — mostly young women and older ones — and the stalls themselves were piled with rouge and face powder and small trinkets.

“Is today some kind of festival?”

Ding Weixiang heard her and turned around. He looked briefly startled, then seemed to remember something and glanced at Xiao Nanhui. “Not exactly a festival. It’s the city’s annual Peach Blossom Fair — merchants set up night markets this time each year, and most of those who come are women. It wouldn’t surprise me if Team Leader Xiao wasn’t aware of it.”

Xiao Nanhui had heard of the Peach Blossom Fair before, but as Ding Weixiang said, she was a martial person who seldom touched powder or kohl, let alone wore hairpins — these sorts of gatherings had never captured her attention. Now that she saw it in person, it was far livelier than she had imagined.

While she was distracted, the crowd around her had thickened further. She had no desire to run into anyone she knew, and was about to tell Bolao to hurry up with the luggage—

“Xiao Nanhui?”

A piercing, high-pitched voice detonated behind her like a sharp fingernail raking across a nerve.

At the same moment, that wretch Bolao dug both heels into Jixiang’s sides like a mouse that had spotted a cat and bolted out of sight in an instant.

Speak of the devil.

She knew without turning around exactly who had called her name.

But with this many people around to provide cover, Xiao Nanhui decided to play deaf for the moment and hunched her shoulders inconspicuously.

“Xiao Nanhui!”

The voice was closer now, carrying a note of anger — and unmistakable certainty.

Xiao Nanhui had just shifted position, preparing to hold out a little longer, when the man inside the carriage decided this was the perfect moment to speak up: “Oh? The person over there looks like someone you know.”

Xiao Nanhui shut her eyes in despair. The next second came a rapid set of footsteps from behind, and then Dujuan’s hand descended on her shoulder and wrenched her around.

“Xiao Nanhui, how dare you pretend you couldn’t hear me calling you?! You actually came back?! You might as well have just died out there!”

Dujuan rarely called herself that — she avoided anything that implied she was getting old. Except when she was truly furious.

It was dusk, and the street was full of people making their way home from work alongside the evening strollers. Dujuan’s outburst drew stares from every direction. Xiao Nanhui desperately wished her face were small enough to hide behind her own sleeve.

“Dujuan, I know I was wrong, all right? Please — not like this, not in the middle of the street.”

Dujuan’s elegant brows shot up, but her voice dropped: “Oh? You admit you were wrong? Then tell me — wrong about what?”

Xiao Nanhui faltered. “Wrong — wrong about—”

Dujuan let out a cold snort, tucked the silver hairpin she had just bought into her hair to free her hands, and with swift precision, pinched Xiao Nanhui’s ear.

“Can’t say it, can you? I finished my errands today. I have all the time in the world to keep you company tonight and find out what exactly is going on in that head of yours.”

Xiao Nanhui yelped. She had never been able to understand how fingers as slender as Dujuan’s possessed the grip strength of a seasoned monk who had spent decades in meditative combat training.

“Just a moment.”

Zhongli Jing’s voice drifted from the carriage, slow and unhurried. Dujuan blinked, and without noticing, her grip loosened slightly.

Xiao Nanhui was not at all surprised. That was nearly everyone’s reaction the first time they heard that voice.

“Weixiang — bring Young Master Yao’s luggage.”

Several cloth bundles and the large box that Hao Bai had given her were pushed out from behind the carriage curtain. Then a hand emerged from the curtain — its knuckles well-defined, its skin the color of white jade — and with careful deliberateness set the box, won through so much hardship, at the very top of the pile. “Young Master Yao mustn’t forget the most important thing.”

Dujuan stared at that hand, swallowed quietly, and found her voice had gone soft without her quite realizing it.

“Thank you so much, young gentleman. Our Nanhui has a willful nature — she must have caused you a great deal of trouble. Please forgive her.”

Caused trouble? Who caused trouble for whom — that was hardly settled!

Xiao Nanhui was entirely certain this was deliberate. She had suggested parting at the city gate and he had refused, insisting on Dingyu Road — and then they happened to run straight into Dujuan at the Peach Blossom Fair. How could everything be this conveniently timed? She was about to confront him directly when Dujuan’s grip tightened again — this time sharply at her waist.

“The luggage is all here. Aren’t you coming home with me?!”

She barely had time for any further exchange with the man in the carriage before she was hauled away.

Once they had left the noise of the main street behind, Xiao Nanhui finally managed to wriggle free.

“Dujuan, please stop being angry. I did it for Father—”

“For him? You?! You just disappeared without a word. The General has been worried sick about your safety — he had people quietly searching for you all through Chizhou, and who knows what kind of mess you’d gotten yourself into. His men were coming to report back to the mansion in the middle of the night, and the General couldn’t get a proper night’s sleep—”

So that was why the assassins had thinned out once they crossed into Chizhou. It had been Xiao Zhun.

Xiao Nanhui stood listening, and something sweet and warm began to spread through her chest. She let Dujuan’s mouth work its way through the full list of her grievances and felt not the slightest sting.

Xiao Zhun cared about her.

There were not many people in this world who genuinely cared about Xiao Nanhui. So each one of them, she repaid with devotion many times over. That Xiao Zhun was among them — that was what she considered the greatest stroke of fortune in her life.

Never mind going to retrieve a mere imperial seal. Even the moon hanging in the sky — she would be willing to try.

Xiao Nanhui reached out from behind the wall of luggage and, with considerable satisfaction, took hold of the box resting on top.

The moment her fingers closed around it, her smile stopped.

The box was far too light.

She looked up, startled, scanning the mouth of the alley and the street beyond — the carriage traffic flowed on, and the carriage was long gone.

Dujuan noticed her expression change and did not understand. Xiao Nanhui had no time to explain. She snapped the box open with trembling urgency.

What met her eyes was not the glimmer of jade green — but several small spots of red.

Three rubus berries lay quietly inside the box, perfectly still.

The imperial seal was nowhere to be seen.

Tucked into a side alley in the western quarter of Quecheng, there was a courtyard that looked from the outside like an ordinary private residence. Facing the street was a three-story building with three upswept eaves, from the topmost of which hung a row of white jade wind chimes — a rare sight. When a breeze passed through, the jade pieces struck one another with a clear, delicate ring.

There was no plaque above the street-facing gate, no name of any kind. Only regular visitors knew: this was a jade house.

By now the sky had darkened, and candlelight had begun to glow within the building. The sounds of people coming and going were still lively — the place had not yet closed.

Ding Weixiang brought the carriage to a gentle stop at the door. A man in gray was already waiting there. Once the two men stepped down, he drove the carriage away alone.

Zhongli Jing was unencumbered, hands free. Ding Weixiang carried only the one item — now without its box, wrapped in a piece of soft cloth that gave nothing away to the eye.

Ding Weixiang weighed it in his hand and felt a pang of something.

He had watched his master execute the switch in full view of his eyes, and privately, as a swordsman from a distinguished lineage, he found the method not entirely above reproach. But thinking on it now — it was seamless, effortless, and had spared them a great deal of difficulty. Miss Xiao would certainly not have given it up without a fight.

“Does Weixiang think me despicable?”

Even after all these years at his side, being read aloud so suddenly still made Ding Weixiang flinch. He straightened his expression at once. “My lord’s judgment is your own. I would not presume to comment.”

But the man had already passed through the entrance of the building ahead of him. Ding Weixiang let the thought go and followed.