King Kang’s detached palace was situated in Tongcheng of Jizhou. By now it was the height of summer, the hottest time of the year in Tongcheng.

Several consecutive months of scorching heat and drought had made water as precious as oil in Tongcheng. The villages outside the city had to travel several li just to draw water.

A place like this was deeply suspicious of outsiders, and with the assassination attempt on King Kang, Tongcheng had effectively become a city without a master. In the span of barely a month, more than half the population had packed up and left. Had the rains not been so scarce, the official road leading into Tongcheng would likely have been overtaken by weeds long ago.

In this atmosphere of universal anxiety and self-preservation, the escort bureau’s business had become unexpectedly brisk. The wealthy residents of the city were scrambling to spend their silver to save their lives, evacuating Tongcheng with their entire households in tow. On a lucky day, a single routine escort mission could earn a hundred taels of silver.

Xiao Nanhui spotted this as an opportunity and found herself a position among the escort bureau’s guard team. Both she and Bolao were skilled fighters — earning their keep was no problem. They had made several trips back and forth along the official road outside Tongcheng and had become familiar faces soon enough.

Everything was in place. All that was missing now was one thing: a chance to enter the city.

But getting into Tongcheng these days was far harder than getting out.

After King Kang’s death, his army of one hundred thousand troops had been placed under the temporary command of Jizhou’s Governor, Lu Songping. Lu Songping could be counted among the youngest governors Tiancheng had ever dispatched to the regions. Young as he was, his ambitions were anything but small — a fact that was evident enough from his willingness to take on Jizhou, that smoldering hot potato of a post.

Following the assassination a month ago, Tongcheng had been placed on emergency alert. To enter the city, one not only needed official travel documents but also proof of registered residency in Tongcheng. Lu Songping publicly declared this was to prevent further infiltration by Bijiang spies. But there were also rumors that the governor had long since colluded with the Bai Family, and that this was merely a smokescreen to keep the eyes and ears of the Tiancheng court at bay.

Unfortunately for Xiao Nanhui, most of the escorts the bureau arranged were for people fleeing out of Tongcheng. Anyone who wanted to go in at a moment like this and willingly walk into that den of wolves must have had their head badly rattled. She had spent several frustrating days waiting, and just when she was on the verge of giving up and resorting to scaling the city walls under cover of night, someone actually appeared who wanted to go in.

Nobody was eager to take on the job of entering the city, so Xiao Nanhui claimed the assignment without much trouble. Her client’s surname was Jia — young, presentable, and not at all the sort who looked like his head had been rattled. Xiao Nanhui had tried to probe indirectly as to why he needed to enter the city, but her questions were met each time with nothing but silence.

After a while, she gave up being curious. So long as she achieved her goal, there was no need to dig to the roots over such formalities.

Young Master Jia proved to be extraordinarily efficient. From the moment he paid the deposit to their departure, no more than half a day had passed before Xiao Nanhui found herself standing beneath the gates of Tongcheng before she had even quite registered what was happening.

The guards at the city gate were three times their usual number. Apart from Young Master Jia, who had already handed over silver, Xiao Nanhui and the others had their personal luggage turned inside out and were ordered not to remain within the city for more than three days. Only after a red stamp bearing the date of entry had been pressed into their travel documents were they permitted through the gates.

The emptied city of Tongcheng was quiet in a way that felt faintly eerie. Most of the households that had chosen to stay had also chosen to shut their doors and windows tight, keeping to themselves inside.

The air carried the smell of deathly stillness. This oppressive atmosphere had begun to pervade everything from the moment they entered Jizhou, growing denser the further west and south they went.

A suppressed mood is contagious, and Xiao Nanhui felt that even the usually chatty Bolao had grown far quieter. Young Master Jia clearly had no desire to linger either. He handed over the remaining payment in full and then hurried off on his own.

After a moment’s consideration, Xiao Nanhui decided she and Bolao should split up and act separately.

“No.”

She had barely gotten halfway through her sentence when she was cut off by a blunt refusal. She was rather annoyed. “I wasn’t even finished. What’s your hurry?”

Bolao gave her a languid, sideways glance. “Do I not know what nonsense you’re holding in? You just want to shake me off and go off on your own. Before we left, the Marquis specifically told me to stay by your side every step of the way.”

There it was — using Xiao Zhun as a cudgel to beat her with, again.

But her manpower was limited, and she could have used one person split into two. Keeping a sharp mind like Bolao beside her, only to eat and sleep, was a genuine waste.

When it came to handling Bolao, Xiao Nanhui had years of experience.

“I’ve already contacted people from Andao Institute. They’ll lend us a night owl. You stay in Tongcheng and keep an eye on Lu Songping for me, and pass any news of mine back to Quecheng. That’s all.”

Sure enough, the moment the Andao Institute was mentioned, Bolao erupted like a hen whose feathers had been set ablaze.

“Why would you go contacting the Andao Institute? I’ve already left that place. I don’t want to see a single person from there, and any bird of theirs I see, I’ll wring its neck on the spot!”

Before the last words had left her mouth, a plump, round, mottled night owl swooped down with a whoosh and landed on Bolao’s shoulder with an agility entirely at odds with its considerable bulk.

Bolao turned her neck stiffly and locked eyes with the sharp-beaked, round-eyed raptor in a gaze that carried an unmistakable air of mortality.

Xiao Nanhui shaded her eyes and squinted up at the sky. “My, the Andao Institute really does work fast. Though it’s hardly surprising — your master has been in Wancheng these past days, which isn’t too far from here. Who knows, perhaps on some whim, she’ll come to Tongcheng for a visit.”

How could Bolao miss the layers of threat woven into those words? The night owl was the Andao Institute’s exclusive messenger bird — capable of enduring hunger and thirst while traveling a hundred li a day, ferocious beyond measure and impossible for outsiders to approach. A single night owl was worth a fortune, and was one of the prized possessions of the current sect leader, Xie Li. Even if she had the nerve to wring the bird’s neck, wouldn’t the old man Xie come at her with a blade before her hand had even dropped?

Either way, this time Xiao Nanhui had her well and truly cornered. She had no intention of taking her to Bijiang.

Yet thinking of the Marquis’s earnest face as he had issued his instructions before they departed, Bolao made one final struggle. “If I went with you, I could still pass along messages.”

Xiao Nanhui gave her a cool look, and decided not to say aloud the thought that followed: If they were both captured and cut down, there wouldn’t even be anyone left to collect the bodies.

After a moment’s deliberation, she decided to try something softer. “I heard that the grapes meant to be sent as tribute from the western Ling region have been held up in Tongcheng on account of King Kang’s business.”

Bolao lowered her eyes, making an effort to conceal her reaction.

“This year was supposed to be a drought year, the rainfall poor. But the grapes have turned out sweeter than usual.”

Xiao Nanhui was fairly certain she could actually hear Bolao swallowing.

Since entering Jizhou, the two of them had been roughing it on the road with nothing but plain and meager rations. Fresh fruits and melons, which Bolao loved most, had been absent for a long while. Her round, plump face had grown noticeably leaner than it had been back in Quecheng, and she was beginning to resemble a persimmon left to shrivel and dry.

“The Marquis — if the Marquis were to ask about this later—”

Xiao Nanhui cheerfully supplied the answer: “I’ll tell him I drugged you and tied you up!”

And so it was that the brave and fearsome Bolao, first assassin of the Andao Institute, was ultimately defeated by a fat bird and a bunch of grapes.

From Tongcheng heading west, the official road too was largely swallowed by the vast and boundless Gobi. Xiao Nanhui couldn’t bring herself to make Jixiang suffer the journey, and so entrusted him as well to Bolao’s care, offering a fussy string of repeated instructions before the two of them finally parted ways and went about their separate tasks.

The summer days in Tongcheng seemed to last especially long; it was only just past the hour of You, yet the world was still bathed in bright light.

King Kang’s detached palace lay deep within Tongcheng. King Kang had been a man of easy, willful temperament, with a particular fondness for flowers, plants, insects, and birds. His birth mother had been born in Wancheng, that city of misty rains, and upon inheriting his title of vassal prince, he had poured lavish sums into transplanting flora and redesigning his detached palace into a classic garden landscape — complete with carved beams and painted rafters, winding streams and flowing water, with every detail in place.

Perhaps elsewhere this would not have been considered especially extravagant, but in the arid western Ling region of Jizhou, it was a genuinely indulgent affair.

As Xiao Nanhui lay on top of the wall appreciating the scene in the light of the setting sun, her impression of this King Kang sank a few notches further.

She was well aware of the methods the current Emperor of Tiancheng employed. Under such a forceful ruler, vassal kings with too much ambition tended not to last very long.

Then again, the consequence of excessive caution was inaction, and sometimes inaction was the greatest incompetence of all.

It was past midway through the hour of Xu when the last sliver of light still clung to the sky. Soldiers who had stood guard all day handed their posts over to the night watch and filed tiredly out through a side gate of the detached palace.

Xiao Nanhui still had not moved. The person she was waiting for had not yet left.

Another incense stick’s worth of time passed, and the sky went fully dark. At last, a figure in official dark robes emerged from the main hall, exchanged a few low words with the night-watch personal guards, and then departed in haste.

Lu Songping truly had his nerve. The body of King Kang was barely cold, and he had already moved into the detached palace under the guise of a supervisory garrison — utterly brazen about it. The palace these days was stripped of King Kang’s own palace guards and filled instead with Lu Songping’s personal guards, all dressed in green.

And yet now, apparently, even he could not remain in the detached palace. Xiao Nanhui curved her lips.

She had told Bolao to stir up some commotion in order to lure this tiger out of the mountain — and from the looks of it, it had worked.

Xiao Nanhui removed her shoes and boots and vaulted down from the wall, keeping her landing as quiet as possible, then crept along the base of the wall and worked her way deeper into the detached palace.

The carefully tended flowers and plants, left without care, had already begun to wither and fade in just over a month. The entire detached palace breathed an aura of decay.

The unpleasant memory of her nighttime infiltration of the Zou Mansion in Huozhou was still fresh in her mind, and Xiao Nanhui now carried a slight psychological shadow from it — yet she still had to steel herself and press on.

Investigating the situation of the Bai Family sounded simple enough but was in reality harder than scaling the heavens. With the chaos in Bijiang, and without even a single thread to pull on, one could spend a year or two and still not uncover anything genuinely useful.

The death of King Kang was deeply suspicious, and she simply did not believe the Bai Family had no hand in it. But the Bai Family was no fool — Tongcheng was still Tiancheng territory, after all, and they would never act so openly. Still, with a careful investigation, catching hold of a loose thread or two should be possible.

Her requirements were not high. So long as there was a trail to follow, she wasn’t worried about being unable to find her way to the Bai Family’s stronghold.

The most pressing matter right now was to find someone directly involved and get a clear account of what had happened.

The maids and eunuchs who had been on duty the day of the assassination had been mostly put to death already. Only a handful with particular circumstances had been spared. Among them was the younger brother of Lan Shi, King Kang’s most favored concubine.

This Lan Shi, riding on the glory of her favored status, had managed to install her younger brother inside the palace as a servant. After three to five years of working his way up, he had risen to the position of Deputy Superintendent — but before he could even enjoy the comfort of his position, King Kang met with disaster.

After the incident, Lu Songping’s people took over the palace’s affairs. In the process of investigating the servants who had been on duty inside and out that day, Lan Shi employed means unknown and somehow managed to preserve her brother’s life.

Spared from death but not from punishment, the ill-fated Deputy Superintendent Lan received thirty strokes of the rod and was locked away in Shunxin Pavilion, where no one was paying him any attention.

Xiao Nanhui, however, felt certain that if he had been on duty that day, he must know something.

She had gone to considerable lengths to dig out this piece of information, and now she used the cover of night to make her way toward Shunxin Pavilion.

Shunxin Pavilion had originally been used to discipline palace maids who had committed offenses. The lower floor had no staircase, only a retractable rope ladder with a hatch that could be opened and closed. The rooms where prisoners were held were on the top floor. Though the structure was only three stories high, for palace maids who had grown up within the detached palace walls, it was a height from which escape was impossible.

Of course, Xiao Nanhui did not fall into that category.

Thanks to her experience climbing the Piaoxiao Tower in Huozhou, she reached the third-floor air vent using hands and feet together in no more than half a cup of tea’s worth of time.

Several wooden boards were nailed around the narrow air vent. Xiao Nanhui looked around and saw no sign of anyone, then kicked the boards loose with one foot and slipped her way into the attic.

In the darkness, a single pair of wide, terrified eyes stared fixedly at her.

He seemed to want to cry out, but having gone so long without speaking, he could only produce a hoarse, barely audible rasp when he opened his mouth.

After a bout of violent coughing, he finally pushed out half a sentence: “Are you here to kill me?”

Xiao Nanhui looked around and found a flat spot where she settled down cross-legged. “That depends entirely on how you conduct yourself in a moment.”

Another silence followed. After quite some time, a response drifted back.

“What do you want to ask?”

“On the day King Kang was assassinated, were you on duty in the main hall?”

Across the dark and murky space, Xiao Nanhui could clearly feel the figure huddled in that corner flinch.

“I — I didn’t see anything.”

Xiao Nanhui frowned. “I haven’t even asked yet — what’s your hurry? Who were the guests present at the banquet that day?”

“So many people—”

“Obviously. I’m asking you who, specifically.”

Xiao Nanhui suspected the man had suffered some kind of mental shock — his answers were all over the place.

Still, years of serving as an attendant had made the reporting of details second nature, and Deputy Superintendent Lan rattled off names with a fluency that put even the most seasoned menu-reciting waiters at a teahouse to shame.

Xiao Nanhui listened quietly for a while, then suddenly interrupted: “Wait — miscellaneous attendants: Ah Kuang and fifteen others. Who is this Ah Kuang? Why would a miscellaneous attendant be permitted into the main hall? And how can anyone have the surname ‘Ah’?”

“Ah Kuang is one of the old fixtures of the palace. His real name is quite a mouthful, so King Kang granted him the name Ah Kuang. Although he held the position of miscellaneous attendant, he was deeply trusted by King Kang. Whenever there was a banquet at the palace, he would be responsible for one or two of the performance acts. He had some connections in the martial world and the underworld, and was always able to track down novel and unusual entertainment to earn favor.”

Xiao Nanhui finally caught the scent of something: “If they’re performers from the civilian world, their identities should have been thoroughly verified. Yet you didn’t report their specific names just now — is that kind of oversight something Lu Songping doesn’t care about?”

Deputy Superintendent Lan let out a laugh that was almost vindictive. “King Kang didn’t like him — so what could the Governor do? Not even a match for some lowly miscellaneous attendant.” He then seemed to recall something, and the laugh vanished. “As it turned out, he actually came out of it with his life — right at the critical moment, he somehow never made it into the hall.”

“Hold on.” Xiao Nanhui’s expression shifted, and she leaned forward. “Are you saying that Lu Songping was actually at the detached palace that day?”

“That’s right. King Kang’s banquet that day had not originally extended an invitation to him — yet somehow he arrived uninvited. I heard an attendant outside the hall announce his name, but after quite some time there was no sign of him entering. I thought something had gone wrong and was about to step out to check when, in the main hall — it just—”

His voice suddenly caught. The two eyes on that gaunt, haggard face stretched even wider. His shackled hands trembled as they clutched at his head.

It was then that Xiao Nanhui noticed — two fingers on his right hand were missing.

The wound appeared to have shriveled and blackened, looking as though the fingers had been cut away.

For some reason, as Xiao Nanhui looked at the wound, she felt a strange sense of familiarity.

She was about to press further with her questions when without warning the light around her dimmed, and a shadow materialized at the window behind her, blocking out half the moonlight.

A cold sweat broke out across Xiao Nanhui’s back in an instant.

Breath contained without a trace. Movement without a sound. A genuine master of internal martial arts.

“What person of such elegant taste would choose this moonless, wind-swept night to come and share old times with Deputy Superintendent Lan?”

Xiao Nanhui turned her face halfway and looked back. The newcomer stood with the light behind them, their features a mass of shadow.

But she recognized that voice.

Just an hour ago, she had heard with her own ears this person instruct their subordinates that they were leaving the palace.

It was the voice of Jizhou’s Governor, Lu Songping.