Cui Xingyao’s life changed at the age of seventeen, on that one day.

She still remembered sitting in the palanquin, passing through those three layers of palace walls for the first time.

She wore the most magnificent clothing she had worn in her life, her cloud-like hair piled high, adorned with ornaments representing the wealth accumulated by her maternal family over many generations.

Layer upon layer of silk and satin wrapped around her, not a thread out of place, not a fraction off — and yet, just before she crossed that threshold, the older attendant who had dressed her tugged the back of her collar down an inch, saying her neck was beautiful, and that His Majesty had once looked twice at a selected consort with an attractive neck some years ago.

Her body did not move, but inside she felt revulsion.

Her father was already dead, and the Yu clan had long since crumbled into ruin. The precious gem who had once been sheltered in the Prince Kang’s traveling palace — whose silk stockings were bound all the way up to her calves — now had to be selected and admired like a courtesan in a pleasure house.

By the lakeside of the Moon-Resting Lake, he sat behind nine layers of gauze screens, only a slender shadow visible.

His voice was somewhat low and hoarse, his manner impossible to read.

He kept her. She had a rough understanding of why. She was the daughter of Prince Kang, a chess piece used to pacify a vassal state, the final stake upon which her family’s hopes rested.

She had glimpsed him briefly at their first meeting; the next time she saw him was half a year later. He finally stepped out from behind those layers of gauze screens and walked toward her step by step.

He was far younger than she had imagined. Not only young, but also handsome. He never spoke in a sharp or harsh tone; the expression in his brows and eyes was so understated it seemed unlike that of someone who held a position of great power.

He was refined and gracious, and whenever he was with her he was as gentle as a spring breeze. He was a man of his word, swift and decisive in putting down the conflict in Bijiang while managing the court. He never used her identity to make political capital. Aside from occasionally inviting her to watch the stars and admire the moon beside the Moon-Resting Lake, separated by that gauze screen, they almost never met.

But it was in the shimmering water-light of the Moon-Resting Lake that she began to waver.

The life she had once despised and reviled had gradually become her anchor, become the meaning she needed to go on existing in this world.

He never called her by her name, only addressed her politely by her title and rank.

Yet what of that? At least she was the only woman who could openly and legitimately sit at his side.

She had never seen another woman beside him.

Perhaps she was the person closest to him.

Her fate and his were the same — and so she understood his difficulties: the suffering of one imprisoned upon a royal throne, confined within palace walls. She would be the one person who truly understood him.

Perhaps she was destined to come to his side; perhaps they were destined to be each other’s companions, growing old together within these deep palace walls.

In the depths of the night, she often woke from a sweetly light dream of growing old together at each other’s side, looked at the desolate moonlight spread across the floor, and gradually remembered the cold reality that was hers.

Her maternal family had poured every resource they had to send her here, and the directive they gave her was this blunt, with no room for negotiation: kill the Emperor and reclaim the secret imperial seal.

She had long assumed the difficulty of this task lay in committing murder, or in stealing the treasure. She had never imagined that in the end, the true difficulty would lie in having involuntarily given her heart.

She could not bring herself to kill him — but if he did not die, what was to become of the Yu family?

And yet how blameless was she in all of this? The people who had sent her into these palace walls in the name of the clan — had any of them ever once considered what was to become of her?

The day of fate’s reckoning finally arrived. On the night she went to find him, she had the soup bowl and the sachet prepared.

In the soup was a gut-dissolving poison. In the sachet was a soul-entrapping incense.

Her family had placed her fate in her hands, and she placed her fate in Heaven’s hands.

If he chose that bowl of soup, then she would submit to her destined fate and bring everything to an end.

But what if he did not touch that bowl of soup?

A longing that had stirred within her for so long was writhing at the bottom of her heart, ready to break through the surface. Perhaps she could rewrite all of this and have an ending that truly belonged to her.

The things she had dreamed of every night — as distant as stars — perhaps one day could truly and completely belong to her.

She had prepared for two outcomes, had traced the most cruel imaginable scenes over and over in her mind — yet she had not once imagined this particular one.

He had known everything from the very beginning, and he told her: the regard she offered was not worth a single copper coin.

“What you are looking for is not here.” His expression remained refined and calm, as it always had been when he spoke to her. “I entrusted it to the person I trust most.”

Who is the person you trust most? Dan Jiangfei? Or—

Her thoughts were in complete disarray. The person before her was both familiar and a stranger; she could not read his emotions.

“This concubine does not understand what Your Majesty refers to, and feels greatly frightened—”

“Cui Shuyuan, both you and I are clear-headed people. At this point, why pretend you have not yet woken from a dream?” He spoke as he opened the sachet in his hand; the incense ash that had burned completely to nothing tumbled out in a scattered drift, sending up a thin wisp of smoke. “Or has this bewitching incense so confused your head that you have forgotten your true nature.”

The situation had broken open, and there was no recovering it.

Cui Xingyao’s heart beat wildly. She was not adept at facing such situations. She was always supposed to be composed, beautiful, measured in advance and retreat, elegant and proper. Not like this — wretched and at the end of her rope.

“All this way, I have kept you near me, which could be said to have given you no small number of opportunities. You are quite self-possessed — you waited until now to finally act.”

Where had things gone wrong? Cui Xingyao could not figure it out no matter how hard she thought.

“From what moment did Your Majesty begin to suspect me?”

“From the moment you entered Quecheng.”

So from the very beginning, he had never trusted her.

“Was it because of my maternal uncle—”

“Yu Youwei?” He looked at her with a hint of surprise, as though he found her question peculiar. “He is he; you are you. Though if you were not Yu Youwei’s niece, I would not have agreed to see you.”

This answer was not so much hurtful as it was humiliating.

The heartbreak and bitter anguish she had believed herself to feel — all of it was nothing but illusion. What remained was just a blunt knife scraping back and forth across her heart.

She would not accept it. She could not accept it. She refused to believe that everything had been only her illusion.

Perhaps — perhaps he had said this on purpose, to make her give up hope.

She raised her head defiantly and looked straight into the Emperor’s eyes.

“If Your Majesty suspected me from the start, why did you invite me every night to watch the stars beside the Moon-Resting Lake?”

Yet the other party’s eyes were perfectly clear — so clear there was nothing to probe within them, like a mirror that could only reflect her own image back to her.

“Watch the stars every night? Look carefully — was the one watching stars with you truly me?”

Cui Xingyao froze; the light in her eyes gradually faded. She cast her mind back over those brief months, over those evenings with the spring breeze. She had been so intoxicated by that gentleness and kindness that she had never once asked herself a question.

Why did the Emperor, every time he met her, insist on placing a gauze screen between them?

“But your voice—”

“If even what the eyes see cannot be taken as truth, how much less what the ears hear?”

Cui Xingyao’s body went rigid. She maintained her kneeling posture on the floor.

He had never had any feeling for her. He had never so much as lingered in her world. Yet she had already walked through all the years of her life alongside him, in one dream after another in the depths of the night.

She suddenly recalled that last night, just before dawn, when she had tossed and turned sleeplessly again and gotten up to stand at the window — she had unintentionally heard what sounded like a woman’s voice drifting faintly from the courtyard where he was staying.

At the time she had assumed it was the voice of a palace attendant at the villa. But remembering it now, something seemed off. When had there ever been a female official serving close to his side?

As though a dreamer had suddenly started awake, Cui Xingyao murmured and opened her mouth.

“Was it because of the person in Your Majesty’s courtyard last night?”

The instant she spoke those words, the expression on the young Emperor’s face changed.

It was as though a mask he had worn for a long time shattered in a single moment — perhaps in the slight lift of the arch of his brow, or in the subtle tremor in the depths of his eyes. Only then did she understand: the face she had seen all this time had been nothing more than the same stone statue the Buddha shows to all living beings.

“You noticed her?” He smiled, and there was an undisguisable chill in the depths of his gaze. “I used a pair of boots as a pretext to lure her here — kept her only one night — and already someone unrelated had picked up on the signs.”

Boots?

The image of that stubborn figure flashed before her — standing in the mud beside a carriage, covered in road dust. An incomprehensible and frantic feeling rose in Cui Xingyao’s chest.

How could it be her? How could it possibly be her?!

“How can she compare to me?! She comes from a military background, her thinking is crude; everything she does is utterly shallow—”

“In my view, love is itself a shallow thing.” The cold light in the Emperor’s eyes gradually dissipated, leaving only a smile without any warmth. “She would go to her death for me. Could you do the same?”

She grabbed at that last straw like a drowning person, raised her snow-white neck without any concealment, and accused him without restraint.

“Xingyao once took an arrow for Your Majesty on the Yue River — has Your Majesty truly forgotten?”

“Oh? Is that so?” He gave his head a slight tilt, as though he were genuinely trying to recall that day. “How I remember it, that arrow was aimed at you to begin with.”

Even after being stripped raw and flogged repeatedly in what had come before, Cui Xingyao had not expected this to be uttered so easily from the other party’s mouth.

Even she herself had taken a long time to accept this fact.

“The young woman of the Bai Family has a sharp and perceptive mind and is skilled at manipulating people’s hearts — always one move ahead. She knew that the people guarding me are supremely skilled, and that even with Yanzi acting, success would not be guaranteed; how then would she make an assassination attempt in the grand setting of a grand ceremony, acting alone? “

Her tears stilled on her face and gradually turned from warm to ice-cold.

She wanted to cover her ears, to block out that voice that murmured like an evil spirit — but the voice would not stop.

“On the last day of the ceremony, you used the excuse of attending the rites in your father’s place and begged me to bring you along, seating you at my side — you were waiting for precisely this moment.”

He picked up the now-cooled bowl of soup, lifted the lid, and took the porcelain spoon to stir within it. The crisp sound of jade and porcelain striking each other, accompanied by the dripping of the liquid, echoed through the tent.

“That arrow of hers was meant to deliver you to my side.”

The man’s wrist turned; the amber-colored liquid in the soup bowl poured out in a cascade and soaked into the embroidered carpet on the floor. But in the very next second, a plume of green smoke rose from the carpet’s surface, accompanied by an acrid smell, scorching an expanse of the carpet’s threads into a blackened, charred ruin.

“It is only a pity that there is already someone beside me.”

The dark hole on the silk carpet burned wider and wider, until its blackened, foul-smelling edges stopped spreading. At last, Cui Xingyao laughed.

The reason fate is called fate is precisely because it is so immovable, so impossible to change.

Her life had in fact never been altered at all.

“I did not wish for things to be this way either. The line of Prince Kang is already severed; the Yu family’s foundations are entirely destroyed. This time — this time was the last chance. If it had succeeded, my maternal family would have had an opportunity to rise again; if it did not succeed—”

Cui Xingyao suddenly drew out the hairpin she had been holding all along and drove it fiercely into the side of her own neck.

That was what she had prepared for herself from the beginning. She intended to preserve her last shred of dignity.

Snap.

Her hand froze; her gaze drifted slowly downward. She saw only the bare broken-off end of the hairpin pressing bluntly against her own neck. Beyond that, two lengths of fingernail that had been cleanly severed.

She had not even seen what had split her hairpin into two, nor who had made the move. The sharp pain that came belatedly swept through her, and the composure she had maintained for so long shattered in an instant.

A cry of pain escaped her; the young woman’s face twisted in agony.

The guard in blue robes gave her a glance, then turned to report:

“The situation was urgent, and my aim was slightly off. I beg Your Majesty’s forgiveness.”

The man did not reply, but walked to stand before the young woman.

“There are still matters yet to be asked of you — you cannot die yet. Of course, when everything is finished, if you wish to die, I will not stop you again.”

Outside the tent, the palace official who had heard the commotion lifted the curtain and entered. Seeing what lay before him, he lowered his eyes, clapped his hands, and several palace attendants in deep-red robes entered, swept away the disorder on the floor, and finally lifted Cui Xingyao and carried her away.

Dan Jiangfei last picked up the broken tip of the silver hairpin from the floor, carefully wrapped the poisoned end in a handkerchief and put it away, and finally looked at the blade-bearer standing nearby.

“Lieutenant Ding, it has been a long time.”

Ding Weixiang glanced at the mild-faced palace official and gave only a light snort.

Dan Jiangfei paid no mind to the other man’s arrogance and impertinence; he turned to look at the Emperor.

“Your Majesty, there is about one hour left before dawn. Shall we—”

His words were cut off midway by a sound from outside the tent.

It was a clear, bright ringing sound of metal and stone striking together — not as deep as a drum, yet it carried farther than a drum.

From beginning to end of the spring hunt, the chuk and yu instruments sounded the signals.

At the start, the chuk was struck; at the conclusion, the yu was beaten.

And the timing of a hunt’s start and finish was bounded by sunrise and sunset.

To beat the yu before the sun rose was a sign that something was amiss.

“Report!”

A shadow appeared at the tent’s entrance — it seemed to materialize there in an instant.

“Black Feather Ren Company reports: Gen position Fourth Palace, Xun position Eighth Palace have been breached — a force of one thousand.”

“Report!” Another shadow arrived immediately after, and reported rapidly in a low voice, “Black Feather Xin Company reports: Dui position Seventh Palace, Kan position First Palace, Kan position Third Palace, Kun position Ninth Palace have been breached — a force of ten thousand.”

“Report!”

“No more reports.” Inside the tent, the Emperor looked up, his jet-black pupils utterly still and without any ripple. “Relay to all Black Feather Companies: follow the plan established beforehand. Everything proceeds as before.”

“Yes.”

Three voices answered in unison from outside the tent. Before the sound had faded, the space outside was already empty.

The long-bladed guard reflexively looked toward the Emperor. The Emperor was setting the soup bowl aside on the tall side table and absently running his hand across the stacked memorials and the opened bronze box.

“Weixiang. Jiangfei.”

Both men answered respectfully in unison.

“Present.”

“In your view — is tonight an auspicious day?”

Ding Weixiang answered without hesitation.

“If Your Majesty says it is auspicious, then it is auspicious.”

Su Wei’s voice carried a faint hoarseness.

“Auspicious day. Day of mourning. They differ by but a single word.”

Ding Weixiang faltered, not yet sure how to respond, but Dan Jiangfei had already said in a soft voice:

“Your Majesty has never lost. Since this is the result of many years of planning, today it will certainly resolve everything. After today, with nothing more to weigh on Your Majesty’s mind, you should be glad.”

“Nothing more to weigh on my mind? I hope it will be so.”

A rare flicker of bewilderment showed on the Emperor’s face, but it vanished in an instant; he quickly returned to a manner as still as an undisturbed well.

“Black Feather Jia Company — Dan Jiangfei, hear the order.”

“Your servant is present.”

Dan Jiangfei turned in an instant and shed that obsequious attendant’s manner entirely; his bearing was so agile and precise that he bore no resemblance to a palace official who spent his days moving through the inner court.

“Tonight there may be many unexpected turns. Whatever happens, you must remain on standby at the throne. You must not allow anyone to enter in a moment of vulnerability.”

“Yes.”

“Black Feather Shadow Guard Commander Ding Weixiang, hear the order.”

Ding Weixiang stepped forward, went down on one knee, and bowed with a solemn expression.

“Your servant is present.”

“Set the formation at the Beast-Taming Platform and relay orders to all companies to hold their positions to the last.”

“Yes.”

“Have the things I asked you to prepare beforehand all been made ready?”

“All is in order. Everything awaits Your Majesty’s command.”

“Good.”

The Emperor turned, swept his long sleeve wide, and the gauze curtain fell open to either side, revealing the void of the black night to the east.

“White Crane Retains — I have waited a long time for you.”

Xiao Nanhui had been riding through the dense forest for nearly half an hour. The continuous noise in her ears had dulled her hearing — the thin, sharp scraping sound had been going on for some time before she realized it was not a ringing in her ears.

At first she thought it was another swarm of night bats approaching.

But then she sensed something was wrong. Because the sound had a slight irregularity — sometimes faint, sometimes loud; sometimes fast, sometimes slow; with pauses, and then starting up again.

Over the course of just a few bounds, the swarm of night bats that had been ahead of her suddenly scattered. The single black mass broke apart into a few scattered dark specks, which quickly vanished into the night without a trace.

Not willing to give up, Xiao Nanhui planted both feet on the saddle, leaped up from Jixiang’s back, grabbed a thick pine branch, used it as leverage, and climbed hand over hand to the canopy level in three or four moves.

The moment she pushed her head through the foliage, she felt a long-missed breeze come from the open expanse above, carrying a slight damp smell — clear and cold.

All around her were the dense, boundless treetops, and above the treetops stretched the vast and infinite night sky.

The bright moon that had guided her direction tonight had grown somewhat hazy; the stars dimmed along with it; thin mist followed the wind from the south, and pale clouds began to weave their way among the stars and moon. The rain of Yu’an was coming again.

Xiao Nanhui understood: she did not have much time.

Once the cloud layer completely covered the night sky, she would lose her bearings in these boundless mountain ridges and dense forests.

And now, the only remaining trace of a clue was that faint sound she had just caught.

She drew a deep breath, and with full concentration, Xiao Nanhui looked out in all directions. Every faculty of her mind was focused, spending every last bit of concentration she had, observing the silent and boundless treetops around her.

There had to be — there must be — some trace, some clue.

A branch trembling, a night bird startled, or the faintest, most fleeting shift of light and shadow.

Suddenly, something with a tiny gleam of light flashed through the corner of her eye.

She immediately turned her gaze toward the right and behind her, just in time to catch a glimpse of a vanishing shadow.

Something had leaped up among the treetops and landed again.

A color like moonlight — slender, bright.

Xiao Nanhui’s eyes went wide; she almost could not believe what she was seeing.

Then instinct roused her memory, and she finally recalled where she had heard that sound before.

In the Xiong family’s old estate in the northern marshland — in the bizarre and eerie cave in the color-dunes of Bijiang — she had heard that sound both times.

It was a flying wire.

Xiao Nanhui’s gaze locked on to that now-tranquil distance, where something was concealed beneath the surface calm of this dense forest.

Deep in the intersection of the mountain forest, countless night bats swept past with a roar.

They had encountered a tenacious hunter and seemed in a panic, plunging headlong deep into the mountains.

Lu Songping’s quiver now held only one arrow. He paused for a moment, then decisively pulled it free and aimed at the most powerful-looking of the agitated black specks.

Capture the leader first, to subdue the rest.

He had been watching them all along; though that particular bat did not necessarily carry the intelligence, it was likely the leader of the swarm.

Swish.

The arrow flew, aimed straight at the vulnerable underside of the agile creature’s jaw. With a shriek, the night bat lurched and was about to fall. Lu Songping urged his mount forward a few paces — but the falling figure, as if resurrected, returned to the swarm in an instant.

Then the bat swarm, as though heeding some call, rushed in a great torrent into the side of the mountain, and in a moment had disappeared entirely without leaving a trace.

Lu Songping dismounted and slowly approached the place where the swarm had vanished. He found that within the mountain face there was a deep, bottomless gorge.

The noisy sounds of the bat swarm came from the depths, gradually fading into utter silence.

Bats naturally favored dark, narrow caves as hiding places, and he had been pressing them with one arrow after another — their flight into the mountain face was not unreasonable.

Yet for some reason, something about the surroundings felt faintly strange.

The cave entrance was far too clean. Not a trace of bat droppings — enough to show that this was not a place where living creatures frequently moved about.

He slowly drew the silver flexible sword at his waist. The moonlight suddenly dimmed at that moment; using the last glimmer of reflected light on the sword’s surface, he gazed into the depths of the abyss.

On the southern face of the northwest Douchenling Pass, where the vegetation was wild and rugged and the rocky cliffs were sheer and steep, a narrow, winding stone plank road wound its way brokenly up the mountain.

Through Douchenling Pass there were countless mountain paths; of those passable by horses and carts, there was only one.

It had been carved long ago by government workers for mining and transporting ore from the mountains. But the ore in the mountains was long since exhausted, and the plank road had been abandoned. Weeds had covered the road surface; mountain rocks washed loose by rain had collapsed and broken the path into several sections, and no one dared risk passing through it anymore.

And now, on that narrow, broken-down, precarious half-mountain plank road, a carriage had stopped.

No one knew how this carriage had driven onto this road that was virtually a sheer cliff, nor how long it had been stopped there. Were it not for the two horses still hitched in front of it, one might genuinely wonder if this was a cart abandoned there years ago.

The horses pulling the carriage had been blindfolded with black cloth to prevent them from being startled. Whoever was driving had clearly come prepared; this was not their first time traveling such a road.

Bolao crouched behind a jujube tree, her gaze fixed on the tightly closed carriage compartment. It was completely still and quiet there — not the faintest breath could be heard.

Drip-drop. Drip-drop.

Sparse raindrops fell, striking the surrounding wild grass with faint, scattered tapping sounds.

She did not know how much time had passed. Just as she finally made up her mind to go forward and investigate—

Creak.

The carriage window was pulled open a crack. A half-length purple sleeve stretched out from the window, followed by a man’s hand.

That hand turned palm upward, caught a few drops of rain, and rubbed them between his fingertips.

“It has indeed started to rain.”