After finishing lunch at Duke Lu’s residence, Qin Yao recounted to Lin Xiao, in the carriage, what Madam Lu had told her.

When she finished, a look of doubt crossed her face. “If the Spirit-Concealing Array in the academy was truly laid down by Celestial Master Li back then, then who has been maintaining it all these years?”

Lin Xiao listened, brows knitting as he thought it over for a moment, then turned to ask her, “Do you really believe the Spirit-Concealing Array was laid by Celestial Master Li?”

Qin Yao hadn’t expected him to ask that. She pondered for a moment, then shook her head, puzzled. “If it really was him, there are too many contradictions that can’t be explained.”

Seeing that she had already grasped what he meant, Lin Xiao simply spelled it out plainly. “The Spirit-Concealing Array exists to mask the malevolent energy within the academy. But Celestial Master Li not only told our Imperial Grandfather about the academy’s ill-omened feng shui back then—he even advised him to shut the academy down for good. Clearly the man never meant to hide anything from the Late Emperor, and our Imperial Uncle took his advice and ordered the academy closed. If that’s so, why would Celestial Master Li afterward need to lay a Spirit-Concealing Array over the academy, let alone go to such pains to maintain it, as though terrified someone might discover something amiss at Yunyin Academy—”

“Yes.” Qin Yao nodded slowly. “You’re quite right—one approach is preventive, the other concealing; the two styles are too different to belong to the same person. But Celestial Master Li’s position in the whole Yunyin Academy affair was too delicate. To say he had nothing at all to do with the Spirit-Concealing Array doesn’t quite hold up either.”

She propped her chin in her hand, troubled, and sighed. “Unfortunately the man died twenty years ago, and we still have no idea exactly when the array was first laid in the academy.”

Lin Xiao couldn’t bear to see her worried. He drew her into his arms and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “You said the other day that laying the array for the first time would have required a great deal of effort. And since whoever did it managed to keep it so well hidden, the array could only have been laid after the academy was closed.”

Qin Yao stayed curled against him in silence for a while, then suddenly sat up again, gripping his hand. “Why don’t we lay all these matters out properly and sort through them.”

Some things seemed wholly unconnected at first glance, yet on closer examination, countless threads tying them together could be found.

Lin Xiao himself had doubts about the timing of several of these events, and since he wasn’t yet certain, he wanted to hear her thoughts before drawing any conclusions. “Mm, go on, I’m listening.”

Qin Yao traced the character for “one” onto his palm and began. “First, in the twelfth year of Yuanfeng, Celestial Master Li appeared out of nowhere and was named Imperial Preceptor by the Late Emperor. Afterward, on the Celestial Master’s guidance, the Late Emperor undertook construction that took several years to build Nanyuanze. By the twentieth year of Yuanfeng, my aunt took up a post as a female official at the academy, just as the Late Emperor was recruiting daughters of officials from outside the capital to enter the academy as candidates for the rank of secondary consort. Not long after, the Late Emperor brought Celestial Master Li and several of his princes to the academy. The moment Celestial Master Li arrived, he found something wrong with the academy’s layout and advised the Late Emperor to close it. At the same time, two of the princes had taken a fancy to the same out-of-town female student there, which led to a falling-out between them and brought down the Late Emperor’s fury—”

She glanced carefully at Lin Xiao, and seeing that his expression hadn’t shifted at her last words, quietly let out a breath of relief before continuing. “Not long after that, the academy was closed, the students were all sent home, and Celestial Master Li died that same year as well.”

Lin Xiao added, “Don’t forget, it was also around the twentieth year of Yuanfeng—at the latest no later than the twenty-first—that Yuan Jue went to Dayin Temple and took the then-abbot as his master, becoming one of Dayin Temple’s monks from that point on. Before that, he was nothing more than a scholar in Qingzhou who kept failing the examinations.”

Qin Yao started slightly and asked quickly, “Have the people sent to look into Yuan Jue’s background come back yet?”

“I expect they’ll arrive tonight,” Lin Xiao said. “I’ve already given orders that the moment they return, no matter how late, they’re to come to Siru Studio and report to me at once.”

Reassured, Qin Yao fell silent for a moment, then went on. “Then let’s set the matter of Yuan Jue aside for now and sort out the order of these events. Not long after the academy closed—we don’t know exactly which year—someone laid the Spirit-Concealing Array within it. After laying it, this person kept maintaining it in secret, hidden so well that for years the academy remained calm, with never a strange rumor escaping it. Then this year, the Emperor suddenly announced the academy would reopen and admitted quite a number of students—myself among them—”

As she said this, Qin Yao suddenly recalled the real reason she had entered the academy in the first place, and paused briefly, then raised her eyes to give Lin Xiao a look that was half a smile.

Lin Xiao naturally understood exactly what she meant, and coughed in embarrassment, with nothing to say in his own defense. He simply picked up where she’d left off, using the words to cover his own discomfiture. “At first nothing was amiss at the academy, not until Zhou Heng’s ghost drifted there from the western outskirts of Chang’an, and the compass you carried reacted to it—that was also the first time malevolent energy appeared at the academy. Because of the Ghost Swordsman, you and the Daoist Master assumed at the time that Zhou Heng’s ghost drifting there was mere coincidence. Later, when your classmate and friend Liu Bingyu was beset by a hungry ghost while studying at the academy, only then did you grow suspicious, and that very night you followed the girls there to investigate, never expecting to find the academy already filled with vengeful spirits—”

Their thoughts ran in perfect step, the account fitting together seamlessly between them.

Qin Yao nodded with satisfaction, unable to help a smile. “Because the malevolent energy that night was so overwhelming, Master and the others noticed something wrong as they passed by the academy and slipped inside, only to be mistaken for thieves and seized by your soldiers. After clearing out the evil spirits, Master was in no hurry to leave—he lingered at the academy a good while longer, even using Daoist methods to examine its layout, as though he’d noticed something. Even more coincidentally, not long after we left, the female official Lu hanged herself within the academy—which shows just how quickly whoever laid the array moved. The way I see it, this person has likely been watching the academy’s every move the whole time, and at the slightest stirring will go to any lengths to cover it up, terrified that someone might discover the hidden array inside.”

“From this,” Lin Xiao concluded, “the odds that Celestial Master Li was the one who laid the array all those years ago are vanishingly small. First, he died not long after the academy closed—never mind whether he’d have had the strength left to lay something as taxing as the Spirit-Concealing Array, but afterward it would need maintaining roughly every half year. That’s a thorny enough task—who could he possibly have entrusted it to? Second, given how much our Imperial Uncle relied on him at the time, even if for some unknowable reason he’d had to lay the array within the academy, he could easily have found a thousand high-sounding excuses and laid it quite openly. Why would he need to hide it from anyone?”

Qin Yao agreed with this reasoning, a look of disappointment crossing her face. “I’d thought we’d found whoever laid the array, but it turns out it was someone else entirely. What’s most baffling now is just what this person laid the array to conceal in the first place. And who could possibly have the skill to lay such a profound formation while staying hidden so completely all this time?”

Master’s reaction that day hadn’t looked feigned—he plainly had no idea there was a Spirit-Concealing Array in the academy. And Celestial Master Li had passed away years ago. Looking across the whole of Chang’an, there were well over a hundred Daoist temples large and small, with no shortage of priests practicing the talisman traditions—to go visiting them one by one would be no different from searching for a needle in the sea.

“How about this—” Lin Xiao said to Qin Yao. “I’ll take you into the palace to find an old servant and ask about how things stood with Celestial Master Li back when he was there. He entered the palace in the twelfth year of Yuanfeng and died in the twenty-third—a full eleven years—coming and going from the palace often. There must have been palace attendants who served him in his daily life back then. If I can find such a person and ask them, I might be able to learn something of those years.”

Qin Yao naturally had no reason to refuse. Celestial Master Li had shaped the very layout of Chang’an and had directly caused the academy’s first closure—he was as pivotal a figure as could be. Starting from him would be far better than searching about with no leads at all.

By now the carriage had reached the gates of Prince Lan’s residence. Lin Xiao instructed Wei Bo and the others, “We won’t be going in—straight to the palace.”

Just as the carriage was about to set off, Chang Rong arrived leading a hidden guard.

One glance told Lin Xiao it was Wang Qi, the man Qin Yao had assigned to watch over Qing Xuzi and his disciple; the other hidden guard was presumably still keeping watch at Qingyun Temple and hadn’t come along. He asked, “What is it?”

Wang Qi had come to report to Qin Yao on Qing Xuzi and his disciple’s movements over the past few days. Not expecting the Prince to be present as well, he got straight to the point. “These past few days the Daoist Master has only left the temple once, to look at a new residence for a family near Yongle Gate; the rest of the time he’s stayed inside the temple and gone nowhere else. This subordinate slipped inside and saw the Daoist Master spending all day with an old book in hand, the same thing day after day. I wanted to get closer to see what book it was, but the Master is far too alert, and fearing I’d give myself away, I looked for a chance several times but in the end never dared approach.”

Inside the carriage, Qin Yao heard every word clearly. An old book? Master’s mastery of the Dao was already so refined—what book could possibly keep him so absorbed he wouldn’t put it down?

“And my senior brother?” she asked through the carriage curtain.

“Brother A’Han also left the temple once, at the same time the Daoist Master was helping look at the new residence,” Wang Qi said. “He had a large bundle of the temple’s pastries in hand and went, for some reason, to the Minister of the Court of Judicial Review’s residence. At the gate he asked the doorman to take the pastries inside, but the servants of the Liu household took him for a swindler and chased him off.”

Qin Yao’s heart clenched. At Fuchun Pavilion that time, Liu Bingyu had asked her senior brother for some of the temple’s Three-Flavor Fruit. Her senior brother always kept his word and took anything entrusted to him very much to heart, so it wasn’t strange that he’d take the sweets to the Liu residence. But the Liu household’s servants hadn’t appreciated the gesture at all—not only had they failed to pass the sweets along to Liu Bingyu, they had likely never let her know her senior brother had come at all.

She couldn’t bear to dwell on the scene of her senior brother being chased away, and hastily lifted the curtain to address Chang Rong. “Guard Chang, please go to Qingyun Temple. On the way, remember to buy some chestnut cakes and layered pastries that my senior brother likes. Once there, just tell him I’m craving Three-Flavor Fruit and have him pack up a bundle for me, then deliver it to the Liu residence yourself. As for what to say when you get there, I needn’t spell it out—I’m sure you already know.”

Chang Rong had once been trapped in an illusion conjured by Luo Cha, and had it not been for A’Han casting his spell in time, his mind would very likely have been damaged. Because of this, he’d always felt grateful to A’Han, and on hearing Wang Qi’s account, couldn’t help feeling some indignation on his behalf. He acknowledged the order at once and went to arrange it.

Only then did Qin Yao sink back into her seat, gloom settling over her brow.

Lin Xiao watched her, well aware that his wife had lived with Qing Xuzi and his disciple at Qingyun Temple for eleven years. In all this world, the person she cared for most besides Qing Xuzi himself was probably A’Han.

“Go back and keep watching,” he instructed Wang Qi. “There must be no mistakes whatsoever.”

Wang Qi didn’t dare show the slightest negligence. He answered crisply, mounted up again, and rode off toward Qingyun Temple.

On the way to the palace, Lin Xiao held Qin Yao in his arms and soothed her for a while, and her dejected mood finally lifted somewhat. A question that had long puzzled her came to mind, and she asked him, “Are all the imperial children of your generation ranked together by age? Why do I keep hearing Kangping call the Crown Prince Sixth Brother, and Prince Wu Seventh Brother, yet call you Eleventh Brother?”

After all, Lin Xiao was the son of his own father, not a blood brother of the Crown Prince or Prince Wu.

“What made you think to ask that?” Lin Xiao seemed a little surprised. “It’s a rule our Imperial Grandfather set down while he reigned. He fathered thirteen princes in all—some fell ill, some died young, and in the end only five lived to adulthood. Grieving for the sons he’d lost so early, he treasured the remaining five brothers all the more, wishing only that they’d remain close and supportive of one another. So he made a rule: among the children born to these five princes, there would be no distinction of uncle and nephew—all would be ranked together strictly by age. That’s why the Crown Prince, though plainly the eldest son of our Imperial Uncle, ranks sixth among this generation of cousins, while I, though born of my own father the Prince, am called Eleventh Brother by Kangping.”

Qin Yao finally understood. So that was it! When she’d first heard Kangping call the Crown Prince Sixth Brother, she’d assumed the Emperor must have fathered five other princes before him.

“So that means the Crown Prince is the Emperor’s eldest son, and Prince Wu his second?” She hesitated, recalling the rumors about the Crown Prince’s birth mother, and asked carefully, “Was the Crown Prince’s mother the Consort Hui who was so favored back then?”

She had always found it puzzling—if Consort Hui had been so beloved, and had borne the Emperor’s eldest son besides, why had she never been posthumously honored as Empress?

“She died before my Imperial Uncle took the throne,” Lin Xiao said, rubbing his chin, feeling oddly as though he’d never spoken so freely of another’s private affairs before today. “Before her death she held no higher rank than secondary consort at his side; the title of Consort Hui was only granted posthumously after his enthronement. It seems that, because of this secondary consort, our Imperial Uncle never took a principal consort at all in those years.”

Seeing that Qin Yao’s expression looked even more puzzled, he thought it over and asked, “You’re wondering why our Imperial Uncle didn’t simply name her Empress posthumously?”

Qin Yao nodded. So many years after Consort Hui’s death, the Crown Prince’s position remained entirely secure—proof enough that the Emperor had never once forgotten her.

Lin Xiao had once heard the reason for this from his father and mother. He hesitated a moment, then said evenly, “It seems our Imperial Grandfather wouldn’t allow it. He despised that secondary consort and once issued an edict to my Imperial Uncle restraining him regarding her—the gist of it being that, never mind while he himself still reigned, even after he himself had passed from this world, he would never consent to having her raised to principal consort.”

The Court of Judicial Review

It was the midday meal hour, and the Court of Judicial Review lay unusually quiet. Feng Boyu stood still outside a tightly shut door, hesitated a moment, and at last slowly pushed it open.

This was the room set aside within the office for storing closed case files; ordinarily two clerks kept watch over it morning and night without fail. He had already found a way to send them off, and before his other colleagues returned, he had ample time to search for the file he was after.

Even if someone discovered him lingering here, he had reasons enough to explain his actions, so he made no particular effort to hide himself.

Closing the door behind him, he walked to the row of floor-to-ceiling file cabinets at the easternmost end. He had once spent months organizing files here and knew the filing order well; he knew that the most recently closed cases were usually kept in the cabinets at the very eastern end.

He raised his right hand and let it trail slowly from right to left, following the chronology of the files. The case of the female official Lu at the academy had occurred less than a month ago, so even if it had already been filed away, it would most likely be on this shelf.

He scanned the whole row but didn’t find the name he was looking for. His brow furrowed, and he lifted his gaze to the drawer above.

He’d had the gift of reading at a glance since childhood, but even after searching back and forth three times over, he still failed to find the file on the female official Lu.

He stood silently where he was, staring hard at the cabinet before him, sweat already beading in his palms. The other day, when Qin Yao had mentioned that the case of the female official Lu had dragged on too long, he had simply assumed the colleague handling it had too much else on his plate and had paid too little attention to a case that seemed to hold no points of suspicion—hence the long delay before it closed.

But now even the file that ought to be sitting right there in the cabinet had vanished without a trace.

“Prince Consort, what are you looking for?” A hoarse male voice abruptly broke the silence behind him. Startled, he spun around to find a round-faced, beardless middle-aged official standing there, wearing the same affable smile he always wore.

“Vice Minister Li?” Feng Boyu steadied himself quickly and regarded the man calmly. He’d been so absorbed a moment ago that he hadn’t even noticed when the man had come up behind him. If he remembered correctly, the case of the female official Lu had in fact been handled by Vice Minister Li himself. “What brings you here?”

Vice Minister Li stood quietly at the door for a moment, then walked in with a smile. “I happened to be passing by just now, and it suddenly occurred to me—a few days ago, being too busy with other matters, I had Assistant Shi help organize the files. I’ve never been quite at ease about how he did it, so I came specially to check.”

“Is that so?” Feng Boyu smiled. “Minister Li truly attends to everything himself—I’m quite impressed.”

“You flatter me, Prince Consort.” Vice Minister Li’s smile grew even more amiable, rippling outward like wind passing over a pond, sending out ring after ring of wrinkled ripples.

Under Feng Boyu’s watchful eye, he ambled unhurriedly to the cabinet, hands clasped behind his back, and swept his gaze up and down once. Suddenly his eyes fixed on something, and he bent down to pull out a stack of files from the bottommost drawer.

“This Assistant Shi,” he said, shaking his head with a faint air of helplessness, addressing Feng Boyu, “look at this—how did he go and put this year’s files together with last year’s? The boy is still too careless in his work; he’ll need more seasoning yet.”

As he spoke, he set the files in order one by one, and one of them happened to land directly before Feng Boyu’s eyes.

Feng Boyu glanced at it casually—written on the side of that file were two characters: Lu Yu’e.

He understood at once, without even needing to open it, that this was the file on the female official Lu.

Vice Minister Li brushed the dust from his hands and gave Feng Boyu a humble smile. “Well then, I won’t keep you from your work, Prince Consort. I’ll take my leave.”

Feng Boyu stood rooted to the spot for a long while, and only after Vice Minister Li’s retreating figure had vanished beyond the door did he turn silently around, his gaze settling once more on the file.

He remained still for some time, and though he knew full well the file would never have been left with anything suspicious in it, he still couldn’t help reaching out, taking it down from the shelf, and leafing through it thoughtfully.