◎Applying the Medicine◎

“Lord Zhou, please wait!”

Qu You had not yet managed to draw her gaze back from that historically famous hall when she heard a hurried call. A young eunuch came running up to the two of them, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Zhou Tan turned at once upon seeing him. Qu You, still supporting him, turned as well, and saw behind the young eunuch a man in a pale gold robe embroidered with coiling dragons.

Pale gold, coiling dragons—the color and pattern reserved for the imperial family.

Before Qu You could work out who this might be, Zhou Tan had already clasped his hands and bowed deeply. “Your Highness the Crown Prince, ten thousand blessings upon you.”

The Crown Prince, Song Shiyan.

Qu You, catching up, hurried to bow alongside Zhou Tan. Only after the man’s gentle acknowledgment did she dare raise her head. The young man’s face was slightly indistinct in the sunlight; she could only clearly make out the faint upward curve of his lips.

Though she knew Zhou Tan was, by reputation, a treacherous minister, she had felt no fear of him upon first meeting—skilled as he was at scheming and manipulation, he had no taste for wanton killing. But the man before her now was different.

Sometimes Qu You even wondered whether it was some family trait—Emperor De swung between lucidity and madness, and though the Crown Prince had inherited none of his father’s occasional good sense, he had inherited the madness in full measure. When Emperor De, on his deathbed, suddenly moved to strip him of his position as heir, the Crown Prince had gone mad enough to throw open the capital’s gates and conspire with a foreign tribe to murder his own father. In the end, it came to nothing—within six months of seizing power, he was overthrown by the grandson of the Prince of Jing.

He died without even a proper posthumous title formally settled; historians, following convention, simply called him Emperor Shang.

The Crown Prince before her now seemed entirely ordinary—who could have imagined that this man would one day become a madman who took pleasure in killing? Qu You found herself shuddering involuntarily at the thought. As luck would have it, the Crown Prince seemed rather interested in her, and asked with a smile, “Xiaobai, is this your wife?”

Qu You had no choice but to offer another reluctant bow. “Greetings, Your Highness.”

Song Shiyan stepped closer, studying the woman before him.

He had heard her name before—the “Twin Peerless Beauties of Bianjing” were famous throughout the capital, and the other of the two, Gao Yunyue, had once been discussed as a potential match for him as Crown Princess. Qu You’s father held too low a rank; his daughter had never truly been considered worthy of such a match, and the matter had been mentioned once and forgotten.

In the end, he had not married Gao Yunyue either, but had taken his maternal uncle’s cousin as his Crown Princess.

The sunlight was strong. Qu You had not come specifically to pay respects at the palace, and so wore none of the formal robes proper to a titled lady—only a simple long skirt in peach-blossom green. She was strikingly, radiantly beautiful, and even with her hair pinned up carelessly, she was still a rare sight.

Sensing his gaze, Zhou Tan suddenly stepped in front of her and, without the slightest hesitation, took her hand. “This is my wife’s first time in the palace. If her manners fall short, I beg Your Highness’s understanding.”

Song Shiyan, coming back to himself, narrowed his eyes and offered a loose gesture of support. “Xiaobai need not be so cautious. As for the outcome of the fall-from-the-tower case, I should really thank your wife properly—daring to beat the drum on the Imperial Way to seek justice for women of low station. Your wife is truly a remarkable woman.”

Zhou Tan’s hand, cold as jade, was gripping hers tightly now, and at last a hint of warmth crept into it. Qu You returned the grip lightly and offered a bright smile, saying little, answering as if shyly, “Your Highness flatters me.”

“I heard Xiaobai was scolded by my father today, and happened to be in the palace, so I made a point to come see you off.” Song Shiyan clapped Zhou Tan on the shoulder, and a young guard beside him hurried forward with a medicine bottle. “This is a wound salve I’ve used myself for some time. Take it home, and have your wife look after you carefully these next few days.”

Zhou Tan accepted the bottle respectfully, his tone neither distant nor obsequious. “His Majesty scolded me today for lechery and depravity, not out of any dissatisfaction with the fall-from-the-tower case. Your Highness need not worry on that account. It’s only…”

Having received the answer he’d hoped for, Song Shiyan raised an eyebrow when Zhou Tan trailed off. “Only what?”

“His Majesty trusts Grand Chancellor Fu deeply. A mere Peng Yue can accomplish little against him.” Zhou Tan spoke plainly, not troubling to hide it from her. “This subject shall naturally think of another way to repay Your Highness’s kindness.”

It was only in the carriage on the way home that Zhou Tan seemed to notice he was still holding her hand.

He hesitated a moment, and seeing Qu You with her eyes closed as if resting, tried to gently withdraw it. To his surprise, she opened her eyes at once and caught his hand instead. “That ‘important person’ at the Fanlou tower that day—it was him, wasn’t it?”

Zhou Tan started, doing his best to ignore their joined hands. “Yes.”

“You work for him?”

“No,” Zhou Tan denied. “We simply share a common enemy at present.”

Qu You thought back over the praise Song Shiyan had just given, and roughly pieced together his meaning.

The Chief Minister Fu Qingnian’s daughter, Consort Fu, was the Emperor’s favorite. Naturally, he hoped that the ninth prince, born of Consort Fu, would become heir. The ninth prince was still young at present—but if he could ascend the throne, the Fu clan would flourish for a hundred years.

Gao Ze, the ruling minister locked in bitter rivalry with the Chief Minister, had once served as the Crown Prince’s tutor and was, in every practical sense, part of the Crown Prince’s faction. That Gao Ze wished to draw Zhou Tan into his camp was, most likely, a wish shared by the Crown Prince himself. Peng Yue was Fu Qingnian’s trusted man planted at the Court of Judicial Review; by scheming to bring him down, Zhou Tan stood to benefit greatly regardless of whether it counted as accepting the Crown Prince’s overture.

And as for why Emperor De had chosen to punish him—likely it wasn’t truly over the rumor of his own lechery and depravity that he himself had spread, but rather suspicion that he had already thrown in his lot with the Crown Prince. To demonstrate his loyalty as an unaligned minister, he’d had no choice but to take the flogging squarely.

Having worked this through, Qu You gently released his hand. Zhou Tan hesitated a moment before tucking it back into his wide sleeve.

“Just now, before you saw the Candlelit Tower—what were you about to say to me?” Qu You asked, recalling his manner from earlier. “You said, ‘It’s because I…'”

This time Zhou Tan was silent for a long while, and it was not until the carriage was nearly at the residence gates that he finally finished the sentence: “It’s because I once held unrealistic hopes for him.”

The answer had neither head nor tail; Qu You was left utterly confused. Before she could ask further, Zhou Tan spoke again. “Once my injuries have healed, come with me to thank Boss Ai.”

After the flogging, he was excused from morning court for five days. He San came by daily bearing urgent documents, though the Ministry had little pressing business at the moment—the fall-from-the-tower case, now under joint review by the Three Judicial Offices, had been handed off to someone other than Liang An, and all that remained was to await the verdict.

Bo Ying visited once, briefly, saying only that the wound salve the Crown Prince had bestowed was excellent and needed no supplementary prescription of his own; he was busy these days setting up his shop for medicinal dishes and had no time to linger.

He San and Old De’s hands were too clumsy for the delicate work, so applying the medicine fell to Qu You herself. Zhou Tan declined a few times, then stopped insisting.

The women of the Fragrant Heart Pavilion were in no position to come calling, so Qu You went to visit them instead, bringing silver for each of them. Those with living parents were arranged to return home; those without were, by their own choice, taken in by Boss Ai to be given work. Zhi Ling and Dingxiang both went to work at Bo Ying’s newly opened shop—Bo Ying, apparently, was quite pleased about it, and the three of them got along well.

These few days were, all told, the most relaxed Qu You had spent since crossing over into this world. She had almost no worries and no pressure—aside from being turned away at the door when she tried to visit the Qu residence, everything else went smoothly.

Only Zhou Tan remained as ever—even while she was applying his medicine, he refused to say more than a few words to her. Qu You had by now learned his temperament well enough that she’d grown too weary to press him on it. He was suspicious, overthinking, and stubbornly difficult by nature—if he suspected even her care with his wound concealed some ulterior motive, then let him suffer with that thought on his own.

In early autumn of the fifteenth year of Yongning, the Court of Judicial Review, the Censorate, and the Ministry of Justice together concluded their investigation into the fall-from-the-tower case that had captivated the entire capital, and submitted their findings to the throne. The Chief Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, Peng Yue, was found guilty of lechery and arrogance, forcing good women into prostitution, imprisoning and abusing numerous women at the Fragrant Heart Pavilion, and trading power for sexual favors—implicating sixty-one officials throughout the court, great and small. His crimes were deemed severe. Peng Yue was stripped of his office and sentenced to exile at the frontier, to depart that very day.

Qu You, dressed once more as a man, mingled with the crowd gathered before the Ministry to read the posted verdict, and found her hands trembling.

So many women had suffered abuse for years without number, and countless lives had been lost besides—all of it, combined with Gu Xianghui’s desperate leap, Yan Wuping’s two years of painstaking scheming, and Qu You’s own reckless accusation heedless of propriety—had bought, in the end, nothing more than the featherlight sentence of exile.

She had come to the Ministry today intending to bring Yan Wuping home, who had been held there temporarily as a witness. But when she finally tore herself away from the crowd, dazed, and made her way to the back hall, she found that Yan Wuping had already gone.

On the table lay a single note, bearing only four characters:

Do not seek me.

Author’s Note:

Changed the title of the story QAQ don’t fail to recognize me~