◎ Honesty ◎

Fu Qingnian’s residence stood in Xianming Ward, the district of the capital closest to the imperial palace—home only to the wealthy and powerful. The Fu family was an old, illustrious clan, their residence spanning both sides of the road, not far from the ward gates. Qu You dozed off inside the carriage, and it was a long while before Zhou Tan finally lifted the curtain and climbed in.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said.

Qu You came fully awake at once and said immediately, “I went to investigate the Liu household. That confession really is flawed. If this whole case is a trap Fu Qingnian set for you, how do you plan to handle it?”

Zhou Tan, still frowning at her, said quietly, “Noble Consort Fu arranged this marriage for you specifically hoping you’d despise me and give me nothing but trouble. When you led the charge in reporting the tower-fall case, you likely already drew their attention. If you’re still standing with me now, on the same side…”

Qu You understood what he was implying, but said nothing. Zhou Tan raised his eyes to look at her, and saw her expression grow faintly tense. He weighed his words. “I thought, by bringing you into the Ministry of Justice, I’d already made you one of my own.”

The bell outside the carriage kept ringing softly; inside, silence fell for a long moment. Zhou Tan was quiet for a good while, then, with a strange, unnatural hesitance, spoke a name he had never once used before: “A’Lian…”

She’d never had a courtesy name before—everyone, past and present, simply called her “You You.” Only Yin Xiangru had occasionally called her “A’Lian.”

It had never struck her as an unusual name to hear before, but for some reason, the moment Zhou Tan spoke it, her heart began pounding like a drum.

Perhaps it was because the character “Lian”—pity, tenderness—naturally carried a certain intimacy in the way it formed on the lips.

Zhou Tan seemed a little unsettled himself, having spoken it. He cleared his throat, covering his discomfort as he continued. “Right now, I can neither win the emperor’s trust nor gain the Chancellor’s favor. What the ruling faction and the Crown Prince both want from me isn’t what I want for myself either. Struggling to survive in the middle of it all—the situation is much like the night you first saw me by candlelight.”

“I doubted you, tested you, even once thought of using you—and then I gave that up. You’ve dedicated yourself, without reservation, to seeking justice for ordinary people; the least I can do is make up for a small part of that. You’re a person of pure and true nature—you deserve to find someone who truly understands your heart, and to live the life you once told me you wanted: freedom, friends, the great mountains and rivers of the world, a life lived freely and without restraint.”

The words she’d carelessly let slip when they’d first met—he had remembered them, word for word, with such precision.

“So I brought you into the Ministry of Justice because you asked, beneath the registration drum, where justice truly lay, and because you seemed to hold such deep interest in the law. I thought this must be the thing you’d always longed for. But anything that touches my own affairs is never as simple as you might imagine—officialdom, the sea of politics, factional strife—one careless step, and it’s ruin for an entire family. Take the Liu case, for instance—I truly believed at first it was simply a chance to seek justice for an old friend of yours, which is why I dared let you get involved. The moment I saw the confession, I knew I’d been wrong.”

“So you hurried to send me back to the residence, hoping I’d stop paying attention to it?” Qu You said, steadying her racing heart. “Unfortunately…”

“Unfortunately, you’re too clever for your own good.” Zhou Tan smiled bitterly. “I still remember, out at the burial ground, I asked whether you’d still want me to go through with this even if it meant dying for the cause. If it were only myself, it wouldn’t matter one way or the other—but with you in the picture, what am I supposed to do?”

He looked at her, his voice low, sincere, utterly helpless. “What should I do, A’Lian?”

He so rarely let his guard down like this. Hearing the tone of his voice, Qu You felt something tremble deep in her chest, and the words slipped out before she could stop them—perhaps because it was, after all, exactly what she’d been thinking all along: “But I’ve never once thought of divorcing you.”

Zhou Tan went rigid. “You…”

“From the day I married you, I’ve never once wanted that. You spoke coldly to me, and I answered you in kind out of spite—only because I was angry that you wouldn’t be honest with me. Even now, though you still won’t tell me the whole truth, let me be honest with you instead—everything I’ve wanted, everything I’ve sought since coming to this place, has been bound up with you, without exception. Whatever it is you mean to do, I want to be beside you for it.”

The laws of Great Yin.

The author of the Flower-Cutting Decree.

That solitary, tragic reform.

Behind the pages of the Chuntan Anthology, the lonely minister in white she’d met in her dreams, standing on history’s hillside, who had shaken her so deeply with the question of what made a person “true.”

Though she herself hadn’t fully realized it, from the very day she’d decided to devote her research to the criminal law of Northern Yin, her fate had already become inextricably bound to the man before her. She’d prided herself on being fair and objective, yet, swayed by that single character—”traitorous”—stamped across the history books, she’d never once been willing to admit that Zhou Tan was, in truth, the very soul at the heart of everything she’d been searching for.

That was why, even when she told herself her interest lay only with the anonymous author, she’d still memorized the Chuntan Anthology word for word without a single mistake.

That was why, even when Zhou Tan had given her ten thousand chances to walk away, she’d remained steadfastly bound to history’s course, staying at his side—lighting a single, flickering lamp for him on that night in the lonely, rain-soaked shrine, hoping, too, to illuminate the confusion in her own heart.

Now, at last, she dared to say it—she was the “great sage” Zhou Tan had been fated to meet only after ten thousand generations. Perhaps the very reason she’d been carried across time and space to this place at all was to see clearly the life he’d lived, hidden beneath the fog of history.

She had already walked with him across his own perilous bridge, and she no longer wanted to face him from behind an ugly mask, now or ever again. She wanted to be honest—with herself, and with him.

Zhou Tan lowered his head, his eyes faintly reddened, his expression somewhere between astonishment and bewilderment, his voice trembling slightly: “The hardships and dangers still to come…”

Qu You rolled up her sleeve and reached out, taking his hand firmly, deliberately. His hand was cold as carved jade, yet she smiled.

“The hardships and dangers still to come…”

“I’ll walk them singing, leaning on my staff.”

“I’m not afraid of dying. I’m only afraid of not having lived with everything I had… You crawled out of that prison against every possible odd, willing to bear the world’s scorn—wasn’t that the very same thing?”

Zhou Tan felt as though the warmth of her palm might scorch him. He instinctively tried to pull his hand back, but Qu You, just as she always had before, held on tight. Not daring to meet her eyes, he said only, “I don’t know if I can succeed.”

Qu You smiled. “But I do.”

He said nothing for a long while. She held onto that hand, remembering the coldness and suspicion of before, and the moments of being moved, of being shaken to the core—and in the end, all that remained was that hillside bathed in molten gold sunset, where she had been certain, absolutely certain, that she had seen “the truth.”

Qu You closed her eyes, remembering the first time she’d read the Chuntan Anthology—a hundred years passing like a rushing stream, wealth and glory turning to cold ash. She’d meant to annotate the final poem, in the style of the Twenty-Four Categories of Poetry, as “Grief and Indignation”—but when she’d finally put pen to paper, what she’d written instead was “Transcendence.”

“A hundred years of living—how far apart, really, are we from that? Joy is brief and fleeting; sorrow, so much more abundant.”

“Better, then, a cup of wine, the days passing among misty vines, flowers blooming again by the thatched eaves, a light rain drifting past.”

“Drink the cup dry, then walk on singing, leaning on a staff—who among us has not had ancients before them? The southern mountains stand eternal, towering still.”

It was a strange feeling. She knew Zhou Tan’s life had been short and bitter, his ambitions never fully realized, dying in the end in obscurity and poverty—the verses should, by rights, have been full of unresolved bitterness and restless anguish. But reading through them in full, what she found, line after line, was instead a sense of transcendence.

Whatever Zhou Tan had done in his life, however it had ended without a proper resolution, he had never once regretted it—just as he was now, knowing full well the road ahead was near impossible, still doing everything in his power simply not to drag those around him down with him, with no thought of retreat.

She had crossed the span of time itself, utterly alone, indifferent to life and death, seeking only to resolve her own doubts. And he, living within this world, had likewise devoted his entire life to an ideal whose outcome remained uncertain.

Qu You thought, her annotation had been exactly right after all.

Since ancient times, who among the living has not faced death—only the southern mountains remain, forever towering, unmoved.

Xianming Ward wasn’t far from Zhou Tan’s residence; by the time they finished speaking, they’d already reached the mouth of the alley. The sun had begun to set, and the carriage had only just come to a stop when Qu You heard urgent voices outside, followed by the black-clad guard lifting the carriage curtain.

His gaze swept briefly over their joined hands, and after a deep breath, he spoke at once. “My lady, the Chief Chancellor Gao’s eldest daughter invites you to meet her at Fan Tower.”

Why would Gao Yunyue be seeking her out so urgently, and for what reason?

Qu You glanced at Zhou Tan, about to agree, when the man in black continued, “Miss Gao says that if Lord Zhou is present, he’s welcome to come along as well—she’s obtained something that bears heavily on the case currently in his hands.”

Qu You exchanged a startled glance with Zhou Tan, seeing the same astonishment reflected in his eyes, and said, “Then we’ll set out at once. Driver, take us there.”

The man in black said, “Yes, my lady.”

Though Gao Yunyue was an unmarried young woman still living at home, she and Madam Gao were regulars at Fan Tower. Entering, Qu You noticed the attendant had flipped the placard to read “Qingchun Ze.”

The private room Zhou Tan usually frequented was named “Liuxiang Ke”; the East Tower, which mostly hosted scholars and men of letters, took its room names from various ci-poem titles—rather charming, she thought.

She had no time to dwell on it further, though. Behind the screen, Gao Yunyue, hearing her enter, immediately sent all the attendants around her away in a low voice. Only after Qu You watched the door close firmly behind her did Gao Yunyue step out from behind the screen.

Holding up her fan, she offered a stiff, formal bow to Zhou Tan. “Lord Zhou…”

Unmarried young women weren’t ordinarily meant to receive male guests outside the family, but since Gao Yunyue and Qu You were close friends, this hardly counted as improper.

“What did you find, that you called me here so urgently?” Qu You pulled her over to sit down, asking anxiously.

Gao Yunyue, too preoccupied to bother with pleasantries, pulled out a boat-shaped box from behind her.

“My mother’s a devout believer in Buddhist teachings—every month, she and I pick a day to go pray at Tingshan Xiuqing Temple. Today, as we were coming down the mountain together, a young beggar child threw herself in front of our carriage, desperate to see me.”

Zhou Tan took the box from her hands, faintly surprised. “This box has been forged from refined iron—without the key, it would be impossible to open. Not even a blade or fire could easily deform it.”

“Exactly,” Gao Yunyue said. “I found it strange, so I went to see the child, and she handed this to me, saying it had been entrusted to her by the young mistress of the Du family. Since Du Hui has only the one son, Du Gaojun, this must have come from Lianxi herself. The girl said Lianxi had once saved her without a second thought—that day, she’d seen Lianxi getting down from a palanquin outside the Du residence, covered in injuries, when Lianxi handed her this object and told her that if anything ever happened to her, she should wait along the mountain road at Tingshan and give it to either me or you, whoever passed by first.”

“I was tied up with the autumn banquet, and this month’s trip to Xiuqing Temple ended up delayed by a few days. You’ve been busy with other matters and hadn’t gone yourself, which is why it’s only now that we’ve gotten hold of her things. I thought this must be connected to her death somehow, so I took the liberty of calling you both here together.”

Zhou Tan gave the box a slight shake; it made no metallic sound, suggesting it likely held letters or documents of some kind. He frowned, then suddenly asked, “Miss Gao, have you mentioned this to Chancellor Gao?”

Gao Yunyue shook her head. “I took it right there on the mountain road—I haven’t even been home yet. I brought the two of you here straightaway instead. I thought, given how seriously Lianxi treated this, entrusting it only to the two people she trusted most, and worrying that others knowing might harm her reputation after death—even when Mother asked, I only told her the girl had once received kindness from me and was now sick and begging for help. I’ve settled her somewhere safe. If you want to see her, I’ll have a servant boy show you the way later.”

“Miss Gao is very thorough. I’ll have someone bring her to the residence,” Zhou Tan said, bowing his head.

Qu You touched the key hidden in her sleeve and glanced at Zhou Tan, but didn’t take it out.

Gao Yunyue glanced toward the door a few times, then rose. “I told Mother I was stepping out to buy some pastries—I really should get back now. I can’t open this thing myself; Lord Zhou may have a way. Who would have thought Lianxi’s case would end up in your husband’s hands of all people? If you two need any help, send someone to find me at the Gao residence anytime.”

Qu You opened the door to see her off. “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me,” Gao Yunyue said, flicking her forehead lightly and hurrying off. “Once this case is settled, you’d better bring Chun Niangzi along and treat me to a drink—we’ll hold a proper remembrance for Lianxi then.”

“If we can truly clear her name, it’ll be worth it, for the sake of the friendship we once shared.”