◎The Su Case◎

By the time Qu You woke the next day, the sun was already high in the sky.

Sunlight filtered through the window paper, warming her eyelashes. He Xing brought in a plate of pastries, and Qu You rubbed her eyes and got out of bed, asking, “Has my lord gone out? Is his chill any better?”

He Xing answered with a smile, “Heiyi came by first thing this morning. My lord woke earlier than you, and told us not to wake you. After exchanging a few words with Heiyi, he hurried out.”

Only then did Qu You slowly begin recalling everything that had happened the day before. She picked up her teacup and took a sip—bitter and astringent on her tongue. She’d always preferred strong tea first thing in the morning, and He Xing, having brewed her tea for years, knew exactly how she liked it.

She sat blankly at the table for a while, then went out to the restaurant where Gao Yunyue and Ren Shiming were staying.

The two of them were already awake, cautiously staying inside without venturing out.

But to her surprise, Zhou Tan wasn’t there.

She’d assumed he must have gone specifically because Ren Shiming had urgently sent for him through Heiyi that morning.

So where had Zhou Tan gone?

Seeing her arrive alone, Ren Shiming came forward to greet her respectfully, then asked, “Sister-in-law, did brother not come with you?”

Qu You shook her head. “He had urgent business at the prefecture office. Don’t be anxious—he’ll be here soon.”

With the daylight now bright, she noticed how much weight Gao Yunyue had lost, and couldn’t help asking, “Are you treating the wound on your face with medicine?”

Gao Yunyue covered her face and glanced at Ren Shiming. He said gently, “When we arrived at the frontier, we found a physician who prescribed some medicine, purely to help the wound heal and stop the bleeding. As for the scar itself…”

Before he could finish, the door was suddenly pushed open.

Qu You, still seated, turned to look, and there was Zhou Tan behind her—clearly having run the whole way, out of breath, his hair slightly disheveled, his gaze landing on her first.

The moment their eyes met, Zhou Tan understood at once where last night’s tears had come from.

Ren Shiming dropped to his knees with a thud, calling out in a heavy voice, “Brother!”

Zhou Tan pulled his gaze away and extended a hand toward Ren Shiming, seemingly meaning to help him up—but before he could reach him, he broke into a heavy coughing fit.

Qu You rushed forward to support him, anxious. “Your chill hasn’t healed yet—you mustn’t get upset or agitated.”

Ren Shiming shuffled forward on his knees, concern in his voice. “Brother, sister-in-law told me you’ve been unwell lately…”

“Get up, get up,” Zhou Tan said, leaning on Qu You’s hand as he sat down on a nearby stool, seeming unused to such open concern, and offering a somewhat perfunctory reassurance out of habit. “It’s just a minor illness, nothing to worry over.”

He wasn’t usually the clingy type—even during the years he’d stayed with the Ren household, he’d never expressed concern so directly.

But looking at Zhou Tan now, Ren Shiming felt his heart sink heavily.

Shame, self-reproach, and guilt tangled together inside him, leaving him without even the courage to raise his eyes and look at his brother again.

Back then, he had repeated Qu You’s words to their mother, who had tossed and turned for nights afterward and written several letters that went unanswered, before finally taking him along on a personal trip back to Jinling.

Their father hadn’t gone with them—ever since coming out of prison, his health had grown fragile, and he’d largely stopped concerning himself with outside affairs.

It was only then that Ren Shiming had learned of the time he’d once considered pledging himself to Fu Qingnian’s faction.

All his life, his mother had been the strict one and his father the indulgent one—but this time, his father had flown into a genuine rage, dragging him into the ancestral hall to personally administer family punishment.

He’d heard his father’s voice, full of bitter regret: “From the day you were born, I’ve taught you propriety and honor, yet you paid no mind to right and wrong and pledged yourself to a treacherous chancellor’s faction—tell me, is this not disloyalty?”

“Defying your elders, abandoning your brother, neglecting your own brother’s wedding—is this not unfilial?”

At the time, he hadn’t fully believed Qu You’s words, only gritting his teeth and kneeling stubbornly on the mat. It was only after being beaten to the point of unbearable pain that he’d finally sneered, “A father is only owed filial devotion if he shows kindness in return; a brother only owed respect if he acts the part of a brother. In Father’s eyes, isn’t Zhou Tan himself a traitor?”

Ren Pingsheng had thrown down the disciplinary rod and sat down before him, defeated, without a word.

Ren Shiming had knelt there, head bowed, for a long while, before finally hearing his father’s restrained, sorrowful weeping beside him.

“I know why you and your mother went to Jinling. Some things… you two won’t believe until you see the black-and-white truth of it with your own eyes. But can’t you sense, with all your senses intact, what’s truly in another person’s heart?”

He remembered his father, in the dead of night, staring blankly at a painting Zhou Tan had once given him.

“You and your mother—you’re his true blood family!”

Their mother had never been welcomed by her own family ever since helping her cousin flee years ago, but this time, when she went to see them, the Bai family had unexpectedly not turned her away. The family elder himself had met with her, his gaze sweeping over Ren Shiming. “Your son is just as ungrateful as you are.”

“Xiaobai begged me repeatedly not to tell you this, but I can see you’re a foolish woman, unable to see through the ways of the world or read people’s true hearts. Back when the Ren family came seeking a marriage alliance, Qiu’er, before she left, did you a favor and elevated your standing by arranging it. After all these years in the capital, do you truly still believe it was you who did the Bai family’s own eldest daughter a favor?”

“My daughter has never needed anyone else’s charity.”

Their mother’s face had instantly turned as pale as a ghost’s.

After returning, she’d fallen seriously ill for days, at one point slipping into unconsciousness. Only upon hearing that Zhou Tan was leaving the city had she forced herself up to the city wall, standing there for a long while.

From that point on, Ren Shiming had cast off his old nature entirely.

Life was short—if he kept saying one thing while meaning another, how much love would he waste, how much good time would he let slip by?

But now wasn’t the moment to dwell on old grievances. Gao Yunyue rose hurriedly from the bed, calling out, “Young Master Zhou—”

Qu You quickly caught her by the arm, keeping her from dropping straight to her knees before Zhou Tan.

“Heiyi has already explained everything to me in detail. Miss Gao…” Zhou Tan closed his eyes, unable to bear it, his dark lashes trembling faintly. “Did the Chancellor… pass in peace?”

“After Father was imprisoned, he refused to confess to his last breath. While being paraded through the streets, he cried out three times, ‘The nation is in peril,’ before being executed at the Vermilion Platform.” Gao Yunyue held her head up, no longer crying, only the trembling rise and fall of her chest betraying her emotion. “Father said it was because he hadn’t heeded Young Master Zhou’s warning that he came to this end, and he asked only that Young Master Zhou do everything in his power to rid the people of this scourge.”

Zhou Tan’s slender, well-defined hand curled into a fist on the table, the veins standing out clearly.

Having said this much, Gao Yunyue wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and asked, “Young Master Zhou, the old Su family case… what exactly does it have to do with the Crown Prince?”

Gao Ze had only vaguely mentioned this matter before his death, and she hadn’t even told Ren Shiming about it. Hearing these words, Zhou Tan gave a bitter smile. “The Chancellor must have uncovered the truth behind the old Su case, and that’s why the Crown Prince had him killed… Perhaps I never should have told him.”

He cleared his throat and turned his face away. “If Miss Gao wants to know, I can tell you everything honestly. But right now, there’s something else I need to attend to first…”

Heiyi, standing behind him, respectfully handed over a brocade box. Zhou Tan took out two memorials from within, their covers bright imperial yellow, sealed with crane feathers.

Qu You said, startled, “This is…?”

“This arrived from the capital first thing this morning,” Zhou Tan said gravely. “His Majesty has sent two secret edicts in succession, urgently summoning me to contact Old General Chu and return to the capital to await orders. I’m afraid…”

For a moment, none of them said anything.

That Song Chang would suddenly send a secret edict, at a time like this, to Zhou Tan of all people, so far away in Ruozhou, asking him to bring Chu Lin back to the capital—the meaning was self-evident. Just as he’d written in that earlier letter to Zhou Tan, in this moment of crisis, he had found himself surrounded by scheming on all sides, with not a single person left he could truly trust.

In the end, he had thought of the old friend who had remained loyal to him, and the son of that old friend, equally loyal in turn.

Zhou Tan glanced back, and Heiyi understood at once, turning to close the door behind him, then standing by the window to signal the accompanying guards to clear the restaurant of other patrons, keeping them a good ten paces away.

It being early morning, before long the restaurant held only the five of them.

Only then did Zhou Tan speak. “At the beginning of the month, you must have heard something about the old Su family case.”

Ren Shiming nodded, saying somewhat hesitantly, “It was the year Brother left the capital for his posting—an astonishing bloody case broke out in the capital. Minister of Revenue Su Huaixu was killed in broad daylight at Fan Tower, amid a crowd of people. The Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review worked together to solve the case, but in the end they arrested some nameless nobody and closed the matter with that. Someone used heavy-handed measures to suppress the case, and afterward secretly dealt with a number of officials from both departments who’d been involved in the investigation—I only know this last part because Brother told me. I heard the killer was someone of extraordinary status, some member of the imperial family, who must have bought off whoever was necessary, since even the Su family never pursued the matter further.”

Su Huaixu was Su Chaoci’s father.

Zhou Tan gave a soft acknowledgment. “As for who the killer was, you should understand by now.”

Gao Yunyue said with bitter hatred, “It was the Crown Prince.”

She paused. “Minister Su was an upright, principled official. The Crown Prince had no grudge against him at all—why would he take such a tremendous risk to kill someone at Fan Tower?”

Zhou Tan’s gaze drifted for a moment, as though lost in old memories.

At last, he simply said, briefly, “The Crown Prince isn’t the Empress’s biological son.”

The words landed like a boulder dropped into still water. Ren Shiming flinched in shock. “What?”

Qu You lowered her eyes, thinking it through.

Though Song Chang had acted with a kind of manic recklessness, given his own uncertain origins, he placed extreme importance on the proper distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate heirs. Even though his primary consort had died shortly after giving birth—so early, in fact, that he’d only posthumously conferred the title of Empress upon her after his own ascension—he had still named the legitimate-born Song Shiyan as Crown Prince early on.

And he had never named another Empress since.

“The Empress came from a prominent noble family, and wasn’t particularly favored when she first married His Majesty… At the time, Minister Su’s sister was on close terms with the Empress and often visited the Crown Prince’s residence. One day, the Empress took a liking to a maidservant she’d brought along and kept her in service.” Given the urgency of the moment, Zhou Tan kept his account brief. “His Majesty took a fancy to this woman and favored her, but since she carried Xishao blood, he never gave her any formal status. The Empress had hoped to use her to secure more of His Majesty’s favor for herself, but the woman ended up drinking a contraceptive brew of her own accord and became pregnant even before the Empress did. Furious, the Empress had her moved to the punishment quarters.”

In his youth, Song Chang had also been something of a philanderer—unable to grant the woman any formal status, he cast her aside after a few visits, not even aware she’d become pregnant.

Not long after she was confined to the punishment quarters, the Empress was diagnosed by the palace physicians as being with child herself.

On one side, lanterns and streamers of celebration; on the other, a cold, dim chamber. The woman, suffering endless torment in the punishment quarters, came to harbor deep hatred toward both the Empress and Song Chang.

At the time, Song Chang had not yet ascended the throne, and the Crown Prince’s residence wasn’t nearly as tightly guarded as the palace itself would later become.

The woman gave birth on the very same day as the Empress. An old attendant from the punishment quarters delivered her child. No sooner had the baby been born than she heard that the Empress had suffered a postpartum hemorrhage and bled to death after giving birth to her own child.

Just as a flicker of vengeful satisfaction passed through her, an even more vicious idea occurred to the woman.

She had originally been a Xishao woman who’d smuggled herself across the border into the capital, concealing her true identity while searching for a way to make a living. Because of her youth and beauty, she’d caught the Su family’s eye and been taken in as a maidservant.

But not for a single moment had she forgotten her homeland.

Ordinarily gentle and courteous, she had, over time, buried the gifts Song Chang and the Empress had given her beneath an old tree in the back garden. Now, she dug them all up, gave half to the old attendants, bribed the wet nurse, and on the chaotic night after the Empress’s death, swapped the two infants.

Once the switch succeeded, she nursed the child for only two more days before smuggling the Empress’s true son away hidden in a manure cart, fleeing the Crown Prince’s residence entirely.

From that point on, the Xishao woman’s son was raised as though he were the Empress’s own child.

Later, when Song Chang ascended the throne and posthumously honored his primary consort as Empress, that child naturally and rightfully became the Crown Prince.

Years later, Su Huaixu happened, by sheer coincidence, to encounter that Xishao woman again. Her striking, unusual beauty had left a deep impression on him back when she’d served in the Su household.

By then, the woman had grown old, wandering the streets in a state of madness. Seeing him was like seeing a savior—she could barely speak coherently, only begging him to help her see the Crown Prince once, just once.

Su Huaixu put her off for a long while, but grew genuinely concerned she might be carrying some relic of the Empress’s to pass along, so he arranged a banquet at Fan Tower to invite the Crown Prince over, and midway through the meal, had the woman brought up.

What he never could have imagined was that the woman had been feigning her madness all along.

The moment she saw the Crown Prince, she threw herself at him in a fit of weeping, crying out “my son” over and over, while at the same time laughing wildly and trying to bite his finger, demanding a blood test to prove kinship between them.

Su Huaixu, utterly alarmed, hastily dismissed all the guards—but by the time he tried to pull the Crown Prince away himself, it was too late; the Prince had been detained.

The Crown Prince didn’t believe for a moment that he could truly be this madwoman’s son. He’d meant to have Su Huaixu serve as a witness to disprove it—but the instant the blood met water and mixed instantly together, he suddenly recalled his own hair, which had always curled more tightly than his brothers’, and his own eyes, set deeper than theirs. He felt as though he’d fallen into an icy abyss.

To bury this secret forever, he made an instant decision, drawing his sword and killing Su Huaixu on the spot.

For a Crown Prince to murder a court official was an unforgivable crime. Knowing he could never conceal it, he preemptively removed his own hairpin of office and confessed his wrongdoing, requesting that his position as Crown Prince be revoked, claiming it had been an act of drunken rage, an accidental killing.

This move—retreating in order to advance—proved remarkably effective. To protect the Crown Prince and appease the Su family, Emperor De used his imperial authority to suppress the case entirely.

What the Crown Prince never anticipated, however, was that before bringing the woman to see him, Su Huaixu had already told someone else about the matter.

Gu Zhiyan.

The moment Su Huaixu died, Gu Zhiyan had immediately grown wary, instructing Zhou Tan to openly withdraw from the investigation into the Su case.

But when Su Chaoci, having lost his father, came seeking Zhou Tan’s help, the two of them knelt before Gu Zhiyan for an entire night until he finally relented and told them everything.

Since the Xishao woman hadn’t covered her tracks perfectly, and some of Su Huaixu’s fleeing servants had survived, Zhou Tan and Su Chaoci, piecing together fragments from every possible source and sparing no effort, finally uncovered the full truth of the matter.

Su Chaoci swore to avenge his father, but with no immediate means to act, he chose to protect himself by resigning his post and returning home to observe the mourning period. Zhou Tan, meanwhile, took the opportunity to impeach him several times at court, and even after the mourning period ended, kept him suppressed and unable to return to office.

Both of them understood clearly that if Su Chaoci remained in officialdom, the Crown Prince would view him as a thorn in his side regardless of what he actually knew, and might well find some excuse to have him secretly eliminated one day.

It was because of this absurd old Su family case that both Gu Zhiyan and Zhou Tan had entirely abandoned any thought of supporting the Crown Prince.

Gao Yunyue and Ren Shiming had listened, utterly stunned into silence. Qu You, too, felt a shock of her own—though the imperial dynasty presented such a glorious face to the world, behind the scenes, even Song Chang’s own bloodline was murky and uncertain. Who knew how many other scandalous secrets lay buried beneath these vermilion palace walls?

She’d already witnessed one such secret firsthand, and couldn’t help thinking, with bitter irony—

Truly, a father unworthy of the name, a son unworthy in turn.

But… at least now she finally understood why the Crown Prince had colluded with Xishao in the first place.

Every page of written history, it seemed, truly did have its traceable roots.