The Emperor’s wedding was held with great splendor — a splendor that felt somewhat ill-suited to the times, yet somehow precisely right as well.

The wedding was arranged by the Prince Wu’s Consort herself, from beginning to end, because the Emperor had wanted it done quickly, and the Consort had genuinely exhausted herself in these days.

The Prince Wu’s Consort was determined not to let those courtiers dictate how the Emperor’s wedding should be conducted — which meant that inevitably she would have to shoulder even more of the burden.

Whatever the case, from the first meeting with Yu Ruoyan to the wedding day, the entire process had taken only fourteen days. For an imperial wedding, this was genuinely hurried — and genuinely modest. Though it had, by all appearances, looked rather grand.

But the Emperor didn’t care, and the Empress of Dachu didn’t care either. Nothing felt quite natural, and yet everything seemed to fall into place exactly as it should.

In the days following the wedding, the Emperor did not hold court. Each morning he took the Empress by the hand and went out to stroll, visiting the imperial gardens one day, boating on the lake the next.

So much so that some of the officials privately mused that had they known this was what it took to keep the Emperor from holding court, they should have sent him some women long ago.

With Dachu already in the state it was, the courtiers felt awkward attending court — like actors going through the motions of a performance. No, not like — it simply was.

With the Emperor absent from court, they were content to enjoy the ease of it. All they were doing was waiting — waiting for their new master to arrive.

And those with well-placed sources already knew that Prince of Heaven Yang Xuanji was about to make his move once more.

The number of people in Daxing City willing to welcome Yang Xuanji was far, far greater than those who remained loyal to the Dachu court.

Having learned from his previous failure, Yang Xuanji would not let slip this opportunity with the Ning Army absent from Jingzhou.

“The realm.”

The Emperor sat aboard a pleasure boat, murmuring those two words to himself, his voice so soft he felt only he himself could hear them.

The Empress sat quietly beside him. Though the two of them had known each other for fewer than twenty days, sitting side by side they gave the impression of people who had always, by right, sat together just like this.

The Emperor’s gaze drifted back from the homes along the banks and settled on his wife.

“Are you cold?”

He asked.

It was the end of the fifth month, the weather already warm, yet the breeze over the waterway was not slight.

The Empress shook her head slightly. “With Your Majesty beside me, my heart is at peace — and when the heart is at peace, one does not feel the cold or the heat.”

The Emperor loved the way she spoke. He loved the sound of her voice. He loved this quiet stillness.

“Before I became Emperor, I played at being reckless, so that many people could feel at ease. Since becoming Emperor, I have not been reckless for a long time.”

What the Emperor referred to was the fact that he had not held court for several days.

The Empress asked softly, “Does Your Majesty have regrets?”

The Emperor shook his head. “No regrets.”

The Empress smiled — bright as the sunshine of this fifth month.

“If the place where Your Majesty’s heart is at rest is with me, then I will stay by Your Majesty’s side like this. But if the place where Your Majesty’s heart is at rest is there…”

The Empress gestured toward the homes along the riverbank, then continued. “Then I ought to urge Your Majesty: let the imperial heart dwell in the realm, for the world holds ten thousand hardships — yet Your Majesty can face the wind and break through. The world holds ten thousand tribulations — yet Your Majesty can sail with the wind.”

The Emperor stilled.

The Empress smiled and looked at him.

The Emperor was silent for a moment, then turned back and said to Zhen Xiaodao, “Return to the palace. Court.”

In that moment, Zhen Xiaodao smiled as well.

He looked toward the Empress with deep gratitude, and in that instant he suddenly found that the Empress’s gaze seemed to hold a star-filled sea, vast and serene.

“When I hold court, you are to sit beside me.”

The Emperor said to the Empress.

The Empress shook her head. “Your Majesty, ancestral precedent must not be violated. The order of the court must not be abandoned.”

But the Emperor was unusually resolute. “Where my heart is at peace — it is you.”

He was resolute in a way quite unlike his usual self.

The Empress was silent for a long moment, then nodded. “Then your subject consort will heed Your Majesty’s wishes. If Your Majesty wishes me to be present, I will be present always.”

And so, from that day forward, at every court session, the Empress sat beside the Emperor.

What court affairs were there, in truth? Those powerful figures who no longer regarded themselves as loyal subjects would no longer serve Dachu with any sincerity. They were far more willing to express displeasure at the Empress attending court alongside the Emperor.

But this time the Emperor simply did not care what they said — he treated their words as wind.

Perhaps those powerful figures assumed the Emperor had become besotted with a woman, which was actually a convenient development, and so in time they stopped pressing the matter.

Yet gradually they found that things were not as they had assumed.

The Empress sat at the Emperor’s side and said not a single word — only sat there, calm and still.

But with her at his side, the Emperor looked entirely renewed, full of vigor — as if a different person compared to those days before.

The Empress knew her place. At court she never interfered in anything. Yet simply by being present, she seemed to fill the Emperor with strength.

The Empress said that the Emperor had the hearts of the people within him, but the Emperor had never heard those hearts — because the palace walls were too high and the courtiers too heavy a weight.

High and heavy together, they had blocked out the will of the people.

So the Emperor and the Empress carved out time to walk among the common people. The two of them changed into plain clothes, ate at cheap street stalls, and lingered for a long while talking with the man who ran the food stall.

The Emperor asked him: if rebels surrounded Daxing City, what would you do?

The middle-aged man said: what could I do? I have a wife and children to think about. I suppose I’d accept my fate.

In the past, hearing such words, the Emperor would have felt an uncontrollable surge of anger.

But today, the Empress’s hand lightly patted the back of his hand, and he suddenly understood — the common people were not disloyal. They were powerless.

The Emperor still wanted to ask the man whether, if the court paid him a soldier’s wage and looked after his wife and children, he would be willing to fight for the court.

But before he could ask, the Empress asked the middle-aged man: “What if the rebels are brutal, and will harm your wife and children?”

The middle-aged man brought his chopping knife down hard on the cutting board. “They’d have to kill me first.”

The Emperor was struck motionless. He saw the Empress smiling at him.

And so, beginning the next day, proclamations appeared throughout the city one after another, recounting in detail the atrocities committed by the great bandit Li Xionghu — the crimes, great as the sky, that he had perpetrated. Wherever Li Xionghu’s rebel forces had passed, every man had been pressed into military service; the elderly and children had been slaughtered; and the women had all been violated to their deaths.

The proclamations calling on people to be loyal to the Emperor and love Dachu were covered over — yet something seemed to gradually shift among the people of the city.

In the Eastern Study, the Emperor sat in thought, contemplating how to address the crisis. The Empress sat beside him embroidering a handkerchief.

The Emperor turned to look at her. Sunlight fell across her face, and she seemed to glow with a pure, holy radiance.

“My heart is at peace,” he said.

The Empress set down her embroidery, sat upright, and looked at the Emperor. “Your Majesty’s heart should not be at peace,” she said.

The Emperor asked why.

The Empress said: because Your Majesty carries the people in your heart, and the people’s hearts are not at peace — so Your Majesty cannot be at peace either. When Your Majesty says you are at peace, you are only saying it to make me happy.

The Emperor fell silent.

The Empress continued: Your Majesty carries the people in your heart, but the people don’t know it. Your Majesty must let them know.

A light flickered in the Emperor’s eyes. He asked, “How do we let the people know?”

The Empress said: Your Majesty stands too high — the highest person in this world. When the common people crane their necks and strain to look upward, they still cannot see Your Majesty clearly. So if you want the people to know that Your Majesty carries them in your heart, Your Majesty must first come down.

The Emperor understood.

The next day, further proclamations appeared throughout the city: the Emperor was recruiting a new army. This time, the Emperor would live and eat alongside the common people — as an ordinary soldier.

The people didn’t believe it — until they saw the Empress.

The Empress stood on a carriage — a carriage with no enclosed compartment — dressed in a valiant suit of battle armor.

She called out along the way, declaring that the Emperor knew how brutal the rebels were, and so this time, the Emperor would personally take to the field to protect his subjects.

She called out to the people, telling them the Emperor was waiting for them at the training ground, that the Emperor had said he would train alongside them — learning how to draw a bow, how to grip a sword, how to keep the enemy from threatening their families.

And so the people went, half in doubt — and found the Emperor truly there.

From that day on, the Emperor did not return to Shiyuan Palace. He lived in a tent at the training ground.

The Empress did not return to Shiyuan Palace either. She changed into coarse cloth clothing, tied on an apron, and personally cooked porridge and prepared food for the common people.

More and more people enlisted, and the spirit of this army was nothing like that of recruits gathered in the old way.

The Emperor would wrestle with them on the training ground, shout alongside them, drill with them, charge together through the pouring rain toward imagined enemies.

And no matter where the Emperor was, one could always spot the Empress’s figure not far away.

In a secluded corner, the Commander of the Imperial Guard, Hui Chunqiu, watched the Emperor drilling with the common people in the curtain of rain. He shifted his gaze slightly and saw, not far away, the Empress standing in the rain without an umbrella, watching the Emperor as well.

“The Empress must be a celestial immortal,” Hui Chunqiu murmured to himself.

The head palace attendant, Zhen Xiaodao, nodded vigorously. “Yes. The Empress must certainly be one.”

They had never seen the Emperor like this before. It was only because the Empress had appeared that the Emperor was no longer a man who kept his desire to save the realm locked away within himself.

An Emperor who acted — who translated those desires into deeds — showed the common people hope. Showed the Emperor himself hope.

“If only the Empress had come sooner,” Zhen Xiaodao said.

Hui Chunqiu gave a murmur of agreement, then reflected, “Indeed… if the Empress had appeared earlier, things might have been different long ago.”

They watched as the Emperor suddenly broke from the ranks and ran toward the Empress, pulling her by the hand to a sheltered eave. He told the Empress she could not stand in the rain.

The Empress said she had promised to stay by his side always.

As she said those words, her eyes held a vast star-filled sea, shimmering with brilliance.

The Emperor shook his head and said she had to listen to him — he was her husband.

He did not say I am the Emperor. And so when the Empress smiled, the star-filled sea in her eyes grew even brighter.

She nodded and said she would listen to her husband.

And so the Emperor smiled and ran back into the rain to drill alongside the common people once more. The people erupted in cheers — no one quite knew why they were cheering, but everyone felt a boundless joy.

Everyone could see the change in the Emperor, and many shared in that joy.

Yet there were also many who did not share in it.

Beneath another sheltered eave, those officials in their fine brocade robes watched the Emperor in the rain, their brows tightly knit.

They thought: this sort of Emperor seemed no longer to be a good Emperor. And if the Emperor was no longer a good Emperor, what good days could remain for them.

Someone’s gaze drifted toward the Empress. And then every person sheltering under this eave looked in her direction.

“This won’t do,” someone murmured to themselves.

It was not said for others to hear — yet everyone heard it.

And so someone echoed: “Yes… how can things continue like this?”

“The Emperor, as the supreme ruler, should not be mingling so intimately with common laborers. It violates ancestral precedent.”

“Indeed. It violates ancestral precedent.”

“The Emperor is a wise and enlightened ruler — only he has been led astray.”

“Yes, you are right. The Emperor has only been led astray.”

Their gazes shifted once more toward the lone young woman beneath another eave. There were a great many of them gathered here; there was only the Empress beneath that eave, alone.

These men with their air of moral rectitude — there was a gleam in their eyes now as well.

Only that gleam was very dark.