Shen Rujian crouched and pinched a little of the scattered powder between her fingers, brought it to her nose, inhaled gently, then rose. She already knew what it was.

She returned to her seat, opened the case she had brought, and took out a jade bottle filled with pills no bigger than grains of rice. She tipped a few into her palm and held them out to Li Chi. “Your Majesty — three of these.”

“I am unaffected,” Li Chi said.

Shen Rujian said nothing more. She simply looked at him.

He endured it for a moment, then capitulated, took the three pills from her hand, and swallowed them without water.

“Three for everyone.”

She passed the bottle to the small eunuch Ding Qing’an, who distributed pills to everyone in the Eastern Warm Chamber. He skipped Xu Ji — but Li Chi pointed at him with a look that clearly said, *he’s not a stranger, give him some too.* Ding Qing’an handed the pills over with evident displeasure, and Xu Ji accepted them without protest and swallowed them down.

“Have someone wet the floor and sweep it out — wash it several times,” Shen Rujian instructed.

Now Li Chi looked at Xu Ji, kneeling there and shaking. To his own surprise, he found himself feeling something almost like pity.

“Oh, you…” A helpless sigh. *What do I even say to you in front of all these people?*

He couldn’t say it plainly, not here: *I was already letting you have so much rope, even coming out to play the game from your side — and you still couldn’t manage it?*

He gestured for the room to clear. Only the two of them remained.

Li Chi crouched in front of Xu Ji and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know whether to be disappointed in you, or whether I simply expected too much.”

Those words hit harder than a blow to the face.

*I’ve been giving you this much help, holding your hand through all of it, practically sabotaging my own court on your behalf — and you’re still this useless? I expected too much.* Which was another way of saying: *You are, quite simply, worthless.*

“Did you send men outside the city?”

Xu Ji’s first instinct was to shake his head — pure reflex, pure fear. Then, very slowly, he nodded, though barely perceptibly.

Li Chi sighed again.

“Were the numbers enough?”

That question — after the *I expected too much* — was somehow even more wounding.

Xu Ji slumped where he knelt, unable to form an answer. He thought: if I could dissolve into dust and be scattered by the wind right now, even that would be better than this humiliation.

“If the numbers weren’t enough, tell me. I don’t particularly want to be done with you yet.”

Li Chi returned to his chair, took a sip of tea, and fixed Xu Ji once more with that look of exasperated disappointment.

“You know, I’ve already been practically running your operation for you, and you still can’t get anything right. Having ambitions isn’t a flaw — but you need to have the ability to match them. Big dreams without the competence to back them up is just chaos. If you want to do something, do it carefully, one solid step at a time. Do you understand the meaning of *methodical*?”

Another sip. He set down the cup.

“Actually, I’ve already arranged everything for you. The men you sent outside the city would never have stopped the Court of Justice — not because I had a net waiting for your people, but because I had already sent word to the Imperial Garden: those brigands from Shu Province are to be quietly executed on the spot. I never planned to bring them into Chang’an for questioning. I was afraid you’d be useless. As it turns out, my fear was entirely justified.”

He shook his head.

“And now, thanks to all of this, by tomorrow a great many people will hear that the assassins captured at the Imperial Garden were ambushed on the road back to the capital and taken from the escorts. That’s the cover. Otherwise, how would your little play continue?”

He continued, in the same tone of mild resignation: “Of course I can’t do everything for you. So be more careful going forward. Be more cautious. When you hire people, don’t scrimp — you’ve been collecting money for years, you can afford quality. Pay for the expensive ones.”

“And one more thing. What happened in the palace today will not be spoken of. The monk you brought was unable to kill me, which means he may come looking for you next. Mind yourself. I repeat: don’t be stingy. Hire good people. Do you expect me to send palace guards to protect your household? I can give you this much rope, but I won’t give you the sea.”

“If you truly can’t find capable guards, tell me and I’ll have an Imperial Escort assigned to your residence. You pay me the market rate — I won’t cheat you.”

A small wave of the hand. “Go home. You needn’t come to court tomorrow. I’ll tell the ministers you’ve taken ill and require a few days of rest.”

Xu Ji got to his feet and moved toward the door like a puppet, stiff and hollow. He walked a few steps, then turned back, knelt, and knocked his head to the floor several times.

Li Chi didn’t respond. He simply watched.

Xu Ji rose, made it to the door of the Eastern Warm Chamber — and then heard the Emperor speak behind him.

“Ding Qing’an — have someone escort Lord Xu home to rest. Stop by the Imperial Physicians’ office on the way and have them send along a calming tonic. That monk’s formula doesn’t look like it worked very well; better let the Imperial Physicians write something up.”

Xu Ji stopped walking.

It felt like another knife in the ribs. After a moment, he turned back woodenly, bowed woodenly, and said in a hollow voice: “Long live His Majesty’s gracious benevolence.”

Li Chi thought: *Of course it’s gracious benevolence. I’ve practically become an accomplice in your plot against me. You’d better be grateful.*

He felt something almost like sadness, scanning the whole array of civil and military officials in his service — Xu Ji was the only one who showed even a flicker of genuine ambition. And even then, Li Chi had to coax and encourage and prop him up just to get that flicker to burn a little brighter. He’d done all that — and this was the result.

He supposed he couldn’t blame Xu Ji entirely. He might have to blame himself a little too.

What a thing.

—

Meanwhile, across the city, the escaped Zangjie was almost cheerful as he ran. Self-satisfaction threatened to bubble over; he thought he deserved to stop somewhere and drink to his own success.

He had convincingly played the role of a man attempting to assassinate the Emperor, and had made it out of the Weiyang Palace alive. Few people in the world could have managed that half as cleanly.

He didn’t know: first, that Li Chi thought he’d done rather well, and privately wished Xu Ji showed half the competence. And second, that Li Chi had given specific orders for his escape to proceed. Without those orders, getting out of that room would have been nearly impossible, let alone out of the palace.

In that chamber, Li Chi had chosen not to act, using the Flowing Cloud Sleeve only to scatter the powder. If he had decided to get involved, Zangjie would have had a very different experience.

Shen Rujian had received Li Chi’s signal and chosen not to pursue. If she had, she could have caught up to Zangjie before he got anywhere. Even Ye Xiaoqian had deliberately held back, performing the appearance of maximum effort while doing just enough to look convincing.

About an hour later, in the small southern courtyard, Master Chu opened the willow chest.

The first thing he saw was the ancestral tablet of Yang Jing, last Emperor of the fallen Kingdom of Chu.

In that moment, everything fell into place. Master Chu understood why the monk had come to Chang’an.

A faint sorrow moved through him. He lifted the tablet and looked at it for a moment, then exhaled softly.

A breath later, Master Chu tilted his head — something in the air, some faint disturbance — and set the tablet back in the chest. He closed it, withdrew a single step, and flicked his wide sleeve. The air stirred; the footprints on the floor were swept smooth.

In the next instant, Master Chu was gone from the courtyard, direction unknown.

In the instant after that, Zangjie came over the courtyard wall, landed lightly, scanned his surroundings with a cautious eye, and — satisfied — walked inside.

He came into the room and exhaled a long, slow breath. Not from fear or tension — from a deep, spreading sense of well-being.

He pulled a chair to the bedside and opened the chest. He took out the tablet, as he always did, and cleaned it carefully with a cloth.

“Your Majesty,” he said quietly. “At this point, success is not far off. I feigned an attempt on the Ning Emperor’s life. Xu Ji is beyond rescue now — a sitting Chancellor brought down by a charge of treason, the first great scandal in Ning’s founding history.”

“And it isn’t only Xu Ji who will die. I have arranged for Ye Celeng to be drawn in as well — Your Majesty doesn’t know him yet, but he is one of the Ning Emperor’s most senior officials.”

“A treason case at the founding of a dynasty, implicating men at the very top of the court — the Ning government will be shaken to its roots.”

Zangjie exhaled again, slowly, peacefully.

“Your Majesty, when you sent me away from Daxing City, you said you hoped I might do something for the Great Chu — perhaps remove a traitor like Pei Qi. I failed to do that.”

“But this — this is something. The Emperor and his ministers suspicious of each other, the court fractured from within. If you could see this, Your Majesty, I think even you would smile.”

He gave the tablet a light, gentle pat, then set it back in the chest and stood, stretching both arms wide above his head.

In his chest, there was nothing but lightness.

—