The Yongning Tongyuan Carriage Depot occupied a generous piece of ground — three courtyards front to back. The front courtyard served as the business face of the establishment; the middle courtyard was for rest; the rear courtyard held a large open space where horses and carriages were normally kept.

Because the rear courtyard was so spacious, it had been divided into a number of functional areas. One side held the stables, housing the depot’s draft horses and warhorses, with a forage storehouse alongside. On the other side stood Li Chi’s Flowing Cloud Formation; next to the formation was the dining hall. Beyond these was a small training ground.

This rear courtyard was a world unto itself — and by now, it seemed every role within it had been filled.

Aunt Wu’s arrival had apparently plugged the last remaining gap.

Yet after Tang Pidi showed up, the question of who actually ran the carriage depot began to weigh heavily on Yu Jiuling’s mind.

Previously, it had always been Li Chi who told everyone what to do. Starting from Tang Pidi’s third day there, he had without any warning whatsoever begun taking over those duties, with no apparent intention of consulting anyone.

He’d arrived and slept the first day. Slept until the following afternoon on the second. On the third day, he abruptly became the master of the house? On what grounds?

What baffled Yu Jiuling even more was that Li Chi seemed to have quietly accepted this. Even he himself was being managed by Tang Pidi with full efficiency.

From the third day onward, everyone at the depot was put to work digging a cellar. Tang Pidi’s reasoning was that they needed to find every possible means to stockpile grain, because he anticipated that within the next two or three years, Jizhou would face a catastrophic grain shortage.

Each day the people were divided into two groups. One group dug in the morning while the other went out by every available means to purchase grain; they switched in the afternoon.

Li Chi’s instruction had been simple: do what Tang Pidi says.

Yu Jiuling simply could not understand why, the moment Tang Pidi arrived, Li Chi was so willing to cede authority — as though it were only natural for Tang Pidi to run the place.

He couldn’t understand it. Zhuang Wudi didn’t care. Li Chi was content.

And if Yu Jiuling had thought that was the end of it, he was mistaken. At midday, over the meal, Tang Pidi made another announcement: after dinner, no one was permitted to wander off or rest. Every evening, two hours of tactical coordination and swordsmanship practice would be added to the schedule. Everyone had grown accustomed to their idle hours after supper — and now two more hours of training on top of that?

The whole day’s physical labor already left them exhausted, and everyone needed to rest. But Tang Pidi saw nothing negotiable in this.

When he finished speaking, everyone looked to Li Chi. Li Chi nodded. “Do as Tang Pidi says.”

Just those words.

—

A carriage drew to a stop outside the gates of Prince Yu’s mansion. Yun Gu stepped down first, then helped Xia Xiruо to alight. Yun Gu’s eyes were full of worry. Xia Xiruo herself seemed calm.

“Yun Gu, let’s go.”

She moved forward. If it hadn’t been for the large number of things she needed Yun Gu to help carry — many kinds of musical instruments, which would serve an important purpose — she would not have brought even Yun Gu along.

A guard at the gate raised a hand to stop them. Yun Gu produced a card from her sleeve and offered it, explaining they had come to perform music for the Princess’s birthday celebration. The guard examined it carefully and let them through.

The card had been written by the mansion’s steward, Song Chunming, personally — so the guards saw no reason to scrutinize them further.

“Yun Gu, how much did we pay Song Chunming?”

Xia Xiruo murmured as they walked.

Yun Gu kept her voice low: “Five hundred taels.”

Xia Xiruo gave a quiet scoff. “He’s only a steward in a prince’s household. And yet he profits even from the Princess’s birthday.”

Yun Gu said, “Five hundred taels isn’t exorbitant, given who he is. Families from every great house court his favor. The reason he let us in for five hundred taels is because I forged a token from the Yuwen family. You know, young mistress — there is no one in the mountain sect better at that sort of thing than me.”

She added softly, “I led Song Chunming to believe we were a down-and-out branch of the Yuwen family hoping to use this occasion to request an audience with Prince Yu.”

Xia Xiruo said, “You’ve worked hard, Yun Gu. Once the moment comes… find a way to leave first.”

Yun Gu shook her head. “Young mistress, say no more. You wanted to come, so I came with you. If there’s no way out, I’ll stay with you.”

Xia Xiruo shook her head in turn. “You have to go. You promised me. You’re to go in my place to see my mother — go in with me and set down the things, then find an excuse to leave.”

She smiled. “Besides, Yun Gu, you should trust me.”

She paused, then continued: “We agreed on everything already. You’ll go to my mother, tell her why I slipped away in secret all those years ago, then go find my foolish brother and tell him — he may be the elder, but he can’t carry the whole family alone.”

She drew a slow breath and tried to smile. “I’m grown now. I can do some things in his place. The reason I came back to Jizhou before Prince Yu raises his banner is that I know exactly how vicious that woman is.”

“With Prince Yu still in Jizhou, she may be keeping herself in check. But once he marches out, she certainly won’t follow the army. The first thing she’ll do is kill my mother. If she can manage it, she’ll also have my brother killed.”

Xia Xiruo spoke as she walked, her pace briefly faltering. “Prince Yu needs her family’s resources. In the thick of a military campaign, even if word reached him that she had murdered my mother, he wouldn’t concern himself with it — because what he cares about is whether he can become Emperor.”

She unclasped a beaded pendant from her person and handed it to Yun Gu. “Take this to my mother. She’ll know to trust you when she sees it. Yun Gu — thank you for treating me like a daughter all these years. If I live through this, I’ll repay you properly.”

She exhaled slowly. “Yun Gu — do you think there truly is Meng Po’s broth in the underworld? Is it possible… to not drink it?”

Yun Gu’s eyes had already turned red.

—

Several years earlier.

A little girl sat on a set of steps and asked her brother: “Why do we have to live here? Why can’t we see Father often? Why can’t it be like other families? Why do people always come wanting to kill us?”

Her brother sat down beside her, raised his hand, and ruffled her hair gently. He sighed, not knowing how to explain.

“You ask so many why’s.”

He said: “All you need to do is grow up happy. Whatever has to be done, I’ll do it. I live to protect Mother and you.”

The little girl bowed her head. “But do we have to live like this forever? Did we do something wrong? Did Father do something wrong? Did Mother do something wrong? Or are the ones who want to kill us the ones who did something wrong?”

Her brother went quiet. He truly didn’t know how to explain any of it to her.

These were not thoughts a girl of eleven or twelve should have to carry — and yet she had faced them countless times. Why did the consorts in the prince’s mansion feel they could send people after her without end? Because every time Prince Yu was away from Jizhou, they immediately stirred up trouble — because they were all doing the Princess’s bidding. The Princess orchestrated things from the shadows; the consorts were her knives.

Her brother said: “Don’t think so much about it. With me here, and Teacher Ye here, Mother will be fine. You’ll be fine.”

“But, Brother—”

The little girl took his hand. There was a scar on it — across both the palm and the back, because a dagger had passed clean through when he interposed his hand between her and the blade meant for her.

Her brother drew his hand back. “It’s long healed. Doesn’t hurt at all. A man should protect you. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

The little girl lowered her head again.

Two days later, while no one was paying attention, the little girl quietly packed her things, slung the bundle over her back, and left on her own.

Her destination was a branch range of the Yanshan Mountains, a place she knew was called Yuyin Mountain. She also knew it was where her mother had come from.

Her mother had told her the story: back then, her mother had been a young girl too, learning the art of healing and medicine on Yuyin Mountain. Then a plague broke out in Jizhou, and her mother left the mountain to help people.

On her way through Jizhou, she encountered her father — who at that time was not yet Prince Yu, but a prince freshly returned from the northern frontier. Her mother had not even known he was a prince, taking him for a general who had suffered grave wounds. A great battle against the Black Wu forces had killed tens of thousands of soldiers.

Watching the columns of men return from the north, the carriages full of groaning wounded, she had decided to stay and tend to them.

That was how Yang Jixing had come to meet her. And at that time Yang Jixing already had a wife waiting for him in the capital — the current Princess, Yuwen Xi.

Her mother healed Yang Jixing. He fell for her at first sight, and invited her to return with him to Jizhou. Her mother had come to admire this general willing to fight to the death defending the frontier — and it wasn’t his first time. He had come to the northern borderlands in his teens, winning great military distinction, and when the Black Wu forces invaded again, the old Emperor sent him back.

But Yang Jixing had not foreseen how deeply that northern campaign would mark him.

He had not expected to meet the woman he would come to believe was the true love of his life — a woman who was willing to follow him home, even if only as a maid in his household, her eyes holding not a trace of ambition, only sincerity.

Nor had Yang Jixing foreseen that shortly after bringing her back to the capital, barely having revealed his identity to her, the old Emperor would strip him of everything.

Because he had distinguished himself in battle. Because he was shrewd in the political arena and had the support of many court ministers. Because his abilities far outstripped those of his elder brother, the half-witted Crown Prince. Because he was too exceptional — and so the old Emperor had him stripped of military command.

In those darkest days of his life, Yuwen Xi had returned to her family’s home, citing ill health. It was this woman who had stayed at his side throughout.

Years later, he was enfeoffed as Prince Yu, with his seat in Jizhou.

For his sake, the woman who had once been that young girl had chosen to remain in his household — still no more than a maidservant, it seemed. As though she had forgotten the healing arts that were her gift. Like a white cloud that drifts down to the mortal world and gradually becomes earth.

She had forgotten. But her daughter had not.

If her mother had known her daughter would leave because of those stories, she might never have told her anything — never spoken of Yuyin Mountain, never spoken of any of it.

No one could have imagined how far a twelve-year-old girl could travel alone. More than a thousand li of hardship — and for every measure of hardship, there was an equal measure of resolve.

She refused to live forever in her brother’s shadow. She refused to be only a little girl who wept.

She lost her way countless times. Each time she was on the verge of collapse, she would look at the beaded pendant.

Now she had come down from Yuyin Mountain, retracing the road her mother had once walked to return to Jizhou. But she was not coming down the mountain to save people the way her mother had. Saving people could come later — if she survived.

She had come to kill.

—