Summer nights resounded everywhere with cicadas, but word had spread through the capital that “the Emperor does not kill singing cicadas.” No one dared defy the imperial will, and even the merchants who had formerly caught and sold cicadas were now seeking other livelihoods this summer.

Pei Xi walked only a few steps before the night’s clamor gave him a splitting headache. Only when he neared the Ye residence did it grow somewhat quieter.

In Biandu, every inch of land was worth its weight in gold. In earlier years, even the Grand Minister of the realm, if he lacked ancestral property, would have to rent a house to live. Last year he had taken forged documents and left You Prefecture to travel to Biandu for the imperial examinations. Many of his fellow graduates, even after passing the exams, still worried about where to stay — since the Caltrop Case, court officials no longer dared to casually take in scholars the way they once had, for fear of bringing disaster upon their entire households.

Fortunately, before Ye Tingyan had set out for Biandu, a woman surnamed Ai and her husband surnamed Gao had already arranged a residence for him. It was said these two were the foremost wealthy household in Jiangnan at the time, with half the businesses in Biandu acknowledging them as their master. In his younger years he had heard Bai Sensen boasting that the Crown Prince held the realm’s commercial network in his hands, and seeing it now, it was evidently true.

Song Lan had once wondered where Ye Tingyan’s residence had come from, and Ye Tingyan had only said he had saved up money during his travels through Jiangnan, which deflected the question.

The Ye residence was on Junyi Street in Biandu — not only not far from the imperial city, but also facing the river and overlooking the street, convenient for transmitting information. In the rear garden of the residence grew various trees, and at this season there should have been cicadas singing in abundance, yet as he drew nearer he heard no cicadas at all. He knew Ye Tingyan would certainly not follow Song Lan’s example, and had likely long since sent someone to catch them away.

But now was not the time to let his mind wander. Pei Xi moved without obstruction all the way, skirting round to the front of Ye Tingyan’s rooms through the back gate of the residence with practiced ease. Seeing a lamp burning low through the door frame, he knew Ye Tingyan would not yet be asleep and must be meeting with someone in discussion.

Pei Xi reached out and knocked three times on the door, calling out: “My lord.”

The door opened at his call, and a breeze lifted several sheets of white paper hanging by the doorframe.

Every time he entered, the first thing he saw was the ailing plum tree planted facing the doorway. He fixed his gaze on it and noticed that since the last time he had seen it, several more branches had been pruned away.

Zhou Chuyin turned and, seeing it was him, raised an eyebrow and asked: “Cuozhi, why have you come by night?”

Ye Tingyan had a strip of white gauze covering his eyes. Hearing the sound, he reached out and lit another candle by his side — perhaps worried Pei Xi could not see clearly.

Pei Xi stepped forward a few paces, caught his breath, and said in a low voice: “A message from the forbidden palace — the Empress visited the Ministry of Justice tonight and personally administered poison to Qiu Xueyu.”

Zhou Chuyin’s brow furrowed slightly, and she immediately turned to look at Ye Tingyan’s expression — but she saw no change on his face. He even gave a faint smile: “Tell it slowly.”

“Yes,” Pei Xi acknowledged. “The message came from Lord Yuan — the case of the Empress’s attempted assassination had dragged on for a long time. Though the chief conspirator Princess Ningle Imperial had died, all those who colluded with her had still not been dealt with. Song Lan had handed the matter to the Empress. The Three Judicial Offices, unable to discern the Empress’s intentions, could only delay further. Now that the Dragon Boat Festival had passed, if the case were not concluded, it would invite criticism. Today, after the Empress met with Song Lan, she went in full formal dress to the Ministry of Justice and personally handed Qiu Xueyu the cup of poison.”

Zhou Chuyin slapped her thigh and suddenly understood: “So that is how it is.”

Ye Tingyan gave a bitter smile: “What have you grasped?”

Pei Xi was even more bewildered. Zhou Chuyin refilled her own teacup, held it in her hand, and said with an amused expression: “Yu Qiushi knew that Feng Yanlu was Qiu Xueyu and wanted Song Lan to feel the Empress had divided loyalties. But then your lordship intervened and told the Empress — Qiu Xueyu’s hairpin deflected a large portion of Song Lan’s suspicion, and your lordship uncovering Princess Ningle Imperial’s role had nearly cleared the Empress entirely.”

“Princess Ningle Imperial’s identity was too sensitive to be brought openly before the Three Judicial Offices. If the case concluded in this manner, the final guilt would fall on Qiu Xueyu alone — and this was also the stratagem Qiu Xueyu discussed with your lordship while in Zhuque Division.”

Ye Tingyan’s eyelashes beneath the white gauze moved faintly, silently confirming her account.

On that night he had seen Luowei and then returned to Zhuque Division to continue the interrogation. After Yuanming left, Qiu Xueyu asked him “can I become a blade for you all?” and then leaned in to whisper in his ear the full scheme for framing Song Zhiyu.

Lunatic palace servants outside the palace, numerous corroborating witnesses within the inner court, that ambiguously uttered word “Princess” — it had all been Qiu Xueyu’s arrangements over these past few years within the palace. Before she drove the hairpin in, she seemed to have long foreseen such a day, and intended to use her own life as a fuse, dragging Song Zhiyu down to hell with her.

And so on the day he was sent by imperial command to administer death to Ningle Imperial, he held the exchanged poison cup and hesitated repeatedly, and did not immediately reveal his true identity.

Ningle Imperial ultimately drank the poison and died, just as she herself had said — burdened with more than a thousand lives, she could not go on living.

Though it was not by her own intent, though she had been forced, the poem “Lament for Jintian” had ultimately come from her own brush.

Pei Xi, hearing all this, finally understood: “I had been wondering before why your lordship had suddenly shifted the blame onto Princess Ningle Imperial. Now I see — Miss Qiu did not know the full situation, and between her and the Princess there was indeed a long-standing blood feud.”

Ye Tingyan gave a quiet “mm” and continued along Zhou Chuyin’s line of reasoning: “She was determined to die. If the case went through open channels, she would be sentenced to death by hanging or beheading, or worse, dismemberment — the Empress, with all her abilities, could never have bribed all the officials of the Three Judicial Offices and released the person without leaving a trace. Once she thought it through, she devised another plan and sent word to summon Yan Shizi back to the capital.”

“Wang Fengshi was an old associate of Yu Qiushi. Song Lan had harbored designs on You Prefecture’s military since his northern inspection tour, and so sent this man to probe the situation in Beiyou first — he dispatched this person with no real intention of letting him return alive either. Besides, Wang Fengshi had been corrupt and reckless in his garrison duties, so his being executed by Yan Lang was not unjust.” Zhou Chuyin remarked, then added, “Only, this matter was still somewhat hasty. After this incident, Song Lan will certainly be highly alert to You Prefecture’s military, for in his eyes this affair signified that the Yan clan had both the will and the power to eliminate any general he sent to take over.”

Pei Xi said: “Yan Shizi has a close relationship with the Empress. To act so boldly and then openly return to the capital without his armor — is this not provocation? Yu Qiushi will certainly counsel Song Lan that if the Empress wished to use You Prefecture’s military to rebel, it would be as easy as turning one’s hand. Ah, I think I understand a little more now — Song Lan had to be made to waver in this way. Only then would he remove the assassination case from the Three Judicial Offices and hand it directly to the Empress — he wants to use every means to test her intentions.”

“Cuozhi is progressing,” Ye Tingyan said with mild praise. “Handled by the Three Judicial Offices, certain death. Handed to the Empress, it becomes a question — if uninvolved, kill someone close to you as proof; if you insist on protecting this person, that reveals an unfaithful heart.”

“Yet since the power of life and death has already fallen into the Empress’s hands, what harm is there in staging a performance? She appeared in full formal dress and went to the Ministry of Justice in broad sight, making it known to all, letting Song Lan see her sincerity. Chuyin, do you know how a person who dies accidentally in the Ministry of Justice’s prison is handled?”

Zhou Chuyin said: “Previously they were sent to Aishan Prison in the city for burning and disposal of the body. Nowadays most are burned on the Eastern Mountain. The minor officials are lazy about it, use too little fire, and the Eastern Mountain is the wild graveyard hill — they just throw the body down and consider the matter done.”

Ye Tingyan suddenly let out a low laugh: “Mm, searching through a wild graveyard for a person — that is indeed a difficult errand.”

* * *

At that very moment, Yan Lang, walking up the mountain path of Eastern Mountain with a shovel on his back, suddenly sneezed.

A soldier behind him, similarly dressed in night-traveler’s garb, stepped forward and said with some apprehension: “Why does the young general shudder in summer? Could it be you have caught a chill?”

Yan Lang took several deep breaths, thoroughly baffled: “I am perfectly fine, only my nose suddenly itches…”

Before he could finish, he sneezed again.

His subordinate suddenly understood and said with conviction: “Young general, it must be that someone is cursing you.”

Yan Lang: “…?”

* * *

Pei Xi, having heard the two of them explain, felt both convinced and awestruck: “The imperial court may be splendid in its brocade, but it devours people without spitting out the bones. Killing a person is easy, yet how extraordinarily difficult it is to save one. To rescue this one person, the Empress wagered Song Lan’s trust. With Yan Lang temporarily not returning to Beiyou, her position in the palace would be…”

Though he held no post in Qiong Ting, he came and went often, had come to know several close friends there, and the palace servants spoke of the Empress in tones of endless admiration. For a moment, he could feel something of why Ye Tingyan, despite being locked in a mortal feud with her, had still held back and could not bring himself to strike — those virtues she displayed were truly not the stuff of pretense. Even when one glimpsed the ambition beneath her surface, one still could not help but waver again and again, softening again and again.

He knew the story of the former Crown Prince, yet the subtle details of it Ye Tingyan would not speak of to anyone else. People only knew he had been lured and tricked out of strength by the Empress, then secretly attacked by his subordinates and fell into the water, afterward seized by Song Lan and imprisoned in the palace, nearly ending his own life. If the loyal guards had not arrived in time, if Bai Sensen had not heard the news and rushed from the southwest, he certainly would not have survived to the present.

Before arriving in Biandu, that hatred could still be sustained.

After meeting the person, everything could inexplicably dissolve — leaving only a congested, vivid, indissoluble tangle of complex sorrow.

Even someone like His Highness, who had formerly been like a transcendent celestial being, could not be exempt from the vulgarity of that one word “sentiment,” Pei Xi thought.

But this was perhaps for the better — it was more like a human being than the cold-hearted, cold-souled, world-weary, self-loathing manner he had had when he first changed his appearance.

He was still lost in his own reverie when he heard Ye Tingyan heave a deep sigh.

Zhou Chuyin shook her head beside them and said: “If as you deduce, the Empress’s aim from the very beginning was to consolidate power and compete for dominion, then what she did back then… was to choose between you and Song Lan, and she chose him, because he appeared easier to control.”

“After Song Lan came to power, she only then realized she had raised a wolf cub with her own hands. With Yu Qiushi at his side, she alone faced threats from two directions and walked on thin ice — her original plan should have been the same as yours: plan gradually and unhurriedly, penetrate little by little, and strike when the moment was right. But in order to save Qiu Xueyu, she had no choice but to burn her boats and advance her timetable. This is why she spoke to you of the risky plan to deal with Yu Qiushi. In truth, with both of them serving beside the Emperor, framing someone for ‘treason’ is not difficult at all — each has their own misgivings. But now she has no misgivings, while Yu Qiushi does. The odds of winning…”

She glanced at Ye Tingyan and said pointedly: “Taking a step back: if the Empress miscalculates and gets herself drawn in as well — that has no bearing on you. She may wish for mutual ruin, yet in that very act she would be smoothing your path. Either way, in this game, you will not come out losing.”

Because the white gauze covered his eyes, the two of them could not see Ye Tingyan’s gaze. They only heard him silent for a long while before he spoke sparingly: “The time is not yet right. I will do my utmost to assist her.”

Zhou Chuyin snapped open the folding fan in her hand, using it to cover her face, and quietly leaned toward Pei Xi, murmuring: “‘The sickness has its root in no one else’s presence; the cure is the same as the void that encompasses all four elements.’ When you seek a virtuous wife to wed, you must certainly not…”

Ye Tingyan’s face went cold. Without knowing what he threw from his hand, with a swishing sound he knocked both candles clean out.