The word “boundaries” struck Yang Lun like lightning.

He hurriedly said to Yang Wan, “What you’ve said here, keep it in your belly.”

Yang Wan nodded and continued, “You can’t be too aggressive either. You must carefully gauge the Empress Dowager’s position and find the right moment while staying mindful of your boundaries as a subject.”

Listening to her words, Yang Lun pressed his tiger’s mouth point while nodding and turning toward the Yangxin Gate. Yang Wan took a few quick steps to catch up with him, saying, “Brother, wait!”

She pushed a money pouch into Yang Lun’s hand. “Take this money to buy things for Deng Ying.”

Yang Lun glanced at it and replied casually, “Buy what? Right now he won’t eat anything except prison food.”

Yang Wan said, “Then buy him some apples and tangerines to eat, for vitamin supplements, so he won’t lose his hair.”

Yang Lun narrowed his eyes, “You said supplement what…”

“Ah? Oh.”

Yang Wan coughed once, somewhat embarrassedly correcting herself, “I meant to supplement his health.”

Yang Lun looked at Yang Wan’s expression, half-believing as he tucked the money into his robes. After walking a few steps, he quickly returned to stand before Yang Wan, pointing at her, “Yang Wan, when you leave the palace, you need to come home.”

Yang Wan stepped back, pressed by his intensity.

“For what?”

“For what?” Yang Lun stretched his neck, “I need to interrogate you!”

Yang Wan crossed her arms and laughed, “Fine, set up your court, and I’ll show up for questioning.”

As November passed, the Ming Dynasty welcomed its coldest year-end in history.

On the tenth of December, the inner court was to send off the Zhenning Emperor’s funeral procession. The capital was under strict security with cleared roads, and reed shelters of various sizes were built along the route for the new emperor and officials to rest during the procession.

Apart from the case of the Imperial Household Department, all other cases in the Ministry of Justice were suspended due to the grand mourning. Prisoners couldn’t be properly distributed between labor and exile sentences, leading to overcrowding and uneven provisions. Families of prisoners were forced to find ways to send supplies inside, but half was scraped off at the entrance to the ministry, and another half was stripped away by the prison guards, leaving very little to reach the prisoners.

Yang Lun had his servant buy a pile of apples and tangerines from the market, wrapped them in a bundle, and personally brought them, standing in the Ministry of Justice hall waiting for Qi Huaiyang. Qi Huaiyang hadn’t been home for nearly ten days and was just taking his noon rest in the inner office when summoned by the yamen runners. He was still putting on his mourning robes while walking, hanging them on his sleeves, and casually asked, “The joint tribunal hearings are all suspended these days, waiting for the ‘face questioning’ inside. Why did you come…”

Before he could finish, he saw the bundle in Yang Lun’s hands.

“Bringing supplies?”

Before Yang Lun could speak, Qi Huaiyang crossed his arms and said, “He won’t accept them. While I’m here, you might as well go in and see him.”

Yang Lun smiled, “That works too.”

Qi Huaiyang turned to ask the jailkeeper coming from behind, “Did someone come from the palace today?”

“Yes, an attending eunuch from the Imperial Household Department came to teach the prisoner about the etiquette for ‘face questioning.'”

“Have they come out?”

“Not yet, they just went in.”

“Oh.”

Qi Huaiyang tied his mourning sash, led Yang Lun out through the back hall, ordered the prison door open, and then turned back to the office.

Yang Lun carried his bundle into the inner prison.

In Deng Ying’s cell stood the attending eunuch from the Imperial Household Department and four yamen runners. The eunuch held a register, reciting word by word, while Deng Ying stood by the wall with hands lowered, listening silently. After the eunuch finished reading, a runner asked Deng Ying, “Do you understand?”

Deng Ying nodded and replied evenly, “Yes, I understand.”

The runner said, “Recite it back.”

“Yes.”

Deng Ying gently squeezed his wrist and lowered his head to recite.

His pace wasn’t fast, each word and sentence very clear, almost identical to the text in the register.

“I had heard before that you could memorize at a glance, today I truly witnessed it.”

Deng Ying smiled somewhat shyly, “Thank you for your trouble, Sir.”

Yang Lun hadn’t heard Deng Ying recite texts for a long time. This was a skill of children from scholarly families, their ‘horse stance’ training, and in this area, he had quite a reputation. They had competed before, with wins and losses on both sides, but he always suspected that in the times he won, Deng Ying hadn’t given his all.

The attending eunuch put down the register, bent down to come out, and took a sip of tea. Before he could set down the teacup, he saw Yang Lun looking at him sideways and hurriedly came forward to pay respects, “Assistant Minister Yang…”

Yang Lun glanced at Deng Ying, still standing behind the prison door, and lowered his head to ask, “Has the date been set?”

“Yes…”

“Alright, you may go. I’ll inquire about the details at the ministry.”

“Yes.”

The attending eunuch didn’t dare drink more tea and withdrew from Yang Lun’s side with a bow.

Yang Lun bent down to enter the cell. Deng Ying lowered his hands and laughed once, “To let you hear me reciting these things.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Yang Lun put the bundle on the ground and sat cross-legged on Deng Ying’s rush mat, “After all these years, you can still memorize at a glance.”

Deng Ying sat down on his knees, “The inner court has many rules, just the ‘Inner Palace Instructions’ alone must be memorized thoroughly.”

He mentioned inner court life casually, but Yang Lun’s ears grew hot.

“Can Yang Wan memorize so many rules too?”

Deng Ying hugged his knees and sat up straight, “She can, but she has a habit.”

Yang Lun pushed aside the instruments of punishment near Deng Ying’s legs, “What habit?”

“She likes to write things down, whether reciting or recording, she always writes.”

He looked up at Yang Lun as he spoke, “She seems to always be writing in a book.”

“What kind of book? What’s written in it?”

Deng Ying replied, “A thread-bound book, I haven’t specifically seen the text inside, but it seems to be a barbarian script…”

“How is that possible!”

Yang Lun turned around, “She was raised beside Mother and her sister-in-law since childhood, how could she have contact with barbarian writing?”

Deng Ying didn’t answer.

Yang Lun frowned, his hands clasped at his knees. After a while, he finally spoke, “Fu Ling, she made a point today in front of the Yangxin Gate.”

“What?”

“About this case of you forging the imperial edict.”

Yang Lun paused, his fingers digging into his tiger’s mouth point, “She asked me if the boundary between criminal cases and inner court secrets was clear.”

Deng Ying froze for a moment, “Are you confident?”

“Don’t talk about whether I’m confident or not right now!”

Yang Lun was inexplicably agitated, “She’s my sister, she’s followed behind me since she was little, what her temperament was like before, what she knew and didn’t know, I understood completely, but…”

He suddenly slumped his shoulders, “Even you and I didn’t see this aspect, don’t you think she sees too clearly this time? She…”

“Zi Xi.”

Deng Ying interrupted Yang Lun, “Not just this time.”

He leaned against the wall as he spoke, “Before the autumn examinations, both the teacher and I thought the academy student’s matter was a dead end, but in the end, it came alive at Qingbo Pavilion.”

Yang Lun sprang to his feet, “Since you knew long ago, why didn’t you ask her directly?”

“Do I have the qualification to question Wan Wan?”

“You…”

In his urgency, Yang Lun bumped Deng Ying’s ankle. Deng Ying closed his eyes and endured the pain, supporting himself to stand up, looking at Yang Lun, “I don’t want to question Wan Wan.”

Yang Lun asked, “Why?”

Deng Ying lowered his eyes, “She has always been the one watching me, questioning me. I have always been someone beneath her court, how could I become her interrogator?”

After hearing these words from Deng Ying, Yang Lun felt a sudden pain in his heart.

Both for Deng Ying and for Yang Wan.

All women in the world receive teachings of feminine virtue, viewing men as heaven – his mother was like this, and his wife was the same.

But Yang Wan wasn’t among them. Perhaps because she had set her eyes on a servant, she didn’t need to crawl beneath ‘heaven.’

That person of wind-swept dignity had been ground to dust, and from then on had sheltered every step Yang Wan took within his embrace. By Deng Ying’s side, though her reputation seemed in tatters, her inner spirit had never been humiliated in the slightest.

He had said earlier that Yang Wan saw too clearly.

Perhaps it was because she lived too freely.

The person she loved wouldn’t be her interrogator, so every word she said, everything she did, only needed to follow her own inner principles.

Yang Lun felt this was very dangerous for a woman. He didn’t entirely approve, but he had to admit that in Yang Wan he saw a temperament, something that neither Yang Yi nor Xiao Wen had ever possessed, temporarily situated between scholar and woman.

“Forget about not asking.”

Yang Lun looked down at the bundle on the ground, changing the subject, “On the day of the face questioning, you and He Yixian will be brought into the inner court together. In the previous three tribunal hearings, did you confront him?”

Deng Ying looked up and said, “It hardly counts as confrontation. Unless the judge asks, I have no more testimony to give. Now this case has only one knot left untied – whether or not I was instructed by the Imperial Household Department to forge the imperial edict. However, this knot doesn’t have much impact on the conviction. It’s just a matter of distinguishing between He Yixian and me, whose crime is more severe, but in the end, we probably can’t escape death.”

Yang Lun said, “When His Majesty questions you and He Yixian face to face, I want to debate this point in front of the Empress Dowager and Empress. See if we can force out the Empress Dowager’s true attitude about the forged edict. You just asked if I was confident – if I had thought of this aspect myself, I might not have much confidence, but since Yang Wan pointed it out to me, I’m quite confident. If it succeeds, this will be a life-saving grace. When you get out, thank her.”

Having said this, he picked up the bundle from the ground and handed it to Deng Ying.

“Take it and eat.”

Deng Ying didn’t reach out to take it, saying softly, “Don’t give me things, I eat well enough.”

“It’s apples and tangerines.”

“Even less necessary.”

Yang Lun shrugged and hugged the bundle back, “You said you don’t want them, right?”

“Yes, no need.”

“Yang Wan bought them for you.”

Having said this, he turned and walked toward the prison door.

“Zi Xi.”

Behind Yang Lun came the sound of shackles scraping against the ground, and then the voice calling him raised a few notes higher, “Zi Xi, wait a moment.”

Yang Lun stopped in his tracks. When he turned back, Deng Ying had already walked to the cell door. The jailer came to lock the door, and he was blocked behind it, looking somewhat anxious.

“Don’t take them away…”

Yang Lun walked back to face Deng Ying, “Apples and tangerines, she wants you to eat them every day, says they can supplement something vitamin, eat them so you won’t lose your hair.”