Li Gu opened his eyes.

The room was dark and very quiet. A silk quilt had been draped over him, still soft and faintly fragrant. This was Xie Yuzhang’s bedroom and inner chamber.

He sat up and called for someone.

Xie Yuzhang, her outer robe draped over her shoulders and holding a lamp, pushed open the door and entered.

Her hair was loose and disheveled — clearly she had been sleeping in the side room outside, keeping watch over him.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“Much better.” Li Gu said. Sleeping that one sleep slumped over the table had lifted much of the accumulated exhaustion of many days.

Xie Yuzhang set the lamp on the daybed table, then turned and took the water that had been kept warm on the water-and-fire stove, poured a cup for Li Gu, and said: “Have something to drink, moisten your throat.”

Then she asked: “Would you like to eat something?”

Li Gu said: “Bring me a bowl of noodles.”

Xie Yuzhang turned and went out, and after a moment returned: “It will be ready shortly.”

Li Gu asked: “What time is it?”

Xie Yuzhang answered: “The second night watch.” As she spoke, she first brought him pastries to take the edge off his hunger.

Li Gu was famished and ate several pieces in succession.

Xie Yuzhang poured him more water, watched him drink, then asked: “The ladies of the palaces have been confined for seven days now. What do you intend to do?”

Li Gu’s hand tightened, nearly crushing the cup.

He stared at the cup, clenching his jaw until his teeth nearly cracked: “They should all die!”

Though he said so, the ladies had been confined for seven days without a single verdict being handed down — clearly, in Li Gu’s heart, he simply could not bring himself to act.

His blade had always pointed outward. His back was what he showed to family.

He could not turn himself around. Because these women — with the exception of Li Zhenzhen and Deng Wan — were all the mothers of his children.

The room fell quiet for a long time.

“Yuzhang,” Li Gu called to her, but paused for a long moment before continuing, his voice low: “The one who has disappointed me the most is… Wan’er.”

This was the second time Xie Yuzhang had heard Li Gu call Deng Wan by the intimate diminutive “Wan’er.” The first time had been when he had promised her the position of wife.

Only family members and those held very dear would be called by such doubled names. Yet he had always referred to Cui Ying by nothing more than “Ying Niang.”

“So in your heart…” Xie Yuzhang said with a sigh, “And yet Cui Shi has always had a far better reputation. Virtuous, kind, gentle, gracious — I have never heard a single person speak ill of her.”

Deng Wan, by contrast, had some small shortcomings.

Yet it turned out that the woman who had been permitted to walk into Li Gu’s inner heart, within his rear palace, was Deng Wan.

Li Gu looked up.

“Ying Niang is very good.” He said. “Too good. I cannot find a single fault with her.”

Xie Yuzhang gave a slight nod: “You are right.”

Li Gu had risen from the very bottom. Xie Yuzhang had once fallen from the very heights. Their life experiences had given them both the same understanding — whether of people or of things, there is no such thing as “perfection” anywhere in this world.

A person who presents themselves as “perfect” is the equivalent of presenting a falsehood.

“Women of the rear palace, whatever their true natures, all show gentleness and deference.” Li Gu’s gaze fell on the daybed table. “Only Wan’er still had some genuine nature about her.”

Xie Yuzhang nodded: “I understand.”

Empress Zhang had always humiliated her.

Faced with Xie Yuzhang’s plight, Li Zhenzhen would speak out against the Empress — but she had her own interests and her own position. Cui Ying Niang showed warm pity, but that pity was expressed with too much ostentation and actually wounded rather than helped.

Only Deng Wan would frown when she saw Xie Yuzhang. Her gaze plainly conveyed that she did not like her. But she never demeaned her. She neither pitied her nor humiliated her.

Deng Wan was a woman of fine character and inner pride.

And yet she had been the first to lay a hand on the First Imperial Prince.

Xie Yuzhang wanted to ask Li Gu exactly how he intended to deal with the ladies of the palaces. In the past, she had remonstrated with him, and though he understood each time, he had been unable to act upon it. He had even harbored the fantasy of having her manage the rear palace for him.

But now, the matter had already threatened the imperial heirs. Xie Yuzhang resolved to ask him.

She had not yet opened her mouth, however, when a commotion rose in the courtyard — clearly someone had arrived.

Xie Yuzhang said nothing further, and Li Gu also stared ahead in silence.

Very shortly, outside the inner chamber, a voice said: “Your Majesty! Your servant Liang Chen! Your Majesty, your servant has an urgent matter to report!”

Liang Chen was Fuchun’s adopted son. If Liang Chen had been sent, it was naturally because something had happened and Fuchun needed to remain behind to hold things steady in the rear palace.

Li Gu and Xie Yuzhang exchanged a swift glance, and both felt a premonition of bad news.

Li Gu called out: “Come in and speak!”

Liang Chen pushed open the door and entered. Without waiting for Li Gu to question him, he threw himself to the ground, his forehead pressed against the carpet, and reported in a trembling voice: “Your Majesty, Noble Consort Deng… has taken her own life.”

The air froze in an instant — silent as ice.

Xie Yuzhang abruptly rose to her feet and said: “Go quickly!”

Li Gu snapped awake from his trance, stepped off the daybed, and strode out in great steps. Liang Chen scrambled up and followed.

Xie Yuzhang draped her robe and went to the side room. Li Gu had already vanished.

A serving woman held a tray. On the tray sat a bowl of steaming silver-thread noodles.

There had been no time to eat them.

Li Gu returned to the palace. Deng Wan was already dead.

She had swallowed gold to die. She had left only a single parting word —

“I have wronged my lord.”

Her final words used “lord.”

Li Gu sat at her bedside and held her hand for a long time. But her eyes would never open again.

All six of the confined palaces had been wanting to see him, all scheming for ways to survive.

Only Deng Wan, in the end, had chosen death as atonement.

Li Gu finally released his hold on Deng Wan. All warmth had left his gaze, and all hesitation with it.

Li Gu departed Jingluan Palace and walked toward Yuzao Palace.

He walked very slowly, making his way through the cold night wind, reviewing in his mind the fragments of years past — from taking a wife, to the wedding night, to taking concubines, to conferring the rank of consort, to the birth of children.

He had to admit that Xie Yuzhang had been right. He had indeed been too greedy.

He had harbored the delusion of fencing off a corner of the rear palace, of encircling a home for himself within it — truly stubborn and laughable.

Li Gu walked on, step by step, leaving that greedy and laughable man behind.

By the time he arrived at Yuzao Palace, the man Cui Ying saw was the Emperor.

These past days, Cui Ying had kept her hair loose and herself in plain clothing. She was eating very little, so much so that within just a few short days, her eye sockets had grown hollow and she had become thin enough to stir pity in any who saw her.

Throughout these days, she had requested an audience with the Emperor many times. Today, she finally saw him.

She was a mother who had lost her son through her own misstep. She had much repentance and grief to show the Emperor — from the very first day she had become his wife, she had recognized how tender his heart truly was.

In this moment of crisis, she intended to use that tenderness to transform her misfortune into fortune, to reverse the tide.

But the emotions she had been cultivating for days, the tears she had readied and prepared to flow, were all scattered into nothing by three words from Li Gu.

“Are you worthy,” Li Gu asked, “of being called a mother? Cui the Eighteenth.”

Cui the Eighteenth.

The beautiful and gentle face of Cui Ying lost all color in that instant, turning sallow as gold foil.

Cui the Eighteenth was a beautiful and obedient secondary-born daughter.

When chaos broke out in Hexi, the prefecture eventually fell into the hands of that Li Shiyi Lang. The family was unwilling to send out their primary branch’s legitimate daughter, and so they found her elder legitimate sister, Cui the Seventeenth, and pushed her forward.

In the eyes of the main wife and the legitimate elder sister, Li Shiyi was nothing more than a soldier who had come from begging — hardly a worthy match. The two of them wept day and night.

But in Cui the Eighteenth’s eyes, the Li Shiyi Lang who had seized control of Hexi was an opportunity in life. She volunteered to her stepmother, offering to take her place.

And so, while the men were busy redistributing the spoils of Hexi, busy swallowing and dividing up the estates of the Huo and Wang families, no one thought to imagine that three women had the audacity to engineer such a daring substitution — the secondary daughter married in the legitimate daughter’s place.

By the time Cui’s father discovered it, Cui the Eighteenth had already entered the gates of the Li household and the ceremony had been performed. Reversing it at this point would mean openly telling Li Shiyi what the Cui Family had done.

That man was a killing god who had annihilated the entire Huo and Wang surnames.

Cui’s father did not have the nerve. He went in trembling trepidation to seek the clan elder to confess and beg forgiveness.

The clan elder was so furious he nearly fainted.

Nothing was more feared than an ant undermining an elephant, and nothing more detested than a petty person ruining a great affair.

Cui the Eighteenth could no longer be moved within the Li household. So Cui the Seventeenth was quickly given away in marriage under the name of the secondary daughter Cui the Eighteenth. As a precaution, she was married off somewhere very far away — almost to the outermost edge of Hexi. All to ensure she would never again appear in the social circles of Liangzhou.

Because of this, when Cui the Eighteenth later entered the palace as a consort, Cui’s father followed her to Yunjing. But Cui’s mother was left behind in Hexi.

Cui the Seventeenth’s marriage was deeply unsatisfactory, and her heart was filled with bitter resentment. Yet that man she had looked down upon — the rough soldier Li Shiyi — had gone on to become the King of Hexi, then the Emperor, seated on the Dragon Throne in Yunjing city.

Cui the Seventeenth’s composure completely collapsed.

She wrote letters raging at her mother, accusing her of ruining her life.

Cui’s mother spent her days weeping.

Cui the Eighteenth became pregnant for the second time while in Yunjing. Cui’s father wrote letters back to the clan to share the happy news. The clan members all sent their congratulations — addressed to Cui’s mother.

One after another, calling her “your daughter the Seventeenth” — and Cui’s mother’s composure crumbled day by day. She finally began to “speak nonsense.”

Fortunately, the clan elder had long since stationed people to keep watch over her. The moment she showed signs of it, the clan elder had her brought under control.

The clan elder wrote a letter to Cui’s father. Cui’s father agreed.

So Cui’s mother “fell ill.” The clan members went to fetch Cui the Seventeenth back to her maiden home. Once she arrived to tend to her ailing mother, Cui’s mother “died of her illness,” and the “Cui the Eighteenth” who had returned home to nurse the sick “accidentally fell into the water and drowned.”

The true Cui the Eighteenth carried with her all the hopes of the family. The remaining family members who knew the truth would never reveal it.

When Cui the Eighteenth received the news that both her stepmother and her elder legitimate sister had died, she finally felt her heart relax.

She had believed that for the rest of her life, no one would ever call her “Cui the Eighteenth” again.

Li Gu said: “Cui the Eighteenth.”

“Did your stepmother and elder sister die peacefully?” he said. “Did your heart feel at peace when you observed the year of mourning for your mother?”

He said: “I do not even know whether Cui Ying is your real name.”

If only she had truly been the real Cui the Seventeenth, how good that would have been.

She had married such a fine man.

Or perhaps if he had taken only her alone, or if he had not become Emperor but only remained the King of Hexi — in any of those cases, she would have been willing to be devoted and gentle toward him for the rest of her days.

But he had brought her to Yunjing, brought her into the imperial city.

She was his first wife. She possessed the First Imperial Prince. She stood only a single step away from the most exalted position of all.

How could she be content with less?

She had fought her way up from a minor secondary daughter all the way to this point! And the Emperor’s heart had drifted toward Deng Wan!

How hateful that Deng Wan was!

Her flaws were in truth the result of being spoiled by those who loved her — a small willfulness born from being pampered. Because she had never needed to demean herself and live under a stepmother’s thumb.

She possessed an innate confidence that came from being a legitimate daughter, along with the straightforward character of a noble family’s daughter.

But her luck had been poor — she had lost two children in succession, and she did not dare have more.

And even so, despite all of Cui the Eighteenth’s tender and careful machinations, the Emperor’s heart had still tilted toward Deng Wan!

How deeply maddening!

Tears streamed down Cui the Eighteenth’s face.

She lowered herself to the ground, her forehead touching the back of her own hand: “Your servant’s given name is Yu. Cui Yu.”

The Emperor said coldly: “You are unworthy of the character ‘Yu.’ From this day forward, you will still be called Cui Ying.”

The Emperor finished speaking and turned to leave.

Cui the Eighteenth collapsed onto the floor, the world spinning around her.

Li Gu met the cold wind and walked through the night, step by step, into Li Zhenzhen’s sleeping chambers.

Li Zhenzhen was roused by someone and sat up with a start.

Li Shiyi has come! How does he intend to deal with her?