“Come in.” A familiar voice came from inside — a voice like an ice hammer, striking heavily against Qian Lan’s heart.

Qian Lan took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

The kerosene lamp cast a faint, dim light. Shi Guang sat beside the table, his face rendered even more gloomy and sinister by the flickering darkness.

Qian Lan walked over and said nothing. Shi Guang fixed her with a dangerous, brooding stare — a gaze that seemed as though it could pin her to the spot.

“Didn’t you say you were one hundred percent certain?” Shi Guang said in a low, ominous tone. “Qian Lan, don’t think about playing tricks on me.”

“You saw the documents with your own eyes. The Commander also made a promise to me. Things turning out like this — I came here wanting to ask you the very same question, and yet here you are, turning your suspicions on me instead.”

“Am I not allowed to question you?” Shi Guang suddenly stood and took two strides toward Qian Lan. She was forced to step back, but he slammed her against the wall with one hand.

Shi Guang’s five fingers closed around her throat, the veins on the back of his hand bulging. In his eyes, endless flames burned without mercy.

“Shi Guang, you’ve lost your mind — let go — cough, cough.” Qian Lan could barely breathe, and the look she gave him was filled with both shock and fear. “Everything I was supposed to do, I did. Now that something has gone wrong, instead of examining your own part in this, why are you coming after me?”

“You said the Commander had become completely obedient to your every word — so what exactly is going on here?” Shi Guang increased the pressure of his grip until Qian Lan could barely breathe or speak.

Only when her complexion grew increasingly terrible did Shi Guang gradually loosen his hand.

“You’ve gone mad.” Qian Lan glared at him furiously and bent over, coughing continuously.

When her breathing was finally clear again, she snapped: “The medicine was given to me by you. The supposed effects were described by you. I simply followed through on your plan — how does the blame end up falling on me?”

“Don’t think I don’t know what your real objective is. You want to destroy the Shi Family — and take me down with it.”

Qian Lan stared at him, red threads spreading through her eyes. “Shi Guang, what do you mean by that?”

“Qian Lan, we were each using the other for our own ends, and yet you’ve developed thoughts you shouldn’t have.”

“Ha — and what about you?” Qian Lan shot back without hesitation. “Aren’t you exactly the same? I’d wager that deep down, you’ve long planned to kill me once things were settled.”

Shi Guang said nothing, his eyes narrowing dangerously.

“Shi Guang, the Commander still listens to me right now. If you kill me, you’ll truly have no way to reclaim the position of Young Commander. You’ll have to stand there and watch Shi Ting parade his authority in front of your eyes, and watch everything that was once yours vanish into smoke…”

“Enough.” Shi Guang cut her off with fury.

Qian Lan sighed. “Shi Guang, shouldn’t we be standing united right now? What good does it do to blame me? Everything seemed to be well within our grasp, and then something changed out of nowhere — not just you, but I’m also completely at a loss for the reason.”

After hearing Qian Lan’s words, Shi Guang’s mind raced rapidly and he gradually calmed down.

“Isn’t it dangerous, meeting like this?” Qian Lan asked warily. “I’ve already sent someone to notify the Commander to return earlier.”

“The Commander and Shi Ting are both at Jiuyan Tower. I have someone watching them,” Shi Guang said. “They won’t be back.”

“What do we do next?” Qian Lan said. “Shi Ting has been appointed Young Commander. From now on, he’ll rank above you. Trying to seize that position back won’t be so easy.”

“Right now, the problem isn’t seizing back the position — it’s understanding why things turned out this way.” Shi Guang said anxiously. “Are you certain the Commander has shown no signs of anything unusual these past few days?”

“None.” Qian Lan said with certainty. “Everything I told him, he obeyed without question. I said Er Yitai had an affair with the steward and wanted to send Er Yitai to Mo Cheng — he didn’t even investigate, just nodded and agreed. Whatever I said went; he never contradicted me in the slightest.”

“There’s still that Dr. Zhang treating him.”

“Dr. Zhang comes every day to give him acupuncture. At first it was one week, and when there was no improvement, another week was added. Do you think Dr. Zhang is the problem?” Qian Lan thought for a moment. “Whenever Dr. Zhang performs acupuncture, I always have someone standing by to watch. Nothing unusual was ever discovered.”

“Then where does the problem lie?” Shi Guang said, baffled. “Why did the Commander suddenly change his decision? Was it Shi Ting? But what could he possibly do to make the Commander — who was hanging on your every word — change his mind?”

“What do we do now?”

“Tonight when you see the Commander, ask him directly. Find out what he’s thinking. If he truly is as wholly dependent on and obedient to you as before, he’ll surely change his decision again.”

“I suppose that’s all we can do.”

Shi Guang rose to his feet. “Observe first, then decide. Until we’ve found the reason, we can’t act rashly.”

“Mm.” Qian Lan nodded in agreement. “Meeting me like this is too dangerous. Next time, it’s better to go out somewhere.”

A thought suddenly struck her. “Was it you who killed Yin Minghui?”

“You were careless yourself — when you went out, you were spotted by this Yin Minghui. She followed you all the way to Chang’an Street and saw you appear inside that shop. What’s more, she very likely overheard part of your conversation. So this woman absolutely could not be allowed to live. Only the dead can keep a secret.”

“Was it really you?” Qian Lan’s eyes went wide.

Shi Guang said: “I hope there won’t be another time that you need me to clean up your messes. The enemies we face don’t allow us even the slightest carelessness. And — stop making that expression, as if you’ve seen a ghost. Qian Lan, you’ve always known perfectly well how many people I’ve killed for you. And not only known — you tacitly permitted it, didn’t you?”

Qian Lan’s face instantly returned to cold composure. “You’re right. Only the dead can keep a secret.”

She glanced at her watch. “I’ll head back now. The Commander will be home soon.”

Shi Guang gave a nod.

Qian Lan walked quickly to the doorway. When she pushed the door open, she saw a figure standing in the courtyard. The winter moonlight fell upon him, as if it had cast a layer of cold silver over his form.

At the sight of this person, Qian Lan instinctively covered her mouth and stumbled back two full steps.

Shi Guang noticed her reaction and hurried over in alarm. The moment his gaze fell on the same spot as Qian Lan’s, a boundless chill swept through him from head to toe — as though a basin of ice water had drenched him inside and out.

The person standing there was none other than the Commander himself — the very man they had just been speaking of.

The Commander still wore the clothes he had put on for the banquet. He stood there gazing up at the moon in the sky, as if he had been standing there for a very long time.

It was only after Qian Lan opened the door that he turned his gaze toward them. His eyes remained soft, but every trace of warmth had already drained out of them.

“Com — Commander?” Qian Lan was profoundly startled. It took her quite a while to collect herself. “Why are you here?”

The Commander said gently: “I came to walk Lan’er home. It’s so cold out — what would I do if Lan’er caught a chill?”

Qian Lan could feel that the Commander’s tone was still the same as ever, but underneath the words lay an emotionless, icy chill.

She couldn’t suppress a shudder.

“Ah, Weizhi is here too.” The Commander walked over, appearing not the least bit surprised. “Your relationship with your stepmother really is quite remarkable. It’s a good thing I know there’s nothing between you two, or I might wonder what you’re both doing out here alone in the dead of night. I might almost think you were having a secret tryst.”

At these words, Shi Guang was already scared out of his wits. Almost without thinking, he dropped to his knees, pressing his face to the ground, his body trembling.

“Commander, the Madam and I were merely — merely discussing some matters. There was nothing improper. I ask the Commander to see clearly.”

The Commander walked over without expression and came to a stop before the two of them.

He looked down at Shi Guang kneeling on the ground and at the dumbstruck Qian Lan.

“Commander.” Qian Lan rushed forward. “Commander, I was only talking things over with Weizhi. Please don’t read too much into it, all right?”

Under ordinary circumstances, the Commander would have believed her without a moment’s hesitation. But tonight, he seemed wholly unmoved.

Undeterred, Qian Lan continued: “Commander, I have a bit of a headache. Let’s go home.”

She reached out and took the Commander’s hand. The Commander let her grip it — and for one brief moment, Qian Lan felt a surge of joy, thinking this was still the same Commander she had always known. Then pain shot through her wrist, and she couldn’t help but cry out in shock.

In a single instant, the Commander had snapped her wrist with brute force.

Qian Lan nearly fainted from the pain, a shrill scream tearing from her lips. This was the Commander who, ordinarily, would have agonized over her being bitten by a mosquito — yet now he had personally broken her hand.

“So Lan’er can feel pain after all,” the Commander said, still holding her wrist, his eyes utterly without warmth. “I had almost thought you had no heart, that you couldn’t feel pain.”

As he spoke, he pressed down hard on her injured wrist several more times.

Qian Lan wept from the pain, her body instantly drenched in cold sweat. The gaze she fixed on the Commander was full of desperate pleading.

“Commander…”

“Heh.” The Commander gave a cold laugh. “At my age, to be jointly betrayed by the wife who shared my bed and my own son — I suppose I haven’t lived these years for nothing.”

Qian Lan stared at him in astonishment, shaking her head in disbelief. “Commander, you — you’ve recovered? No. This is impossible.”

Shi Guang remained kneeling on the ground. The moment the Commander snapped Qian Lan’s wrist without the slightest hesitation, he knew that Qian Lan had become — in the Commander’s eyes — a discarded woman, one who could be dealt with at will.

And because Qian Lan had betrayed the Commander, it was something he could never forgive.

Kneeling there, Shi Guang felt a chill settle over him like floodwaters — worse than the icy shock he had felt when he learned Shi Ting had been named Young Commander.

Aside from kneeling in silence, he could not find a single word to say.

Because at this moment, whatever was said would be superfluous — a pale and powerless defense. All he could do was remain there and think carefully about the full sequence of events, to figure out where things had gone wrong.

Only by understanding that could he save himself.

But where the problem lay, he did not know. He could not figure it out.

The Commander smiled and looked at Qian Lan. “Lan’er, what did you just say? Something about me recovering? Has my cold not already been cured?”

Qian Lan stared at him, her expression extraordinarily vivid.

At that moment, the courtyard was suddenly ablaze with light, and the clear sound of footsteps filled the air.