“Ding Xu is dead?!”

Wanyan Puruо received this news that very night.

She paced back and forth anxiously in her room, feeling that the situation behind all this was rather mysterious.

At tonight’s banquet, during the interval when she went out to change clothes, it was precisely when Ding Xu passed her the message, telling her Shen Zhizhong’s conditions, that she dared to boldly quote that figure.

But not only did it fail to achieve her expected result, Ding Xu ended up dead shortly after…

These two events occurring one after the other were definitely connected. Wanyan Puruо carefully reviewed every move and gesture of everyone at the banquet, suddenly realizing—perhaps the negotiation intent was real, but the content of the negotiation was a setup.

Among the ministers Shen Zhizhong brought with him, there was someone he highly suspected. He knew the most crucial part of the negotiation lay in inducing Wanyan Puruо to quote the amount of annual tribute, and Wanyan Puruо didn’t know how much financial resources Jinling currently had—she needed an inside source to probe. Shen Zhizhong gave everyone different figures, and after Wanyan Puruо left and returned, the number she quoted was to verify who the traitor was!

That cunning old fox!

Understanding this complexity, Wanyan Puruо realized she had been thoroughly outmaneuvered, but she wasn’t frantic. Instead, she found it interesting. She wasn’t someone who acted on impulse—losing some small chips wasn’t worth fearing. The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind—what she wanted to win was a much larger game.

And every exchange with an opponent was an exhilarating learning experience.

——

Shen Zhizhong was currently at the Candlelight Bureau headquarters, listening to shadow guards report on the situation. Hearing Ding Xu’s final words before death, he broke out in a cold sweat.

This was a secret he kept sealed tight—he hadn’t even told Song Muchuan. It could be said that in all of Jinling, he was the only one who knew this. He and Xie Queshan had never corresponded, leaving no written evidence. How did Ding Xu know about this? But thinking again, anything that had existed must leave traces. For the moment, he couldn’t figure out where things had gone wrong…

While he was pondering, Xie Zhu had already arrived in a fury. Grief and anger mixed, and before he even stepped through the threshold, words came crashing down.

“Lord Shen, my nephew is actually the deepest-hidden undercover agent of the Candlelight Bureau—why did you never inform me! I wronged him all these years. How can I face him in the future!”

Xie Zhu rarely lost his composure like this. He had run so hard his official cap was askew, and only now anxiously adjusted it, unable even to observe proper etiquette.

Faced with such questioning, even someone as eloquent as Shen Zhizhong was momentarily speechless, not knowing how to respond.

Seeing him just sitting there without a word, Xie Zhu anxiously slapped the table with both hands: “My heavens, Shen Zhizhong, how can you still sit there! Tell me, what do we do now? Ding Xu knew, and Wanyan Puruо might already know too. You must find a way to rescue my Chao’en—otherwise, as his teacher, you’ll be the first to let him down!”

“Lord Xie, please calm down,” Shen Zhizhong was also anxious inside. Xie Zhu’s words made him feel both guilty and regretful. At this moment he was like a tangled mess, but he couldn’t lose his composure. He could only first calm Xie Zhu down. “Rashly rescuing him would stir up even greater waves at Li Du Mansion and might alert our enemies, making the situation completely chaotic. This matter requires long-term planning.”

These words were tantamount to acknowledging Xie Queshan’s identity.

Shen Zhizhong frowned in deep thought while Xie Zhu could only sit down and take a long breath, but still couldn’t suppress that towering emotion in his heart. He casually picked up tea from nearby to drink, nearly spitting it out from the heat—he looked truly disheveled.

Only now did Xie Zhu notice his loss of composure since entering. He composed himself and fell silent for a moment before sighing: “I once harshly scolded him… I wonder if Chao’en will hold a grudge against me.”

Shen Zhizhong had been thinking for a long while but his mind was completely empty—he couldn’t think of any countermeasures. Hearing this, his face showed a trace of regret: “The person he should resent most is me. I pushed him into the fire pit…”

Two men whose ages added up to nearly a hundred sat there sighing at each other.

“Ding Xu is dead, so there’s no way to know how he learned this information. The urgent matter now is still to watch Wanyan Puruо closely and cut off her communication with Li Du Mansion. As long as Prince Ling’an safely enters Jinling, Chao’en’s mission will be complete, and he can smoothly return to court.”

“Didn’t you send others to Li Du Mansion? Send them a message to find a way—first probe Chao’en’s situation and be sure to keep him safe.”

Song Muchuan had already temporarily cut off contact with Jinling. Both sides were actually isolated islands, which could maximize the safety of operations at Li Du Mansion.

Ding Xu was a traitor, true, but he hadn’t personally admitted to being Daman—he might not be. Since the Qi people could plant one person in Jinling, they could plant a second. Shen Zhizhong still maintained some vigilance about this and wouldn’t easily let down his guard just because of Ding Xu’s death, thinking everything was now fine.

This message—he actually couldn’t send it.

But Shen Zhizhong also couldn’t explain the situation to Xie Zhu in such detail, so he could only agree for now.

——

As long as Wanyan Puruо’s message hadn’t been sent back to Li Du Mansion, Xie Queshan remained confined on that boat for another day, awaiting judgment.

However, since Nanyi’s arrival, the three daily meals had visibly become much more sumptuous.

Zhang Yuehui obviously already knew Nanyi was on the boat, but what could he do? He could only swallow his broken teeth and serve this little ancestor.

Xie Queshan made no comment on this. He was becoming increasingly silent and taciturn. He feared that once she pried him open, he would sink irretrievably into indulgence.

Nanyi had grown accustomed to this. Every day upon waking, she would begin chattering endlessly, talking about her childhood through to growing up, rambling about everything under the sun until her mouth was parched, regardless of whether he responded.

Every word she spoke, every sentence, he heard clearly, but he played the part of someone both deaf and mute.

She wanted to save him, while he wanted to drive her away. They used the gentlest methods to secretly contest with each other, trying to reverse the other’s decision.

The river waves rose and fell clearly beneath their feet. They seemed to have drifted far with the current, yet clearly remained in the same place.

The bow faced west, and every day they could clearly see the sunset over the river.

After the magnificent splendor came darkness that devoured everything.

Xie Queshan didn’t talk much with her. After sunset, even the weary birds returned to their nests, and everything became extremely quiet and desolate.

Nanyi began to somewhat hate the arrival of night. She hated this feeling of being devoured while powerless to resist. Every day she watched the sun sink into the western mountains, she would have the illusion that the sun wouldn’t rise again the next day. Every day she stubbornly fought against this feeling.

But Xie Queshan liked the darkness.

Only when sharing the quilt in sleep could he, borrowing the dim night, silently hold her tight after she stubbornly burrowed into his embrace.

In these silent moments, he could think of nothing, pretend nothing.

“Xie Queshan, I don’t want to watch sunsets anymore. Tomorrow when we get up, can we watch the sunrise instead?” she suddenly said softly in his arms.

She was trying to change this life where she could only see dusk every day.

He pretended to be asleep and didn’t answer.

The next day, Xie Queshan was shaken awake forcibly.

He blearily glanced over to see Nanyi sprawled beside his bed, her eyes bright and sparkling as if she had seen something incredible.

“Xie Queshan, the sun is about to come out!”

Xie Queshan closed his eyes again, his response dreamlike: “So what?”

“Get up quickly, didn’t we agree to watch the sunrise!”

Xie Queshan sleepily turned over. When did they agree to that? He suddenly hazily wondered what time it was—he could barely open his eyes. There was no sundial or water clock here, so how could she precisely wake up and catch the moment of sunrise?

Could it be that she had waited all night?

Thinking of this, he became somewhat alert.

Some morning light was already filtering through the window lattice like a sheet of crystalline floating golden powder. But the boat’s stern faced east, so the sunrise couldn’t be seen from inside the room.

Xie Queshan no longer resisted and let Nanyi pull him up.

“Come quickly!”

Seeing him get up, she ran out joyfully first, afraid of missing even a moment of sunrise, her footsteps squeaking on the floorboards.

Xie Queshan was caught up in her momentum unprepared, the corners of his mouth involuntarily lifting in a faint smile.

“Do you see it? The sun is about to leap from the river surface!”

Nanyi stood by the ship’s rail, pointing at the river scenery behind them.

Xie Queshan’s footsteps stopped. Just one more step and he could walk out of the room, but the iron chains on his hands were already stretched to their limit.

One more step outward and he could see the sunrise behind them. But it was precisely this one step that he couldn’t take.

Like an ominous portent, the dawn that had just broken instantly retreated back into night. The hope in his heart was extinguished once again. He knew it—everything in this world was preventing him from taking this step. These damned chains, this damned cage, this damned sun.

He raised his eyes to look at Nanyi, his gaze pitch-black and lifeless.

The smile on Nanyi’s face also froze. She had waited all night between sleeping and waking for the sunrise, yet she alone had overlooked this one thing.

It seemed she had done something wrong.

She wanted to pull him from darkness, but forgot he needed to cross an abyss. What if… he couldn’t cross over?

They looked at each other across a doorway, one standing in light, one standing in shadow, like a prophecy, like destiny.

Nanyi suddenly thought of something, her eyes brightening again: “Wait for me!”

She quickly ran into the room, took the bronze mirror from the table that was used for grooming, then ran back to the ship’s rail.

She was like a gust of wind, whooshing past Xie Queshan and whooshing back again. By the time Xie Queshan came to his senses, the girl had already nimbly climbed onto the ship’s rail, half her body leaning outward. She held the bronze mirror high, adjusting the angle bit by bit.

A dazzling ray of morning light refracted through the bronze mirror into Xie Queshan’s eyes. He instinctively squinted, then saw half of the rising sun in the mirror.

The other half of the sun was on her face.

Xie Queshan felt inexplicably shaken.

The boat was splitting, the river flowing backward. Against everything, everything in this world, there was someone who would risk her life to bring light to his eyes.