However, at present, a severe problem lay before Wanyan Puruо.

She couldn’t personally return to Li Du Mansion to handle the Xie Queshan matter—she had to stay in Jinling City, using her current advantage to extract greater benefits from the Yu Dynasty court.

She also couldn’t act rashly. She had to remain calm and pretend to know nothing. Otherwise, her deepest-planted chess piece might be exposed.

The game played out in minute details, and the scales of victory could tip at any moment because of a single piece of intelligence.

So she could only send word to Wanyan Jun to handle this matter.

Though Wanyan Puruо’s position was strong enough, Jinling was ultimately someone else’s territory, and her actions were inevitably constrained. Now Shen Zhizhong had even sealed off her information channels completely, keeping her Black Raven Battalion shadow guards all under surveillance. This intelligence—who should carry it back to Li Du Mansion?

Wanyan Puruо thought of Guilai Hall. Over these years, she had participated in Guilai Hall’s business and knew they had trading houses in Jinling too.

Only now, she somewhat distrusted Zhang Yuehui.

It wasn’t any specific suspicions, more of an instinct.

This instinct had also appeared when she looked at Xie Queshan.

In Great Qi, they were all strangers in foreign lands, their cold, selfish facades coming naturally. But returning to Yu Dynasty territory, Wanyan Puruо vaguely sensed they were merely wanderers hesitating to go home.

The Han people have a saying: “The heart is separated by the belly.” Who knows in what moment a person might change? Or perhaps they had never changed—they simply had never removed their true faces.

Previously, she had left Xie Queshan’s matter to Zhang Yuehui because she knew that in such open affairs, Zhang Yuehui wouldn’t dare make mistakes or defy her. But in those shadowy matters, any sleight of hand would be impossible to verify.

But aside from Guilai Hall, in this unfamiliar Jinling, who else could she use?

Wanyan Puruо hesitated somewhat. Actually, in the past, she and Zhang Yuehui could be counted as partners fighting side by side.

She closed her eyes in contemplation, and various scenes involving him flashed frame by frame through her mind.

Zhang Yuehui had built his fortune on money lending and gambling houses.

One hand lent money at interest, the other let people lose it all back in gambling dens. Money in, money out—the cash stayed in his pocket while he earned pure profit.

But not just anyone could do this kind of shady business. This trade dealt daily with ruffians and desperados—you had to be more ruthless, more heartless, with harder methods than these people to control the situation.

Who would have thought the boss behind it all was a smiling, fair-faced scholar?

The gambling houses he opened, along with the accompanying wine towers for entertainment, brought the Han people’s intoxicating lifestyle into Great Qi’s royal capital. For a time, the mysterious Guilai Hall gained great fame.

Wanyan Puruо set her sights on this enterprise.

At that time, Great Qi’s treasury was empty from southern and northern campaigns, and she was trying every means to raise money for her royal brother. She quickly understood how gambling houses operated and their profits, deeply believing this was an excellent way to secretly extract money from those nobles and ministers’ pockets.

She was no benevolent ruler—she wanted to devour this Han man’s business.

That meant setting a trap for him.

Soon the gambling house had a death, and the authorities came to investigate and confiscate. Zhang Yuehui finally appeared.

This was Wanyan Puruо’s first time seeing Guilai Hall’s owner. She sat in the wine tower across the street, not showing herself, merely observing the gambling house from afar.

With such a serious incident, this man still seemed as languid as if just awakened, casually throwing on an outer robe, walking through the gambling house’s chaos to sit at the largest gambling table, propping up his long legs with an air unique to him alone.

He chuckled and said lazily: “Ha, you just want my gambling house but made such a big show of it—really overestimating me, Zhang.”

He beckoned to the lead official: “Sir, care to gamble a round with me?”

This official was Wanyan Puruо’s subordinate, here today to do her bidding. He had thought that under such circumstances, Guilai Hall’s owner should be bowing and scraping, humbly begging for mercy. He hadn’t expected him to still have the mood to suggest gambling.

Without waiting for agreement, Zhang Yuehui casually took a dice box and shook it up and down. No one around dared speak, and it suddenly grew quiet, leaving only the crisp sound of dice rattling in the box.

Slap—the dice box slammed onto the table like a challenge.

Even Wanyan Puruо, sitting across the street, felt as if she could hear that sound.

Seeing the other party didn’t take the bait, Zhang Yuehui said calmly: “Seems the official finds this boring. Fine, I’ll raise the stakes—let’s play something exciting.”

“You scoundrel still want to stall for time! Confess your crimes quickly!” The official only wanted to finish the job safely and steadily, not be led around by the nose. He quickly raised his voice in loud rebuke.

“My stake is the entire Guilai Hall—if you win, it’s all yours. If you lose, it all returns to me.”

“What?” The official suspected he’d heard wrong.

They had investigated beforehand—Guilai Hall wasn’t just this one gambling house and wine tower. Visible and hidden assets combined made it a considerable enterprise. But their target today was merely this one gambling house. In the very worst case, he would lose one gambling house today, yet he was voluntarily raising the stakes even higher—what was his game?

Zhang Yuehui raised an eyebrow, indicating he hadn’t misheard, too lazy to repeat himself.

“Why do you want to gamble this round?” The official couldn’t figure it out, looking completely confused.

Zhang Yuehui smiled and looked up, his gaze directed toward the wine tower across the street.

Though Wanyan Puruо sat behind a screen, she felt Zhang Yuehui had seen her.

“But I want the noble person behind you to gamble with me.”

Hearing Zhang Yuehui’s wild words, the officials immediately drew their swords. Zhang Yuehui’s men fearlessly protected him, instantly creating a tense standoff.

Just then, the crowd outside stirred, and a woman in red entered. Wanyan Puruо came alone in ordinary dress. Upon entering, she shook dust from her cloak, the bells on her wrist chiming, revealing some brightness and ostentation.

Zhang Yuehui lowered his legs and rose leisurely: “Bring a seat for Her Highness the Princess.”

Wanyan Puruо paused. They had clearly never met, yet he could accurately call her title. This person’s perception was terrifyingly sharp.

This piqued Wanyan Puruо’s interest—she liked clever people.

She calmly sat at the gambling table, her gaze sizing him up completely. She always felt this person was going to cheat—with just big or small, fifty-fifty odds, he had no guarantee of victory. How could he not be nervous at all?

He couldn’t possibly cheat in front of her unless he didn’t want to live.

More and more people gathered outside. Guards surrounded the gambling house tightly, doors and windows were closed, and outside light leaked through wooden gaps, cut into narrow strips like a cage made of light with the two of them inside.

“Your Highness, do you bet big or small?”

Lost in thought, Zhang Yuehui’s words interrupted Wanyan Puruо’s musings.

Despite gambling such enormous stakes, he wasn’t panicked at all, moving unhurriedly as if playing.

This was truly an irresistible puzzle. Wanyan Puruо was even willing to indulge—she desperately wanted to know what medicine this person was selling.

“Bet big.”

“You open it.”

Zhang Yuehui handed the initiative to Wanyan Puruо.

But Wanyan Puruо’s movement stopped—she felt she was actually somewhat passive now. Yet no matter how she thought about it, Zhang Yuehui couldn’t gain any advantage from this gamble. She couldn’t grasp any clues, as if cornered in a dilemma, making her unwilling to face the result immediately.

She hadn’t felt such intense conflict in a long time, so she inexplicably spoke.

“Boss Zhang really wants to gamble so big? Can you bear the consequences of losing?”

“If I win, having gambled with the Princess—wouldn’t that bring infinite glory to my gambling house? If I lose, it’s just starting over. In Guilai Hall, the most important thing is me, not these properties.”

Such arrogance.

Wanyan Puruо immediately understood—this was a submission. Zhang Yuehui had drawn her curiosity, drawn her questions, just to tell her that one gambling house, even the entire Guilai Hall, wasn’t remarkable—he was the most valuable money tree.

He wasn’t gambling Guilai Hall, but her favor.

This subtle flattery made Wanyan Puruо somewhat pleased—much more comfortable than those sycophants’ monotonous rhetoric.

Doing business in Great Qi, he needed backing. She wanted to accumulate wealth and needed talent. If they cooperated, they could each get what they needed and achieve mutual success.

Wanyan Puruо directly grasped the dice from the box and walked toward Zhang Yuehui.

She supported herself against his chair back with one hand, slightly leaning over to look down at him. What should have been an emotionless appraisal gained some inexplicable intimate ambiguity at such close distance.

Her voice carried a slight lilt: “Gambling harms the body. I want to change the game.”

“Entirely at Your Highness’s command.”

“What you want, I’ll give you. Henceforth, for all your business, I want forty percent of the profits.”

Wanyan Puruо opened her hand—the dice had already turned to powder in her palm, scattering over Zhang Yuehui’s robes.

Light took concrete form in the dust.

Through the dancing light, Zhang Yuehui asked with a smile: “Your Highness knows what I want?”

She directly countered: “What do you want?”

Zhang Yuehui’s gaze lifted toward the lead official: “This person won’t do—too crude, making such a mess of my place.”

Wanyan Puruо looked back at her subordinate and crisply uttered one word: “Scram.”

From then on, Wanyan Puruо became another behind-the-scenes owner of Guilai Hall.

Her ambitions were vast—not merely for supreme power, but to establish a new dynastic order for Great Qi. She enjoyed standing shoulder to shoulder with men in court, enjoyed being an ambitious schemer, the thrill of confronting the world’s sharp edges.

And she knew Zhang Yuehui made money not from greed for profit, but to watch people go mad before gambling tables both real and illusory.

He wanted to be a different kind of ant.

Very occasionally, she actually found him pitiful. A homeless person—in this world, he believed only money wouldn’t betray him.

Therefore she also knew he had never truly trusted her.

Neither had she.

This man had made himself into an anomaly, but she still admired him greatly. He was like his gambling house—clearly dangerous and harmful, yet the possibility of winning was attractive enough.

Over these years, she had indeed tasted the sweetness of cooperation with him. Not just the wealth he brought her, but that perpetually untamable, elusive quality about him that constantly spurred her to climb higher.

That subtle desire to conquer.

At this moment, she actually already had a leaning answer.

She still had to use Zhang Yuehui.

The gamble between them had truly begun only after that dice turned to powder, lasting through long years with the answer still unrevealed.

She had invested too much to withdraw now. She knew there was a possibility of losing, but thought only of taking the risk for a huge win. At this moment she was like a red-eyed gambler, telling herself this was the last time—regardless of success or failure, she would quit after this.

So she gritted her teeth and pushed in all her chips.