Once Qin Yuan had settled herself, the carriage set off. After traveling some distance, the towering palace walls gradually fell behind, and the carriage made its way toward the bustling streets of Chang’an.

Having circled most of the way around the city, Qin Yuan lifted the curtain to look outside and made out, faintly, Shuangyan Alley, where the Marquis of Jinghai’s residence stood. Knowing she was nearly home, her heart settled a little.

The cold wind rushed into the carriage as she lifted the curtain, setting off another fit of coughing. The maid beside her hurried to rub her back and held a small medicine vial under her nose for her to inhale.

The scent from the vial was faint but carried a pungent sharpness. Under ordinary circumstances she would surely have found it unbearable, but it strangely suited her present condition. After inhaling it for a while, the cool sensation shot straight up through her nasal passage, and in no time her coughing eased considerably.

She took the vial and turned it idly in her hand, thinking to herself without much concern that she had long heard Yu Ruoshui’s medical skill ran deep and his reputation spread far and wide — and now, seeing this, the reputation was indeed well deserved. From now on, letting him treat her, she could reluctantly set aside a measure of her guard.

By the time they reached the residence gate, the old servants of the Marquis of Jinghai’s household had already lined up in formation, waiting silently at the entrance, holding their breath. Many of the older women, not having seen their young mistress in so long, had reddened eyes.

Once inside, Qin Yuan could not help walking slowly, looking around as she went. Seeing that everything in the residence remained unchanged, kept exactly as it had been, she found it deeply familiar and turned back with satisfaction to say to the head steward, “You’ve worked hard these past months.”

The head steward, his voice catching in his throat, repeatedly protested that he had only done his duty.

Once in the inner courtyard, Qin Yuan did not hurry to her own chambers, going first instead to the main hall.

The furnishings in the main hall were exactly as they had been when she left — or to put it more precisely, ever since her mother’s death, her father had preserved everything in the room with near-obsessive care, unchanged for a full fourteen years.

She walked up to the dressing table and ran her hand over the mirror, testing for dust that did not exist. She glanced once at the face in the mirror, said to resemble her mother’s closely, then turned away listlessly and went to the window, where she idly handled a pair of glazed vases shaped with rounded shoulders.

Only after she had looked over every corner of the room did she take the three sticks of incense a servant handed to her and kneel before the pair of memorial tablets enshrined in the main room, holding the incense in silence as she gazed at the tablets.

After a long while, she slowly bent forward and bowed her head heavily to the floor.

That evening, after bathing and taking her medicine, Qin Yuan lay down in bed.

While in the palace, there had always been too much to plan and scheme over — three nights out of every ten she could not sleep at all. Now that she was home, she could finally lower her guard and rest properly for a night.

She closed her eyes, and just as drowsiness was beginning to gather, she suddenly remembered the scene that morning at the palace gate, running into Qu Qin Yao. Uneasy, she opened her eyes again. That woman’s words this morning had been strange — could she already have discovered something?

Bandits? Why would brigands suddenly appear in Chang’an for no reason? Had she just been putting on a show, or did she mean something specific by it?

After thinking it over, she glanced once toward the window and slowly let her guard down. There were men posted outside the residence sent by the Crown Prince — whether the matter of bandits was true or not, fearing the authority of the imperial family, surely no one would dare bring trouble to the doorstep of the Marquis of Jinghai’s residence.

With this thought, she turned over at ease, a faint smile on her lips, and closed her eyes once more.

Perhaps because it had been so long since she had slept at home, once she drifted off she sank into a very deep sleep, so deep she never even heard when the clash of weapons began outside.

In a daze, she was shaken violently awake. “Miss, Miss! Wake up quickly! Bandits have broken into the residence!”

It was the voice of her maid Lü Yun.

Bandits? With her eyes still closed, she let out a soft sigh — so it really was true that what one thinks of by day, one dreams of by night. She had only thought about it briefly before falling asleep, and now she had actually dreamed of bandits.

But Lü Yun’s voice grew more and more urgent, carrying a note of life-and-death intensity, right there at her ear, unmistakably real.

With a jolt of alarm she snapped her eyes open and saw a crowd of servant women gathered before her bed, every face wearing an expression of panic unlike anything before. Seeing her awake, they said in trembling voices, “Miss! Bandits have truly come from outside. Miss, don’t delay — flee for your life at once.”

What was happening? Had bandits really broken in?

Qin Yuan was stunned for an instant, then quickly threw off the covers and got out of bed, letting the servants fumble to drape a cloak over her as she did her best to stay calm and look toward the window.

Sure enough, she could faintly make out an unusual brightness in the sky over the front courtyard, clearly the glow of many lit torches and lamps, and the fierce sounds of fighting and clashing weapons left no room for doubt.

“Miss! Don’t waste any more time!” The door suddenly burst open, and a maid scrambled up using both hands and feet, crying out, “The bandits have already fought their way into the inner courtyard! They’ll be heading straight for our courtyard very soon!”

Qin Yuan’s face went pale. She demanded sharply, “Where are the guards? Where are the men the Crown Prince sent?”

Surely they couldn’t be unable to hold off a mere handful of bandits!

“I don’t know!” the maid wailed, shaking her head desperately. “I only heard there are huge numbers of bandits — more than half the household’s guards have been cut down, and even Steward Chen has already died under their blades. They’re simply no match for them.”

Qin Yuan clenched her teeth fiercely. She had known there was something wrong with these bandits! No — these probably weren’t bandits at all. This had to be someone come seeking revenge.

She delayed no further, wrapping her fur robe tightly around herself, and hurried out at a quick pace.

As she reached the courtyard, Qin Yuan turned back and said with apparent concern to her frightened, scattered maids, “Let’s just go out through the back gate. Since those bandits broke in through the front, they’re unlikely to have sent anyone to guard the back so soon.”

Before she had even finished speaking, a thunderous crash sounded from beyond the courtyard, as if some heavy object had toppled over, and the sounds of fighting were already drawing close.

The maids were so terrified they scattered out of their wits, pouring out through the courtyard gate, racing each other toward the back gate of the residence.

In the chaos, no one paid Qin Yuan any mind.

Qin Yuan moved a few steps with the crowd, then, taking advantage of the confusion, turned and hurried back into the courtyard, pushed open the door of a side room normally used for storing odds and ends, slipped inside, and immediately turned to shut the door behind her.

Several floor-to-ceiling cabinets stood against the walls inside. She walked up to one of them, opened its door, and reached inside to feel around. A moment later came the sound of something heavy shifting, and a hidden passage opened up before her.

She stepped inside and closed the cabinet door behind her. After walking along the hidden passage for a while, a door appeared again in the wall. She pushed it open and stepped out into a derelict, overgrown house.

This was precisely the house, abandoned for a hundred years, standing beside the Marquis of Jinghai’s residence. She straightened her skirts, stood in the overgrown garden, and listened for a moment — the fighting nearby was still fierce. She hesitated over whether to keep hiding in the derelict house or to use this chance to escape Shuangyan Alley altogether.

Suddenly she heard the voices of several men drawing nearer. “I heard the young lady of the household has already fled. A pampered, delicate young miss like her can’t have gotten far even if she did escape the residence. Let’s search around here a bit more — who knows, she might be hiding somewhere close by.”

“Hey, Brother, isn’t there a house right here? Could the young lady be hiding inside? Come on, let’s search it!”

Qin Yuan’s face turned extremely grim. Looking up, she spotted an old tree not far off. Her gaze fixed on it, and she dashed to the base of the tree as fast as she could, felt around on the ground, opened a hidden door, and descended into a tunnel.

This tunnel was known only to her and her father. She had walked back and forth through it countless times before, and could even tell, with her eyes closed and without any light, exactly where it narrowed and where it turned.

After walking for a long while, she reached the end of the tunnel, stopped, and felt along the wall for the steps. She climbed up them carefully and quietly, knowing that overhead was a very well-hidden but very light trapdoor that only needed a gentle push to let her out of the tunnel.

Reaching the top of the steps, she expertly pushed open the hidden panel. Before her lay only darkness, and the air carried the particular scent of old lacquered wood found in an abandoned temple.

Completely reassured now, she climbed carefully out of the tunnel. Just as she was about to stand up, the sound of footsteps suddenly reached her, and light abruptly flared up inside the temple.

Every hair on her body stood on end. She watched, helpless, as the figure across from her stepped out of the darkness into the light — he looked exactly as cold and handsome as the first time she had ever seen him, but there was not the faintest trace of a smile on his face now. He looked at her and said, “So it really is you.”

She stared coldly at Lin Xiao. But beside him another figure now approached, paying her no mind at all, walking straight to crouch by the entrance of the tunnel. Looking at the light wooden panel, that person rubbed her chin thoughtfully and said, “To think, this very board once left me utterly baffled. Not wanting to wrong an innocent person, I refused for so long to suspect you. Now I’ve finally worked it all out.”

Qin Yuan gave Qin Yao a venomous look and sneered coldly. “So what if it’s me? Even if I know about this tunnel, what proof do you have that I’ve ever harmed anyone?”

Those women of Pingkang Ward — low and filthy as the mud underfoot, with not the slightest worth even while alive. Looking back on it even now, she felt no twinge of conscience at all.

As she said this, her face turned vicious and cruel, utterly unlike the timid, delicate beauty she usually presented — like two entirely different people.

Unfortunately, with her attention fixed entirely on Lin Xiao and Qin Yao, she had failed to notice that someone was hiding behind the tattered curtains in the hall — a figure dressed in bright imperial yellow, the robe faintly showing the five-clawed dragon embroidery specially reserved for the Crown Prince of this dynasty. Hearing Qin Yuan’s words, his fists, hanging at his sides, clenched tight without his realizing it.