“In response to Your Lordship’s inquiry — there were no traces of blood found beside the body or anywhere within the room.”
Upon hearing this, both Qu Ziyu and Feng Chuyue quietly breathed sighs of relief. By now, the truth had become blindingly clear; they merely waited to see how the woman would attempt to wriggle out of it.
Sure enough, the Imperial Censor fixed a heavy, searching gaze upon Wen Niang. “You stated earlier that after Wang Yikun entered the room, you remained standing guard outside the entire time — and that when Yao Niang was found dead, you were the first one to rush inside?”
Wen Niang’s eyes shifted, and then she stiffened her neck and declared with absolute certainty: “Yes! I caught Wang Yikun red-handed at the scene.”
The Deputy Chief Censor’s voice cut through the air like a blade: “If Yao Niang had lost a great deal of blood before her death, and you never gave Wang Yikun the time to clean up the scene — then why was there not so much as a single drop of blood on the floor of that room, nor on Wang Yikun’s clothing?”
Wen Niang stood there dumbfounded. She was nothing more than a common market woman, one who had spent her days scheming for profit and had never learned to read a single character — how could she be expected to understand such things?
Seeing that Wen Niang offered no reply, the Deputy Chief Censor’s fury mounted further: “It is perfectly obvious that Yao Niang had already been dead for some time, that you concealed the body inside the room, and deliberately framed Wang Yikun! The evidence is laid out right before you — and still you dare to fabricate a story? Someone, take this scheming woman into custody!”
Events turned in an instant. Wen Niang watched the yamen runners advancing on her with menacing intent, poised to bind her — and she immediately began stumbling over her words as she changed her statement: “It — it was this servant who misremembered. When this servant noticed something was wrong, the door was already wide open, and Young Master Wang was not in the room. He only returned afterward — that is when we caught him!”
What a farce. Wang Weiting had no patience left to watch any more of this woman’s wretched spectacle. Thoroughly disenchanted, he rose to his feet, murmured a few words into the ear of his attendant, and turned to leave. The attendant went to relay the message to the Imperial Censorate.
After a night of torment, Wang Yikun walked out of the Imperial Censorate’s prison feeling as though both his body and spirit had been thoroughly cleansed and renewed. Everything that met his eye seemed suddenly dear to him — the sky was a deeper shade of blue than he had ever seen, the clouds more brilliantly white, and even the roadside trees and grasses looked fresher and more tender than usual. He had no idea his father had come earlier; he glanced around, and spotting Qu Ziyu and Feng Chuyue standing before a carriage waving him over, he strode toward them eagerly. “Wen Yuan! Ji Zhou!”
The three of them, reunited, each felt as though they had lived through a lifetime since last they met.
The Palace Examination was the day after tomorrow — precisely when they needed to devote themselves entirely to their studies — yet in the middle of it all, this affair had erupted out of nowhere. The three of them reached a silent understanding: they would set the matter of the woman aside for now, return to their respective residences to rest, and settle accounts after the examination was done.
Just as they were about to board the carriage, Qu Ziyu suddenly felt something strike the hem of his blue robe. He turned to look, and only then realized that the Qingyun Temple’s carriage had drawn up alongside them at some point without his noticing.
Qu Ziyu, always quick-witted, immediately understood that his younger sister had arrived — and that she most likely did not wish his fellow examinees to know of her status as a Daoist, and had quietly drawn his attention so he would come to her on his own.
He hastily offered his apologies to Feng Chuyue and Wang Yikun, explaining that he had just recalled he needed to call upon a nearby relative and could not accompany them.
Once the Wang and Feng pair had departed, Qu Ziyu made his way to the carriage and lifted the curtain — only to discover that it was not only his sister inside, but Qing Xuzi and A’Han as well.
He quickly paid his respects to Qing Xuzi, then greeted A’Han.
“Elder Brother, has your fellow examinee been released?” Qin Yao pulled her brother down to sit beside her. The carriage was quite spacious — it could comfortably hold six or seven people.
Qu Ziyu nodded, looking somewhat weary, and recounted the events to Qin Yao and the other two.
“Why would that woman spin such a clumsy lie?” Qin Yao and Qing Xuzi and A’Han exchanged baffled looks. If one truly intended to frame another person, the scheme would at the very least require careful, meticulous preparation — every detail would need to hold up under scrutiny.
“Is it possible she herself is the killer?” Qin Yao asked.
Qu Ziyu furrowed his brow. “That has not yet been confirmed, but in all likelihood she cannot be entirely exonerated. Just now, the Deputy Chief Censor already issued an order to have her transferred to the Court of Judicial Review’s prison for thorough interrogation.”
Finished speaking, he looked at Qin Yao with a puzzled expression. “Why were you all here in the first place?”
Qing Xuzi was just about to answer when Qin Yao shot him a subtle glance and spoke first: “We were entrusted with a task — we went to a nearby residence to drive out a malevolent spirit, and happened to pass through here on the way.”
She was not sure why, but she did not want her brother to know she had been investigating the cause of Yao Niang’s death — and even less did she want him to know she had asked Prince Lan’s heir to lend his assistance.
Afraid her brother might press further, she quickly spoke again: “Elder Brother, you haven’t returned to the residence in a full day and night — Father and Mother must be beside themselves with worry. Our residence isn’t far from here; let us send you home.”
Qu Ziyu fixed his gaze on Qin Yao steadily, wanting to ask more, but with Qing Xuzi and A’Han present, he restrained himself and said no more.
Lin Xiao had finished handing off all the matters in his charge to his subordinates and was just about to leave the palace to rendezvous with Qin Yao, when an eunuch named Lu from the Emperor’s side came to relay a message: many guests from afar had arrived at Daming Palace, and His Majesty urgently invited the Young Lord to come and meet his relatives.
Guests from afar? Lin Xiao had not the slightest interest. Qin Yao was still waiting for him outside the Court of Judicial Review; all he wanted was to leave the palace as quickly as possible.
But when the Emperor summoned someone, one could not simply refuse to go. He hesitated a moment, then called one of his deputy commanders forward and whispered a few words of instruction to him.
When he arrived at Daming Palace, the hall was indeed already full of people. The Crown Prince and several other members of the imperial family were present inside as company, and the hall rang with cheerful laughter and voices — most unexpectedly of all, even the Duke of Lu Guo and his wife, together with the three Jiang brothers, had come.
He quickly exchanged a glance with Jiang Sanlang, who had only recently recovered from a serious illness, then, without pausing to take a good look at the unfamiliar faces in the hall, went forward to pay his respects to the Emperor.
The Emperor smiled with warm, genuine pleasure, and beckoned Lin Xiao forward. “Weijin, so many years have passed — come, look at these people, can you still recognize who they are?”
Only then did Lin Xiao turn to look more carefully at the people in the hall. He saw approximately twenty men and women of all ages, each one of remarkable bearing and presence, all smiling at him.
His gaze, uncertain, settled on the face of a magnificently dressed woman whose temples were already touched with frost. He stood still for a moment — then broke into a surprised, delighted expression: “Seventh Aunt!” He stepped forward in a few strides and embraced her.
The woman’s eyes reddened at once. She cradled Lin Xiao’s face in her hands and choked out: “You’ve grown so tall! You’ve become a man! And so remarkably handsome — your aunt almost didn’t recognize you!”
Lin Xiao felt as though something had lodged in his throat. He was silent a long moment, and a thousand words collapsed into one: “Your nephew has missed all of you very much.”
The woman dabbed at her tears with a handkerchief, then led Lin Xiao around to those standing behind her. “This is your Seventh Uncle-by-marriage — he has aged considerably, can you still recognize him? This is Lan’er, nearly as tall as you now. And this is Di’er — he was only five when we left Chang’an, yet look at him now, all grown up.”
Lin Xiao stepped forward to greet each one in turn: “Uncle, Elder Cousin Lan, Younger Cousin Di.”
His uncle, Xia Hongsheng, had aged greatly. Though a smile hung on his face, his expression could not entirely conceal the weight of years and sorrow — when he spoke, his shoulders seemed to bow slightly forward as though beneath a burden too heavy to bear, and even his once remarkably straight spine now showed signs of a slight stoop.
Xia Lan took strongly after his father Xia Hongsheng — both possessed the same handsome, dignified, and composed bearing.
His younger brother Xia Di, by contrast, resembled their mother more closely: his features were bright and quick, a smile always ready before he had even spoken, his manner lively and unrestrained.
Looking to the last of them, Lin Xiao found an extraordinarily lovely young woman — her bearing was delicate and refined like the scent of orchids on a gentle breeze, yet her manner was so graceful and unworldly as to immediately capture one’s attention.
Without waiting for the woman to introduce her, the exquisite beauty walked up to Lin Xiao herself and dipped into an elegant curtsy, her lips curving into a smile: “Eleventh Elder Brother.”
Lin Xiao paused briefly, then nodded with a smile: “Younger Cousin Yuan.”
The woman Lin Xiao had called “Seventh Aunt” was the seventh daughter of the Late Emperor, and also the current Emperor’s seventh sister — Princess Derong.
Derong and the Emperor were not born of the same mother; she was the daughter of Consort Yu. Consort Yu had once reigned supreme in the imperial harem and had given birth to one son and one daughter: the son was the Fourth Imperial Prince — later ennobled by the Late Emperor as Prince Yun — and the daughter was Derong.
Prince Yun’s natural gifts were exceptional, and his mother enjoyed deep imperial favor. The Late Emperor had shown him an almost unguarded degree of admiration and partiality.
Having grown up in an atmosphere of constant praise, Prince Yun inevitably developed a temperament that knew no constraints. In his speech he often spoke in a manner that suppressed his brothers, and gradually this drew upon him the hidden resentment of the other imperial princes.
Princess Derong, however, was altogether different from her elder brother. She was temperate and impartial, skilled at navigating relationships with people, and she got along with everyone among her brothers and sisters so well that virtually all of them genuinely liked her.
Later, a woman of the Zheng family married Prince Lan and became Derong’s sixth sister-in-law. The two women took to each other at once, and from then on kept up a frequent correspondence.
And so it was that as a young child, Lin Xiao often found himself seeing this warm and gentle Seventh Aunt in his own household, and his mother often brought him to call at Derong’s matrimonial home, the Duke of Wei Guo’s residence. The two families got along remarkably well.
After the Late Emperor passed away, the Third Imperial Prince — who had always been quiet and reserved — ascended the throne unexpectedly, to the shock of the entire court. Once the reins of government were firmly in his hands, the Emperor gradually began to settle scores with those he regarded as his enemies.
The first target of his purge was Prince Yun, whom he had long resented. He first manufactured a pretext — claiming that Prince Yun had failed to maintain discipline among his subordinates, and that a servant of his had injured someone — and demoted him to Prince of Second Rank. Then, not content to stop there, he had Prince Yun accused of embezzling from the imperial treasury, and had the entire household of the Prince Yun Residence rounded up and banished to the far northwest.
During the journey into exile, Prince Yun fell inexplicably ill with a strange ailment that defied every remedy, and died on the road.
When news of her brother’s death reached Derong, she wept through an entire night — grieving over her brother’s fate, and fearing that the Emperor might extend his wrath to her as well and bring punishment down upon the Duke of Wei Guo’s household.
Fortunately, the Emperor, bearing in mind that Derong had generally kept to her proper place and had always shown him due respect, merely had her husband — the heir of the Duke of Wei Guo, Xia Hongsheng — reassigned far away to Shu, serving as regional governor, and ordered the entire family to relocate from Chang’an, forbidden to return to the capital without imperial summons.
Though it was effectively banishment, the lives of the whole family were at least spared. Derong dared not wish for anything more. That very night she packed up their belongings alongside her husband, gathered up the children, and set off for Shu to take up his post.
They were gone for eleven years.
A few days prior, while the Emperor was discussing with several court ministers the matter of reopening the Yunyin Academy, he happened to glance at a list of the academy’s former students and noticed Derong’s name among them. He was suddenly struck by the realization that she had been gone from Chang’an all this time.
He was now middle-aged, and had grown considerably calmer and more magnanimous; things that had once preoccupied him now struck him as hardly worth a second thought. That very night he issued a decree restoring Xia Hongsheng’s ducal title and summoning Derong’s family back to Chang’an.
The years had left clear marks on Derong and her household. She was far removed from the youthful radiance Lin Xiao remembered; Xia Hongsheng was no longer the refined and handsome young nobleman he had once been; and even the three Xia siblings, with whom he had played as a child, were all quite different from how he remembered them.
After exchanging greetings with Xia Yuan, the three siblings gathered around Lin Xiao and began chatting with the ease of people picking up where they had left off.
Seeing that the children felt not the least bit of awkwardness with one another, Derong was greatly reassured. She took Lin Xiao’s hands in hers and studied him carefully from head to toe, turning him this way and that.
Lost in her reflections, she was suddenly interrupted by a palace attendant outside announcing that Prince Lan and his wife had arrived.
Derong quickly raised her head to look, and saw her Sixth Elder Brother entering the hall arm in arm with a young woman. The woman was no more than seventeen or eighteen years old; she held a plump, fair-skinned baby in her arms and walked serenely at Prince Lan’s side.
Derong reflected inwardly: so this must be the princess consort Sixth Elder Brother took after his remarriage. She was reasonably attractive, and her bearing was acceptable — yet there was a slight lack of composure and breadth of spirit in her gaze; she fell far short of Weijin’s mother.
At the thought of that departed soul, Derong felt a shadow fall across her heart. She suppressed a quiet sigh and, forcing a smile, stepped forward: “Sixth Elder Brother.”
“Derong!” Prince Lan was enormously moved. He stepped forward in a few strides and pulled his sister into an embrace, his eyes reddening as he looked her over carefully from head to foot. After a long moment, he turned and clapped Xia Hongsheng heavily and wordlessly on the shoulder, the glimmer of tears faintly visible at the corners of his eyes.
Everything was understood without being said. In the presence of their imperial elder brother, all the sighs and emotion that could not be spoken ultimately dissolved into one long, quiet breath.
Cui Shi had taken some offense at Derong’s pointed neglect of her a moment before, but in front of so many eyes, she dared not let it show. She merely cast her gaze mildly downward, concealing the flicker of contempt in her eyes.
This scene did not escape Lin Xiao. The cold light in his eyes deepened further. The last time, over the affair of Zhu Qi’er, his father Prince Lan had erupted in fury at the residence — not only sending a harshly worded letter to reproach Cui Yuanguang, but also moving to confine Cui Shi to her quarters and forbid her from continuing to supervise the upbringing of Lin Min.
Cui Yuanguang had rushed overnight from Youzhou to Chang’an and begged forgiveness at great length, insisting that both he and his sister had been foolish, that they had misjudged a person’s character and had nearly brought about a catastrophe — swearing that nothing of the kind would ever happen again, and beseeching Prince Lan, for Min’s young sake, to spare Cui Shi this once.
Though Prince Lan was generally soft-hearted, this time he was resolute in his determination to punish Cui Shi. No matter how fervently Cui Yuanguang pleaded, or how much Min cried and made a scene, he still had Cui Shi confined to the North Garden, and summoned from the palace an experienced and capable Nanny to take charge of Lin Min’s upbringing.
Today, with his aunt’s family returning to Chang’an, Prince Lan had most likely released Cui Shi out of consideration for appearances — bringing her into the palace along with him.
Cui Shi noticed Lin Xiao watching her and quickly looked away, going through the motions of soothing Min in her arms with an air of unconcern. Before long, Min reached his arms out from Cui Shi’s embrace toward Prince Lan and called out in his garbled speech “Father,” upon which Prince Lan remembered Cui Shi and Min and promptly took Min from her arms, leading them forward to greet Derong and the others.
Observing the warm and harmonious scene in the hall, the Emperor was in high spirits. He remarked that it was rare to have everyone gathered together like this, and proposed that that evening a banquet be held at Taiye Pond to welcome Derong’s family back.
Everyone assented with great pleasure.
Lin Xiao quickly glanced at the sky outside the hall and felt a flash of conflict. Seventh Aunt’s family had only just returned to Chang’an after all these years — this was precisely the moment for a proper reunion, and to slip away without a word would truly be inexcusable.
But Qin Yao was still waiting outside the Court of Judicial Review. The arrangements on that side had already been made; if he broke the appointment for no reason, he could not be certain she would not come to regard him as a man of no integrity.
He was still weighing his options when Xia Di grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the exit: “Eleventh Brother, everyone’s headed to Taiye Pond — let’s go.”
Xia Yuan smiled at Lin Xiao with dancing eyes: “Eleventh Elder Brother, I don’t know what you were thinking about just now — the Crown Prince called your name several times and you didn’t hear a thing.”
Lin Xiao looked up, and sure enough, there was the Crown Prince smiling and shaking his head as he walked past. At his side was the utterly fearless Princess Kangping.
Kangping turned back to pull a face at Lin Xiao and blurted out without a moment’s restraint: “Eleventh Elder Brother has someone he fancies now — we brothers and sisters don’t register with him anymore!” And with that, she darted out of the hall.
At these words, Prince Lan and the others all stopped in astonishment and turned to look at Lin Xiao. The Emperor laughed in surprise: “Oh? Weijin — is what Kangping says true? You have someone you fancy? Which family’s young lady might it be?”
Lin Xiao was inwardly furious, but it would not do to show it. He arranged his expression into one of bewilderment even greater than everyone else’s, and said: “Kangping is talking nonsense again. When did I come to have someone I fancy? How is it that I myself don’t know?”
Seeing that he was perfectly composed with nothing to hide, everyone laughed again after a brief silence — none more so than Derong, who quite visibly relaxed: “Good, good — that’s good. But if you truly do take a fancy to some young lady outside, you must not keep it from your aunt!”
Lin Xiao laughed and readily agreed.
Everyone moved out of the hall in lively fashion, and no one noticed that Cui Shi’s complexion, which had gone deathly pale a moment before, had now visibly eased.