Yu’an had no wind. Whatever wind reached this place softened and gentled, dissolving into sighs, fading away into the rain and mist.

Without wind, there was nothing to drive away those clouds heavy with wrung-out water.

Fine rain mingled with mist, accumulating here, growing thicker and thicker, until everything was swallowed in the void.

Since ancient times, those who loved to tend flowers and plants have chosen to settle in Yu’an. The seeds of countless rare and precious grasses have taken root here. Even the most delicate flowers, the most fine and soft orchid grasses, are treated with gentle care by the soil and water of this place.

At dawn, the flower keepers would sit in their courtyards, brewing a pot of fresh tea — inhaling the fragrance of the tea while listening to the sound of dewdrops, condensed from the mist, falling from leaf-tips.

If there were a courtyard without a single flower, it was certainly not a courtyard in Yu’an.

And yet the courtyard before them was precisely so.

There was not a single flower, not a single tree, not a single ornamental rock, not a single decorative feature — only gravel that covered every surface and an endless sea of bamboo.

Xiao Nanhui understood why.

Fine gravel crunching underfoot, bamboo leaves rustling with a dry whisper — even the smallest movement, even the slightest disturbance, could not escape the ears of a top-ranked archer.

Xiao Nanhui gazed at this stark, bare, empty courtyard and could not for the life of her figure out where the legendary Black Feather Shadow Guards were hiding, or whether at this very moment they were watching her and the Emperor with calm, unhurried attention — intending to watch on like this through the entire night.

She stood before the ancient stone wall, the candle flames in the corridor casting her shadow onto a bead curtain patterned with entwining mandragora vines. It all felt utterly unreal.

She still could not accept the fact that she had actually, genuinely, entered this courtyard.

All she remembered was the two of them standing in a standoff at the courtyard gate, and then he had said something along the lines of it’s late, and every courtyard has its restrictions by night, easy to leave but difficult to return to — some high-sounding words like that — and before she could come up with a forceful rebuttal, he had taken her hand and led her through the gate.

These hands of hers could drag a plowing ox, could manage two spirited warhorses, could handle three to five armored soldiers — and yet with just a gentle tug from him, she had been led wherever he pleased, entirely without recourse.

She was unwilling to admit her own compliance, and worked hard to convince herself that it was only because her legs hurt terribly and she had no desire to climb over any more walls.

But now, standing here before the room where he slept, she felt: she really should have gone back and climbed the wall.

“How much longer are you going to stand there?”

She looked up in a daze, meeting his somewhat dissatisfied gaze.

Then a pulling force came from her hand.

With just that gentle tug, she stepped forward — and entered the room.

There was no one in the room — neither Ding Weixiang nor Cui Xingyao.

Xiao Nanhui let out a deep breath of relief.

Late spring had already arrived. If there was no wind in the evenings, even a thick quilt could grow stifling — and yet this room held a faint cool undercurrent, most likely because the stone walls had absorbed too much of the unrelenting, cold damp. The palace lamps, twisted in the form of entwining mandragora branches, burned dimly and with a hazy ambiguity — like night pearls in a dragon palace — casting light only over the four copper-wire braziers set in each corner. The effect was a feeling that the room expanded endlessly into darkness. The heat from the braziers and the cold damp of the surrounding air surged alternately, stirring up a restless, inexplicable agitation in the chest.

After the walking about she had done outside earlier, the thin soles of Xiao Nanhui’s soft shoes were soaked through, and her clothes were half-damp, half-dry from the fine rain. She had felt nothing of it outside, but now that the temperature had risen in the enclosed room, she was acutely aware of how clammy and uncomfortable her entire body felt — she longed to tear everything off at once.

This was what she was thinking, and it was also what the room’s owner was thinking.

In the span of a single distracted moment, he had already removed his shoes and boots, untied his waist sash, loosened his outer robe, let down his hair — and in one breath blown out the two largest palace lamps.

Xiao Nanhui was alarmed.

“Your — Your Majesty—” she stammered somewhat incoherently, “didn’t we say — it was only a matter of changing a pair of boots—”

“What boots?”

He had suffered a lapse of memory.

“The — the wet boots.”

“Hmm?” He let out a sound from his nose, drawing it out with deliberate suggestion. “I seem to recall that it isn’t only a pair of boots that got wet.”

Hearing this, how did it carry such a shameless implication?

If her boots were wet, she could change into another pair. But if her clothes were wet, surely she wasn’t expected to change clothes here?

Her toes curled involuntarily, pressing down against the bottom of her shoes and wringing out a puddle of water. She lifted her eyes and stole a glance at the figure behind the bead curtain.

In the dim light, that face — which in the daylight wore an expression of such impassive colorlessness — had come suddenly, unexpectedly alive. He sat before that overly spacious bed and languidly beckoned her toward him.

“Come closer.”

Xiao Nanhui didn’t move, yet she swallowed involuntarily.

She felt like a penniless scholar who had stumbled into a strange tale, now faced with some supernatural creature that had taken human form — her heart in the grip of a battle between reason and desire.

Seeing that she was not moved, that “creature” suddenly rose from the bed and walked toward her.

This was cause for real alarm.

What sort of creature had cultivated the bearing of something between demon and immortal?

He had removed his formal headpiece and let his hair down, and somehow appeared several years younger than usual. He wore that plain, unadorned silk-and-linen inner robe and walked toward her barefoot — like a herb-gathering youth from deep in the misty mountains, who normally carried an air of long detachment from the world of people, but in whose eyes, the moment he heard a human voice, a keen and fervent light would stir.

The curtain of ink-jade beads swayed and clicked, filling the air with soft, scattered sounds.

She shuffled her heels backward, trying to put distance between herself and this person who made her heart flutter like a banner in the wind.

But before she had managed more than a few wet footprints on the floor, he was already before her.

“So it was that you were unwilling to walk over yourself?”

What? Unwilling to do what?

Xiao Nanhui’s thoughts were cut off at that very moment. In the next instant, one of his arms wrapped around her waist, while the other came to rest horizontally behind her knees — then lifted, and she tumbled entirely into his embrace.

A cool, clean scent. A warm body.

For a brief moment, she seemed to be carried back to that night in the Snow Labyrinth Palace.

He turned, and the light and shadows cast by the carved palace lanterns spun and bloomed above her head — like the orchid flowers that had blossomed in the Snow Labyrinth Palace that night.

She was beginning to grow familiar with this feeling.

After familiarity came longing.

After a few steps, he set her down on the bed.

She was still somewhat dizzy, but the moment the back of her body made contact with the bed, her senses sharpened — she had no care for how undignified she looked, and with hands and feet scrambling together, she began rolling toward the edge to climb down.

Watching her adopt the pose of a warrior cutting off his own arm in sacrifice, the man on the bed did not stop her. He simply extended two fingers and, with unerring accuracy, pinched the knot she had hastily tied at her lower back.

A sound of fabric sliding — Xiao Nanhui felt the sash at her waist suddenly loosen, and then that wet, sodden outer robe slid uncontrollably to the floor, leaving only two precariously dangling ties still maintaining the last defense of her inner robe.

“You can take your chances going out like this, and gamble on whether someone might happen to be up in the middle of the night and come across something strange. Or you can get back into this bed and let me take a look at your leg.”

When it came to shameless maneuvering, she had never been a match for this man.

Her two hands and one leg had already touched the floor, with only half a leg still resting on the bed — her well-trained body maintaining a bizarre equilibrium between the floor and the bed on nothing but years of physical conditioning. She felt like a stone lion balancing on a ball that had tipped at an angle — posture unseemly, unable to move.

Finally, a hand supported her at the small of her back, and with magnanimous mercy, scooped her back onto the bed.

She didn’t dare raise her head to look at him. She was racking her brains for some method of subduing an opponent in close quarters without injuring them. But before she could devise anything remotely clever, his voice sounded unhurriedly.

“If Xiao Consultant keeps moving, I’ll take it as performing the coy resistance-and-enticement game from that manual of erotic pictures.”

As he spoke, his hand had already closed around her calf.

She instinctively struggled twice. His fingers applied the slightest additional pressure, and she shuddered head to toe with pain.

Even so, she did not make a single sound. Her leg braced against him, a look of defiant resolve on her face as she faced him in standoff — she herself could not quite say what she was insisting on.

In the end, he could not bring himself to be harsh. He eased the pressure.

“Pain of this kind — drinking wine alone won’t do anything for it.”

The moment the pressure on her leg lifted, Xiao Nanhui’s whole torso went limp and half-collapsed.

The man seemed to grant her a temporary reprieve. He reached for the purple ceramic hand warmer nearby, twisted open the ceramic bowl that had been kept warm on top of it, and with his fingertip spread out a small amount of a luminous white salve.

She seized the break to catch her breath and gather herself — and then suddenly felt somewhat ashamed.

She had thought she had hidden it well enough all the way here — well enough to fool enemies, well enough to fool her own people. At the very least, Zong Hao had not noticed, and Xiao Zhun had not noticed.

“How did Your Majesty know—”

She left the question half-finished as the sensation on her leg interrupted her.

His hand had just left the hand warmer and carried the heat of it — spreading salve against the skin of her ankle, the warmth was penetrating and soothing.

“Hao Bai’s medical skill is not bad, but he is still somewhat young. He knows how to treat the symptoms without knowing how to treat the person. His Subduing Bone Needles are exquisite, yet he never once prescribed a single course of medicine to expel the cold and fortify your constitution.”

Subduing Bone Needles?

Xiao Nanhui was astonished. How did he know that Hao Bai had treated her leg? He even knew the details better than she did?

The image of that barefoot physician — that look of having suffered great grievance with no recourse for his complaints — rose before her eyes, and she suddenly understood.

Was it possible that—

“At the time, Hao Bai’s appearance in Bijiang — that was at your behest?”

“It was no use going myself, so I had him make the trip instead.” His half-lowered brows and eyes were right before her, entirely untroubled. “The Subduing Bone Needle is cold in nature. It would, to some extent, aggravate the bone pain. But without the Subduing Bone Needle, there was an eight-in-ten chance your leg would be ruined.”

Back in Huozhou, she could still recall how Hao Bai had dealt with the household thief who had stolen the Subduing Bone Needles. Something that precious, and yet he had been willing to use it on her — it seemed only natural, under a certain someone’s coercive pressure.

Compared to not being able to walk, not being able to run, not being able to jump — she suddenly felt this pain was not so difficult to endure.

“In any case, it only hurts on rainy days. It’s really not so terrible.”

She gave a crooked smile. The expression on the face before her grew distant.

“You truly can endure. Did you endure your way through your arm as well, back then?”

Xiao Nanhui stiffened. Her gaze shifted away involuntarily.

She did not know why he had suddenly brought up that old, miserable business without warning. She then realized that in only these short few months, she had actually already—

“You may hate me.” His voice drew closer, carrying something almost like a bewitching quality as it pressed near. “If love holds you back, then let us begin from hatred.”

The voice had not yet faded — and then warmth fell upon her forehead.

As tradition held, this was how a deity drew near to its devoted — a kiss upon the brow, which was meant to carry no trace of desire, sacred and devout.

Yet the person before her eyes had upended and overturned all of that.

His breath was very warm, but his scent was very cool. His movements were very slow, yet utterly languorous and consuming. From her brow to the bridge of her nose, to her ear, to the side of her neck — it was as though with just that small point of flesh on the tip of his lips, he intended to grind her down and swallow her whole. She could even feel the pulsing rush of blood through her own veins, driven by the pressure he laid upon them, surging thunderously up to the crown of her head.

Last of all, he paused at the edge of her lips — skin that had grown warm from friction pressing against skin, so near—

By the time she came to her senses, she found that they were already lying tangled together, wrapped in each other.

Her inner robe was half undone. His thin shirt, however, was still in perfect order.

He gazed steadily at her. After a long moment, he lowered his eyes and, with unhurried ease, began to undo his own lapel.

Xiao Nanhui’s breathing, which she had barely managed to slow, quickened again.

She suddenly realized she had been at his disposal for quite some time now — responding, even, without meaning to.

She was under the influence of some enchantment she could neither name nor explain — no matter what he did, she was incapable of resistance.

Her heart drumming like a war drum, she watched his hands — until his two hands gently clasped her two ankles, then laid them crossed and overlapping against his chest.

“My hands run cold — only my chest runs warm. My constitution is not as strong as a martial artist’s. If you have no wish to be charged with the murder of an Emperor, it would be best not to move.”

Xiao Nanhui’s thoughts came to a halt. After a moment, she began to come back to herself. And the first thing that surfaced when she did was: he was right.

His hands were not warm — but his chest was.

Through the soles of her feet came a steady, continuous warmth, and within it, his heartbeat pulsed.

These feet of hers, which had trodden across countless miles of yellow sand and muddy earth in Tiancheng — they now rested upon the heart of Tiancheng’s Emperor.

He gently closed his lapel, gathering her legs within its folds.

“Using the boots as an excuse — it was just that I wanted you to sleep a little more soundly, that’s all.”

The hidden ache in her legs gradually eased with that warmth. Xiao Nanhui’s heartbeat slowed along with it — and yet the corners of her eyes stung involuntarily.

Through countless days and nights, in the depths of agony and sleepless pain, she was not without her moments of imagining — imagining the existence of a body she could lean against and find warmth in.

But it had always been nothing more than imagining.

Do not crave too much — that was her principle of happiness. Once that principle was broken, she would fall into an abyss of wanting what she could not have, and never climb out again.

Zong Hao’s words echoed near her ear.

But she could no longer hear them. She was already in the abyss.

Afraid of letting the person before her notice her emotions, she suppressed the sting in her nose for a while and did not let out a single sound.

Then she curled herself inward and leaned against his embrace.

After some time, his hand moved gently over her back.

“Sleep. When you sleep, it won’t hurt anymore.”

In the moment she gently closed her eyes, the tears she had held back for so long finally fell.