On the eastern slope of Doucheng Ridge, several carriages were making their way slowly along a muddy road.

The carriages, at closer inspection, were ancient and understated — the carved decorations not elaborate, yet possessed of an elegant charm. The old wood of the carriage shafts had been lacquered so many times that the beautiful grain of the wood had been saturated through with oil. The rooftops were covered with oilcloth, and the solid copper figurines weighing down the four corners of the cloth gleamed in the rain, their eyes carved with astonishing lifelikeness.

The foremost carriage was somewhat larger and wider, with an oil lantern suspended from the front. Whatever material the lantern was made from was unknown — neither wind nor rain could extinguish it. The two old horses pulling the carriage had somewhat sparse manes, yet their footing was entirely steady; they knew instinctively to veer away from deep ruts or muddy pools long before they reached them.

In such a simple and antique scene of nighttime mountain travel in the rain, the coachboy at the front looked utterly out of place. His robe was entirely white, and his face appeared to have been dusted with powder. The right hand holding the reins had two pinky fingers elegantly lifted, while the other hand actually held a folding fan — kept tightly shut, evidently for fear of the rain soaking through the silk.

The wheels turned a few more squeaking revolutions before finally lurching free of that pitted, uneven little road.

Hao Bai quietly exhaled in relief and twirled the fan in his fingers a few times, letting a hint of ease show.

The area around Yu’an tended toward rain, but a downpour like tonight’s was seldom seen.

The damp weather made the elderly prone to aching joints and stiff limbs, so the past several days had been spent tending to his great-grandfather’s back and legs, and he had consequently fallen behind. He was in danger of not making it into the city by tonight. Having delayed again and again, arrived late again and again, his timid heart had only to think of that person’s smile — half amusement, half something unreadable — and he felt a tremulous, frightened chill.

When all was said and done, he was only the youngest of the family. Yet somehow these nerve-wracking errands always fell to him.

After some deliberation, he decided to take a risk and cut through a shortcut.

In their family’s history, every head of the Qu family for generations had traveled the world and practiced medicine across the land, recording every mountain range and waterway they traversed and passing that knowledge down through the generations. He had been a bit lazy as a child and read perhaps only one or two parts in ten of those records — barely enough to serve his current purpose.

The official roads near Quecheng numbered seven or eight, but mountain paths were fewer. This was by design: too many wide mountain paths would make it easier for enemy forces to infiltrate without detection. So the road through Doucheng Ridge had long gone without official maintenance, and few people used it.

Even so, aside from the rough terrain, there had been no other trouble so far.

By his calculations, the moment he entered the city, the Emperor’s spring hunt party would be returning right on his heels — the timing could not have been better.

He was still drifting contentedly through these thoughts when, without warning, something dark suddenly shot out in front of him.

He startled, yanking the reins tight.

They say the more a road is traveled, the smoother it becomes — and a mountain path that few people use inevitably has its rough patches. But on rough patches, the wild animals also grew bolder. It was said this ridge of Doucheng had once been well known for its wild boar — surely it couldn’t be that unlucky—

Hao Bai tensed, squeezing his fan tight. He stretched out half a fan to poke at the oil lantern at the front of the carriage, trying to borrow a little light. Before he could figure out how to adjust the thing, the dark shape came charging straight at him and sank its teeth into his sleeve.

The unfortunate white-robed physician let out a shriek and frantically flailed his arm.

After two or three shakes, he noticed something odd, slowly stopped, opened his eyes, and looked at the thing that had “attacked” him.

The thing had a long face. Bristling hair fell over both eyes. Only a row of even teeth and two wide nostrils were particularly prominent.

It was a horse.

He exhaled in relief, then felt a flash of indignation.

In this day and age, even a brute animal was bullying him.

He shook free his sleeve with an air of pique and let out a cold snort.

“Whose mount is this? With such complete ignorance of manners.”

As if to confirm his assessment, in the very next instant the piebald creature snorted furiously through both nostrils and sent a splatter of muddy water right across his face.

A muddy stream trickled slowly down from the center of his brow. Hao Bai’s fury hit its peak, his own two nostrils flaring with rage, his fan-gripping hand trembling faintly.

“Impudent creature! How dare you — how dare—”

He was never any good at cursing people out, and he had certainly never traded insults with a horse. He found himself momentarily at a loss for words.

In this brief impasse, the cabin door at his back was finally pulled open, and a broad-faced, handsome-bearded man leaned out.

“What is it? What happened?”

Hao Bai shook the mud from himself with as much dignity as he could muster and said, with forced composure:

“Nothing, nothing. Probably someone’s horse that got lost and stumbled onto the road.”

The bearded man’s gaze fell on the horse beside them and looked it over from one side to the other.

“Any markings on the saddle? We might be able to return it to the owner when we get to the city.”

Hao Bai made a dismissive face.

“Look at that wild, shabby state — no one to manage it at all. Clearly not from any distinguished household.”

Saying that and doing that were different matters; he still seized the horse’s bridle and looked it over from front to back.

The saddle was of the plainest possible style. The pommel was worn to a bright polish. The left stirrup appeared to have been broken once and clumsily reattached, and looked shorter than it should. Assorted bags hung from both sides of the saddle. The saddle flap and skirt carried not a single embroidered decoration, let alone any household crest or identifying mark.

Hao Bai was just about to withdraw his hand when, at the last moment, he felt that his palm was covered in the horse’s mud. With a look of mild distaste, he wiped his hand twice on the horse’s hindquarters.

The horse suddenly whinnied and reared its back legs. As the mud on its haunches slid away, a wound was revealed — deep enough to show bone, left by an arrow.

Hao Bai’s hand stilled. His gaze fell on the vaguely familiar grayish-white piebald markings on the horse’s hindquarters, and after a long moment, something surfaced in his memory. His expression became something close to disbelief.

“I did wonder — what ordinary person’s horse could have such a foul temper?”

The horse, whether or not she understood his mutterings, remained obstinate as ever — blowing angry blasts from her nostrils and stamping her hooves in the puddles, turning an already muddy stretch of road into a scene of complete chaos.

The bearded man was smiling outwardly, while inwardly he had already arrived at a few conclusions.

“Do you recognize this horse?”

“I don’t.”

He denied it swiftly and turned his face away, making every effort not to look at that messed-up, arrow-wounded hindquarter.

“Then the horse recognizes you.”

Hao Bai raised his eyes to the sky.

“The rain is too heavy. She lost her way and mistook me for someone else.”

Before the bearded man could say anything in response, laughter drifted out from within the carriage — and then the laughter gradually turned into a low, fit of coughing.

The man quickly turned back into the cabin to offer comfort.

After a moment, the coughing subsided, and an aged voice spoke up.

“This horse seems to have quite a bit of spirit. Perhaps her owner has met with some misfortune, and that is why she is acting this way.”

Hao Bai bowed his head, a touch of restraint entering his expression.

“Then does Great-Grandfather mean that I should go have a look?”

“Mm.” The voice mused for a moment, then continued with unhurried shamelessness: “That you should go have a look — not we.”

The white-robed physician cowered and murmured:

“But Great-Grandfather — the rain is very heavy right now.”

“Xingzi.”

The bearded man heard his own name and responded with prompt deference.

“Yes, Great-Grandfather?”

“Go get Ink Boy a piece of oilcloth and send him on his way. If we dawdle any longer, we’ll miss the roast goose banquet at Youyanju tonight.”

Qu Xingzi obediently fetched the oilcloth and offered it to Hao Bai with an amiable expression.

“Nephew, off you go.”

Hao Bai stared at the oilcloth. His fingers opened, closed — closed, opened — and at last, with a grind of his teeth, he took it.

The rain grew heavier. He looked down at the white boots he had changed into just the previous day, then at his two spotless white sleeves, ground his teeth in grief-stricken indignation, threw the oilcloth over himself, and jumped down from the carriage.

The horse watched him from the darkness. He watched the horse in return.

The sound of carriage wheels behind him faded slowly into the distance. Only then did he resign himself, step forward, and take hold of the saddle.

“I haven’t ridden in a very long time. Don’t you dare give me any trouble.”

Heavy rain drummed down, sharp and loud as a pounding drum.

A clatter of unsteady hoofbeats rang out from a distance, circling for a while before a faint silhouette finally emerged through the curtain of rain.

Hao Bai had both hands gripping the tuft of hair at the top of Jixiang’s head, slumped crookedly across her back.

He seldom rode at the best of times, and he had certainly never ridden through terrain this treacherous. The rain-slicked mountain stones beneath her hooves were slippery underfoot, her steps picking their way between steep cliffs, and though his body was technically still in the saddle, his heart had never stopped hanging in midair — his life and limbs entirely entrusted to those four hooves.

Between the tension and the jolting, he had nearly slid off the horse’s back several times. The oilcloth had long since vanished to parts unknown, and he was now soaked through to the skin. He struggled to pry his eyes open against the rain spattering in his face, but it was no use — blind as a bat, he could only depend on the creature beneath him.

Because he was so tense, his grip was enormously forceful — and yet the Jixiang who would ordinarily throw a fit over the slightest thing had endured the entire ride without complaint. In the heavy rain, she tracked the faint, lingering scent of blood, following it until she found the place.

This was a mountain path, half consumed by a mudslide. The path vanished into a murky void at its far end. The feeble early light of dawn fell cold and pale on the flooded ground, the pooled water reflecting a ghostly blue light.

The rain was still falling. Everything around them was a white haze of mist.

Nothing could be heard but rain, and Jixiang stopped moving, turning around in place, while he did not dare dismount.

He had the intuition of a physician: something terrible had just happened here.

“Is — is anyone there?”

He opened his mouth, only to discover he couldn’t even hear his own voice.

“Xiao Nanhui?”

He raised his voice. Still nothing stirred around him.

Jixiang let out a loud snort — more resounding by far than anything he had managed. He recognized her contempt in the sound, and finally resolved to throw caution to the wind and win back a shred of dignity.

“Xiao Nanhui!”

He bellowed into the rain with everything he had. His voice seemed to be smothered in place by the dense downfall — audible only to himself.

He refused to give up. Drew a deep breath and bellowed again: “Xiao Nanhui! Your grandfather has come to find you! If you’re not dead, make some kind of noise! You’d better not be dead — or I’ll skin you and take my needles back! Do you hear me?! I’ll skin you alive—”

The figure on the ground finally let out a faint murmur, and then a trace of weak breathing followed.

Hao Bai collapsed straight down to sit on the earth, feeling as though every last drop of strength had been drained from him at once.

“O holy Patriarch, you know I only said I’d treat those who were about to die — I never said I’d treat anyone who had already died.”

He tucked away his needles, steadied himself, and turned to examine her injuries.

She had been struck twice. Her inner garment bore two cuts with sharp, clean edges — whether from a blade or a sword, it was hard to say. Based on how the fabric had torn, either of these blows should have been fatal. Even if not causing the belly to burst and bowels to spill, they should have shattered her tendons and broken her bones.

Yet the wounds on her body were not so severe. There was blood, yes, but nothing beyond the reach of treatment.

The one truly troubling area was the bruising on the back of her neck and across her lower back.

She had apparently been struck with tremendous force and thrown — losing control of her body entirely and colliding against the rock face with no cushion whatsoever.

If it was only bruising, perhaps that could be managed. But if the spine had been injured, or she had damaged her head in the fall—

“What absolute rotten luck — always having to save your skin. Holy Patriarch above, please let this be the last time.” He stood up, as if to convince himself, and muttered a few more times: “Last time. Yes. Last time…”

He used strips torn from her shredded clothing, then gathered a few branches to roughly brace her head and limbs, so that the jolting ahead would not worsen her injuries.

When that was done, he needed to get her up onto the horse. Jixiang had long been waiting patiently nearby, and when she saw him approaching, she bent her legs and knelt cooperatively. Even so, his chronically under-exercised arms and legs strained to the point of cramping.

He had encountered situations before in his medical practice where heaven had made up its mind to take someone and he could do nothing — but handling the aftermath, moving bodies — that had never been part of his work. Now, attempting it for the first time, he truly understood the expression dead weight.

The moment a person loses consciousness, they become exactly as heavy as a corpse. No matter how lively and light on her feet she might have been, she was now no different from a slab of stone.

After an enormous, sweat-drenched ordeal, he finally got back on the road.

Once they left that small mountain path, it was back into the deep and treacherous mountain forest — each step uncertain. With only his own weight before it had been hard enough. With an added passenger, it was harder still.

The swaying of the horse’s back made his thoughts grow dim and sluggish. He lost track of how long had passed. Then he felt the constantly lurching horse beneath him suddenly come to a stop.

He wiped the water from his face, lifted his eyes to look forward — and froze.

Perhaps the noisy splatter of rain through leaves around him had been too loud; perhaps he had been keeping his head bowed and concentrating so hard on staying balanced that he had not noticed the world around him. He felt as though he had only looked away for a moment, and the carriage had simply appeared there.

The carriage looked, on the outside, perfectly unremarkable. Not a single feature stood out to draw the eye or invite closer inspection. The figure in a rain cape seated at the carriage front was so forgettable that the moment you looked at him, your mind moved on.

And yet precisely for that reason, the situation felt deeply strange.

How had such a carriage come to be here? Had it been here all along, or had it followed his tracks? Was this a chance encounter, or—

Hao Bai’s temple twitched with nerves, and he clenched his jaw, not daring to make a single sound.

At last, the rain-caped coachman moved.

He removed his straw hat, revealing a plain yet oddly familiar face.

The twitching at Hao Bai’s temple stopped — and became a tremor at the corner of his mouth instead.

“Di — Di—”

Before he could get out whatever he was trying to say, the cabin door behind the coachman slowly slid open.

“It has been a long time, Master Qu.”

The moment he heard that form of address, he knew the person before him was not the “Young Master Zhongli” he had first met — but a different face entirely.

The Emperor’s deep, dark brows and eyes were like the Buddha depicted in scripture, yet his gaze was like a sharp blade — cutting clean through the curtain of rain and landing squarely on Hao Bai’s face, sending a shiver through him.

How could anyone with features like that manage a look like this?

“This commoner — this commoner Qu Mo pays his respects to Your Majesty.”

No one responded from the darkness. The faint, scattered light filtered through the leaves and illuminated the rain-pitted mud below, followed by the distant rumble of thunder breaking apart at the edge of the sky.

A cold dread crawled up Hao Bai’s spine and into his skull. Even moments ago, faced with an uncertain situation of unknown danger, he had not been this afraid.

“Weixiang — bring her over.”

Ding Weixiang leaped down from the carriage in one motion and crossed to him in a few quick strides, swiftly transferring the woman from the horse to the carriage.

The instant the woman was lifted into the cabin, the man whose expression had been cold and still the whole time fixed his gaze on her like a hook.

He saw the fasteners that, just the previous morning — in the calm, warm hours of that early day — he had clasped shut for her with his own hands. Not a single one was intact now. The dark mourning robe was in shreds like a defeated banner, spotted all over with dark stains that might have been mud or might have been blood.

He felt he should have rushed forward at once to examine what nightmare lay beneath that tattered cloth. Or perhaps he should have found some way to rouse her, to demand to know why she had done this to herself.

But he hesitated.

A strange emotion seized him — one he had not experienced before in this form. That emotion was called dread. He was afraid of the answers. Afraid to face her suffering head-on.

In just a moment, he withdrew his gaze.

From inside the carriage there seemed to be others present — low, indistinct voices carried over, too faint to catch clearly. The Emperor’s expression became even harder to read.

After an indeterminate time, the murmuring ceased, and that calm voice came again.

“Why are you here at this hour? And why is she so badly injured?”

The person being questioned was seven parts aggrieved and three parts on the verge of tears.

Heaven was witness: he was only a passerby. Or more precisely — a meddling passerby.

Hao Bai pulled himself together with an effort. He felt his conscience was clear, and wanted to preserve some dignity for his family.

“This commoner traveled with my clansmen to Chizhou, and planned to enter Quecheng today, so I took a shortcut. While passing through Doucheng Ridge, I encountered Miss Xiao’s mount. When I found her, she was already in the condition you see now. This commoner only administered acupuncture to save her; beyond that, I truly know nothing.”

The other party did not respond immediately, and simply observed him with a cool, appraising look.

The white-robed physician was a complete mess — the powder on his face washed away by the rain to reveal his naturally tan and dark complexion beneath, which gave him rather an honest and straightforward appearance.

At last, the man in the carriage withdrew his gaze.

“The person — We are taking. Given the life-saving debt you owe her, We will forgive your offense of disrespect.”

Hao Bai felt a wave of relief wash through his chest — but then the other party spoke again.

“Master Qu — today you traveled through Doucheng Ridge with your clansmen. In the heavy rain, you lost your way, and while searching for the road, you came across Aide-de-camp Xiao who had fallen from a cliff. You brought her down the mountain. The Great Xiao has been injured in the spine. After setting the bones, she cannot be moved. So you have temporarily placed her in Wangchen Tower to recuperate, and she is to receive no visitors for three months. Have you understood what We have said?”

As that person spoke, a young woman of similar build to Xiao Nanhui stepped out from the carriage. She wore the same dark mourning robe, and her hair had been dressed in an identical style. She gave Hao Bai — who was staring with his jaw hanging open — a slight bow, and when she spoke, her voice was indistinguishable from Xiao Nanhui’s: “I have injured my spine. Please assist me onto the horse, Doctor.”

He stood there gaping for a moment, then without quite willing himself to, did exactly as she asked. By the time he came back to his senses, there were only two people and one horse left in that entire stretch of forest.

And the carriage had vanished soundlessly into the misty rain — just as it had come — without a trace.