June was swelteringly hot. For ten consecutive days within Chizhou’s borders, not a single drop of rain fell.

The days were stuffy and oppressive; it was only after dusk that any coolness came. So Xiao Nanhui often leaned against the swaying side window of the carriage, letting the evening breeze blow over her while she sorted through her thoughts.

Sometimes her mind wandered, and she would sit in the corner of the carriage and quietly observe him.

Over these ten days, he rarely spoke.

He had brought a full ten chests with him, each packed to the brim with documents and memorial scrolls. Throughout the journey, fast horses would periodically come galloping up from behind — sometimes in the dead of night around the third watch, sometimes at high noon under a blazing sun — always to deliver one chest and take away another, and every chest was packed quite full.

Xiao Nanhui watched from the side, and the keen curiosity she had felt at first gradually gave way to something ordinary and routine.

She had once thought that being Emperor was the most comfortable position in all the world — borne in an eight-man palanquin when going out, feet never touching the ground; met at the door with golden cups and jade goblets, without a care in the world; as many glittering beauties and rare curiosities as one could want, all delivered to one’s doorstep at once; whatever he said, no one under heaven dared contradict; no one would ever look down on him or bully him, and he would never be like her, forever sleeping with weapons at the ready, weeping tears of blood while forgetting to eat.

But now, she had suddenly lost any interest in what people called the Imperial Household. The only thing she still envied about him was a certain quality that years of self-discipline had cultivated in him — something she could not quite put into words.

It was an indescribable feeling — like an unvarying indifference toward everything around him. She could just barely describe it as “composure,” and it was a quality she would never possess herself.

She was perpetually anxious, uneasy, coiled and ready to spring.

Composure was too great a luxury for her.

And besides keeping company with those ten chests, he would occasionally pause, estimate the hour, and then take a small porcelain vial from a lacquered case and hand it to her.

Each vial held only one pill. Once she had taken it, the vial would be put away in another lacquered case. So it went, two times a day, one after another.

He said these were the life-saving medicines she had taken while recovering from her injuries, and that he had asked Hao Bai to prescribe a few extra doses to be safe.

She did not ask further questions, but was nearly certain in her heart that this was not something one could simply have prescribed in a few extra doses. Because the taste of these medicines was very similar to the Zhidan that Hao Bai had given her in Mu Er He — only these smelled more fragrant and felt warmer going down.

Something of this nature — how could that stingy physician bring himself to give it out like common digestive pills, two a day?

Thinking of this, she took them all the more happily.

And as she took them, the memories of that night on Douchen Ridge began drifting up in fragments — she vaguely recalled Hao Bai’s furious face hovering above her, swaying back and forth, and then he had hurled some harsh words at her and jabbed her hard with several needles.

Not wanting to be an entirely ungrateful person, she found an opportunity to ask about the whereabouts of that itinerant physician. He replied only lightly: that Hao Bai had been given some other matters to attend to, and that an old friend had been invited to keep him company — he was living a quiet, carefree life.

She was somewhat skeptical, because from the moment they left Quecheng her sneezing had inexplicably increased, and her ears had been running a little hot. She had a persistent, vague feeling that the physician was not living comfortably at all — and that he was therefore cursing at her every few days, causing her nose to itch.

Or perhaps it was simply that the weather was truly dry and hot, and so her nose kept going dry and itchy.

Finally, at dusk on the tenth day, with a crack of thunder, raindrops began pattering against the carriage roof. And almost simultaneously, the men who had been delivering the chests suddenly stopped coming.

Xiao Nanhui surmised it was because they had entered the borders of Huozhou.

He was free at last. Before the sun set, he prepared a fragrance with a cool, pungent, spicy aroma and lit it, then leaned against the side window being struck by the sudden rain and looked quietly at her.

The carriage was still jolting along. In the darkness there was only the faint dark-red glow of the incense burning.

And his gaze passed through the swaying darkness, as though passing through long ages and unknown hardships, and fell gently upon her.

“Why haven’t you asked me?”

She instinctively lowered her head.

“You were so busy, and there are still many things I have yet to sort out in my mind —”

“Then ask now.”

He pressed forward with another sentence, his voice unusually calm amid the noise of the rain outside the window.

What question?

She could have pretended not to know — but she chose silence instead.

“Do you not want to know whether I was aware of the truth behind the massacre of the Xiao Family? Why haven’t you asked? Is it that you don’t want to ask, or that you don’t dare?”

But in the end, he had asked it for her.

Damp air began seeping into the carriage, mingling with the pungent fragrance — there was a coldness in it that a summer night ought not to have.

She sighed softly in the darkness.

“You know perfectly well why.”

Some questions, if one has never heard the answer, remain at the level of speculation, no matter how many conclusions one has drawn — they have not yet truly settled into finality.

But once the answer is known, many things can no longer be avoided.

“And yet you have already uncovered quite a great deal, have you not?” He paused, and his voice grew somewhat distant. “From the time we first met in Mu Er He, I had a premonition that you might be the first person in all these years to come close to the truth. So at that time, I considered whether or not to kill you.”

Her heart tightened, and she instinctively felt a certain discomfort. But when she thought carefully back to the circumstances of that time, she remembered that she had also harbored thoughts of killing him — and her heart evened out somewhat.

Who could say anything about the future? Back then, she had only thought of him as an enemy of the Marquis Mansion.

“Since you didn’t kill me, do you regret it?”

He was silent for a while, as though genuinely considering the question, and at last said lightly.

“Some answers can only be known a very long time afterward.”

A very long time — how long is that?

She felt this answer looked profound on the surface but was in fact entirely hollow.

If the lovelorn heroes and heroines in story books said such things, the people who had paid silver for those books would be cursing.

It either is or it isn’t. There is no need for so many words.

She steeled herself, and let a touch of stubbornness into her tone.

“You didn’t kill me then, so it’s still not too late now. Besides, there are some things I have not yet told another living soul.”

But he did not take the bait at all — his attention was entirely elsewhere.

“What have you managed to uncover? Why don’t you tell me.”

A month ago, she could never have imagined being able to sit face-to-face with him and speak of this matter so candidly.

Now that this day had finally come, she found herself calmer and more clear-headed than she had imagined she would be.

Ordering her thoughts, Xiao Nanhui slowly spoke the conclusions she had reached after all these days of deliberation.

“When I first began investigating the suspicious circumstances of the Xiao Family, I noticed a letter that had been recorded by the Censorate. At the time, my standing was too low and my power too weak — there was no possibility of digging any deeper, so I had to let it rest. But after Bai Yun appeared, I learned something of critical importance: the Bai Family was connected to that letter. Before this, I had always assumed the Bai Family’s entanglement with this matter had only begun on the night of the Yu’an Uprising.”

His expression remained composed throughout. Xiao Nanhui could not tell whether he was truly unperturbed, or whether he had in fact known all along about her investigation from beginning to end.

“What did Bai Yun tell you?”

The scene in Jingbo Tower came to her mind — she would never be able to forget it.

“Bai Yun said that the letter had been personally brought back from the Black Wood Commandery by Bai Heliu during his mission to Huozhou. At first hearing this seemed unremarkable, but on closer consideration there was something strange about it. First, the Xiao Family had never had any dealings with Huozhou — so how had they suddenly acquired old acquaintances with whom they could correspond by letter? Second, given Prince Shuo’s standing at the time, going back and forth with Huozhou was a sensitive matter. Without special reason, correspondence should have been transmitted through official channels — that way, even if one were later caught up in some affair, there would be a means of explanation and a way to extricate oneself in time. To entrust such a matter to a friend who served at court alongside you and held a high position was by no means a wise strategy.”

“So my inference is this: everything Prince Shuo did at that time was out of caution. He did not want others to know the contents of that letter. The Bai Family were close friends of his; the letter would not pass through other hands during transmission, which eliminated the risk of its contents being leaked — and at the same time, it bypassed the inspection of official correspondence. And if the contents of that letter were connected to events that subsequently occurred, it must have implicated two opposing forces.”

He leaned forward slightly, as though finally finding this somewhat interesting. But the interest looked more like that of a bystander watching a spectacle — as though what she was about to say had nothing whatsoever to do with him.

“Which two forces?”

She glanced at him.

“The Imperial House of that time, and Pu Huna.”

He followed up immediately.

“Why not suspect the Bai Family?”

“I dislike Bai Yun, but at least six or seven parts of what she said in this matter were true. When she told me at Tingling Tower that the Bai Family had no part in the Xiao Family’s blood feud, I wavered inwardly, but did not fully believe her. Not until the imperial hunt brought me back to Yu’an, and I went myself to investigate the Xiao Family’s secondary residence — the traces at the scene told me everything.”

He listened intently, without the slightest sense that he was approaching forbidden ground.

“Oh? What did they tell you?”

Everyone inside this matter seemed unconcerned about it; she had no choice but to keep herself as calm and dispassionate as possible and speak through this most treacherous part without a trace of feeling.

“They told me that the massacre of the Xiao Family was a long-premeditated slaughter, carried out for the purpose of thoroughly destroying a secret. The Bai Family, as parties who knew of the plan beyond its original scope, were conveniently framed as the perpetrators and dragged into it. Because their opponent was the Imperial House — and if they did not resist, their fate would only be the same as the Xiao Family’s — Bai Heliu took the Yueze Army and retreated into Bijiang, and even colluded with Pu Huna for years in opposition to Tiancheng. Because he knew this matter was not finished — that the Imperial House would one day complete the final step of that year’s slaughter. This is the truth of the Yu’an Uprising and the recovery of Bijiang.”

As she poured all of this out in one breath, Xiao Nanhui suddenly felt an unprecedented sense of release in her chest.

It turned out that some things, even unspoken, had long been quietly forming within her. Better to lay them bare clearly now than to wait for them one day to burst forth unexpectedly.

“Finally, there is one more thing sufficient to support my inference.”

Xiao Nanhui paused and did not continue at once; instead, she raised her eyes to look at him.

“If I tell you the truth, you must not be angry — and you must not take it out on me.”

He gave a soft snort — it seemed like a light laugh.

“If you were afraid of me taking it out on you, would you have said all this?”

In the past, she had heard him speak like this and thought nothing of it — but in this particular moment, looking at his effortlessly composed manner, she suddenly felt a flicker of annoyance.

“I’m not afraid of losing my head, but I’m afraid of making you angry and upset.”

He dropped his smile. Those eyes held a layer of faint dark light in the darkness.

“But I am already angry. Because I know what you are going to say.”

Xiao Nanhui, whose temper had been slightly inflated the moment before, suddenly found herself deflating.

The last thing she needed to say was Xiao Zhun.

From what she knew of Xiao Zhun, even with Bai Yun’s involvement, he would never have defected during the imperial hunt simply because of a confrontation with Bai Heliu.

He had been born into a military family, heir of the loyal and upright. His father and elder brothers had raised him in the barracks from childhood; the northern frontier was as close to him as a brother, and family and country were bound up with his very blood. Even if Bai Yun’s appearance had been an unexpected turn for him, he would not so easily abandon the loyalty to family and country that had been his creed for half his life.

Unless he had learned something terrible — some truth that was enough to shake the faith he had defended through twenty years of bloody battle.

She did not speak. The man in the darkness also fell silent for a very long time.

So long that the incense had burned entirely out, and the drumming rain against the window had shifted from urgent to gentle, becoming a scattered, faint background noise.

“Xiao Nanhui.”

He suddenly called her by name.

“Listen to me carefully. What I am about to tell you, there is no second person in this world who knows. But no matter what you hear today, or what you come to understand hereafter, you must remember the promise you made to me that night at the Qinghuai Marquis Mansion.”

That no matter what happened, she would not leave him?

Her heart beat faster and faster, but she still nodded.

“Alright.”

He looked at her deeply, and before she could decipher the meaning of that look, his voice had already begun, low and heavy.

“Everything must begin with my royal father. The Su clan was once a family of powerful ministers — with many fine strategies but insufficient deliberation. Yet by the time of my royal father, everything was different. He was an emperor born, his thoughts as deep and hidden as a dark chamber, with no one able to know what he harbored in the depths of his heart. But heaven moves in capricious ways — half his life he laid careful schemes and calculated every move, yet fortune turned on him and doom entered his house; none of those close to him came to a good end, and his own heirs and descendants were short-lived.”

“Royal Father once had two sons: the elder born with double pupils, the younger with one eye — yet both died before they had reached the age of ten. Diviners were brought into the palace to practice their arts of geomancy, and they pronounced that within the palace walls there lurked impurity left by the former dynasty, occupying a place where yin energy coiled and gathered. And so Royal Father ordered that all the lakes and ponds within the palace be filled in — but only one pool of stagnant muddy water, thick with lotus, could not be filled no matter what was done to it. The diviners exhausted every method at their disposal without finding a solution, and in the end had no choice but to let the water remain.”

Hearing this, Xiao Nanhui suddenly recalled the business Yaoyi had mentioned some time before.

“Yuèqi Lake?”

He glanced at her.

“You’ve heard of it?”

She had not merely heard of it — she had spied on him choosing a wife from a small earthen mound outside the palace walls, had gotten into a quarrel with Xu Bu over it, and on the way back had gone and knocked over Su Pingchuan’s undergarments.

She sniffled.

“I just heard people talking loosely about it.”

He pretended not to notice the small tells she had when she was lying, and continued at a measured pace.

“After the incident of the lotus pool, Royal Father also felt that the diviners were likely just talking nonsense, and so he invited the head of the Qu Family of Buxu Valley — who had already gone into seclusion — to come and make a proper assessment. The head of the Qu Family at that time stayed only a single day within the palace before pronouncing: the pool water had not dried up, and this was not residual impurity — it was a sign that the fate of the former dynasty had not yet been extinguished. This vein of energy was either trapped within the palace walls, or hidden somewhere in the open wilderness; it had been steadily growing stronger, and could only be eliminated by cutting off its source. Upon hearing this, Royal Father had what had long confused him suddenly made clear — he found it entirely convincing, turned around, had the diviners from before executed, and then set out to find this vein of energy from the former dynasty.”

Hearing this, she could not help clicking her tongue.

Thinking of Hao Bai’s somewhat theatrical face, Xiao Nanhui genuinely could not imagine how trustworthy the other members of the Qu Family could be — that they could cause a sovereign to set the whole nation in motion searching for an elusive, intangible vein of energy.

Perhaps what drove the Emperor down this path was not any words spoken by the Qu Family, but simply a heart set on protecting power at any cost.

“From as early as I can remember, Royal Father was tormented day and night by the need to thoroughly investigate this matter. He seemed possessed, bewitched — day after day poring over ancient texts and records, tracking down every last fragment of information about the Qiu clan, even forgetting that this vast realm already sat beneath his throne. The fruitless searching hollowed out his strength; suspicion and rumination devoured his very soul. His body rapidly withered away, and all the imperial physicians in the palace were helpless. And at that time, the only heir he had was me — who had long since been absent from the palace.”

He paused at this point, and when he spoke again it seemed as though he had deliberately omitted something.

“Royal Father and I had always been somewhat at odds. Even at the very end, he was still unwilling to simply hand over the seat he had held for so many years to me — and so he placed three deadly trials before me. He took me to my mother’s grave and made me swear an oath: that once I took the throne, I would complete three things within my lifetime. This was the price of my right to take my place. If I refused, he would kill me on the spot and find another to inherit the throne from among the imperial kinsmen.”

What “somewhat at odds” — this sounded more like a deep-seated, bitter enmity. Otherwise, why would he be willing to kill his own child rather than pass the throne to someone from another branch?

Xiao Nanhui understood that there were things he had not fully spoken.

But she did not intend to press him for now. Because she surmised this likely had something to do with his mother consort, and that was yet another painful story.

“What were the three things?”

“The first was to recover the secret imperial seal. The second was to suppress the rebellion in Bijiang. The third was to permanently eliminate the remnants of the former dynasty.”

“Remnants of the former dynasty?” She found this somewhat astonishing. “Could it be referring to that vein of energy from the former dynasty that had not yet been found?”

“Perhaps. I have spent years in careful preparation, and the first two matters now have some resolution — only the third has never had an answer. At first I thought it might simply be a reference to the matter of the secret seal — but knowing Royal Father as I did in life, if he specifically raised the point separately, he must not have intended a repetition, but something else entirely. At the time, I should have asked Royal Father to clarify — but his illness was already severe by then, and within three days of the Yu’an Uprising, he had breathed his last. And the attendants who had been closest to him were found guilty of dereliction of duty and not long after left Quecheng, to go and tend the mausoleum at the Su clan’s ancestral burial ground.”

“You mean Steward Zong, don’t you?” Xiao Nanhui suddenly recalled the scene that night at Yulin Lodge. “Zong Hao once told me that he had spent his life traveling all over, collecting every piece of woven brocade bearing a prophecy — yet there was one he could never find. Could the massacre of the entire Xiao Family truly have been carried out for that single strip of cloth? Is that the secret the Imperial House wished to destroy?”

She suddenly felt that everything had taken on a somewhat absurd and laughable quality.

A man who once told her that prophecy was nothing but illusion — in the end, it was over this non-existent illusion that he had claimed seventy-nine lives.

But she knew that Zong Hao was only a sharp blade. The one truly heartless was the man who had gripped that blade from the throne.

A wave of churning rose within her. She struggled not to let herself think about the bloodline that ran through the man before her.

“But why not act sooner or later — why then, of all times —”

“Perhaps he had not known before then — that what he had spent half his life searching for had been hidden in the capital all along.”

No — something was still not right.

Xiao Nanhui racked her mind, trying to piece together the information she had just learned, but no matter what she did, she could not find the missing corner.

And right now, her only lead was truly just that strip of cloth lying quietly inside the lacquered box.

“Never mind that this is nothing more than a piece of ordinary undyed hemp cloth — even if it does hold some secret, what is that secret, and where does it come from?”

“Since the one who wrote the prophecy is no longer in this world, the only option is to go find the one who wove the cloth.”

A flicker of hope rekindled within her.

“You know the person who wove this cloth?”

“I do not.”

He answered without the least hesitation, and a cunning smile played at the corner of his mouth — as though he were deliberately waiting to watch her be caught off guard.

She stared at him, and suddenly felt that this man’s expressions had been growing more numerous of late.

He had not always been this way. Though his features had always been fine, his face was usually expressionless — there was even a kind of wan, pallid blankness to him. For however beautiful a person might be, if they are always wearing a cold face, it does diminish the effect somewhat. But if someone is already reasonably fine-looking and then adds some life to their expression, they can instantly become more than one can handle.

To think that back then, she had smiled until her face ached and still could not persuade that elder Zhou Waiye in Mu Er He to arrange a private room for her — and this man had merely drifted in and taken one look around before being singled out as the main attraction.

People are truly shallow, drawn only to things that look appealing.

Xiao Nanhui shifted forward slightly, affecting an air of great seriousness — actually so she could get a better look at his face.

“If you don’t know them, how do we find them?”

“The strip of woven brocade you found at the Marquis Mansion has threads that are slightly yellow-black in color. This is not because the hemp was that color to begin with — it was stained by exposure to a certain substance over time. As for what that substance is —”

Before he could finish, the carriage suddenly jolted and slowly came to a stop.

Ding Weixiang’s voice rose from just outside the carriage door.

“Your Majesty, the road ahead is impassable.”

“What has happened?”

Outside the carriage went quiet for a moment, and then the carriage door was pulled open. Ding Weixiang’s figure appeared, half visible in his rain cape.

“Would Your Majesty like to take a look personally?”

Xiao Nanhui was still stealing glances at the man beside her — yet he had already gently taken her hand.

“Let us take a look, then.”

The damp air surged in, carrying with it the fishy smell of river water.

Xiao Nanhui looked up in surprise at the surroundings, and only then realized they had imperceptibly arrived once again at the banks of the Hunhe River.

The last time she had entered Huozhou, she and Bolao had ridden hard on fast horses and it had taken more than ten days to reach the border. They had been traveling now for just barely ten days all told, in a carriage no less — yet they had already reached Yueyuan Town.

The place was still as muddy, still as grimy as ever. Caravans and horse teams converging from all directions had gathered together, waiting to board the ferryboats at Dafen Crossing. Right now, a large herd of multicolored cattle and sheep were slowly moving through the dusk, completely blocking Yueyuan’s already narrow and pockmarked road. Some distance away, several herdsmen were shouting and driving the animals along — but at a conservative estimate, it would take at least half an hour for them all to pass through.

“It’s no matter. We’ll lodge here for the night.”

Ding Weixiang received his orders and drove the carriage into a nearby thatched shelter. He then retrieved rain capes for the two of them and led the way toward that familiar inn.

Knock, knock, knock — after three knocks, the familiar proprietor was there, still hugging his hand warmer, his squinting eyes still half-asleep. He did not look up as he hedged dismissively.

“Terribly sorry, young sir, our establishment is fully booked —”

While he was still speaking, a slip of paper was extended before his face.

A familiar note. A familiar red seal.

The proprietor looked up in astonishment. When he had made out the three figures standing in the rain, his expression became even more impossible to read.

“The room marked with Heaven’s character — if you would be so good as to lead the way.”

Watching that proprietor shuffle off trembling without daring to breathe a word, Xiao Nanhui felt absolutely delighted.

So this is what it means when they say: one man attains enlightenment, and even his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven.

The moment she stepped through the inn’s precarious front door, she instinctively swept a glance around.

Inside were still those same five or six battered tables, still crammed with people on all sides.

But strangely, everyone was quietly drinking their broth and eating their flatbread, and not a single person raised their head to look at the three guests who had seized the best room — nor did anyone show any envious expression over it.

Xiao Nanhui felt a little deflated, and was just about to withdraw her gaze — when in the next instant she suddenly stopped.

At the nearest table to her left sat a man dressed like a herdsman, one arm resting on the table, his profile just barely visible — and for some reason, he looked vaguely familiar.

Yet no matter how she tried to recall, she could not for the life of her remember where she had seen such a person.

Behind her, Ding Weixiang had already gotten the key from the proprietor and was heading upstairs. She stood there a moment and then followed after.

As she passed by the man’s table, something stirred in her heart, and she was moved by some instinct to pull out a copper coin and toss it on the floor.

“My friend, you’ve dropped something.”

The big man’s figure paused, and he instinctively looked down.

This single look turned his face fully toward her, and in that brief instant, it was enough for Xiao Nanhui to remember exactly where she had seen him before.

“You are —”

Before she could finish the words, Ding Weixiang up ahead had already sensed something.

A flash of white light blazed within the cramped interior of the inn, and dozens of weapons were drawn from their scabbards in an instant.

Yet faster than any of the blade-wielders was the fleshy body of the inn’s proprietor. At some point he had already nimbly squeezed himself under a table.

“I am only a simple businessman — honored sirs —”

Xiao Nanhui, fury rising in her chest, gave that half-exposed backside a vicious kick.

“Silence.”