Now that the truth was already exposed, why keep pretending?

Only now did Shen Qingwu realize just how bold and ruthless Zhang Xingjian truly was—when he’d believed she was Princess Ande, he’d still dared to draw a blade against a princess.

The faint smile on his face, the more composed and unruffled it looked, the more it irritated her. A moon too easily obtained wouldn’t have left Shen Qingwu so unable to let go; the harder it was to have, the more it bred resentment.

…How dare he think he had the upper hand over her!

Shen Qingwu said nothing the entire time, but her fury flared instantly, burning high.

Shen Qingwu seized Zhang Xingjian’s chin and forced it down hard, the exchange of breath between their lips growing fierce once more. Her urgency drew from him a short, stifled sound, which drifted through her heart like scattered sand.

Did he think she couldn’t have him? He was dreaming.

Even with her sleeve slashed and the scent of blood thick between them, the woman’s grip only pressed down harder.

And Zhang Xingjian no longer bothered pretending either.

Blindfolded and unable to see, his martial skill no match for hers, he still felt this unreasonable little woman needed to understand that not everything in this world would bend to her will.

Zhang Xingjian’s hand brushed to her waist—not to embrace her, but to twist and push against her, forcing her back with strength.

Shen Qingwu took the blow without a sound, releasing her grip on his chin, sliding her hand down instead to counter his push.

In the cramped space, their breath grew ragged and chaotic.

It was both the intimate touch of breath meeting breath, and a contest where neither side would yield an inch.

Even someone of Shen Qingwu’s martial skill was forced to break into a sweat in that confined space, her heart pounding wildly. But she couldn’t quite say whether the heat coursing through her came from the struggle of fighting him, or from the stimulation of bodily contact between man and woman.

Amid their panting, they pressed close even as they left room to guard against each other’s sudden strikes.

Their clothes, tidy until now, grew disheveled and creased.

Zhang Xingjian didn’t know what Shen Qingwu was feeling, but his own hands were damp with sweat, the veins at his neck trembling harder. His expression remained composed as ever, but his flushed, moist lips, parted and gasping, told a different story—as did the bruises likely forming beneath his robe where she’d struck him.

Sweat poured like a stream.

…A flicker of anger rose in him too.

Never in his life had he encountered a woman this stubborn, this unwilling to yield!

A small lesson only made them grapple harder.

Zhang Xingjian was aware of his own state, aware that this was improper. She pressed close against him, fighting him even as she remained tangled and intimate with him, their bodies impossibly near, her breath coming in soft, dense bursts… this was already a kind of torment for him.

He would lose his composure.

He would lose to her.

…But Zhang Xingjian never lost.

His mind went blank, stirred into recklessness by this stubborn woman, forgetting his usual calm restraint. Had his reason still held firm, he was certain he wouldn’t have continued struggling with Shen Qingwu—he would have yielded to her cleanly and let her leave without complication…

Since he’d already guessed who she was, why would he continue this recklessness with her?

Looking back later, he was certain the drug had been controlling him in that moment.

The gasping young man’s wrist was caught by her, and his gesture of pushing shifted instead into wrapping around her waist. She stiffened slightly; he hadn’t fully registered it, his hand sliding from behind her to the front.

Shen Qingwu’s heart lurched violently.

A flicker of daze rose in her eyes.

Zhang Xingjian’s hand, warm as jade, hooked into the collar of her robe. Shen Qingwu gradually let go of her fierceness, a rush of pleasure surging through her… she felt a touch of triumph, thinking she would finally have him, wouldn’t she?

Until Zhang Xingjian’s fingers brushed against the jade pendant hanging beneath her collar.

Shen Qingwu paid it no mind at first.

She remained locked with him, tangled and kissing, her hand hooked into his sleeve, pressed against the wildly beating pulse at his wrist… the blood flowing from her arm stained his sleeve slightly, but in the darkness, neither of them noticed.

Zhang Xingjian’s fingers pressed against the jade pendant beneath Shen Qingwu’s collar.

Having been nearly unbearable, having struggled so fiercely, having lost a measure of herself… all her senses returned to her in that instant.

In the darkness, the jade pendant Zhang Xingjian touched was fine Hetian jade, carved with a single character: “Wu” (nothing/none).

This had been given to Shen Qingwu by Bo Rong.

In her first, second, and third years in Yizhou, though Shen Qingwu had served as a soldier and risen to general, she had always kept to herself. Every festival, while others received letters from distant relatives and friends, Shen Qingwu would sit beneath the bright moon, watching it through the entire night.

Perhaps Bo Rong had felt sorry for her, and so he’d personally carved a jade pendant for her.

Bo Rong hadn’t been certain whether he should give it to her, but if the character “Wu” carved on it wasn’t meant for her, then who else could it possibly be for?

Shen Qingwu didn’t care whether it was proper for a man to give a woman a jade pendant. Bo Rong’s hesitation, she understood, came only from his fear she might misunderstand. But Shen Qingwu would never misunderstand—no one in this world would ever love Shen Qingwu. On the battlefield, it wasn’t practical to wear a pendant at her waist, so she kept it hidden beneath her collar instead.

She’d carried this pendant with her for years. Every time her anger flared, she would touch it, and it would remind her of Bo Rong, remind her that he was the one person in this world who had ever treated her well.

In this moment, in the narrow room, the embracing pair—the woman still lost in it, the man now growing calmer and calmer.

Zhang Xingjian’s body, driven by the drug as if in a raging fever, still managed to touch this pendant and ask Shen Qingwu, “What is this?”

Shen Qingwu looked down and saw the pendant from her chest now resting between his long, slightly curled fingers.

She startled abruptly.

Pulled from her daze of tangled emotion, Shen Qingwu heard footsteps drawing closer outside, and suddenly remembered the situation she was in—

How could someone who’d taken advantage of another in their weakened state be caught in the act?

Shen Qingwu immediately snatched the pendant back to her chest and stepped back. Zhang Xingjian startled, still reluctant, falling back into old habit as he reached to hold her back: “Don’t go…”

But this time, Shen Qingwu withdrew cleanly and without hesitation.

His arms suddenly empty, Zhang Xingjian stumbled forward two steps, nearly tripping over some clutter at his feet. He stopped where he stood, and caught the faint sound of a window being pushed open. At the same moment, the creak of a wooden door swinging open sounded.

Chang Lin’s voice slipped in: “Young Master…”

Chang Lin cut himself off in shock, staring blankly at the young master in the dim room.

He had never seen Zhang Xingjian look like this before—

The white cloth hung askew over his eyes, his snow-white collar soaked through, sweat beading on his face, his pale skin flushed as though with fever, his dark hair disheveled, several damp strands clinging to his face, his once-immaculate robe now creased and rumpled, his sash hanging loose, the silk ribbon trailing on the ground.

Zhang Xingjian lifted the cloth from his eyes.

Chang Lin didn’t dare look too closely: even his eyes held a certain moist, glistening quality.

When had Second Young Lady Zhang, who so carefully watched over the young master’s every word and action, ever allowed him to appear in such a disheveled state?

As Chang Lin’s thoughts wandered, he saw Zhang Xingjian sway and catch himself against the wall, his brow furrowing with a slight tremor. His damp lashes fluttered faintly, his face flushing and paling by turns, utterly bewitching.

Chang Lin hurried forward: “Young Master, it’s the Princess—”

Zhang Xingjian gestured for him to be silent.

Zhang Xingjian closed his eyes. “Let’s leave this place first.”

At Princess Ande’s banquet, the fireworks were at their most brilliant.

The princess’s expression had soured; searching the crowd, she’d heard a guard report that “Zhang Yuelu is missing,” and her face had stiffened. Her almond eyes turned toward Shen Qingye, the Fifth Young Lady of the Shen family, who had come to the banquet together with Zhang Xingjian.

Shen Qingye, frail and thin, stood among the young ladies, gazing up at the fireworks as though entirely unaware of what had happened.

But this was the princess’s own domain—who could possibly have the ability to rescue Zhang Xingjian from right under her nose?

The princess seemed lost in thought for a long while, her face somewhat pale.

The guard called out to her several times before she finally came back to herself: “Investigate. Who in all of Dongjing would dare defy me?”

“Boom—” Fireworks burst across the sky.

Brilliant fireworks blazed overhead, lighting heaven and earth as bright as day.

Carriages rattled through the deep alleys.

Zhang Xingjian sat in a plain, unadorned carriage, slumped weakly against the wall, drenched in sweat as he endured the final stage of the drug’s effects.

His mind drifted—one moment recalling the uneven breathing in the darkness, the next filled with the scent of blood from the woman’s arm, and then again the jade pendant carved with “Wu.”

He thought: “Wu”—what could it mean?

Did Shen Qingwu not know that her own name meant “phoenix tree” rather than “possessing nothing”? Or did it mean something else entirely?

Beneath that same brilliant sky of fireworks, Shen Qingwu leaned against a wall covered in withered vines within the princess’s garden, gazing up indifferently at the blaze of light in the sky.

The dazzling colors completely obscured the bright moon behind the clouds.

Yet the pounding in Shen Qingwu’s chest grew only more violent.

She couldn’t feel the pain of the cut on her arm; instead, she reached up tentatively to touch the corner of her bitten lip.

Her mind was full of everything that had just happened.

With her exceptional eyesight, she remembered every line of the face of the young man she’d cornered in that dim room, remembered it with perfect clarity.

And the more she thought of it, the harder her heart pounded.

She understood, better than most shy young women her age, the misery a man suffered when overwhelmed by his own body’s urges. She’d seen plenty of that in the military camp, and she took a certain malicious satisfaction in knowing Zhang Xingjian would have to endure that same suffering too.

Poor Zhang Yuelu.

Whenever she thought of Zhang Xingjian, her blood ran hot. She touched the corner of her mouth, closed her eyes, and the corner of her lips curved up ever so slightly.

…Sparring with Zhang Xingjian had felt like an exhilarating battle. A masterful fight made all the more satisfying by an opponent’s cunning, leaving her wanting more.

She was wild and untamed by nature, and she loved to fight.

Who had won, who had lost?

Either way, she hadn’t lost.

That night, everyone tossed and turned in their own way.

The Zhang household didn’t know why Zhang Xingjian returned so exhausted, but assumed he must be sitting up through the night pondering some important matter, and no one dared disturb him.

At Princess Ande’s residence, deep into the night, they finally uncovered who had helped Zhang Xingjian escape.

Past the third watch, the princess, distracted and dazed, wandered out from behind her gauze curtains. She had just woken from a nightmare, leaning groggily against her desk.

The candlelight flickered gently. Traces of tears still lingered at the corners of the princess’s eyes as she took her attendant’s hand and wept softly: “I dreamed again of when I was fifteen, before he died. The Zhang family wasn’t like this back then, and neither was I…”

A guard outside the door reported to the princess, still troubled by her dream: “It was the General Who Guards the West, Second Young Lady Shen Qingwu of the Shen family.”

The princess froze for a moment, then woke fully from her dream-daze.

That night, perhaps only Shen Qingwu was happy.

At the post station, Yang Su and the others could plainly see their general’s good mood, but couldn’t understand the reason for it.

Shen Qingwu climbed up onto the roof.

Yang Su and the others were stunned: “General, what are you doing? Aren’t you going to sleep?”

Shen Qingwu answered, “Watching the moon.”