The moon hung above the willow branches, a few scattered stars along the horizon, the cold light thin and sparse.

The female assassin, whose strength seemed to come and go unpredictably, carried a wooden tub into the room where Zhang Xingjian slept, then attentively poured hot water into it.

Shen Qingwu felt rather pleased with her own thoughtfulness, but Zhang Xingjian didn’t so much as offer her a word of pleasantry. One moment she’d just finished filling the bathtub with satisfaction; the next, she found herself shut outside the door.

Shen Qingwu raised an eyebrow.

She would be a patient wife—listening from outside was also a method.

Leaning against the earthen wall outside the room, Shen Qingwu propped her chin, listening to the sounds within while pondering when best to slip inside.

Zhang Xingjian seemed unwilling to grow too close to a country girl from the wilds—he kept calling A’Wu his savior, yet showed no intention of offering himself in gratitude. So much for the so-called debt of a life saved.

Shen Qingwu didn’t want to break things off with Zhang Xingjian just yet. She decided to climb up onto the roof, lift a tile, and peek in from above instead.

Strange.

She’d done this sort of sneaking about plenty of times before, yet thinking of it now, something in her heart gave a faint, sour throb, and a tingling numbness in her fingertips left her briefly stunned.

While Shen Qingwu was down below, puzzling over the odd feeling in her own hand, Zhang Xingjian, inside the room, slowly drew a shard of porcelain with a sharp edge from his sleeve. He loosened his robe, pulled open the collar, and slowly unwound the cloth binding the wound on his chest.

The porcelain shard came from a bowl broken in the kitchen.

His going into the kitchen every day to lighten Shen Qingwu’s workload had, in truth, also been to obtain something he could use to defend himself. Given how careless the female assassin was, she’d never notice a bowl or pair of chopsticks missing from the kitchen.

By now, though Zhang Xingjian’s vision could not make out anything clearly, he could roughly discern shapes and outlines. This was also why he’d chosen to break with the female assassin—without depending on her, he could travel alone, to go make contact with his own men.

Under the single point of lamplight, Zhang Xingjian lowered his head, coldly regarding the scar on his chest. The mark of the arrow wound there ran deep, lying close beside a scar from years before. The healed tissue mingled with the newly grown pink flesh, in varying depths, altogether ugly.

He had been recuperating for a month now, yet the arrow wound still plagued him, causing intermittent pain in his chest. The colder the weather grew, the worse the pain became.

That Zhang Xingjian’s wound never properly healed was partly due to the lack of good medicine out here in the wilds and the lack of careful care—but it was also because he poured out every dose of medicine brewed for him each day, never drinking a drop.

When Shen Qingwu watched him, he drank the medicine; when she wasn’t looking, he poured it out. Ever since he’d discovered this female assassin’s identity, he hadn’t trusted her in the slightest. Each time he drank the medicine, there were signs of drowsiness afterward, and he’d always suspected it was some scheme of hers.

Strangely—and fortunately—Shen Qingwu had never particularly bothered to watch closely whether he actually took his medicine.

Now, however, Zhang Xingjian needed that medicine. He needed a heavier dose than what he normally took himself—if things went wrong, this drug could be used against the female assassin.

His most pressing task now was to send the female assassin away and set a killing trap meant for her.

And so, by candlelight, the handsome, refined young master, his face pale as snow, calmly loosened his thin robe, and without hesitation drove the porcelain shard back into his own wound—

“Mm…”

Leaning against the wall, eyes closed in thought, Shen Qingwu heard a muffled groan from inside the room, one he could not quite suppress.

Her ear twitched; she caught the sound of the young master’s somewhat labored breathing from within.

Shen Qingwu called: “Zhang Yuelu?”

The voice that came from the room strained to sound calm, yet the faint tremor in it, carrying a trace of hoarseness, splashed against Shen Qingwu’s ears like a pebble dropping into water: “It’s nothing… I just accidentally bumped my old wound.”

Shen Qingwu blinked.

An old wound?

The next instant, a thud of something falling to the floor came from the room, and Zhang Xingjian’s breathing grew a degree more strained.

Shen Qingwu turned and, without hesitation, pushed the door open and went in, unwilling to let slip such a good opportunity to check whether he was hiding an old item on his person.

She pushed open the door and swept her eyes over the room, disappointed to find no discarded men’s clothing hanging by the bathtub. After all that dawdling, Zhang Xingjian hadn’t even taken off a single sash.

Then, looking again, she was startled to see Zhang Xingjian collapsed on the floor, blood seeping from beneath his robe.

Zhang Xingjian’s clothes were half undone, his black hair plastered to his face, his lips—usually a rosy red—now pale. His dark, cold eyes held a moist sheen; the cloth binding beneath his chest was stained with blood, sweat beading on his forehead from the arrow wound, though his expression remained composed.

Zhang Xingjian turned his face toward her, light rippling in his unseeing eyes: “A’Wu?”

He gave a bitter smile: “I’m troubling you again…”

Shen Qingwu crouched beside him, startled by the bloody sight of him. She was the one who’d inflicted this wound, and General Shen, who had seen every manner of life and death, now found herself unable to look too closely, out of a guilty conscience.

Facing the pale, lifeless-looking Zhang Xingjian, she was at a loss. She wanted him not to be so easy to handle, but she didn’t want him at death’s door either.

Shen Qingwu had seen more comrades-in-arms than she could count die months after surviving an arrow wound, simply for lack of proper care.

Her voice sharpened slightly: “What happened?”

Zhang Xingjian paused, catching the change in her tone.

A hand touched his slightly feverish forehead, and a stream of internal energy flowed into his body.

Zhang Xingjian’s heart tightened; he reached out and grasped her wrist, shaking his head weakly to refuse. He murmured: “A’Wu, I was careless unwinding the bandage, and the wound started bleeding again—it seems to have gotten worse. These past few days I’ve felt a tightness and pain in my chest, but I was afraid to worry you, so I didn’t dare tell you…”

His voice grew fainter and fainter as he spoke.

He let his head droop, drifting into unconsciousness.

Shen Qingwu: “Zhang Yuelu?”

She reached out to check his breathing—his hands and feet were ice-cold. She called his name several times with no response; steam still rose from the hot water in the tub, and Shen Qingwu began to regret pushing him to bathe.

Holding this man whose body temperature kept fluctuating, she felt lost: “What about my vacation?”

…If he died, what would happen to her vacation?

Zhang Xingjian murmured: “Medicine…”

It struck Shen Qingwu like a bolt from the blue—she remembered the physician in town. Before, she’d always told the physician not to prescribe anything too effective; now she found herself desperately hoping he could produce some miracle cure to save her vacation.

Shen Qingwu: “Zhang Yuelu, hold on.”

She understood well enough that a sick man couldn’t travel long distances with her.

She immediately carried Zhang Xingjian to the bed, then turned and strode swiftly out of the house, using her lightness skill to rush toward town. She had no idea where the physician lived, no idea whether the clinic would still be open, but she had to hurry.

After Shen Qingwu left, Zhang Xingjian naturally began at once to set up the room he’d been lying in for a month.

By the time Shen Qingwu returned, dragging the trembling physician along with her, a full two hours had passed. She’d been terrified of returning to find a corpse, but fortunately, Zhang Xingjian lay on the bed, breath faint but still showing signs of hope.

Shen Qingwu ordered the physician about: “This time, prescribe plenty of good medicine. It looks like his wound’s split open again—probably the last medicine wasn’t right.”

By the dim firelight, Shen Qingwu leaned in, standing beside the bed.

Some two inches above her head, directly above the unconscious Zhang Xingjian on the bed, several shards of porcelain were fixed at various angles along the beam. The shards were concealed by the coarse hemp rope in the room, blending seamlessly into the surroundings.

And beneath the bedding, on the right side of Zhang Xingjian, was tucked the end of a rattan cord.

The moment anyone touched it, the killing device on the beam would trigger instantly. Even a god would find no escape.

But neither Shen Qingwu nor the old physician, examining Zhang Xingjian’s wound in the room, had any inkling of just how ruthless this frail, sickly young master truly was.

The old physician examined the young master’s wound; with his modest medical skill and clouded eyesight, he couldn’t detect Zhang Xingjian’s own tampering, only that this was indeed a case of a new wound aggravating an old one, likely flaring up badly.

The old physician stroked his beard: “Has this young master perhaps been wounded in the same spot before?”

Shen Qingwu was puzzled.

Zhang Xingjian was the Zhang family’s precious moon-like figure, spending most of his time confined to his own small domain—the rare times he left the capital, she’d run into him herself. When would he have been wounded before?

The old physician pointed it out: “Look at the scar marks here, so close to the heart—this spot is no good at all…”

The old physician eyed the puzzled Shen Qingwu sideways, beginning to grow suspicious: “Is this really your husband? He had an old wound two inches from his heart before, right beside where the axe struck this time—the smallest carelessness would naturally trigger the old injury… how could you not know this?”

Shen Qingwu murmured: “The heart…”

A bolt of lightning seemed to flash through her mind.

She suddenly recalled that torrential rainstorm in the late autumn of the nineteenth year of Tianlong—Shen Qingwu walking resolutely away in the rain, and Zhang Xingjian, whom she’d stabbed in the chest with a dagger.

Not yet come of age, Zhang Xingjian had collapsed in a pool of blood, with many people crowding around him, shouting in alarm. She’d heard he’d been ill for a long time… yet he’d clearly been up and about quickly enough to go see Shen Qingye, to become engaged to her, and to stand together with Shen Qingye atop the city walls of the capital, watching Shen Qingwu leave the city.

That distant moon hanging in the sky in the nineteenth year of Tianlong—Shen Qingwu had resented it bitterly for a long time.

Shen Qingwu’s memory returned to a month ago, when her arrow had grazed Chang Lin and struck Zhang Xingjian dead center.

She hadn’t realized that, on two separate occasions, she’d wounded him in the exact same spot. Zhang Xingjian was a bastard—he’d never once shown just how severe the pain truly was. She’d always thought him weak and useless, never knowing the limits of his endurance.

So it turned out the entanglement between Shen Qingwu and Zhang Xingjian had always been this coincidental, and this deep.

The old physician sighed with regret: “This spot is far too dangerous—one wrong move and he could die. Every time the weather turns cold a little, doesn’t it flare up… ah, you young people, far too careless.”

He turned to say something more to Shen Qingwu and accidentally brushed against the shackle on Zhang Xingjian’s wrist. The unusual clinking sound startled him, and he froze, terrified by the cold look Shen Qingwu shot him.

The old physician didn’t dare probe further into what that chain he’d touched might mean.

Shen Qingwu glanced slowly at the physician and said, indifferently: “Give him the best medicine. I want him alive.”

Zhang Xingjian deserved to belong to her.

His life was hers to give; his death, too, would be hers to give.

Life and death—both should be decided by her alone—

The town physician could hardly produce some miracle elixir. The woman was fierce, and the terrified physician’s prescription amounted to little more than a larger dose than before—otherwise no different.

He helped brew the medicine for the household; the moment it was ready, he was chased out, since Shen Qingwu needed to attend to feeding Zhang Xingjian the medicine and had no time to spare for the physician.

Fortunately, this uncompromising young lady paid generously, and the old physician left shaking his head. He pretended not to notice this strange couple’s peculiar tastes, pretended not to have seen the shackles on the young master’s wrists and ankles… the less he knew, the safer he’d be.

Once only Shen Qingwu and Zhang Xingjian remained in the house, Shen Qingwu carried in a bowl of the freshly brewed, potent medicine to see him.

She sat down at the edge of the bed.

The mechanism on the beam lay not far above, just inside the bed.

As long as she didn’t get close to Zhang Xingjian, as long as she simply sat at the edge of the bed watching him and did nothing else, she wouldn’t trigger the device.

But that, of course, was impossible.

Shen Qingwu’s mind kept circling back to that dagger from before, and now, that cold arrow. She couldn’t say where the strange, sour, numbing feeling in her chest came from, couldn’t understand why she felt so lost now that she knew all this…

She simply chalked up this tangled feeling to her own unwillingness to let go, her own unresolved grievance.

She truly couldn’t figure this moon of hers out!

Shen Qingwu: “Zhang Yuelu, take your medicine.”

Naturally, the feigning-sleep Zhang Xingjian on the bed didn’t respond.

Shen Qingwu lifted the bowl, intending to feed the medicine straight into his mouth. But Zhang Xingjian knew that if the dose were heavy enough, he really would pass out—how could he let that happen as she wished?

Unable to get the medicine into him, Shen Qingwu’s brows knit tighter and tighter, her patience wearing thin. She tried gentle persuasion, then tried pinching his chin to force the medicine down. She very nearly dislocated his jaw; the young master on the bed coughed violently, his face flushing red, and Shen Qingwu no longer dared use force.

The atmosphere fell into an eerie stillness.

Zhang Xingjian rather hoped she’d recognize the difficulty and give up on her own.

He didn’t necessarily have to kill her.

As long as she didn’t move against him, he could actually spare her life. Cunning as she was, she had, after all, cared for him for a month… Zhang Xingjian’s breath suddenly caught—something soft had pressed against his lips.

His entire body froze as if encased in ice.

Even with his impaired vision, his eyes flew open in that instant, the hazy, unfocused light in them falling on Shen Qingwu’s face, pressed close against his own.

One of her hands braced against the bed board, the other gripped his chin, forcing his head up. Expressionless, she took a large mouthful of the bitter medicine and leaned down over him.

Zhang Xingjian’s mind went blank, the hand resting flat on the bedding trembling slightly.

This young lady paid no mind to his wishes, nor did she care whether his eyes were open. Perhaps in her eyes, an unconscious blind man opening his eyes meant nothing at all. And so, at this extremely close distance, their eyes met, their lashes nearly touching, their breath entirely mingled.

Her tongue pressed against his teeth, a rare gentleness that sent a tremor through Zhang Xingjian’s chest, as the medicine passed into his mouth.

She leaned over him, the light in her indifferent eyes calm and steady, cool strands of her hair falling across his face, brushing against his lashes. In his shock, Zhang Xingjian, tongue pressed against his own, throat forced to swallow, drank the mouthful of medicine in confusion.

Satisfied, Shen Qingwu took another mouthful of the strong medicine and leaned down over him again.

Zhang Xingjian’s eyes snapped shut.

In an instant his neck flushed red, his breath ragged and uneven between his lips and teeth. With his eyes closed, the darkness pressing in from all sides, the young lady’s breath—soft yet insistent—carried him back to a place he’d once known well—

One night, blindfolded, he had kissed Shen Qingwu in a storeroom full of odds and ends.

His neck tilted back; amid truth and pretense, amid mutual testing, they had briefly lost themselves to each other for a while.

Zhang Xingjian’s experience of intimacy between men and women, in this life, had been limited; everything he knew of kissing was far from ordinary. He remembered only pressure, back and forth exchange, teasing, pursuit, dust swirling in the air…

And now, in this house below the hills outside town, he was experiencing this same, not-quite-ordinary intimacy once more.

Shen Qingwu.

Only Shen Qingwu.

No one but Shen Qingwu would toy with him like this.

At once, Zhang Xingjian’s mind grew chaotic, his usually ice-calm thoughts churned into mush. He didn’t know what to think, what to do—yet the touch of lips against his own was not his to refuse. He could only vaguely think that he mustn’t swallow this medicine, mustn’t let himself be knocked out by it…

And so his tongue pressed outward.

He met Shen Qingwu.

After a moment of stillness in their breathing, Shen Qingwu’s breath shifted subtly. The medicine passed into her mouth, yet this no longer resembled feeding medicine—it resembled a chase, a game between lovers. Unable to help herself, Shen Qingwu’s thoughts drifted to a night from before, bitter medicine and warm breath arriving together at once…

How could she stay calm?

She gripped his chin, and as his throat worked, she kissed him.

He turned his face aside to evade her, and Shen Qingwu, somewhat hurried now, took another mouthful of medicine. Her eyes grew moist, her face burned hot, and in a hoarse voice she tried to convince herself: “Zhang Yuelu, you need to take your medicine.”

She tossed the bowl aside and leaned down completely, pressing her lips to his once more.

Candlelight fell, flickering at the foot of the wall, crawling and swaying like a spider’s web. The room dimmed, yet their breathing sounded all the clearer for it.

Shen Qingwu’s hand rested on the bed; leaning over him, her elbow pushed aside the piled bedding toward the inner side of the bed. Zhang Xingjian’s heart lurched—he thought of exactly where her hand was about to touch… the porcelain shards on the beam glinting coldly.

He had, after all, only been guarding against the female assassin using force on him… he simply hadn’t known, while guarding against the female assassin, that the female assassin was Shen Qingwu.

Suddenly, the young master beneath her raised his arms and embraced her, wrapping around her neck, pulling her against his chest.

She started, her blood running cold, snapping out of her daze—shocked that he might have woken… He held her, rolled over with her, and pressed her beneath him.

The dazed Shen Qingwu felt him kiss her cheek.

Her brows flew up.

Her cheek was cupped by his hand, her breath blocked once more. The mouthful of medicine that had passed back and forth was pressed by Zhang Xingjian back into her own mouth, and she swallowed it in confusion.

Candlelight fell upon this pair, helplessly caught up in each other.

The porcelain shards on the beam were never triggered, from beginning to end—

Zhang Xingjian rubbed his forehead, stumbling as he rolled off the bed, bracing himself against the bed frame to steady his ragged breathing.

His face was flushed red, his eyes moist, his lips even more vividly colored, his already-thin robe now rumpled from their back-and-forth entanglement. His long hair spilled across his face; head bowed low, a bead of sweat clung to his lashes.

He turned back, and through the hazy candlelight, looked at the young lady lying on the bed, now unconscious from the medicine he’d fed her.

As for himself, having swallowed a few mouthfuls of the medicine too, his own head felt somewhat foggy. But he was still better off than Shen Qingwu, who was drinking this medicine for the first time, and certainly better off than Shen Qingwu, who’d swallowed the greater portion of it.

Fortunate that this was medicine, not poison. Otherwise this ravenous, lecherous woman might have ended up dead at his hands without even realizing it.

Zhang Xingjian smiled bitterly, and felt a flicker of irritation as well: so it really had been Shen Qingwu.

To think Bo Rong had let Shen Qingwu leave the camp, had let her come find him.

The Zhang family’s affairs were so complicated—why would Bo Rong let Shen Qingwu get involved? Why wouldn’t Bo Rong treat Shen Qingwu better, why not keep her away from all this trouble? Wasn’t it better for her to remain the imposing female general, why did she have to get entangled with the Zhang family of all things…

Zhang Xingjian said quietly: “Shen Qingwu, I told you long ago not to trust Bo Rong so much.”

But Shen Qingwu never listened to him.

Through his blurred vision, Zhang Xingjian couldn’t make out Shen Qingwu clearly, nor did he wish to. He sat stunned at the edge of the bed for a while, thinking that he should leave now, should go attend to his own affairs.

Surely Shen Qingwu had had her fill of fun by now? Surely she’d go back to Yizhou.

His mind in disarray, Zhang Xingjian tried his best to think calmly about what to do next—he thought he should leave before Shen Qingwu woke. There should still be some time before dawn; he should go.

His thoughts were too tangled just then, and he sensed oversights everywhere in his planning. Yet his mind kept circling back to Shen Qingwu, his heart in turmoil, the wound on his chest throbbing without pause—all of it caused by her. It was difficult for him to plan his next moves without his thoughts drifting back to her.

He should leave.

Zhang Xingjian stood, reaching for the bamboo staff by the bed. He stumbled over the medicine bowl left on the bed, falling back onto it, and found himself lost in thought for a moment.

Zhang Xingjian suddenly turned back, his unfocused, unseeing eyes settling on the bed.

He suddenly turned and bent down, his fingers brushing over her brows and eyes, tracing the outline of her face.

He told himself he was only confirming that this person really was Shen Qingwu, that he hadn’t made a mistake again. The female assassin would obey Kong Ye’s orders to eliminate him, but Shen Qingwu would not. In this world, there ought to be no one who could make Shen Qingwu fully obedient.

The face beneath his fingers did indeed belong to Shen Qingwu—that… strange young lady.

Zhang Xingjian steadied his breathing, his gaze softening for an instant—

That willful, self-centered little wutong tree, whom he could never quite understand…

He had to leave now.

Zhang Xingjian rose to his feet, felt for his bamboo staff, gathered his things, and left this place—

When Shen Qingwu next woke, dazed and disoriented, a full day had already passed.

The last light of dusk brushed against the window, falling into the empty room. Shen Qingwu sat cross-legged on the bed, looking down to see her own loosened clothing, one round shoulder exposed. Her long hair spilled to her waist; when she sat up, she pressed painfully on her own hair.

She didn’t believe she could have grown so lost in passion, alone, that her clothes ended up nearly stripped off.

Zhang Xingjian.

Sunlight flickered lightly against Shen Qingwu’s closed eyelids, and her eyes suddenly snapped open.

There was no trace of anyone’s presence in the room; releasing her internal energy outward, she found no sign of any living thing anywhere in the house. Last night’s bowl of medicine had been a trap—Zhang Xingjian had used his looks to seduce her, then slipped away.

Shen Qingwu rose calmly and began searching the room for any traces left behind.

That her skill had fallen short of his, that she’d lost to Zhang Xingjian and been turned against by him—that was nothing to her. She’d known all along he wouldn’t obediently stay put and recover; this performance of his had been quite something, stirring up her competitive spirit.

The more he disliked her—whether as Shen Qingwu or as A’Wu—and wanted to keep his distance, the more she wanted to have him. He’d stirred up her fighting spirit; she liked difficult people.

Flipping up onto the beam, Shen Qingwu found the broken porcelain shards and the mechanism set up along it. Seeing that these traps were more than capable of inflicting serious injury, her eyes only grew brighter—

What a formidable Zhang Xingjian.

What a wicked moon.

She wanted him even more now.

And besides, thinking back on last night’s events today left Shen Qingwu’s heart stirring with no small amount of longing.

In the cold night, having thoroughly searched the house inside and out, Shen Qingwu walked out, bow slung across her back.

The hunter was setting off after her prey.