Thunder rolled through the night, lightning cutting like blades.

Standing in the rain, his face pale as snow, Zhang Xingjian finally let his composure slip.

Watching the instant clarity return to Shen Qingwu’s eyes, despair and frustration crashed over him—he had come so close.

So close, and yet again, not close enough!

His wet fingers trembled faintly. Even he was beginning to wonder if heaven itself was working against him: every single time, always just short, and that last small distance never closing.

He knew, in his heart, that defeat was coming.

But he never surrendered mid-battle.

He tried, still, to salvage this—

With difficulty, very softly, he said, “Wutong. It was only a clap of thunder.”

“Only a clap of thunder?” she echoed.

“Have you never once believed my oath? Every vow I’ve ever made—to you, has it all just been a joke, not worth honoring?”

His lips parted.

She cut him off, sinking into memory. “That’s right. In the nineteenth year of Tianlong, you told me yourself—you don’t believe in oaths. You never swear them yourself, and of course you don’t believe anyone else’s. But, Zhang Yuelu—”

Her dark, still eyes finally settled on him.

“Didn’t I also tell you that I keep my word? That every oath I’ve ever sworn was real?”

“Wutong, listen to me—”

She cut him off again. “I won’t listen to you.”

As thunder cracked abruptly overhead, the distance between them widened.

She walked toward him. “You’ve said more than enough already. Now it’s my turn. It’s time you listened to me—”

Step by step she advanced; he hadn’t meant to retreat, but somehow found himself stumbling back a pace anyway.

Holding her ground, bearing down on him, she went on: “I truly believe people should keep their word, should answer for every word they say and every thing they do. I’ve never feared paying the price for anything—you said it yourself, that I don’t care about anything.

“I wanted to steal you away from Shen Qingye, wanted to keep you prisoner, wanted you to bring me joy, wanted you to settle a debt I’d carried for years. I only cared about pleasing myself—I didn’t care what any of you thought, what you thought.

“Angry? Then take your revenge. Can’t beat me? Find another way to win. Here I am—Shen Qingwu. I’m not afraid to pay whatever price you name.”

Rain fell on her.

Lightning at her back, she closed in, step after step.

Zhang Xingjian stood frozen, watching her, refusing to retreat another step. His face grew paler and paler, like some ghost dragged up out of a river.

Watching his own downfall, he was powerless to stop it—

Every time she came at him like this, it drew him in completely.

Even knowing exactly what she was about to do.

She stopped right in front of him, looking into his eyes.

It had been a long time since she’d truly looked at him like this.

She didn’t know what she felt for him, didn’t know what she actually wanted between them. But she knew one thing—she didn’t want to let him have his way. Didn’t want him to always come out ahead of her.

“What are you doing, Zhang Yuelu?” she asked. “You beg me to come with you, and still you scheme against my heart, still you use every trick against me—your face, your voice, your ‘sincerity,’ your bared heart… nothing is off-limits to you, Zhang Yuelu. You don’t care what means you use.

“Do you think that if you love me, I have to go with you? Do you think that as long as you can trap me by any means necessary, treating me well afterward counts as making up for it?

“Do you think I’m so easy to fob off?”

He looked into her eyes.

For once, he was the one on the losing side.

Rain dripped from his lashes into his eyes, and he murmured, “You’re… very, very… not easy to fob off.”

“I’m simply unsatisfied. Simply unhappy.

“You didn’t look at me when I needed you to. You tried to drag me into this when I hated the very idea of feeling anything. You said I can’t make peace with myself. Fine, I can’t—so what?

“But I can be reasonable too. You said you treated me like a stranger—then I’ll treat you like a stranger too. You say you love me, and I’m supposed to turn around and leap for joy, overflow with gratitude?

“The man I once couldn’t let go of has finally turned to look at me. The man I once wanted so desperately and could never have says he loves me—I truly don’t know why you’d suddenly feel this way, and I don’t know whether you’re lying either. You’re too cunning, too clever, too vicious—I’m no match for you.

“But I have my own thoughts.

“What right do you have, Zhang Yuelu?”

She asked him: “Are you always the winner, and I always the loser? Am I supposed to spend my whole life looking up at you, never good enough for you, grateful for even a single glance? What right do you have?

“I’m proud. I’m disobedient. I’m stubborn. I’m flawed in every way, and I still insist on defying every one of you. I’ve failed again and again, been laughed at again and again—do you think I don’t know how pathetic I look to everyone else, like some kind of joke?”

Softly, he said, “But Wutong, love isn’t a war. It doesn’t have to end with one of us dead, one of us alive. It doesn’t have to end with both of us destroyed.”

“But to me, love is a war.

“My whole life has been a war—fighting, always, every step of the way. I never learned any other way to survive. You tell me I could live differently, but I can’t work out how, not now.

“Right now, I can’t let this go.”

Of course she couldn’t.

She wouldn’t let herself think about what she’d once hoped for from him at sixteen. It would lead nowhere, be no use at all.

She only knew—

“You don’t hold the thunder oath in your heart, but I’ve never forgotten it. It’s the most serious oath I’ve ever sworn in my life…

“Do you not have a sincere heart at all? How dare you still use tricks to win me back, even now? How is even ‘sincerity’ just another tactic to you? In your whole life, has there never once been a single thing you did without calculation, purely from the heart, without weighing every angle?

“Do you actually love me, or are you simply dressing up your own ambitions as love?

“Why is it that I look like a madwoman, and you get to be the noble, moonlit gentleman above the fray? Why is it that whatever you want, you simply have—and whatever I want, I have to bash my head bloody just to catch the barest glimpse of it?”

Her eyes went cold. “Why does everyone say Shen Qingwu doesn’t deserve Zhang Xingjian? Why does no one ever say Zhang Xingjian doesn’t deserve Shen Qingwu?

“After all those years of effort, after I finally managed to trap you here, made you into some kind of reward I gave myself—now you turn around and say you love me, as if, as if—”

As if all her effort had meant nothing.

As if her having him at all was only because he’d wanted her to have him.

Why did Zhang Xingjian keep making her feel this imbalance, this gap between them, this impossible distance separating them?

Dazed, her thoughts drifted to Bo Rong.

She was beginning to understand his situation now.

Trapped between going forward and going back—wanting to take it back but unable to, wanting to turn around but too proud to. This cliff’s edge, this impasse, was too hard for people as serious as they were.

They took things so seriously!

Longed for someone, for something, with such total sincerity.

And the other side simply didn’t care, didn’t hold that sincerity in any regard at all.

So then… what right did they have?

“I think if I’m with you, I really will be struck by lightning,” she said.

“I don’t want to die.”

She told him: “Do you know why I wanted to imprison you, why I wanted to force you into loving me? Because I told myself—

“I would make the moon feel unsatisfied, just once.

“I would make the moon taste what I’ve felt. I would win Zhang Yuelu, and then throw him away.

“I would make Zhang Yuelu know what it feels like to be discarded.”

His eyes went wet in an instant.

His voice, very low: “Don’t do this to me.”

She looked up, meeting his utterly pale face.

She had a debt to settle with him.

Whatever happened afterward, if she didn’t settle this now, she’d never find peace.

She smiled at him—cold, merciless, as unrelenting as ever:

“Zhang Yuelu.

“In this matter of love—I want you to lose.”

Outside the tent, Li Linggeh walked arm in arm with Bo Rong along the mountain path.

While Zhang Xingjian went to find Shen Qingwu, Li Linggeh, umbrella raised against the rain, went to check on the soldiers who’d stood watch through the night.

Bo Rong followed silently behind her.

He watched her smiling profile, her easy, composed tone—as though the Princess who’d been forced to nod along in that tent, cornered by Zhang Xingjian, had never existed at all.

But once her rounds were finished, she continued walking slowly along the mountain path.

Sheer cliffs rose on either side, rain and mist thick around them, the sky grey, lightning flickering. Nothing was clear; nothing could be untangled.

She walked ahead alone, umbrella raised.

She looked, in that moment, so much like her younger self—

That clever, cunning young princess had always liked to pace back and forth in dangerous places, going over and over her thoughts, whenever she faced some unsolvable problem, some torment she couldn’t shake.

Bo Rong waved off the soldiers trailing behind them, signaling them to fall back, and continued after her alone.

The soldiers and her own attendants withdrew without question, leaving Marshal Bo and the Princess their privacy. After months together, who didn’t already sense the quiet understanding between them?

Though the two of them had never shown any open affection, everyone assumed that one day, Bo Rong would become the Princess Consort.

That notorious princess, the one who refused to marry—her consort’s seat had always seemed to be waiting for one particular man to return.

Rain fell thick over the earth.

When Li Linggeh came back to herself, she found she was standing at the very edge of the cliff, cold wind and rain lashing at her, the umbrella in her hand shaking with the force of it.

In that dark, heavy expanse of sky and earth, a sudden fear gripped her.

But when she turned, she saw Bo Rong right beside her.

Her lashes trembled faintly. She lowered her gaze and smiled softly.

She teased him gently. “I walked all the way here, nearly fell over the edge, and you didn’t even warn me. I think you actually want me dead.”

Gently, he said, “How could that be?”

She sighed.

She always performed for others—performed for him too, in her way. But compared to everyone else, he had already earned far more of her trust than anyone.

She was certain he loved her.

He had to love her—that was surely why he’d never once brought up what had happened to the elder Zhangs, all those years ago.

If she succeeded… she would make him her consort. She would never look at another man again, for his sake. The one person she’d carried in her heart, unable to let go, for all these years, had only ever been him.

Thinking this, she turned her face to him. “Rong-ge. Do you know… about the old business between me and your brother?”

Bo Rong was silent for a moment.

Gently, he said, “What business?”

She let out a breath—so Shen Qingwu hadn’t told him after all?

Laughing lightly, she explained, “Nothing much, really. Just some foolish old business. I’d had too much wine, was missing you terribly, and Zhang Yuelu was so… I wanted to work with him, wanted to extend an olive branch. He turned me down.”

She reasoned that Zhang Xingjian himself would never speak of it, so with a little embellishment, no one would ever know the truth of it.

She laid her heart bare, just a little: “…I missed you so much. I was so lonely.”

Bo Rong said nothing.

He took off his oilcloth cloak and draped it over her shoulders.

She looked up at him, eyes shining, gratitude and delight lighting her beautiful face pure white.

She bit her lip, wanting to try to draw closer to him—but after much deliberation, she was still afraid he might hold back.

She’d walked through gardens of flowers for years, seen man after man who had Bo Rong’s shape but none of his spirit. The more men she saw, the more she missed him.

If only he’d come back to her… she wanted him back so badly.

She didn’t voice these womanly feelings, choosing instead to distract herself with matters of state: “Rong-ge, Zhang Yuelu wants me to return to court, and he’s offered such generous terms—if I refuse, I’ll look ungrateful.

“The scholar-officials will surely condemn me, say I don’t appreciate the young Emperor’s good intentions.

“He’s already admitted his fault—how can I not forgive him?”

She gazed out at the misty rain over the cliff, drawing the silk cloak he’d draped over her more snugly, indolent.

She played the pitiable victim before him: “That wretched Zhang Xingjian!”

She complained to him, “Your brother is so annoying.”

Bo Rong smiled faintly, but didn’t take the bait.

He was always like this now—far more silent than before, even more taciturn than he’d ever been, even with others.

Unbothered, she went on muttering her complaints in the rain, fretting over how to unravel Zhang Xingjian’s plans—

Of course she had no intention of leaving with him tomorrow.

She had no wish to return to Dongjing, to go back to being the young Emperor’s older sister.

She had played this princess for far too many years already—stepping carefully, watching every angle. She was thoroughly done with it.

After all her years of scheming, she believed herself far superior to Li Mingshu. He had no learning, no talent—if she hadn’t held the reins of court all this time, Great Zhou would have collapsed under him long ago.

She believed she had the ability.

She needed this opportunity.

She murmured in the rain: “If something happened—something that ruined Zhang Xingjian’s plans, that made me look innocent, that gave me a proper pretext to act…”

She turned to Bo Rong, pouting faintly. “And here you’re supposed to be my teacher! You never offer me any ideas, never help me.”

He laughed.

“Have I never helped you?”

This time, he had already, silently, helped her a great deal.

Seeing him laugh made her happy.

She deliberately put on the look she knew he liked, acting the innocent, coquettish girl, complaining prettily: “You just don’t help me.”

Her flowing eyes fixed on him, shimmering.

They both knew, without saying, what she longed for.

Neither of them had ever crossed that line. But Bo Rong knew she was afraid of him now, and that someday, she wouldn’t be able to help herself from crossing it.

He laughed softly in the rain.

He wondered—what did it feel like, to be someone’s cherished ideal? To be the one pale moonlight someone both loved and hated held dearest in their heart?

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

He reached out his hand.

She looked at him, startled, delighted.

Time seemed to freeze in that look on her face—

He reached toward her, his hand closing on her waist—not to draw her in, not to embrace her. His hand found her waist only to shove her, hard, off the edge of the cliff.

The umbrella was torn from her grip by the wind, snagging on the hem of his robe.

As she fell, her vision filling with the sight of him, his face remained—as it always had—perfectly, eternally calm.

He stood at the cliff’s edge, looking down at her.

Watching her fall.

She made no sound. Called for no help, begged for nothing. Her robes billowed, her golden hairpin slipping loose, her dark hair plastered to her cold, wet cheeks in the fierce wind and freezing rain.

She looked up at him, silent, for a long, long moment—

The rain was so heavy.

Lightning cut across her vision in a single streak of white.

Memory carried her back, far, far back—

Rain mixed with blood.

Li Linggeh, weeping, kneeling before Zhang Rong, begging him not to kill Li Mingshu—begging for a way out, for both their sakes, for his own life too.

Because any minister who dared kill an emperor would surely die for it. Because if the young Li Mingshu died, with the throne so unsteady, the royal family and the court would devour her—a young princess alone could never survive.

Because their father, on his deathbed, had gripped her hand and made her promise to look after her only brother, made her promise the two of them would never lose the realm.

Because young Li Mingshu, waking from nightmares, would cling weeping to her leg, saying it was for her sake that he’d had Zhang Rong’s parents killed.

Gasping through sobs, he’d said: “Sister, they wouldn’t let you marry the Grand Tutor, they kept saying terrible things about you to me—I couldn’t stand it, so I struck first… Sister, I did it for you.”

At fifteen, Li Linggeh had knelt in the pouring rain, before Zhang Rong.

She’d had no choice.

Weeping without end: “Rong-ge, please, spare my brother, spare me, and spare yourself too…”

At thirty-one, with no guards or retainers to protect her, Bo Rong pushed her off a mountain cliff.

She simply kept her eyes open, cold and still, meeting his gaze—deep and dark as an abyss.

She fell through the rain like a swallow caught in the storm.

Never again would she beg forgiveness from anyone—

Bo Rong looked toward the cliff.

What was the best way to raise a person?

Either send her to die once.

Or die in front of her.

That was eternity.

After only a moment of silence, Bo Rong called out, calm and steady:

“Chancellor Zhang sent an assassin to kill the Princess! He harmed her! Chancellor Zhang did not come to negotiate peace—he came to murder the Princess.

“Chancellor Zhang cannot be trusted. Save the Princess—”

Invoking her name, he ignited the war once more!

In the cold night, another bolt of lightning split the sky.

In the rain-soaked mountain forest, the war that had barely paused erupted again.

The Yizhou soldiers and the Princess’s own guards, hearing that she’d fallen from the cliff, split into search parties, and at the same time turned their weapons on Zhang Xingjian’s group, closing in step by step.

The soldiers all sided with their beautiful, dignified Princess.

Furious, they shouted: “You never came here to negotiate—you came to kill the Princess! The Princess, for the sake of the realm’s people, was willing to reconcile, willing to return to Dongjing—and this is what you do?

“Was it because the Princess said she needed to think it over, because she didn’t agree right away, that you went back on your word? Or did you never mean to negotiate honestly at all?

“You came here to kill!”

Shouts, curses, the clash of battle erupted deafeningly through the cold night.

Not knowing what had happened, Shen Qingye, pale as a sheet, was pulled by Qiu Jun toward some empty stretch of ground, away from the fighting.

But they ran into Zhang Xingjian’s retainers.

One gripped her arm tightly. “Fifth Young Lady Shen—our lord ordered that nothing must happen to you!”

“What’s happening? Why are you attacking the Princess…”

The retainers looked lost themselves.

“We don’t know either,” they answered.

Perhaps their lord had some other plan?

The battle that had erupted in the storm was, of course, impossible to hide from Shen Qingwu and Zhang Xingjian.

As the fighting broke out again, soldiers naturally came looking for her—

“General! General! Marshal Bo wants you to find the Princess…”

At the same moment, Zhang Xingjian’s retainers came searching for him too: “Third Young Master, this is bad!”

A dozen or so retainers found him; only a few soldiers had come for her. Vastly outnumbered, both sides went on guard the instant they spotted each other, weapons drawn.

Lightning lit them both.

Before anyone could react, Shen Qingwu drew her blade and pressed it flat against Zhang Xingjian’s throat.

She shouted at his retainers: “Back off!”

“If you don’t want him dead, clear the way!”

She wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but she trusted her instincts in a fight—Bo Rong had told her to stay by the Princess’s side.

Why had the Princess been harmed? Who would dare kill her?

Zhang Xingjian?

She couldn’t help but begin to doubt his true purpose here tonight…

The blade rested against his throat, threatening him, and her eyes couldn’t help but land on his pale, fine-boned face.

Softly, he said, “Wutong. Are you doubting me again?

“Does everything unexpected that happens automatically get blamed on me? Is Bo Rong forever the good man, and I forever the villain?”

Her hand faltered on the blade, just for an instant.

She said nothing.

His retainers’ eyes fixed on his face.

But in the cold rain, thunder and lightning crashing, his face bloodless, his eyes dark as night, he seemed lost in thought, giving his men no signal at all.

So the retainers had no choice but to clear the path, watching their general use their own lord as a human shield to force them aside.

She used him to clear her way, until she reached a spot she judged safe enough to leave him.

The retainers trailing them were still several yards off; she judged she could get away even if she let him go now.

She sheathed her blade and turned to leave.

His cold hand caught hers.

His voice came out hoarse: “Wutong!”

Pleading, hopeless… and yet full of hope!

She turned back, and saw his rain-soaked eyes.

He held her wrist and wouldn’t let go, hoping she’d consider his position, hoping she’d turn back, hoping not even Bo Rong’s orders could pull her away, hoping she’d come with him…

“Bo Rong is using you,” he said. “I haven’t lied to you. I truly do love you, truly do—”

In the cold rain, his hand trembled around hers.

His eyes had gone faintly red.

She thought, for a moment, that he was about to cry.

Something twisted uncomfortably in her.

But he’d said one true thing—she really was that ruthless.

Ruthlessly, she pried his fingers off her wrist; when he refused to let go, she simply used force, driving him back two steps. The veins on his wrist stood out, trembling.

He watched her standing at the cliff’s edge, drenched through, bedraggled as a half-drowned bird.

And yet she was so proud. So merciless!

She told him, “Zhang Yuelu. I told you—I’ve let you go.”

As she turned to leave, even her own eyes began to redden.

Looking at his face one last time, she felt longing, disgust, hatred, nostalgia, reluctance, confusion, all at once.

Eyes red, she said, “Zhang Yuelu. I don’t understand love. I can’t let this go.

“Zhang Yuelu. Goodbye. I’m going to be a free Wutong now.”

Terror overtook him, his mind going utterly blank.

A single tear mixed with the rain in his eye, clear as a bead of glass. He really was beautiful.

His voice shook. “Alright—alright! If you can’t let it go, then don’t. I’ll find a way, I’ll find a way—Wutong!”

Skilled as she was, she gave him one careless smile.

As his retainers rushed forward to pursue her, she shoved him aside and leapt off the cliff, joining the other soldiers in the search for Li Linggeh, dead or alive.

He threw himself down at the cliff’s edge, instinctively wanting to follow her: “Wutong—”

His retainers caught his thin frame, holding him back: “My lord, careful!”

His eyes red-rimmed, his sleeve torn on the brush, the hand he’d reached out into the empty air reflected the lightning flashing above.

He thought of what she’d said—struck by thunder.

Why wouldn’t she believe him?

He coughed up a mouthful of blood, broken and gasping, his lips and collar instantly stained red.

His retainers cried out in shock: “My lord!”

But he couldn’t collapse now.

This scheme—he had to unravel it.

Meanwhile, at the base of the cliff, amid mud and thorny brush, Shen Qingwu found Li Linggeh, her breath faint, and dragged her, blood-soaked, out of the thicket.

Li Linggeh leaned against her, and Shen Qingwu channeled her own energy into her, barely restoring her breath.

Weakly, Li Linggeh said, “There’s a signal flare in my sleeve—set it off, let my people find me…”

“Who wanted you dead?” Shen Qingwu asked.

Eyes closed in her arms, Li Linggeh struggled to hold on to consciousness, forcing herself to stay awake.

The bigger picture, the bigger picture… ambition, ambition!

This was her chance!

Her chance to break with the young Emperor for good. Her chance to win over every heart. Her chance to make Shen Qingwu help her…

“Bo Rong,” Li Linggeh said.

Shen Qingwu froze—

The rain fell so hard.

The lightning and thunder were unbearably bleak.

This war, erupted anew in the mountains, could not be called back now.

Wiping the blood from his lips, Zhang Xingjian, leaning on his retainers for support, calmly began directing the battle, working to break free of the Yizhou army’s encirclement and crush this rebel force. From this moment on, the war would not end until one side or the other was destroyed—there would be no more negotiation.

His gaze steady, he said flatly, “Everything else can wait. What matters most—capture Bo Rong alive!

“He is a traitor. He cannot be spared.”

The mountain streams rushed swift and cold in every direction. Having hidden Li Linggeh safely away, Shen Qingwu walked through the sodden mountainside, seeking to reach her own people.

She had made no promises to Li Linggeh.

As she turned away, she heard Li Linggeh issuing orders, forcing herself to stay calm. Shen Qingwu was used to following commands, used to obedience… Bo Rong had told her to use her own judgment, but she wouldn’t abandon an injured Li Linggeh in a moment like this.

She had no choice but to stay with her, for now.

She wanted to ask Li Linggeh whether to try reaching Bo Rong.

She suspected he and the others had already turned on each other completely—suspected that even she herself might no longer be on the same side as him… Zhang Xingjian, this whole night, had worn her down too.

The men of the Zhang family were all detestable.

She turned back, looking at Li Linggeh, leaning against the rock wall, her face and hair slick with cold sweat, rain, and blood.

Li Linggeh kept issuing orders, tears falling steadily from her eyes the whole time.

But her voice never wavered. Her manner never wavered. Her commands stayed perfectly clear.

A princess’s tears were the most useless tears of all.

Even as she wept, she went on making the best decisions she could.

This was a princess in disarray—filthy, weak, pitiable.

When Shen Qingwu turned to look at her, tears and blood mixed on her cheeks, and she smiled at her:

“A’Wu. Help me, won’t you?”

In the spring of the twenty-fifth year of Tianlong, north and south split along the great river, each ruled separately.

South of Yizhou belonged to the Princess. North of Yizhou, the young Emperor still reigned. And so the war began in earnest—both sides vowing to reclaim the whole realm, to restore Great Zhou to unity.

Newly appointed Chancellor, Zhang Xingjian escorted a captured traitor of the Yizhou army back to Dongjing.

The whole realm fell silent, waiting.