Chen Baoxiang did not resist.

Not because she was so consumed with guilt that she wished the earth would swallow her — but because in the present circumstances, there was nowhere safer than Zhang Zhixu’s arms.

Her instincts had been right. The reason everything today had gone so smoothly was that Cheng Huaili had been using himself as bait all along. If the great immortal hadn’t appeared when he did, she’d have had a very difficult time finding any way out.

But as things now stood, she could no longer sustain the lies she’d told him.

“You killed Lu Shouhuai.” The great immortal made it a statement, not a question.

Chen Baoxiang kept her eyes shut. “Yes.”

“You had a grudge against him long before any of this.”

“Yes.”

“Going after Cheng Huaili isn’t because of Zhang Yinyue — it’s for yourself.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve known all along that I’m Zhang Zhixu, not some insubstantial immortal.”

“…Yes.”

Zhang Zhixu let out a short, cold laugh. He struggled to recount the course of everything between them, willing himself to stay calm and not lose composure — but his voice still came out with a tremor.

“When did you recognize me.” He murmured quietly, almost to himself. “Was it last time, when I let something slip?”

He should have known. That time when Xie Lanting had come up, he’d instinctively told the story of how, when they were young, a few of them had been dragged into playing at holding court as a prank.

But by all reasoning, he was a great immortal — he hadn’t lived through Zhang Zhixu’s childhood. How could he have known something like that?

Chen Baoxiang’s expression had gone blank at the time — clearly she too had caught the inconsistency in the same moment. But instead of raising the question, she had deftly steered the conversation elsewhere, as though afraid he might realize the contradiction.

Which meant that by then she had already understood everything — and had simply continued to play-act with him.

“No.” Chen Baoxiang opened her mouth, voice muffled against his chest. “It wasn’t that time.”

Something in him eased slightly. Zhang Zhixu looked at her steadily, wanting to hear another reason — or perhaps that in truth everything had some other explanation entirely.

But Chen Baoxiang, her arms still around his waist, said: “It was even earlier than that. In fact, as early as the day you pulled me out of the prison.”

Zhang Zhixu’s pupils contracted.

Outside, it seemed as though rain was coming on. Wind curled through the window carrying a cool, damp breath — cold as the last days of winter when he had hosted his farewell banquet.

Back then, he had sat on a platform surrounded on all sides by hidden threats, his mind calmly working out which level of the underworld he ought to report to after death.

The cauldron of boiling oil he probably wouldn’t have to endure. But the mountain of blades and sea of fire — he’d likely have to make that crossing. Would his feet ache? He had lived his entire life without ever experiencing truly agonizing pain.

Jiuquan had sent a signal: everything was ready, they were about to act.

He had lifted his gaze with detachment, intending to raise one last cup of wine to Cheng Huaili across the table.

And then — without anyone understanding how — someone bypassed all the surrounding defenses and alighted directly between himself and Cheng Huaili.

“I humbly offer a dance for the honored lords.”

She curtsied with graceful formality, the dagger in her hand jingling in time with the small bells at her ankle, and without further ceremony launched into a performance. Face veiled, limbs spinning, her movements utterly stilted and bizarre.

Cheng Huaili’s attention was caught, his expression baffled.

But in that same moment, the arrows that had long been nocked in the distance were loosed all at once — hundreds upon hundreds of shafts, dense as a burial mound, arcing in an overwhelming torrent down upon the platform.

In that instant, the only thought that came to Zhang Zhixu was: if one fewer person could die here, then one fewer it should be.

So he launched himself upward, intending to pull her clear.

He hadn’t expected her to be so strong. He couldn’t draw her away on the first attempt, so he shifted from pulling to shielding — putting his own back between her and the arrows.

A long shaft drove through his back. In the last instant before he lost consciousness, he thought he caught her eyes — though he couldn’t quite make out what her expression held.

……

“You.” He said, voice hollow. “You truly were there to assassinate Cheng Huaili.”

“Yes.”

Chen Baoxiang blinked slowly. “So when I later saw the scar on your back, I was… somewhat undone.”

Cheng Huaili commanded authority that reached to the heavens — no matter how long she had worked to establish herself in Shangjing, she had never managed to get close enough to even glimpse the man. In the end, the only option had been to bribe her way into the banquet kitchen staff and attempt to kill him at the farewell feast.

When she’d realized it was a trap, she thought she was done for. She had not expected someone to appear out of nowhere and take the arrows meant for her.

He had been so fine-looking — tall in stature, sharp brows and a keen, elegant gaze. Even with his snow-white robe soaking through with blood, he had still turned to her and said, “Run.”

Low and unhurried, just two words — and she had carried them in her heart ever since.

So when he spoke in the prison cell later, Chen Baoxiang had recognized him almost immediately.

But a thing as extraordinary as another soul inhabiting the same body — she hadn’t dared be certain. She could only play ignorant and continue observing quietly from the side.

She listened to him work out how she might escape, listened to him speak of things that only Zhang Zhixu could have known, and only then did the certainty settle slowly into place.

And yet — at that point in time, from where Chen Baoxiang stood, the Zhang Family and the Cheng Family were connected through marriage. The two men had been on such easy, friendly terms that evening at the banquet. She, with her intent to kill Cheng Huaili — how could she have dared expose herself to him?

Better to keep up the pretense.

Chen Baoxiang had spent many years reading others’ moods and playing whatever part was asked of her — performance and artifice were her most honed skills. Once she’d probed enough to confirm that though he could hear her spoken words, he could not perceive her actual thoughts, she had begun to plan: to use him as a means of regaining access to Cheng Huaili, the attempt on whose life had not yet succeeded.

“Our goals were clearly aligned.” Zhang Zhixu said, his voice carrying a disbelief he could barely contain. “We even shared the same target. What would have been the harm in being honest with me?”

“I don’t trust people easily.” She rubbed the tip of her nose with a trace of embarrassment. “And at the time, I didn’t know where you actually stood.”

“And afterward.” His throat shifted in a quiet swallow. “Afterward, when I brought you out of the prison — you had a perfectly suitable moment to reveal that you knew my identity.”

Yet she had continued playing the fool, treating him as the great immortal rather than as Zhang Zhixu.

Chen Baoxiang was silent.

What could she say — that she thought if they each returned to their proper stations they would be separated by a gulf as vast as cloud and mud, and that only by keeping him as the great immortal could she narrow the distance between them, the better to make use of him?

Every word of it was true. But none of it was something she could say aloud.

Chen Baoxiang knew clearly that she was no good person. When it came to achieving her aims, she did not let morality or dignity stand in her way. From the very beginning, she had made up her mind to deceive him — after all, it was a stroke of fortune handed down from Heaven itself.

She had originally planned to climb high by attaching herself to an official’s family as a wife, then use that position to file a formal appeal. But the example of Madame Ji had taught her that path was closed. She had to become an official herself — only then would she have more avenues for revenge, and someday perhaps the chance to supplant Cheng Huaili entirely, to ensure his end was absolute and left him with nothing.

Building a close relationship with Zhang Zhixu would spare her countless difficulties and open the most reliable shortcut — all it required was deceiving herself, and then deceiving him.

She had no reason not to take this path.

A trace of guilt flickered through her. She averted her gaze and said vaguely, “I was too flustered back then — I didn’t work it out in time.”

“…”

The man across from her lowered his eyes. The tendons on the backs of his hands stood out.

He’s furious, she thought — and rightly so. He had believed himself to be the one holding all the threads, and hadn’t realized until now that she had been threading her own needle behind his back.

But at least they were only friends. And he had said it himself — even if he were deceived, he wouldn’t make too much of it.

Chen Baoxiang bit at the dry, peeling skin on her lip and tried to think of how to ease the tension.

But Zhang Zhixu let go of her first.

The warmth left the space around her. She looked up in mild surprise.

Zhang Zhixu drew two slow, deliberate breaths, straightened to his full height, and looked down at her. “Even now, at this point, still not willing to tell me the truth.”

He suddenly felt the truly foolish one was himself. The person in this world who understood her best — what a claim that was. From beginning to end, he had never truly seen her clearly. Even here, even now, even when she could see he was already livid with anger, she still chose to brush it aside with deflection and lies.

Whatever sense of kinship they had built in life-and-death moments — whatever feeling of two minds meeting as one — perhaps all of it had been nothing but his own wishful thinking.

A wave of exhaustion swept through his limbs and gathered at his chest. Zhang Zhixu turned away. “In that case, this Zhang will wish Magistrate Chen every success in her endeavors.”