“Cheng Huaili once held off an enemy force of a hundred thousand at the frontier, accumulating great military merits, and was thus granted the title of General of the North.” Chen Baoxiang continued, “But do you know how that battle was actually won?”

The military dispatches were filled with nothing but praise for Cheng Huaili — they certainly wouldn’t record the specific tactics. Zhang Zhixu shook his head.

Chen Baoxiang gave a light laugh. “The enemy at the time excelled at crafting bows and crossbows, and their assault on the city was extremely fierce. To hold the city, Cheng Huaili first drove out a batch of prisoners outside the gates.”

“Drove them out for what?” Zhang Zhixu didn’t understand.

“The battlefield was thick with fog. When the enemy saw people emerging from the city, they would fire arrows.” Chen Baoxiang explained. “He was using these people as targets, to exhaust the enemy’s supply of arrows.”

Zhang Zhixu froze.

“The prisoners in the city numbered only around two thousand — not enough to last very long. So Cheng Huaili gave the order to drive the refugees who had fled there from all over outside the city walls as well. Tens of thousands of people in total — more than enough to deplete the enemy of the greater part of their arrows.”

She spoke in an unhurried tone, lowering her eyes. “Grandma Ye was among that crowd.”

Tens of thousands of living targets — a dense mass of people, faces impossible to distinguish. No one cared who she was or what her name was, no one cared what aspirations or wishes she still carried in her heart.

She was nothing more than the most insignificant grain of dust in a defensive strategy.

At the time, Chen Baoxiang had been working as a servant in the army camp, thinking that once she collected the rations in the afternoon, she and Grandma Ye would be able to share a proper meal.

But when she returned, all that was left in the room was wreckage.

She gazed out at the land beyond the city in a daze, and what she saw was a mountain of corpses that blotted out the sky.

“I searched for her for a very long time.” She sighed. “And when I finally found her, there was almost nothing left.”

Such a capable, such a good woman — and in the end, all that remained was a dried and rotting corpse. Grandma Ye had never fulfilled her last wish, and she had not been given a peaceful end.

Zhang Zhixu suddenly seized her hand.

Chen Baoxiang’s expression was perfectly calm — after all these years, she had long since mastered the art of concealing her emotions.

But the person across from her was far more undone than she was. His jaw was clenched tight, the corners of his eyes reddening, even the hand gripping hers trembling faintly.

The night wind howled, and the candleflame on the table guttered and swayed.

Zhang Zhixu suddenly understood all those strange emotions he had never been able to make sense of in Chen Baoxiang — the grief and fury she carried, the murderous intent that she suppressed only for it to surge back again.

The flood in Guilan Village. The pit on Tianningshan. The living targets at the frontier.

No wonder she always struggled to say she couldn’t die — it wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was that she couldn’t.

Too many souls were waiting for her to avenge them. As long as Cheng Huaili still drew breath, she would never rest.

“If I ever get the chance, I will carve him apart piece by piece with my own hands, and settle every one of those old debts with him.” She said it with a smile. “I will. I definitely will.”

Zhang Zhixu stared at her in silence.

Catching herself belatedly, Chen Baoxiang reined in her expression and shifted uncomfortably, touching the corner of her own brow: “A little frightening?”

“No.” He shook his head. His dark eyes began to fill with a kind of light. “I think you are extraordinary.”

“What?” She widened her eyes. “Have you lost your mind? I don’t just want to kill someone — I want to commit patricide. You’re not even afraid, and on top of that you’re praising me?”

“Dasheng upholds the strict separation between those of high and low station — which means subordinates cannot file complaints against their superiors through the proper channels, and common people have no power against officials and the highborn. Most people, when they encounter injustice, can only swallow the bitterness and endure.” He said. “And yet you have never once given up on your revenge because of it.”

She had tried hiding in a slop barrel to stage an assassination. She had tried spreading rumors to push the Emperor into investigating through the Shouang Princess affair. Those methods sounded unreliable — and yet they were the absolute best she could manage at the time.

She had even considered the path of filing a direct imperial petition — all she needed was to get herself close to Pei Ruheng, wait for him to be promoted to the fourth rank, and she could go knock the imperial drum herself.

But the fate of Madam Ji’s imperial petition made her realize that being an official’s wife carried no weight. To speak with authority, she herself had to be the official.

So she went and sat the examination for a military post — simply because Cen Xuanyue mentioned that military officials were scarcer, and could rise through the ranks more quickly.

And then in the end she discovered that the Emperor favored Cheng Huaili, and no matter who filed the complaint, justice was never going to come.

Chen Baoxiang was like a glass marble, stumbling and bouncing through a labyrinth — knocking here, knocking there — never finding the way out.

An ordinary person, faced with such circumstances, would have long since given it all up and gone on to live their own life.

And yet she had held on until now. Through her own abilities and what little luck she possessed, she had finally waited for this opportunity: the Princess Imperial.

Truly remarkable. Truly, truly remarkable.

Chen Baoxiang met his gaze. After a long moment, she covered her eyes with one hand and burst out laughing: “Zhang Fengqing, you’re a lost cause — whatever I do, you think I’m in the right.”

“Not entirely,” he said, looking just a little abashed and indignant. “At the very least, that business about you dragging me along to get close to Pei Ruheng — no matter how I look at it, I can’t say that was right.”

“I told you, it was purely using him as a tool.”

“But you clearly had feelings for him at the time.”

Feelings? For whom? Pei Ruheng?

Chen Baoxiang sat up and suddenly grabbed him by the collar, pulling him close.

Zhang Zhixu was completely unprepared. He barely managed to brace himself against the edge of the bed with one hand — and found himself looking straight into her eyes.

Intense emotion. Surging, swallowed-down grievance. She looked at him deeply, as though she might spill over into tears at any moment.

He panicked and leaned back, his mind already racing through how he ought to apologize.

But then in an instant, the person before him blinked and was perfectly composed again. She propped her elbow lazily on his shoulder. “Feelings like that?”

Zhang Zhixu: “……”

He’d almost forgotten — this person lied so smoothly she even deceived herself.

He turned his head away in silence, still not entirely recovered.

“I had heard of Pei Ruheng long before,” Chen Baoxiang said idly, toying with a strand of his hair. “Cheng Huaili treated his wife and daughters like animals, and yet he was very devoted to his younger sister. The villagers all said that the child named Pei Ruheng had a very fortunate lot in life — living a life completely unlike mine.”

“So I always wanted to see him for myself.”

“But when I actually did see him, I didn’t envy anything else about him — I only envied that his mother was still alive.”

Thinking of that gentle woman who was always protecting her child, Chen Baoxiang clicked her tongue lightly: “I never met my own mother. I wonder if she would have been like her.”

Zhang Zhixu found this very difficult to answer.

He summarized, a little woodenly: “So you envied him — you didn’t actually have feelings for him.”

“If I truly had feelings for someone, how could I let go so easily? It was all just to fool a certain idiot.”

The idiot sitting at the edge of the bed: “?”

He was exasperated enough to laugh: “You really ought to have gone into theater. You have a god-given talent with absolutely no weak points.”

“You flatter me, you flatter me,” she said — and finally, exhaustion caught up with her, and she let out a yawn.

“Go to sleep.” Zhang Zhixu patted her. “It’s time.”

She murmured vaguely in agreement, and her eyes slowly fell shut.

The rain outside had stopped. The candle on the table had burned itself down to nothing. Clear, bright moonlight flowed in through the windowsill, soaking into the hem of his robe.

Zhang Zhixu sat alone at the edge of the bed, and felt something he had never felt before — a profound, settled peace.

Chen Baoxiang had told him so much about her past. She had revealed to him her little schemes and calculations without the slightest concealment, and shared her thoughts and feelings with him without reserve.

It was as though she had suddenly fallen back down from some intangible, traceless void into the space right beside him — close enough that he had only to reach out to truly touch her.

Not a single word had been said about the feelings between them. And yet, somehow, she had already given him a great deal of answer.