Yet Zhang Zhixu had never anticipated that Cheng Huaili, having lost the Soul-Returning Pill and failing to catch the thief, would go absolutely mad and redouble his oppression of those beneath him.

The tenant farmers on his estate, the workers in his shops, the derelict soldiers — he had them all flogged and punished without discrimination.

Cheng’an, unable to bear the severity of the punishment, threw every last bit of blame squarely onto Chen Baoxiang, telling Cheng Huaili that she had colluded with the thieves — working from the inside to deliberately hold them up.

——Though he had actually guessed correctly.

But this meant that Chen Baoxiang was now in serious trouble.

That day, she was making her usual patrol rounds when a group of military officers suddenly seized her right there in the street, dragging her off to prison without so much as a word of explanation.

“Officer, surely anyone taken to prison must be charged with a crime and have someone file a complaint against them?” Zhang Zhixu grabbed the iron bars and shouted outward. “Locking someone up for absolutely no reason and giving no explanation — what kind of logic is that?”

This dungeon was darker and gloomier than the last one, and looked far more likely to be the kind of place where someone could be beaten to death without anyone ever knowing.

Chen Baoxiang was full of regret: “Had I known today would go like this, I’d have brought more people with me.”

Zhang Zhixu gave a helpless, half-amused sigh: “When rank crushes all beneath it, no matter how many people you bring, it won’t do any good — if they want to arrest you, they will.”

“Then what do we do?”

What could they do? Hope they’d encounter a reasonable interrogating official who might give her a fighting chance.

Just as they were speaking, a jailer with a scar across his face came and took her away to the interrogation room.

Zhang Zhixu kept puzzling over it along the way: “The process here is strange — no formal complaint filed is one thing, but hauling someone off to interrogation without even questioning them first?”

Chen Baoxiang looked at the things hanging on the walls, her spine going rigid, the skin all over her body tightening: “They intend to go straight to torture.”

“What? There’s no charge — what is there even to torture someone about?”

“There’s nothing they want to ask.” She said softly, “Cheng Huaili simply wants me dead.”

For someone of great power and high rank to have an ordinary commoner quietly done away with inside a prison was far too easy — all those elaborate procedures were nothing more than a fig leaf thrown over the brutality of abused power.

Zhang Zhixu’s face went pale, his eyes filled with disbelief, yet the jailer up ahead truly had already brought out a wooden finger press, and was placing the fingers she had worked so hard to nurse back to soft and fair — one by one — into the slots between the wooden boards.

·

Ever since he came to inhabit Chen Baoxiang’s body, Zhang Zhixu had never stopped worrying over her.

This person had no idea how to take care of herself — she was getting hurt and bleeding every other day — and every evening he had to sit up and apply medicine for her, making sure no scars would form.

For a girl who looked so composed and refined, her hands were terribly rough, nails short and blunt, fingertips calloused. He couldn’t bear to look at them, and had secretly soaked and buffed them with cow’s milk and pearl powder for months before they had finally taken on some semblance of delicacy.

He had even clumsily dyed them a lovely water-blue tint using the juice of touch-me-not flowers.

And now, blood was streaming down from a wound on Chen Baoxiang’s head. Her fair fingers, squeezed between the wooden press, had swollen to a deep purple, and the pretty painted nails were already seeping blood into their edges.

Zhang Zhixu was in so much pain he couldn’t even cry out.

He wanted to shout at Chen Baoxiang to resist, but she was alone and couldn’t even break free of the ropes binding her, let alone escape from this heavily guarded death-trap of a prison.

He wanted to negotiate with the jailers, but these men had long since been given their orders — they paid him no heed whatsoever, and bore down with full force on the torture press.

Chen Baoxiang let out a hoarse, agonized cry, her voice breaking into near-unconscious weakness at the end —

*You said it. *

His mind drifted, and he murmured: If we had killed all those people back there and hadn’t let Cheng’an go back, would things have turned out differently?

Great Immortal.

She inhaled sharply through the pain: Two hundred and more people dead in that place — blood would have flowed through the whole street. If anyone had lodged a complaint, my fate would have been the same.

A person of low standing who gets involved in such matters is gambling with their life from the start. I didn’t have many options to begin with.

Why — why does he get to do terrible things without paying any price, while you’re like an ant, facing torture without even the chance of a public trial?

Because in the eyes of the powerful, commoners are ants.

Zhang Zhixu was deeply shaken.

In the past, he had often heard his tutors say “private power must not grow too great, lest it crush lives” — at the time, those words had not moved him much; he took them in as one takes in a rule, and left it at that.

Only now, having become the one being crushed, did he truly understand how terrifying private power could be.

Sharp, piercing pain radiated from her fingertips all the way to the crown of his head. Zhang Zhixu thrashed at the edge of death, flashes of white light bursting before his eyes, a ringing beginning to rise in his ears.

In a daze, he heard Chen Baoxiang murmuring, “I cannot die here.”

Familiar words. A familiar scene.

Moonlight poured through the window, casting the same slant of drifting dust as before.

She lay with her eyes open, staring at the dust, and repeated stubbornly: “I will not die. You and I did not die here the last time. We will not die here this time either.”

Something struck his heart like a stone thrown into a still pool, sending ripples spreading in every direction.

Zhang Zhixu heard the sound of blood dripping onto the ground, and the scrape of iron chains. Somewhere far off came the crack and roar of raging flames, and farther still, the cries of other prisoners.

His body turned cold. Those sounds grew slowly fainter and faded away, and other sounds began to crowd in, one after another.

“……When he wakes is up to him. If he is unwilling, he will simply not wake.”

“Is there anything he particularly enjoys in his daily life? Bring it and let’s try.”

“When has Fengqing ever enjoyed anything — he takes no interest in anything at all.”

……

The sounds grew louder and louder, until at last they seemed to ring right beside his ear.

Zhang Zhixu struggled to grip whatever lay within his reach.

Not the torture press — but soft silken covers.

He opened his eyes again, and there were the embroidered bed-curtains, already interwoven with golden thread as he had once instructed.

“Master?” Jiuquan called out, startled with delight.

The room burst into commotion at once — people rushing to pass word, others moving to take his pulse. Gong Lan and Zhang Yuanchu also pressed to the bedside, overjoyed: “My son — you’ve finally woken.”

Zhang Zhixu stared blankly at the canopy for a moment, then gasped in a breath. With no time for anything else, he grabbed the edge of the bed and pushed himself half-upright: “The — the wheelchair.”

“What wheelchair?”

“Bring…it…here.”

“Quickly — do as the young master says!”

No one dared delay. The wheelchair was brought to the bedside in an instant. Supported by helping hands, Zhang Zhixu struggled into it, and without even pausing to put on his outer robe he gave the order: “Go the way I tell you…quickly!”

Gong Lan and Zhang Yuanchu were both startled — he had only just woken; how could he go out?

But when Zhang Yuanchu moved to stop him, Gong Lan held him back.

“Our son is not an impulsive person. If he is this urgent, there must be something important. Just send people to follow him — don’t stand in his way.”

Indeed, Fengqing had always been well-behaved and would never do anything rash.

Zhang Yuanchu was persuaded.

But one stick of incense later, the ever well-behaved Fengqing had ordered men to ram open the great gates of the northern city prison by force.

“Lord Zhang, please listen to me — everyone brought in here must go through the register. If a name isn’t on the register, there is no way you can claim they are here. That’s against all reason.”

“Besides, you have no requisition documents and no warrant from the Criminal Justice Division — how can you bring people inside? Are you not afraid of censure from the Censorate?”

“Please, you cannot go any further ahead.”

Zhang Zhixu pressed forward on memory alone, completely ignoring the jailer’s protests.

He remembered this path clearly — remembered that up ahead one turned right, then descended two steps, passed through a stone door, and then turned left —

The familiar interrogation room came suddenly into view.

Dim torchlight lit the mottled walls. Half the assortment of torture instruments that had hung there were already gone. The air was thick with the stench of blood.

Someone lay on the floor, curled into a ball.

The jailer inside was still administering punishment — the whip was raised high, and with a vicious, whistling crack it came down hard across her back. The sound of flesh splitting rang against the ear. The person on the ground convulsed with agony, her spine heaving without stop.

Zhang Zhixu’s chest seized. Without waiting for the wheelchair to stop, he lurched up and threw himself forward.

“Master!”

“Lord Zhang!”

He heard nothing but her. He fell upon her, urgently wiping the blood and filth from around her mouth and nose, sliding one hand under the back of her neck to help ease her breathing.

“Chen Baoxiang?”

“Chen Baoxiang!”

The person in his arms had a face like white ash, eyes tightly closed. The blood that had run from her forehead had dried. Her celadon-coloured suit was drenched and ruined with blood. He grasped her shoulder instinctively, and his palm came away soaked with wet warmth.

Even though he had returned to his own body, the pain still felt like his own.

Zhang Zhixu’s eyes were bloodshot. He drew two rapid, shallow breaths.

Behind him, Jiuquan cursed furiously and kicked aside the jailer who had tried to continue. A whole group of men pushed in, forcing the guards and clerks of the torture chamber into the corner of the wall. The interrogation room erupted into chaos.

He did not look back. He only trembled as he leaned close to her, wanting to give her some of his strength to hold on, wanting her to have at least one last breath remaining —

Great Immortal, you truly are incredible — practically an all-powerful, all-knowing deity!

No Bodhisattva has your power, no Buddha has your compassion — you truly are the best, best, best immortal in all the world!

How could I possibly deserve your protection? I truly am not worthy — when I get back, I’ll build you a proper altar, with gold foil lettering and heaping, abundant incense offerings, sob.

The insubstantial voice crumbled apart in the blood-soaked air, impossible to grasp. The person in his arms lay perfectly still, as though all breath had already left her.

His throat worked. Zhang Zhixu reached out, carefully avoiding her wounds, and tried to lift her into his arms.

But he himself had only just woken — his body was terribly weak — and try as he might, he could not manage it.

Jiuquan reached out, moving to take her.

Zhang Zhixu gritted his teeth: “Don’t touch her. When she’s in pain, it’s very hard for her to bear it.”

Only he knew how to avoid her injuries. Only he knew how to ease her discomfort.

Drawing a deep breath, Zhang Zhixu mustered every last measure of his strength to draw her into his arms, leaning back as he did, and sank into the wheelchair — but his arms held firm, slowly settling her in his lap.

His hands were covered in filth from the ground. The snow-white of his inner robe was streaked all over with blood and grime.

Jiuquan knew how much the master prized cleanliness, and quickly offered him a warm damp cloth.

Zhang Zhixu took it — but did not wipe his own hands. Instead, he pinched a corner of it and began to dab at the dried blood on Chen Baoxiang’s face, and as he dabbed he muttered with distaste: “So many cuts. A perfectly good young woman, always covered in injuries — what kind of way is that to carry on.”

“Where is the wound-healing herb? Jiuquan — did you bring any wound-healing herb?”

Jiuquan had never seen his master like this and scrambled to check through the things they had brought with them.

Hot water, cloths, soft cushions, even incense had been prepared for the master’s use — but since the master’s injuries had already healed, not a single medicine had been packed.

Zhang Zhixu suddenly fell apart. One hand pressed against Chen Baoxiang’s bleeding wound, the other turned the wheel of the chair and drove it forward with all his might toward the exit.

“Master!” Jiuquan rushed to catch up and help push, anxiously trying to reassure him. “Sun the Medicine Sage is waiting just outside. Miss Chen will be fine — please don’t panic, don’t panic.”

How could he not panic? She was so resilient, so tough — and she still hadn’t managed to hold on until he came back.

It was his fault, too. Why had he woken so late? Why had he come so slowly?

The reek of blood struck his chest and stole his breath. His vision swam in and out of darkness.

“Fengqing — your master is here.” Sun Sihuai received him into the carriage. “I can save her. Once we’re back, I can save her.”

“Quickly! Clear the way ahead — send someone on horseback at once, have the medicines and needles readied for me!”

Many voices sounded around him. Someone supported him. Others attempted to reach over and take Chen Baoxiang.

Zhang Zhixu drew his arms tighter, stubbornly refusing to let go.

This world had never been fair. A man like him, who had so little will to live, had enormous resources and manpower poured into keeping him alive. And yet a woman like her — who fought so desperately just to survive — had a life cheaper than a blade of grass.

Having spent so much time together, he realised he had never truly managed to fulfil a single one of Chen Baoxiang’s wishes. He had not conjured silver for her. He had not helped her ascend to a higher station. He had not even managed to keep her from being hurt.

He was not worthy of being her Great Immortal.