Under Mu Fulan’s guidance, that night, Zhu Liuhu and Hua Niang became husband and wife.

The bright moon hung in the sky over Dongting Lake, its clear waters shimmering like a dream. Mu Fulan sat by the lamp, reading through medical texts alone in the medicine cottage.

A’Da had said that the last time the Medicine Elder returned was more than a year ago. Over the years, her master had remained as free and unencumbered as a wild crane drifting through the clouds, wandering from place to place. She could only glimpse the traces of where he had been through these medical journals he had left behind.

“…Traveling westward along the Hexi Corridor for several months, passing through Qilian and Yumen — though these lands are called harsh and barren, the local customs and way of life along the route are still very much worth recording…”

Mu Fulan read on and on, gradually lost in thought, when a report came from outside.

A guard relayed a message: at the ferry crossing below the mountain, someone had come seeking medical treatment and was asking whether they should be allowed up.

She had only just returned, and news of that should not yet have spread. Yet the name of the Junshan medicine cottage was renowned far and wide. With the Medicine Elder away, A’Da could still treat ordinary ailments, so over these past few years, those seeking medical care here had continued to come in an unbroken stream.

Crossing the water in the dead of night to ascend the mountain — it must truly be an urgent case.

Mu Fulan set down her medical text and told the guard to bring the person up.

She waited a moment. Footsteps sounded in the courtyard. She looked up and saw the guard leading the person inside, stopping just outside the threshold.

Mu Fulan looked the visitor over. The person seeking care was dressed in plain cloth with grass sandals, hair disheveled, frame gaunt, standing in a patch of shadow just outside the door with head bowed low — the face was difficult to make out clearly, but her impression was that this person was not very old.

Mu Fulan told the guard to bring the person in. The guard ordered the person to raise their arms for a search first.

The person silently lifted both arms. After the guard conducted a thorough search and found nothing unusual, he led the person inside. The person stopped to one side of the doorway, still hanging their head, saying nothing.

“What is wrong with you?” Mu Fulan asked.

Still no reaction whatsoever.

Mu Fulan felt that something was not right. In her life she had treated countless people and encountered all manner of those seeking medical care, yet she had never met anyone quite like this.

This person gave her the feeling of someone who had not come seeking medicine at all.

She looked the person over once more. Her gaze fell upon that face — half-hidden beneath the disheveled hair, never once raised from the very beginning — and a sudden sense of familiarity stirred in her heart.

“Who are you? Raise your head.” Her tone turned cold. Several guards immediately stepped forward, drawing their blades and holding them across the person’s neck.

The person’s shoulders trembled faintly, and slowly, at last, raised their head.

Though it had been many years since they had last met, though the face before her had grown so thin it was almost unrecognizable — and though she could no longer find in him any trace of the noble young lord of leisure who had once graced the elegant pavilions — Mu Fulan recognized him at a glance.

“Zhao Xitai!” she exclaimed, stunned beyond measure.

The person gazed at her steadily.

“Looking the way I do now — when I caught my own reflection in the water yesterday, even I could not recognize myself. I thank you for still remembering me.” He said it quietly.

Mu Fulan held his gaze for a moment, then told the guards to release him.

“I thought you were dead,” she said.

Zhao Xitai nodded. “Yes. I was hunted by pursuers with nowhere left to run. The one who died was a body double of mine. As for me…”

He paused, a faint self-mocking smile touching the corner of his lips.

“I have never had any great ability in this life, but when it comes to avoiding disaster and fleeing for my life, I am second to none. I fled from the Eastern Capital to Jiangdu early on, then from Jiangdu I fled south early on as well. I knew long ago that no matter how hard I tried, the only thing waiting for me in the end was failure. In truth, after I arrived in the south, I had already been waiting for Xie Changgeng to send troops to attack me. At that time, he could have dispatched a single army — he would not even have needed to come himself — and he could have easily and completely destroyed my little court.”

“…What was strange was that he did not send troops immediately. This allowed my little court to survive a few more years. This time, I could still have escaped again. Long before any of this, I had already prepared the place I would go afterward — the boat and the people were all in place.”

“If that is so, then why did you not leave? Why come here? What is it you want to do?”

“My Lady…”

He held her in a long, steady gaze, and at last opened his mouth, addressing her in a low voice by that old title.

“Forgive my presumption — I still call you My Lady. The time I cherish most from this entire life of mine must be those days in the palace when we first came to know each other as children. Next to that was when I came here seeking care…”

He looked around at his surroundings.

“In those days, I once thought that if I could build a humble dwelling here and live out my life in this place, that would have been enough. And in the blink of an eye, so many years have passed, and now I must flee again. I asked myself: before I go, is there anything I ought to take with me — something I truly want? But in this world, what is there that I can take away?”

“When I was a child, everyone thought I would not live long. Then you cured my illness. But living on like this — it is like being a stray dog…”

He slowly turned his gaze toward Mu Fulan.

At that moment, a commotion arose outside the medicine cottage, and the courtyard lit up with the glow of torches. Yuan Handing led a company of soldiers rushing in, heading this way.

“My Lady — you asked me just now what I came here to do. I myself do not know. I truly do not know. I only wanted to come here, and so I came…”

As he spoke, he seemed wholly unaware of the men surging toward him from behind. He simply gazed at the woman before him, the light in his eyes gradually brightening.

He suddenly stepped forward, spreading open both arms, and began walking toward her from the doorway.

“Stop — take one more step, and you will be cut down without mercy —”

Yuan Handing roared a fierce warning from behind him. Yet he seemed not to hear it. Far from stopping, his pace grew faster still.

Yuan Handing hesitated no longer and immediately released the arrow in his hand.

“No —”

Mu Fulan suddenly understood. She shot to her feet with a cry. But it was too late. That arrow, carrying tremendous force, tore through the air toward the figure’s back like a bolt of lightning, and in the span of a single breath — with a dull thud — it struck true, straight through the heart from behind.

Zhao Xitai halted. He stopped at a distance of one person’s width from Mu Fulan, looked at her, stood rigid for a moment, and then a faint smile slowly spread across his lips — before he collapsed to the ground.

Yuan Handing rushed in. Seeing that Zhao Xitai was dead and Mu Fulan was standing upright, seemingly unharmed save for the pallor of her face and a faint trembling of her body, he let out a breath of relief.

He ordered the soldiers to carry the body away.

Mu Fulan stared at the pool of blood on the ground and said quietly, “He meant me no harm. Coming here — it was most likely because he was seeking death…”

Yuan Handing started, hesitated a moment, then said, “The fault is mine — I acted rashly. Tonight I received word that Zhao Xitai might still be alive and could be making his way here with unknown intent, and I was told to take precautions.”

“Who gave you this information?”

“The source was unknown. So at first I half-disbelieved it, but fearing that something might go wrong on your end with too few people at hand, I came over at once. I never expected it to be true…”

Mu Fulan was lost in thought for a moment, then said, “It is not your fault. That he would come here in secret like this — you were right to be on guard.”

“Elder Brother, do me a favor and give him a proper burial. That way, I can honor what little friendship we shared in childhood.”

Yuan Handing agreed and urged her to go and rest.

Mu Fulan called him back. “Elder Brother Yuan, you have come at just the right time — there is one more thing I wish to discuss with you.”

This matter had been turning over in her mind for a very long time.

She said, “Elder Brother, when I returned this time, I brought Auntie’s remains back with me. Her greatest wish in her final moments was to return to Dongting. The person she could never stop thinking of was your foster father. I would like to bury her together in the same grave as Chancellor Yuan. Would Elder Brother agree?”

Yuan Handing seemed taken aback at first. He studied her calm expression for a moment, then said hesitantly, “Before my foster father passed, he left me instructions to bury him on a nameless, solitary island deep within Dongting Lake. There are no people there, and to this day there is only his lone grave. This puzzled me for a long time. Later, when I was sorting through his journals and collected writings from his lifetime, I came across a few lines in passing that told me that in his youth, he had accompanied Prince Changsha to make offerings to the Lake God, when a storm arose and their boat was blown to the island, where they took shelter. At that time, your aunt was also aboard the boat. I surmised then that the place must have held some particular significance for him.”

He looked at Mu Fulan and said, word by deliberate word, “Why would I refuse?”

Mu Fulan smiled. “Thank you, Elder Brother. I will choose an auspicious day and see to it.”

Several days later, Mu Fulan boarded a large vessel, and under Yuan Handing’s guidance, set off into the depths of Dongting Lake. After a full day and night of sailing, the boat at last reached a solitary island and came to a stop.

The island was not large — seen from a distance, it resembled a cluster of spires rising from the water’s surface, with jagged rocks scattered all along its shores. When they landed on the island, it was just before dawn, the sky ablaze with rosy clouds. Wild ducks flew through the clouds overhead, and Chancellor Yuan’s old grave stood quietly at the island’s highest point, facing in the direction of Yuezhou.

Yuan Handing broke open the old grave with a hoe, and Mu Fulan, with her own hands, cradled the sealed urn of fragrant remains she had carried back from the capital and laid it to rest within.

The attendants had already erected a row of tents on a nearby flat expanse of ground for lodging. Mu Fulan would stay here for seven days and seven nights, while the monks who had come with her chanted scriptures. Yuan Handing had intended to stay with her and depart together, but the following day, a boat came from the city bearing news: the chieftain of the Sanmiao had arrived and was making a visit especially to see Yuan Handing — and because the visit was personal in nature, no envoy had been sent ahead to announce it. The chieftain was already nearly at Yuezhou. Mu Fulan urged Yuan Handing to return first, with the agreement that he would come back to fetch her on the final day.

And so she stayed on this solitary island in the depths of Dongting Lake, praying alongside the monks day and night without pause, offering devout blessings for her aunt and for the one her aunt had loved until death — the one she had never been able to see again.

One night, deep in the night, the monks had finished chanting the final round of scriptures for the day. The attendants and servants had each gone to sleep, save for the guards keeping watch, who still stood at their posts. This remote island in the heart of the lake felt utterly otherworldly.

Mu Fulan sat atop a rock, gazing in the direction of Junshan.

The night wind swept across the lake’s depths from all sides, stirring the hem of her robe. She sat motionless, as though she had entered a trance, entirely unaware of the moment when the stars faded from the night sky above her and dark clouds gathered overhead.

Threads of rain began to fall, growing heavier and heavier, soaking through her clothes. Droplets gathered in her hair and at the tips of her brows.

Water rolled into her eyes, carrying a faint, stinging sensation.

She blinked. She was just about to rise when, at that very moment, she suddenly felt as though somewhere behind her, a pair of eyes was watching her.

It was an extraordinarily elusive feeling.

Since landing on the island, this was not the first time over the past few days that this feeling had come over her.

She turned her head. Nothing.

Behind her, a stretch of pitch-black lake water churned and surged ceaselessly against the rocky shoreline, driven by the night wind.

A’Mao scrambled out of the tent — seeming to have been startled awake from sleep — rubbing her eyes as she came running toward her, crying out, “It is raining! Watch out for a chill!”