Having left the main encampment of the Yongtong Canal, Shen Xiao boarded the sedan chair and prepared to return to the Ministry of Finance.

The midday heat was stifling. Shen Xiao drew the curtain aside to let in the air. He sat perfectly upright, turning over in his mind how he would report back to the Second Prince.

Cui Jinzhi had clearly been burning through the Ministry of Finance’s grain on purpose — yet the Yongtong Canal was the one and only waterway for transporting grain from the south, and the one and only means of relieving Guanzhong’s drought. Once the Yongtong Canal ran out of grain, the construction schedule would fall behind — and once the schedule fell behind… Guanzhong would descend into unrest.

Therefore, even if the Ministry of Finance had to sell everything it possessed down to the last pot, it could not afford to cut off the grain supply to the Yongtong Canal.

Cui Jinzhi held the Yongtong Canal in his hands, which meant he held the Ministry of Finance’s vulnerability — and with it, the Second Prince’s throat.

The Second Prince had lost this game of chess. He could only be led by the nose by the Crown Prince.

Just as Shen Xiao was sinking into deep thought, from somewhere up ahead came the sound of carriage wheels.

Through the sedan chair window, Shen Xiao looked up, and saw a low-key, unassuming carriage pass close alongside his sedan chair.

Seated inside was an exceptionally beautiful woman. Her long brows were faintly furrowed, and through the carriage window she kept looking ahead in the direction of travel, as though she were deeply worried about something.

She was heading in the direction of the Yongtong Canal.

*

Inside the tent.

Li Shu leafed idly through the account books, but found nothing amiss in the figures.

After seeing Shen Xiao off, Cui Jinzhi walked toward Li Shu and said: “The accounts are genuine.”

Li Shu leafed through a few more pages and replied: “I never said you were keeping false accounts.”

Cui Jinzhi was not stupid — why would he falsify accounts right under the scrutinizing eye of the Ministry of Finance? That would be handing his own weakness directly into the Second Prince’s hands.

Li Shu closed the account book and set it down on the table. “You are pushing Second Brother to the brink of no return,” she said.

The words seemed to carry a note of wistfulness — yet when Cui Jinzhi looked up, Li Shu’s expression was as cold and indifferent as ever.

She was not soft-hearted. In truth, she was rarely soft-hearted.

When past ties and present interests came into conflict, Li Shu would hesitate for no more than a moment before choosing interests.

She had an exceedingly cold heart — Cui Jinzhi had known this from the very beginning.

Cui Jinzhi said: “In the struggle to seize the throne, it is a matter of life and death. The day Second Prince falls will be the day you rise one step higher in the court.”

Li Shu’s right hand rested on the thick stack of account books, tracing the cover with an idle, absent touch. “I know,” she said.

She would climb on Second Brother’s shoulders, stepping upward to a higher place. It was not as though they had chosen the same road from the beginning.

Li Shu lowered her eyes and said nothing. A brief silence settled over the tent.

Seeing her like this, Cui Jinzhi moved closer — as though wanting to cross to her side — but when he reached the desk, he stopped himself and turned instead to sit at the far end of the table.

Separated by the wide expanse of the table: one person on this side, one person on the other.

Cui Jinzhi looked at Li Shu.

Li Shu was silent for a moment, then raised her eyes directly to meet Cui Jinzhi’s gaze. She quickly looked away again, unwilling to hold his stare.

Li Shu had always disliked Cui Jinzhi’s eyes.

He had been born with phoenix eyes — deep and penetrating; when he fixed his full attention on someone, his gaze always held the air of a man with something tender on his mind. It occasionally gave Li Shu a strange feeling… as though he were looking at her with affection.

Li Shu did not like this feeling. It made it far too easy to sink into it — far too easy to let herself indulge in sentimental fancy.

Her marriage to Cui Jinzhi had already become a laughingstock. She could not allow herself to become a laughingstock as well.

She averted her gaze from Cui Jinzhi and, reaching for something to say, asked: “How is your injury?”

Cui Jinzhi continued to look at Li Shu. He gave his arm a casual wave, completely unbothered. “Much better already — it was never a serious wound to begin with. Just a surface slash.”

The physician’s bandage had been wound extremely tight; Cui Jinzhi had found his arm feeling uncomfortably constricted the whole time. Now that Li Shu had brought it up, the arm began to itch and feel constrained again. So he lowered his head and returned to the task he had been occupied with — methodically unwinding the bandage.

Li Shu let out a soft sigh. “Stop fiddling with that. Physician Xue just finished binding it — don’t go ruining his work.”

And so Cui Jinzhi obediently stopped.

But the bandage had already been picked apart into a loose and ragged mess, looking nothing like it should.

Li Shu almost rolled her eyes. She pulled up a chair at the back of the desk and sat down, reached over to take one end of the bandage, and dragged Cui Jinzhi’s arm toward her.

Cui Jinzhi was pulled off-balance with a lurch, and had to prop his left arm on the table to keep from falling. His right hand was left suspended mid-air; Li Shu bent her head low and was already rebinding the bandage.

Facing the top of Li Shu’s head, Cui Jinzhi suddenly smiled.

Li Shu kept winding the bandage as she spoke: “That laborer who injured you was someone you arranged.”

This was not a question.

“Yes.”

With no one else present, Cui Jinzhi admitted it cleanly and without hesitation.

“To make the Second Prince release some grain, I had to shed a little blood first. If I didn’t make it a big enough scene, I feared the Second Prince would keep dragging his feet and withholding the grain.”

Li Shu gave a slight nod, then said: “You had that man killed.”

This too was not a question.

The smile on Cui Jinzhi’s face slowly froze. He said slowly: “No.”

Li Shu, who had been keeping her head bent over the bandage all this time, finally looked up. Her brow furrowed, a look of incomprehension in her eyes.

Cut the root, leave no handle — this was the foremost principle in political strategy.

Li Shu furrowed her brow, clearly disapproving, and said to Cui Jinzhi: “You have left yourself a vulnerability.”

If that laborer who had attacked him was ever caught by the Second Prince, it would spell trouble.

Cui Jinzhi looked at Li Shu. All the emotions in his eyes slowly drained away one by one. Something heavier and more long-buried pressed down on his chest, and his gaze set like ice.

He withdrew his right arm, rose slowly from the desk, and said to Li Shu:

“I am not as ruthless as you. I am not like you — you always kill.”

This too was not a question.

It stated, without room for dispute, some irrefutable fact from the past.

Always. Kill.

This was the first time Li Shu had ever heard Cui Jinzhi say those words to her. It would not be the last.

Li Shu looked up in bewilderment at Cui Jinzhi, her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

Cui Jinzhi looked at Li Shu, let out a cold, contemptuous laugh, and gave no answer.

Li Shu was infuriated by this evasive, dismissive manner of his.

What did he mean by saying she always killed? What did those words even mean?

Li Shu was suddenly furious. She leaped to her feet, “Cui Jinzhi, what exactly do you mean?”

Cui Jinzhi still said nothing, turning his back to face away from Li Shu. He met her questions with silence.

Li Shu was completely enraged by his attitude.

What was this? He threw down some groundless accusation, offered her no explanation — as though he had already pronounced her guilty, condemned her wrongdoing without appeal.

Li Shu drew a sharp breath, and with great strides moved to stand directly in front of Cui Jinzhi, tilting her head up to face him. “I do not like to repeat myself. This is the last time I will ask — what exactly do you mean? If you will not tell me now, then never speak of it again.”

Cui Jinzhi’s expression was stern and cold. He stared in silence at Li Shu for a long moment — until Li Shu thought he would say nothing more — and then Cui Jinzhi suddenly spoke.

“Qing Luo. I am speaking of Qing Luo.”

He said.

Having spoken those words, he quickly looked away, unwilling to face Li Shu any longer.

Something far heavier and more oppressive weighed on Cui Jinzhi’s chest — things he had no desire to speak of aloud. The only accusation he could make toward Li Shu, the only thing he could bring himself to say, was the matter of Qing Luo.

“Five years ago, you nearly killed Qing Luo. You thought you had kept it hidden from everyone. But I know everything you did.”

Cui Jinzhi said.

Li Shu’s eyes went wide, and she stepped back.

Qing Luo. Qing Luo. That name clung to her like a nightmare.

It had haunted her for five full years.

Leyou Ward was the most dazzling and glittering part of Chang’an — towers full of beauties beckoning from every window, and how many wayward young men had lost themselves there. Cui Sanlang, the third son of the Cui clan — the wayward one, Cui Jinzhi — was a habitué of Leyou Ward. He had no fondness for fame or power, was not interested in the court; if he was not traveling outside to wander mountains and rivers, he was lingering in Leyou Ward in the company of beauties. He was the most unconventional figure among the sons of aristocratic families.

Every time he went to Leyou Ward, he would call only for one person: Qing Luo.

She was Cui Jinzhi’s intimate companion — the one who truly understood his heart.

Cui Jinzhi wandered through his wayward years until he reached twenty, and it was time to take a wife. The Crown Prince had set his eyes on the Cui Family’s influence in the military and wished to draw the family closer; he wanted to marry his younger sister Princess Anle to Cui Jinzhi. Princess Anle had long cherished feelings for Cui Jinzhi.

But Li Shu also had feelings for Cui Jinzhi.

No one would plan on Li Shu’s behalf, so Li Shu had to plan for herself.

At that time, Li Shu was far less favored than she was now. For a princess born of a concubine to hope to marry into the most powerful family at court — this was, by all accounts, nearly impossible.

But the more unattainable a thing seemed, the more fiercely one wanted it.

She knew that Cui Jinzhi had a reputation for scandalous behavior, but all such incidents had been suppressed by the Duke of Cuiguo, and the Emperor had no knowledge of any of it.

So Li Shu secretly gathered all the evidence of Cui Jinzhi’s indulgent escapades — including the intimate companion known as Qing Luo — and laid it before the Emperor.

And just like that, the marriage between Princess Anle and Cui Jinzhi collapsed.

When the news reached Qing Luo’s ears, she was terrified and tormented with guilt, convinced that she herself was the one who had ruined Cui Jinzhi’s marriage prospects.

The next piece of news to arrive was the report of Qing Luo’s fall from a cliff.

Li Shu had believed that Qing Luo, overcome with fear and guilt, had taken her own life.

Li Shu had used her to destroy Princess Anle’s marriage — and in doing so had inadvertently driven her to her death.

She had never intended to kill anyone. Yet Qing Luo had died because of her.

For a long time afterward, Li Shu had been consumed with guilt over Qing Luo’s death, day and night without rest. That name haunted Li Shu like a nightmare, forcing her to lie awake night after sleepless night.

Later, Li Shu had married Cui Jinzhi — yet Cui Jinzhi treated her with extreme coldness. That name stood between them like an invisible wall, sealing off any possibility of closeness.

Li Shu had exhausted every effort to win Cui Jinzhi’s favor, yet he had never accepted any of her gestures.

Then came three years ago, when the two of them traveled together to Wuxing, and Cui Jinzhi encountered Qing Luo once more by chance — only to discover that she had not died after all. In the joyous wake of that reunion, he had rekindled his old bond with her and taken her into his household.

That name finally ceased to haunt Li Shu’s dreams — yet it had shattered her emotional life beyond repair.

From that day forward, there was no longer any possibility between herself and Cui Jinzhi. Li Shu recognized this with cold-eyed clarity, and with despair.

It turned out that she herself was the intruder who had forced her way into someone else’s love.

From that day forward, she would never again try to win Cui Jinzhi’s favor. She would never again allow herself to show him a single trace, a single hint, of her feelings.

From beginning to end, her feelings, her scheming — all of it had been nothing but a joke.