Shen Xiao had already been standing outside Princess Pingyang’s gate for nearly three hours.

No matter what it took, he had to see Li Shu today and persuade her.

With only one month left before the grain deadline, there was still a shortfall of two hundred thousand piculs. Among all of Chang’an, those capable of producing two hundred thousand piculs in one go were extraordinarily rare — and Princess Pingyang was one of them.

But that was not the reason Shen Xiao had fixed his sights on Li Shu and refused to let go.

Even for someone as extravagantly wealthy as Princess Pingyang, producing two hundred thousand piculs all at once would be a deeply injurious affair, and besides, she and he had no relationship to speak of — why would she do such a thing?

Shen Xiao had never relied on Li Shu contributing a great amount of grain. The amount did not matter — what mattered was whether she would contribute at all.

Even a single ten thousand piculs would be a remarkable signal.

Li Shu’s position was exceptionally singular. On one hand, she was one of the Emperor’s most cherished princesses — if she were willing to contribute grain, that would be tantamount to the imperial family and royal relatives signaling their willingness to comply. On the other hand, she was the legitimate daughter-in-law of the Cui household. The Cui Family might have fallen on hard times, but in its day it had been the foremost aristocratic house in Guanzhong — a centipede that dies but does not fall over. If even Duke Cuiguo’s own daughter-in-law had given grain, it would be tantamount to the great families and old houses signaling their willingness as well.

One could say that with even a small shift in Princess Pingyang’s stance, the entire situation in Chang’an would turn around.

The contest for succession between the Second Prince and the Crown Prince had erupted fully in the matter of grain requisitioning. And the key to whether grain requisitioning could succeed rested entirely with Princess Pingyang.

It was not that Shen Xiao was stubbornly fixated on Li Shu — he had no other choice but to be fixated on her.

To collect the remaining two hundred thousand piculs within just one month, Li Shu was the only possible breakthrough point. So long as Li Shu gave an inch, the majority of those imperial relatives and great families would also give an inch.

Not only Shen Xiao — at this moment, countless eyes across Chang’an were fixed on Princess Pingyang’s residence. Li Shu had spent the past two months hiding away in the mountains not merely to avoid Shen Xiao alone. She was avoiding the persuasions and maneuvering of every faction.

The sun was brutal, but Shen Xiao stood outside the gate without moving.

He had made up his mind: today he would see Li Shu no matter what.

If he failed to see Li Shu, and if grain requisitioning then failed — afterward, he would have nothing left but a path to death. Shen Xiao understood this clearly.

But… whether she was willing to see him at all — that was an unknown.

A person like Princess Pingyang calculated only in terms of power and benefit, with cold hands and a colder heart — the very image of a political schemer. The only moment Shen Xiao had ever seen a trace of genuine human feeling in her was that day at Yongtong Canal, when she had rushed frantically into the tent out of concern over the Deputy Minister’s injury.

Would simply standing here and demanding an audience actually accomplish anything?

Just as Shen Xiao was beginning to doubt himself, the tightly shut vermilion gate suddenly creaked, and a narrow gap appeared in the side door. The sharp-looking young gate attendant peered out, saw that Shen Xiao was still standing ramrod straight at the bottom of the steps, and let out a mournful sigh.

The gate attendant lamented silently, then resolutely crawled out from behind the door, resigned to his fate. Fine — this Master Shen had real endurance. He had practically staked his life on seeing the Princess. Impressive, truly impressive. He had won. The Princess really had no way to leave him baking in the sun outside. In this blazing weather, if something happened, the accusation that Princess Pingyang had mistreated a court official would be impossible to wash clean.

The gate attendant trudged dejectedly down the steps, gave Shen Xiao a bow, and said reluctantly: “Master Shen, the Princess invites you in.”

The gate attendant led Shen Xiao into Princess Pingyang’s residence.

The sun overhead was at its most ferocious, and added to that, the twenty-thousand-picul shortfall pressed heavily on Shen Xiao’s chest. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling a wave of dizziness wash over him.

Shen Xiao drew a deep breath, steadied himself, and then continued forward.

Princess Pingyang’s residence was impressively grand: carved galleries and painted eaves stretched on in an unbroken sweep. If one were to rank the finest mansions in all of Chang’an, Princess Pingyang’s residence might not quite claim first place, but it would absolutely never fall outside the top three.

Shen Xiao had now been an official for three months, and all manner of rumors had drifted into his ears. For instance, that Li Shu’s mother had been a dancer without even an official title, born of the lowest station. In her early years at the palace, life had been wretched indeed. Perhaps it was in compensation for those impoverished early years — now that she had come into power, Princess Pingyang lived with extraordinary opulence.

Opulence — put another way, both very wealthy and very lacking in taste.

Shen Xiao had not quite believed it before; after all, she was of the imperial household — how could she be like a newly enriched social climber? Yet at this moment, looking around him, he genuinely felt… Li Shu’s sense of aesthetics left something to be desired.

The paintings on the corridor pillars had been rendered in gold powder, which under the fierce sixth-month sun was so dazzling it was nearly blinding. And there at the corner of the covered walkway stood a collection of potted green plants in enormous celadon vases — as if afraid people might not immediately recognize them as fine ceramics fired in the imperial kilns.

Shen Xiao could not help it — the faintest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. So Princess Pingyang, for all her cold and haughty exterior, had a lifestyle that was… rather at odds with her appearance.

That contrast, unexpectedly, made her seem somewhat more interesting.

More human, too, Shen Xiao thought.

While these thoughts were wandering through his mind, the gate attendant had already led him past the winding corridor. Before them now stretched the shimmering expanse of a lake, and across its waters, Shen Xiao could dimly make out a figure in the pavilion on the opposite bank.

The gate attendant extended a hand toward the pavilion. “Master Shen, this way, please.”

Shen Xiao walked along the covered lakeside walkway and came to stand outside the pavilion.

He breathed in and out deliberately, settling his mind, then arranged his thoughts, and finally lifted his head, ready to bow in greeting — but the hands he had poised to clasp, the words of salutation already at his lips, came to an abrupt halt.

Shen Xiao’s mind went completely blank.

The pavilion was enclosed on all sides by curtains of gauze as fine as a cicada’s wings. Princess Pingyang Li Shu was not dressed in finery today — only a thin, plain outer garment draped over her shoulders, with a light-colored inner bodice beneath. Through the sheer gauze fabric, the faint outline of her slender shoulders was visible: not lushly rounded, yet with a translucent, cool clarity like jade.

Atop her head, no ornaments of any kind — only a single unadorned gold hairpin set at a slight angle, with a few loose strands of hair falling along her ears and trailing down her neck, the rest of the view then concealed by the bodice.

He had never noticed it before — how remarkably fair she was.

The fashion in the Great Ye dynasty was open and free; women favored a low-cut style, with a wrapped bodice worn over a very sheer outer robe. Yet whenever Shen Xiao had seen Li Shu before, it was always in formal settings, where she invariably wore carefully composed, modest attire and never showed off her figure. It was rare to see her looking so casually at ease as she did today.

In the three months Shen Xiao had been an official, he had followed the Second Prince to no small number of aristocratic banquets and had long since grown accustomed to the singing girls and dancers who performed at those feasts. Yet though those women were far more unrestrained in manner and more exposed in dress, he had never been moved by any of them.

But now, catching a sudden glimpse of Princess Pingyang in her thin gauze robe, sitting casually on the stone bench in the pavilion — Shen Xiao did not know why, but he suddenly felt… a kind of dizziness…

The sun overhead grew more scorching by the moment. The scene before him flickered between dark and light, and in a haze, the image surfaced of that night three years ago, when he had been compelled to share her bed — crimson curtains all around, and a beauty like finest jade…

Shen Xiao bit down hard on his teeth, trying to drag his thoughts back — but he suddenly felt his upper lip go wet and slippery. He raised a hand to touch it, and his palm came away smeared with red.

A nosebleed.

“Crash.”

A fully grown man collapsed just like that, right in front of Li Shu.

Li Shu: “…”

She had been inwardly calculating how to send Shen Xiao away as quickly as possible — preferably in a way that would make him permanently abandon any idea of requisitioning grain from her. Who could have predicted that Shen Xiao, responding to all her evasions with a single decisive move, would simply go ahead and pay his respects face-first on the ground.

Master Shen truly was… impressively respectful.

The pavilion immediately broke into a flurry of commotion. Hong Luo quickly ordered one of the deft young attendants to go fetch a physician.

Had Master Shen gone and died on them?

Hong Luo was instantly flustered. If he died here in the residence, the Princess would never be able to explain herself. Princess Pingyang murders a court official — what a fine headline that would make for the year.

Hong Luo glanced at Li Shu in a panic. Li Shu’s expression had also changed. She quickly crouched down and reached out to feel the air beneath his nose.

He was still breathing. Good.

Li Shu felt a wave of relief. Seeing that Shen Xiao’s face was bright red and his nose still bleeding, she guessed he had been standing in the sun far too long and had suffered heatstroke. She gave her instructions: “Carry him to the guest room. Put several ice basins in there.”

What a situation this was — she had not yet heard a single word of actual business, and here she was clearing out a guest room to treat his illness. Had this Shen Xiao come today specifically to cause trouble?

*

Shen Xiao’s eyes flew open.

He remembered clearly that he had just fainted, yet now he was standing perfectly upright. Before him was still that same pavilion, its waters shimmering on the lake in front, the light breeze lifting the gauze curtains at its four corners, revealing within them the silhouette of a person in white gauze.

This was the pavilion in Princess Pingyang’s residence where she had received him, Shen Xiao thought with absolute certainty — but why were there no other people? Those guards, attendants, and maids — where had they all gone?

How was it that only the person in the pavilion remained, sitting there all alone?

Without meaning to, he walked several steps forward and came to stand beside the table.

He leaned down and found that she had fallen fast asleep. Her white gauze outer robe had slipped from her shoulder, hanging half-open and half-draped, baring a shoulder of jade-like luminescence.

Through her shoulder, Shen Xiao could see the bodice covering her chest, rising and falling gently with her breath. When she exhaled, the bodice was not quite as snug as it lay against her on the inhale, and between fabric and skin a narrow gap appeared.

If one’s gaze could flow like water, it would follow that gap downward to explore what lay beneath.

Shen Xiao did not know what he was thinking. All of a sudden, the sleeping figure opened her eyes. Those cool, clear eyes rose to meet his, looking straight at him. “Shen Xiao, what are you doing?”

Her usual tone, detached and indifferent.

Shen Xiao snapped back to himself with a start, stepping back several paces. “I… I… this official…”

He stumbled through half a dozen false starts before managing to produce a coherent sentence: “This official reports to Your Highness — this official has not… has not done anything.”

Princess Pingyang rose from the stone bench, narrowed her eyes, and studied him with suspicion.

She seemed not to have noticed that she had just woken from sleep, and her appearance at this moment was genuinely far from composed.

Her hair was slightly disheveled, and the gauze outer robe on her shoulder had also come loose, sliding down her arms without her knowledge and pooling on the ground. And so before Shen Xiao she stood now in nothing but the wrapped bodice and a long skirt that swept past her feet.

Whether bodice or skirt, both carried that looseness of someone newly roused from sleep, as if… as if they might be pulled off with a single tug.

The moment that thought stirred in Shen Xiao’s mind, it took root like something bewitched and began to grow.

From a few steps away, Shen Xiao took her in from head to foot.

He had always thought of her as perpetually decked in glittering ornaments and fine robes — composed, commanding, perched high and remote, unreachable no matter how many ten thousand steps one climbed.

But she was not always like that. She also had moments like this — in plain, thin garments — and without her ornaments and fine robes, she looked, surprisingly… slight.

This opulent residence, pavilion after pavilion stretching endlessly on — she stood there now, and seemed like a child who had strayed by accident into a treasure trove, appearing to possess everything, yet somehow at odds with all of it.

In a fleeting moment of abstraction, Shen Xiao felt — unexpectedly — that she was somehow… pitiable. But what was there to pity about her? She clearly had everything: power, wealth, status. She had it all. Yet she still looked thoroughly unhappy, as if none of the seven emotions and six desires could find a way into her heart.

He looked at her bare shoulder and thought: he wondered what it would feel like to hold her.

And so he stepped forward, and reached out, and drew her into his arms.