Returning to the present from the reverie, Cui Jinzhi gazed at Li Shu.
He could not quite say why he had wanted to come see her tonight.
Perhaps it was the thick, heavy darkness of the night sky. Perhaps it was the flickering, indistinct light in the corridor. Perhaps it was the Emperor’s renewed promotion of Shen Xiao — yet another signal that the suppression of the great clans was about to begin again.
So many “perhaps,” and yet they all brought Cui Jinzhi here to be with her for a while.
Li Shu had been scolded today by the Emperor, and he had abandoned the work at the Yongtong Canal to come back and comfort her.
But now the night was hushed and still, and Li Shu slept soundly, her brow smooth and untroubled — without a trace of worry to be seen.
Cui Jinzhi slowly came to understand his own heart: in truth, she had no need of his comfort tonight. It was plainly he who needed her.
Since his elder brother had died in battle and his father had retired from public life, he had donned his official robes and entered the court.
He had ground away every sharp edge of himself, forced himself to bear the burden of the family name, forced himself to serve and support the Crown Prince, forced himself to scheme and maneuver, forced himself to claw and scrape his way forward.
But the longer he pushed himself, the more exhausted he became.
One after another, the affairs of the court pressed down on him — never once granting him a moment to catch his breath, as though they would crush him entirely.
He needed to carve out a pause, to let himself breathe, before he could go on.
Qing Luo could give him only the quiet of distance from the court. But Li Shu could give him the strength to keep walking forward.
Li Shu had grown accustomed to loneliness from childhood, and it had forged in her a resilient and unyielding nature. No matter how severe the setback, she could endure it. She was always composed and steadfast, always pressing ahead without hesitation, always knowing what she wanted — and it was precisely because she knew that she could endure every thorn on the road.
Li Shu was too strong. So strong that in this moment, Cui Jinzhi found himself wanting to seek shelter beneath that strength.
Cui Jinzhi slowly bent forward, pressing his forehead into Li Shu’s palm. In a gesture that was at once a comfort-seeking and a plea for forgiveness, he leaned against her — while she slept.
He felt the warmth of her hand against his forehead, the two of them drawn suddenly close together, the way they had been in their youth. In that fleeting daze, he became again that carefree, spirited boy who cared nothing for the world.
……
Resting his forehead in Li Shu’s palm, Cui Jinzhi had almost drifted off to sleep when he suddenly felt her hand stir beneath him, and then swiftly draw away.
He lifted his head and looked — he did not know when Li Shu had awakened. Still that same pair of clear, perceptive eyes, yet now they watched him with cool distance. “What are you doing in my room?”
Her words held no warmth — only detachment.
Cui Jinzhi said: “Nothing, really. I just thought… you were reprimanded by Father Emperor today, and I worried you might be in a dark frame of mind.”
Seeing how remote Li Shu was, his words came out with an edge of bitterness.
Li Shu sat up, tucked a pillow behind her back, leaned against the headboard, and looked at him with a flat, expressionless voice. “I am perfectly fine.”
She had spent days scheming toward this outcome. Now that it had succeeded, she could hardly have any dark thoughts — what was there to brood over?
Cui Jinzhi had entered the room without lighting a lamp, and only the lantern light from the corridor filtered in, giving the room a certain intimate, ambiguous atmosphere.
Li Shu frowned. This sort of atmosphere made her deeply uncomfortable. She called out: “Hong Luo, light the lamps.”
Hong Luo came in with a candle stand and lit the lamps one by one inside the room, until it was bright and clear.
Cui Jinzhi sat at the edge of the bed. He watched the candlelight fall on Li Shu’s face — she simply kept silent, leaning against the headboard looking at him, waiting quietly for him to say whatever serious matter he had come about.
But what serious matter did he have to say?
He felt that he had nothing to say.
Cui Jinzhi could only manage: “So long as you’re all right. So long as you’re all right.”
And so Li Shu frowned again, feeling that something was off with Cui Jinzhi.
“What is the matter with you? What is it you actually came for? Did the Crown Prince give you some new errand to pass on to me?”
The Crown Prince was poor at managing those beneath him. The moment someone made an error that cost him even the slightest advantage, the Crown Prince immediately grew impatient and unwilling to deploy them again.
Today everything in the Hanyuan Hall had been set in motion by Li Shu — knowing the Crown Prince as she did, he would have no use for someone as “useless” as her anymore.
The Crown Prince had no shortage of loyal dogs. He did not need her.
Could she have actually miscalculated, and the Crown Prince still had something he wanted her to do?
In that case, she would need to put on an even more distraught and broken appearance, so as to fob the Crown Prince off.
Li Shu’s mind worked through many possibilities in rapid succession, each consideration a matter of court politics — with no thought spared for personal feelings.
Cui Jinzhi looked at Li Shu like this and felt another weight settle on his heart.
Without his noticing, Little Sparrow had drifted further and further from him. Even now, sitting together on the same bed, her expression was cold and distant, as though she were pushing him a thousand li away.
He shook his head. “No — the Crown Prince has no errand for you.”
In truth, that afternoon the Crown Prince had blamed Li Shu from head to toe in the Eastern Palace, and very nearly ordered someone to drag her there and give her a harsh dressing-down. It was only through Cui Jinzhi’s repeated persuasion that he had managed to talk the Crown Prince out of it.
Li Shu’s long brow furrowed further. “If there is no urgent matter, then what are you doing in my chambers? I’d only just woken up and already found you there — I thought something major had happened at court.”
The idea that Cui Jinzhi would appear in her bedchamber was nothing short of a miracle — a miracle so jarring it felt completely out of place.
Li Shu said this and adjusted the clothing that had slipped off her shoulder, then added: “Since there is nothing pressing, you may leave first. I’d like to sleep a while longer.”
She was already dismissing him.
Cui Jinzhi had a rare opportunity to be with her in this way — no arguments, no politics — and he felt a reluctance to leave.
He was still thinking of an excuse to stay a little longer when he saw Li Shu, without thinking, wipe her hand against the thin coverlet.
As though there were something dirty on her palm.
Cui Jinzhi’s gaze stilled. Li Shu’s gesture was like a hand clenching around his heart — in an instant he could not breathe.
She had come to despise him so much that she couldn’t even bear the touch.
Cui Jinzhi stared blankly at her hand. Li Shu, seeing that he had not moved or spoken for a while, grew faintly impatient. “Is there something else?”
She was exhausted — she hadn’t slept properly in two nights. Could she not be allowed to rest for a little longer?
“Nothing… I have nothing.”
Cui Jinzhi quickly answered, and then, as though making a show of saving face: “Besides, I have business at the Yongtong Canal to attend to. I must be on my way.”
He could not look at Li Shu any longer. He turned and walked toward the door — his retreating figure, for all its composure, carried a trace of something that looked very much like panic.
Li Shu watched him leave and thought he was behaving strangely.
What was the matter with Cui Jinzhi tonight.
She gave it no more thought, and instructed: “Hong Luo, bring me a cloth — I’d like to wipe my hands.”
Having her hand grabbed by Cui Jinzhi had left her with a distinctly clammy feeling.
Hong Luo quickly soaked a cloth, wrung it half-dry, and brought it to Li Shu.
Li Shu wiped her hands. She heard Hong Luo say: “This servant somehow feels that… the Prince Consort just now did not seem to be in a very good mood. His complexion looked rather grey.”
Li Shu was not particularly concerned. “He’s been busy these past few days. He’s probably tired.”
Cui Jinzhi had Qing Luo to look after him. What concern was it of hers?
Woken up by Cui Jinzhi, Li Shu found that her drowsiness had fled for the moment. She asked: “Has the matter of the fifty thousand shi of grain been passed along?”
The Emperor had ordered her to surrender an additional fifty thousand shi within three days, and Li Shu naturally could not be slow about it.
Hong Luo nodded. “It has been conveyed to the steward. The steward is busy tallying the grain from the various estates, and will have it transported tomorrow.”
Li Shu gave a nod, then said: “There is one more thing. Send someone to Wannian County and have the estate manager Liu brought here. I wish to see him tomorrow.”
She would have to punish him.
Having made her arrangements, she sat for a little while longer, and soon drowsiness returned. Li Shu lay down and quickly fell back into a deep sleep.
The next day, barely awake, she heard Hong Luo report that Estate Manager Liu was already on his knees in the reception hall, begging forgiveness.
Li Shu washed and dressed and then went to the reception hall. When Estate Manager Liu saw her come in, his face wore an expression of deep remorse, and he said urgently: “Your Highness, it is entirely my fault for failing to guard the grain, and letting people take it. It has brought such great trouble upon the princess.”
The matter of Princess Pingyang being publicly reprimanded by the Emperor over grain had already spread all through Chang’an.
He finished and pressed his forehead to the floor in a bow, his attitude of contrition genuinely good.
But Li Shu only sat in the main chair, holding a cup of tea — not drinking, not speaking — just looking at him with a mild, indifferent gaze.
A gaze that felt as though it weighed a thousand jin.
Estate Manager Liu’s back broke out in a cold sweat at once.
He had served the princess for five years now, and feared nothing else — only the princess’s silence. Even being scolded or punished was better, for at least that meant the princess still intended to go on using him. But this silence now… was more like the calm before a great storm.
Estate Manager Liu struggled to offer some defense for himself. “Minister Shen arrived with five hundred soldiers, but the estate that night had only twenty-odd guards — all the others had been transferred away to the other estates.”
It was not that he had not tried to stop them. Heaven and earth knew his loyalty to the princess was absolute — it was simply that he had not been able to stop them.
Estate Manager Liu pressed on doggedly: “That night, even the Prince Consort’s men could not stop Minister Shen from taking the grain.”
The implication being: the Prince Consort commanded soldiers from the Ministry of War, and even they had failed to stop it — so for a small estate manager, failing to stop it was perfectly understandable.
But the moment Li Shu heard this, she set her teacup down on the table with a sharp crack, sending tea splashing across the surface.
“Even now you do not understand what offense you have committed!”
Li Shu said coldly: “This princess is not blaming you for failing to stop Shen Xiao. That was not your fault.”
“This princess called you here for one reason alone — to ask: between me and Cui Jinzhi, who exactly is your master?”
Estate Manager Liu started.
“The estate you manage is this princess’s estate; the grain stored there is this princess’s grain. So when something arose, great or small, it should have been reported to this princess… “
Li Shu’s voice suddenly dropped to an icy chill. “Without this princess’s permission, who gave you leave to send men privately to find Cui Jinzhi?!”
Estate Manager Liu could not quite grasp where the princess’s anger had come from.
Weren’t the Prince Consort and the princess one and the same?
He was bewildered and confused. “But… but that was the Prince Consort…”
Surely it was natural for a wife to call for her husband when trouble arose?
Li Shu gave a cold laugh at that. “The Prince Consort?”
She instructed: “Hong Luo — have someone drag Estate Manager Liu to the front gate and make him open his eyes wide and look — what exactly is written on that plaque up there? Is it ‘Princess Pingyang’s Residence’… or ‘The Cui Residence’?!”
Hong Luo turned and made to step out, as though to summon people.
Estate Manager Liu finally understood. The princess was making a clean break from the Prince Consort.
But why? What couple could be so estranged?
Though he could not quite fathom it in his heart, he understood that he had touched the princess’s bottom line. Without waiting for Hong Luo to call anyone, he hastily begged forgiveness: “This servant understands — this is naturally Your Highness the princess’s residence.”
Li Shu stared at him directly. “Since it is this princess’s residence, then who is your rightful master?”
“Naturally, the princess.”
Li Shu gave a sharp crack of her palm on the table. “If I am your master, then without my permission, who gave you the right to go looking to Cui Jinzhi as an outside backer? Are you looking down on this princess, or switching your allegiances?”
Estate Manager Liu trembled all over, his head pressed to the ground, not daring to reply.
Li Shu withdrew her hand and slowly massaged her wrist.
It was time to clean house.
Had Shen Xiao not seized the grain — prompting Estate Manager Liu to panic and call on Cui Jinzhi for help in that desperate moment — she would never have noticed that there were quite a few people in this residence who owed their loyalty to the Cui family.
The household servants were divided mainly into three groups.
The first were those Li Shu had brought from the palace when she left to be married — very few in number. The second were those gradually purchased over time afterward. And the third were servants dispatched to her by the Cui family.
When Li Shu had first come to live outside the palace after her marriage, she had few reliable and useful people around her.
Being a daughter of the imperial family and being a married woman were two entirely different things. A girl had no responsibilities; a married woman had far more to manage — fiefs, farmland, and household affairs. Being the mistress of a residence was no easy task.
A princess like the favored Anle had reliable servants and matrons carefully selected for her by the Empress before her marriage, so that after the wedding she had nothing to worry about.
Slightly less well-off than Anle, even a princess of illegitimate birth who at least had a mother consort could receive her mother’s guidance before marriage and not be caught completely at a loss when it came to managing a household.
But for Li Shu alone — firstly, she had no reliable servants around her; secondly, she had no elder to guide her. When she first married and tried to manage a household, she had been quite at a loss.
Cui Jinzhi had seen this and, with genuine care, specially dispatched a group of experienced senior servants from the Cui family’s ancestral home to help and support her.
The Cui family was a household of a hundred years’ standing, and the servants who attended them were incomparably more capable than those of ordinary families — one could easily do the work of ten. In the five years since the two of them had married and established their residence, these servants had been placed in important positions one after another and had become key managers in the household.
Estate Manager Liu was the most capable of the lot. Back in the Cui ancestral home, he had managed an estate; upon coming to the princess’s residence, he had managed her largest estate for her. Rain or shine, the estate in Wannian County had never once fallen short of its grain harvest, and there was not a single error to be found when the accounts were tallied at year’s end.
Such a capable person — in the wider world, every trading house would pay a handsome price to hire him.
But Li Shu now had no choice but to stop using Estate Manager Liu.
He was capable, yes — but he was not of one heart with her. At the root of it, he belonged to Cui Jinzhi’s side.
Her servants must regard her as their sole master — whether it was the Prince Consort or any other person, without her permission, not a single word was to be breathed outside.
She had already made her plan to break away from the Crown Prince’s faction. Cui Jinzhi belonged to the Crown Prince, and that meant she must sever ties with Cui Jinzhi completely.
Otherwise, whatever schemes she devised going forward, the servants would relay everything to Cui Jinzhi — and she might as well be finished.
A complete break.
When this thought crossed Li Shu’s mind, she felt a sudden pang in her heart — followed swiftly by a sharp, clarifying relief.
She and Cui Jinzhi had come at last to this kind of ending.
With this thought turning in her mind, Li Shu’s voice toward Estate Manager Liu was no longer so cutting. She said slowly: “Estate Manager Liu — these past years you have also done a great deal of real and diligent work for me, without ever slacking. You have never made an error. The grain seizure was not your fault, and I will not punish you for it. But… I will not be employing you any further.”
She sighed faintly. “Since your heart regards Cui Jinzhi as your master, there is no need to go on serving under me. I will have you returned to the Cui family now.”
“Go to the accounts room and collect a sum of silver, then take your leave.”
Estate Manager Liu sat in a daze for a long moment, not speaking.
The princess was always generous with her payments — what she called “a sum of silver” would amount to no less than several hundred taels. Even if he did no more work for the rest of his life, that silver could keep him fed and clothed with ease.
Estate Manager Liu’s feelings were complicated. He understood that the princess was making a clean break from the Prince Consort, and that he was merely the thread that had drawn the whole thing out.
He had spent his years managing the estate — he did not know what went on inside the residence. But he still remembered clearly: the year those two wed, ten li of crimson wedding gifts stretching as far as the eye could see — what a perfectly matched pair they had been.
How had it come to this?
Estate Manager Liu sat stunned for a while. Knowing the princess, though she was a woman, whatever she said was never to be questioned. He wanted to speak but could not think what to say, and so simply knelt upright on the floor in a proper bow.
“This servant thanks the princess.”
Estate Manager Liu was only the beginning of Li Shu’s purge of the household. She called for Hong Luo to bring the household register, then had each name called in one by one. All the servants who had been originally dispatched from the Cui ancestral home by Cui Jinzhi — however capable, however senior their position — were not to be kept. Each was given a sum of silver and sent back to the Cui family.
Then came those who had always served in Cui Jinzhi’s western courtyard — each given a sum of silver and then sold out of the household.
By the time this great reshuffle was complete, more than half the servants had been driven out. What remained were those who were wholly loyal and unwavering, who recognized the princess and the princess alone as their master.
Every servant in the household now understood: though the western courtyard was still kept for the Prince Consort’s use, it was in appearance only. The Prince Consort was no longer master within these walls.
Whoever went on pledging loyalty to the Prince Consort was defying the princess — and there would be no good end in it for them.