Within the Eastern Palace.

The Crown Prince had been restless and ill at ease all morning.

A serving girl came to pour tea. The Crown Prince raised the cup to his lips, but his hand trembled at an inopportune moment, and the tea spilled down the front of his robes. The serving girl hurried forward to wipe it away, but the Crown Prince flew into a rage at once and flung the teacup at her.

“Get out!”

Pingyang had entered the Hanyuan Hall, and Cui Jinzhi had entered the Hanyuan Hall too!

The Crown Prince was in a panic.

They had each spoken with Imperial Father for so long — what had they said? Were they reporting him?

The Crown Prince despised himself for that night of reckless impulse, when fury had overtaken reason and he had ordered people to go after her without consulting anyone. He had been too rash, far too rash!

Seated in his chair, the Crown Prince felt a chill spreading from his limbs through his entire body, and his whole frame began to tremble slightly. Before him floated the image of Pingyang’s eyes — sharp and cold, like the edge of a blade, seeming in the next instant to drive straight into his chest.

He could hardly breathe.

At that moment he heard footsteps in the hall, light and soft — and someone drifted in like a breath of mist, a hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “Your Highness, what is the matter?”

It was the Crown Princess, Zheng Shi.

“All of you, withdraw.”

At her command, the attendants immediately melted away without a sound.

The Crown Prince turned his head to look at Zheng Shi. He said nothing, but she could clearly see the fear in his eyes.

Deep in her gaze, a flicker of dissatisfaction crossed her face — but it was quickly suppressed.

If he were not the Crown Prince, she would never have spared a glance for a man like this. No strategy, impulsive and prone to anger, heedless of consequences, unable to manage those beneath him. But what could be done? She was the mistress of the Eastern Palace; her grandfather had placed her here to support the Crown Prince. She had no other choice.

“Pingyang,” the Crown Prince said. “Pingyang has entered the palace. Imperial Father will —”

“— Imperial Father will not!”

Zheng Shi said, “That person — I have already had someone deal with it.” Her tone was completely composed, and cold. “Even if Pingyang wished to report what happened, she has no evidence.”

She was far more decisive and ruthless than the Crown Prince.

Only then did the Crown Prince let out a breath of relief. Zheng Shi lightly patted his back, the way one would soothe a child. The hall had barely settled into quiet for a moment when the junior eunuch outside was heard shouting, “Deputy Minister Cui, this servant must first go in to report to the Crown Prince — no, you cannot simply force your way in!”

Before the eunuch finished speaking, the hall doors were violently thrown open from outside.

A figure appeared in the doorway.

Zheng Shi watched as Cui Jinzhi strode forward. His face was deeply ashen, his eyes shot through with red, and he walked straight in staring at the Crown Prince, crossing the entire distance from the door without slowing once. The face that was ordinarily that of a refined and cultivated gentleman now, in this moment, carried something almost vicious in its expression.

Not that the Crown Prince was any great specimen of composure — but even Zheng Shi, calm as she usually was, felt a measure of unease at the sight of him.

The junior eunuch trailed behind still trying to stop him; Zheng Shi shot him a single glance, and the eunuch immediately retreated, even pulling the hall doors thoughtfully shut behind him.

The matter of Pingyang’s ordeal was the Eastern Palace’s wrong to Cui Jinzhi. No matter how many times she inwardly cursed the Crown Prince a foolish blunderer who had made a mess of everything, it could not undo Cui Jinzhi’s fury. After all, that was his wife.

Zheng Shi, wishing to placate Cui Jinzhi, pressed a hand to the Crown Prince’s shoulder — a signal for him not to make any sudden moves — and stepped forward herself with a smile. “The third young master of the Cui Family is here. Come, sit, sit. One of the girls has just brewed a pot of pre-rain tea, let me —”

Cui Jinzhi’s bloodshot eyes shot directly through Zheng Shi’s words. He turned his head to fix his gaze on the Crown Prince, and without offering any salute, asked a single question. “Why did you want her killed?”

His voice was very hoarse.

The Crown Prince was frightened by the savage look on Cui Jinzhi’s face — yet the more frightened he was, the more he had to project sternness, and so he snapped, “Cui Jinzhi, is this how you speak to me?!”

But Cui Jinzhi seemed to have fallen into a kind of madness. His eyes stayed locked on the Crown Prince, demanding an answer. “I have followed Your Highness for so long. I dare say I have given loyal service, whether or not I have done anything deserving of praise. Now I want only one answer: she is my wife. Why did you want her killed?”

He had said he would get justice for Pingyang — and so he would get it. He would not go back on his word, even if she no longer trusted him.

The Crown Prince let out a cold laugh. “Before you ask me that question, why don’t you first ask why she betrayed me!”

The most favored legitimate son in the imperial palace, who had lacked for nothing since birth — the one thing he could never endure was betrayal.

But at that, Cui Jinzhi’s fury blazed even hotter, and he nearly shouted, “But she did not deserve to die for it!”

Pingyang’s sharp, relentless questions from that night still rang through his mind without ceasing: What if I had died?

If she had truly died — caught between the Crown Prince and her, what choice would he have made?

He did not dare to think of it. The thought alone was enough to drive him to the edge of madness.

“But she did not deserve to die for it!”

Cui Jinzhi cried it out again, almost in despair.

“Third young master Cui!” Zheng Shi’s voice suddenly rose sharply beside him, a cutting warning. “Do you want this matter shouted across the entire city?”

Cui Jinzhi’s eyes snapped over to Zheng Shi.

Zheng Shi bit down on her back teeth and held herself straight beneath his near-murderous gaze, forcing herself to appear composed.

“If Third Young Master Cui has grievances, direct them at me. His Highness’s station is too exalted to be addressed in this manner.”

The Zheng and Cui families had both been among the foremost great families of Chang’an for generations. In the Daye dynasty, there was no particular segregation of men and women; Cui Jinzhi and Zheng Shi had been acquainted since childhood, meeting at gatherings and banquets of various kinds. Between them there was the familiarity of having grown up together, and so Zheng Shi did not address him by his official title but by his birth order.

It felt, for a moment, like those earlier years — when the great families of the whole city moved freely in each other’s circles, and every gathering was a sea of color.

“For the matter of Pingyang — you may blame me. I accept it. But you spoke one thing wrongly just now…”

Zheng Shi stepped forward, drawing close to Cui Jinzhi’s side, and said quietly, “She is no longer your wife.”

The Emperor had ordered the separation decree drawn up, and the news had taken wings throughout the entire palace. When Cui Jinzhi came out of the Hanyuan Hall, his face had been ashen, his robes spotted with ink — he had evidently been subjected to no small measure of the Emperor’s fury inside.

Separated. Those two characters carried the lightness of a breath, yet landed with a weight of a thousand catties, like an iron hammer driving straight into Cui Jinzhi’s body — he had no strength to evade it, and met it head-on with nothing but flesh and blood.

Yes. She was no longer his wife. Five years of marriage, and this was how it ended.

Cui Jinzhi’s body wavered, as though he could no longer stand.

Seeing him this way, Zheng Shi understood that he still harbored old feelings for Princess Pingyang.

Old feelings — what use were they? He had already made his choice between power and sentiment. Why still wear this face of reluctant longing? It would only disgust Pingyang, and the Eastern Palace too would see his loyalty as suspect.

Zheng Shi fixed her gaze on Cui Jinzhi, resolved to press him once more — to drive home the point until he had made up his mind entirely. Since he had severed things with Pingyang, let it be severed. Let him stay quietly within the Eastern Palace.

And so Zheng Shi stepped yet closer to Cui Jinzhi, her voice wrapping around him like a specter from all sides. “This time the wrong was ours. On behalf of His Highness, I offer you my apologies. The disrespect you showed just now — His Highness will not pursue the matter.”

“But in future, Third Young Master, do take greater care with your manner of address. Otherwise — the Cui Family name… can you carry it alone?”

“How your two elder brothers fell in battle, how the Cui Family came to decline, the old Duke Cuiguo lying senseless on his sickbed, kept alive on medicine.”

“Third Young Master Cui — without the Eastern Palace, where else could you go?”

Zheng Shi’s voice was cold, boring into Cui Jinzhi’s ear and freezing his very heart within him. “You have no way out. Your only path is through us.”

Zheng Shi had a gentle countenance, but in moments that mattered, her eyes could become very sharp. She was the beloved eldest granddaughter of Zheng Pushe, wed into the Eastern Palace to shore up the Crown Prince — she was among the most accomplished women of her rank.

Cui Jinzhi’s body visibly trembled, as though the weight on his shoulders was too great and he was on the verge of collapse.

Zheng Shi looked at Cui Jinzhi, and in her expression there appeared something that could only be called compassion.

Compassion exactly like Li Shu’s. Compassion exactly like Qing Luo’s.

Zheng Shi had no wish to press Cui Jinzhi too hard. He was a man of genuine ability — capable of real work — and the Eastern Palace could ill afford to lose him. It would be a blow to the bone and sinew.

Moreover… the great families still needed Cui Jinzhi as their blade against the Emperor.

Because of his family’s decline, Cui Jinzhi had come to despise Emperor Zhengyuan’s policy of elevating scholars of humble birth. He was rooted to the great families’ side by his very nature, and because of his family’s tragedy, he carried within him a ruthlessness that stopped at nothing — he would risk everything to uphold the dignity of the Cui Family, of the great families as a whole.

He was a very useful blade. Wielded by the great families, he could hold imperial power at bay for a long time to come.

Cui Jinzhi clenched his fist. After a long silence, he suddenly let out a low laugh. “Crown Princess, you are right. I have no way out.”

Que’nu had a way out — apart from the Crown Prince, she was still a princess, still one who could count on the Emperor’s favor. But he had no way out. He had a family to restore to glory, a debt of vengeance to repay.

Emperor Zhengyuan wished to suppress the great families — very well then. Let him open his eyes and watch his own son be swallowed whole by those same great families, let him watch his own son undo every effort he had made during his reign. Emperor Zhengyuan, unless he was willing to kill his own son, could never hope to bring the great families to ruin.

Whatever the cost — he would push the Crown Prince onto the imperial throne, and let the son tear down everything the father had built during his reign, so that Emperor Zhengyuan could not rest in peace even in death.

That was what true vengeance looked like.

—

Emperor Zhengyuan moved swiftly. The next day, the formal separation decree came down from the palace.

In truth, when a princess sought a separation — if both parties were willing — there had ordinarily been no need for the Emperor to issue any formal decree at all. A word conveyed, the Emperor’s assent received, and that would have been the end of it. The fact that a formal separation decree had been issued on this occasion made it look far more like a letter of dismissal — as though the princess had turned out the prince consort — though a final veil of propriety was preserved by calling it a “separation” to the outside world.

The moment the news broke, all of Chang’an was astonished. Emperor Zhengyuan had naturally not stated the matter of the kept woman openly in the decree — that would have stripped Li Shu of all dignity as well. The decree merely offered a few bureaucratic phrases about “incompatibility of disposition” and left it at that.

Yet the more ambiguous the wording, the wilder the rumors that swept through the city.

In the end, it even reached the point where whispers circulated about Cui Jinzhi being afflicted with some private infirmity — Princess Pingyang had been married five years with no child, and since one could hardly speak ill of the princess in such a matter, the rumors attached themselves to Cui Jinzhi instead. He had his share of scandals from his earlier years to draw on, and so word spread of all manner of ailments, of being rendered incapable, of this and that shameless, lurid tale — the whole city talked of nothing else.

His reputation, too, was thoroughly destroyed.

Momentous news followed upon momentous news.

The Emperor further decreed that since Princess Pingyang’s fall from the cliff had been the work of malicious assailants, a city-wide curfew and search would be imposed to hunt down the culprits.

Naturally, nothing would be found. Zheng Shi’s hands were clean; she left no traces. Yet the display of searching was conducted with enormous noise and commotion, throwing the entire city into unease and putting every household on edge.

The search went on for half a month without turning up so much as a shadow.

Emperor Zhengyuan’s love for his daughter had turned to fury, and he dressed down the Ministry of War along with the sixteen guards of the Southern Court in the harshest terms, calling them all useless drunkards who could not accomplish a single thing of any use.

When the Son of Heaven is furious, the consequences are severe: the Ministry of War was swept clean from top to bottom, inside and out, and underwent a complete change of personnel.

In former days, Emperor Zhengyuan had trusted the Crown Prince, and the Ministry of War had been held firmly with Cui Jinzhi at its center — an iron stronghold of the Crown Prince’s faction. Now the Emperor took it directly back into his own hands. Cui Jinzhi, held responsible for the failure, was stripped of his post in the Ministry of War. The Crown Prince and the other great families interceded to shield him, and the final outcome was that Cui Jinzhi’s stipend was docked for one year, and he was transferred by lateral appointment to another ministry.

Everything the Crown Prince and the great families had laboriously cultivated in the Ministry of War over so many years was reclaimed by Emperor Zhengyuan in a single stroke.

Point east, strike west. Kill the chicken to warn the monkeys. Emperor Zhengyuan wielded his love for his daughter as a pretext to reclaim authority, and his method was nothing short of masterful.