Li Shu was momentarily bewildered. She instinctively began to explain herself: “No, I do not care about him — well, actually I do care about him—”

She certainly cared about Cui Jinzhi. He was a political enemy!

Across from her, Shen Xiao’s deep, dark eyes fixed directly upon her. Li Shu was suddenly rendered speechless. “What I mean is — I care in that way, not in that other way.”

What was all this talk of “this way” and “that other way.”

Shen Xiao heard it and his brow furrowed. Li Shu inwardly cursed herself — she had no idea why she had suddenly grown flustered; her mouth couldn’t keep pace with her mind.

It was truly because Shen Xiao looked so… pitiful.

His lashes swept downward, veiling whatever lay in his eyes. All that remained visible was the line of a straight nose descending toward tightly pressed lips. The picture of someone both aggrieved and displeased.

Li Shu finally recovered her composure and said, “Cui Jinzhi is the most capable and effective person under the Crown Prince’s command! The Crown Prince relies upon him enormously. So I had someone keep watch over him. As long as we keep a close eye on Cui Jinzhi, we can learn a great deal about the Crown Prince’s movements.”

Li Shu finished speaking, but across from her Shen Xiao remained heavily silent. He raised his eyes and studied her carefully for a long moment, then lowered them again to the note in his hand.

Li Shu was thrown into uncertainty by his unreadable manner. She leaned her upper body forward, propping herself against the low table, and peeked across with restless eyes.

Yet upon looking this closely, she discovered that the corner of Shen Xiao’s lips had curled ever so slightly upward.

He was smiling!

That brief flash of jealousy had vanished in an instant. The moment after, Shen Xiao had already worked out the reason Li Shu “cared” about Cui Jinzhi.

After all, the man was the Crown Prince’s foremost capable subordinate.

Yet watching Li Shu across from him in her frantic rush to explain herself, Shen Xiao lowered his eyes and simply refused to say anything — perfectly content to watch Li Shu prove her innocence.

So she was afraid of making him angry.

The moment that thought arose, Shen Xiao could not maintain his composure any longer. The thin line of his lips curved upward, letting through a ten-thousandth part of the delight within him.

But of course, he was caught red-handed by Li Shu. Li Shu’s eyes widened. “What are you smiling about?”

Shen Xiao immediately raised the note in hand, affecting the appearance of reading it attentively. “I wasn’t smiling.”

Li Shu slapped the note aside with one hand and extended a finger at him — a fingertip that very nearly poked the corner of his lips. “Then why are you curling your mouth?”

“…All right. I was indeed smiling just now.”

“Why?”

Shen Xiao kept a perfectly straight face. “Because the Seventh Prince received His Majesty’s commendation.”

Li Shu: …!!!

Shen Xiao glanced downward and saw that Li Shu’s pointing finger was suspended just before the tip of his nose.

Her hand injury had fully healed. The scabs had mostly come off, and one could make out the fresh pink new flesh that had grown in, which stood out starkly against the surrounding pale skin.

A hand full of scars — quite an alarming sight by any measure. Yet Shen Xiao found himself feeling only a quiet ache of sympathy.

Perhaps it was because Li Shu had listened to him — he had told her not to drink wine, and she had stopped; perhaps it was because when his mood had shifted, Li Shu had found herself moved by it too.

These small details, woven together, prompted Shen Xiao to reach out suddenly and gently close his fingers around Li Shu’s wrist.

She always ran cold.

Li Shu startled. Only then, belatedly, did she become aware that Shen Xiao’s breath at the tip of her nose was steady and unhurried — exhaling softly onto her outstretched index finger, leaving her hand faintly damp with a warm mist that carried something nameless and ambiguous.

He held her wrist lightly, his fingers dry and warm.

Li Shu was dazed for only a brief moment before she instantly came to her senses and withdrew her hand with a sharp pull. His palm was very warm, which was precisely why she disliked it.

Warmth and tenderness were the most terrifying of all feelings — they could draw a person in to drown, and then strip away every last shred of will to fight.

She had already crashed into the stone wall that was Cui Jinzhi hard enough to leave herself with a bloodied, broken head. She would not stumble over a second person. She did not need anyone’s affection, and she would not allow herself to feel it for anyone either.

What never changed in this world would never be feeling — only power and wealth.

Li Shu let her gaze cool and her body retract, curling back against the bolster cushion. She turned her eyes aside and fixed them on the floor, not looking at Shen Xiao.

That was the first time Shen Xiao had reached out to touch her, and he was cut off by Li Shu’s decisive response.

His outstretched hand hung empty in the air — neither pulling back nor reaching forward.

After a moment, Shen Xiao smoothed his expression into something indifferent, as though the touch had been nothing more than an accidental contact. He calmly retrieved the note Li Shu had knocked to the floor and said slowly, “The Yellow River must have had some kind of incident. And judging by how urgently Deputy Minister Cui departed, it is likely not a small matter.”

Li Shu covered the wrist he had touched with her other hand, as though she could still feel the warmth lingering there. Her voice took on an official tone. “I will have people keep watch on Cui Jinzhi.”

Shen Xiao looked at her for a long moment. “Inform me of anything that comes up.”

Li Shu nodded.

Outside, the rain continued its quiet, endless murmuring. The room seemed all the quieter for it, and the cold aloofness Li Shu carried — that air of keeping the world at a thousand paces — seemed all the more pronounced.

Shen Xiao looked at her with something in his eyes that refused to yield.

She truly did run cold, always keeping the world at a remove. And because of it, she seemed all the more alone.

He gave a light cough and said, “The Seventh Prince is gradually emerging into the open, and court affairs will only grow more numerous from here. There will be more and more obstacles ahead. If there is ever something to attend to — should we continue to meet here?”

At those words, Li Shu lifted her eyes and held his gaze. Shen Xiao affected nonchalance, meeting her penetrating look.

After a long pause, Li Shu nodded. “Very well.”

*

When Cui Jinzhi filed his memorial with Emperor Zhengyuan to leave the capital, his stated reason was, as Li Shu had guessed, a routine Ministry of Works inspection tour of the Yellow River to guard against any unforeseen problems.

Emperor Zhengyuan raised no objection.

Cui Jinzhi rode a fast horse with many guards following behind.

He wore a straw raincoat, but the rain still beat down full in his face. He wiped his face and flung the water from his hand, then continued riding toward the Henan Circuit.

The Crown Prince’s instructions from that midday meeting at the Eastern Palace were still echoing in his head.

He had been urgently summoned to the Eastern Palace. The moment he crossed the threshold, he was met with a thin slip of paper and the Crown Prince’s panicked face.

Cui Jinzhi had thought the sky was falling — but upon reading the letter with a furrowed brow, his expression bore none of the Crown Prince’s alarm. His voice was rather composed.

“Your Highness need not be too concerned. The letter says the Yellow River has surged and part of the embankment has been breached. Though the letter does not clearly state the full extent of the disaster, I estimate it will have flooded at most a few counties.”

His brows carried the shadow that had not left him since the divorce, but on the whole he remained steady — his feelings had not greatly impaired his political judgment.

“The last time the Yellow River had an incident, it flooded the entire Henan Circuit and left the Central Plains swarming with displaced people. By comparison, this disaster is far less severe.”

But the Crown Prince, far from being calmed by this, looked all the more agitated. He wrinkled his brow tightly, made a gesture and every person in the hall withdrew, leaving only Cui Jinzhi.

The hall doors closed. The interior light turned dim and heavy. The Crown Prince paced like a caged beast several times back and forth, then suddenly stopped, crossed to Cui Jinzhi in a few strides, and said abruptly, “The current Prefect of Luofu is someone I recommended to Father three years ago!”

The section of the Yellow River that had just suffered the breach happened to be in Luofu!

Cui Jinzhi’s sharp gaze locked onto the Crown Prince. “The Luofu Prefecture is one of the wealthiest in the Henan Circuit. That prefect has been sending quite a few things Your Highness’s way over the years, I imagine.”

The Crown Prince flared with shame and fury. “What does that have to do with this matter!”

Cui Jinzhi fixed the Crown Prince with a hard stare and said nothing. The Crown Prince withered under that look and after a long moment conceded, “It was nothing more than seasonal offerings… you deal with this matter first and stop concerning yourself with that.”

Cui Jinzhi’s jaw tightened; his face went iron-grey.

The Luofu Prefect had been personally vouched for and recommended to the Emperor by the Crown Prince. If Luofu had an incident, the Crown Prince would certainly be implicated. In the past, when the Crown Prince’s position was powerful, this might have been left unaddressed — worst case, he would be scolded by the Emperor. In any case, the disaster was not severe enough to be unmanageable.

But not now.

The Crown Prince had been losing ground on every front. Emperor Zhengyuan had already made his displeasure plainly felt. The Crown Prince had retreated again and again, and his standing was far from what it once was.

If the Luofu affair were exposed, it would add yet another layer of shadow over the Crown Prince before His Majesty — the shadow of poor judgment in choosing men, and of accepting bribes.

Not to mention that the Luofu Prefect had very possibly paid his tributes to the Eastern Palace using the very funds meant for repairing the river embankments.

The Eastern Palace had to be protected at all costs.

With that thought, a ruthless light entered Cui Jinzhi’s eyes. “I will ride for the Henan Circuit at once. Your Highness may rest easy — I will bury this matter for you!”

Pulling himself back from his thoughts, Cui Jinzhi gripped the riding crop tightly.

The Eastern Palace was like a swamp. From the day he had stepped into it, there was no way out — and he knew it. He knew he was slowly being corrupted, but he could neither escape it nor did he wish to.

The crop swept high, then came down in one savage slash across the flank of his horse, as though he meant to pour every last drop of his bitterness and rage into that single strike.

The horse screamed in pain, lunged forward like a bolt of lightning, and vanished into the curtain of unending rain.

*

Three days later.

The Henan Circuit and the Hedong Circuit shared a northern border, with the Yellow River as their natural dividing line. Luofu Prefecture lay in the northwest of the Henan Circuit, and the Yellow River roared past the outskirts of Luofu, dragging sand and silt in its furious current.

It was the small hours of the morning. The sky was barely beginning to lighten, and the rain had gradually eased, letting through a faint glimmer of distant horizon far away.

The Luofu Prefect — a man surnamed Gao — rode out to the riverbank and found a figure in black standing there with hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the roiling Yellow River as it surged onward.

Prefect Gao was a man of ample, flabby build. He rolled down from his horse like a ball and came trundling toward the riverbank.

“Your subordinate pays his respects to the Senior Official. Deputy Minister Cui has made the long journey here and must be exhausted. Allow your subordinate to prepare a reception banquet—”

Before the courtesies were done, the black-clad figure whipped around and drove a kick straight into his chest.

Prefect Gao had spent half the night laboring away in his concubine’s chambers and his legs were already soft as noodles. When Cui Jinzhi’s kick landed, he went rolling a great distance, barely missing losing consciousness entirely; a mouthful of blood lodged in his throat.

He lay on the ground for a long while before recovering his senses, and looked up as Cui Jinzhi approached. Beneath rolls of fat, his narrow eyes gleamed with resentment.

He was, after all, the second legitimate son of the Gao family of Taiyuan. Though he could not compare with the century-old great families of Chang’an, his family was still the most powerful clan in the Henan Circuit, one whose word was law.

Who did Cui Jinzhi think he was? No matter how illustrious the Cui family had been for a hundred years, they had been crushed to pieces by His Majesty long since. Cui Jinzhi now was nothing but a stray dog that had lost its gate and lineage. If he did not have the Eastern Palace behind him, who would he dare treat so arrogantly?

Cui Jinzhi had ridden three days and three nights straight without sleeping. His eyes were threaded with bloodshot red; dressed in black, he radiated a murderous ferocity from every inch of him.

Still that face of a young man from a great family — yet his bearing had become something entirely different.

From the moment he had crushed Li Shu’s jade ornament, he had known: never again could he allow himself any choice that touched on feeling. Apart from elevating the Crown Prince to that highest seat, his eyes would see nothing else.

Power — only power.

“Useless wretch!”

Cui Jinzhi spoke through gritted teeth, his riding crop pointing at Prefect Gao, his face glacial. “The Yellow River has embankments all along its length — not a single other section has given way. And yours is the one that collapses!”

Prefect Gao had just been seething with resentment, but faced now with the aura of menace pouring off Cui Jinzhi, he immediately began to shake like a sieve. He swallowed hard on that mouthful of blood and forced a smile. “Deputy Minister Cui, please calm your anger.”

Afraid that Cui Jinzhi might not manage to hold himself back and throw him bodily into the Yellow River then and there.

Cui Jinzhi’s voice was ice-cold. “What exactly is the state of the disaster?”

Prefect Gao forced the blood back down his throat and rasped out, “In reply to the Senior Official — the disaster is actually not severe. The Yellow River has only breached a small gap, and only three counties have been flooded.”

A knot of tension in Cui Jinzhi’s chest loosened. This was roughly what he had estimated.

If he meant to conceal the disaster and manage it privately, three counties were manageable. Luofu’s treasury could bear the weight of it.

Cui Jinzhi’s eyes fixed on Prefect Gao. His voice was harsh. “How have you handled disaster relief these past days? How are the displaced people? How has the embankment repair gone?”

Three consecutive questions left Prefect Gao with nothing to say.

It was… just three counties. Even without any relief, what could the displaced people really do?

Cui Jinzhi read what lay behind that expression. He grabbed him by the collar and hauled his corpulent body off the ground.

“This year the Yellow River has surged — yet every other section has held. Yours alone collapsed first. You think I won’t send someone to dig up that embankment and see what black-hearted material they used to build it?”

Cui Jinzhi’s voice pitched sharply upward, and Prefect Gao’s flesh trembled on the spot. “An official like you, who profits even from what should buy human lives — I’ll throw you into the Hanyuan Hall and see if His Majesty deigns to let your miserable neck survive!”

Prefect Gao’s collar contracted. At first he had genuinely been frightened by Cui Jinzhi’s thunderous manner — but he swiftly understood: Cui Jinzhi was merely threatening him. In truth the man was all bark and no bite.

A vicious smile crept onto his face beneath the rolls of fat. “But all the money your subordinate pocketed — not a single coin was kept. Every bit of it, over the years, has been offered as tribute to His Highness the Crown Prince.”

So, Deputy Minister — you have every right to be fierce. Go ahead and kill me. But can you rip out the Crown Prince along with me by the root?

Cui Jinzhi was struck instantly at the most vulnerable point and his eyes snapped tight, boring into Prefect Gao.

The Prefect’s small eyes, buried in fat, glittered with malicious delight.

Interests were tangled root and branch — my hands are dirty, and so no one else’s can be clean. When I’m in trouble, if you want to protect yourselves, you have no choice but to protect me too.