The night passed without incident — but the following day, events began rolling out one after another.

First thing in the morning, Zhang Shi came to find Pu Zhu with a piece of “good” news to share: just a moment ago, the Crown Prince had summoned her and asked many careful questions about Pu Zhu — what she lacked, what she liked in her daily life, what she did not like, and so on. Furthermore, the Crown Prince had also canceled his originally scheduled departure for that day.

Zhang Shi hinted repeatedly between her words that the Crown Prince had his eye on her — that this was an exceptional opportunity for her to change her fate, and that she absolutely must not let it slip away, but seize it firmly.

For Pu Zhu, this was indeed “good” news in a certain sense — yet she felt not the slightest trace of happiness.

On the contrary, the Crown Prince canceling his planned departure on her account was the very last thing she had wished for.

The previous day had yielded a happy accident: from the moment Li Chengyu had gathered her into his arms and carried her back, she had felt certain he had taken a genuine interest in her. Her goal had thus been smoothly achieved.

What she had hoped for was for the Crown Prince to set off according to the original plan — carrying within him a tender fondness and longing for her — rather than for him to create unnecessary complications by staying behind on her account.

What was the point of staying? Dallying in moonlit gardens, whispering sweet nothings?

The time had not yet come for that.

Li Chengyu’s move was not only superfluous — it might well prove harmful to him. And what was harmful to him was no different from what was harmful to her.

Zhang Shi still had to arrange the morning send-off for Prince Qin and the little prince, and having passed along the news, she hurried off.

Pu Zhu stood at the window gazing outside, brow furrowed in thought, when she received word of yet another development.

Li Xuandu had also, as it turned out, canceled his plans to depart that day. But for a different reason from the Crown Prince — he could not leave because of a problem with the little prince. It seemed the boy had woken up that morning complaining of a stomachache and had made several urgent trips to the latrine. The physician was called and found his tongue heavily coated, indicating food stagnation and cold obstruction — in plain terms, he had eaten too much the night before, and had probably also caught a chill in his sleep, leading to morning diarrhea. The physician recommended a plain and light diet and leaving his stomach empty for two meals, and said he would be fine.

Though the ailment was not serious, with such an inconvenience underway, travel for the day was clearly out of the question, and the originally planned departure was canceled. After the little prince had eaten a bowl of plain congee, whimpering and complaining, and taken his medicine, Li Xuandu commanded him to rest in bed, then went out himself to visit the Western Di envoy’s delegation at the relay station.

It had been the little prince who ate at her quarters last night and upset his stomach this morning, and Pu Zhu felt rather guilty about it. Under both the circumstances and common courtesy, she really ought to go and call on him — but she was wary of Li Xuandu and suspected his displeasure with her had certainly grown stronger. She hesitated for a moment, then in the end decided it would be better to avoid unnecessary complications. Just as she was about to send one of the maidservants in her stead to pay a brief visit to the west courtyard, the maidservant found her first, reporting that the Crown Prince had come to call on her and was at that very moment outside.

Pu Zhu had only just been thinking about how to arrange a meeting with Li Chengyu as soon as possible, and here he had conveniently delivered himself to her door. She had the maidservant invite him into the outer sitting room, had tea brought, then took a quick moment to touch up her appearance in the mirror before walking out from the inner chamber.

Li Chengyu had slept poorly the entire previous night.

After learning of her background, rather than feeling any revulsion, his heart had filled with an additional measure of tender pity. When he closed his eyes, what he saw was this Pu girl’s bright eyes, deep as still water holding the promise of spring. He had been old enough to have taken a Crown Princess — he was no innocent youth — yet for the first time he was experiencing the sensation of meeting a true kindred spirit, the pounding heart and budding feeling of first awakening. In the second half of the night, unable to sleep, he had simply gotten up and in one sitting written out the complete score of the Phoenix Terrace melody by lamplight — and not only that, but had painstakingly added detailed annotations at every passage he considered particularly brilliant, guiding the technique and the weight of the touch of each stroke. At daybreak he had summoned Zhang Shi and gathered a great deal of information about the Pu girl, then come over to see her without delay. When told she also wished to see him, he had felt a rush of delight. He waited in the room, admiring the apricot branches outside the window, finding them alluring and full of feeling, the spring fragrance enchanting.

From behind him came the light sound of graceful footsteps. Li Chengyu turned his head and saw a faint, refined figure approaching with unhurried ease.

Having fallen into the water the day before, Pu Zhu had bathed afterward and had not gathered her long hair into a bun again — and so it was this morning as well. She had used only a single hairpin to gather her dark hair loosely at the back of her head, from which it fell in a gentle cascade against the length of neck visible above her collar. Not a trace of rouge or powder touched her face; her lip color was a pale, natural hue. She wore a long moon-white everyday dress, and as she walked, her hem drifted lightly — she came as a lotus blossom risen from the water.

It was not the brilliant, luminous beauty of her moment of turning to look back beneath the flowering trees the previous evening — but instead it held an ease and grace all its own, an unstudied elegance. Lovely and radiant women were not so rare in the world, but this particular bearing and manner could not be learned even by imitation.

Before seeing her as she was now, Li Chengyu had been savoring the memory of the previous evening’s stunning vision. But seeing her in this moment, he suddenly felt this image of her was somehow more beautiful than yesterday by several degrees. Watching her approach with a gentle smile, he became completely transfixed until she was bowing gracefully before him and saying, “Greetings to the Crown Prince,” at which point he roused himself hurriedly and told her to rise. “You fell into the water while saving the little prince — I was deeply moved. Finding myself with nothing to do this morning, I came to see how you were faring. After a night’s rest, are you feeling better?”

Pu Zhu replied that she had already recovered, and expressed her gratitude.

Li Chengyu offered a few more words of comfort, then took from the hands of the attendant standing beside him an exquisite case decorated with brocade facing, and held it out to her.

Pu Zhu accepted it, somewhat puzzled.

Li Chengyu gestured for her to open it. She did as he said, and inside found a rolled scroll; unrolling it, she discovered it was a qin score for the Phoenix Terrace.

Li Chengyu said, “This is a score I transcribed last night especially for you. Included within it is the passage you played incorrectly, and I have added detailed annotations throughout the most brilliant and exquisite parts, guiding the technique and force of hand. If you have time, you may practice diligently following the score — it ought to be of some help to your qin technique.”

Pu Zhu felt a measure of genuine surprise.

She recognized Li Chengyu’s handwriting — it was indeed written by his own hand.

The score was not short, and he had not only transcribed it in its entirety overnight but had also added careful annotations throughout. He must have had hardly any time to sleep.

In her previous life — how to put it — to say she had felt no emotion toward him at all would not have been accurate either.

She had had feelings for Li Chengyu; by the time they came to an end, those feelings had become like those for a family member one lives with day and night — pity for his misfortune, frustration at his weakness.

So in this life, having decided she would still be his Empress, and having bound her fate to his, naturally she needed to think of him in all things.

When he flourished, she could flourish. Only then would she have any chance of matching the legendary Jiang clan Grand Empress Dowager of the Li imperial house.

Pu Zhu therefore allowed an expression of delighted surprise and gratitude to appear on her face. She looked through the handwritten score on the spot, as if handling a treasure; having finished looking through it, she raised her head and said, “This is truly wonderful. Just last night I was thinking about how to ask Your Highness to leave me a complete score, but did not dare say so — and yet Your Highness has already considered it for me. Such thoughtful care is beyond my power to repay! My deepest thanks for Your Highness’s generous gift. I will practice diligently and dare not be negligent, nor dare I fail to live up to Your Highness’s night-long effort and kind intentions.”

Li Chengyu was pleased, and on the spot commanded her to go and fetch the qin so he could demonstrate for her.

But Pu Zhu did not move; she only looked toward the attendants standing nearby and gave them a glance from the corner of her eye.

Li Chengyu immediately understood.

She was indicating that she had something to say to him in private.

A surge of excitement rose in Li Chengyu’s chest. He immediately dismissed everyone. Once only the two of them remained in the room, he moved a few steps closer and said gently, “Do you have something to say to me? Say whatever it is — no matter what it may be, you may speak to me freely.”

Pu Zhu held the qin score and said quietly, “May I ask Your Highness — why did you delay your journey and remain behind this morning? What was your purpose?”

Li Chengyu was momentarily taken aback. He had been about to use the little prince as his excuse, but looking into her eyes as they met his gaze, his heart warmed and the words tumbled out of their own accord. “Pu Shi, I stayed for you! I wish to bring you with me back to the capital — would you be willing?”

Pu Zhu nodded, then shook her head.

Li Chengyu was confused.

Pu Zhu said slowly, “I know well that I am beneath you. To have encountered Your Highness here by fortune, and to have received Your Highness’s favorable attention, is a blessing of three lifetimes. In the future, I would not dare aspire to anything further — to add fragrance and grind ink beside Your Highness, attending you at your side, would be the greatest of fortunes. Yet at this moment, Your Highness must not bring me to the capital. Not only must you not — but Your Highness yourself must by no means alter your travel schedule and delay your return to the capital on account of a woman like me.”

Li Chengyu’s expression remained puzzled. He hesitated, then said, “Could it be that you fear your family circumstances? You may rest easy — my imperial father declared a general amnesty when he came to the throne; you are without guilt. With me to protect you, you will certainly be kept safe.”

Pu Zhu shook her head. “Your Highness has misunderstood. What I am worried about is not my own safety — besides, with Crown Prince Your Highness protecting me, what do I have to fear? What I worry about is Your Highness yourself.”

Li Chengyu was even more confused. “What do you mean?”

“Your Highness — what was the purpose of His Majesty’s dispatch of you to He Xi on this occasion?”

Li Chengyu knew perfectly well the answer to this question in his own heart.

He had come of age with his capping ceremony the previous year. Yet unlike his uncle the Liang Crown Prince, who had taken his own life eight years ago, he himself — as a grown Crown Prince — had had rather poor luck with his previous few assignments, having not executed them particularly well. The ministers had been whispering about it privately, and this had greatly displeased the Emperor. This assignment, dispatching him to He Xi to carry out this errand, was intended to give him practice and build his prestige.

And so his Grand Tutor and Grand Ceremony Director Guo Lang had admonished him repeatedly before his departure: he must handle this assignment well no matter what, and must not allow any further mistakes. After arriving in He Xi, Li Chengyu had not dared to be negligent, had attended personally to everything, and had earned widespread praise. He expected the news had already reached the capital by now.

But such things — even if he liked this woman before him very much, without the closeness of a confiding relationship, he would naturally not lightly speak of them.

“What exactly do you mean by this?”

And beyond that, Li Chengyu also felt, in his heart, a faint twinge of offense. Had he not been genuinely smitten with this woman, he might well have changed his expression on the spot.

Pu Zhu continued, “Your Highness, on this journey through He Xi, you have employed worthy men and governed with benevolence, and your good reputation has spread far and wide. However humble I am — merely a woman raised in a remote and humble place — I still know the principle that those of talent invite jealousy. If it were to become known that while carrying out His Majesty’s charge to pacify and comfort the frontier on his behalf, Your Highness lingered over a woman and delayed your return to the capital on her account — and that that woman is from the household of an unpardonable convicted official — once rumors arise, what great harm would this bring to Your Highness? How would His Majesty and the court ministers regard Your Highness? Good fields are ruined by errant paths; gold is melted away by the mouths of the crowd. This is a grave taboo. My life or death is of no consequence — I worry only that because of me, I will drag Your Highness down and cause all the merit of this frontier pacification to come to nothing.”

As she spoke, she made to kneel before Li Chengyu.

Li Chengyu, as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over him, jolted sharply awake. He turned her words over in his mind, and a cold sweat broke out down his back. Coming back to his senses, he saw she was about to kneel before him, and in one quick stride rushed forward to support both her arms.

Pu Zhu had no great liking for kneeling before others in any case, and took the opportunity to straighten herself upright. She lifted her eyes and met Li Chengyu’s gaze, fixed upon her with intensity, then lowered her eyes again.

In this moment, Li Chengyu’s emotions were a mixture of lingering fear and deep feeling. He said in a low voice, “I was muddled for a moment and failed to think of this! You are entirely right! If this were discovered by someone with ill intentions and deliberately distorted in the retelling, it would be most damaging to me! Fortunately it has only been one night, and they did not manage to leave today either. The attendant is still at the relay station — I will go tell him at once and have him rearrange the itinerary! Whatever day they depart, I will travel with them! I am going now!”

He released Pu Zhu and turned, striding swiftly away.

Pu Zhu watched Li Chengyu’s retreating figure. She saw him reach the doorway and then suddenly stop again, turning his head to look back at her. Then he turned and came quickly back, seized her hand tightly, his expression deeply agitated.

“Pu Shi, I have not misjudged you — you truly think of me in all things, and it has not been for nothing that I was drawn to you at first sight. Rest easy. You may stay here a while longer in peace. I will instruct Yang Hong and his wife to take good care of you, and after I return to the capital, I will find a way — sooner or later I will bring you over. Wait for me!”

He glanced behind him and lowered his voice. “And once I am enthroned in the future, I will find a way to clear your grandfather’s name. I will not fail you!”

The Crown Prince finished speaking, gazed at her deeply, as if to imprint her image upon the depths of his eyes, and then, with great reluctance, released her hand and walked away, looking back at every third step.

Pu Zhu watched Li Chengyu disappear through the doorway, then stood in deep thought for a moment before thinking of Huaiwei. Taking advantage of Li Xuandu’s absence, she sent a maidservant ahead on her behalf to pay him a visit. The maidservant returned seeming to have something to say yet hesitating to say it; Pu Zhu asked, and she reluctantly and haltingly reported that the little prince was making quite a scene next door — starving and nearly in tears — and was even more heartbroken that the flower cakes he had brought back last night had disappeared, apparently thrown away by Prince Qin himself.

The maidservant finished speaking and cast a careful glance at Pu Zhu.

Pu Zhu’s expression remained tranquil, but the sense of unease in her heart grew heavier than before.

If what she had left Li Chengyu with yesterday had been merely a surface-level impression of dazzling beauty, then today, after this exchange of words, Li Chengyu would certainly see her in an entirely different light.

Plans did not always advance precisely as one had envisioned ahead of time — but as long as she faced them with a calm mind and adapted to circumstances as they arose, the results, it often seemed, turned out even more perfectly than she had originally imagined.

Except for one person.

The moment she thought of Li Xuandu, a sense of unease crept over her.

In this life, there were certain pivotal matters she knew in advance — yet at the same time she had gradually come to realize that many things might, perhaps because of her interference, have already diverged completely from how they had unfolded in her previous life.

Her relationship with Li Xuandu, for instance.

She feared he might become an obstacle in the path she was walking. When they returned to the capital, if at a critical moment he spoke to the Jiang clan — who doted on their grandchildren and great-grandchildren — and said something against her interests, everything she had worked for would come to nothing.

The thought was terrifying.

Pu Zhu could not imagine what she would do in this life if she failed to become Li Chengyu’s Crown Princess.

Was she to be reborn into a new life only to grow old and die in He Xi?

She could not help shuddering.

They had not yet left — and perhaps this was her opportunity.

She needed to think carefully. She must seize the chance to snuff out this possibility before Li Xuandu returned to the capital.