Auntie Xu led Ming Huazhang inside, collecting the clothes lying about with a slightly self-conscious air. “It’s a mess in here — please don’t mind. Sir, please sit — let me make you some tea.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself, Auntie.” Ming Huazhang stopped her. “I only came to ask about some old matters. There’s no need to be uneasy — please treat me as any ordinary caller. Auntie, when did you leave Chang’an?”

Auntie Xu perched stiffly on the round stool across from Ming Huazhang and gazed into the middle distance. “It’s been some years. After the household changed hands and we old servants were dismissed, I never went back to Chang’an. I believe it’s been four years.”

Four years. Ming Huazhang kept his expression impassive, but inwardly his attention sharpened. The timing was sensitive — it coincided exactly with when Lu Du’s parents had died in the accident, and with when the killer had stopped committing murders. He asked, “Was the new head of the household Lu Du?”

Auntie Xu nodded. “That’s right — we all called him Young Master. But he and the master were on poor terms; Young Master spent most of his time at his maternal grandfather’s house, and we old servants were not close with him. When he took over the household, the very first thing he did was dismiss us all.”

Ming Huazhang asked, “His maternal grandfather’s family — that would be…”

“The Mistress’s family name was Zheng — it was the Zheng family’s compound.” Auntie Xu said. “Young Master Lu grew up at the Zheng family’s old residence. Later, when the Empress came to power, many great families were swept up in purges; the Zheng family moved back to their ancestral seat in Xingyang to avoid trouble. The Mistress had married into Chang’an and so she stayed behind. Afterward the Mistress turned more and more devoutly to the Buddha, and she donated the Zheng family compound to the temple, for the sake of accumulating merit for future generations.”

Ming Huazhang pressed quickly: “The temple that Lu’s Mistress donated — could it be Qingshan Temple?”

Auntie Xu thought hard, then nodded. “I believe so.”

Qingshan Temple was the former name of Pude Temple. So Lu Du and Qingshan Temple had this additional connection — no wonder he had taken up long-term residence there. Ming Huazhang asked, “Why were Lu Du and his father on such poor terms?”

Auntie Xu sighed. “As they say — you have no say in what child you’re born as, and a child has no say in what parents they get. How many fathers and sons in this world truly get along? Actually, in the earlier years Young Master and the master had a reasonable relationship — but when Young Master was around twelve or thirteen, the father and son suddenly fell out entirely.”

Auntie Xu attributed all such shifts to the debt between parents and children across lifetimes. But Ming Huazhang felt certain: there was no such thing as a relationship that deteriorated without cause, no bond that broke without reason. He asked, “When Lu Du was twelve or thirteen — did something happen?”

Auntie Xu thought for a moment and said in puzzlement, “Nothing in particular, as far as I know. Perhaps it’s just that Young Master had grown older, and young people are sensitive — he may have been jealous when he saw his younger sister favored while the master never paid him any attention.”

Ming Huazhang raised an eyebrow slightly. A boy of twelve or thirteen, jealous of a younger sister? As someone who had a younger sister himself, he could not accept that explanation. He noted Auntie Xu’s expression with careful neutrality and asked, “This younger sister you mention — who is she?”

“The master and mistress’s second daughter — only one year younger than Young Master.” Auntie Xu rambled on. “In truth, Young Master had an older sister before her, but she died at ten years old, and the master grieved terribly over it. He was consequently very doting toward the second daughter. He never once held Young Master, but he treated the second daughter as a precious gem — she basically grew up in the master’s arms. Two children nearly the same age, and the master treated them so differently. Perhaps Young Master grew resentful and, as he got older, distanced himself from his father.”

The situation in the Lu household was essentially a mirror of Duke Zhenguo’s estate. Ming Huazhang felt he understood Lu Du’s feelings and position very well — and precisely because of that, he was all the more certain that whatever had caused Lu Du to break with his father at thirteen had another explanation entirely. He gave a noncommittal response and asked, “But I’ve heard the Lu family’s younger daughter died young. When was this?”

Auntie Xu sighed again. “The master took charge of every aspect of the young lady’s daily life — even chose her clothes for her — so we servants had little access to her. But a girl that young dying so suddenly — who could help but grieve? She must have been around fourteen when she died.”

When Ming Huazhang heard the age fourteen, something in him went very still. Ming Huashang’s profile described the killer as preferring meek, young-looking girls between fourteen and sixteen — did that not match the Lu family’s younger daughter precisely? He considered carefully and asked with deliberate caution, “How did the young Lu daughter die?”

A look of guarded reticence crossed Auntie Xu’s face. “She died of illness.”

Ming Huazhang lifted one brow and made clear without words that he was not persuaded. “Illness? Auntie Xu — I hold no suspicion toward you personally. But this is a human life. If you know something, I hope you will speak candidly, so that I may seek justice for the deceased.”

Auntie Xu let out a deep sigh, the creases around her eyes sagging downward. “I really don’t know the full details — I only heard from the maidservants who waited on the main courtyard that the young lady died in a manner that was not altogether clean. But those girls were all sold off afterward, and when the young lady was quietly buried and the master declared it an illness, what more could we ask? What surprised us was that Young Master, on hearing of the young lady’s death, came rushing back from the temple at once and made a fierce scene demanding the coffin be opened. After that, father and son never exchanged another word.”

Ming Huazhang’s brow knitted tight, his gaze darkening with gravity. “The daughter died under unclear circumstances — what did Lu’s Mistress say?”

“The Mistress was so devoted to her Buddhist practice that she had long since withdrawn from household affairs,” Auntie Xu said. “Everything in the Lu compound was decided by the master.”

A father who controlled every detail of his daughter’s life down to the clothes she wore. A mother who stood by without a word. Ming Huazhang’s instincts told him this household was deeply wrong. He asked, “And the couple’s death — how much do you know?”

·

Inside Qingchan Temple’s study, Ming Huashang came in and looked curiously around. Lu Du went to the inner room to fetch the tea, his voice drifting through the wooden shelves, indistinct and not quite audible: “What kind of tea do you prefer?”

Ming Huashang had already found a prayer cushion to sit on. She said quietly, “It doesn’t matter — whatever you have is fine.”

Lu Du soon carried out a pot of hot tea. He held back his sleeve and poured for Ming Huashang with measured, elegant movements. He noticed Ming Huashang seemed to be watching him, but he was far too accustomed to women watching him with that expression — he paid it no mind and said casually, “Qingchan Temple is lovely in every way, except for one flaw: there are too many trees. In summer especially, the birds squawk incessantly and it’s quite irritating. Just now, I believe I even heard one.”

“Did you?” Ming Huashang looked genuinely puzzled. “Scholar Lu, you have extraordinarily sharp ears — I didn’t notice at all.”

Lu Du settled his robe and sat down. “Perhaps because you’ve just arrived and are not yet attuned to it. Once you’ve spent more time here, you’ll start to hear all manner of noise.”

Ming Huashang remained baffled, but looked at him with sincere admiration: “Scholar Lu, you truly are perceptive — even a casual remark carries such Buddhist insight.”

Lu Du gave a faint smile and gestured for her to drink. “You are too kind, Second Miss. This is a Mengding tea I prepared myself — try it and see if it suits you.”

Ming Huashang’s eyes brightened. “Scholar Lu, you make your own tea as well?”

She spoke and had already taken an eager sip. Savoring the fragrance, Ming Huashang gave lavish praise: “Truly exquisite — clean and fragrant, with a lingering aftertaste. Nothing at all like the common tea one finds outside.”

This Second Miss Ming was wonderfully expressive — respond to anything she said and she would give back tenfold. Spending time with her seemed almost effortlessly pleasant. Conversation with her was not an unappealing prospect — a pity, though…

Lu Du watched Ming Huashang sway and topple forward onto the table with a dull thud, and thought, with serene detachment, what a pity it was that there would be no more of this.

·

“In the middle of the night, four years ago, we were asleep when we heard shouting outside. We came out to find the main courtyard on fire. We rushed to help, but with the curfew in effect, water was difficult to get, and we had noticed it too late. By the time we stamped out the last of the flames, the master and mistress had already burned to death.”

Ming Huazhang frowned. He had already caught a note of wrongness. “What were they doing that a fire could reach them and they still didn’t run? Even if they couldn’t get out, surely they would have shouted for help?”

The question stopped Auntie Xu. After a moment’s hesitation, she said uncertainly, “Perhaps… they were asphyxiated by the smoke before the fire reached their bodies?”

Ming Huazhang knew about such things: some people, afraid of the cold, would seal their doors and windows in winter and sleep with burning charcoal, and simply never wake up. Yet the Lu family was one of the five great surnames — it was inconceivable they would not have known that danger. He asked, “That night — was there no one attending them?”

Auntie Xu shook her head. “The Mistress practiced Buddhism and the master disliked having people close by — at night they never permitted servants to disturb them. We would set everything out and leave; we only dared return the next morning when the master called for us. There was never anyone left in the main courtyard overnight. So by the time the fire started and we realized it, it had already grown large.”

As she said this, Auntie Xu’s expression shifted, almost imperceptibly — a brief flicker that she herself may not have consciously noticed. But Ming Huazhang caught it. He fixed his gaze on her with quiet precision and asked, “What did you just think of?”

Auntie Xu hesitated, stopping and starting several times, before finally saying haltingly, “Now that you mention it, sir, there does seem to be something odd. The master and mistress had been sleeping in separate quarters for a long time. Why, that night, were they in the same room?”

Ming Huazhang’s pupils contracted; his attention snapped to full alert. He pressed forward: “That day — had either of them received any visitors?”

Auntie Xu furrowed her brow, working to recall. “I don’t believe so. There had been no guests in that period — except for Young Master coming to pay his respects to the master and mistress. Aside from that, no one else.”

So Lu Du had actually been living at home during that time? Ming Huazhang felt instinctively that he had seized on something significant. He asked quickly, “When the fire broke out, what was he doing?”

“Asleep, naturally,” said Auntie Xu, as if that went without saying. “The fire broke out not far from Young Master’s rooms. If we hadn’t gone in to wake him, he might well have been burned alive too.”

Lu Du had been woken by the servants. On the face of it, that meant the fire had no connection to him — that he too had narrowly escaped. Ming Huazhang made no expression of agreement or disagreement, and asked, “At the time, where was his courtyard?”

Auntie Xu traced the layout with her hand. “The Lu household is within the city walls — quite small compared to the Mistress’s old compound in the family residence. The fire started in Lengqie Courtyard, where the master lived. At that time Young Master was staying in Yanhua Courtyard. It was a calm night, fortunately — if the wind had been up, Young Master would have been in danger as well…”

Ming Huazhang paused when he heard the name of the courtyard — not because of Lu Du’s quarters, but because of: “You just said — Lengqie Courtyard was the name of the residence where Lu Du’s father used to live?”

“That’s right,” said Auntie Xu. “The master had a spiritual nature and unusual habits. He didn’t live in the largest central compound but chose a side courtyard and named it Lengqie. I always thought it was a modest and rather plain choice — but the master was very fond of it and never allowed us anywhere near it.”

Lengqie was also the name of a Buddhist sutra, so after the Lu family compound was donated to Qingchan Temple, the abbot had not changed the courtyard’s name. And now Ming Huazhang stood utterly still — because he recalled that on his visit to Qingchan Temple to examine the premises, the novice monk who showed him around had mentioned in passing that Lu Du had a private study set aside for his sole use within the temple, and it was called Lengqie Courtyard.

Lu Du despised his father so thoroughly that he had donated the entire family home. Why would he preserve the courtyard where his father had once lived — and even take up residence there himself? What was so special about that courtyard?

·

When Lu Du handed her the tea, Ming Huashang already knew something was wrong with it. She pretended to take a sip, feigned the onset of the drugged daze, and when Lu Du’s attention was elsewhere, quietly spat it out. Thanks to the rigorous training on Mount Zhongnan, Ming Huashang could feign unconsciousness with practiced ease. She lay with her eyes closed, but her ears were following every one of Lu Du’s movements, tracing the path in her mind. After she was placed in the underground chamber, she judged the drug’s effects had been sufficiently delayed and allowed herself to rouse at the appropriate moment.

The first thing she saw was a low, dark ceiling. The smell in the air was damp and suffocating, as though sunlight had never reached this place — the pervasive scent of decay filling every corner.

She moved instinctively and found all four limbs bound in rope. She traced the ropes with her gaze and saw that she lay on a flat, square stone platform, the edges of which bore suspicious dark reddish-brown stains. Before her stood a clay Buddha, fingers lightly curled, lips touched with a serene smile.

A statue like this, placed in the main hall of a proper temple, would inspire reverence and a sense of boundless merit. In this context, it only inspired dread.

Ming Huashang stared fixedly at the Buddha and showed none of the expected behavior — no crying, no struggling. The figure watching from the shadows could endure it no longer. “You don’t seem afraid?”

Ming Huashang followed the voice and found Lu Du in the darkness. “Of course I’m afraid,” she said. “But what use is fear now?”

Clearly none. Lu Du walked slowly out of the shadows. “You’re not what I imagined. You’re different.”

“What was I supposed to be like?” Ming Huashang returned the question. “Like the beggar girl, Yanyan, Cheng Siyue — screaming, struggling, begging, so you could enjoy their suffering?”

Lu Du’s eyebrows stirred, his surprise deepening. “How did you know about Yanyan?”

He had not denied the others — which meant he had implicitly confirmed he was the killer at the center of Chang’an’s serial murders. Nor did he attempt to conceal any of it — being feared by others, hated by others, talked about by others could only bring him satisfaction. But if outsiders dismissed his work, or worse, attributed the crude and clumsy imitations to him, that would be what truly provoked him.

All these years, everyone had believed his victim was Huang Caiwei. So many officials had come and gone from Jingzhao Prefecture, investigating over and over, and all of them held to this belief without question. He felt a private smugness — and yet, too, a peculiar loneliness.

He desperately wanted someone to recognize him. But the things he had done could not be spoken of openly, and so he could only savor his victories alone, in silence.

And now this lamb he had impulsively decided to catch had seen straight through his intent with a single word. Lu Du felt a thrill run through him from head to foot. She was so like his sister — almost an exact likeness — and yet she was far luckier than his sister had been.

She had a loving father, a protective elder brother, and had lost her mother right at birth. Why had all these fortunate things happened to her, and not to someone else?

The thing Ming Huashang was best known for was her laziness. Having explained something once, she had no interest in explaining it again. She asked, “I still don’t know the name of that female beggar. What was she called — and why did you kill her?”

Under normal circumstances, no one would answer the questions of a captive about to die. But Lu Du had been lonely far too long. Now that someone wanted to understand him, he almost couldn’t hold back his eagerness to reply: “She had no name. I gave her one — I called her May.”

“Why May?”

“Because Second Sister died in the fifth month.”

Ming Huashang’s brow shifted slightly. The Second Sister in Lu Du’s words was clearly not referring to her — it had to be his own sister, then.

In truth, the coincidences between herself and Lu Du’s sister were rather numerous. But this was useful. Ming Huashang took the opening and asked, “How did she die?”

“Because of that beast!” Lu Du’s voice rose with sudden passion. The teacher-scholar composure he always maintained was gone — he was now speaking through clenched teeth, his entire face twisted into something ugly. “He prided himself on being of the Fanyang Lu lineage — a name of distinction — and yet he had not a single official post to his name. He couldn’t wait for the court to summon him, so he declared he was retiring from worldly affairs to pursue Buddhist cultivation. But what kind of person could truly follow that path? He heard that the highest teaching of the esoteric school required dual cultivation between man and woman. He looked down on women whose bloodlines were not among the five great surnames. So he turned his eyes on his own daughter. A Lu woman’s blood, at least, was pure enough.”

Ming Huashang had remained calm when she discovered she had been brought to the underground chamber; she had remained calm when she discovered she was in the hands of a serial killer. Now, she let her brow crease, and a plain expression of revulsion crossed her face. “You are saying your father violated his own daughter — and dressed it as the practice of Buddhist teaching?”

Lu Du gave a cold laugh, his expression distorting entirely, sinking deep into memory. “Yes — isn’t it revolting? When I was very young, I resented my sister fiercely because my father adored her and never once looked at me. But then I was thirteen, and I went to my father’s room to look for him, and I walked in by accident on him and my sister… She was only twelve at the time — right here, on this stone platform.

“I can still remember the feeling of seeing that. The pale white bodies, utterly repulsive — and yet my mother did nothing, lost entirely in her devotions. My father threatened me: if I spread what I had seen and brought disgrace on the Fanyang Lu name, I would be the sinner of the clan. I had no ability of my own — without the prestige of the Lu name, I was worth nothing at all.”

Ming Huashang listened in silence. She asked, “So you submitted?”

“What else could I have done?” Lu Du gave a bitter, mocking smile. “Did I have a second path? I couldn’t face my father, and I had no power to save my sister. I could only move to Qingshan Temple. I asked the abbot of Qingshan Temple what to do — and he told me: cultivate the Buddhist path.

“My sister had accrued ill karma in a previous life, and so in this life she suffered this. Her suffering was her practice; through it she was redeeming her debt. In the next life, she would be reborn into bliss. I believed him. For the next two years I devoted myself to Buddhist cultivation at Qingshan Temple. But when I was fifteen, a servant told me my sister had died. I rushed home and found that her coffin was already nailed shut. After she was buried I went to see her in secret. Her body was covered in bruises — she had been violated to death. I went to the abbot again. I asked him — what was the point of cultivation? Those perpetrators were not being guided toward Buddhahood. The abbot said it was because my sister had not yet accumulated enough merit. He took me to her grave, dug out her shin bones, and fashioned them into a bone flute. He said that if they were enshrined before the Buddha, and sutras were chanted over them with every ceremony, it would dissolve the karmic barriers of her past lives and allow her to ascend to paradise.”

“You believed him?”

“All phenomena are empty; only cause and effect are not.” Lu Du lowered his gaze and folded his hands. His complexion was pale, and in the ghost-ridden darkness of the underground chamber he made this devout gesture with an air of such sincerity that it was both grotesque and deeply chilling. “She had accrued a debt — that was why this life was as it was. The abbot enshrined her bone flute before the Bodhisattva. Each ceremony, each sutra recitation, was one step toward erasing her debt. In the next life she could be reborn well.”

Ming Huashang raised an eyebrow, unable to make sense of this logic that placed the blame on the victim. The sister had suffered because of debt from a previous life; the father had done these things so that he might repay his own debt in a future life — but in this life she was already dead, and the father had faced no consequences whatsoever. What good was any future life?

And yet, apparently, Lu Du believed it with complete sincerity. Ming Huashang continued: “If you have already settled her debt, why did you kill those women?”

Lu Du’s eyes opened slowly. The underground chamber held a single oil lamp; his face in the flickering light appeared eerie and otherworldly. “Because I began receiving proposals for marriage — and I discovered I could feel nothing for any woman.”

Ming Huashang’s expression shifted slightly. She was beginning to understand. By her calculations, Lu Du had killed May at eighteen — the most turbulent and hot-blooded of ages. Yet he could feel nothing for ordinary women, and the suppressed desire had to find some other release.

Lu Du gave a very slight, soft laugh — intimate as a whispered confession. “I hated that beast so deeply. And yet, in the end, I found I was just like him.”

When he realized he felt nothing for women who were gentle or graceful or vivacious, but was drawn instead to small, delicate girls of thirteen or fourteen — the panic he felt in that moment was indescribable. He had tormented himself for two years, telling himself over and over that he was not that kind of person, that he would never, never be like that beast. But one day he seemed to lose all consciousness, and when he came back to himself, he found he had already brought the young beggar who so resembled his sister back to his room and knocked her senseless. He panicked for a brief moment — and then a wild idea rose up from somewhere inside him.

She was only a beggar. He was the son of the Fanyang Lu lineage. The opportunity to serve him would be three lifetimes of fortune for her. If he hid her away, kept her entirely for himself, she would surely be willing.

And so Lu Du concealed May in the underground altar. This had once been his maternal grandfather’s compound; he had grown up here and knew every inch of it. He had known since childhood that there was an underground chamber beneath Qingshan Temple — afterward, when his mother had become deeply devout, she had converted it into an altar for the esoteric tantric deity. The abbot came less than once a month; it was a perfect hidden world apart.

And his own room had a passage leading directly to the altar. He had chosen this room when he first came to live here precisely because as a child he had once played in the passage.

He had believed that as long as he was careful enough, he could hide everything from the world. But May resisted fiercely and nearly escaped on several occasions. She was only a beggar — without him, she would have spent her life among the lowest riffraff and vagrants of the street.

Lu Du had no choice. He could not risk the name of the Fanyang Lu lineage. He killed her. May had experienced these things because of the ill karma she had accumulated in previous lives, and Lu Du, following what the abbot had once done, tried to take her shin bones for her merit — but his technique was painfully unskilled, producing a great deal of blood and mess, and in the end the abbot discovered it.

Lu Du told the abbot, calmly and plainly, that if the abbot reported him, Lu Du would tell the authorities every word the abbot had ever said to him. Neither of them would escape.

The abbot ultimately did not dare take the risk, and agreed to help Lu Du conceal it.

The abbot held the keys to Qingshan Temple, which made Lu Du’s movements considerably easier. In the stillness of deep night, Lu Du carried May’s body out to the hills behind the temple — and as he had expected, no one gave the matter any attention at all. He passed one year in unaccustomed quiet. In the seventh year of Tianshou, he could no longer restrain himself.

That time, he set his sights on Yanyan, the maidservant in the household of Examiner Huang. A servant girl — not much above a beggar. If he handled it as before, it could be covered up without difficulty.

But he had not anticipated that after he took Yanyan, Huang Caiwei came running after her — and walked directly into the scene of what he was doing. Lu Du had no choice but to knock Huang Caiwei unconscious as well.

But this time, the aftermath presented a complication: Examiner Huang suddenly appeared at his door, and Lu Du had to remove both people in great haste, narrowly avoiding detection by Jingzhao Prefecture.

The killing of the National Academy Examiner’s daughter caused a massive uproar that swept through Chang’an, and both the Qingshan Temple abbot and Lu Du were frightened. The abbot quarreled violently with Lu Du and refused to let him stay at Qingshan Temple any longer. Lu Du had no choice but to return to his father’s home.

But looking at his father and mother, he found he could not endure it.

The two successive killings seemed to have opened a door to a new path before him. It was only then that Lu Du realized, with sudden clarity, that he could kill them.

Killing those two was far easier than killing May. He laced their tea with poison, and soon they were convulsing on the floor and lay still. Lu Du stood over them, looking down, and still felt that the pale white of human bodies was revolting.

Afterward he carried them to their bed, set fire to the curtains, and staged it as an accidental house fire. He had calculated the wind direction and the rate the fire would spread, and deliberately lay in the path of the flames, waiting to be “rescued” by others.

The aftermath unfolded just as he had expected. The household servants took it for a tragic accident and everyone expressed sympathy. Lu Du became the sole decision-maker of the Lu household, and the first thing he did was dismiss all the old servants — so that no one would ever know the shameful truth of what the Lu family had concealed.

After killing his parents, Lu Du felt a clarity in his heart that seemed to illuminate everything. He no longer hunted young girls for relief, and found even the capacity to recite sutras and pray for them. Four years of such peaceful existence passed — until some fool chose to imitate his methods and commit crimes in his name.

Lu Du could not endure the world holding him in contempt, and for that he was willing to kill again, to prove his own elegance and precision.

This time he had believed things would go as with the two previous cases — investigated for a while, then left to die. But the newly arrived Deputy Prefect of Jingzhao was formidably persistent, tracking the investigation all the way to the National Academy and coming to question him, again and again. Lu Du could see in that young man’s clear, cold eyes that he was under suspicion.

The scrutiny grew tighter. Lu Du became afraid. After years away he returned to Qingshan Temple — now renamed Pude Temple — and demanded the abbot’s cooperation to help him escape justice.

Not only for himself. The abbot had his own share in it. Even if the abbot, as a man of religion, might escape legal punishment, Pude Temple’s incense and donations would plummet into ruin without question — and that was as good as a death sentence.

The abbot eventually agreed. On the day Lu Du specified, he traveled into Chang’an to deliver a dharma lecture, deliberately taking all the monks with him and leaving only Cen Hu behind, to give Cen Hu the opportunity to “steal.” Then the abbot instructed Cen Hu to accompany Lu Du on a mountain walk, while he himself went to Cen Hu’s cell and created disorder there to fabricate the appearance of a guilty flight. Lu Du, for his part, deliberately led Cen Hu to a dangerous section of the path and, seizing an unguarded moment, pushed him off the cliff.

Cen Hu died instantly from the fall. Lu Du walked back down from the cliff at his leisure, and stuffed documents, money, and the deliberately shattered bone flute into Cen Hu’s robe. Let this evidence be buried with Cen Hu’s death and lie forever in the dust.

What followed went exactly as he had planned. Jingzhao Prefecture charged Cen Hu with the murders, and the case was closed. Lu Du had been irritated enough already by someone copying his methods, and now he was confronted by a young woman who stood before him boasting shamelessly about her elder brother.

Rising bright and young and talented — every one of those words struck a raw nerve in Lu Du’s chest. Lu Du could endure no more, and decided to teach that reckless Deputy Prefect of Jingzhao a small lesson.

Ming Huashang suited his desires almost perfectly. She was a little older than he preferred, but her looks were delicate and pretty, her manner sweet and charming — it would do well enough.

Lu Du came back to himself and realized a great deal of time had passed. He had no more patience to converse with his prey. He picked up his blade and said, “They were told — so why still disobey? A sister who does not listen must be punished.”

Ming Huashang stared at the cold gleam on the blade’s tip, her nerves pulled tight, inwardly praying that Ren Yao and Jiang Ling would come quickly. She had sent the signal through a whispered code while drinking the tea — had they not heard?

She had come into the lion’s den alone, but not without preparations. She could incapacitate Lu Du with her hidden weaponry and save herself if necessary — but the reason she had arranged all of this was to catch him in the act, to expose everything he had done in broad daylight, so that Ming Huazhang could overturn the verdict without a shadow of doubt. Unless it came to the last possible moment, Ming Huashang truly did not want to destroy the careful trap she had laid.

Lu Du appeared deeply agitated, murmuring in a disturbed way: “You are like this, and Cheng Siyue was like this too. You have everything you need — so why must you run?”

Ming Huashang tried to buy time and asked deliberately, “How did you get Cheng Siyue to come out?”

Lu Du gave a cold laugh. “Simplicity itself — a single message sent by carrier pigeon, and she shook off her maidservants and guards and came alone to the meeting place. I brought her to my study, she drank the tea without the slightest suspicion — just as you did — and I disassembled her body here in this very room.”

“You claim over and over to believe in the Buddha, and yet you commit such monstrous acts — do you truly believe your faith is pure?”

These words seemed to strike a nerve. Lu Du’s face darkened; his voice turned sharp and harsh. “Don’t try to stall for time. This is entirely your own fault — you defied what was told to you, you had no sense of self-restraint, and so you have come to this. Remember it in your next life — redeem yourself, and be a obedient, well-behaved sister.”

With that, Lu Du raised the blade and drove it hard toward Ming Huashang’s throat. Ming Huashang quietly took hold of the short crossbow in her sleeve, just on the verge of releasing the trigger — and then from above came a thunderous crash, as though something had been kicked open by tremendous force. A sharp wind cut past her. A woman’s fierce cry exploded at her ear: “You coward — you only know how to attack defenseless girls. Fight me if you dare! Worthless wretch — come meet your end!”

Ming Huashang’s eyes flew open in shock. She saw a flash of silver light sweep past, and a red-tasseled spear split the darkness like lightning, driving forward with the force of a dragon. Before she had time to process it, the ropes on her wrists were sliced clean through. Someone caught her from behind, his arms steady and powerful, though his hands trembled without stopping. “Huashang — it’s all right. I’m here.”