Seeing that it was Su Yuji, Ming Huashang let out a quiet breath of relief — and then felt the awkwardness settle in. “Ah, it’s you — please, come sit down.”

Su Yuji stood by the window in her sleek, practical outfit, her manner cool: “No need. It will only take a few words. You don’t need to know the specific reasons, but before your maidservant died, I saw her. There were some details at the time that struck me as wrong. I felt I ought to pass them along.”

Hearing Zhao Cai’s name, Ming Huashang’s smile faltered. She lowered her eyes, smiled softly, and said: “All the more reason to sit down and speak properly. I’ve been confused and muddled the past few days — there’s no good tea in the room, only plain water. I apologise for the poor hospitality.”

Ming Huashang took out the cups and poured two, setting one across the table. Su Yuji stood and watched for a moment, then slowly walked closer and sat down opposite her.

Ming Huashang asked: “Thank you for coming to tell me. What did you see?”

Su Yuji did not touch the water on the table. She said, with detached composure: “After you and Su Xingzhi left that day, Zhao Cai stayed behind in your stead. Jiang Ling and Ren Yao kept searching further out, and I followed mainly with them — I didn’t pay much attention to Zhao Cai. But as I was leaving, I caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, standing in the lane, talking to someone. The person was standing in the shadows — I couldn’t make them out clearly — but I noticed they were wearing red clothing.”

Ming Huashang asked: “Was that the same lane where she died?”

Su Yuji nodded: “Yes.”

“What kind of red clothing was it?”

Su Yuji said: “I couldn’t see clearly. But I’m quite certain — it was not the garment they found in the drainage channel today.”

The previous day, Su Yuji had been on a surveillance assignment. Her task was to covertly observe the Twin Jades’ team — not just the Twin Jades themselves. She had seen Su Xingzhi when he came to find Ming Huashang, but she had just had an argument with Su Xingzhi and was in no mood to follow them, so she had stayed in Changshou Ward to continue monitoring the others.

She hadn’t imagined a maidservant could turn up anything of significance, so her primary subjects remained Jiang Ling and Ren Yao. It was precisely because of this that she had missed Zhao Cai’s death.

When Su Yuji learned of it, she was overcome with guilt. She had seen Zhao Cai. She may even have seen the killer. If only she had stayed a moment longer, or paid just a little more attention to Zhao Cai — could she have saved her?

She felt compelled to follow up on what happened to Zhao Cai. And when she watched Xie Jichuan pull a bluish-green long robe from the drainage channel and, on the strength of that, locate Yang Banfeng, subsequently finding the murder weapon in Yang Banfeng’s home — Su Yuji knew something had gone wrong.

The person who killed Zhao Cai was absolutely not Yang Banfeng. Someone had arranged the clues, deliberately steering suspicion toward him. But the Jing Zhaoyin had ironclad evidence on all sides — witnesses, physical proof, everything — and Su Yuji had only suspicion and nothing concrete to back it. She thought it through again and again, and in the end decided she had no choice but to find Ming Huashang.

After hearing her out, Ming Huashang was silent for a long moment, then asked: “This is such an important piece of information — why bring it to me? Telling the Jing Zhaoyin, Xie Jichuan, or… my Second Elder Brother — wouldn’t any of them be more useful?”

When Xie Jichuan had come that day, Ming Huazhang had taken him outside to speak. The two of them had assumed Ming Huashang was asleep and hadn’t deliberately kept their voices down — but Ming Huashang had not been sleeping at all, and had heard every word.

Her instincts had begun to piece together the clues, but then she remembered that she had gotten Zhao Cai killed, and felt she had no business interfering. Investigating crimes was the Jing Zhaoyin’s affair. Her own blundering involvement would only make things worse.

She had not expected Su Yuji to arrive with entirely different news. The killer the Jing Zhaoyin had found was wrong. The person who murdered Zhao Cai was very likely still free.

Something this significant — why bring it to her? What if she made a mess of it again?

Su Yuji raised an eyebrow and stood: “Fair point. They have official positions, authority — there’s far more they can do. I must have lost my head. I thought that because Zhao Cai was your maidservant, you’d be the one person who would dig to the very root and pursue the killer without let-up. But if you’re unwilling, then pretend I said nothing.”

Su Yuji turned to leave. Ming Huashang called out from behind her: “Wait.”

Su Yuji stopped, but did not turn around. The room was unlit; the quiet of the night settled in the space between them. Ming Huashang was silent for a moment, then asked: “Why do you believe I can find the killer? Even I don’t believe that.”

Su Yuji exhaled and crossed her arms over her short blade. Her voice was cool: “I don’t, either. It’s just that compared to the others, I think you want justice for her the most — that you’ll bite down and follow the thread all the way to the end. Nothing more than that.”

Ming Huashang was struck still by those words. Everyone had been walking on eggshells around her feelings, afraid of upsetting her further. Su Yuji paid not the slightest mind to any of that; she had tossed the fact of Zhao Cai’s death — which Ming Huazhang had been carefully keeping from her — directly in her face, and spoke without any softening at all.

And she was right. She could grieve. She could cry and mourn and feel the weight of the season. But Zhao Cai was never coming back. The officers of the Jing Zhaoyin pursued the case for the sake of their records; Ming Huazhang pursued it for her sake. Xie Jichuan, Ren Yao, and the others had sought the killer because they felt uneasy in their conscience. Not one of them was doing it for Zhao Cai’s sake.

Zhao Cai had been sold by her own family at a young age. Through all these years in the Duke Zhenguo’s household, she had long since severed all ties with her kin. If Ming Huashang would not speak up for Zhao Cai, who else would?

Without realising it, Ming Huashang had pressed her nails so hard into her palm that they had nearly drawn blood. She could not fall apart. She would fight on, for Zhao Cai’s sake, against whoever was behind this.

She gritted her teeth, stood up, and said: “Just a moment — I’ll change my clothes. Zhao Cai’s body is still in the estate. I’m going to examine it now. There will be marks left on her body by the killer.”

Ming Huashang had only a thin under-robe on; the cold kept seeping in through her cuffs and trouser hems, and her whole body shivered imperceptibly. She had no time to dress carefully — she threw on a cloak and tied it, then slapped both her cheeks firmly with her palms. Her forehead was still burning, yet her mind had never been clearer.

Pull yourself together, Ming Huashang. The killer is still alive. How can you collapse? For those you wish to protect — both the ones standing beside you now and those who have already gone — even if it breaks your bones, even if you are bloodied and torn, you must get up again, and keep fighting, until the very end.

Ming Huashang did not rouse the maidservants. She pushed open the door and walked in the direction of the darkness — unsteady on her feet, yet completely resolute. Su Yuji followed a few steps behind. Ming Huashang breathed in the piercing cold of early spring and spoke over her shoulder: “There is something I owe you an apology for. I thought I was acting in your best interest, which is why I had Su Xingzhi keep it from you — but you are the person who most deserves to know. I overstepped. I’m sorry.”

Su Yuji raised an eyebrow, and her gaze sharpened. Ming Huashang steadied herself and pressed on: “You should know — you are not truly surnamed Su. You are the daughter of Duke Zhenguo; you were sent to the Su family because of certain circumstances. The Su family knows this. And the Duke Zhenguo’s household… also knows.”

The expression on Su Yuji’s face grew colder with each word. The sharp edges around her were back, bristling like needles. She asked: “What are you trying to say by telling me this?”

“Don’t misunderstand — I have no intention of showing off or giving offence. I only wanted to say: we should have been twin sisters, growing up side by side, bickering and squabbling through our childhood together. But Father had someone even more important to protect, and so he had to choose between us — and you were the one who was sent away, not me. I’m sorry for that.”

Su Yuji’s brows slowly drew together; her expression grew uncertain: “What are you saying?”

“The Ming family did not have a son and daughter born together. They had twin daughters.” With the fever still running in her blood, Ming Huashang found she could not think very well — so she let the heat carry her, and said everything in a single breath without looking back: “The child who was brought to take the place of one of those daughters was Ming Huazhang. He is not truly surnamed Ming. He is the son of Crown Prince Zhānghuái. Seventeen years ago, when the Eastern Palace fell to accusations of treason, he was sent to the Ming household for shelter. Father wished to preserve the bloodline of Crown Prince Zhānghuái, and so he sent away his own daughter, keeping the Crown Prince’s son — passing the two of them off as twins, a son and a daughter, deceiving the world until this day.”

Su Yuji went completely still. She stared for a long, incredulous moment, and whispered: “But…”

“But the people who told you otherwise said something different, didn’t they?” Ming Huashang completed her sentence for her, and continued in a measured tone: “Of course. My words are only one side of the account as far as you’re concerned — you are free to doubt me. But all of this is tangled up with a struggle for imperial power, and in that game, neither of us will ever be on the winning side. I hope that before you make any decision, you will think it over carefully and give yourself time to wait.”

This time it was Su Yuji who fell silent. Ming Huashang did not push. The two of them walked through the night one behind the other; the only sound between them was the rhythm of their footsteps. After a long while — just when Ming Huashang was beginning to wonder whether she had even been heard — Su Yuji spoke: “Are you saying all this for his sake?”

Ming Huashang had been prepared to offer some explanation, but on reflection she admitted to herself that it wasn’t wrong. No matter how many reasons she could give, the core motive behind persuading Su Xingzhi to conceal things from Su Yuji had been Ming Huazhang. Ming Huashang did not hide it, and nodded: “You could say that.”

Su Yuji seemed to give a faint, quiet laugh. She said: “The loyalty you people have for him is something else entirely.”

Su Yuji had been made unable to return home because of Ming Huazhang — and whatever Ming Huazhang’s intentions might be, that was real harm, and it had truly happened. Ming Huashang did not speak up in Ming Huazhang’s defence. That was a matter between him and Su Yuji — he needed to resolve it himself. She should not interfere.

Before long, the courtyard where Zhao Cai’s body was being kept appeared ahead. Ming Huashang walked directly to the gate. The guard on watch saw her and said in surprise: “Second Young Miss, what brings you here?”

Ming Huashang gave a composed nod and said: “I’ve come to see Zhao Cai.”

The guard hesitated. The Second Young Master had given orders that no one was to enter unless he was present. But the guard wasn’t sure whether the Second Young Miss counted as “no one.” He wavered for a moment: “My Lady, please wait — I’ll go report to the Second Young Master.”

He had barely finished speaking when a rush of air cut through the silence. He had been wholly unguarded against Ming Huashang and had left his back fully exposed to the dark. By the time he realised something was wrong and moved to dodge, a sharp pain struck the back of his neck. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped into unconsciousness.

Ming Huashang sighed and said: “Actually, letting him go report would have been fine. There was no need to knock him out.”

Su Yuji had already put the guard down with clean efficiency. She dusted off her hands and said evenly: “You just said it yourself — no matter how these imperial sons and princes fight it out, neither of us will ever come out ahead. How do you know he won’t burn the bridge once he’s crossed it? I don’t trust him. I only trust myself.”

Ming Huashang naturally trusted that Ming Huazhang would not act against the Duke Zhenguo’s household. But Su Yuji had recently been inexplicably targeted by a group of people, and had now learned from Ming Huashang’s own lips that everything she had been told about her origins was a lie. That she would be on guard and hold everyone — particularly anyone with imperial blood — at arm’s length was entirely understandable. This was not the moment to try to persuade her. Ming Huashang said nothing and quietly dragged the unconscious guard to a sheltered spot out of the wind.

Ming Huashang stood before the room’s door, reaching out to place her hand on it — and then remained there for a long time, unable to find the courage to push it open.

A thin wooden door, and yet it seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. Zhao Cai was on the other side. She had steeled herself so many times already, but now that she was actually standing here, she understood — examining a friend’s body takes a courage unlike any other.

Ming Huashang drew in a deep breath and told herself to push open the door on the count of three. One, two, three — she clenched her jaw and shoved.

Inside was cold and dark. The chill rushed at her like a serpent, clutching and tearing at her from all sides. She would not allow herself to step back. She forced herself to raise her foot, walked forward in a hollow daze toward the dark shape at the centre of the room.

Zhao Cai lay on the low platform, still arranged in the position in which she had died. Her body was curled in on itself; her hands, already stiffened, were pressed in front of her abdomen as though she had been trying to protect it; her skin had gone to an unnaturally ashen grey. Ming Huashang looked at her and felt something pierce through her heart like a blade. She spun sharply away and stood with her back turned, breathing hard, in rapid, shallow gasps.

Su Yuji stood in the doorway. Seeing how much it was costing her, she said: “Would you like me to look instead, and describe the wounds to you?”

Ming Huashang shook her head. She took out a fire-starter, blew the flame to life, and forced herself to turn back around, moving the light slowly and steadily over every inch of Zhao Cai’s body, refusing to let herself miss a single detail: “I’ll do it. I want to see — clearly — every single thing that person did to her, inch by inch.”

Ming Huashang bent over the body to examine it. Darkness filled the room in great sweeping waves, utterly silent. The flame in her hand was a solitary vessel on a storm-tossed sea, liable at any moment to be swallowed by the dark. Su Yuji stood in the doorway watching this scene, and found herself strangely unsure of what to do.

Saying nothing at all seemed too unfeeling — yet offering comfort felt presumptuous, given that their acquaintance had not yet reached that point.

While Su Yuji was still wrestling with this, a low voice drifted in from inside: “She was so easily frightened. Alone in a place like this — do you think she might be afraid?”

The ice gave off cold and soundless vapour; the flame swayed and trembled, its light skimming again and again across the ashen face of the corpse. Ming Huashang stood before the iced surface, holding a dead person’s hand and murmuring, as though she were speaking to someone.

Su Yuji suddenly felt the back of her neck prickle. She looked instinctively to both sides and asked: “Are you… talking to a ghost?”

“She is Zhao Cai, not a ghost.” Ming Huashang lowered her eyes. “And besides — what is there to fear from ghosts? We live among people every day. If we’re not afraid of people, why be afraid of ghosts?”

Su Yuji raised an eyebrow. She moved slowly to lean in the door frame and tipped her head back to look at the stars above: “Sometimes I truly cannot make sense of you. You go through every day bright and cheerful, as though nothing but good things lie ahead — and yet at other times, you seem so deeply disappointed in people.”

Ming Huashang said, quiet and low: “Because human nature is, at its core, something despairing. When I decided to give the rest of my life to tracking down criminals and righting wrongs, I thought I had prepared myself. After all, I wasn’t even afraid of death anymore — what else was there to fear? I didn’t care what other people thought of me, didn’t care about the dangers I might face. Even if it brought the killer’s retaliation down on me, that would be my own choice. But why did it have to drag in the people around me? Zhao Cai never once left the walls of the Duke Zhenguo’s estate. She was sincere and warm-hearted, spoke her mind freely, and her greatest ambition in life was to eat and drink well. Who could possibly raise a hand against a woman like that? How can the human heart be so evil as this?”

A long silence passed. Then Su Yuji’s voice came from the doorway: “Are you… confiding in me?”

Su Yuji had expected Ming Huashang to deny it. She did not expect her to nod, openly and without hesitation: “Yes.”

The directness of it left Su Yuji with no reply. She looked at the chilling blocks of ice and the body lying on them, and gave a faint, unreadable laugh. “This is the strangest heart-to-heart conversation I have ever witnessed.”

Su Yuji gazed at the brilliant, jewelled sky overhead and found it deeply ironic. What a bitter joke — that such a cold night could hold such a beautiful sky. It was as if the gods above had never concerned themselves with the joys and sorrows of the human world, and simply arranged their favourite stars wherever it pleased them.

Just as, no matter what happened, tomorrow’s sun would rise as it always had.

Su Yuji suddenly asked: “Do you know why Yang Banfeng went mad?”

Ming Huashang shook her head honestly: “I don’t.”

“When people see a madman, their first instinct is usually disgust, as though the person was always this way. I couldn’t understand why Yang Banfeng had grown so convinced that everyone in the world was out to kill him, so I looked into his history in the Xuan Xiaowei archives. What I found there was a record of interrogation.”

“Yang Banfeng was the one being interrogated.”

Ming Huashang stilled her hands and listened. Su Yuji continued, neither caring for nor needing any reaction: “In the second year of Chuigong, the Holy Sovereign began making extensive use of cruel officials to purge the court. At that time, Yang Banfeng still went by the name Yang Huaisha. He had just passed the imperial examinations, bright with ambition and renowned for his talent. He met with some friends and spoke about his frustrations with the current political climate — and then a close friend informed on him. He was arrested by the cruel officials and tortured under interrogation. When he came out, his convictions had collapsed. He could no longer trust a single person. He became convinced that the court meant him harm, that anyone might be sent to kill him — and has been erratic and unhinged ever since. Yet even so, he kept trying to live, kept screaming out that he didn’t want to die.”

Yang Huaisha. Huaisha — the title of Qu Yuan’s final poem, written before he drowned himself.

Ming Huashang fell silent with the night. Su Yuji continued to gaze at the sky, her voice flat and undisturbed: “And Yang Banfeng was not the only one. I’ve seen many people like him out in the world among common folk. Natural disasters, man-made calamities, illness, forced labour — they exhaust every ounce of strength just to stay alive, and yet they go on struggling and crying out from the mud, doing everything they can to hold on. The only purpose to living is simply to live.”

“You have no need to toil for your livelihood. You have ability, and people who support you in pursuing what you aspire to. You are already more fortunate than the vast majority of people in this world. Heaven gave you a gift. What you do with it is your own affair — you could even throw it on the ground and leave it to rot; that is your freedom. But speaking plainly: to give it up over something like this — that would be a terrible waste.” Su Yuji levered herself upright from the door frame with her blade hilt, brushed the dust from her clothes, and stretched out a hand to point toward the east. “Look — the sky is almost light.”

Ming Huashang followed Su Yuji’s pointing finger. The east had begun to pale with a dim, diffuse glow. Without noticing it, the night had already passed.

Neither of them spoke. They watched in silence as the first light pierced through the clouds, and a round sun rose with its full radiance. The drums of the watchtower sounded on cue, their vital, urgent beat ringing out together with the morning bells of the Buddhist temples, and together the two sounds rose into the sky above Chang’an.

Life is bitter as a song. And yet — even so — one must sing, when the sun rises.

Ming Huashang let out a soft, quiet breath: “So that is what he meant when he said there was a great person out to kill him.”

Ming Huashang said it, then went suddenly still, murmuring: “A great person…”

Countless fragments of memory flashed through her mind. Her eyes fixed, unseeing, on the sunlight; in her thoughts, countless threads stretched out, snapped, and wove themselves together once more — until at last they all converged at a single point.

Ming Huashang turned sharply and ran back to Zhao Cai: “Something’s wrong!”