In front of the Great Buddha Hall. At the square where sutras were lectured yesterday, the lectern had been dismantled, leaving only a giant candle standing beside the tall incense burner in the empty courtyard.

On the other side of the incense burner was the remaining foot-long candlewick. A man in his fifties was crouching there, scraping candle wax from the ground with a shovel.

As he scraped with effort, tears streamed down his face. Tears and sweat mixed, flowing down his wrinkled, gaunt face and dripping onto the sun-scorched bluestone ground, evaporating instantly in the afternoon heat.

Huang Zixia walked over and crouched beside him, asking: “Uncle, what’s troubling you? Why are you crying here alone?”

The old man glanced up at her, then lowered his head to continue scraping wax, his voice hoarse: “Who are you?”

“I’m here on orders from the Court of Judicial Review to investigate yesterday’s chaos,” Huang Zixia said.

The old man finally responded in a muffled voice: “These were candles I cast!”

Huang Zixia immediately understood – so this was the craftsman who made the candles, Lu Zhiyuan.

“This pair of candles was this old man’s proudest work in his lifetime! Besides me, look – who else in Chang’an could make such perfect candles?” Lu Zhiyuan wiped his tears and pointed at the remaining giant candle, “I was born in Chang’an, and learned candle-making from my father at age six, our Lu family candle shop spans four generations, ending with me! This old man is fifty-seven now, my health isn’t good, I’m not as strong as before. I thought these candles would be our Lu family’s final glory, but who knew even heaven wouldn’t allow it, forcibly destroying the best thing I’ve made in my life!”

Huang Zixia consoled him: “A bolt from heaven is beyond human control, there was nothing that could be done.”

“Hmph…” He showed his disdain, struggling to stand up to scrape another patch of wax.

Zhou Ziqin helped him move his basket closer, asking: “Is this wax still usable?”

While scraping wax into the basket, he said: “I’ve already vowed before Buddha to recast a candle. Beeswax is expensive now, so collecting what I can is good. The rest, I’ll make up myself.”

“What a pity, such a huge candle, completely exploded and burned up, hardly anything left,” Zhou Ziqin sighed. “Did you see what happened yesterday?”

“I wasn’t here,” he focused on scraping candle wax, not looking up. “For this pair of candles, I worked seven days and nights straight to complete them. As soon as they were delivered here, I fainted and was carried home.”

“Yes, I heard about that yesterday,” Huang Zixia nodded.

“This is fate! Heaven wanted to punish evil people, and that evil person happened to be by the candle, so when heaven’s lightning struck, all my life’s work in these candles was destroyed!” The old Lu spat and showed his disgust.

Zhou Ziqin pondered: “I heard that too, everyone says it was heaven’s punishment.”

“Those eunuchs who abandon male dignity for wealth and glory – what wouldn’t they do? The most disgusting things in this world are those neither male nor female eunuchs!” Old Lu spat in contempt.

Huang Zixia looked at her own eunuch’s clothes, unsure if Old Lu truly didn’t recognize the eunuch’s garments or was intentionally insulting them indirectly. She could only smile bitterly.

Zhou Ziqin argued: “Uncle Lu, you shouldn’t say that – there are good people among eunuchs too.”

“Good people? Would good people give up their manhood? Instead of being proper men, they make themselves neither yin nor yang?” Lu Zhiyuan snorted coldly. “In this world, men are heaven! They won’t even be heaven, willingly debasing themselves!”

Huang Zixia could only remain speechless before this old man.

Zhou Ziqin asked bewilderedly: “Uncle, you just said your family’s candle shop ends with you… you have no children?”

“Useless wife couldn’t bear sons, died early too, leaving just a worthless daughter – what can you expect? Pah!” He spat in contempt.

Huang Zixia stood up, dusting off her clothes: “All right, I’ll go see if they’re done with the fish at the liberation pond.”

Compared to this old man who looked down on women, she’d rather be by the stinking liberation pond.

After carting away sack after sack of dead fish, the nearly explosive stench from the liberation pond finally diminished somewhat.

Huang Zixia and Zhou Ziqin finally breathed easier, covering their noses as they walked to the now-visible bottom of the liberation pond, asking the two monks: “Almost done?”

“Two more sacks should do it.” The pond had been drained, and the two monks walked down the steps along the pool’s edge, using winnowing baskets and shovels to gather dead fish, sighing as they worked, “We two are assigned by the temple to manage this liberation pond. The day before yesterday, knowing there would be many devotees coming to release animals, we two drained and cleaned the pond, and worked a whole day until we nearly collapsed. Who knew we’d face this today – such sin, such sin!”

Zhou Ziqin sympathized: “Once this is over, the liberation pond will be easier to maintain, then you can rest a bit.”

But Huang Zixia’s attention was drawn to a dark glint in one corner of the pond. She endured the stench to walk into the pond, approaching that glint and crouching down to look carefully.

It was an iron wire thinner than a chopstick, about two feet long, straight at the top end, and curved into a semicircle at the bottom. One end was still rusty, while the other seemed to have been tempered, showing a faint blue-green luster.

Huang Zixia picked up the wire and weighed it in her hand.

“Just an ordinary wire,” Zhou Ziqin crouched beside her and concluded.

The two monks cleaning up dead fish said: “When we cleaned the pond the day before yesterday, this wasn’t here.”

“Must have been dropped by some worshipper during yesterday’s chaos,” the other monk said.

Zhou Ziqin nodded, finding this reasonable.

But Huang Zixia stood up holding the wire, saying: “How strange though – what would such a wire be used for? And why bring it to a Buddhist gathering?”

“Many uses, like binding especially heavy things when rope might not be strong enough.”

“Then where did whatever it was binding go?” Huang Zixia asked.

Zhou Ziqin, always full of imaginative ideas, immediately said: “Maybe it was binding a load of salt – when it fell in the water, the salt dissolved, the wire came loose, and the salt seller had no choice but to fish out the floating carrying pole and cut their losses.”

“Who would come squeezing through a religious gathering carrying salt?” Huang Zixia was exasperated, but handed the wire to Zhou Ziqin as she climbed the steps, “Take this to the Court of Judicial Review, say it’s evidence.”

Zhou Ziqin looked shocked: “You’re going to solve this case?”

“How to solve it? Right now, everything seems like natural disaster and coincidence.” Huang Zixia turned to leave, “At least we should have something to show we’re not just going through the motions.”

“Makes sense,” Zhou Ziqin said, giving a thumbs up.

After parting with Zhou Ziqin, Huang Zixia led Fusha back to Prince Kui’s mansion, exhausted.

“Has His Highness returned?” she asked the gatekeeper uncle.

Learning that Li Shubai hadn’t returned, Huang Zixia felt the weather even more sultry. Fortunately, it was midsummer and hot, so she directly drew two buckets of water for a wash.

The cold water quickly calmed her, and the scent of soapbean cleared her mind of fatigue.

The eunuch quarters of Prince Kui’s mansion were quiet and empty in the afternoon. After washing, she sat inside drying her hair while thinking about Wang Yun’s invitation for tonight.

It was only an hour or two until dusk. She had wanted to discuss it with Li Shubai, but now he wasn’t here, making her inexplicably nervous.

But what must come would come, she could only take it one step at a time.

She silently warned herself: Huang Zixia, you used to rely on yourself for everything, how have you started depending on others after just a few days?

Once her hair dried, she changed into eunuch’s clothes, carefully combed her hair and inserted her hairpin. Looking in the mirror, the bronze reflection showed a young eunuch with delicate skin and eyes bright as lacquer.

Even among eunuchs, those neither male nor female, she seemed to stand out somewhat. Huang Zixia took out some yellow powder, initially planning to apply more to her face, but thought better of it and put it down – at this point, what use was there in hiding?

Opening the cabinet, in the empty drawer lay the fan Wang Yun had given her, resting quietly.

She took the fan and went out, just as Lu Yunzhong came running over, calling excitedly: “Chonggu, hurry hurry, there’s perch for dinner, isn’t perch your favorite? Cook Lu says she’s saving a big one for you!”

Huang Zixia shook her head and smiled at him: “No need, you have it, I’m going out.”

Lu Yunzhong asked in surprise: “Where to? Going out with His Highness?”

She smiled, walked a few steps, then turned back and said very seriously: “To the Wang family, the Langya Wang family. Commander Wang invited me over tonight.”

At early dusk, Huang Zixia arrived at the Wang residence as agreed.

The bright moon rose in the east, casting flower shadows aslant. Wang Yun waited for her at the Moon-Greeting Pavilion by the water in the Wang family garden.

A gentle breeze came, and she saw Wang Yun standing alone with hands behind his back, moonlight filtering through branches and leaves as if painting thousands of branches and leaves in light ink on his white clothes. His expression was hidden behind the pale moon as he watched Huang Zixia walking slowly along the riverbank, his gaze dim yet focused.

Huang Zixia suddenly found courage in that moment, seeing that his inner hesitation and uncertainty were no less than her own.

The opponent she faced was not as fearsome as she had imagined.

So she quickened her pace, stopping three steps before him and bowing: “Young Master Wang.”

Wang Yun stared at her with dark eyes, staying silent for a long while.

She straightened up and respectfully presented the fan before him: “Thank you for lending me the fan before, Young Master Wang. I’ve come specially to return it.”

He finally smiled slightly, reaching out to take the fan and toying with it casually, asking: “Why aren’t you continuing to hide from me today?”

She said softly: “Excessive concealment only draws attention, there’s no meaning in it.”

Wang Yun’s lips showed a faint smile. He was a typical refined son of a noble family – even in poor spirits, his smile carried only a slight mockery: “If everything had gone smoothly, we should be husband and wife by now — yet our first formal meeting has turned out like this.”

Huang Zixia avoided answering, hearing the buried sarcasm and mockery beneath his gentle voice. She kept her head lowered, not daring to look at him, only asking softly: “When did Young Master Wang discover my true identity?”

He lowered his head, gazing at her steadily as he said: “From our first meeting, I felt you resembled someone in my memory, but I wasn’t sure then because of your identity. Later, after you corrected the Empress and solved Wang Ruo’s case, I knew – I was certain you were the person I’d been thinking of all along.”