The moment the Zhou family’s doorkeeper saw them, his face broke into a broad smile. “Eunuch Yang, you’ve arrived! And this is…?”

The doorkeeper nodded respectfully toward Li Shubai, who remained seated on his horse without dismounting, saying only, “You go ahead, I’ll wait outside.”

Huang Zixia dismounted and casually tied her horse to the hitching post by the gate. The doorkeeper smiled and said to her, “The young master has already given instructions – in the future, you can go directly to his quarters. Come, let me show you the way.”

Huang Zixia thanked him and followed him into the Zhou residence. They walked to a corner near the garden where there stood a small courtyard covered in Boston ivy.

The courtyard gate was wide open, and inside, two servants sat under a grape trellis playing cat’s cradle. Zhou Ziqin’s voice drifted out faintly: “I… I say, Abi, Ayan, could you come help me up?”

“Young Master, it’s not that we won’t help, but that thing is truly frightening – we wouldn’t dare touch it!” The two servants didn’t even look up, completely absorbed in manipulating their red string.

Zhou Ziqin’s exasperated voice was audible even to Huang Zixia outside the gate: “You two good-for-nothings! You’d rather play with such feminine things than help your young master… oh my bones are about to break…”

The doorkeeper, clearly used to such scenes, calmly smiled at Huang Zixia and left. She entered the courtyard and called out, “Zhou Ziqin, come quickly, there’s urgent business!”

Zhou Ziqin’s voice came from inside the room, as if granted a reprieve: “Chonggu, help! Quick… I need immediate assistance! Come give me a hand!”

Huang Zixia glanced at the two servants still unmoved from their cat’s cradle game, then walked to the door of the side room where the voice came from. There she found Zhou Ziqin pinned to the ground by two bronze figures, one male and one female. He was clearly in pain but still clutched a white skull desperately in his hands, refusing to let go.

Not understanding the situation, she could only go in and drag the two oddly-styled bronze figures to the side. The figures were partially solid and extremely heavy, leaving her so exhausted she had to sit down.

Zhou Ziqin wore a jade-green brocade robe embroidered with smoky purple peonies and a bright red sash – even covered in dust from the floor, it remained eye-catching and vibrant. He got up from the ground, fondly stroking the skull as he said, “Thank goodness it’s not damaged – I’d have been heartbroken. This is a complete young person’s skull that cost me twenty taels of silver to have someone find. Look at these beautifully rounded curves, these neat white teeth, these deep eye sockets…”

Huang Zixia couldn’t help but interrupt: “How did you end up in this state?”

Zhou Ziqin tenderly caressed the skull in his arms and said, “Well, when I was grabbing this bone, I slipped and fell, and then the two bronze figures were shaken and fell over. To save my precious skull, I had to make a heroic diving save – fortunately, I hadn’t had them made completely solid, or I surely would have died beneath them today!”

Huang Zixia looked at the perfectly white skull in his arms and gained a deep understanding of why this handsome, healthy, and cheerful young lord had yet to be betrothed – no young lady would want to compete with a skull for her husband’s embrace. This was probably also why he had been relegated to the most remote corner of the family compound.

“Oh right, Chonggu, what did you need me for?”

Huang Zixia asked, “Do you remember those beggars who died under the poison arrow tree?”

Zhou Ziqin immediately jumped up, still clutching the skull: “Of course! How… how could I forget? I will investigate their cause of death!”

“I already have some leads. If you want to know, come help me with something,” Huang Zixia gestured for him to put down the skull, then stood and walked outside. “Remember to change into some light, coarse clothing, the more worn-out the better. Whatever you do, don’t go out wearing your current green and red brocade robes!”

Zhou Ziqin procured a horse from the estate, and the three of them rode toward the northeast of Chang’an.

They had barely gone a few steps when Zhou Ziqin quickly urged his horse closer to Huang Zixia and asked, “Chonggu, you said you’ve figured out those beggars’ deaths?”

“Mm, I have some leads. We just need to wait for someone to appear,” Huang Zixia nodded firmly.

“Wait for someone? Who?” Zhou Ziqin asked eagerly, “Is it someone very important?”

Huang Zixia nodded slightly: “If my guess isn’t wrong, once she arrives, this case that has troubled us for days will be solved.”

“What kind of person could play such an important role?” Zhou Ziqin looked at her in amazement.

She smiled and only said, “It’s just a preliminary theory I have, we haven’t even seen the person yet.”

Zhou Ziqin looked at her questioningly, but she said no more, letting him guess for himself. Di’e’s temperament was fierce, taking the lead, with Feisha following close behind, while Zhou Ziqin’s horse could only obediently fall to the rear.

The three horses proceeded in single file along Chang’an’s streets. Suddenly Zhou Ziqin slapped his forehead and called out from behind them: “I know! I know who that person you’re waiting for is!”

Huang Zixia turned back to look at him in surprise. He held his reins with one hand while waving the other in the air, staring at her with sparkling eyes and an excited, expectant expression: “It’s a woman, isn’t it?”

Huang Zixia was slightly surprised: “Mm, that’s right.”

“A sixteen or seventeen-year-old young lady?”

“Correct.”

“A sixteen or seventeen-year-old, very beautiful young lady!”

“She should be… very beautiful.” On this point, Huang Zixia wasn’t quite certain.

“I knew I guessed right!” Zhou Ziqin excitedly grabbed her sleeve and asked, “So, when is Huang Zixia coming?”

“…Ah?” She stared at him, speechless.

“The beautiful sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl you mentioned, the one whose arrival will make the whole case clear – who else could it be but Huang Zixia?”

Li Shubai, riding ahead, didn’t turn around, but Huang Zixia still saw his shoulders twitch slightly as if forcefully suppressing an imminent burst of laughter.

She sat on her horse, completely at a loss for words.

She didn’t want to imagine how Zhou Ziqin might react when he learned that she was Huang Zixia.

When they approached the Taiji Palace, they dismounted and walked, finding a secluded alley.

Zhou Ziqin looked back at their three horses and asked, “Will our horses be all right?”

Li Shubai walked forward, casually saying, “With Di’e there, anyone who dares steal the horses should be prepared to lose a leg.”

Huang Zixia and Zhou Ziqin looked at each other, both seeing the twitching at the corners of each other’s mouths.

Huang Zixia led them to the Guangzhai Ward where the Right Outer Teaching Institute was located, and stopped.

Zhou Ziqin tugged at the clothes he had borrowed from a gardener, following Huang Zixia along the small river while asking puzzled, “Chonggu… this seems quite far from where the beggars died…”

“Don’t draw attention to yourself, let me look around.” The Guangzhai Ward was outside the Phoenix Gate of Taiji Palace. Huang Zixia gazed at the entrances to the palace and outer teaching institute, calculating the shortest route, then turned to a nearby area thick with shrubs to which no one paid attention. She examined traces of disturbed stones around them, then pointed to the water channel flowing through the area and said to Zhou Ziqin, “Jump in.”

Zhou Ziqin gaped: “Chonggu, first, it’s not swimming weather yet, and second, I’m not a very good swimmer…”

“You don’t need to be very good, the water isn’t deep here. You just need to go down and fetch something back up,” she said.

Li Shubai seemed not to hear their conversation, raising his head to admire the surrounding scenery.

Zhou Ziqin asked again, “Chonggu, did you drop something? I can call someone to help fish it out…”

Huang Zixia cut off his words: “I’m looking for a piece of evidence related to those beggars’ deaths.”

Before she finished speaking, Zhou Ziqin had already started removing his clothes.

This time it was Huang Zixia’s turn to look skyward, while Li Shubai said coolly from the side, “We already had you wear these raggedy clothes, what are you stripping for?”

“Oh, right…” Zhou Ziqin tied his clothes back on, “Your Highness, Chonggu, next time you need someone to go in the water, tell me earlier and I’ll borrow some swimming gear.”

“Stop wasting time, this matter must remain absolutely secret, we can’t let anyone know about it.” Huang Zixia held out both hands to demonstrate the size of a pipa, “There should be something about this big, maybe a package, at least this size if not larger. See if you can find it.”

“All right.” Zhou Ziqin jumped into the water with a splash, diving down into the channel.

Li Shubai stood on the bank, gazing at the blue sky and white clouds above the lush elms and sophoras, remarking thoughtfully, “The sunlight through the clouds, the mists dispersing – quite a lovely scene.”

Huang Zixia sat down on a relatively flat blue stone by the bank, feeling that her way of coercing Zhou Ziqin was becoming more and more like Li Shubai’s style, which filled her with a sense of melancholy.

Before long, Zhou Ziqin surfaced, gasping for air: “This channel is really deep, and the water’s quite dirty too. The bottom is all mud and water plants – finding anything is going to be difficult. Should I call some people to thoroughly sift through this area?”

“No.” Huang Zixia crouched on the bank, speaking seriously, “Haven’t we already said, to avoid alerting anyone, it’s better if just the two of us search slowly.”

Zhou Ziqin hung onto the bank with both arms, looking up at her with a bitter expression: “But with such a long waterway, having just one person feel around for something we don’t even know what it is – it’s like searching for a needle in the ocean.”

“Don’t worry, considering the route, direction, and need to hide traces, this should be the killer’s first choice. I think it must be here.”

“…But this place is so far from Qujiang Pool where the beggars died, there’s no connection at all…” Zhou Ziqin was still muttering when Huang Zixia pressed down on his head with her right hand, pushing him back underwater. His words turned into a string of bubbles, all submerged in the channel.

After flailing about underwater for a while, Zhou Ziqin surfaced again, furious: “Yang Chonggu, you bastard, without even a warning – my, my foot is caught in water plants!”

“What? Really?” Huang Zixia became anxious too, “I’m sorry! Here, give me your hand, I’ll pull you up.”

“It’s wrapped tight, so heavy…” Zhou Ziqin said while frantically kicking his legs. Huang Zixia grabbed his hand and pulled upward. After much pushing and pulling, they finally freed Zhou Ziqin from the weight on his foot and got him onto the bank.

Both were somewhat exhausted, collapsing on the ground and breathing heavily.

“What kind of water plant is so tough? Someone your size nearly got dragged under.”

“Don’t remind me, it was so heavy, wrapped around my foot like cloth. When I looked down in the water, there was this big dark shadow-” Zhou Ziqin held out his arms to demonstrate an embrace-sized shape, “tangled around my foot, couldn’t shake it off…”

Huang Zixia looked at the size he was showing and thoughtfully compared it to the size she had demonstrated earlier.

Zhou Ziqin suddenly froze.

Huang Zixia looked at him, he looked at Huang Zixia, and after staring at each other for a long while, Zhou Ziqin stood up and jumped back into the water channel with a splash, diving down again.

Just as Huang Zixia prepared to receive whatever he brought up from the water, Zhou Ziqin suddenly surfaced again, shouting: “Quick! Quick! Major discovery!”

“What discovery?” Huang Zixia glanced at Li Shubai, mentally calculating the possibility of getting him to help in the water.

“The water was too murky before and I only saw a shadow, but now the dirt has settled and I can see clearly! Not just a package! There’s a corpse!”

At these words, even Li Shubai was quite surprised, asking: “A corpse?”

“Yes! And it’s a headless corpse – I saw it clearly, no doubt about it!”