Perhaps it was Ming Tan’s thorough theoretical knowledge, or perhaps it was Qing He’s natural aptitude, but despite their haphazard approach, they managed to avoid any mishaps.
Before long, Yun Yi arrived. As a genuine member of the Jin Yun Guard, Yun Yi could kill as easily as chopping vegetables, so horseback riding was second nature to her. Ming Tan, aware of her limitations, wisely stepped aside from her role as the instructor, allowing Yun Yi to properly teach Qing He.
Noticing Qing He’s genuine interest in horseback riding, Ming Tan secretly spoke with Jiang Xu, arranging to leave the horse behind as a gift for her.
After lunch, despite their reluctance, the group had to continue their journey. The parting was not too sorrowful, as Ming Heng would return to the capital for official duties in a year.
Before leaving, Ming Heng presented Ming Tan with another box: “These are trinkets I’ve collected for you over the past half year. I originally planned to send them to the capital next month, but since you’re here, take them with you. They’ll help pass the time on your journey.”
“Thank you, Brother,” Ming Tan said with a smile as she accepted the brocade box and opened it.
Inside were intricate Lu Ban locks, jade Chinese rings, colorfully painted rattles, and dazzling jeweled hairpins—all in fresh styles rarely seen in the capital.
As she was about to close the box, Ming Tan’s eye caught a barely noticeable dark object in the corner. Curious, she reached in and retrieved a dark jade stone.
This stone closely resembled the one she had seen in Jiang Xu’s hidden pocket that morning, though its shape differed. This one was oval, more like a river pebble.
“Brother, what is this?” she asked, holding it up to the sunlight. It was completely opaque.
Ming Heng explained, “Oh, that’s a jade stone called ‘Wu Heng Jade,’ unique to a small country called Wu Heng in the Western Regions. It’s entirely dark in color and extremely hard. Although Wu Heng produces this jade, it’s very rare. I happened to acquire this piece and thought you might use it for jewelry, so I included it.”
Ming Tan nodded in understanding.
Ming Heng remembered something and added, “Actually, I’ve sent you a piece of this jade before. Don’t you remember?”
Ming Tan was puzzled for a moment but quickly dismissed it. She had countless jeweled hairpins and even the exquisite pearl headdress that Uncle Fu had sent her under the guise of Jin Cuo Pavilion—she had only looked at it once and never worn it.
If her brother said so, then it must be true. This also explained why the jade stone she saw with her husband that morning had seemed familiar.
Without giving it much more thought, Ming Tan took out the Wu Heng Jade once they were in the carriage and waved it in front of Jiang Xu. As she examined it, she chattered, “Husband, this jade stone seems to be the same as yours. It’s called ‘Wu Heng Jade,’ right? Brother said he sent me one before, which explains why I found yours familiar this morning. But I wonder what Brother was thinking, giving me this dark thing for jewelry. What young lady would use such a dark jade stone for accessories? Brother doesn’t understand girls…”
Suddenly, Ming Tan paused. Jiang Xu silently watched her.
Wait, she remembered now. A few years ago, she had indeed received such a dark jade stone. Finding it novel at the time, she had used it to make an accessory—precisely the kind of small, elongated jade pendant now in Jiang Xu’s hidden pocket. She had attached it to her waist ornaments as decoration.
Those waist ornaments, she recalled, had been locked away in a chest with other clothes and accessories after returning from the Hanyan Temple spring outing three years ago, deemed unlucky and never used again.
Thinking of Hanyan Temple brought back an old memory.
Hanyan Temple had once been popular in the capital, with a thriving congregation. But a massive fire three years ago had razed it to the ground. Since then, the capital’s residents spoke of it in hushed tones, if at all.
Ming Tan remembered that the fire that consumed Hanyan Temple had occurred on the day of the spring outing.
At the time, she was just entering her teens. On the day of the spring outing, she had gone with other young ladies from the capital to Hanyan Temple to enjoy the spring flowers.
Hanyan Temple was in a remote location but renowned for its efficacy in granting children to those who prayed for them. Somehow, it had also gained a reputation for being effective in matters of love and marriage.
Young men and women, just beginning to understand love and attraction, were enthusiastically, if naively, interested in matters of marriage. Despite the inconvenience, they insisted on making the trip to Hanyan Temple.
At that time, Ming Tan was betrothed to Liang Zixuan. Inexperienced in the ways of the world, she was quite pleased with this marriage arrangement.
When she visited Hanyan Temple, she took the opportunity to pray for a smooth marriage. However, when she drew a fortune slip after her prayers, it was an extremely inauspicious one, which greatly upset her.
Because of this slip, she was in low spirits. Later, when she sat with other young ladies on the rear mountain of the temple to admire flowers and play games, she couldn’t muster much enthusiasm.
She couldn’t remember which young lady suddenly wanted to fly a kite. The wind carried the kite high and far, and as the girl chased after it, she carelessly stepped on Ming Tan’s light-colored skirt several times, leaving multiple footprints.
Ming Tan, suffering this undeserved misfortune, felt her already poor mood worsen. However, she couldn’t lose face over a dirtied dress, so she could only seethe inwardly. When her maid was helping her change clothes in a side room, someone happened to encounter her at this irritable moment.
Halfway through changing, a temple monk knocked urgently at the door, saying that an assassin had entered the temple and asking to search her room.
Her anger flared instantly! To think they would come to search her room, speaking such nonsense—did they care nothing for her reputation?
She lashed out at them from behind the door, citing rules of propriety one after another without pausing for breath.
The monks outside looked at each other, unsure. Searching for the assassin was not something they wanted to make public. After some consideration, they decided not to force their way in and went to search elsewhere first.
However, as she was leaving the room after changing, Ming Tan suddenly noticed some small blood stains in the corner behind the folding screen. She was instantly panic-stricken, her mind going blank and her body rigid. She could barely move. In the end, she managed to compose herself and walked out of the room as if nothing had happened.
That spring outing had been truly unlucky. Ming Tan was both angry and frightened, feeling that Hanyan Temple was inauspicious in every way. Upon returning home, she went straight to bed in a foul mood. To her shock, when she woke up, she heard that Hanyan Temple had burned down completely in a great fire the previous night.
The capital’s officials announced that during the Qingming Festival, with so many people burning incense and paper offerings, a forest fire had started, and Hanyan Temple had unfortunately fallen victim to it.
But the whole affair seemed strange. If it was a forest fire, why hadn’t any mountains been left bare? Why had only this one Buddhist temple burned? Moreover, only a small portion of the temple’s inhabitants had died or been injured; the rest had been moved to other temples.
Though young at the time, Ming Tan sensed something was amiss. She even feared that by letting the assassin escape, she might have been responsible for the temple’s misfortune.
Later, however, she learned indirectly from Lady Pei that the temple’s destruction was not an accident, but an intentional purge from above—some monks at Hanyan Temple seemed to have been involved in unspeakable acts.
Lady Pei didn’t say much more, perhaps not wanting to sully Ming Tan’s ears. But that year, several ladies in the capital had either hanged themselves or died from illness, and all of them had successfully prayed for children at Hanyan Temple.
Connecting these events, along with occasional, vague rumors in the city, Ming Tan formed a bold guess: there must have been debauched false monks in Hanyan Temple. The so-called efficacy in granting children was likely nothing more than coerced intimacy.
Later, she paid attention to the families of the deceased ladies. Without exception, the children born to them had all died young for various reasons. Only one family claimed their child was weak and had been sent to their old home in Jiangnan to recuperate, after which there was no further news. This seemed to further confirm her suspicions.
Lost in these memories, Ming Tan fell silent for a while. Suddenly, Jiang Xu asked, “What are you thinking about?”
Ming Tan came back to herself, instinctively shaking her head. “Nothing… Oh, right, husband, you mentioned earlier that the Wu Heng Jade once saved your life?”
Jiang Xu nodded. “Three years ago, when reclaiming Yuzhou, there was a difficult battle. After escaping the battlefield, I encountered assassins. My protective mirror had shattered, and the jade deflected a poisoned arrow for me.”
Ming Tan realized, immediately recalling her brother’s words about the jade’s extreme hardness. But to think her husband had experienced such a dangerous situation! Fearfully, she said, “So the jade truly did save your life. Thank goodness you were unharmed.”
Jiang Xu remained silent. He had only briefly mentioned it, but the dangers he had faced were beyond words.
Before the reclamation of Yuzhou, the Great Xian appeared peaceful and prosperous on the surface, but in reality, internal and external threats had reached their peak.
The Empress Dowager Su was eyeing the throne covetously, making several attempts on Emperor Chengkang’s life. She even used the debauched false monks of the Hanyan Temple to control the wives of several important court officials, blackmailing them step by step and confusing bloodlines, all to use them for her purposes and steal crucial intelligence.
Jiang Xu had infiltrated the temple to investigate, but underestimating his enemies, he was injured and hidden in a side room. By coincidence, it was the very room where Ming Tan was changing clothes.
He was hidden behind the folding screen, while Ming Tan was changing on the other side of the screen.
She had draped her outer garment over the top of the screen, with her jeweled waist ornaments carelessly thrown over it. Somehow, a small dark jade pendant fell from the waist ornaments, making a clear, crisp sound.
At that moment, Jiang Xu had murderous thoughts.
But the young lady on the other side didn’t bother with the fallen object, only grumbling about how inaccurate the temple’s fortune slips were and how precious her clothes were. When someone came to search for the assassin, she seemed to lose her temper, systematically countering their arguments point by point, effectively driving them away from the room.
Jiang Xu couldn’t help but peek through a gap in the screen. The young lady appeared to be only thirteen or fourteen, with delicate features and a hint of childishness.
Her use of etiquette rules to rebuff the searchers, and her deliberate dawdling while changing clothes had bought him crucial time. At that moment, he had recovered to fifty percent of his inner strength, allowing him to successfully leave Hanyan Temple.
That night, they burned the temple and arrested people. During the day, undercurrents surged in the court. Many things were never openly discussed, but overnight, everything had turned upside down.
The Hanyan Temple incident was key to the forced retreat of Empress Dowager Su’s faction that year. Because they had gone too far, several previously neutral important officials angrily declared their stance, becoming irreconcilable with Empress Dowager Su’s faction.
His little princess consort had unknowingly helped him at Hanyan Temple, and the dark jade pendant he had taken on impulse had saved his life again not long after in the battle of Yuzhou.
Reclaiming Yuzhou was the most perilous campaign of his life. The front lines were in dire straits, corruption was rampant in the capital, and the Great Xian army was retreating on all fronts, with casualties in the tens of thousands.
Severely wounded, he used himself as bait to lure the enemy’s pursuit in the forest. Suddenly, several arrows were fired at once, with one aimed directly at his heart. He thought he couldn’t escape this calamity, but the dark jade pendant he had casually placed over his heart turned out to be the indestructible Wu Heng Jade, deflecting the poisoned arrow for him.
Fate works in mysterious ways. Some people may know each other for years and remain mere acquaintances. Others meet once in a lifetime and are destined for each other.