The sun slanted westward — the Hour of the Rooster had not yet passed, but the Hour of the Dog was drawing near.

Dan Jiangfei carried a simple food box up the steps to the western pavilion of Jingbo Tower.

This was the first time since he had entered the palace walls that he had brought a meal to anyone other than that person.

There was not much inside the box — only two dishes, one soup, and a plate of pastries for each visit. Yet it was the cleanest and safest meal one could find in the world below.

He turned three flights of stone steps, passed through a dark stone corridor, and was met by the red-orange light of sunset.

His eyes went instinctively to the stone bed first. Finding it empty, he turned his gaze toward the railing.

Then he saw the young woman in plain hemp-cloth garments standing on top of the railing, her robe billowing in the wind, her silhouette swaying as though it might topple at any moment.

Dan Jiangfei froze. The basket in his hand dropped straight to the ground.

“Miss Xiao!”

The woman heard the sound and turned back with some surprise.

There was unmistakably three parts barely-concealed alarm on the face of the black-robed chamberlain, and his warm, even eyes locked on her so intensely that she began to feel unsettled.

She climbed down from the railing and opened her palm, looking like a child who had done something wrong.

“Chamberlain Dan — I was taking care of this. I didn’t notice you’d arrived.”

Dan Jiangfei’s gaze fell on what was cradled in her palm: a fledgling with a yellow beak and barely-grown feathers.

“Just now, it fell from up there. I was trying to put it back, but I couldn’t quite reach.”

She spoke, gesturing toward the bird’s nest visible between the beam and the eave pillar — a few fuzzy little heads could be seen crowded together inside it, sitting in silence.

The chamberlain’s expression finally returned to normal. He stepped closer, carefully took the fledgling from her, and studied it for a moment before saying quietly:

“A swallow.”

A brief flicker of stiffness crossed her face, followed by a sorrow she could not conceal.

Swallows made their nests under the eaves — they were said to be an omen of good fortune and joy.

But someone had borrowed that name, and with their own hands taken away her fortune and joy.

So she would rather not believe in any of the hopes people projected onto these feathered creatures, and see them instead as the most ordinary living things in the world.

That was how she had spent the last three days, watching the world.

She had watched birds build their nests beneath the eaves, carrying back and forth with slender blades of grass — fine soft feathers trembling in the wind, delicate and yet resilient.

She had watched mayflies live out a full life in a single day. She had watched dew form on the grass in the morning and evaporate with the sun.

She had watched the lake water ripple and shimmer at times, and grow dark and murky at others. On bright days, the surface was clear and transparent; on overcast days, dim and muddied.

She had watched every inch of light shift as the sun rose and set, and seen the moon’s pure glow shine steadfast from behind drifting clouds.

It was said that when a person passed through the threshold of death and came back, they were left with many questions.

She had thought she would need three or five years to work through those questions and find true peace. But on the evening of the third day, she had stood up from the place beside the railing.

Because she had seen the fledgling fall.

She had not expected to climb out of that abyss so quickly. Her thoughts had not yet prepared themselves — yet her body was already ready to stand again.

Perhaps thinking doesn’t provide the answers. But instinct can.

A faint tickle moved across her palm. She lowered her head to look at the tiny, wriggling creature nestled there, her fingers moving with a small, uncertain caution.

Dan Jiangfei took it all in, and the quiet worry he had been carrying eased a little.

“Leave the bird to this servant, my lady. I’ll have someone bring a ladder and put it back up shortly. You should eat first — the food won’t be as good cold.”

Dan Jiangfei picked up the food box from the floor and had just lifted the lid when he realized: the fall just now had spilled half of both dishes. They were no longer fit to eat.

“This servant’s hands are clumsy — he has carelessly ruined everything. Please wait a moment, my lady. I will go and prepare a fresh portion at once.”

Dan Jiangfei gathered up the food box, tucked the fledgling inside his sleeve, and made to leave.

She hesitated for a moment, then called after him.

“May I ask — where is His Majesty at this moment?”

He paused, then answered honestly.

“His Majesty is here in Jingbo Tower at this moment.”

In fact, His Majesty had been in Jingbo Tower for all three of these days.

But the woman did not know that. She let out a quiet breath, as though relieved she had asked at just the right time.

“There’s no rush with the food. Would you please lead the way, Chamberlain Dan? I have something I would like to discuss with His Majesty.”

Heaven only knew how long he had been waiting to hear those words.

The black-robed chamberlain was only too glad to oblige.

“Please follow me, my lady.”

Another long corridor — another dark tunnel.

She felt her way along the rough stone wall for what seemed a long time. At last, Dan Jiangfei’s footsteps stopped ahead of her.

A candle lantern wavered in front of them, throwing light on the stone chamber’s entrance.

She blinked and stepped inside, then looked around.

There was not much to look at.

Like everywhere else, everything here was made of stone. A stone desk, stone stools, a stone lamp-stand. He sat behind the stone desk, head bowed over memorial scrolls, his expression as cold and unyielding as the stone itself.

She could tell he was probably somewhat annoyed with her.

But what exactly he was annoyed about — that she was less certain of.

Perhaps she ought to behave more gently, the way ordinary women did — step forward, say some pleasant words, let him say some pleasant words, and let them both come away satisfied.

But she knew she couldn’t do that. Just imagining it made her skin prickle.

She was someone who had military authority and had fought on the battlefield. Put nicely, she valued her dignity more than her life; put plainly, she was as stubborn as a mule.

After this honest assessment of herself, she straightened her back, dropped the bow she had been about to offer, and forgot entirely what she had come to discuss — and, out of spite, deliberately looked away from the direction where he was sitting.

“I would like to go out for a walk.”

After a long pause, a single word came from that direction.

“Fine.”

Contrary to her expectation, he agreed immediately, without any difficulty.

This left her feeling somewhat at a loss.

“Then — shall I go now?”

He didn’t even look up.

“Go.”

The woman lingered in place for a moment, looked down at her own clothes and shoes, and in the end walked away while muttering something or other under her breath.

When the sound of her footsteps had completely faded, his gaze finally lifted from the memorial scroll spread open before him.

Not a single character had been annotated. Only a bronze paperweight shaped like a golden toad — plump and rounded — sat on top of it; from its round belly, one could see the reflection of every corner of the stone chamber.

The man reached out, picked up the golden toad, moved it aside, and dipped his brush in vermilion.

“Jiangfei.”

The chamberlain who had not yet left answered in a low voice.

“What are your orders, Your Majesty?”

“Have someone follow her. Don’t let her leave the city, and don’t let her go anywhere without people. Anything else — let her do as she pleases.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The vermilion brush moved swiftly. Of the more than ten scrolls that had been stacked before the desk, only three or five remained.

“Any news of Lu Songping?”

“None has been found. He seems to have vanished from thin air — not even a body has been discovered.”

“Have people keep watch on all major roads in the Yu’an area, and instruct every prefecture to watch for his movements. The moment there is any news, report it to Us immediately.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Dan Jiangfei’s silhouette had barely disappeared through the entrance of the stone chamber when the last scroll on the desk was annotated and stacked neatly with the others on the lacquered tray beside it.

The figure behind the stone desk slowly rose and crossed to a stretch of stone wall, pressing open a stone door.

On the other side of the stone door, smoke and mist curled through the air. Medicinal plants, minerals, and assorted creatures — birds, insects — were piled across nearly every surface.

The white-robed physician tending a row of clay pots over steaming heat turned at the sound and startled.

“This commoner pays his respects—”

“Spare it.”

The man waved a hand casually and found himself a spot to sit down on a grass basket full of licorice root.

Hao Bai read the room and let his posture ease slightly, picking up a fan painted with elegant bamboo from nearby and attending to the flame.

The flame was singing the edge of the fan black in patches, and medicinal broth was bubbling up through the airholes of the pots, steaming everywhere — like blood dripping from his heart.

He felt less like he was brewing medicine and more like he was doing time in prison.

As long as that woman was not well, he would not see the sun outside for one more day.

“Has Miss Xiao been taking her medicine on schedule?”

He asked with all due caution. The man on the grass basket answered with comprehensive carelessness.

“She went out.”

“She went out?” The white-robed physician’s eyes went wide. “But just a few days ago she was all but at death’s door, wasn’t she?”

“Perhaps your skill is exceptional and the medicine has done its work.”

The man delivered this lofty compliment without any expression whatsoever, while Hao Bai only felt his neck growing more unsteady under the weight of his head.

He was still young. He had never been to a brothel. He had not yet met a woman who, unable to afford his fee, would offer herself in payment.

Yet in this moment, his mind had already composed a prison testament — a lament of a great medical clan that had saved the suffering, only to be crushed to dust by tyrant and noble because of one lapse in care.

He took a large gulp of cold tea from nearby, and when he spoke his voice was still dry.

“As the saying goes, it takes a hundred days to recover from injury to the bone. The flesh wounds are fine enough, but what worries me is injury to the bones in the back. That area had already been damaged once when she was scaling Ningyao Tower in Mu Er He — it counts as an old injury compounded by a new one. And furthermore — even if there is no physical pain, that doesn’t mean there is no pain in the heart. People, you see, are most afraid of tying themselves in mental knots—”

“She is not so fragile.”

The other party clearly knew what he was building toward, and blocked his entire half-formed grievance with those five simple words.

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt. Hao Bai felt somewhat dazed for a moment.

He did not know whether the attitude of the person before him was good news or bad news for him.

A row of clay pots chose this moment to let out a collective low whistle. Steam began to push up through the openings, and the air all around grew thick with vapor. The man’s features drifted in and out of that haze — impossible to read, whether pleased or displeased.

“The matter I asked you about the other day — have you reached any conclusions?”

Remembering the purpose of this trip to Quecheng, he snapped to full attention.

“At first I did not dare to make a judgment. But after my great-grandfather looked it over carefully, we have more or less arrived at an assessment.” He paused for a moment — as if he meant to draw out the suspense. “Does Your Majesty still recall the strange poison that the Mu Er He Zou family patriarch Zou Sifang was infected with?”

“We do. You also talked Us into handing over a sarira bead of ours to treat the illness.”

Hao Bai’s face went red, and he quickly let out a couple of light coughs as cover.

“That sarira is indeed precious, but this student was truly desperate to save a life — and besides, given the situation at the time, Your Majesty also needed him to survive—”

“To the point.”

“This poison does indeed share its origin with the mechanism on the secret seal. It was once called the Heart-Piercing Sting. When its history began is no longer known, nor is it known from what substances it was made. From the earliest records, it was used to sedate sacrificial animals during religious rites. Should a person be infected with it, the symptoms are identical to those of Zou Sifang — they retain a single breath, yet appear as corpses, and not until nineteen days have passed do they finally expire.”

“And after they expire?”

Hao Bai startled — clearly not anticipating that the other party would latch onto that critical detail so quickly. All his carefully prepared phrasing was rendered useless, and he had no choice but to state the plain truth directly.

“There are accounts in circulation that those infected with this poison, after expiring, may experience a sudden burst of lucidity — or even a return from the dead. But these are only recorded in unofficial histories and legends. No one has ever witnessed it firsthand—”

“In your assessment, is it credible?”

He brushed a bit of soot from his sleeve with a composed and principled air.

“This student is a physician. He does not believe in ghosts or gods. He must investigate with strict adherence to fact — and without personally witnessing or hearing something himself, he cannot draw any conclusions.”

“Very well. Have Weixiang take you to examine Xu Rui’s remains.”

“But — but—”

But he was a physician, not a coroner!

“What is it? Master Qu — has half a month away from home left you pining for it already? I would think that with several of the Qu family’s elders now in the city, you would have nothing to worry about.”

Was this a threat against his whole family? Hmph. His Patriarch had not deceived him — the imperial family was thoroughly, comprehensively vile. One vile specimen, two vile specimens — a vile father, a vile son — generation after generation of vileness, an entire nest of it—

“Master Qu?”

That person called his name, gently.

He drooped his head with a defeated air.

“This commoner obeys the imperial decree.”

Xiao Nanhui walked out of Jingbo Tower alone.

Jixiang was being housed in the Black Feather Camp, eating and drinking at their expense, while the wound on her hindquarters would likely need time to heal. As for the streets, around sunset they grew livelier and livelier, and a carriage would not be convenient — so she simply walked to Yanfu Street.

On the way she passed the street vendor selling sweet tangerines, thought about it, and in the end didn’t buy any. She turned a corner instead and went to Xiaofu Residence.

The proprietor of Xiaofu Residence was an older man, dozing on a bench. He woke with a start when Xiao Nanhui told him she would be taking away all ten jars of Yunye Fresh that she had been saving up for three or four years, and thought for a moment he must have dozed off again and was still dreaming.

The proprietor asked her three or four times whether she truly meant to take all of them, and reminded her again and again that Yunye Fresh needed to be kept in the cellar — once removed, if it wasn’t drunk within three days, it would turn.

She only smiled and said she understood, picked up the wine, and walked out of Xiaofu Residence.

She had always had a habit of setting aside the good things for later. Even when she treated herself occasionally, she would only take a little at a time, and never empty the supply at once. That would make her feel too unmoored.

But Bolao had always been the opposite. She never saved the good things for last — when fresh grapes came in, she would eat them until she couldn’t walk and had to lean against the wall.

She had studied for a few years at a private school; Bolao had barely learned her characters and could never have articulated the philosophy of seizing the day in words, but she had her own way of putting it: Die beneath the grape trellis, and the ghosts will be glamorous ones.

So from their childhood on, no fruit or nectar — no rare vintage or delicacy — ever lasted the night in the mansion. The one exception was these ten jars of Yunye Fresh.

These she had gathered through painstaking effort, always hiding them away carefully. She had planned that someday when she was old and could no longer walk, no longer fight, no longer earn silver — there would still be a good wine to drink. She had imagined the grandeur of a single person in sole possession of ten jars of fine wine, and she had imagined setting the jars out in front of that fool who believed in seizing the day — saying nothing at all, proving her own wisdom with nothing more than silence.

But she had never imagined that she would keep the wine safe through every difficulty, yet not be able to keep the person.

The person who could have drunk with her was gone. And she had no need to wait until she was old.

Xiao Nanhui carried her ten jars of wine and walked alone into the crowd.

Perhaps in this life, companionship was always fleeting, and solitude was the natural state of things.

Night thickened gradually. The lanterns were lit. The Wangchen Tower was at its most lively.

Today was the Huanhua Festival. The beautiful women of the tower all had fresh flowers in their hair. The courtyard at the center, which ordinarily hung with lanterns, now had a winding brook laid out from crushed stone, floating jade cups and fruit platters, the fragrance of flowers and wine drifting everywhere, and the warm early-summer breeze brushing across the skin of the lovely women — just the right temperature to make one feel pleasantly drunk.

She stood by the little wooden arch bridge that had been temporarily put together and watched for a while. A few women passed by under their umbrellas, soft and fragrant, and pressed close to her — finding she was a woman, they did not immediately cool toward her, and seeing she was carrying ten jars of wine with what looked like something weighing on her mind, they instead tugged at her arm and invited her to come drink with them.

She smiled and declined, and suddenly understood a little better why people came here.

This was the most alive place — every person who entered was treated with warmth, yet no one was asked where they came from or where they were going.

The fingers carrying ten jars of wine had begun to ache. Xiao Nanhui finally moved her feet toward the back courtyard.

She hadn’t yet turned the corner of the corridor when she caught sight of two familiar silhouettes.

Yaoyi was wearing a vulgarly bright cyclamens flower — a red so deep it nearly went black — and to match that color had put on a red-and-gold braided jacket, making him look like some kind of brilliant pheasant.

Wu Xiaoliu wasn’t faring much better: a loofah flower pinned to his head, his short jacket a vivid green — like a frog that had turned into a person.

Like owner, like servant — these two were growing more alike every day.

Yaoyi on the other side was speaking very fast about something. It was actually Wu Xiaoliu who spotted her first. His entire manner of speaking stumbled.

“Xiao — Xiao—”

Yaoyi was clearly at a crucial point in what he was saying. He frowned at Wu Xiaoliu’s expression of slack-jawed stupidity, but when he looked up and saw her, those quick-darting little eyes of his went, uncharacteristically, still for a moment.

Xiao Nanhui rubbed her itchy nose and was just about to call out and wave them inside, as she usually would, when the person across from her suddenly let his eyebrows droop.

“How are you—” He paused, then quickened his steps toward her while lowering his voice. “How are you just wandering around out here?”

Xiao Nanhui put on a nonchalant look and stretched her arms and flexed her legs.

“All healed up. Good as new.”

Yaoyi was momentarily speechless, staring fixedly at that face — freely parading around, looking at everything — without blinking.

“That’s not what I’m asking—”

“Then what are you asking?”

The sharp-tongued proprietor of Wangchen Tower was actually stumped. Before he could sort out how to answer, some important guests arrived at the front hall, and by the sound of things, another wealthy young lord from some prominent family had come.

Xiao Nanhui narrowed her eyes, trying to make them out, when something swooped down and landed squarely on her head — a large cloth printed with bright flowers, covering her face entirely.

Furious, she was about to react, when Yaoyi’s voice came pressing down:

“Don’t say anything! There are people coming!”

She held herself back. Instinctively she didn’t want to cause trouble for her friend — and then felt somewhat wronged.

She had barely escaped death, suffered countless hardships, and the one friend she had left was treating her this coldly.

Not cold — this was past coldness. This was absolutely outrageous.

Yaoyi, paying no attention to her inner complaints, gave her an impatient push, and she was towed along like a mule being led, into a room.

“Wait here a moment. I’ll go finish with the ones outside, then come find you.”

Yaoyi left that parting sentence, then turned and slammed the door shut.

Xiao Nanhui sat there with the large flowered cloth slid halfway off her head, her face bewildered and confused.

She had thought back to all the times she had come to find this miserly proprietor before, and had never seen him act this contemptuous. Could it truly be that being bedridden this long had left her looking so dreadful that she was unfit to be seen?

She set down her jars of wine on the table and, wearing the flower cloth, walked to the dressing table in the corner. She leaned toward the bronze mirror and turned her face left and right — and found nothing wrong with her face.

The bronze mirror seemed to have been untouched for some time and had turned slightly green with patina.

She grabbed a patterned handkerchief nearby to wipe the mirror surface, leaning in closer as she wiped to see better.

At this moment, the door behind her was suddenly opened.

A figure darted quickly inside and shut the door again, leaning back against it, catching their breath.

That Yaoyi — he moved fast.

“You’re back?”

Xiao Nanhui turned slowly, holding the flower handkerchief — and found herself looking at Su Pingchuan’s face, utterly shocked.