The yellow horse bolted in agony, and the entire carriage lurched and swayed under the force of its galloping. Inside the cabin, the constant booming and crashing never stopped — the bench seat knocked back and forth, cups and vessels tumbling and shattering in a relentless cacophony.

The merchant, gripping the side of the carriage, glanced back. That self-proclaimed poet named Jia Duck — though he could not outrun a four-legged horse — kept cutting corners and vaulting over obstacles with stubborn tenacity, clinging to the end of the road. Every time the merchant thought he had finally shaken him for good, that figure would resurface at the horizon in the very next moment.

…If a poet could do this, scholars would never again be mocked for having the strength of a chicken.

The merchant set his jaw and shoved open the carriage door.

The blood-stained dagger in his hand drained the color from the woman inside the carriage. “Don’t try anything,” the merchant snarled. “Or I’ll slit your throat right now. Tell me — where did your husband hide the banknotes?!”

“I… I don’t know…” Shen Zhuxi pressed her back against the carriage wall, eyes wide with alarm as she stared at the merchant.

“How could you not know?!” The merchant looked frantic. The ice-cold dagger pressed against Shen Zhuxi’s neck, the chill seeping through skin and into bone. She could even smell the iron tang of blood rising from the blade — whose blood, she didn’t know. Li Que’s? Li Kun’s? Or Li Wu’s?

“I truly don’t know,” she said, her voice trembling. “My husband thinks I spend money like water — he never lets me handle the finances…”

The merchant glared at her for a long moment, then apparently believed her. He let out a grunt of resentment, turned, and grabbed the several neatly packed bundles she had prepared, shaking each one open and letting the contents spill across the floor.

Toiletries, personal garments — and even that string of oddly assembled trinkets Li Wu kept for some unknown purpose. Among the items was the linked-duck-pattern brocade robe of Li Wu’s — the very one hiding the banknotes.

The merchant lunged for it and began tearing through it frantically.

Shen Zhuxi was terrified he would find the banknotes, and she cursed herself bitterly for not wearing the gold hairpin Li Wu had polished for her today. She forced herself to stay calm, her eyes sweeping quickly across the carriage for anything she could use.

Her gaze landed on the celadon teapot rolling around at her feet — it had been knocked from its place by the swaying of the carriage and had fallen to the floor, spilling tea everywhere.

If she brought this teapot down on his head — would it work?

If it failed to knock him out and only enraged him, that would make things far worse.

Shen Zhuxi was still running through her options at speed when the merchant let out a cry of triumph. He seized Li Wu’s brocade robe and pressed and squeezed along the area where the hidden compartment had been stitched, clearly having found something.

Shen Zhuxi’s heart plummeted, but she kept her face composed, hoping against hope that he hadn’t discovered the compartment. She feared precisely what then came — the merchant fixed a greedy smile on her and pressed his fingers against the concealed layer inside the robe. “Your needlework is impressive. If I weren’t a man of the world, I might have been fooled entirely.”

He stripped off the bloodied robe he was wearing and put on Li Wu’s brocade robe in its place.

Having done all that, he took in Shen Zhuxi with fresh eyes. “I’ve changed my mind — instead of selling you to a brothel, I’ll keep you in my wife’s embroidery workroom. You’d rather be an embroidery worker than a courtesan, wouldn’t you?”

Shen Zhuxi stared at him in fear, quietly shifting her feet beneath her skirt to conceal the teapot with the hem of her dress.

The merchant stepped out of the cabin and gripped the door frame, glancing back at the man still doggedly chasing the carriage from the end of the road. He cursed the man’s ancestors to the eighteenth generation in his heart.

He could not let himself be caught by that man surnamed Jia. If he were, he would have no chance of surviving. Even if it meant everything went up in flames, he had to make one last desperate gamble.

The merchant steeled himself and drove the dagger into the horse’s hindquarters a second time.

The yellow horse let out a scream of agony and crashed through the small path at full gallop, plunging headlong into the forest.

The carriage accelerated sharply. Shen Zhuxi — already rising with the teapot in hand to approach the merchant — was flung against the carriage wall. The teapot rolled out of her grip.

“You still dare to resist?” The merchant’s expression darkened. He threw himself at her in a tackle, pinning her to the ground.

The back of Shen Zhuxi’s head struck the hard edge of the bench. The pain brought tears to her eyes — but she didn’t dare let them fall, and couldn’t afford to let her vision blur. She kept her eyes wide open, fighting with everything she had against the merchant’s hands pressing down on her wrists.

“Give it up, once I——” The merchant broke off with a sudden scream.

Shen Zhuxi had driven her knee hard into him — right where it counted most.

“Shen Blockhead — if you’re ever in danger and I’m not there, remember: go straight for that spot. Kick it hard, stomp it mercilessly. Put the same ferocity you use to guard your backside into it. Even Xiang Yu himself, come back from the dead, couldn’t withstand one kick there.”

Li Wu’s words from their days of wandering through the famine rang through her mind.

She had never imagined there would come a day when she actually needed them.

Just as Li Wu had said — it required no great strength, yet it surpassed any strength.

The merchant who had taken that blow looked agonized, his face bleached white. Shen Zhuxi pushed him off with almost no effort at all.

The yellow horse rampaged through the forest like a wild thing unleashed, the carriage slamming repeatedly into trees and grinding against rocks. The roof of the cabin was torn away in no time — the carriage bells and lanterns gone, the wheels beneath clattering and rattling as if they might drag the whole carriage apart at any moment.

Shen Zhuxi snatched up the teapot rolling across the floor, turned, and brought it down on the merchant’s head with full force.

The carriage jolted over a crossbar in the road. The whole cabin heaved, and Shen Zhuxi stumbled and fell, the teapot swinging wide — it grazed past the merchant’s head and smashed on the floor.

Blood beaded at the merchant’s temple, but his mind stayed clear. Murder filled his eyes as he raised the dagger toward Shen Zhuxi——

The carriage lurched again, and the merchant crashed into the carriage wall.

Shen Zhuxi didn’t know where her courage came from — she lunged at him and seized the dagger with both hands, wrestling for it.

If she didn’t fight, she would die. And she did not want to die.

Beyond the window, the view burst open — the yellow horse tore out of the forest and onto the broad official road.

Shen Zhuxi could never have imagined that one day she would find herself in a grappling match with a grown man.

A piercing crack split the air without warning. The carriage tilted violently and overturned. Both Shen Zhuxi and the merchant were thrown out through the open door.

Shen Zhuxi tumbled several yards along the smooth road surface. Aside from a spinning head she hadn’t suffered any serious injury. The merchant, hurled out alongside her, was far less fortunate — he struck a protruding rock as he hit the ground, and blood immediately began to flow from his temple.

Black boots stepped onto the official road.

A man of unremarkable appearance — the kind of face that left no impression — walked up to the merchant. The cold blade in his hand crossed his neck.

With his left hand, he drew four portraits from his robe and held them open, comparing them against the merchant at his feet and the astonished Shen Zhuxi a short distance away.

Among the four portraits, only one was a woman — almond-shaped eyes: a match, a beautiful face: a match. Of the others, one had no red pockmarks, one was not nine feet tall, but one fit the description of the linked-duck-pattern brocade robe and a height of eight feet.

That had to be the eldest of the three brothers.

Zhou Qianli spoke.

“Where are the other two?”

“What… what other two? Who — who are you?” The merchant winced through the pain, squinting at the stranger before him.

“Sent by Lord Han Fengnian on his orders, to take the head of the one who murdered his kin.” Zhou Qianli said coldly. “Which of your group killed Second Young Master Han?”

The merchant was still in a fog of confusion. But Shen Zhuxi understood immediately.

This man had mistaken the merchant — now wearing that day’s brocade robe — for Li Wu.

Her expression changed sharply. Before the merchant could open his mouth, she called out to him at the top of her voice:

“Husband! He’s come to avenge Han Fengyue — run!”

“I…”

The merchant’s expression froze mid-confusion — and stayed that way.

The man’s blade drove into the back of his neck. Blood welled like a spring, and within a few blinks it had spread into a pool beneath the merchant’s body.

Shen Zhuxi was witnessing a killing for the very first time.

This was entirely different from finding a body afterward. And beyond that — this man had died because of her.

She was terrified, sick to her stomach, her insides churning — and yet the black-clad man was already staring at her with cold, assessing eyes.

Her tear ducts, which had never in her life listened to her better judgment, chose this moment to come to her aid.

Uncontrollable tears spilled from her eyes, cutting off the man’s scrutinizing gaze. Shen Zhuxi wailed at the headless body bleeding at her feet:

“Husband!”

The man watched her sobbing without stop. After a long silence, he withdrew the blade from the merchant’s body and said, “State your names and where you are from. If you lie by even a fraction, you will end up the same as him.”

Shen Zhuxi instantly recalled the story Li Wu had told Han Fengyue — using the same lie again would be no protection and would likely cost her her life. This man must have already investigated Li Wu’s identity.

Under the crushing pressure of life or death, Shen Zhuxi’s mind moved faster than she had ever known it to. Without pausing to think, she said:

“My husband was from Yangzhou. When he traveled to swindle people, he called himself Jia Duck — but his real name was Zhen Pi. I am from Yongzhou, my surname is Zhu and my given name is Zhu. When the capital fell to war, my family perished — I escaped alone, and this Zhen Pi took me by force as his wife.”

Shen Zhuxi wept. “Every time he did something unconscionable, I pleaded with him again and again — he never once listened…”

Her clear accent from the capital region lent strong credibility to her account. The suspicion on the man’s face eased ever so slightly.

“Why was your carriage careening wildly through the forest?”

“Because my husband fell headfirst into the pursuit of money! He used Second Young Master Han’s money to buy grain and sell it on — he made a tidy profit, and then he got the idea of keeping it all for himself. Naturally his two younger brothers wouldn’t stand for it — so they chased him all the way here!”

Shen Zhuxi let the tears flow freely, not daring to meet the eyes of the man standing before her. She threw herself into wailing at the merchant, who was by now thoroughly dead:

“Husband, I always said that good begets good and evil begets evil — but you simply would not listen!”

“Guilt has its origin, and debts their debtor——” The man looked at Shen Zhuxi’s tear-blurred face and walked slowly toward her. “Lord Han is a merciful man — he gave me no orders to harm the others. But husband and wife are of one body. I am still obliged to take your life.”

At that critical moment, several voices broke from the trees:

“Sister-in-law!”

“Sister-in-law, can you hear us?! Where are you?!”

“Blockhead! Blockhead! Where are you?!”

Li Wu’s voice — frantic, half out of his mind — swept through Shen Zhuxi like a sudden calm.

She let the tears fall from her eyes, one after another, and in the grip of pure instinct brought forth the gift most natural to a woman.

Crystalline teardrops fell one by one down that face like a painting — ink-black hair cradling a complexion gone pale and luminous, the glimmer of tears flickering and fading in eyes that rippled like deep water.

The hand gripping the sword stilled, almost without the man’s knowledge.

She said nothing. And yet each tear was a plea.

Li Wu’s voice drew nearer and nearer. Hope swelled in Shen Zhuxi’s heart, growing larger with every second.

She looked at the hesitating man before her, begging with her eyes.

The approaching cries made up his mind. He looked at Shen Zhuxi one last time, turned back to the merchant’s body, and raised his blade in one sweep.

Shen Zhuxi could not help closing her eyes.

When she opened them, the man was already walking into the trees on the other side of the road, a severed head in his bloodied grip.

He had not gone far.

For reasons she couldn’t name, she simply knew it.

If she didn’t want the pursuit to continue, she had to make him believe that the man who had died was the one who had killed Han Fengyue.

That Li Wu — what audacity, to tell her he had let Han Fengyue go.

He had killed that person without a word of warning to her, and now it fell to her to figure out how to clean up after him.

Heavenly Mother, your daughter is suffering!

The three brothers broke out of the forest one after another, having seized a carriage along the road and ridden the horses hard to reach her.

The first sight that greeted them was Shen Zhuxi kneeling before a headless corpse, weeping with earth-shaking, soul-shattering abandon.

The grief of a wife at her husband’s sudden death — this was what it looked like.

Li Wu’s brow furrowed sharply, and he was just opening his mouth.

Shen Zhuxi suddenly raised her voice to its highest pitch:

“Husband! What a terrible way to die! From this day forward, I shall be a widow!”