Ning Yu carried a bowl of warm medicine into Fang Shi’s bedchamber.

Fang Shi — thin as dry kindling — was kneeling before an incense altar, eyes closed, moving prayer beads through her fingers. Her pallid complexion had taken on a greenish cast.

Ning Yu set the medicinal broth on the side table and stepped forward, saying softly:

“Madam, the calming decoction is here.”

Fang Shi’s hand stilled. The motion of the prayer beads ceased.

Ning Yu slipped her hands under Fang Shi’s arms and helped her rise from the prayer cushion, guiding her to the chair beside the table.

She had just reached out to lift the medicine bowl when Fang Shi said, “Have the bed linens been scented?”

Ning Yu startled. “In reply to Madam — yes, they have.”

Fang Shi’s brow drew together, and a flicker of irritation crossed her face. “…The scent is too strong — it only makes my head worse and keeps me from sleeping. Change out the incense ball for the old one.”

Ning Yu was inwardly surprised, but lowered her head and agreed.

The moment Ning Yu was gone, Fang Shi immediately tipped the medicine bowl in front of her into the flower pot beside her.

The dark broth soaked into the soil and disappeared almost at once.

“This medicine is a formula the young master sought out from far and wide, unable to bear seeing Madam tossing and turning sleeplessly through the night. For one so young, he already understands the ways of filial devotion — and particularly toward Madam, his thoughtfulness and filial heart are truly beyond compare…”

Ning Yu’s words echoed through her mind once more.

This time, Fang Shi knew with absolute clarity that it was all false —

All of it lies —

She had believed it once. She had told herself that even if he had killed his own father, it was no more than an unknowing mistake. That even if he had constrained her conduct at every turn, it was only because she had first done something to bring shame upon him and forfeit his trust —

She had made excuses for him at every turn!

Only because she had believed his conscience had not entirely perished — only because, despite everything, he was still the child she had carried for ten months through agony, the life she had retrieved from the very gates of death. Blood ties ran deep; she could not bring herself to sever them.

Now that the truth had come to light, she saw how pitiable and absurd she had been!

Fang Shi had no wish to hear his name again, still less to see that figure again. Everything connected to him stirred nothing but anguish and convulsions in the depths of her heart — nauseating revulsion. The calming medicine he had gone to such pains to find, and even the air he had once breathed, could only call up a surging hatred… and a helpless, paralyzing grief.

Now she was no different from a broken, useless thing. Even if no one kept watch over her, she could barely make it out of the Fu family’s gate.

The only will to live remaining within her, the last wish she still held, was what sustained her.

Fang Shi set down the empty bowl. As Ning Yu came back in carrying fresh bedding, she resumed moving the prayer beads through her fingers.

Even if it cost her this remaining life, she would not stand by and watch as his hands were stained once more with the blood of someone dear to her.

“Madam, Ning Yu will help you to bed.”

Ning Yu, having straightened the bedding, came over and helped her toward the bed.

In the past, Fang Shi had needed the calming decoction to sleep without dreams. Now, she opened her arms and willingly received nightmare after nightmare. Within those nightmares were blooming flowers, and endless summer showers of cicadas, and rain streaked with blood flowing from beside his feet.

When the present is crueler than the past, even a nightmare can be a shelter from the storm.

Without quite realizing it, Fang Shi sank into a dreamscape flickering with fragments of the past. The sound of rain came without pause, and a voice repeated endlessly in her ear:

“Keep the bigger one, or the smaller one?”

And she heard herself weeping as she said:

“The smaller one…”

A pale flash of lightning cut across the paper window, lighting the room white as day.

After the dry thunder, the world fell back into silence.

The dark night spread endlessly outward. The deep, dark blue sky suddenly let fall a torrent of rain. From the far horizon, a cold wind rose, and the fine, dense autumn rain — cold as silver needles — fell upon every person in the open wilderness.

“How dare you! How dare you show such disrespect to His Majesty — do you intend to rebel?!”

The loyal Chief Censor drew his sword and pointed it at the Fu family soldiers encircling them, demanding an answer from their commanding general in a voice full of fury. The general remained unmoved, keeping a predatory gaze fixed on Shen Suzhang, who was being shielded from behind by the Chief Censor.

“The Chief Censor is the one holding His Majesty hostage and trying to flee — it is you who are the traitor, defying all loyalty. Come, men! Seize this treacherous criminal and escort His Majesty safely back to the imperial carriage!”

The Fu family soldiers surged forward. Shen Suzhang — who had no physical strength to speak of — was easily shoved aside. The ruler of a nation fell to the ground, and no one paid him any mind. He had barely raised his head from the mud when the Chief Censor’s head — wide-eyed with fury — rolled to a stop in front of him.

“The traitor has been put down! The rest of you — surrender your weapons at once!”

The clatter of weapons hitting the ground sounded one after another. Swords and spears splashed into the puddles, sending up ripples of dirty water. The defeated soldiers were roughly bound, their faces — some slack with defeat, some pale with terror — reflected in the murky water pooling on the ground. Shen Suzhang, his robes disheveled, his boots filled with mud, was shoved stumbling into a horse-drawn carriage that could not be opened from the inside.

The carriage made its way through the downpour back to the encampment. The general withdrew his gaze and exchanged a look with the subordinate in charge of the prisoners.

Blades rose into the air.

When they came down, rain and blood flew off the edges together.

The carriage rolled back into the encampment in full view of everyone. The Fu family soldiers — iron-clad and formidable — stood in silent, lethal formation on either side, watching with cold, predatory eyes as the staggering Shen Suzhang was pushed inside the main tent.

The four corners of the main tent were set with braziers, their warmth holding steady even against the bitter cold of the falling rain outside. Countless expressionless maidservants and guards stood in the corners, performing what was nominally called service but was in truth surveillance. There inside the main tent stood the ruler of a nation — soaked through to the skin — and not a single person paid him any attention.

“Where is Fu Xuanmiao?! Where is he?! I know you are waiting for me — come out this instant!” Shen Suzhang’s expression was wild and unhinged. Like a top being set spinning, he turned rapidly in place, trembling, his gaze darting with profound hatred from shadow to shadow within the tent.

In the main tent, only the sound of his descent into madness echoed.

Outside, the rain fell in torrents, hammering against the oilcloth covering the tent roof with a heavy, relentless sound.

A gaunt hand lifted the tent flap and stepped unhurriedly inside. A soldier behind him closed the pale blue oilpaper umbrella and was immediately swallowed by the rain.

The flap fell. Only a figure in dry, pale celadon-colored robes remained standing just inside the entrance.

Fu Xuanmiao, beneath Shen Suzhang’s gaze of pure, burning hatred, lowered his head and offered a composed salute. He said in an even voice, “Your Majesty need not be alarmed. The traitor who took Your Majesty hostage and forced an escape has been brought to justice. All his accomplices have also taken their own lives in fear of punishment. There will be no more petty criminals to disturb Your Majesty’s quiet.”

“Fu Xuanmiao — We want to return to Jianzhou! Whatever it is you want to do, go and do it yourself! We want to return to Jianzhou!” Shen Suzhang said.

“Once the matter has been concluded, Your Majesty may naturally return to Jianzhou,” Fu Xuanmiao said. “Does Your Majesty truly not wish to see your own younger sister?”

“We will see no one! No one at all!”

It seemed to be something like the instinct of an animal protecting itself from harm — Shen Suzhang felt an acute resistance to this journey to Yangzhou, as though what awaited him there was not Yangzhou, not the Princess of Yue, but the cold, mocking face of the King of Hell himself.

“Your Majesty, as the ruler of a nation, it is Your Majesty’s duty to consider the greater picture,” Fu Xuanmiao said.

“You still have the audacity to remind Us that We are the ruler of a nation?!” The words struck a raw wound, and Shen Suzhang screamed them at the top of his lungs.

His eyes were wide open, bloodshot throughout, and his elaborate robes — though embroidered with golden dragons — were dripping steadily, the hem caked with brownish mud, and the golden crown on his head sat crooked and askew. There was nothing about him that even remotely resembled a ruler of a nation.

He was nothing more than an earthworm caught in the rain, completely helpless.

“Your servant is filled with trepidation.” Fu Xuanmiao lowered his head with perfect composure and said softly, “That Your Majesty is the ruler of a nation is something known to tens of thousands.”

“Then if that is so, We command you — send Us back to Jianzhou immediately!”

The only response was a long silence.

Shen Suzhang completely lost control. In a fit of hysterical, reckless rage, he screamed, “Fu Xuanmiao, you great traitorous hypocrite — We will have you put to death by a thousand cuts one day! You will die a terrible death!”

Fu Xuanmiao appeared not to have heard him at all, and said softly:

“His Majesty is fatigued. Why has no one brought out the elixir for His Majesty to take?”

A palace maidservant who had been standing in one of the corners immediately went to a gauze cabinet and removed a jade box the size of a palm.

Inside the box was a pitch-black medicinal pill.

The pill was placed on a white porcelain saucer and brought before Shen Suzhang. He recognized it. There had been a time when he too had repeatedly used the pretense of “bestowing medicine” to compel the man before him to swallow various pills of unknown effect. A pity — his luck had been good; several of the test subjects had died, and yet the man still stood before him now, apparently perfectly well.

“Your Majesty, please take your medicine.”

Shen Suzhang swept the porcelain saucer aside with one hand. It landed on the soft rug without breaking, and the black medicinal pill rolled across the floor to rest at Fu Xuanmiao’s feet.

“Fu Xuanmiao — you deceive the world and steal its admiration, you scheme to usurp the throne, and you will die a miserable death in the end! For the Fu family to have produced someone as savage and wolfish as you — how will you face your ancestors when you go down to meet them?!” Shen Suzhang shouted.

Fu Xuanmiao bent down to retrieve the pill from beside his foot.

In the instant he bowed his head and crouched down, Shen Suzhang felt a reckless impulse to throw himself forward and bring them both down together — but the eyes of the countless people around them, which had instantly turned sharp and dangerous, extinguished that impulse at once.

In the end, he could only watch as Fu Xuanmiao picked up the pill.

“Your Majesty misunderstands this servant.” Fu Xuanmiao raised his head and said quietly, “What this servant has ever wanted has never been to usurp the throne.”

“Then what is it you want?!”

Fu Xuanmiao looked at the pill in his hand. After a moment of silence, he said, “Has Your Majesty ever seen a mirage?”

Shen Suzhang stared at him warily and gave no answer.

Fu Xuanmiao did not wait for one. After a brief pause, he continued.

“If there came a day when Your Majesty discovered that everything you possessed was, in the end, nothing more than a false mirage… what choice would Your Majesty make?”

Shen Suzhang had just begun to answer when Fu Xuanmiao spoke again:

“Your Majesty has already made that choice.”

“From childhood, Your Majesty was Crown Prince — and when you grew, you became Emperor. You possess all under heaven, the ten thousand miles of mountains and rivers. To all appearances, your every word is law, your power without limit — yet how much real authority Your Majesty actually holds, Your Majesty knows better than anyone. The world says Your Majesty was born under a fortunate star, that everything came to you without effort — but they do not know how Your Majesty rose above a dozen brothers who smiled to your face and wished you ill behind your back. They do not know how many assassination attempts and traps Your Majesty has survived since birth. When they speak of Your Majesty, they say only — His Majesty ascended to the highest seat without the slightest struggle, ten thousand men below him.”

Shen Suzhang stared at Fu Xuanmiao, the words he had been about to say dying somewhere in his throat.

“What Your Majesty did in the past, and what Your Majesty does now, is the same thing.”

“What you and I do is the same thing.”

Fu Xuanmiao said.

He stepped forward and placed the medicinal pill back on the saucer brought forward by the attendant, then walked at an unhurried pace toward Shen Suzhang.

As he passed, Shen Suzhang trembled uncontrollably — as though the cold rain drenching him had in that moment seeped through to his very blood and marrow.

His whole body went rigid, braced as though in the face of some great threat. Yet Fu Xuanmiao only walked past him with perfect, unhurried ease, moved to stand behind him, and placed the saucer down on the tea table.

With a quiet sound, the base of the saucer settled squarely on the tabletop.

“The imperial throne holds no appeal for me,” he said. “Everything this servant has ever done in his life… has been nothing more than the wish to hold onto the mirage before his eyes.”

Fu Xuanmiao had barely finished speaking when Yan Hui’s urgent voice rang out from beyond the tent:

“General — the forward scouts report that they have spotted Bai Rongling and a large force of light cavalry on the move!”