Xi’er was her child.

The piece of her heart she could never bring herself to let go of, no matter when.

Mu Fulan stared at the man leaning over the bedside, unmoving.

Xie Changgeng fixed his gaze on her eyes.

Those two eyes of hers, which had still held a hollow quality as if born of the anguish of a nightmare, were gradually becoming clear.

At last, as though she had finally recognized who he was, she said nothing at all — only slowly released the tension in her body, turned over toward the wall, and closed her eyes again, as if she had fallen back to sleep.

The moment he had entered, he had heard from the bed a low moan from her, a sound filled with suppressed pain and sorrow, like weeping.

He had walked over, and found her caught in a nightmare — brows tightly knit, covered in cold sweat, lashes trembling ceaselessly, arms wrapped around her own body, her entire self curled into a tight ball on the bed, looking to be in extreme distress.

He knew she despised him, but seeing her in such a state, he could not bear to leave her there. He had called out to rouse her, and finally patted her awake — only to have her, in the very moment before she fully woke, suddenly call out that name.

Xie Changgeng stared at her back turned toward him in silence, and his expression grew slowly cold.

He asked nothing more, straightened up, turned, and walked out of the room.

He went to his study. In the dead of night he returned, closed the door, and on his own took out a set of bedding from the cabinet, which he spread upon the sleeping couch positioned across from the bed.

The couch was meant for sitting rather than sleeping, and was not quite long enough, though it could serve well enough for a night’s rest.

He lay down upon it.

Not a word was spoken that night.

In the days that followed, Empress Dowager Liu summoned Mu Fulan into the palace frequently to keep her company. When the wives of various officials in the capital learned that the Mu woman — the daughter of Prince Changsha — whom Xie Changgeng had married had arrived in the capital, calls and visits began to come one after another.

Mu Fulan spent her days managing all manner of people, while at night she shared rooms with Xie Changgeng — sleeping apart, she in the bed and he on the couch. He left early and returned late. For the time being, they existed in a state of uneasy but untroubled coexistence.

Before long, the eighth day of the twelfth month arrived.

In recent years, Empress Dowager Liu had grown increasingly devoted to Buddhism. Not only did she widely cultivate good deeds and frequently held Buddhist ceremonies in her own palace quarters, but on two days of the year — the fourth month’s Buddha’s birthday and the eighth of the twelfth month — she would personally leave the palace to go to the imperially commissioned Huguo Temple to pay her respects.

Today was the day the Empress Dowager was to go to Huguo Temple to pay her respects.

All matters relating to rest stops along the route from the palace to Huguo Temple outside the city wall could not afford even the slightest negligence. The responsibility for the escort and protection of the procession fell upon Xie Changgeng, who was appointed as its commanding officer. The Empress Dowager, wishing to demonstrate her devotion, was to set out at the fifth watch of the night, and Xie Changgeng had already risen and departed at the third watch.

When the Empress Dowager went to pay her respects, she naturally brought her attendants and titled noble ladies with her.

Mu Fulan was among those accompanying the imperial party.

After Xie Changgeng left, Mu Fulan remained awake. When it was past the fourth watch, she too rose, washed and dressed, ate a few bites of an early breakfast, and together with two maidservants, boarded a carriage and set out through the gates.

The Xie residence was very close to the Imperial Palace — just two streets away.

When Mu Fulan arrived, the sky was still pitch dark, but outside the western gate of the palace — the gate through which the Empress Dowager’s procession would pass — torches blazed as bright as daylight. Imperial Guards clad in armor had already lined up in rows on both sides of the palace gate. One magnificent carriage after another arrived in an unbroken stream of rumbling wheels, carrying the most nobly ranked women in the capital to gather here. The servants of each household, directed by the attending eunuchs, positioned the carriages in their designated spots according to rank, and formed lines to receive the Empress Dowager when she emerged from the palace.

The Grand Commissioner was an outside official, holding a second-rank position; by order of precedence, Mu Fulan’s carriage should rightfully have been positioned further back. But the moment the attending eunuchs saw the Xie Manor carriage arrive, they came forward at once with welcoming smiles and guided it to a spot near the front, close to the palace gates.

The weather was bitterly cold, and having to leave early and wait here in the open for the Empress Dowager to emerge was no small hardship for these women accustomed to comfort and ease. Yet to be granted the opportunity to accompany the Empress Dowager to Huguo Temple to pay respects was a matter of considerable honor to be proud of. Far from viewing it as a hardship, the wives of each household vied with one another for the privilege and considered it a distinction.

Everyone knew that Xie Changgeng was favored by the Empress Dowager. Even the wife he had taken — the daughter of Prince Changsha from the Mu Family, who by all accounts should have been regarded with hostility by the Empress Dowager — had, within only a few days of arriving in the capital, already been summoned to the palace several times to keep the Empress Dowager company. Love for one’s protégé extends to those around him; the magnitude of the favor shown was plain to see. That morning’s procession arrangements for the Mu woman’s position of attendance further confirmed it.

Mu Fulan sat inside the carriage, well aware that she had become the center of everyone’s attention.

She took a warming hand-stove from a maidservant riding with her, closed her eyes, and leaned back against her seat. Then she heard the Xie Manor steward say from outside the carriage: “Imperial Princess, the Princess Consort of Prince Qi has sent someone over to give you a fur lap robe.”

Mu Fulan opened her eyes.

The maidservant opened the carriage door.

A steward, holding a fox fur robe and standing before the carriage, bowed and said with a smile: “My mistress the Princess Consort says that the capital is especially cold, and the Imperial Princess is used to living in the south. The Princess Consort remembers that the Imperial Princess had a poor tolerance for cold even as a child. She happens to have an extra one in her carriage, and she asked me to send it over to the Imperial Princess.”

Prince Qi, Zhao Long, was one of the more closely related nobles in terms of his relationship with the Emperor, among all the various vassal kings. He had resided in the capital from an early age. After Empress Dowager Liu came to power and relations with the vassal princes grew strained, he too had returned to his fief, but he continued to advocate for maintaining good relations and remained a mediating presence between the Empress Dowager and the many vassal kings. He was a man of considerable standing and reputation. In recent years, as a token of favor toward Prince Qi, the Empress Dowager had permitted him to come to the capital each year to attend the ancestral temple’s year-end sacrificial rites.

Princess Consort Qi must have arrived in the capital just a few days prior as well.

Setting aside the upheavals that had come in the previous life, during the half year Mu Fulan had spent in the capital as a child, her aunt had been on very good terms with Princess Consort Qi, who had spent most of her time residing in the capital. The Princess Consort had frequently come into the palace to keep the Empress company. At that time, Mu Fulan had indeed often seen the Princess Consort at court, but after her aunt passed away and she returned to the Kingdom of Changsha, they had no further contact.

Mu Fulan thought it over, then asked the maidservant to receive the robe, had the steward convey her thanks to Princess Consort Qi, closed the carriage door, and asked the maidservant to take the robe and use it as a lap blanket, while she herself settled back into her seat as before.

After a moment, the palace gates slowly swung open. From inside came the eunuchs’ drawn-out announcement: “The Empress Dowager’s imperial carriage departs the palace —”

Before the eunuch’s words had faded, the two rows of Imperial Guards lined up outside the palace gate dropped to their knees in unison. The assembled titled noble ladies hastily dismounted from their carriages and knelt to the ground to receive her.

Despite the great number of people, all around was utterly still.

Mu Fulan dismounted with the others and knelt beside her carriage, watching as Empress Dowager Liu emerged amid a procession of ceremonial escorts, borne on a palanquin, and was helped by eunuchs into a six-horse imperial carriage at the palace gate.

Xie Changgeng appeared as well. He led a detachment of guards on horseback at the front, guiding the imperial carriage as the procession set off.

Beneath the heavy dark sky of the fifth watch on a winter morning, this great procession wound its way in a long line through the wide and empty streets of the capital, passed out through the city gates, and made its way toward the imperially commissioned Huguo Temple outside the city.

Mu Fulan sat in the carriage with her eyes closed, still as though in meditation.

At Huguo Temple, there were eminent monks. It was said that where the sounds of Sanskrit bells and chanted sutras arose, wandering spirits could be released from their transgressions and grievances.

In her previous life, after Xie Changgeng had become Emperor, he had built a memorial shrine behind the pagoda forest of Huguo Temple for his first Empress who had died at the hands of his enemies, and had had the monks of the temple chant sutras for her day and night to guide her spirit’s passage.

Yet her own trace of soul had drifted and wandered, going back and forth many times, and in the end could never quite bring itself to leave behind that last tie to the mortal world.

For ten years she had lingered without departing, watching as he posthumously conferred upon her the title of First Empress, bestowed upon her a string of fine-sounding posthumous honors, set aside a spirit hall for her within the palace, built a memorial shrine behind the pagoda forest, chanted sutras to guide her spirit, and eventually even had Qi Lingfeng killed.

But everything he had done was nothing more than self-deception — laughable and hollow.

Huguo Temple was drawing near, and the sky was gradually brightening.

Mu Fulan opened her eyes, quietly lifted a corner of the warming curtain, and stole a glance ahead.

Xie Changgeng led the guards, remaining always close to the Empress Dowager’s imperial carriage, every inch the image of absolute loyalty.

Eunuch Yang, together with a few of his subordinates, rode on horseback at the rear.

Mu Fulan knew Xie Changgeng would not remain in the capital for long. Moreover, the Hexi frontier region he governed was not exactly at peace at present — the northern peoples had long been eyeing it greedily. Most likely, once the year drew to a close and the new year came, he would return to Hexi.

What Mu Fulan was worried about was her own fate after he left.

If they were an ordinary couple, her options would be straightforward.

If the husband loved his wife, he would bring her with him to Hexi for his posting.

If filial piety were the overriding consideration, she would return to the Xie family home in Xie County to attend to his mother.

But now, neither of these options was clearly possible.

Mu Fulan was fairly confident that her conduct since arriving in the capital had not given Empress Dowager Liu cause for excessive suspicion.

What she was turning over in her mind was the third possibility that her elder royal brother had also worried about: that in the end, she would be kept in the capital by the Empress Dowager on some pretext or another, as a hostage for the Kingdom of Changsha.

If at all possible, she urgently needed to secure someone close to the Empress Dowager — someone who could keep her promptly informed of the Empress Dowager’s movements, so she could guard against them in advance.

This was not only urgently needed now. If she could get through this particular crisis, having eyes and ears within the palace would be of continued assistance even after she returned to the Kingdom of Changsha in the future.

Mu Fulan’s gaze rested for a moment on the silhouette of the eunuch known as Cao Jin, and then she lowered the warming curtain.

From the moment Cao Jin had come to deliver that message when she arrived in the capital, she had recognized this young eunuch as the same man who had been at Xie Changgeng’s side ten years later as his chief eunuch. From that moment on, Mu Fulan had speculated that it was very likely he was already acting as Xie Changgeng’s spy within the Empress Dowager’s household.

Xie Changgeng was a man of inherently cautious nature — most especially so in the ten years after he became Emperor, during which Mu Fulan had witnessed firsthand that he trusted people very little.

He was skilled at recognizing and employing talent, and had a great many capable ministers under him, yet he had not a single subordinate he truly regarded as a confidant — not even those who had served him from the beginning.

Within the inner palace, this was even more so.

He forbade Empress Qi from entering his bedchamber even one step, and was especially guarded about his food and drink. He was diligent in affairs of state and pored over memorials late into every night, yet a sword always lay across his desk. Beneath the pillow where he slept, a dagger was concealed. As for his consorts, once his summons to them was fulfilled, they were sent away at once — not one was permitted to stay and spend the night.

Nearly ten years, without a single exception.

Only Cao Jin was different.

In his daily life, Xie Changgeng not only ate food that had first been tasted by Cao Jin, but also permitted him to remain within the bedchamber and be on call at close quarters.

If there were not an old and established connection between them, how could a eunuch left over from the previous dynasty have ever earned such trust?

The carriage she sat in suddenly lurched, and slowly came to a stop.

Ahead, the faint sounds of attendants settling horses and carriages drifted back.

“Imperial Princess, we have arrived at Huguo Temple.”

The steward’s voice sounded from outside the carriage.

Mu Fulan lifted the warming curtain once more and glanced outside.

Directly ahead lay the foothills. Morning mist curled through the mountains. A broad and straight flight of stone steps, more than a zhang wide, led directly up the hillside and connected the temple’s mountain gate with the foot of the hill.

The morning sun had just risen, falling upon the magnificent gates of the temple complex. A group of monks was hurrying out from within the mountain gate to receive the Empress Dowager.