When Li Xuandu was attacking the Eastern Capital and the city was on the verge of falling, the desperate garrison troops descended to madness and took the city’s populace hostage, fighting to the last in a final, futile resistance.

Confronted with the men, women, elderly, and children of the city who had been driven onto the walls, weeping and begging for their lives, Li Xuandu ordered his troops to withdraw and temporarily lay siege without assaulting.

The stalemate persisted for half a month. Then, just a few days ago, Li Xuandu suddenly issued a new command: he ordered the troops to withdraw from the area around the Eastern Capital’s southern gate—withdraw completely, leaving not a single soldier or horse—keeping only the siege forces on the east, west, and north sides.

This order initially left everyone baffled.

Li Xuandu explained: the garrison troops inside the city had been reduced to using the populace as hostages, which showed they had exhausted all other options and had completely lost their nerve—they were just one final step from collapse. Opening one side of the siege: at first the soldiers would be suspicious, assuming a trap, and would not dare make a move easily. But given time, they would begin to entertain the notion of luck—thinking perhaps there was a chance to flee. Once one person took the lead, those around him would follow. At that point, no need to storm the walls or harm the civilians: the rebel forces would crumble from within, and the city would fall without being attacked.

His assessment was quickly proven correct.

No more than three days later, a disturbance broke out near the Eastern Capital’s south gate.

Seven or eight soldiers, unwilling to remain trapped any longer, secretly conspired with the guards watching the south gate, arranging to flee together under cover of night. When they began to open the gate, their commanding officer noticed. In the end one managed to escape; the rest were seized and beheaded on the spot to serve as a warning.

The one soldier who escaped came and threw himself on Li Xuandu’s mercy, kneeling at the camp gate and begging for shelter. Li Xuandu pardoned him of all wrongdoing, and Han Rongchang selected a squad of men with powerful voices. Taking the pardoned soldier along, they circled the gates of the Eastern Capital every morning and evening, calling out to those within. The soldiers inside had long since lost all desire to fight. Seeing that those who had fled over had been pardoned by the Prince of Qin, with the south gate standing unobstructed, morale naturally wavered further—and even executions could not stop the tide of desertion.

Within the span of just a few days, several more incidents of secret defection occurred. Though none were large in scale—the biggest single episode numbered only around a hundred men—all were swiftly suppressed and the participants executed. Yet the momentum not only did not diminish but continued unabated. Liu Guojiu was so frightened that he ordered his trusted men to garrison the south gate with troops day and night to stamp out the threat.

Inside the city the undercurrents ran deep; outside, in the main camp of the imperial forces, officers and soldiers were relaxed. Han Rongchang and the other generals were filled with even greater admiration for Li Xuandu, bowing to him in complete reverence.

At this rate, it would not be long before the Eastern Capital fell without a battle.

The situation was unfolding exactly as he had envisioned, and he had been engaged in the campaign within the passes for half a year. By rights, at this moment, Li Xuandu should have been able to relax along with his subordinates.

But he dared not let his guard down. Especially in recent days—the more turbulent the waves at the south gate, the more unsettled and ill at ease he felt, a nagging sense that something was wrong, though he could not for the moment identify what it was. Then, on this particular night, he received an urgent dispatch that Prince Duan had sent at eight-hundred-li speed from the capital.

The dispatch said: after Li Chengyu was taken prisoner that day, he had not been killed. A band of followers loyal to him had seized upon the confusion of Shen Yang’s retreat to rescue him and escort him to the imperial mausoleum. He was using the threat of burning the Hall of Eternal Repose to demand that the Princess Consort come to meet him. Prince Duan had been forced to send someone to He Xi to inform the Princess Consort, and at the same time had sent the news here.

Li Xuandu’s brow furrowed deeply, his gaze turning dark and cold. He stood motionless for a moment, and then the cloud that had been swirling through his mind—present but indistinct—suddenly dissolved.

He understood at last—what exactly was wrong.

Inside the Eastern Capital, the situation had deteriorated to this degree, with the garrison forces liable to fall into chaos at any moment. Yet Shen Yang, the man who truly held power in the Eastern Capital’s court, had been entirely still for days.

Each day, apart from the hostages piled on the walls and the guards posted thickly there, he had received no other intelligence about him.

Such stillness—a stillness bordering on resignation—was not like something Shen Yang would do.

And then there was Li Chengyu. Though he was incompetent, a man of his standing, having been made a prisoner—even if Shen Yang were in the midst of a retreat, given Shen Yang’s temperament, how was it possible that he would allow the man to be rescued?

Furthermore, the place where Li Chengyu had appeared to summon her for a meeting was the imperial mausoleum.

The deep mountains and ancient plains where the founding emperor had built the imperial mausoleum all those years ago—in the event of an emergency, they could also function as a military stronghold, with routes both in and out.

Put differently: the terrain there could be used to hold a defensive position with full use of natural advantages, or could be used to escape with those same advantages.

Li Xuandu stared fixedly at the letter in his hand, and in a flash—almost the speed of lightning—he connected these two things.

He understood.

It was Shen Yang’s manipulation.

It was Shen Yang who had lured her there. Li Chengyu was nothing but a puppet in Shen Yang’s hands.

Most likely… No. Li Xuandu was already certain: at this moment, Shen Yang was not inside the Eastern Capital at all.

He must be at the imperial mausoleum, hiding in some corner unknown to anyone, like a hunter who had laid a trap—waiting for the prey he wanted to walk into it.

Li Xuandu clenched his jaw, his eyes blazing with fury. He suppressed the anxiety and tension surging in his heart, ordered someone to summon Han Rongchang, swiftly handed over the affairs on this side to him, and set off immediately himself—riding light and fast, heading straight for the capital.

Night fell once more. The Hall of Eternal Repose resumed its customary solemnity and stillness.

The eternal lamps burning inside the hall had kept Pu Zhu company for two nights already.

This was the third night of her vigil—and the last.

With a heart full of boundless reverence, she knelt before the spirit tablet, quietly keeping the departed company in the candlelight, all the way until midnight, when Luo Bao entered and gently urged her to go and rest.

She bowed her head to the spirit tablet of the Jiang clan once more in a deep, solemn kowtow, then finally took Luo Bao’s hand, rose from the ground, and made her way slowly outside.

These past few days at the mausoleum, she had been lodging in the Wanshou Pavilion—the same old quarters where Prince of Qin Li Xuandu had spent three years keeping vigil all those years ago. After entering the pavilion, she did not immediately go to the back to rest, but stopped again in the front hall, knelling once more before the image of the Three Pure Ones, bowing her head in prayer.

The night grew ever deeper. Outside the Wanshou Pavilion, the ancient plain lay hushed and dark, all creation silent—but then a commotion suddenly arose.

Deep in the night, the sound carried with startling clarity.

It seemed as though the eternal lamps had been blown over by the wind, setting something alight. The nearby sentries saw a reddish glow flickering from inside the bright hall before the Taizong mausoleum—it had caught fire.

Across the ancient plain, the mountain wind threaded through the forest with a whistling shriek. Quickly, the fire grew fiercer on the wind. Just as everyone was rushing over to fight the flames and the surrounding area fell into confusion, a dark figure slipped out of the darkness like a specter—soundlessly avoiding the sentries outside the Wanshou Pavilion whose attention had been drawn by the fire—and stepped into the front hall.

The front hall’s windows were half open; gusts of night wind flowed in continuously. Shen Yang halted behind a green gauze curtain that swirled in the breeze. Shielded by the darkness, he looked toward the space ahead.

The great hall lay in emptiness. In the shrine before the Three Pure Ones two clear-burning lamps had been set; their flames, a bluish-gold, wavered uncertainly in the night wind, dim and indistinct—casting a faint outline of the figure kneeling on the prayer cushion.

She had not yet removed her earlier attire: still dressed in plain mourning garments, wearing a white mourning cap, her head bowed, palms pressed together, bowing toward the sacred image. Her silhouette was motionless—as though she were still deep in devout prayer.

Shen Yang stood silently for a moment, then stepped out from behind the gauze curtain.

He fixed his gaze on that figure and walked toward her, step by step, drawing ever closer—and she seemed lost in her own world, wholly unaware that there was anything to notice, oblivious to the danger stealing quietly toward her from behind. She went on bowing her head in prayer, still and unmoving.

Shen Yang finally came to stand directly behind her, no more than three feet between them. He only needed to reach out his hand and he could touch her.

He bowed his head, his gaze resting on the figure before him. And then, without warning, a strange feeling swept through his heart.

He could not have said what prompted it—but he never doubted his instincts, keen as a beast of prey, which had never once misread the scent of quarry.

This figure in the mourning cap was not her.

His pupils darkened abruptly.

In that very moment, the person who had been quietly bowing their head before the shrine turned around.

Not that beautiful face he knew at all.

It was the attendant who served at her side. He turned his face and showed his teeth in a grin.

Shen Yang instantly fell back a step, his fingers closing around the hilt of his sword. Before he could draw it, Luo Bao had already sprung up from the ground—his movement swift and agile—striding past the back of the shrine, calling out: “He’s here!”

Inside the great hall, the lamplight suddenly blazed bright. From the main doors at the front and from behind the shrine doors at the back, several dozen burly guards carrying torches poured rapidly in.

In the blink of an eye—swords flashing, axes gleaming, archers in formation—the guards had enclosed the uninvited intruder who had forced his way in at midnight, hemming him in from all sides.

Luo Bao let out a breath of relief. He reached up and tore off the mourning cap he had been wearing, and turned toward the back of the shrine.

“Princess Consort—it is indeed him, as expected!”

Shen Yang lifted his eyes and saw her emerge from a door behind the shrine—dark hair, plain white garments, her complexion pale as snow. Or perhaps it was the effect of the hard riding over the past days, followed by these several nights of keeping vigil in mourning without rest: her face bore traces of fatigue, and her lips had not a trace of color. But her eyes were unusually bright—like two dots of cold starlight in an ink-dark night, shooting directly toward him.

Shen Yang stood motionless. His figure, at first rigid, gradually eased as he met her gaze for a moment, and finally—gritting his teeth—he said in a hoarse voice: “So you were prepared all along. How did you know it was me?”

“Li Chengyu should never have appeared here—and he had previously fallen into your hands. To keep an extra measure of vigilance against you is never the wrong choice.”

“So you used the situation to your advantage and lured me in…”

He glanced around at the guards surrounding him in layer after layer, and the corner of his mouth twisted slightly into an expression of self-mockery. He also slowly loosened his grip on the sword hilt.

“So in the Princess Consort’s estimation, I warrant so many formidable soldiers.” He gave a nod and said.

Pu Zhu’s expression was grave: “Against you, I had no choice but to take precautions. During the last upheaval in He Xi, I had to avoid the men you sent to hunt me down and fell into a dangerous situation. Had my husband not arrived in time to save me, I would have lost my life then and there.”

She looked at him, her voice even colder.

“Shen Yang—a person should know how to value themselves. Only when you first value yourself will others value you in turn—and yet you are completely ignorant of this principle. You have made trouble for me time and again, and even now, having come to this pass, you still scheme against me. I cannot keep running from you, cannot keep hoping that my husband will arrive in time to rescue me again. This time, do not forget—you were the one who came after me first!”

Shen Yang was silent. After a moment, he said: “I have never truly intended to harm you—you should know that. The He Xi matter—I also heard what my people told me. Nearly causing you harm was indeed my fault, but it was not my intention…”

“Yes.” She cut him off.

“You never truly intended to harm me. You only wanted to use me against my husband—isn’t that right? Your Eastern Capital court is on the verge of collapse. Your dream of power is about to turn to dust. You are running out of roads, and so you have devised a scheme to force me here—to take me hostage and use me as a threat against my husband. Isn’t that right? You are very clever, and you know I could never sit by and allow the Hall of Eternal Repose to come to harm. But you are also far too confident—you think everything is within your control.”

She had no desire to speak further with him.

“Surrender.”

She finished speaking and turned to go inside. But then a voice came from behind her.

“And if I refuse? You will have me killed?”

Shen Yang said each word one by one.

Pu Zhu stopped and turned her head. She saw that his complexion had gone ashen, his gaze flickering.

She said: “Do you think I would not?”

He stared at her. The muscles along one side of his face suddenly twitched. His shoulders moved. He stepped forward, walking toward her.

“Shen Yang! How dare you! The Princess Consort has already shown you mercy! Take one step further, and you will be killed on the spot!”

Luo Bao grew tense and, glancing at the sword at his side, immediately rushed to stand before Pu Zhu, shielding her behind him.

Pu Zhu looked at the man across from her. Before her eyes suddenly rose the past life.

In that time, she had still been Li Chengyu’s Empress. At a palace banquet, this man had looked at her from across the feast.

Though so far away, she had seemed to feel the scorching, all-consuming intensity of those two gazes—as though they would swallow her whole.

Even at the very end—when this man who had once held the Li imperial dynasty in the palm of his hand had been routed from the capital—he had still not let her go.

She had died, and she had died at this man’s hands.

“Do not come any closer.”

She fixed her eyes on him and said each word with deliberate care.

He seemed not to hear. He continued, taking another step toward her.

A guard standing at her side did not hesitate for a moment. He immediately loosed an arrow at the dangerous man before him.

The arrow flew swift and true and buried itself in his shoulder.

His body jolted. A moment later, without even glancing at it, he raised his hand, gripped the shaft, and wrenched it free, tossing that arrow with its tip trailing a gory mess of torn flesh to the ground at his feet. His eyes remained fixed on her as he kept walking.

Two arrows fired in unison.

One into his chest. One into his abdomen.

Again he pulled out the arrows that had pierced his body by force.

The searing pain seemed to galvanize him. His face twisting to one side, his expression contorted, his eyes blazing with a taunting light—he continued walking toward her.

Blood poured from the wounds all over his body, quickly soaking through his robes and dripping onto the ground. In his wake, there trailed a crooked, staggering line of blood.

When yet two more arrows drove into his body, the force sent him lurching sideways. Pain twisted across his face; his body buckled and bent. But slowly—slowly—he fought to stand upright again. And not only that: he let out a roaring laugh: “Very well! I never imagined that I, Shen Yang, would die like this, at your hands in the end. To die beneath the flowers—a romantic way to go. Worth it!”

He wrenched the arrows out again by force, and kept walking forward.

The final, fatal arrow was finally loosed at him. As he was just about to reach her, it buried itself in his body.

He went rigid. His steps halted. He looked down and saw the arrow lodged deep in his chest, looked at it for a moment, then slowly raised his head and looked at her. His mouth opened slightly—as though he meant to say something—but in the end nothing came out. He fell backward, crashing heavily to the ground.

A tide of blood rapidly seeped out from where the arrow was buried in his chest, and soon spread across the floor—running along the cracks between the blue stone tiles of the Taoist hall, flowing slowly to her feet.

He lay without moving, and breathed his last.

The great hall was crowded with people. Yet at this moment, not a single sound could be heard.

Pu Zhu looked down at the man who had collapsed on the ground, covered in blood, lifeless. In this moment, she should by rights have let out a long, deep breath of relief.

But for reasons she could not name—perhaps because tonight his death had not been part of her plan, and because it had been too bloody and too brutal—it left her feeling unsettled. Even as she had done when she witnessed Li Chengyu’s death three days before, her heart stirred with an indistinct, faint sadness she could not explain.

She closed her eyes for a moment. She had no desire to look anymore. She turned to go.

Then suddenly, the man on the ground who had seemed so utterly dead came back to life—and lunged forward, reaching out and grabbing her ankle in a crushing grip.

He was clinging to a last breath that refused to scatter, and through gritted teeth demanded: “I showed you mercy many times over. Why—why do you hate me so?”

Luo Bao and the guards nearby had no time to react. By the time they came to their senses and were about to rush forward and pull her free, Pu Zhu had already steadied herself, thought for a moment, and waved her hand—ordering everyone to withdraw.

Luo Bao was reluctant at first. When he met the gaze she turned toward him, he had no choice but to comply.

The guards all retreated from the hall. Luo Bao himself did not leave, standing at the entrance, watching on guard.

Pu Zhu looked down and met those bloodshot eyes of his.

“You do not know—but I do. Right here in this place, I once died once before. Without regard for my wishes, you made me die at your hands. I owe you nothing. Now we are even.”

“Li Xuandu once said to me that power is a sword of supreme mastery: grip it in your hand and it can kill—but it can also turn upon its wielder.”

“A person must know reverence and restraint. You have ability—ability that is not inferior to Li Xuandu’s—but you will never be able to surpass him.”

“Because of one person’s desires, you plunged the realm into war and chaos. Your virtue was not equal to your station. What defeated you was your own boundless ambition and the unchecked lust for power that had lost all restraint.”

The blood draining from his body was carrying the vital force out of him rapidly.

The cold arrowheads had caused that heart of his—originally as powerful as a lion’s—to gradually slow its beating.

Shen Yang knew he was going to die.

Her words drifted into his ears. His consciousness grew slowly hazy. But the hand clasping her ankle remained clenched tight, refusing to let go.

A scene that seemed as though he had experienced it himself suddenly crashed into his mind.

He seemed to see her in magnificent robes and splendid adornments, standing amid a palace banquet—holding her own against the envoys of a Western Region kingdom that had been secretly colluding with the Eastern Di, envoys who harbored ill intentions. The young Empress was not only peerlessly beautiful—she was quick-witted and ingenious, dissolving the envoys’ scheme to humiliate the Li court’s emperor and officials.

He felt himself drawn to that woman—and from that moment on, he could never wipe her image from his mind.

The scene shifted.

He had killed her Emperor husband, held the realm in thrall, and she had become a deposed Empress—but she would not submit to him, and herself petitioned to go to the imperial mausoleum and reside in the Wanshou Pavilion. He had gone to seek her out many times, trying to make her change her mind—but she remained unmoved through it all, provoking his anger until he almost resorted to force, and she threatened to take her own life, showing not the slightest fear.

He had ultimately been unable to bring himself to let her die. Later, people he had sent to attend on her told him that she would often go and sit in the room where Prince of Qin Li Xuandu had lived as a young man, sitting from morning until night, sometimes sitting there an entire day without saying a single word.

At the time, he had not understood why she did this and had not dwelt on it.

Later still, before he had built up enough capable and loyal subordinates, Li Xuandu had led his army in from He Xi. The court shattered into fragments; however iron-fisted his methods, he could ultimately not save a losing situation. He withdrew from the capital, intending to use the terrain behind the imperial mausoleum to hold out for a time—and when he brought her along in his retreat, she struggled with all her strength. He lost his grip for a moment, and she fell from the horse, breaking her neck and dying right before his eyes…

A sharp pain suddenly shot through his chest, and the agony wrenched him back from the dream.

It was a dream—yet he felt it with perfect clarity, as something genuinely lived through, something that was his past, something that had truly happened. Only that before, he had not known it.

And in that moment, his heart suddenly understood something.

So it had been that early—even then, even in those days—she had already been in love with Li Xuandu.

So in the end, he had lost to him once again—exactly as he had now.

The fury and the unwillingness drained away from his body.

The crimson that had suffused the depths of his eyes also gradually faded.

He looked steadily at her.

This time—he had not, as she imagined, come here to use her as a threat against Li Xuandu, in hopes of turning defeat to victory in the war.

His war with Li Xuandu was already lost. He knew this perfectly well.

A cornered beast making its last stand—in his view, was equally pointless.

Rather than linger on in ignominy, better to die a blaze of defiance.

But there was still a small, stubborn ember of unwillingness in the depths of his heart.

He had wanted to fight a duel with Li Xuandu.

The sword in his hand had drunk of no one could say how many men’s blood throughout his life.

Let it be stained one final time.

Perhaps with Li Xuandu’s blood.

Or perhaps his own.

But she had not given him that chance.

So be it.

To die at her hands—he truly had no grievance.

As she had said—it was what he owed her…

The light in his eyes gradually scattered. Yet the hand clasping her ankle, all five fingers still bent like hooks, stubbornly refused to release her.

“You never truly loved me—neither in the past life, nor in this one. The reason you could not let go was that you had never possessed me.”

“That is all.”

She met his gaze steadily, and in a calm, unhurried voice spoke her final words to him. Then she reached down and, one finger at a time, pried open the hand that was wrapped so tightly around her own ankle.

After separating herself from him, she sat for a moment, then tried to rise from the ground—only to find that her hands and feet had gone soft, drained of the strength even to stand.

Luo Bao came running and helped her up off the floor.

She finally slept—a long, deep sleep. When she woke, she found the sun already at dusk; she had slept an entire day.

She went outside, standing on the steps before the Wanshou Pavilion, gazing at the ancient plain spread out before her, bathed in the light of the setting sun.

It was also this hour of dusk when Li Xuandu arrived at the imperial mausoleum.

He had encountered several ambushes along the way—clearly someone had been trying to obstruct his journey.

His heart urgent and anxious, when he finally arrived outside the mausoleum’s great gates at this moment and saw a contingent of guards, he went straight up to ask about her situation.

The guard captain recognized him. He quickly led his men in saluting Li Xuandu, and told him that the Princess Consort was safe and unharmed. He then went on to give a brief account of the events that had taken place at the mausoleum over the past few days.

Li Xuandu learned that she was safe and sound, and the heart that had been hanging high inside him finally eased somewhat.

He paused briefly, then turned and strode quickly inside. When he reached the Wanshou Pavilion, he was told that the Princess Consort had gone out—from the direction she had headed, it seemed she had gone toward that slope on the plain.

Li Xuandu ran to the foot of the slope and encountered Luo Bao, who was standing guard there. Luo Bao was both startled and overjoyed to see him appear suddenly, and hurried forward to pay his respects, calling out “Your Highness.” He said that the Princess Consort was just up ahead at the top.

Thinking of everything the Princess Consort had been through these past days, his eyes reddened involuntarily. Without waiting for Li Xuandu to ask, he went ahead and recounted in full, unhurried detail everything that had happened in these last days.

Li Xuandu closed his eyes, let out a long, slow breath, then opened them. He gazed out ahead at the slope on the plain and began climbing upward in long strides.

At this moment his heart held pride, gratitude, and lingering fear—pride and gratitude that she had managed to resolve such a dangerous crisis on her own, and fear at the thought of how she had once again been placed in such peril.

He walked faster and faster, the mountain track under his feet as level ground. Very quickly he had climbed to the place near the crest.

When he raised his eyes and looked up, he saw the setting sun spilling out in shafts of golden light through the evening glow, dark crows homing through the sky—and she, facing the sunset, sitting quietly at the side of the great stone at the crest of the slope.

Wind swept over the top of the slope. Her robes rippled and surged; her long hair whipped wildly—as though at any moment she might be borne away upon the wind.

He remembered that another year, another dusk just like this one—the sun sinking like molten gold, resting birds cawing—when he was still a young man with an aching, turbulent heart, he had climbed alone to the high plain and lain on his back on top of that rock, fallen into a deep sleep, and not woken until dawn.

Now, the scene before him was so familiar, and yet utterly different.

Between heaven and earth, on the crest of the slope, there was not only that sunset light and those homing crows—there was also her still figure, seemingly wrapped in infinite feeling and thought.

In this moment, something unseen struck his soul a heavy blow, and nearly sent his spirit soaring free of his body.

He could not go forward. He stopped and gazed fixedly at her silhouette, his thoughts adrift, touching the memories of his youth—yet not only those, far more than those.

In the unbroken sound of homing crows in his ears, something like memories in fragments—a glimpse of a scale, the edge of a claw—seemed to drift through his mind.

He reached for them—but in an instant they became empty air.

His heart beat faster. In the midst of this aching, tormenting sensation, the figure at the crest of the slope seemed to perceive something behind her. She hesitated for a moment, then slowly turned her head and looked back.

When her gaze settled on his face, in this moment it was as though heaven and earth froze, time ceased to flow.

Li Xuandu simply stood there—and their eyes met across the distance.

A moment later, she suddenly smiled, lifted her hand, and slowly reached it toward him. Her voice came softly: “You came?”

In that very instant—a door seemed to be pushed open.

Kaleidoscopic memories, like a tide, came surging toward him all at once.