The consort of the Prince of Zong had no idea — Su Luoyun had not gone off to play with idle money at all!

Once all the postal roads leading to the capital had been cut off, the only way to learn what was happening there was to listen to the scattered, unverified rumors drifting in from travelers and merchants. But Luoyun knew of one man whose intelligence network would put even official channels to shame. Who in all the realm could have better reach than the God of Wealth, whose money houses stretched to every corner of the land?

And so, taking advantage of the moment her mother-in-law had gone to call on the wives of officials, Luoyun took a few attendants and rode by carriage into the city. She presented herself at the Maoxiang Money House, made her identity known, and left her calling card.

This time, the clerks did not put her off with excuses. One slipped inside to make inquiries, and after a brief interval, returned to invite the honored guest to take tea and wait a moment.

Before long, a richly appointed carriage drew up before the money house, and several beautiful maidservants stepped out to respectfully escort the Shizi’s consort aboard.

Luoyun understood at once that the carriage had been sent by You Shanyue. Her personal guard quietly cautioned her that it would be wisest not to board a carriage of unknown provenance. Luoyun smiled faintly and said in an easy tone: “Not just anyone can ride in the God of Wealth’s carriage. The capital may be in turmoil, but Liang Prefecture is still standing. Follow along behind us — that will be enough.”

With that, she led her two maidservants aboard without a trace of hesitation.

The carriage carried them all the way to Xianyin Mountain, the remote retreat where You Shanyue kept his private residence. The two adjoining peaks were ordinarily off-limits to villagers and travelers alike. When Luoyun alighted from the carriage, a palanquin with cushioned handles was already waiting to carry her up to a courtyard halfway up the mountain.

The buildings here were exquisitely constructed — rooftiles finely worked, eaves carved with delicate detail — so that the compound had all the grandeur of an imperial palace set among the peaks.

Although it was summer, the mountain air was cool and damp, and those prone to cold might have found it a touch chilly. Yet the moment Luoyun’s feet touched the flagstone courtyard, she felt a faint warmth rising from beneath the soles of her shoes.

The God of Wealth truly had money to spare. Not only the interior rooms, but even the courtyard had been fitted with underfloor heating channels — come winter, snow would melt the instant it touched the ground, the meltwater flowing away into the grooves cut on either side of the path. One could stand and admire the snow falling over the garden without ever wetting one’s shoes.

This You Shanyue had truly not come into the world for nothing. He had studied every last refinement that life could offer, and mastered them all.

Entering the building, they passed around a great floor-to-ceiling screen of carved sandalwood. Luoyun parted the layered gauze curtains, and there, ringed by several supremely beautiful maidservants, sat the God of Wealth himself — jade-mouthed water pipe in hand, drawing slow, gurgling puffs and exhaling leisurely curls of smoke.

The women around him were lovely enough, yet their faces were plastered with powder and rouge in a manner that struck one as somewhat vulgar. When Luoyun stepped forward — clad in a single pale, unadorned garment, her skin white as snow, her brows lightly traced — she outshone them effortlessly. Those eyes of hers alone, clear and shimmering like autumn light on water, surpassed all the ornate allure of painted faces.

You Shanyue, though advanced in years, retained a keen appreciation for beauty. He had met Su Luoyun before, but at that time her eye ailment had not yet fully healed. Now, with those luminous eyes awake and alive, it was as if a soul had been breathed into a jade carving — she was many times more arresting than before.

You Shanyue’s gaze brightened. He sat up a little straighter, gave a slight bow of greeting, and exhaled a thin stream of smoke before remarking with unconcealed appreciation: “The Shizi’s consort is truly the most beautiful woman this old man has ever had the pleasure of beholding. I hear your eye ailment has fully recovered — how very delightful, how very auspicious!”

Luoyun had long since learned that this God of Wealth, who moved through every shade of grey in the world’s dealings, had a habit of speaking with rather unrestrained frankness. She did not let it trouble her, and only smiled lightly, saying: “The old gentleman looks far more vigorous than when last we met.”

You Shanyue laughed heartily. He gestured for someone to offer her a seat, and said: “I accept your kind words gratefully. But may I ask — what brings the Shizi’s consort to seek me out so unexpectedly?”

Luoyun came directly to the point. “All the main postal roads have been cut, and though I have shop workers in the capital, they have all since fled the city. I have no way of knowing what is happening there. I thought that since You Xiansheng’s reach extends so far and his intelligence is so much more reliable than most, I would come and ask — has he any news from the capital?”

You Shanyue curled one corner of his mouth in a faint, sardonic smile. “Old Hu warned the Shizi long ago to enter the capital sooner rather than later. But he was too absorbed in those northern prefectures — gaining this county, losing that one — and could not bring himself to move. I hear he has finally set out. But I must speak plainly: going now, he may already be too late.”

It was evident that You Shanyue harbored genuine displeasure at Han Linfeng’s refusal to heed his advice, and his words carried a touch of mockery.

Luoyun gave a rueful smile. “I am only a woman of the inner household. I can manage accounts tolerably well, but the affairs of men — those things are entirely beyond my understanding. I only wish to know whether Lord Beizhen and the Shizi are safe. Of all the people beneath heaven who might possess such far-reaching knowledge, surely only you, Xiansheng, would be among them. I came today on a chance — I did not truly expect to learn anything. I only wonder whether you might have any word.”

A beauty’s smile, a beauty’s sorrow — both carry their own rare charm. Luoyun at this moment wore a face full of gentle worry, her fine brows lightly knit, that tender, affecting look that would soften the heart of even the most iron-natured person.

You Shanyue received her understated flattery with evident satisfaction. Inwardly gratified, and unable to resist a little proud display of his own remarkable capabilities, he said: “The consort flatters me too generously. However, it is true that this old man has channels somewhat more reliable than the postal service. I keep people dedicated to raising carrier pigeons in every county and township. These are prized birds, each one worth a hundred taels of silver, specially trained to fly higher, faster, and farther than ordinary birds. In ordinary times they are nothing but a drain on my purse — costly things to keep fed. But in extraordinary times, they earn their keep many times over. There is no postal road in all the realm more dependable than my pigeons.”

You Shanyue seemed quite proud of possessing capabilities that surpassed ordinary mortals, and showed no hesitation in displaying them before Su Luoyun.

Luoyun understood that what a man like him — one who had all but encompassed the wealth of the realm — truly wanted was the admiration of others. So she praised him lavishly, then asked once more whether he had any recent intelligence from the capital.

You Shanyue let out a crafty laugh, and with a meaningful look at Luoyun’s luminously clear face, said: “The Shizi is no small talent — that cannot be denied. The pity is that he spent all his energy reclaiming those northern territories. Had he possessed even a fraction of Qiu Zhen’s ambition, controlling the situation in the capital would have been a simple matter for him by now. According to the intelligence I have received, he does not yet appear to have reached the capital — and I suspect, frankly, that he will not reach it at all.”

Luoyun frowned. “But are there not merely a rabble of rebel commoners in the capital? What unpredictable danger could possibly stand in his way?”

You Shanyue took another slow draw on his water pipe and exhaled a lingering cloud of smoke before replying: “Word has it that the Prince of Dongping from Cai Prefecture was the first to enter the capital…”

In the early years of the Great Wei dynasty, there had been many princes enfeoffed throughout the realm. But after Emperor Xuanzong of Wei, Han Xu, had seized the throne from his nephew — perhaps fearing that others might follow his example — he began steadily curtailing the power of the feudal princes, restricting the size of the armies they were permitted to raise. Any prince who overstepped the boundaries was dealt with without mercy: demoted, stripped of his enfeoffment, and stripped of his title.

By the reign of the current Emperor Huizong, the feudal princes throughout the realm had grown largely powerless and ineffectual.

Yet the Prince of Dongping from Cai Prefecture was someone even Luoyun had heard of. Cai Prefecture was notorious for its bandits, and this prince had made his name precisely by suppressing them. It was said that he had once personally led his men in a single night’s campaign, sweeping through eighteen strongholds in succession — a feat of extraordinary valor.

In the years when displaced commoners had been rising up in rebellion across the Wei lands, princes who raised militia forces and helped the court suppress uprisings were given a degree of latitude even when their troop numbers slightly exceeded the permitted limits. The court tended to turn a blind eye. After all, there was no point removing a millstone before the grain had all been ground. If a feudal prince was willing to relieve the court of its burdens, His Majesty would, in extraordinary times, bend the rules somewhat.

Yet no one had imagined that the Prince of Dongping — enfeoffed in one of the most distant regions from the capital — would have arrived there so early. One could not help but suspect that someone had secretly sent word ahead, alerting him to move sooner.

At this thought, Luoyun allowed her expression to soften almost imperceptibly, and said in a tone of mild relief: “If a feudal prince has entered the capital, that is quite a good thing. As long as the turmoil there can be brought to order, the common people will have their peace sooner. When the Shizi learns of it, he and Lord Beizhen will likely turn back — and there will be much less trouble for everyone.”

You Shanyue laughed again, that same sly, knowing chuckle, his eyes resting on Luoyun’s smooth, unclouded face. He said, in a tone laden with implication: “The consort need not worry overmuch. I believe your greatest fortune still lies ahead. It is often said that beautiful women are fated to short lives — but I do not think that is necessarily so. The beauties who die young are the ones who are too single-minded in their devotions. Those who can adapt to circumstance, who know how to seek shelter in the shadow of powerful men — they will find boundless wealth and prosperity waiting for them. Forgive an old man for speaking bluntly, but — even should the Shizi meet with some misfortune in this affair, you need not be too troubled. Whatever happens, I will do my utmost to see you kept safe and settled somewhere fitting. If you should ever find yourself in need, come to me at any time. The mountain path to Xianyin will always be open to you.”

Luoyun appeared not to hear the brazenness hidden in You Shanyue’s words. She only offered a sorrowful smile and said: “I thank the old gentleman for his kind wishes. At present I only hope the Shizi and my father-in-law can return soon. The capital is in such chaos — I told him at the time not to go. Why not simply live out our days in peace here in Liang Prefecture? Getting mixed up in affairs like these never leads to anything good…”

You Shanyue listened to this consort’s wifely lament, and a faint smile crept across his wrinkled face — meaningful, and carrying just the slightest trace of condescension.

Women. Short-sighted creatures, every one of them. Even this sharp-minded young consort could not, it seemed, escape that common failing.

Still, a guest was a guest. You Shanyue was quite generous toward the Shizi’s consort. As she prepared to leave, he sent her off with several chests of jewels and ornaments, among them three full sets of fine red coral hair-pieces.

You Shanyue remarked that red coral was an auspicious stone that changed one’s fortunes. Worn on the person, it would bring peace and blessings.

On the return journey, Su Luoyun sat in her own carriage in silence, saying nothing.

Xiangcao could see that her young mistress was in low spirits and could think of no way to lift her mood. In hopes of offering a small distraction, Xiangcao opened one of the boxes You Shanyue had given them, thinking to let her mistress have a look and perhaps ease her heart a little.

But when Xiangcao lifted the lid and beheld the exquisitely worked contents, she could not help exclaiming: “That You Xiansheng gives such lavish gifts! Red coral of this quality is truly rare — you could search all the world and not easily find its equal!”

Luoyun cast a cold glance at those several chests of jewels, and said slowly, in a low voice: “His heart… deserves death.”

Xiangcao looked up at her in surprise.

She had been at her mistress’s side throughout, and had heard every word that passed between You Shanyue and her. Apart from the old gentleman’s remarks about her mistress’s beauty — which had carried the particular blunt indecorousness of old men who care little for propriety — nothing else he had said had struck Xiangcao as overtly offensive.

Luoyun closed her eyes briefly, and replayed in her mind the conversation she had just had with You Shanyue.

She had spent half the afternoon feigning ignorance in the halls of Xianyin Mountain — but she was not truly ignorant.

Now, Luoyun was profoundly grateful that the urgency of gathering intelligence had driven her up that mountain.

You Shanyue had said nothing explicit. But from childhood, Luoyun had grown up watching her stepmother’s every expression, learning to read the faces of smiling-tiger figures like her. She had become expert at parsing the unspoken.

In the way You Shanyue had treated her today, she had sensed a marked loosening of care, a certain careless dismissiveness — as though she were no longer quite worth the full measure of courtesy. It reminded her of the moment You Shanyue had decided to abandon Cao Sheng and redirect his wager onto Qiu Zhen, when the fate of a longtime associate had left him entirely cold and indifferent.

If Han Linfeng’s prospects were still sound, he would never have treated her like this.

And there was the matter of the Prince of Dongping’s celebrated exploits in suppressing bandits. Han Linfeng himself had once mentioned it. Those tales of sweeping through eighteen strongholds in a single night — they had the flavor of a storyteller’s embellishment. Considering that even someone as thick-waisted as Cao Pei’er could be painted by storytellers as willow-slender, the inflation involved in such legends was easy enough to imagine.

Tales of that nature were either the kind that grew in the retelling, or the kind that had been deliberately manufactured to build the myth of a warrior-god — cultivating popular support and martial reputation.

In a time when the court was steadily weakening its feudal princes, offering one’s forces to help suppress bandits on behalf of the authorities was the most natural pretext in the world for building up an army.

The Prince of Dongping had likely been doing precisely that for a very long time.

Yet raising troops was extraordinarily expensive, and Cai Prefecture was no prosperous land. Could he have been another dark horse in whom You Shanyue had staked a secret wager?

That old gambler. With his mastery of the gambler’s art, he would never stake everything on a single bet. Had he not, that earlier time, openly supported Qiu Zhen while secretly hedging on Han Linfeng?

But Han Linfeng’s Iron Mask Army had always been dedicated to recovering the twenty northern prefectures — clearly not aligned with You Shanyue’s desire to stake his fortune on reshaping the imperial order.

The Prince of Dongping had entered the capital first, likely on the strength of a secret message from You Shanyue, and had hastened there in response.

And when she thought back over the suddenly erupting, unstoppable turmoil in the capital — it all had the feel of something deliberately engineered, guided by an unseen hand…

The more Su Luoyun traced these threads to their depths, the more a cold chill crept through her.

This You Shanyue was nothing at all like that merchant Lü Buwei, who gambled on a single extraordinary prize. He was something far more dangerous: a man who actively courted chaos, stirring the capital’s unrest with ever greater abandon, as though he would not be satisfied until the Great Wei dynasty had been entirely consumed and extinguished.

And since he was operating from a thousand li away, whoever he chose to work through would need to be a pliable and obedient instrument. Han Linfeng was not pliable enough. The Prince of Dongping, who had entered the capital first and done so early, clearly suited the gold-lord’s designs far better.

Luoyun currently held interests in the shipping trade, and through those older hands of the rivers and lakes, had gathered a fair number of rumors about this God of Wealth. He had, it seemed, long since severed himself from the pleasures of women, and so beyond one sickly son, had produced no other heirs. Yet despite his own celibacy in that regard, You Shanyue kept a collection of incomparably beautiful women about him.

Some young and beautiful widows from distinguished families, fallen into straitened circumstances, had even sought refuge with him — and found themselves once again clothed in silk, welcomed into the social circles of the powerful elite, living lives of comfort and decorum. Then, in time, at You Shanyue’s arrangement, these celebrated beauties had each been dispatched to the beds and inner chambers of various men of power and influence, becoming useful instruments for cultivating his network of connections.

The remarks You Shanyue had made earlier — about how a beauty must know how to read the times — had sounded, on the surface, like the rambling admonishments of an old man. But Luoyun had felt her skin prickle as she heard them.

You Shanyue had been looking at her the way one appraises a piece of merchandise — as if in his mind he had already taken full liberty to arrange where this widow-to-be would be placed. Han Linfeng, it was clear, he had written off as already dead.

Once Han Linfeng fell from power, the women of the Beizhen Wang household would likely be sorted through by this God of Wealth with practiced precision, and dispatched as gifts to the various princes…

This could only mean one thing: in the turmoil engulfing the capital, Han Linfeng did not currently have the upper hand. The Prince of Dongping, as a half-brother of Emperor Huizong himself, had decidedly better odds.

Should the Prince of Dongping ascend to the throne, he would inevitably move to eliminate every obstacle in his path — and Han Linfeng’s Iron Mask Army would naturally become a thorn in his eye.

With that realization, Luoyun looked again at those chests of lustrous, rounded jewels — and felt as if she were looking at a pile of rotten, stinking fish and shrimp. They turned her stomach.

In that moment, she wished she could fly to Han Linfeng’s side. If only she had not listened to his dissuasion at the time — if only she had gone with him to the capital. At least then she would not have been left here in the borderland of Liang Prefecture, blind to everything, her heart gnawed with worry and longing.

But since she had remained in Liang Prefecture, she had to do her utmost to help him in whatever way she could.

After returning home, Su Luoyun sought out Old Cui, the cook, and asked him directly: “I heard the Shizi mention that you were once a hunter — that catching birds is your particular skill?”

Old Cui nodded. “Not just me — my son has an even steadier aim. Tell me what game you want, Shizi’s Consort, and I’ll send him up the mountain to bring it down for you.”

Luoyun nodded as well. “At this time of year, game birds are the most nourishing. I need you and your son to help me bring down a few… particularly important birds. Pigeons, to be precise.”

You Shanyue’s proudest avenue of intelligence — all those messages — traveled by his prized carrier pigeons. With the postal roads now blocked, those pigeons of his must be working at a furious pace. When releasing a pigeon bearing a message, it was standard practice to release five or six at a time, to guard against loss mid-flight. If she could capture even a few of them, there might be intelligence to be gleaned.

You Shanyue’s retreat was Xianyin Mountain. There would certainly be a pigeon relay station somewhere on that mountain. Luoyun intended to send Old Cui and his son to try their luck — to see whether they might bring some fresh additions to the household’s table.

Old Cui heard her instructions, nodded at once, and set off with his lean, wiry son — bows on their backs, a large bamboo basket in hand.

Luoyun knew those pigeons would not be easy prey. The slopes around Xianyin Mountain were thick with the covert guards You Shanyue maintained, and to bring down well-trained carrier pigeons while evading their notice would be no small feat.

But Old Cui and his son were no ordinary men.

It had been his son — that slight, sinewy young man — who had disguised himself as a prisoner to infiltrate the jail in the capital, used his bone-shrinking technique to pass through the iron bars, and had silently strangled the traitor to prevent him from talking.

Though the slopes of Xianyin Mountain swarmed with hidden guards, after a careful change of disguise, father and son made their way halfway up the mountain, climbed into the trees, and became — for all appearances — a pair of human trees.

After keeping that vigil for a full day and night, the two of them came back, each carrying two pigeons.

These were no ordinary pigeons. White-winged, broad-chested, somewhat smaller in body than common birds — at a glance, one could tell they were built for flight.

Tiny bamboo cylinders had been bound to each pigeon’s leg. When Luoyun opened them and looked inside, she found herself momentarily at a loss. The slips of paper bore not a message but a string of numbers — resembling pages of an account ledger.

Old Cui took one look and understood immediately. “This is the method commonly used in the military to encode intelligence. The numbers refer to page numbers and character positions in a text. Without an agreed-upon source text as the key, these slips of paper are completely useless.”

When using pigeons to carry messages, one always feared the pigeon might fall along the route and the message be intercepted. So encoding of this kind was standard practice.

But what source text had You Shanyue used for the cipher? Where in the world could one even begin to guess?

Evidently these paper slips would indeed become useless waste. Yet Luoyun refused to give up. She pulled out several commonly available copies of the Four Books and Five Classics from the bookshelf and tried matching characters against the numbers — to no avail. She paced back and forth, turning her mind to You Shanyue himself, trying to think through the man.

He was a man with a deep streak of jianghu pride in his bones, and in everything he did, he was very much his own person. When Luoyun had been aboard the boat with Han Linfeng, sharing drinks with You Shanyue, she had gathered from his manner of speaking that he had little taste for books. Yet the decorative bookshelf on that boat had held a prominently displayed set of more than a dozen volumes of poetry.

Han Linfeng had asked about them at the time. You Shanyue had said they were poems his sickly son had written in his idle hours to lift his spirits during illness. You Shanyue had engaged people specially to compile his son’s verses, commission a preface from a renowned scholar of the age, and have them typeset and printed.

The collection had been sold for a time, but the son had once said he did not like his poetry falling into the hands of ordinary people. And so You Shanyue had bought back all the copies in circulation. In his leisure moments, he loved nothing better than to leaf through his son’s poetry collection.

At this thought, a sudden flash of inspiration struck Luoyun. She cast her mind back over what she remembered, wrote down the name of that poetry collection, and decided to try her luck at the bookseller’s — on the chance that You Shanyue might have used his beloved son’s collection as the cipher key.

Unfortunately, just as You Shanyue had said — that collection had long since been purchased out of circulation by the wealthy patron himself, and had not been reprinted since.

As Luoyun was walking out of the bookshop, her heart heavy with care, she nearly walked straight into her young brother-in-law Han Xiao.

Han Xiao, seeing his sister-in-law at the bookshop, casually asked what book she was looking for.

Luoyun gave a rueful smile and was about to deflect the question — when the clerk behind her had a sudden flash of recollection and said: “Ah! The young master of your household used to subscribe to poetry collections before he left for school in Hui City. It was our custom to send him a copy whenever a new one came in… now that I think of it, Young Master, did you not once purchase a copy of the Jianyue Poetry Collection?”

Han Xiao frowned, turning it over in his mind, and allowed that he had a vague recollection of the thing.

Though the whole collection had struck him as contrived and overwrought — the kind of mournful verse that made one’s heart feel leaden just to read. He had felt so aggrieved after finishing it that he was convinced that if verse of that caliber could be printed and sold, he himself could have filled eight or nine volumes with ease.

And afterward, he had indeed pestered his mother until she had financed the printing of his own collection — a hundred-odd copies, distributed among family and close acquaintances — which had satisfied him considerably.

Luoyun could barely contain her delight. She grabbed her brother-in-law’s sleeve and told him to hurry home at once and find that poetry collection for her.

Han Xiao had never imagined that his vulgar sister-in-law had such a profound passion for poetry. After producing the dust-covered volume, he even solemnly pressed his own collection into her hands for her refined appreciation.

He had no idea that his vulgar sister-in-law intended to use the poetry collection to crack an encoded cipher.

As it turned out, the test succeeded without surprise — You Shanyue had indeed used his beloved son’s poetry collection as the cipher key. Who but Luoyun, with her sudden inspired guess, could ever have arrived at a solution as oblique as using an out-of-print, obscure poetry collection by one’s own son?

The encoded messages on those slips of paper all proved to be the latest intelligence reported from the capital.

According to the messages, the Prince of Dongping had allied with the three most powerful among the feudal princes, and together they were marching on the detached palace where Empress Wang had taken temporary refuge. Though the palace was guarded by the forces of the Wang family from Changxi, they would not be able to hold out for long.

As for the Shizi of Beizhen, he had not appeared anywhere near the capital. It seemed his march had been obstructed and he had not been able to arrive in time. His prospects for this contest looked bleak, for the Prince of Dongping had already seized the initiative. If the prince successfully united the three feudal lords, Han Linfeng — arriving late — would be at a grave disadvantage.

Reading this, Luoyun felt her heart clench sharply. At the pace Han Linfeng normally traveled, he ought to have reached the capital long since. Yet these coded dispatches said he had still not arrived. What on earth had happened to him along the way?