“What are you planning to do?”

Madam Bai, knowing full well that her husband operated by no predictable code of conduct, felt genuine worry for Shen Zhuxi.

But Bai Yugeng had no intention of elaborating.

“In a little while, write out a calling card. Use the pretext that you and Her Highness hit it off immediately when you met at the Shen household today, and invite her to come as a guest.”

“And what of Li Wu?”

Bai Yugeng’s brow furrowed. With some irritation he said, “If that Rongling boy were here, it would be useful — he’s no good at much else, but pestering people and making nuisances of himself he does rather well. He should have been put to work keeping that Li fellow occupied. But since we’ve left him behind in Xiangzhou… there’s nothing for it. Have Anji invite the Yangzhou gentry and hold a welcoming banquet for him tomorrow.”

“Anji handles things with care — it’s better to have him take point on this.” Madam Bai nodded. “…That said, Li Wu is still a military commissioner of one region. Don’t go too far.”

“I know, I know—” Bai Yugeng said impatiently, then paused. His expression shifted subtly, and the face he had been keeping deliberately composed let his gaze drift toward Madam Bai. “…What does Her Highness like?”

“What?” Madam Bai blinked.

“You spent half the day talking with Her Highness — surely you gathered some sense of her tastes and preferences?”

Madam Bai thought for a moment. “Her Highness’s clothes and adornments were not particularly lavish, and she is quite patient and gentle with her personal maid. She did not strike me as the spoiled and extravagant figure that the rumors had painted. Oh — she did admire the spring-grass embroidery pattern on my garment, and said it was novel and charming, unlike anything she had seen before.”

Novel and charming?

Nothing simpler than that.

Bai Yugeng clasped his hands behind his back and walked toward the door. Madam Bai called after him from behind, “Why are you asking all this?”

“Just asking on a whim,” Bai Yugeng said, his manner entirely offhand.

The moment he stepped out the door, however, he set off at a vigorous, energetic pace and made straight for the storehouses in the rear courtyard.

The manservant in charge of the storehouses had been slacking off and napping. When Bai Yugeng appeared without warning, the man was so startled that he tumbled right off his rattan chair. He did not even have time to wipe the drool from his lips before hastily bowing in greeting.

Bai Yugeng told him to get up, had the storehouse opened, and strode inside — into a room gleaming with gold and glowing with jade. His finger moved from point to point, indicating over a dozen locations in quick succession—

“This one, that one, this one too… move all of them to the front gate. When the old madam has someone deliver the calling card in a little while, send these along with it.”

The manservant took one look at the items being indicated — five-foot coral trees of pearls and precious stones — and his eyes nearly fell from his head. Old Master Bai, who at his own grandson’s coming-of-age ceremony had sent nothing more than a handwritten note reading “Eat more, say less,” had today swept his hand across the storeroom and indicated one rare treasure after another?!

To what family of noble guests was this calling card being sent?

The carriages laden with precious gifts drew up slowly before the Shen household gate. Manservants with exceedingly obliging expressions carefully transferred the items from the carriages, working together with the Shen household’s own servants to carry everything inside.

Li Wu strolled back to the Shen household from the Bai estate, hands clasped behind his back, taking a leisurely route to walk off his meal. The moment he stepped through the courtyard gate, a blaze of red light dazzled his eyes.

“Where did all this come from?” Li Wu’s eyes lit up. He walked briskly over to the coral tree and circled it once.

“These are gifts sent over by the Bai family, along with a calling card.” Shen Zhuxi stood holding the calling card, written in Madam Bai’s own hand. “An invitation for me to come calling tomorrow.”

“How convenient.” Li Wu rubbed his chin. “Grand Uncle is hosting a welcoming banquet for me tomorrow, and now this — the Bai family wants to divide and conquer us.”

“You’ve clearly been reading too much military strategy, because that idiom does not apply here,” Shen Zhuxi said. “It may simply be that since Grand Uncle’s banquet will be attended only by men, and it would not be appropriate for me to attend, Grandmother has invited me over to keep me company.”

“You just think too well of people.” Li Wu said without hesitation. “Your grandfather — he’s a devious one. Today he slaughtered at least ten ducks to receive me, and behind every corner of that Bai household lay an ambush. It’s only because I was quick-witted that I made it out in one piece.”

Shen Zhuxi was so amused she could not help but give him a light tap on the chest.

“How can you talk about Grandfather like that?”

“I’m just straightforward — I’m no good at saying false things.” Li Wu took her hand and put on a look of grave seriousness. “Being too honest, I’ve taken no end of losses over the years.”

“You, honest?” Shen Zhuxi laughed. “I’ve never met anyone less honest than you.”

“Then you’d better keep your eyes open when you visit the old man tomorrow,” Li Wu said, “and you won’t be disappointed.”

Shen Zhuxi found herself growing even more curious about this maternal grandfather she had met only once.

“All of this was sent over by the Bai family?” Li Wu scanned the array of treasures filling the courtyard — some edible, some practical, some purely decorative, their only common feature being rarity.

And rarity, as a rule, meant expense.

Take the coral tree before him, for instance. One reaching over two feet was already considered exceptional. The Bai family had casually produced a coral tree standing five feet tall, with purple gemstones set into its branches — so that at a glance, it looked as though the brilliant red treetops were blooming with clusters of water-purple flowers.

To say nothing of outside the palace: even looking at how Shen Zhuxi was already holding it and unable to bring herself to put it down, one could tell that such a treasure would have been a rarity even within the palace walls.

“The venue Grand Uncle has arranged for tomorrow’s banquet is the Spring Breeze Pavilion.” Li Wu said.

The Spring Breeze Pavilion?

Shen Zhuxi was about to ask what kind of establishment that was, but the answer already came to her from Li Wu’s expression and the suggestive name of the place.

Though it was common enough in the world for men to frequent establishments of that sort, Shen Zhuxi still felt a faint pinch of something.

She said nothing, intending to pretend she did not care.

“This time I won’t touch the food or drink.” Li Wu said. “I’ll eat my fill and go in fully prepared beforehand — I want to see whether it’s the demon that stands a foot taller, or the righteous man a yard higher!”

He squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I absolutely will not give those wild hens and wild ducks any opening to sully my honor!”

Shen Zhuxi was so thrown off by his unconventional pledge that she could not help but laugh, and the unease in her heart dissolved like smoke. She was just about to speak and express her trust in him when Li Wu added with meaningful weight:

“To guard against them sullying my honor — how about tonight, you sully it first?”

Shen Zhuxi’s face erupted in scarlet. She instinctively looked toward the nearby servants, and one after another, the manservants and maids averted their gazes — some finding the sky suddenly fascinating, others intensely interested in the ground, their innocent faces all but announcing:

“Please continue, we hear absolutely nothing.”

“…Stop saying nonsense in front of everyone.”

Shen Zhuxi replied in a voice barely louder than a mosquito’s hum, then directed the servants to bring the gifts sent by the Bai family inside and put them away.

Fortunately, she had anticipated something like this when setting out from Xiangzhou and had brought along a quantity of local specialties from the Zhenzhou region. Though their value was trifling compared to the treasures the Bai family had sent, they carried at least a sincere and wholehearted sentiment. She watched the servants pack them up and send them out as a return gift from the Shen household, then retired to the main room of the separate courtyard.

Li Wu lay sprawled on the bed with one leg crossed over the other, staring at the empty canopy above with a distant, preoccupied expression.

Shen Zhuxi sat at the dressing table, removing the comb from her hair and beginning to smooth the loose strands at her temples, when Li Wu suddenly said:

“Shen, you simpleton—”

“Mm?”

“I’m going to work hard to win the Bai family’s approval.” He said it slowly, each word deliberate and earnest. “And then — I want to give you a grand and proper wedding ceremony, with the Bai family as witness.”

Shen Zhuxi lowered her eyes. Beneath long lashes, a bright flush crept steadily across her cheeks.

“…All right,” she said softly.

A thousand li away in Jianzhou, the spring winds swept across the land — a season that should have been warm and full of blossoms. Yet a bamboo hermitage standing alone in the outskirts lay utterly silent.

A woman drenched in blood was shoved along by two sturdy guards through the bamboo grove, brought before a green-roofed pavilion, then struck from behind and forced to her knees.

Heavy shackles bound her slender hands. Those ten fingers, which had once been capable of playing the zither and painting with a brush, were now deformed — the protruding joints covered in dried, encrusted blood.

Yan Hui stood beside a zither table, unable to bring herself to look directly at this woman who had once been her colleague.

…If only she had known it would come to this.

When the Young Master had turned a blind eye to her transgressions, it was never out of any sentiment for their shared past — it was simply because she still had her uses to him.

Even a temporary use was not irreplaceable.

Perhaps there was someone in the Young Master’s heart who was irreplaceable. But evidently, that person was not Yang Liu.

After the guards delivered Yang Liu and withdrew without a sound, Yang Liu lifted her tear-blurred eyes and looked with anguish toward the figure in the pavilion — a figure who had not granted her so much as a stray glance.

A light breeze passed through. The bamboo leaves rustled softly. The bitter chill of a late spring cold snap spread through the heavy air.

“Young Master…” Yang Liu’s voice was hoarse and shattered, each syllable pressed out as though wrung from a cracked and splitting throat.

Her words broke the stillness of the bamboo grove. The figure in the pavilion gave the faintest frown.

The water had boiled.

The small brazier used for the tea began to make the sound of bubbling water. Yan Hui quietly glanced sideways. The person beside him showed no reaction, so she could only watch helplessly as the water continued to boil.

On the emerald zither table, crafted from green bamboo, rested a black-lacquered bronze zither. At the dragon-pool aperture beneath the soundboard, gilt seal-script carved the zither’s name: “Moonlight.” A lean and slender hand passed slowly across the zither’s surface, over the bright yellow tassel, and picked up the plectrum that lay beside it.

The wide sleeves of frost-white gauze spread across the bamboo mat, like remnants of cold left over from the last winter — translucent enough to reveal the pale pattern of the mat beneath.

“Yang Liu,” Fu Xuanmiao said, lifting his calm gaze to look quietly at the woman kneeling below. “I never wished for things to come to this.”

“Yang Liu was wrong…”

Tears spilled from Yang Liu’s eyes. Dragging the heavy ankle-shackles that had already worn her ankles raw and bloody, she shuffled forward on her knees two steps, leaving a trail of faint, scattered bloodstains across the stone path.

“Please forgive Yang Liu this once, Young Master. Yang Liu will never again act without authorization and displease the Young Master…”

“You truly know you were wrong?” Fu Xuanmiao said quietly.

“Absolutely and completely. Yang Liu will never dare again… From now on, whatever the Young Master bids Yang Liu do, Yang Liu will do. She will never again deceive and conceal the truth, or act without authorization!”

“In that case — can you retrieve something for me?”

Fu Xuanmiao slowly lifted the lid from the small brazier. White vapors billowed upward and gradually dispersed through the air.

“Whatever the Young Master wishes for, Yang Liu will go and retrieve it!” Yang Liu’s excitement distorted her voice — already hoarse, it cracked further still.

Fu Xuanmiao said: “My plectrum.”

Yang Liu froze.

The plectrum — that plectrum that Fu Xuanmiao held in his hand — she watched with her own eyes as it fell into the boiling water.

“Can you bring it to me?” Fu Xuanmiao said.

Yang Liu bit down on her teeth, staggered to her feet, and made her way to the pavilion, her bare feet leaving bloody prints with each step, one after another.

She looked at the boiling water in the pot. Then she looked at Fu Xuanmiao. Then she plunged her left hand into the scalding water.

The rolling sound of the boiling water grew suddenly louder. As Yang Liu’s left hand groped with effort through the pot, an indescribable scent of cooked flesh began to rise from within.

After a moment that was neither long nor short, Yang Liu withdrew the plectrum. Half her arm, which had been submerged in the boiling water, had turned a deep, mottled red. Her deathly pale face was drenched in great drops of sweat.

She sank to her knees. The plectrum slipped powerlessly from her left hand and fell to the ground.

“The… the plectrum… Yang Liu retrieved it…” she said in a trembling voice.

Fu Xuanmiao looked at her and said softly, “If you were willing to reach into boiling water to retrieve a plectrum for me, why were you unwilling to confess the full truth of what you have done?”

“Yang Liu has already told everything!” Yang Liu wept. “Yang Liu told it all!”

“No… There is still something you are hiding from me.”

Fu Xuanmiao looked into her eyes, utterly unmoved.

“What is it…” Fu Xuanmiao said, “that has driven you, even in your current state, to protect at all costs?” He paused. “I confess, it has made me rather curious.”

“Young Master, you must believe me…” Yang Liu sobbed without cease. “The wrongs I have committed — I have confessed them all. Yang Liu truly knows she was wrong, Young Master… Young Master… I beg you, for the sake of the ways Yang Liu has gone through fire and water for you in the past — believe me, just this once…”

“Your face…”

Fu Xuanmiao’s gaze settled on her face. The brief flash of something like regret that passed through his eyes filled Yang Liu with a cold dread that reached all the way to her bones.

“A pity,” he said.

Yang Liu screamed — because Yan Hui had stepped forward, seized her by the back of her hair, and was dragging her toward the boiling brazier.

The heat swept toward her face. The agony she had just experienced with her left hand began creeping upward. Her skin burned and ached even from the proximity alone. She had thought that days of brutal interrogation had already brought her to the very limits of pain and terror. She had not imagined that greater pain and greater terror still lay ahead.

“I’ll talk — I’ll talk!” Yang Liu broke completely, screaming through a torrent of tears and mucus.

Yan Hui’s hand stopped pressing down. She was able to struggle away from the scorching brazier.

Fu Xuanmiao said nothing. He simply waited in silence, his cold gaze fixed upon her, waiting for her confession.

Yang Liu knew that the moment she spoke these words, she would not survive them.

But she feared death less than she feared leaving behind, in his eyes, a final image that was ugly and grotesque.

She opened her mouth. A helpless, despairing sob spilled out.

“The Princess of Yue… is still alive…”