Like a thunderclap shattering her senses, Shen Zhuxi froze where she sat, unable to move a muscle, her mouth and tongue clinging together without producing a single sound. Only her eyes, wide and struck through with terror, could not turn away from the shadow that had loomed over the first half of her life.

That shadow had briefly departed once. A radiant sun had driven it away — but now the shadow came sweeping back, and settled over her once more.

Her whole body went cold. She even felt those invisible strings climbing back up her limbs.

“Xi’er…”

Seeing that she did not speak for a long while, Fu Xuanmiao reached out his hand toward her shoulder. Fear surged inside Shen Zhuxi. Driven by sheer instinct under the force of that overwhelming pressure, she reacted before she could think, jerking away from Fu Xuanmiao’s thin right hand, ducked her head, her heart pounding like a drum, and bolted in a desperate dash toward the miasma-laden Sky-Swallowing Cave…

Before Shen Zhuxi had gone more than a few steps, her arm was seized and she was yanked back.

Fu Xuanmiao looked at her with an unreadable calm, but only Shen Zhuxi knew just how tightly — how forcefully — that hand gripped her arm.

“…Where does Your Highness intend to go? I have carriages, horses, and attendants with me. Wherever Your Highness wishes to go, I can arrange it.”

Shen Zhuxi summoned every bit of her courage and said in a thin voice:

“I want to go to the Thousand-Blade Pit…”

Fu Xuanmiao looked at her, his expression unreadable. A long moment passed before he spoke.

“Very well.”

Shen Zhuxi stared at him wide-eyed, unable to believe what she had heard.

“Men.”

At Fu Xuanmiao’s quiet command, soldiers poured out from the forest in dense ranks. They wore the standard iron armor of the Great Yan and held long blades or bows. Infantry emerged from the trees, and beyond them, a large body of cavalry remained within the forest, waiting in silence beneath swaying branches for the order to advance.

Not a moment before they appeared, Shen Zhuxi had not imagined that so many people could be concealed in that forest, and she had not sensed them at all!

So this was the Fu Family Army that struck terror into the hearts of their enemies?

A different kind of dread rose inside her — the dread of Princess of Yue, of the Lady of Xiangzhou, faced with a formidable and fearsome enemy.

Yan Hui walked with brisk, confident strides to stand before Fu Xuanmiao and dropped to one knee. “Yan Hui awaits your command.”

“Conscript every able-bodied man within five hundred li. They must arrive here within three days. Those who delay or evade the conscription… are to be executed as deserters without exception.”

“Why are you conscripting men?” Shen Zhuxi cried out in alarm.

“For the Princess.” Fu Xuanmiao looked at her and said, one word at a time, “Since the Princess wishes to reach the Thousand-Blade Pit yet has no path to do so, this subject will open a path for the Princess. Blast through the mountain, move the mountain — build a bridge, build a plank road — there is always a way to let the Princess have what she desires.”

“You must not!” Shen Zhuxi exclaimed.

“Why not?”

“What you are describing — all of it — would be a tremendous waste of resources and a burden on the people!”

Fu Xuanmiao regarded her in silence.

The weight of his meaningful gaze made the courage Shen Zhuxi had just gathered shrink back inside her.

Fu Xuanmiao said: “Is this not what the Princess wanted?”

It was like a direct blow to her face — Shen Zhuxi was struck dumb.

“Since the Princess no longer wishes to go to the Thousand-Blade Pit, please return to the carriage. The summer rain is harmful to one’s health. The carriage is stocked with hot tea, hot food, and bedding — quilts and all. Sleep for a few hours, and you will soon be home. His Majesty has long missed the Princess; seeing her again would surely bring him great happiness.” Fu Xuanmiao shifted his gaze away from Shen Zhuxi’s face, his voice dropping cold. “…Will no one please escort the Princess to the carriage?”

Yan Hui lowered the other knee and pressed both to the ground, his forehead striking the mud without the slightest hesitation. “Please, Your Highness, allow us to escort you!”

All around, soldiers knelt in the rain, one after another, bowing down:

“Please, Your Highness, allow us to escort you!”

The resounding chorus rolled through the mountain forest like an unstoppable tide, crashing against Shen Zhuxi from all sides.

In all of heaven and earth, it seemed as though only she and Fu Xuanmiao remained, facing one another.

Her face was deathly pale, like a leaf of duckweed adrift in wind and rain.

A countless number of soldiers from the Fu Family Army “escorted” her into Fu Xuanmiao’s lavishly appointed private carriage. Fu Xuanmiao sat across from her, composed and entirely at ease, and began chatting with her about the differences in customs between Jianzhou and the capital — reassuring her that the palace kitchen had imperial cooks brought from the capital, so there was no need to worry about unfamiliar food.

It was as though she were still the girl she had been two years ago in Cuiwei Palace. As though the two years in between had changed nothing at all. Not a word about why she had not returned to the palace, why she had appeared in Shouzhou, why she wanted to go to the Thousand-Blade Pit, or why she wore a married woman’s bun.

His effortless naturalness only made Shen Zhuxi feel as though she were sitting on a bed of needles, filled with dread and unease.

He must know everything.

He knew everything, yet acted as though he knew nothing.

Fu Xuanmiao was more deeply unsettling to her than he had ever been before.

The summer rain came and went quickly, beginning without a word, barely wetting the surface of an umbrella before the rain and clouds turned capricious and left again. Beyond the carriage window, the sky cleared. The sun, which had been buried behind clouds, glimmered at the end of the official road.

The nearly three thousand Zhenchuan soldiers Shen Zhuxi had brought with her — with both her and her deputy general now in Fu Xuanmiao’s hands — were left leaderless, and had no choice but to accept absorption into the forces of the second-rank senior official and Deputy Chief Minister, now making their way in full force toward Jianzhou.

“…What is the Princess thinking about?”

Fu Xuanmiao’s voice made Shen Zhuxi snap her gaze back from the window with a start. She stiffened and did not look at him, saying quietly, “Nothing…”

A moment of silence from beside her.

“The Princess has changed a great deal.”

With difficulty, Shen Zhuxi shifted her gaze toward him.

What she saw made her pause involuntarily.

Fu Xuanmiao was not holding himself in his usual rigid, carefully composed posture before her. He reclined naturally and unguardedly against the carriage wall, his deep, still eyes resting on her steadily, all emotion submerged in that dark, swirling depth.

“…I have changed?” Shen Zhuxi murmured, in a daze. “In appearance?”

“Not only in appearance.” Fu Xuanmiao said softly.

He said nothing more, and she did not ask further.

She could not sit still, no matter how she tried. Her hands tugged at her clothing without thinking. The Sky-Swallowing Cave was already far behind her; the Thousand-Blade Pit grew more distant with every passing moment. Was she simply to accept this fate and be carried away, helpless?

Her gaze drifted instinctively around the carriage interior, searching for something that could be used as a weapon.

But what good would a weapon do?

Even if she escaped the carriage, could she escape the snare that surrounded it? Surely she, a woman without the strength to bind a chicken, could not seize Fu Xuanmiao and fight her way through the encirclement?

Li Wu was still waiting for her at the bottom of the Thousand-Blade Pit. How could she simply give up and go back to living as a pampered princess?

Once night fell, the procession halted to make camp.

Shen Zhuxi shut herself in her tent and refused to come out. The food sent in by the servants was accepted, then set aside — she lifted the carpet and buried it in the dirt. When the night grew deep and still, and even the sound of birds had vanished entirely, she lifted the tent flap, confirmed no one was nearby, and crept quietly out of the tent.

She oriented herself briefly, then lifted her skirts and ran in the direction they had come from without a moment’s hesitation.

Aside from the occasional crackle of the torches standing before each tent, the camp beneath the night sky was utterly silent. Shen Zhuxi ran in the shadow of her own figure, not daring to look back, not daring to stop, sprinting without pause toward the camp’s main gate.

As she neared it, she discovered that the two watchtowers on either side were completely empty. At the vast gate itself, not a single person stood guard.

Shen Zhuxi felt that something was not right, but in that moment she did not want to give up this rare opportunity. After a brief hesitation, she continued running toward the gate.

Her racing footsteps came to a sudden stop when she caught sight of a tall figure standing beyond the gate.

The cold night wind found its way through every gap, flowing inward along her bones toward her heart.

Fu Xuanmiao stood quietly in the clear moonlight — tall and upright, brilliant as a jade tree. His dark, fathomless eyes looked at her without moving, showing neither shock, nor disappointment, nor anger. Not a trace of any emotion that a living person ought to feel. He concealed himself so completely — not a thread of warmth showed through.

“Where does the Princess intend to go?”

After a long silence, Fu Xuanmiao spoke.

His cold voice was colder still beneath the moonlight, making Shen Zhuxi feel as though she had been plunged into an icy pool.

She could not speak, but this did not prevent Fu Xuanmiao from speaking.

“Wherever the Princess wishes to go, Yan Hui will be glad to accompany you.”

He walked slowly toward Shen Zhuxi.

Shen Zhuxi could not help stepping back.

“When did the Princess grow so distant from me?” Fu Xuanmiao said softly.

Shen Zhuxi continued to retreat.

Until there was nowhere left to retreat.

She knocked over a torch and stumbled, a searing heat spreading across her arm. Sparks and ash scattered from the overturned torch, and one glinting red ember was about to land on her skirt when a hand closed around her wrist and drew her away with a gentle pull —

There was barely a hand’s breadth of distance between Shen Zhuxi and Fu Xuanmiao.

His dark, deep eyes filled her vision.

“Xi’er…” Fu Xuanmiao looked down at Shen Zhuxi’s terror-stricken face, his voice low and quiet, like a cold underground river flowing silently through the air. “Why are you afraid of me?”

Shen Zhuxi wanted to retreat further, but Fu Xuanmiao’s grip on her wrist was unyielding, and she could not move.

“…Why are you afraid of me?” Fu Xuanmiao leaned closer and asked again.

The stars dimmed. The proud, cold moon looked down from the deep blue vault of heaven over all the world below.

Shen Zhuxi moved her lips. Courage and fear waged war inside her body, tearing at each other — and at last, her courage overtook her fear, forcing from her throat words of resistance she had never spoken before.

“Let…”

“What did you say?”

Fu Xuanmiao had not caught her voice, barely above a mosquito’s hum. He leaned toward her again.

In that instant, both Shen Zhuxi’s fear and her courage converged on a single aim:

To escape from Fu Xuanmiao.

“I said — let go of me!”

Feeling overtook reason. Without thinking, she pulled the gold hairpin from her bun and drove it with full force toward the face that was drawing close enough to press against hers.

A sharp, tearing sound.

Silence blanketed the world.

Time seemed to stop flowing.

In that instant, Shen Zhuxi thrust the gold hairpin forward — yet even she had not imagined that the sharp point in her hand could pierce through Fu Xuanmiao’s clothes so easily and sink into his flesh and blood.

Red blood welled from around the hairpin’s tip, and in a brief moment soaked through Fu Xuanmiao’s shoulder. A rivulet of blood ran down the pin toward Shen Zhuxi, burning hot against her fingers.

She shuddered violently and instinctively looked at the wound she had inflicted on Fu Xuanmiao.

He stood straight and still in the moonlight, unmoved, unshifting. The depths of his gaze did not stir a single ripple — or perhaps they had, only with no one there to witness it. Blood continued to pour from his shoulder; even the hand with which Shen Zhuxi held the gold hairpin trembled — yet the one who had been stabbed and was now bleeding stood without moving.

“Why… why didn’t you dodge…” said Shen Zhuxi.

“If the sovereign commands a subject to die, the subject does not dare to refuse.”

Fu Xuanmiao reached out and wrapped his hand around hers — the hand that held the gold hairpin. Shen Zhuxi tried to pull the hairpin free and flee; instead, Fu Xuanmiao gripped her hand, hairpin and all, and held them both fast. With her hand clasped in his, and before Shen Zhuxi’s disbelieving eyes, he slowly pushed inward.

She could even feel the sensation of the gold hairpin breaking through flesh, pressing deeper. That strange, wrong feeling made her tremble all the more violently.

“If the Princess wants my life, she may take it herself.”

Fu Xuanmiao looked at her and said softly:

“My life has long belonged to the Princess.”

Before his voice had faded, Shen Zhuxi wrenched the gold hairpin free from inside him. A gush of blood immediately surged from Fu Xuanmiao’s shoulder.

Fu Xuanmiao, his expression unchanging, watched Shen Zhuxi as she stepped back several paces, hairpin in hand, and said:

“The one who is injured is me — so why does the Princess still look so frightened?”

“Was it you… who blasted apart the cliff?” Shen Zhuxi said, her voice hoarse.

“The cliff?” Fu Xuanmiao repeated the words softly.

“If it wasn’t you… then how would you have come to be in Shouzhou…”

Thinking of Li Wu, somewhere at the bottom of that cliff with no one knowing if he lived or died, courage steadily rose inside Shen Zhuxi’s body. She gripped the gold hairpin tightly and struggled to clear the mist trying to cloud her vision, staring at Fu Xuanmiao, not a blink, across the short distance between them.

“It was you who left Li Wu’s fate unknown…”

“It was you… who harmed my husband…”

After Shen Zhuxi’s voice fell, the moonlit night was silent for a long while.

Fu Xuanmiao only looked at her in silence across those few steps between them — yet it was as though he were watching her from a great distance.

Moonlight spilled between them like an uncrossable river of silver.

“Since the Princess harbors such suspicions —”

Fu Xuanmiao spoke.

He said, in a calm and measured tone:

“Why not let Bai Rongling come and explain to the Princess the full account of what happened.”