A small failure had become the final straw that broke Shen Zhuxi’s confidence.

She could not understand it — how could something as simple as lighting a fire be something she could ruin?

She had no talent for needlework, and her hands had been pricked red and swollen by embroidery needles. In order to earn her needlework teacher’s approval, she had practiced in anxious, painstaking effort through an entire night — and the very next day, Fu Xuanmiao had entered the palace.

He had taken away her half-finished embroidery and left behind a palace maid whose needlework skills were flawless. He had said there was no need to force herself — he would handle everything.

The Princess of Yue was said to be virtuous in character and bearing, well-read in the Four Books and Five Classics, accomplished in the four arts, and no lesser than others in needlework — held up as a paragon of womanly refinement by every distinguished household.

She was Shen Zhuxi — sometimes the Princess of Yue, and at other times, she felt she was not.

Her needlework was clumsy. She had only ever glanced through the Four Books and Five Classics, and the great principles within them had failed to stir even a ripple in her heart. She did not enjoy the four arts, yet in the palace, the four arts were the only way to pass the time. If she ever neglected her practice, Fu Xuanmiao would invariably appear before long. He would not reproach her — yet the very act of saying nothing, simply commanding someone to bring out the strings so that they could play music together, placed even more pressure on her than any scolding would have.

That flawless, perfect Princess of Yue was far removed from her — so far that whenever she overheard rumors from outside, she found herself feeling almost absurd.

Was that truly her?

Shen Zhuxi gave a silent answer: no. Even if the Princess of Yue had been a fabrication, that fabrication was still a thousand, a hundred times better than the clumsy, weeping, good-for-nothing person she was now.

She was worth less than a lie.

Large, heavy teardrops fell from her eyes. Not wishing to show such a sorry state before Li Wu, she tried desperately to wipe them away with the back of her hand — but the more she wiped, the more the tears came.

“…Enough.”

Li Wu reached across the table and took hold of her hand, his expression one of helpless exasperation.

“Your hands are still dirty, and you’re smearing them across your face. Do you know what you look like right now?”

Shen Zhuxi hiccupped through her sobs and said nothing.

She could not bring herself to care what she looked like — what she wanted to know right now was what she could do to make up for having nearly burned down Li Wu’s house.

Li Wu released her hand, rose, and left for a short while. When he returned, his arms were full of things. He set a wooden box on the table, then turned her face toward him and used a damp cloth to carefully wipe her ash-smeared cheeks.

It was still the same Li Wu — yet the gentleness of his hands was unlike the Li Wu she knew from ordinary days.

He wiped her face, then brushed the stray hair away from it, before picking up her hand and wiping away the grime meticulously — not missing a single gap between her fingers.

Shen Zhuxi watched, and watching, her tears fell again.

A warm teardrop landed on Li Wu’s hand. He looked up, his eyes heavy with resignation.

“Why are you crying again?”

“I don’t deserve you being this good to me,” Shen Zhuxi said.

“Whether you deserve it or not — I’m the one who decides that,” Li Wu said. He raised his hand and used his fingers to wipe the tear from beneath her eye, then said, “The fire’s out. What are you still crying for?”

“What about the things that burned?” Shen Zhuxi pressed her lips together, her tear-bright eyes looking very much on the verge of a second flood. “You count it all up, and I’ll repay you later.”

“Repay what? What’s mine isn’t also yours?” Li Wu said. “It burned — there was nothing worth much anyway, and I’ve been wanting to renovate the kitchen for a while now but couldn’t find a reason to. It burning is a blessing!”

His final, emphatic words made Shen Zhuxi laugh through her tears.

“Stop trying to comfort me,” she said — though her tears had already stopped.

“I’m comforting myself,” Li Wu said. “Things are dead; people are alive. As long as a person is still breathing, what obstacle can’t be overcome? Even if you burned the whole house down, as long as this man is still standing, we can rebuild from nothing — what’s there to make a fuss about? Stop your sniffling — except for when this man dies, nothing else in this world is worth your tears.”

Shen Zhuxi’s heart gave a startled thud, and she blurted out urgently: “Stop talking nonsense! What ‘dying’ — don’t say things like that!”

“Fine. I won’t say it. And you stop crying.”

Li Wu crouched down in front of her, lifted her legs so they faced him, and gently raised her skirt.

“What are you doing?” Shen Zhuxi panicked and quickly pressed her skirt down.

“Looking at your injury.”

Li Wu moved her hands aside, set the hem of the skirt across her lap, and beneath it, the lining of her trousers showed a palm-sized blood stain at the knee. Li Wu regarded the stain in silence for a moment, then slowly rolled up her trouser leg.

A foot-wrap appeared, slightly dusted with ash, and above it, a calf far more white and smooth than the foot-wrap itself — the owner of which, embarrassed, tried to pull back. Li Wu, through the foot-wrap, closed his grip firmly around her ankle.

“Don’t move,” he said, his expression stern.

The timid, uneasy calf went still.

Li Wu continued rolling the fabric upward. The closer he drew to the blood-stained area near the knee, the more careful his movements became. At last the trouser leg was rolled up to the knee, revealing a swollen, scraped-open wound of considerable size.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Li Wu’s expression darkened.

Shen Zhuxi could not find the words. The house had nearly burned down — she had only scraped her knee. What right did she have to mention it?

Li Wu placed the clean side of the damp cloth against her knee, and at close range, told her with a stern expression: “Bear with it.”

Shen Zhuxi reflexively tightened her grip on the armrests of the chair.

The cleaning that followed was gentler than she had imagined. Li Wu furrowed his brow deeply and dabbed at her wound with careful, tentative touches, one small area at a time.

Every involuntary flinch she made was met with an even lighter touch.

“How did you notice?” she murmured.

“With that big a patch of ash on your knee, it’d be hard not to,” Li Wu said flatly.

He wiped the blood clean from her knee, then took a length of bandaging from the wooden box and bound it firmly into place.

Li Wu moved with practiced ease — clearly a seasoned hand at dressing wounds.

Shen Zhuxi asked, “Do you get injured often?”

“Wandering the rivers and lakes, who doesn’t take a blade now and then,” Li Wu said, glossing over the question. “As long as a person’s still alive, that’s all that matters.”

He finished tying the bandage and looked up into Shen Zhuxi’s eyes, saying:

“No matter what happens, as long as a person is still alive, they can start over. The next time you’re in danger, don’t think — just run for your life. Understood?”

Shen Zhuxi felt deeply indebted to him at this moment, so naturally she agreed to whatever he said.

She gave a small nod. “…Understood.”

Li Wu put the remaining bandaging back into the wooden box. He had just picked up the box and stood when Shen Zhuxi suddenly said:

“Why are you so good to me?”

Li Wu said, without even a moment’s pause:

“Because this man is a great philanthropist.”

Shen Zhuxi looked puzzled. “If it had been someone else who had entered into this fake marriage with you, would you be this good to her too?”

Li Wu had already reached the doorway of the main room. He turned at her words and gave her an odd look.

“This man is no Buddha of Infinite Compassion.”

He stepped out of the main room and walked away, leaving Shen Zhuxi alone with a bewildered furrow in her brow.

Not a Buddha of Infinite Compassion? What did that mean?

Shen Zhuxi looked down at her knee, astonished that a man could be so attentive — and that once the bandaging was done, he had even taken care to restore her skirt to its original position.

Shen Zhuxi’s feelings were rather complicated: no one had ever treated her this well before, yet she had nearly burned this person’s house down.

Her gaze drifted back to the table without meaning to, and she suddenly froze.

Where was her boiled egg?

In the blackened, scorched kitchen, Li Wu sat on a small stool supervising the cleanup, legs crossed with ease, turning a single egg over contentedly in his hands.

Li Que, crouching and scraping away the charred remains beside the stove, couldn’t help saying: “Big Brother, what’s so special about that egg? You’ve been staring at it forever.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Li Wu said with affected profundity.

“Then who would?”

“Only me.”

Li Que couldn’t bring himself to tell him that his expression had already given everything away, and changed the subject instead. “Big Brother, what are you planning to do about the kitchen? Renovate it?”

“Tear it down and rebuild from scratch,” Li Wu said. “This man has money.”

“A lamb fattens best when you raise it right — Big Brother was right after all. Old Master Chen was generous this time — three hundred taels in one go.” After confirming that the silver in the earthen jar was safe and intact, Li Que knocked the charred pieces nearby into an earthenware basin. “Big Brother, I heard that the Great Yan court recently issued a summons calling local armies to converge on the capital. How come I haven’t heard even a stir about it?”

“Everyone’s waiting to fish in troubled waters. What stir would there be?” Li Wu’s expression grew serious, and he carefully tucked the boiled egg into the breast of his robe.

“The first rafter to stick out rots the fastest — these men of the literati class are shrewder than they look,” Li Que said with a sardonic smile. “No one wants to be the first declared rebel to carve out their own territory, but no one truly wants to prop up Great Yan’s throne either, rotten as it is to the core.”

Li Wu said, “This is only just beginning. For things to truly descend into chaos, there’s still some time yet.”

“I don’t want time — I want meat,” Li Kun said, jabbing halfheartedly at the charred debris on the ground, muttering: “Gone, it’s all gone, the roast chicken burned… Diao’er wants Piggy-piggy to make it up to him.”

Li Wu kicked him in the backside. “You dare.”

Li Que said, “Silly big brother, if you win your sister-in-law’s heart, forget one roast chicken — even a whole roast pig, Big Brother will make sure you’re fed until you’re full every single day.”

“Really?” Li Kun’s eyes lit up. “If I give Piggy-piggy flowers, will she be happy?”

“You dare!” Li Wu leveled a furious glare at him and sent another kick flying.

Li Kun took a light tap on the backside and shuffled mournfully to one side.

He cut a sideways glance at Li Que and said with a deeply aggrieved air: “…Liar.”

Li Que shook his head. “This time you really can’t blame me.” He raised his head, looked past Li Wu’s shoulder, and said suddenly: “Sister-in-law!”

“Are you playing tricks on me too now?” Li Wu said.

“How would I dare play tricks on Big Brother? Sister-in-law really is here —” Li Que stood up and spoke to someone behind Li Wu: “Sister-in-law, why have you come here? Leave the cleaning to Second Brother and me —”

Shen Zhuxi stood in the doorway, her expression hesitant, and said quietly, “I want to help. I can do anything…”

“Well then…” Li Que looked toward Li Wu.

“Fine.” Li Wu stood up from the small stool and pressed Shen Zhuxi down onto it. “Keep watch over the work for me. I’m going to get something to eat.”

Before Shen Zhuxi could say a word, he had already fished the egg out from his breast pocket and was heading out to stand beneath the sweet osmanthus tree in the courtyard.

Shen Zhuxi watched as he tapped the egg against the osmanthus tree, then peeled it right there on the spot, tossing all the shells beneath the tree as he went. Once the egg was peeled, he stomped on the shells a few times where they had fallen, pressing them firmly into the earth.

“Is that the egg Sister-in-law boiled for Big Brother?” Li Que’s question drew Shen Zhuxi’s gaze away.

Li Que had asked the question, yet his eyes held no puzzlement — only a knowing, quiet smile.

“It is…” Shen Zhuxi said, embarrassed. “I only wanted to boil water for an egg, and instead I set the house on fire.”

She paused, her expression full of remorse. “Li Wu must be very angry with me.”

“Sister-in-law is mistaken,” Li Que said with a smile.

“Mistaken?”

Li Que looked toward Li Wu, crouching in the courtyard eating his egg.

He was eating a plain hard-boiled egg — yet his face wore the expression of someone feasting at an imperial banquet.

“This is the first time anyone has ever boiled an egg for Big Brother,” Li Que said, turning back to Shen Zhuxi with a smile. “He’s happy on the inside. To Big Brother, the fire doesn’t matter — it’s the reason for the fire that matters.”

“…Li Wu’s wife truly has reason to feel fortunate,” Shen Zhuxi couldn’t help but sigh.

Li Que looked at her oddly. “Big Brother’s wife — isn’t that you, Sister-in-law?”

Shen Zhuxi laughed awkwardly and said, “Even I envy myself…”

Li Que took this at face value and laughed warmly.

“If Sister-in-law can feel that way, that’s better than anything.”