Inside the Empress Dowager’s Fushou Palace, Gu Yanxi completed his bow and called out, “Grandmother.”

The Empress Dowager beckoned him to sit closer. She had long grown accustomed to this face of her grandson’s. “I hear you went to pay your respects at the Hua family and were reprimanded by your imperial uncle as a result.”

“I hadn’t expected word to reach you here. Please don’t worry — it was not as serious as it sounds. I have had no dealings with the Hua family ordinarily, so going there to offer condolences out of the blue naturally prompted His Majesty to ask a few curious questions.”

“Your grandmother is curious as well. Tell me too.”

Gu Yanxi lowered his gaze. “If I tell you, you will be sad again.”

“Never mind that. I am no stranger to sadness.”

A brief silence, then Gu Yanxi said: “Years ago, when I escaped from the Prince’s Manor covered in blood, anyone who saw me kept their distance. Had it not been for Old Master Hua happening to pass by and taking me into his carriage to bring me to a physician’s clinic, you might not have been able to see me again.”

Gu Yanxi spoke with quiet composure. The Empress Dowager very nearly snapped the nail from her finger. That year — it was in a physician’s clinic that the Emperor had found Yanxi, battered and broken, and brought him back!

“That is precisely why I didn’t want to tell you. You know now, and you will go over those old events again and grow sorrowful. It is all long past. Please do not keep carrying it in your heart.”

The Empress Dowager patted his hand tenderly, her affection for him deepening still further.

Gu Yanxi lowered his gaze. In truth, Hua Yizheng had had no part in any of this from the very beginning. It had been he himself who had found a way to shake off his pursuers and make it to the physician’s clinic on his own.

But only by placing Hua Yizheng in that role would his imperial uncle refrain from investigating further. Those old and rotted affairs — no one wished to open them again. To do so would be to disgust oneself and disgust others.

What he relied upon was his imperial uncle’s trust in him. He held the authority to oversee all officials and was subject to no oversight himself — which was why he had dared to follow Hua Zhi to Yinshan Pass without imperial decree, and why he had dared to live under an assumed name in the Hua household as a martial arts instructor.

It was also for this reason that the imperial princes, though they were wary of him, did not dare lay a hand on him.

“Your father—”

“Grandmother.” Gu Yanxi raised his head. “Let us not speak of him.”

“All right, all right. We won’t.” Of all her grandchildren, the one the Empress Dowager loved most dearly was this grandson whose life had been marked by hardship and misfortune. She could not bear to see him troubled even for a moment, and the instant he showed reluctance she changed the subject. “Grandmother has been looking into some young women from good families on your behalf. They all have gentle temperaments, none of them troublesome, and their family backgrounds are not among the conspicuously powerful or wealthy — you won’t have to worry about any…”

The Empress Dowager patted his hand. “You cannot go on drifting alone like this. Your grandmother’s heart aches. Your imperial uncle has also brought it up several times. Yanxi, don’t hold anything against your imperial uncle for certain matters — the position he sits in is not easy. But whatever else may be said, he hopes to see you settle down and build a family of your own.”

“I have never held it against Imperial Uncle. How could I.” Gu Yanxi’s expression softened into an unusual gentleness, entirely unlike his usual cool indifference. “Even those few imperial princes may not have received as much looking-after as I have. I have slept beside Imperial Uncle. They have not.”

The Empress Dowager laughed as well. “Exactly — you must keep all of that close to your heart. If you think of these things, a great many others become not so worth fretting over. Isn’t that so?”

“It is. Please don’t worry that I might harbor any ambitions in that direction. What they are competing so desperately to win — I have no interest in it, and no desire to compete for it. Even if one day they truly moved to reclaim the authority in my hands, I would willingly relinquish it. Grandmother, rest assured — I will not involve myself in any of that. If there is a life of ease and freedom to be had, that suits me far better. Once the new year has passed and the weather turns, I will speak with Imperial Uncle about taking you out of the palace to live for a while. You have been confined within these palace walls long enough — even the most beautiful scenery grows tiresome when one can never leave it.”

The Empress Dowager smiled like any ordinary grandmother would, her eyes crinkling with delight. “Don’t think that just because you’ve made your grandmother happy, she’ll forget that other matter. Look at the capital — which young man of distinguished family is still unwed at your age? The eldest imperial prince’s children are already several in number, and you feel no shame at all.”

He was not scrambling to add weight to any side of the scales in a race for that position, thought Gu Yanxi inwardly. But what he offered aloud was a reassurance. “Grandson has someone in mind. The timing is not right yet. When it is, Grandson will tell you.”

The Empress Dowager’s delight was immediate and complete — she sat up straight. “You’re not having your grandmother on?”

“Grandson would not dare deceive you.”

“Which family’s daughter? Quickly, tell Grandmother everything. What do you mean the timing isn’t right — the timing is perfectly right. Speak up.”

Gu Yanxi simply shook his head, and no matter what threats or coaxing the Empress Dowager employed, he would not breathe a single word.

The Emperor, who had been listening outside the door for quite some time, departed as silently as he had arrived. The palace maids kneeling in rows outside exchanged glances, all of them shaken inwardly.

Gu Yanxi glanced at the exterior of the hall, then turned his full attention back to managing his grandmother’s interrogation.

A night passed.

The sun showed its face early. It was a fine day.

Amid the sound of the monks’ chanting, the coffin lid was slowly, slowly lowered. Hua Zhi watched as her grandmother’s face was covered, inch by inch, until the lid fell shut with a resonant sound. Truly, they would never meet again in this world.

The coffin was sealed and nailed shut.

Everyone wept — family, servants, old and young alike. But Hua Zhi did not.

From beginning to end, she had not shed a single tear.

She simply stood upright at the very front, so that people could not help but look to her, follow her, and heed her — guiding the Hua family, before anyone had quite realized it, through the transition from the old mistress to a new head of household.

The hour had come.

The Venerable Banruo placed the spirit tablet in Hua Bailin’s hands, then — to everyone’s astonished eyes — passed the portrait to Hua Zhi.

Hua Zhi did not ask why. She held the portrait she had painted with her own hands, and together with her younger siblings knelt outside the mourning hall to await the raising of the coffin. The night before, she had already made all the arrangements — she would accompany her brothers to the burial procession, while her sisters remained at home.

Amid the chanting, the wooden fish struck its steady, soft rhythm — each note landing gently against the deepest part of the heart.

The coffin was lifted by strong-armed pallbearers. Those walking alongside to steady it were Chen Sui’an, Song Chenghao, Chen Dayi, and the Old Madam’s nephews and grandnephews from her own family. The group looked somewhat assembled from whatever could be gathered, and more than a little thin.

The procession began.

All the mourners were helped to their feet by elder servants and guided out through the main gate. Cries of ceremonial direction, the bellowing of mourning calls, the chanting of the monks, the rhythm of the wooden fish — voices and sound converged from all sides, scattering the grief into the noise.

Hua Zhi pulled her hood up and thought to herself: seven days of enduring this — perhaps all the sorrow had finally been spent.

As the coffin was carried out through the main gate, Hua Jing fell prostrate on the ground, weeping with shattering grief. Not one person among the Hua family — from master to servant — moved to help her. Every eye watched with cold detachment. By now, even the least perceptive among the onlookers could sense that something was deeply amiss in how the Hua family treated Hua Jing. In the end, it was Song Chenghao who, under everyone’s gaze, stepped forward and helped her to one side.

He regretted it bitterly. His father hadn’t come. His younger siblings hadn’t come. Why on earth had he? He had made such a spectacle of himself! And given the Hua family’s attitude, things were clearly far from the simple matter his mother had made it out to be!

Song Chenghao was inwardly disgusted, yet his hands remained gentle — and only Hua Jing, held by those hands, knew how much force was actually in his grip.

Hua Jing endured the pain and kept her head bowed in weeping. The fragment of genuine grief still lingering within her vanished entirely in that instant, replaced by a heart full of seething resentment.

She needed to act first and seize the advantage — if she could get ahead of it, Hua Zhi would have no grounds to pin any blame on her, no matter how many words she had. And she needed to come up with a reason to smooth things over with the Song family.

Lost in these thoughts, Hua Jing looked up — and met Hua Zhi’s gaze.

Hua Zhi was looking straight at her. With eyes that were cold, contemptuous — the way one might regard refuse.

She— she dared—!

Hua Jing’s vision swam with rage. Had her son’s hand not been clamped so firmly around her arm, she would have launched herself across the courtyard and torn apart the junior who had the audacity to look at her that way.