At the docks, people came and went in a steady stream. Hua Zhi stood at the prow of the ship, watching the faces of those who were smiling, weeping, or waiting with longing, and thought of the reluctance she had seen in Yanxi’s eyes when he came to bid her farewell the evening before he left.

It was strange, when she thought about it. He was clearly a man of such lofty standing, and yet between the two of them he had always been the one whose emotions showed openly on his face.

It was not that she felt no reluctance herself — only that she had grown too accustomed to farewells. So accustomed that even knowing they would not see each other for at least a month, she felt it would pass in the blink of an eye. Some habits, once formed, carried over no matter how many lifetimes one lived.

She could not feel what he felt, and she did regret that.

She found herself wondering where Yanxi had reached by now. Lost in that thought, she was just about to return to the ship’s cabin when a voice called out from behind her. “Young lady?”

Hua Zhi turned around. She had not disguised herself or worn a veil — she stood openly and plainly at the prow. Her already striking features were all the more arresting against the expanse of water and sky, and there had been no shortage of eyes drawn to her. But none of those gazes had been as piercing as the one that now met her.

She glanced at him once, offered a small bow of courtesy, and then stepped aside and moved away. Neither rude nor overly familiar — the message was clear.

She had no desire to find herself entangled in some romantic complication with Yanxi away.

The man was taken aback for a moment, then stepped forward a couple of paces before stopping himself. He smiled, an expression of quiet contemplation on his face. Whatever direction the young lady was heading, the nearest port was still two days away. There would be time enough to find a way to speak with her.

To have set out on a visit to a friend and managed to encounter the eldest young lady — someone he had been unable to run into no matter how much time he spent near the Hua Family’s gates — well, this was truly a pleasant surprise.

Hua Zhi paid him no mind. She stepped back into the cabin to find Shao Yao sprawled out fast asleep in all directions. She had spent the previous night tinkering in the medicine room until dawn, and whatever she had been putting together, she had boarded the ship with an enormous bundle on her back.

The Sixth Imperial Prince, who had been sitting in a daze, heard the movement and looked up, then quickly got to his feet. Even now he could scarcely believe that Elder Sister Hua had actually brought him along on a journey. This was the first time — the first time he had ever been this far from the Imperial Palace. And in the days ahead, he would go even farther. The mere thought of it made his heart race.

“The ship is about to depart. They say the moment of weighing anchor is quite a spectacle — won’t you go out and watch?”

The Sixth Imperial Prince shook his head. He had no interest in that. What he wanted to know far more was why Elder Sister Hua had chosen to bring him.

“It was Teacher Lu who suggested it. He said you had never left the Imperial City, and asked me to take you out and see what this world truly looks like.” Hua Zhi had read his expression perfectly and answered his unspoken question with kindness. “If you’d rather not, there is still time to get off the ship.”

“I want to. I do want to.” The Sixth Imperial Prince bit his lip. “Will I cause trouble for Elder Sister Hua?”

“You won’t. Shall we have a game of chess?”

“Yes.”

The journey was about ten days, and Hua Zhi had brought some books to pass the time, along with a chess set. Such a stretch of days could not be wasted.

The Sixth Imperial Prince’s style of play was beginning to take on breadth and scale, though it was still a touch narrow — understandable for his age, and quite good for it. Hua Zhi played with easy, unhurried attention, thinking all the while that she would like to have a match with Yanxi when she had a free moment. Judging from the sand table battles, he was an aggressive, offensive player — she rather liked the feeling of being evenly matched.

From outside came the sound of the anchor crew’s call. The ship was setting off.

The harbor waters were calm and the sailing smooth, and at first there was no sensation of movement at all. But as they left the harbor and joined the main course of the great river, the ship began to rise and fall. Shao Yao, whose alertness never really slept, sat up at the very first swell, eyes wide and clear — as though she had only been pretending to sleep all along.

“Are we finally leaving?” She yawned and lay back down. But she was not so quick to fall asleep again now — after a moment she roused herself enough to start teasing Little Six, who was sitting there with a furrowed brow, racking his brain over how to break through a formation. “Just concede already. There’s no saving it.”

Hua Zhi shot her a sidelong glance. “By that logic, Little Six should never have played against me to begin with — he can’t beat me either.”

Shao Yao laughed and actually nodded.

“Then you needn’t bother thinking over the sand table. You’re no match for me either.”

Shao Yao’s face fell. “Huahua, you’re taking sides.”

“I am.”

“Huahua, Huahua, Huahua, Huahua, Huahua, Huahua, Huahua, Huahua…”

Hua Zhi had no answer for such shameless pleading. She rolled her eyes and let it go.

The Sixth Imperial Prince pressed his lips together, suppressing a grin — and in that moment, a flash of insight struck him. He placed the black stone down at once.

Hua Zhi gave a slight, approving nod. “Sometimes winning and losing are not what matter. What matters is whether you have given everything you have. Take this game — if you had conceded when you felt like giving up just now, you might have lost by twenty stones. As it stands, you have won back at least two. On a battlefield, those two stones are the margin of life you have carved out for yourself — perhaps just enough time to wait for reinforcements.”

The Sixth Imperial Prince listened attentively and took the lesson to heart.

Seeing that he had understood, Hua Zhi said nothing more. Too much lecturing became sermonizing, and that only made people weary of you.

Shao Yao, who had already lost her smile, buried her face in the crook of her arm and lay still with her eyes closed. She envied Little Six a little, and she missed the beautiful woman who had smiled and said that their family was going to have its very own female general.

The game came to an end. Hua Zhi left Little Six to review the match on his own and took out a volume to read.

Master Siqing’s manuscripts were far too precious to carry around everywhere, so she had copied them out by hand. This would be just the thing to fill the long journey.

She had already been struck with wonder when transcribing them. Master Siqing was a genius of the highest order — building upon the foundations laid by those before him, he had devised ten new formations. The first among them alone, the wedge formation, had left her unable to find a counter for some time.

This formation was devastating in its reach and scale. As long as the formation held, it could break through anything in its path.

The previous dynasty had wrought too much destruction — it had not only wiped out countless achievements of civilization but severed an entire century of tradition. Nearly two hundred years of the Great Qing dynasty recovering and rebuilding had not been enough to fully restore what was lost. Brilliances like Master Siqing had never appeared in the Great Qing, and the foundation had been too deeply damaged — the roots had been cut.

Loosely speaking, the Hua Family ancestor Hua Jingyan could be counted as one such brilliance, though the gap between him and Master Siqing remained — the difference between genius and supreme genius.

Hua Zhi rubbed her fingers together, feeling the itch to act. If only she were at home, she could work through this on the sand table.

The first day of the journey passed without incident, calm and smooth. At dusk the group came out of the cabin, leaned against the ship’s railing, and watched the crimson sun sink toward the horizon.

This river was the Wei River — the mother river of the entire Great Qing dynasty. Its surface stretched wide, and while it could not compare to the boundless reach of the sea, looking in every direction it still gave one a sense of one’s own smallness.

The Sixth Imperial Prince thought: if this ship were to sink right now, no matter that he was of imperial blood, there would be no escaping it.

As if searching for something solid to hold onto, he shifted himself a little closer to Hua Zhi’s side.

Hua Zhi caught his movement from the corner of her eye and found it quietly amusing. She said nothing of it, and simply asked, “How does the sunset here compare to the one in the capital?”

“The sun looks larger. Closer to me.”

“The sun has not changed — what has changed is your state of mind. When the heart opens, the world grows larger.” Hua Zhi gave the gentle pointer out of habit, and only afterward remembered that this was not her younger brother. This was a child of the imperial family.

It occurred to her then that she seemed to have been calling him Little Six along with Shao Yao today without thinking. She turned it over in her mind a few times, then asked openly, “For the convenience of the journey, shall we all just call you Little Six?”

“Yes, please. That would be wonderful.” Better than anything. Only Yanxi elder brother and Shao Yao elder sister had ever called him that, and now he could add Elder Sister Hua to that short list. “Little Six or A’Jian — I like both.”

In the midst of their easy banter, a somewhat familiar voice spoke up. “Young lady — we meet again.”

Hua Zhi let her smile settle and turned around. Since there was no avoiding it, she would not avoid it.