“If saying a thing were enough to change it, there would be no need for any of this.” Hua Zhi’s smile was faint and remote. She did not laugh at Little Six for being naive— at his age, such naivety was right and proper. It was only that set against reality, naivety of this kind was heartbreakingly helpless.

Little Six knew he had said something futile. He rubbed his face and asked, “So next is just waiting for Brother Yanxi to come? Is there anything else I should be doing?”

“Keep going out with Zeng Xiangyan and the others. There’s nothing that needs doing. If they ask when we’re leaving, tell them you’re waiting for a cousin from the clan to come and meet us.” Hua Zhi’s brow creased slightly. “I hadn’t anticipated that we’d end up delayed here this long. If I’d known, I would not have brought you. You can’t be away from the capital too long— it’s a ripe piece of fruit, and there’s no shortage of people wanting to pluck it.”

“But everyone knows this fruit already belongs to someone. Can they really take it from its rightful owner?”

“Knowing is one thing. What ends up in whose hands is another matter entirely. Even what the Emperor sees is only the result— he doesn’t concern himself with the process. You have to guard what is yours yourself.”

Little Six bit his lip. He still had too few people he could use. Whenever he needed manpower to get something done, he could never stretch it far enough.

“General Sun and Madam Sun had not anticipated that you would be forced into holding things together on your own so early. For the past while, Madam Sun has been consolidating the Sun family’s people. When you return, she should hand over a portion of the people and resources to you. When that time comes, turn the business affairs and the money over to me— I’ll manage them for you.”

“…Alright.”

Looking at Little Six, his eyes reddening at the rims, every bit the air of a young child still— Hua Zhi felt a softening in her chest. While his character was not yet entirely hardened, while he could still hear what she had to say, she let her voice come gently. “Little Six, no matter how far you go in life, I hope you do not become someone utterly alone. The days of having not a single person to talk to are not good days. The Sun family may have its interests and expectations of you, but you are the only blood kin General Sun and Madam Sun have— even if they act in the interest of the family, they would surely do so only on the condition of not harming you. And then there is the Hua family.”

Hua Zhi smiled. “That you are close to the Hua family is a fact. If things come to pass as we hope, the Hua family stands to gain the most. Once or twice would be one thing, but over time, with so many great clans in the capital, how could they remain willing to tolerate it? By then, the slander against the Hua family would be unrelenting— and three people repeating a lie can make it believed. However great a trust, it may eventually waver…”

Little Six cut her off urgently. “Sister Hua Zhi, I would never!”

“It is not so simple a matter as whether you would or would not. It depends on what position you are in and what circumstances surround you.” Hua Zhi smiled gently. “If that day truly comes, think back on what I have said today. The reason the Hua family became the Hua family that scholars and men of letters held in such high esteem is that it stood upright and true, loyal to the crown and devoted to the people. If the day should come when the Hua family’s own people break faith with that— then whatever has been built upon it would crumble, and there would be nothing left worth reckoning with. Generosity of spirit allows greatness. I hope you will have a heart as broad as the ocean— so that no one can stir up a towering wave in it, and all the provocations others might contrive are no more than clowns jumping about. Not only toward the Hua family, but toward anyone at all.”

Little Six nodded with conviction. He would absolutely never become that kind of person. Never.

Hua Zhi smiled, watching the boy before her who was slowly shedding the last of his childish ways. “No matter the time or the circumstances, never make the mistake of looking down on the common people. Tread upon the hearts of the people underfoot, and yes— they are indeed very weak and very easily satisfied. As long as they can eat enough to be full and dress warmly enough to keep out the cold, as long as there is a life to be lived, they can endure injustice quietly and bear it without complaint. But if someone cuts off their very means of survival and drives them to resist with one heart— no army, however powerful, can stop them. It was just so when the Great Qing overturned the Zhaoli Kingdom. The foundation of this realm has always been the common people. The Great Qing has forty million people, and thirty-nine million or more of them are ordinary folk. The great clans and aristocracy account for the merest sliver of that. And so it has been said: that what causes governance to flourish is always the alignment with the hearts of the people; that what causes governance to fail is always the defiance of those hearts; that the great currents of the world are ever bound to the hearts of the people— when the people’s hearts are in accord, all things follow in accord and all things flourish. You need not go so far as to love the people as your own children— but at the very least, keep them in your heart. The common people are not foolish. They know better than anyone who is good to them.”

“Yes— I’ve taken all of it in here.” Little Six pressed a hand to his chest. At this moment, that place was burning— burning so hard it almost hurt. No one knew better than he did what consequences Sister Hua Zhi was risking in saying all of this. If he were heartless enough, he could use these very words to convict her one day. And yet she had said them all the same, taking the great risk of saying the unsayable to teach him lessons no one had ever taught him before. For that alone, he would remind himself, again and again, not to live out his days as someone utterly alone. He would not let Sister Hua Zhi’s painstaking efforts come to nothing.

Hua Zhi smiled and let the matter rest.

These words she would not say again. Little Six and Bailin were different people, after all. Bailin, even at seventy or eighty, would still be her little brother in her eyes— she could say whatever she liked and he would have to listen. But with Little Six it was different. She could only plant a seed in his heart while his character was still being formed. How it grew from there was no longer hers to determine.

When the first snow of the season fell over Jinyang, Hua Zhi finally welcomed Yanxi back— arriving in from the cold, his whole person dusted with wind and snow.

But when she stepped forward to greet him, he waved her off. “I’m covered in the cold— don’t let me pass it on to you. Go back inside. I’ll come find you once I’ve tidied up.”

Hua Zhi wanted him to be comfortable too. She quickly told Nian Qiu to go prepare hot water and dug out Gu Yanxi’s clothes from the bundle, holding them near the brazier to warm through before calculating the timing and having Little Six take them over.

By the time Gu Yanxi came out, washed and changed, a table full of hot food and dishes was already waiting for him.

He had been riding at full pace for days the moment he received her message, sustained purely by the good constitution his body had built. Hunger and exhaustion were inevitable. Around A’Zhi, Gu Yanxi dispensed with any pretense of dignity and ate without lifting his head.

Hua Zhi kept adding food to his bowl, wanting to say something but finding the tenderness in her chest so acute that she feared opening her mouth would bring a tremor to her voice. She said nothing, and only pushed the soup a little closer toward him.

Her heart was restless. Restless for Yanxi, and restless for herself too.

The Emperor neither trusted them nor showed them any consideration, and yet drove them to the very brink of what they could endure. To risk your life for a superior who held no goodwill toward you— how could anyone be at peace with that?

As a person who had lived a modern life, she could not simply calm herself into acceptance. All she could do was remind herself, again and again, that this was a society where the sovereign held absolute power— that everything she could not accept was perfectly ordinary here, that no one in authority would ever reason things out fairly with her, and that she did not even have the right to resign.

It was truly… maddening.

The man’s warm palm closed around her hand. At some point he had set down his chopsticks. His brow furrowed slightly. “Still this cold? And you look like you’ve lost weight too. You’ve been going out in weather like this?”

“Not the past few days— it’s been so cold that no one wants to go anywhere.” Hua Zhi rose. “There’s no rush to talk about all that. Go sleep first. Your color is too poor.”

Gu Yanxi held her back, keeping both her hands wrapped in his. “I just ate— let it settle a little. Tell me about the situation in Jinyang.”

“It can wait a little.” Even as she said it, Hua Zhi condensed everything she had come to know so far into a clear account.

“You suspect that Zhu Ling and the gambling house proprietor are connected to the Zhaoli Tribe?”

“Whether or not they’re connected to the Zhaoli Tribe, one thing is certain— they are the ones behind Jinyang becoming what it is. They are the ones who have benefited most from it, or at least that is how it appears on the surface.” Hua Zhi smiled. “If you actually participate in it, you’ll see— Jinyang is thriving in a way that could almost be called flourishing. But I had Yu Mu look into it, and the workshops in Jinyang have been shutting down one after another over the past few years. There are also quite a few storefronts standing empty, their ownership having changed hands so many times that no one bothers to open them. All this apparent prosperity has too hollow a foundation beneath it.”