Everyone knew that Jinguan and Jincheng had both failed the examination outright—their names were nowhere to be found on the list.

With this, those friends and relations had all the measure they needed. And thinking back on how Su Hongmeng had seen fit to bring a woman of ill repute into the household, it was hardly surprising that the children raised under such a roof had amounted to nothing. The main Su household’s business had been declining more with every passing day. By contrast, that blind elder daughter—not only had she managed her shops with real competence, but she had married into the imperial family, and now her own younger brother had achieved so much at such a young age. It seemed the Su family’s future prosperity would rest entirely on the pair of children left behind by the late Madam Hu Shi.

Although Master Su had laid out the banquet, the red envelope money he collected was meager—barely enough to cover the cost of the feast. As it turned out, many relatives had sent double gifts, and the weightier envelopes had all gone directly to the household of the Shizi Consort of Prince Beizhen’s household.

Even though the Shizi Consort had held no banquet of her own, there was nothing to stop well-wishers from sending gifts and maintaining their ties with someone who had risen so high.

When Su Hongmeng found out afterward, he raged and cursed. All those parasites who had clung to the Su family for years—seeing that the main household was on its way down, they had scrambled to ingratiate themselves with the newly risen instead.

The warmth and coldness of human feeling—how clearly it showed when you were standing at the bottom.

When Ding Shi heard that both her sons had failed, and that Su Hongmeng had no intention of continuing to fund their studies and planned instead to put them to work learning the trade at the family’s shipyard, she refused to stand for it. She brought her brother along and came to make a scene at the Su household again.

Her entire hope was pinned on her two sons distinguishing themselves and giving her a chance to reclaim her dignity—how could she allow Su Hongmeng to be stingy with money and ruin their prospects?

So her words, of course, laid the blame on Su Hongmeng—accusing him of taking out his resentments on the boys and ruining their future.

This time, however, Su Hongmeng had every right on his side. If anyone had ruined anything, it was Ding Shi herself who had ruined the Su family’s genuinely promising child. Su Guiyan had been kept down and treated like a simpleton under her hand, denied even the chance to study alongside his two brothers—and yet the moment his elder sister took him away, he placed first on the list. What did that say about Ding Shi’s deliberate suppression of his legitimate son, and her coddling of her own two useless boys? He was not some stepfather—he had no reason to sabotage his own flesh and blood. He had spoken with the teacher himself: those two brothers were simply of ordinary ability. Memorizing passages was manageable, but their essays were utter rubbish. Continuing to pour money into their education would be a waste—better they learn a trade and have some means of getting on in the world.

And now this Ding Pei, a woman who had been cast out of the household, still had the face to come here making trouble? Did she not know that Su Hongmeng had been nursing a burning grievance all this time?

Just as Ding Shi’s brother tried to grab him by the collar again, Su Hongmeng deliberately picked up a somewhat worn vase he had recently acquired and dashed it to the floor with a crash.

He immediately seized the uncle’s collar in return and declared that his priceless family heirloom had been smashed. The household staff, well-trained from past experience, immediately reported the matter to the authorities. Master Su pressed this fabricated grievance all the way through to the end—settling the score for the killing of his horse at last. Even when Ding Shi’s brother offered to pay and settle the matter quietly, Su Hongmeng refused. On the charges of unlawful entry of private property and destruction of personal belongings, he had the Ding siblings given a proper sound thrashing with the judicial rod right there in the magistrate’s court.

When the old steward of the Su household reported all of this to Su Luoyun, she listened with complete composure, snacking on fruit and tea all the while.

There are times when one can let go of certain people and events—not because one has forgiven them, but because one has simply risen high enough to no longer be bowed down beneath them. The heart naturally grows more spacious.

Now that Su Guiyan had finally distinguished himself, Luoyun felt as though her own life had taken another step forward. As for the unpleasantness left behind her—and the people who went with it—she had no desire to look back.

What mattered most to her at present was her younger brother’s coming audience before the Emperor.

Guiyan had not come by this opportunity easily. His examination paper had been solid in its foundations, clear in its reasoning, and substantive in its argument—everything he had written had struck a chord with the chief examiner, Lord Li Guitian.

Coming as it did amid the flood disaster at Yan County, if things had been done as the young candidate proposed—thinking ahead and preparing early, readying the equipment to drain the water fields and laying sandbags in advance to reinforce the embankments—perhaps the farmlands and levees would not have been so severely damaged.

It was precisely because the essay moved him that Lord Li felt such a talented young mind should not be left buried in obscurity. Rather than have him spend another few years with his nose in books, it would serve the realm and its people far better to bring him into official service early.

Although the Great Wei was not like the previous dynasty—where all court positions had been monopolized entirely by aristocratic families—it was still exceedingly rare for a man of humble origins to rise to a position of real standing.

From rumors Luoyun heard later, among the three top candidates Lord Li had originally selected for this preliminary examination, two had subsequently been pushed down the rankings. In their place, a distant relative of the Lu Ducal household and the son of a personal attendant to the Sixth Imperial Prince were, after the covers concealing the candidates’ names were opened, given exceptional promotions in the rankings and summoned together with Su Guiyan to appear before the Emperor.

Lord Li was not ignorant of how these things worked—he simply found them deeply distasteful. Even Guiyan’s position at the top of the list had been preserved only because Lord Li had moved swiftly to present the paper to the Emperor himself before anyone else could interfere—and in doing so, had also secured the audience before the Emperor for this young man with no connections to speak of.

Luoyun was well aware that her brother’s remarkable showing owed no small part to Han Linfeng. When drinking from a well, one ought not to forget who dug it—she naturally intended to express her gratitude to the Shizi.

Unfortunately, he had gone out and was not in the household. She planned to wait until Han Linfeng and Lord Li and the Sixth Imperial Prince returned from Yan County, and then have her brother host a small dinner to properly thank his brother-in-law.

On that occasion, she also intended to introduce Hongyun—that beauty who had been waiting in her temporary lodging. Surely a former favorite who suited the Shizi’s tastes so well would make for far more comfortable company than someone of her own stiff-natured disposition.

But as the day of Han Linfeng’s expected return drew near, instead of the man himself, what arrived was a bolt from a clear sky—a terrible piece of news.

Two of the attendants who had gone with Han Linfeng to Yan County came galloping back late one night, barely holding back tears as they reported to the household steward: “Something—something terrible has happened. The Shizi and Lord Li Guitian were inspecting the countryside when the riverbank suddenly gave way. The two of them, along with three or four attendants, were swept away by the floodwaters—not a trace of them left!”

Even Manager Geng, seasoned as he was, felt his legs go weak when he heard these words.

The levees at Yan County had broken in previous years, and hundreds of people had been lost in an instant—some never found even after the floodwaters receded. Now that the Shizi himself and Lord Li had been swept away, the odds of a good outcome were slim indeed.

He dared not delay and immediately conveyed the news to the Shizi Consort.

Of course, he did not expect the mistress of the household to have any answers. In the face of such a natural disaster, even a Zhuge Liang reborn could hardly reverse what heaven had decreed.

Luoyun had been expecting Han Linfeng’s return with such anticipation—and instead, this knock at the door in the dead of night had brought this terrifying news.

The shock of it made her body go rigid for a moment, and she sank heavily into her chair. The servants around her had already begun to sob and wail aloud.

As for young Commandery Princess Han Yao, she was frantic with distress and wept as she pressed Manager Geng for details—had anyone gone along the riverbanks to search? But Manager Geng had only come to deliver the news to the inner quarters and had no specifics to offer.

Su Luoyun was the first to collect herself. Setting aside all propriety, she went directly to the outer courtyard and questioned the two men who had brought the news about exactly what had happened.

It emerged that Yan County had been drenched with rain for days on end, and the levees had been under enormous strain. Under the court’s regulations, during these months when the waters rose, a designated inspector was required to examine the levees for any weaknesses and to report the measured water levels to the court.

Unfortunately, this year also happened to coincide with the official performance evaluations, and there had already been a pattern of concealed and falsified reports coming out of Yan County beforehand. By the time the flood season arrived in full force, the losses to the farmland were severe.

As the disaster worsened and became harder to conceal, the local officials finally began to crack—and the truth came spilling out when Lord Li Guitian arrived to conduct his inspection of the levees and agricultural conditions.

The construction and maintenance of Yan County’s levees had historically been overseen by the Ninth Imperial Prince, Prince Rui.

But this year, the Sixth Imperial Prince had offered the pretext of helping the Ninth Prince manage flood relief since the latter was about to be married, and had seized the inspection duties for himself for a number of days.

Of course, Prince Heng’s motives were anything but charitable. He had come because he was convinced that Yan County was concealing a catastrophe waiting to erupt—and he had come specifically to light the fuse.

But by the time the two of them arrived, there was no time to carefully audit the old accounts. When Lord Li Guitian saw that the damage to the farmland was even worse than it had been the month before, his fury drove him to begin a meticulous examination of the water that had been impossible to drain—tracing it back to its source.

Going through the drainage channels one by one, Lord Li finally discovered that when the levees had originally been built, the officials in charge, in order to shorten the construction period, cut costs, make their accounts look favorable, and win the Ninth Imperial Prince a reputation for frugality and efficiency, had reduced what should have been a three-pronged water-diversion channel into only a two-pronged one—a single diversion channel had simply been left out.

In ordinary times, the absence of one channel was not particularly noticeable. But when the flood season came, the surrounding villages and townships bore the full, disastrous consequence.

This was a matter of grave significance. Lord Li did not dare conceal it. He immediately filed a report to the court and began arresting the key officials responsible for overseeing the construction within the county. What happened next was strange: those corrupt officials had apparently gotten wind of the situation ahead of time—several of the most important ones had already fled, leaving the investigation with no witnesses to cross-examine.

The Sixth Imperial Prince, Prince Heng, for his part, felt he had seized the Ninth Prince by the throat and proceeded to investigate everything down to the smallest detail.

On the day the accident occurred, it had originally been the Sixth Imperial Prince himself who was scheduled to conduct the levee inspection. The officials of the surrounding counties and townships had all received notice and were prepared to receive the Imperial Prince.

But the Sixth Imperial Prince fell ill unexpectedly and delegated Lord Li to go in his place.

As for Han Linfeng—he had been pulled along purely by chance, conscripted on the spot by Lord Li. Among all the idlers at the Ministry of Works, Lord Li found Han Linfeng the most intolerable.

Perhaps it was that Lord Li deeply revered the martial spirit and unyielding character of the late Holy Emperor, and so found it all the more difficult to stomach seeing a descendant of the late Emperor living in such idle dissolution.

And so that day, while they were inspecting the levees, Lord Li found a secluded section of the embankment, deliberately sent the attendants away, and began to deliver a solemn, heartfelt remonstrance to Han Linfeng.

He had just gotten as far as describing the Shizi’s attitude toward reporting for duty at the Ministry of Works—as one who approached each day of work like attending his own funeral—when the earth seemed to split open with a thunderous crack.

Those on the opposite bank of the river saw clearly: one section of the levee collapsed, sweeping the two men who had been standing alone on that embankment away with it.

One sharp-eyed witness reported that when the Shizi fell into the water, he appeared to have grabbed hold of a plank of wood floating in the current.

But disasters are over in an instant—by the time anyone registered what had happened, the floodwaters were roaring in, and no vessel could be launched in time to give chase. The people in the water were surely beyond saving.

Su Luoyun drew in a sharp breath.

She had assumed this was a natural disaster. But listening now, it sounded more and more like something entirely man-made.

A levee, even one in poor condition, would not collapse during a period when the waters were actually receding—and yet it had given way at precisely that moment. And what was that thunderous crack like splitting mountains and earth? Could it be that someone had deliberately blown up the levee, engineering this catastrophe intentionally?

“After the incident, did the people of Yan County send boats to search for the Shizi and the others?”

The man shook his head, expression stricken: “The Sixth Imperial Prince was also in Yan County at the time. The floodwaters were spreading everywhere and could have inundated the county seat at any moment, so the officials were all occupied with evacuating the Prince—there was no one to spare for a search, and almost every available vessel was commandeered to move the officials to safety. We waited and waited, watching those people argue over how to word the memorial to the court, bickering about how to report it all. And some even said this was an assassination attempt against the Prince—nobody cared in the least whether the Shizi or Lord Li were alive or dead. And it’s true, the water was so high, even if they were found… This subordinate has no ability. I failed to protect the Shizi, so I rode back to the capital as fast as I could, to see if there was any way to arrange boats to search for survivors.”

Luoyun quickly calculated the time. Even riding at full gallop without stopping, a full day and night had already passed since the accident. If they were alive, they could not keep floating on open water much longer. As for the only viable course of action now—it was to cast the net wide and deploy as many boats as possible.

In truth, everyone understood the situation. The odds of survival were poor.

But as long as there was even the slimmest thread of hope, every effort had to be made. Luoyun thought for a moment, had Xiangcao bring out a map, and asked her to find Yan County’s location. To her surprise, she discovered that Yan County was not particularly close to the naval garrison where her uncle was currently stationed—but it was not impossibly far either.

When her uncle had first come to the capital, it had been thanks to Luoyun’s careful arrangements that he had made a good impression on his superior. Just recently, he had been promoted and now commanded a naval garrison of his own.

If her uncle could be notified in time and sent out with boats to search, it would be far faster than waiting for the court to receive word, argue about it, and dispatch vessels all the way from the capital.

She immediately wrote out a letter by hand, intending to have it sent to the naval garrison. The flooding at Yan County meant travel by water would be difficult—going overland would be faster.

She asked Manager Geng whether there was any way to dispatch the letter by relay post with fast horses.

Manager Geng looked pained: “The relay post authorizations are all fully booked at the moment—without an official government document, there is no way to get priority. I am afraid our Prince Beizhen’s household does not have quite enough standing for that.”

Luoyun shook her head: “Official relay authorizations go through government seals—still not fast enough. If only we could get hold of a military dispatch tablet from the Ministry of War…”

She had heard Han Linfeng mention this once in passing—if one had a military dispatch tablet, the relay horses used were the Ministry of War’s own dedicated horses, far faster than ordinary relay horses.

The steward’s face fell at the suggestion: “That… I’m afraid the Shizi Consort would have to enter the palace and petition the Emperor in person.”

Luoyun shook her head. This matter carried implications far too large for that. The Sixth Imperial Prince had rushed back to the capital with his boats—wasn’t it precisely to file an impeachment against the Ninth Imperial Prince? That was a move in a game of court politics with consequences for the entire realm. What right did someone of her insignificance have to step onto that board unbidden?

And besides—in the depths of the night, there was simply no way for her to enter the palace.

Then a thought struck her. She spoke again: “What if it were Lord Li’s family who made the petition?”

Manager Geng nodded immediately: “Lord Li Guitian is one of the great scholars of the court, and his students are many. If his family were to request a relay authorization, that should not be too difficult. But the military dispatch tablet is another matter—that would be harder to say.”

Luoyun made up her mind at once: “Prepare a horse. I need to pay a visit to Lord Li’s household.”

The urgency of the situation left no time for propriety—Luoyun had not even dressed her hair, and in the carriage she tied it up hastily with a plain silk kerchief.

When she arrived in the middle of the night, dressed all in white with her hair loose and tangled, and knocked urgently at the gates of Lord Li’s household with her maids and attendants behind her, the gatekeeper nearly leaped out of his skin—he half-believed that a beautiful ghost had come in the night to claim a life.

The Li family had not yet received any word of what had happened to Lord Li in Yan County.

Whatever arrangements the Sixth Imperial Prince had made from Yan County, no one had been sent back to the capital to report the matter—the news appeared to have been deliberately suppressed all this while.

When Luoyun explained her purpose, Lady Li crumpled to the ground on the spot and had to have her pressure points pressed before she could be revived. Luoyun had no time to offer consolation. She asked simply and directly: “Apart from Lady Li, who else manages affairs in this household?”

At this, the eldest son of the Li household, Li Chuanhui, stepped forward. He was only twenty years old, but already held a position at the Hanlin Academy.

When Luoyun laid out her plan in a few quick sentences, young Master Li—though grief was written plainly across his face—grasped her meaning at once.

But when he heard her say she wanted to obtain a military dispatch tablet to send the letter, he could not help frowning. He thought this woman’s idea was frankly preposterous.

Urgent as the matter was, this was not a military emergency—to invoke the dispatch tablet without proper grounds would inevitably invite criticism and reproach. Besides, he felt that Su Luoyun was simply ignorant of practical matters: clearly one could just dispatch boats from the capital—why go to the unnecessary trouble of reaching all the way out to a naval garrison that was some distance from Yan County?

So he said: “I will enter the palace at once and petition His Majesty to issue a decree dispatching boats to conduct a search.”

Without even waiting to take a carriage, young Master Li leaped onto a horse and galloped off toward the palace gates with his manservant.

Luoyun had no choice but to remain in the Li household and wait.

The women of the Li family were weeping all around her, but she herself could not weep. It was not that she had no feeling for Han Linfeng—rather, her mind was entirely occupied with working out what other means might be available to obtain a military dispatch tablet, in case young Master Li was turned away.

And indeed, just as Su Luoyun had anticipated: young Master Li did not get past the palace gates at all.

The night guards reportedly had received orders from their superiors—citing the recent influx of displaced refugees into the capital and the resulting instability, the gates were not to be opened privately in the night for anything short of a critical front-line emergency. As for young Master Li’s request, they expressed their regrets but could not comply.

The Emperor was advanced in years and had always slept poorly—if he were startled awake in the middle of the night by such terrible news, the disruption to the imperial person would be an offense worthy of losing one’s head. Besides, the people had not been swept away this very moment—there was no need to rush. Everything could wait until daylight.

Those maddening words left young Master Li so furious he could have strangled those aggravating gate guards with his own hands.

But Su Luoyun was not surprised. From the very beginning of the accident at Yan County, not a single person had shown any concern for the Shizi’s or Lord Li’s wellbeing. Or rather—perhaps it suited certain parties better if those two men were dead. That way, the Sixth Imperial Prince’s memorial impeaching Prince Rui would carry far greater weight.

The Sixth Imperial Prince had returned to the capital tonight as well. He would likely begin his assault first thing in the morning. He would naturally not allow any information to leak out that might give Prince Rui time to prepare—or to secure an audience with the Emperor first.

So after hearing young Master Li’s account, Luoyun said plainly: “It seems there is no point in counting on the capital to send boats. My approach involves fewer layers of bureaucratic approval. My own Shizi may not be a pillar of the nation—but Lord Li Guitian most certainly is. A man of that caliber—does he not deserve a military dispatch tablet to save his life? If the tablet truly cannot be obtained, would young Master Li think again about whether there are any connections at the relay stations who might allow my letter to be sent ahead of its turn through unofficial channels?”

Young Master Li was like a fly without a head at this point and could only take this blind woman at her word and see whether any unofficial channel could be found.

If military horses were to be used to carry the letter, a military dispatch tablet was absolutely required—using them without authorization was a capital offense.

Luoyun had already thought this through. She recalled overhearing some noble ladies in conversation once, mentioning that the newly appointed Deputy Minister of War, a certain Vice Minister Zhao, was a student of Lord Li Guitian.

She suggested that young Master Li go directly to Vice Minister Zhao. The words were like a light breaking through the fog—the fly without a head had finally found its direction. The two of them went at once to pound on Vice Minister Zhao’s door in the middle of the night, begging him to issue whatever documentation he could—anything that would authorize a route passing by the naval garrison below Yan County, with her personal letter enclosed for delivery.

Vice Minister Zhao was Lord Li Guitian’s own student. Upon hearing the news, he had not a word of hesitation. He threw on his outer robe, went to his official offices, affixed the Ministry of War’s official seal directly to Su Luoyun’s letter, then summoned the Ministry of War’s duty guards and had the letter sent to the relay station—dispatched along the priority route reserved for eight-hundred-li military emergency correspondence.

With the Ministry of War’s official seal in place, the horses chosen to carry the letter were carefully selected military mounts.

By the time the letter was sent, the sky was beginning to pale at the edges. Luoyun returned to the household, her face drawn with exhaustion.

Xiangcao murmured softly to comfort her: “Young miss, the Shizi has the protection of heaven—nothing will happen to him.”

Luoyun let out a quiet sigh: “Let us hope so. He is still so young…”

With everything happening so urgently, her mind had been engaged entirely in calculating what needed to be done, with no room for anything else.

But now, after a night of frantic effort, her mind was buzzing with an emptiness she could not quite shake—and the corners of her eyes had begun to grow faintly damp. A grief she had held at bay, without quite knowing it, suddenly rose up in her chest.

That man who had said he wanted to walk a stretch of this road alongside her—how could he be gone, just like that?

In the day that followed, Luoyun did not go to the shops. She kept vigil in the gatehouse of the household—that way, she would be the first to hear of anyone’s arrival.

Her heart swung between dread and longing: she wanted news, and yet dreaded what the news might be.

Sitting by the fire in the gatehouse with nothing to do, she let her thoughts drift.

When she had gotten married, the whole affair had been so absurd that she had never gotten around to telling her uncle about it at all. And now, of all unlikely turns, it was her uncle who might be the one sent to search for her husband.

The Ministry of War’s priority line would be considerably faster, but the letter would still take about a day and a half to reach her uncle’s hands. She had no way of knowing whether Han Linfeng was alive or dead.

She thought of how he had quarreled with her—quietly, in that small, stubborn way—just before leaving. He had also said once that he had no wish to be nothing more than a cold and hollow pretend-husband to her.

She had not said anything in reply. And now, somehow, that moment had become the last thing between them.

Even washing her hands, Luoyun found she could not stop thinking—was he out there right now, lying in the icy river water, face turned up to the sky, utterly alone, with nothing but a pale and cheerless moon for company?

The image made her eyes sting again, and she forced herself not to think further.

Another day passed in this way. Aside from the Li household’s occasional messengers coming to inquire, no other news arrived.

Through young Master Li Chuanhui, however, Luoyun came to learn more of what lay beneath the surface.

It emerged that the terrible news concerning Lord Li and Prince Beizhen’s Shizi household had indeed been deliberately suppressed—at Prince Heng’s express orders.

That very morning at court, the Sixth Imperial Prince—who had apparently returned the night before—had appeared for the morning audience without even changing his clothes. His trouser legs, face, and beard were still streaked with mud.

This disheveled Prince Heng threw himself to the ground the moment he entered and wept aloud as he presented his account of the Yan County disaster—and of the catastrophe in which Lord Li and Prince Beizhen’s Shizi had disappeared without a trace.

The moment those words left his mouth, the entire court was thrown into an uproar, and the assembled officials were left reeling from the shock.

According to the Sixth Imperial Prince’s account, no trace of the two missing men had yet been found—but the explosive mechanism that had destroyed the levee had been discovered, which was sufficient to prove that the levee’s collapse had been deliberately engineered. This entire catastrophe was the work of human hands.

It was said that Prince Heng wept and lamented at length throughout the court session, repeatedly returning to the fact that he himself had been the one scheduled to inspect the levees that day—had he not fallen ill and delegated the task at the last moment, it would have been Lord Li and Prince Beizhen’s Shizi accompanying him, not taking his place, and they would never have fallen into this calamity.

When these words were spoken, the color drained from the faces of officials throughout the court. If that was the case, the hand behind all of this had originally intended to harm the Sixth Imperial Prince himself?

A collapsed levee had blown open what might become the most stunning case to shake the entire court and realm.

Many eyes quietly turned to watch the expression of the Ninth Imperial Prince, Prince Rui.

The case of the substandard levee construction at Yan County had already been a site of open and covert struggle between Prince Heng and Prince Rui. The Sixth Imperial Prince had long been watching and waiting, eager to expose the dark underbelly of the Ninth Prince’s affairs.

Now that Yan County had continued to produce one calamity after another, every one of them traceable to the old accounts of the Ninth Imperial Prince’s past oversight of those construction works.

Translator’s Note — Yun Bin Tian Shang – Chapter 53

Yun Bin Tian Shang – Chapter 53 is one of the most dramatically compressed chapters of the novel thus far, pivoting rapidly from the domestic comedy of Su Hongmeng’s embarrassing banquet and Ding Shi’s final humiliation to the sudden catastrophe of Han Linfeng’s disappearance—and Luoyun’s methodical, cold-headed response to it in the middle of the night.

The chapter’s central revelation is the nature of Luoyun’s feeling for Han Linfeng. She cannot weep—not from indifference, but because her mind is entirely deployed in crisis management. The grief comes later, quietly, in unguarded moments: the image of him floating alone in icy water beneath a pale moon, the belated sting in her eyes. The novel is careful to frame her emergency actions not as romantic heroism but as practical problem-solving, and yet the urgency with which she acts, and the private thoughts that surface during the long wait in the gatehouse, speak more plainly than she would say outright.

The political dimension of the disaster is laid out with care. The deliberate suppression of news, the Sixth Imperial Prince’s calculated theatrical entrance at court—mud-caked and weeping—and the convenient timing of the levee’s collapse all point toward the larger power struggle between Prince Heng (Sixth Imperial Prince) and Prince Rui (Ninth Imperial Prince). The levee destruction, originally aimed at Prince Heng himself, has instead swept away Han Linfeng and Lord Li—making them, in the political calculus of the court, potentially more useful dead than alive, as their deaths lend greater weight to Prince Heng’s impeachment of Prince Rui.

Luoyun’s navigation of this treacherous terrain—recognizing that entering the palace or petitioning the Emperor directly would be stepping onto a political chessboard where she has no standing—and finding the oblique path through Lord Li’s student network to secure Ministry of War authorization demonstrates the quality of judgment the novel has been quietly building in her throughout.