Prince Ling did not realize until evening that he had fallen for a scheme to lure the tiger away from the mountain.

What use were the wife and children of Fang Shi and Fang You? It wasn’t these women and children who had committed the crime — wouldn’t it have been better to seize Fang Shi and Fang You themselves instead?

Besides, Wei Jie had taken men to capture the wife and children of Fang Shi and Fang You — but where was Cheng Chang? Where had Cheng Chang gone?

The moment this thought struck him, Prince Ling wheeled his horse around and rode hard for Lingjue Temple.

He could only blame himself for being too hasty.

Some time ago, Emperor Zhaoyuan had summoned him once, and the implication of his words had been roughly this: he would move against Cheng Chang first, and if Prince Ling simply held still and, afterward, honestly handed over his power, the emperor would guarantee his safety.

But Prince Ling was far too clever not to realize that once Cheng Xu returned to the palace, he and Cheng Chang would share the same fate — as close as lips and teeth.

Moreover, if he simply swallowed whole the words of the man seated upon the throne without a second thought, he might as well be drawing a circle on the ground and calling it a prison.

So these past few days, his absence from meetings with Pei Ming, Luo Fuyou, and the others had not truly meant that he was sitting idle — rather, he had been using this golden opportunity to quietly watch how things unfolded. After all, with Cheng Chang taking the first blow for him, it would be all the easier for him to make his own move.

He had lain low, grown cautious, unwilling to let the slightest misstep cost him such a rare chance.

And yet it was precisely because he had been so cautious that he overreacted the instant he heard Wei Jie had gone to find Fang Shi’s wife and children, and so fell for Cheng Chang’s scheme to lure the tiger from the mountain.

Cheng Chang, no doubt, had calculated on exactly this, and so had drawn him away with ease.

By the time Prince Ling reached the dense woods, night had already fallen deep. Amid the flickering, indistinct firelight, he made out a slight, delicate figure sitting slumped on the ground.

It was Fang Fulan.

The guard keeping watch nearby, seeing Prince Ling arrive, called out: “Your Highness.”

Then he knelt and begged forgiveness. “Just now the Third Young Master came with men from the manor’s guard. He… he took away the young mistress’s two half-brothers, leaving only Madam Qin and the steward Fang Liu behind. It’s not that we were unwilling to stop him — but the Third Young Master took a hostage in the chaos—”

Before he could finish, Prince Ling raised a hand, cutting him off.

Prince Ling walked forward and called softly: “Fulan.”

At this first call, Fang Fulan did not move.

Only after Prince Ling had come close, crouched beside her, and called her name again did Fang Fulan slowly turn her face.

She seemed to have recovered somewhat; not a ripple stirred in her peach-blossom eyes. She asked gently, “Your Highness has returned? Shall we go back to the villa now?”

Prince Ling nodded slightly and held out his hand to her.

Fang Fulan rose to her feet using the warmth of his palm for support.

She looked calm and gentle, just as she always did.

But Prince Ling knew that Fang Fulan’s calm tonight was far from ordinary — just as it had been more than a year after she married into the Marquis of Zhongyong’s household, when they had met again by chance at the physician’s hall, her outward distance concealing a thousand hidden currents of love and hatred beneath.

The night had grown deep. In the front courtyard of the princely villa grew a stretch of crabapple trees; in early summer, as the blossoms were about to wither, the branches and leaves had instead grown lush.

Ahead lay the main hall, where the maidservants had already lit the lamps.

But Fang Fulan suddenly found that lamplight too harsh on her eyes. She stopped in her tracks beneath the deep shadow of the crabapple blossoms in the front courtyard, and after a long moment, said hoarsely: “Your Highness… didn’t you once say you would clear my father’s name?”

Hearing this, Prince Ling fell silent for a moment, then dismissed the maidservants from the front courtyard, leaving only Madam Qin and the steward Fang Liu at his side, before saying: “Soon. Just a little longer.”

“Wait until when?” Fang Fulan turned to look at him. “Must I wait until Your Highness ascends the great throne and holds the power of an emperor before my father’s grievance can be redressed?”

Prince Ling said nothing.

“What exactly did my father do, that even Your Highness, whose power sways the realm, cannot clear his name? Or has Your Highness been deceiving me all along, using the pretext of avenging my father to make me—”

“My lady.” Hearing Fang Fulan question Prince Ling like this, Fang Liu could no longer hold his tongue and urged, “My lady, please don’t make things difficult for His Highness. The master… the master truly was not wronged…”

“How was he not wronged?!” Fang Fulan said sharply. “Father told me himself, with his own mouth, that he had never lined his own pockets! That he had never written Emperor Taizong’s name incorrectly! Father was meticulous and clear-minded in everything he did, incorruptible — I don’t believe he would do such a thing!”

“The master indeed did not line his own pockets, but the crime he truly committed was far more serious than that. So serious that it could not be spoken of before the realm, and so it could only be concealed under the name of ’embezzlement,'” said Fang Liu.

Hearing this, Fang Fulan stood dazed, and a mist gradually rose in her eyes.

What could be so terrible that it could not be spoken of before the realm?

What had her father… truly done?

“Does my lady know of Consort Wan, mother of the Fifth Prince?”

Fang Liu had followed Fang Yuanshan for many years. From the days when Fang Yuanshan’s talents went unrecognized to his later meteoric rise, Fang Liu in fact knew everything he had done in secret.

“Consort Wan, mother of the Fifth Prince — back then, it was the master who brought about her ruin…”

Fang Liu went on to tell Fang Fulan how, back then, Consort Wan had sought Fang Yuanshan’s help, and how Fang Yuanshan had in turn leaked her whereabouts to the former Empress.

Though he deliberately left out Beauty Lu in his account, Fang Fulan understood — the Beauty later used by the Empress, sent to have Consort Wan killed, was none other than Prince Ling’s birth mother.

“That year’s bloodbath at Mingyin Temple — though the master did not commit it himself, it was his doing that brought it about. After the massacre at Mingyin Temple, Consort Wan died, the Fifth Prince went missing, and it was only then, riding on the Empress’s favor, that the master was promoted into the Ministry of Rites.”

“Some years later, when the Empress fell gravely ill, the master, though already a Vice Minister of Rites, feared he would never rise further in this life. So he once again threatened the former Empress with what had happened back then, hoping to use her family’s influence to enter the Central Secretariat and become Chancellor.”

“By then the former Empress was already too ill to rise from her bed. Perhaps because a person facing death turns kind at heart, this old servant once accompanied the master to see her, and she asked him whether he truly believed there was such a thing in this world as cosmic retribution, as karma for good and evil.”

“She said she regretted it — that she had, back then, brought ruin to Consort Wan and caused the deaths of so many innocent people, and so these years she had lived in bitter suffering, never once truly happy, even her only child lost before it was ever born.”

“Looking back on it now, the former Empress was warning the master even then. She said that in this world, good and evil are separated by a single thought, and that she herself had taken one wrong step after another until there was no turning back, and she hoped the master would stop while there was still time. But the master would not listen to reason, and threatened the former Empress again and again — until finally, at the cost of giving up a lifetime of the emperor’s favor, she told His Majesty the truth of the Mingyin Temple massacre.”

“The master’s true crime was in fact harming an imperial heir and plotting against members of the imperial clan — by rights, his entire clan to the ninth degree should have been executed. The reason His Majesty only had the master executed alone was perhaps because the former Crown Prince was gravely ill at the time, and His Majesty wished to accumulate merit on his behalf, and so stayed the killing, instead sentencing the rest of the Fang household to exile.”

Fang Fulan stood rooted to the spot for a long while after Fang Liu finished speaking.

At last, she murmured three words: “I don’t believe it…”

And these three words seemed to lend her crumbling spirit one last grasp of strength, for she quickly repeated: “I don’t believe it!”

She looked at Fang Liu: “You’re lying to me…”

“Fulan, back then, of everyone in the household, the master doted on you the most. The night it happened, when the people from the palace took him away, you chased after him, and I followed close behind you. Do you still remember how the master looked when he spoke those last two lines to you?” said Madam Qin.

Fang Fulan froze.

That night’s darkness had been so thick, but the imperial guards’ torches had blazed fiercely against the sky.

To this day, she still remembered — when Fang Yuanshan said he had never lined his own pockets, there had been no resentment of injustice in his brow, but a kind of open, unclouded release, a kind of pity, and yet, no regret at all.

“The master never once said he was wronged. When he told you he had not committed those crimes, perhaps all he meant to tell you was that you could live on — so you should live well. He wanted you to go on living, and live well.”

Plotting against an imperial heir did indeed warrant the execution of one’s entire clan, yet Emperor Zhaoyuan had charged Fang Yuanshan with embezzlement instead — which meant the lives of the rest of the Fang household had been spared.

Fang Yuanshan was far too clever; from the very crime the emperor chose to charge him with, he had seen through the emperor’s true intentions.

And so, when he was led away from the Fang household, he had felt a sense of release — but perhaps, too, he simply did not want the daughter he loved most in this life to think less of him as a father, and so he claimed he had committed none of those crimes — after all, only the day before, his most treasured daughter had quarreled bitterly with him over the Third Prince within the palace, declaring she would marry no one else.

Fang Yuanshan had thought, in the end, he only wished for Fulan to have a good future.

No one understood better than Fang Yuanshan why Prince Ling had fallen out of Emperor Zhaoyuan’s favor, and the fate that had befallen him because of it.

Perhaps it truly was some twisted destiny — that Fulan, for reasons unknown, had come to love this very Prince Ling.

Sometimes, being a father is a humbling thing. His daughter had grown up, and could no longer be reined in; for the sake of the man she loved, she would go a whole day without speaking to him. So in the panic of their final parting, as he was shackled and led to the prisoner’s cart, he only had time to say to Fulan, who came stumbling after him: “Father did not write Emperor Taizong’s name incorrectly, and did not line his own pockets…”

He hoped that in her heart, he would remain that father who stood tall and upright, as clear and bright as the wind and moon, someone no one could ever replace.

He never imagined that this single sentence would ruin her entire life.

“Later we heard you had married into the Marquis of Zhongyong’s household, become the lawful wife of General Xuanwei. We thought you had let it go, that you had moved past it — but we never expected… never expected…”

Never expected that she would trap herself in this cocoon of her own making, right up to this very day.

At this point Madam Qin’s voice choked with sobs, her eyes opening and closing as tears fell.

But though Fang Fulan’s eyes had been brimming with tears just moments ago, by now they had run dry.

If this were true — if it were really true — then everything she had done these years, everything she had suffered, what had it all been for?

All her toil, all her scheming and striving — for what, in the end?

She looked at Prince Ling and asked slowly: “Before I married into the Marquis of Zhongyong’s household, I once went to see Her Ladyship the Imperial Noble Consort. That day, I did not see Your Highness.”

“While I suffered, while I endured hardship, Your Highness did nothing for me except clean up after the two constables I had poisoned to death — you never once so much as showed your face. Why? Is it because Your Highness’s birth mother died because of my father, and knowing this, Your Highness came to hate me, hate my father?”

Prince Ling gazed at Fang Fulan quietly, and called out: “Fulan.”

His voice was low and hoarse, as though laden with a thousand unspoken feelings.

But Fang Fulan only gave a faint laugh and said, “Your Highness need not answer. What’s done is done — everything is already as it is.”

She glanced once at the lamplight in the hall, then slowly turned and walked toward the rear courtyard.

Along the way, a maidservant caught sight of her and hurried over with a wind-lamp to light her way, but she pushed the girl’s hand away.

At that moment she loathed such brightness — even the moon’s pure glow in the sky felt harsh and intrusive.

In the rear courtyard was a lotus pond. It was a summer night, and the tender lotus shoots had just begun to unfurl their tips, one after another, upon the shimmering water.

Looking at the water in the pond, Fang Fulan found herself, for some reason, thinking of that morning she had gone to see the Imperial Noble Consort.

Strange to say — her father executed, her mother hanged herself, and still she had endured; violated by the two constables, and still she had endured; even looking upon the corpses of the two constables, blood pouring from every orifice, she had still been able to hold herself together.

What had broken her, in the end, had been nothing more than a few words from the Imperial Noble Consort.

“The daughter of a condemned criminal, and you dare come to my palace?”

“Xuan’er is not here. You may go. From now on, he will not see you again either.”

Fang Fulan thought of how, just days before, she had quarreled fiercely with her father over Prince Ling, until, at the evening meal, her father had come to knock on her door and said: “Fulan, come out. I’ve thought of a way to arrange your marriage — let’s discuss it once more.” And she had shut the door on him and refused to see him.

And now — where had that Third Prince gone, the one who had sworn he would marry no other, who had promised to show her all the splendor of the land?

For his sake, she had not even properly said her last words to her father.

And yet, where was he?

By the time Fang Fulan left the Imperial Noble Consort’s palace, she had gone utterly mad.

Mad within her heart.

The last thread of her reason swallowed whole, she stood by a nearby lake, resolved to end her life then and there, when suddenly she caught sight of a figure in vermilion.

She recognized this young woman — the only daughter of the Marquis of Zhongyong’s household, who had returned from the northern frontier only half a year before, named Yun Xi.

She was unlike any other woman in Jinling.

She smiled radiantly, lived without restraint; her resilience and her joys and sorrows were all plain in her eyes, and those eyes were clean and clear, able to see everything plainly.

So she needed no jade pendants or hairpins, no elaborate skirts — a single vermilion training uniform was enough to make her beautiful.

Fang Fulan thought, how she envied this young girl, able to live so cleanly, so clearly, loving and hating without confusion.

And so — if she threw herself into this lake now, would this young girl save her?

One thought, and good or evil hung in the balance; in the end, her mortal heart succumbed to its demons.

Fang Fulan watched Yun Xi draw closer, closed her eyes, and bent forward, throwing herself into the lake.

The cool, icy water rose over her nose and eyes, filling her lungs.

Her chest ached as though it would burst.

But before long, a pair of warm, small yet strong hands reached up from beneath the water, slowly pulling her up to the surface, as though meaning to carry her away from this abyss of torment.

Fang Fulan knew it was that girl named Yun Xi — she had not misjudged her.

Yun Xi brought her back to the Marquis of Zhongyong’s household and sent her own personal maid, Mingcui, to look after her.

She told her: “I’m not used to having servants wait on me. Back when I lived on the frontier, there wasn’t so much fuss and formality.”

She said her father and brother had spent years away at war, and that she had grown up alongside a dog named A’Chai. Later, when A’Chai grew old and passed away, she had grieved for some time, though by now she had come out of that grief — and if she ever had the chance, she wanted to raise another shepherd dog.

As Fang Fulan listened to her talk, all she could think, with her whole heart, was to live — to live on, to clear her father’s name, to live on and clear her father’s name no matter what.

And so, after lying in bed for three days, the first words she said to Yun Xi were: “I’m too filthy. I want to bathe.”

To this day she still remembered the delighted look on Yun Xi’s face at hearing those words, remembered how she had hurried, flustered, to tell Mingcui to heat the water.

Fang Fulan had thought then, what a kind-hearted young girl this was.

Someone who could feel joy simply because things were going well for someone else.

And so, even though her heart back then was consumed with hatred, she could never bring herself to hate Yun Xi — she liked her, even envied her, and in the long, bitter years that followed, she truly came to think of her as her own younger sister.

Looking back on it now, in this life of hers — those days in the Fang household, ruined to worthlessness by the selfishness of Fang Shi and Fang You; the bond between father and daughter, forever twisted in this life by her father’s dying words; her secret vow with Prince Ling — yet in her hardest days, sunk in the depths of an endless hell, where had Prince Ling been?

It turned out that those years at the Marquis of Zhongyong’s household, those years shared through thick and thin with Yun Xi, were the only ones truly worth remembering.

She remembered how Yun Xi had found work at the Jingzhao Prefecture and came home full of excitement to tell her: “Sister-in-law, I get to be a constable! From now on I’ll have money to get Uncle Bai and Aunt Bai treated when they’re sick.”

She remembered how, every time Yun Xi received her wages, she would pour all the coins from her purse onto the table at once, sorting out which was for her medicine, which was for Uncle Bai’s.

Every time, Fang Fulan would ask: “You’ve given me all your wages — will you have enough for yourself?”

And Yun Xi would take a string of copper coins from her waist pouch, toss it up and catch it, and say, “Enough! Besides, the yamen provides meals too!”

Back then she was still a constable at the Jingzhao Prefecture, wearing the bright vermilion training uniform of the yamen, her thick black hair tied back in a ponytail, the unruly strands at her temples braided into little plaits and tucked into the ponytail, leaving her smooth forehead bare.

She resembled Yun Luo greatly — sharp, clean brows, bright and beautiful eyes, eyes so clear that any random lamplight reflected in them seemed to illuminate the whole world.

Fang Fulan even remembered her own wedding night, how Yun Luo, looking at her trembling all over, had said gently: “Since you’re this frightened, I won’t touch you for now.”

He had also said: “Your family has suffered such a great calamity; it’s understandable that you can’t come out of the shadow of it right away. I can wait for you to get better.”

But what had she done to them, in return?

Fang Fulan remembered that cold spring morning when Yun Xi had said to her: “From now on, you are no longer one of us at the Marquis of Zhongyong’s household.”

Her tone had been resolute, without a trace of lingering old affection.

Of course — A’Ting had always been someone who loved and hated so clearly.

And the Yun siblings were so good, so kind — she truly did not deserve to belong to the Marquis of Zhongyong’s household, did not deserve to be part of the Yun family.

Fang Fulan had originally only been walking along the small pond, merely glancing once at the water, when, utterly without warning, she toppled straight into the lake.

Like a withered willow branch, blown loose from its high bough by a breeze on this quiet early-summer night, sinking down into the water below.

The cool water rose over her eyes and ears, drawn into her lungs.

Her chest ached as though it would burst.

But this time, there would be no pair of warm, small, strong hands to lift her from the water, to carry her away from this abyss of torment.

Cheng Chang’s voice echoed faintly in her ears.

“Take a good look at this half of your life — what a ridiculous joke it truly has been.”

So, in the end, it really had only ever been a joke.