Cheng Chang was, in truth, someone who took life as it came, drifting along without much resistance.

In his past life, he’d been like duckweed adrift, with no true place to belong, his every waking thought consumed by the basic question of “how to live well.”

Now that he’d arrived here, his mindset really hadn’t changed much—someone wanted him dead, and he spent his days rushing about, all in the name of survival.

Yun Xi’s words suddenly stirred up a long-buried homesickness from his two lifetimes.

He set down his chopsticks, his gaze drifting toward the ancient lanes visible beyond the restaurant railing, and found himself, inexplicably, longing for the towering skyscrapers of the twenty-first century, the endless streams of traffic during rush hour, the crowds of people hurrying about their day.

He had lived in the information age, in a city that never slept, where relationships between people were both close and distant at once.

He hadn’t been particularly unconventional, but he’d come to enjoy that kind of distance—much like how a few of his college roommates had scattered in different directions after graduation, some never seen again, others still gathering from time to time. No one had ever felt the anxious need to stay constantly in touch.

The advent of the internet had blurred the line between the far and the near, so that distance became more a matter of the heart than of physical space—coming together when things aligned, parting ways when they didn’t. It wasn’t like here, where hours, distances in li, and social rank were all measured precisely, every boundary carefully counted and observed.

Cheng Chang had never expected he would come to miss the era he’d once lived in quite this much.

And then he realized—this thing called homesickness was, in truth, the deep imprint an era and a culture left carved into a person’s very soul. No matter how untethered he drifted, he was still entitled to carry it with him.

Nor was it something he could easily let go of, even having crossed a thousand years of time.

“Third Young Master.” Seeing Cheng Chang’s unusual silence, Yun Xi couldn’t help but ask, “Did this humble officer say something wrong?”

“No,” Cheng Chang said.

He glanced at her, genuinely grateful, in his heart, for the offhand remark she’d just made—it had let him experience, for the first time, this complex, hard-to-articulate feeling called homesickness.

But he had no desire to pour out his feelings, so he simply followed the thread of her words, redirecting the conversation. “Are you from Jinling?”

Yun Xi nodded. “Yes, I was born here as a child.” She added, “But as a young girl, I lived at the northern frontier with my father and brother.”

Cheng Chang asked, “Is that where you learned all your skills?”

“All my skills?” Yun Xi didn’t quite understand.

She thought for a moment, then asked, startled, “Does the Third Young Master mean my martial arts?”

Though the Great Sui was fairly open-minded, it was still, in the end, an ancient era—men rising to prominence as generals or ministers, women managing the household and raising children, remained the norm.

Even though the court permitted women to hold office, they typically couldn’t rise very far, and most women who did serve tended toward civil rather than martial roles. Few women practiced martial arts at all, and those who did were often regarded as oddities, unbecoming of proper young ladies.

Take the old matriarch, for instance—the standing she enjoyed today was really due to her connections with Prince Cong’s household and with the Imperial Noble Consort’s family through Prince Ling, not merely because she’d once been a female general. A woman general alone wouldn’t have commanded such respect.

“What kind of skill is this, really?” Yun Xi gave a small laugh. “I’m a woman—if my father or brother had this ability, that would be called a real skill.”

“Why wouldn’t it count?” Cheng Chang said. “It lets you protect yourself and protect others too—on a small scale, defending home and household; on a larger scale, driving back invaders and guarding the borders. A skill this useful shouldn’t be divided by gender.”

It also built physical strength and extended one’s life, he added silently.

Yun Xi looked at him, stunned. “Does the Third Young Master truly believe that?”

Cheng Chang gave an affirmative hum. “Truly.”

Yun Xi lowered her eyes, a quiet happiness rising in her heart.

When she’d first returned from the northern frontier, she actually hadn’t set out to find work at the Jingzhao Prefecture at all.

She’d gone to the Privy Council, to the Ministry of War, and to several generals’ households, hoping to carry on her family’s tradition and stay in the military, following in her father and brother’s footsteps. Unfortunately, seeing she was merely a young woman, they had all politely turned her away.

Yun Xi smiled. “That’s right, I learned all this at the northern frontier. As a child, when Father taught Brother, I’d practice alongside them. There weren’t many people in the household, and sometimes when no one was around to spar with me, I’d practice with A’Huang instead.”

She took a bite of food and chewed thoughtfully before continuing. “A’Huang was a dog I raised at the frontier, two years older than me, very clever. When I was little, I couldn’t beat him in a sparring match, and he’d even let me win sometimes.”

Cheng Chang was taken aback. “You raised a dog?”

In the months since he’d transmigrated, he’d come to know quite a few young ladies from Jinling’s great households, and even those who kept cats were rare, let alone dogs—most people regarded dogs as mere beasts, either fearing or despising them.

“Mm,” Yun Xi nodded. “Out on the northern grasslands, with the sky so vast and the land so wide open, A’Huang lived a very happy life there.”

“He was with me for eight years. I remember he was ten years old when he passed—by then, all his teeth had fallen out, and he could barely walk anymore. Every day, I’d carry him out to the courtyard to sunbathe.”

“On his last day, he suddenly insisted on going outside, no matter what. I couldn’t talk him out of it, so I went along with him. And then, just like when he was young, he ran across the grassland with me, played and roughhoused with me one last time.”

“Unfortunately, we only played for half an hour or so before he collapsed from exhaustion. I knew he couldn’t hold on any longer, so I told him, ‘A’Huang, go in peace, I’ll always remember you.’ He could understand human speech, and only then did he close his eyes.”

Hearing this, Cheng Chang felt a wave of emotion and said, “He lived a full ten years—that counts as dying a natural death, in peace.”

“Yes, Father and Brother said the same thing.” Yun Xi smiled faintly. “People in the army always say one should learn to take life and death lightly. A’Huang was buried at the frontier, having lived ten full years—that’s a happy passing, by anyone’s measure.”

Cheng Chang asked further, “Did you ever keep another dog after that?”

Yun Xi shook her head. “Not long after that, we moved back to Jinling.”

Not long after arriving in Jinling, her father had gone off to war and died in battle, and then her brother had gone off to war and died as well.

She had wanted to keep another dog, but hadn’t had the heart for it—raising one would only mean dragging it into hardship right alongside her.

“After coming back to Jinling, there was just too much going on with the household. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to give a new dog the care it deserved, so I never kept one,” Yun Xi said.

Cheng Chang looked at her, about to say something, when he suddenly heard a commotion from outside.

Ke Yong burst into the private room, his face urgent. “Third Young Master, Constable Yun, something’s wrong.”

“Something’s happened at the woodshed!”

Both Yun Xi and Cheng Chang were startled. The woodshed had been quiet for two whole months—why would something happen today, of all days?

Neither of them wasted time. They had the servant boy harness the carriage and hurried back to the Jingzhao Prefecture.

On the way, Ke Yong explained, “Not long after Constable Yun left—around dusk, probably—several men in black showed up to kill the ‘boatman.’ We had enough manpower to handle it, but who could’ve known those men in black were so skilled, and seemed to have come prepared as well. They didn’t fight us head-on at all—just wanted to see what was going on, and once they’d seen enough, they left.”

“Eventually, Zhang Dahu had no choice but to step in himself. Once they saw the ‘boatman’ was actually Zhang Dahu in disguise, they realized they’d fallen into a trap and retreated at once. We chased after them as best we could, but couldn’t catch a single one.”

“Not a single one?” Yun Xi asked. “How many of you were there, and how many of them?”

“Three of them, and we had… over a dozen, not even counting Zhang Dahu,” Ke Yong said, looking embarrassed. “If Constable Yun had been there, perhaps you could have held your own against them.”

“T-that skilled?” Tian Si gasped. “Able to, to fight Constable Yun?”

By then they had arrived at the Jingzhao Prefecture. Cheng Chang and the others got out of the carriage and headed straight for the woodshed.

Outside the woodshed, Zhang Dahu and the rest of the servant boys and runners sat slumped in dejection.

After two whole months of effort, they’d finally managed to hook a fish—only to watch it slip away.

Night had already fallen. Cheng Chang, torch in hand, surveyed the surroundings, then called over a few people to question them, his expression growing darker by the moment.

Two months, and the true culprit hadn’t made a single move—clearly someone with tremendous patience.

So why act today, of all days?

Was there something special about today?

He asked Ke Yong, “You said earlier, those men in black—their skill was comparable to Constable Yun’s?”

“Reporting to the Third Young Master, yes,” Ke Yong said. “Fighters of that caliber aren’t easy to come by. I don’t know how the true culprit managed to gather three of them.”

Cheng Chang thought to himself that this wasn’t hard to explain.

The renegade retainer from his own household had crossed swords with Yun Xi before and had a rough sense of her fighting ability. To pull off an abduction on the Jingzhao Prefecture’s own turf today, the culprit would naturally need people of comparable strength.

The moment this thought occurred to him, Cheng Chang’s mind suddenly sharpened.

He looked up at Yun Xi, still inside the woodshed carefully searching for evidence, and a thought gradually began to take shape in his mind.

How had the news of the boatman’s confession leaked, last time?

It had been at the gate of the Marquis of Loyalty and Valor’s mansion—when Ke Yong went to find Yun Xi and spoke it aloud, someone had overheard.

This time…

Yun Xi searched for a while longer, found nothing, then looked up. Through the woodshed doorway, she saw Cheng Chang standing upright beneath the moonlight, gazing at her in silence.

She stepped outside and, clasping her hands, said, “Third Young Master, this humble officer…”

She didn’t know how to properly apologize.

The manpower guarding the woodshed had been arranged by Cheng Chang himself, so this wasn’t strictly her fault, and yet she still felt responsible.

“You…” Cheng Chang paused for a moment, then asked, “When Tian Si went to your mansion to find you today, was everyone in your household there?”

Hearing this, Yun Xi immediately understood what he was implying.

Could the leak have come from her mansion again this time?

Yun Xi, deeply mortified, said with difficulty, “When Tian Si came to find me, I was in my room, and there was no one around me at the time—though whether anyone passed through the courtyard, I couldn’t say. I… don’t really keep my guard up around them.”

They were all loyal servants and old retainers who had relied on one another for survival—it was difficult for her to suddenly grow suspicious of them over a single coincidence.

“But… afterward, when I hurried out of the mansion, and Sister-in-law called after me to finish my lunch before leaving, everyone in the household was present, and I told them, ‘There’s urgent business at the yamen, I won’t be eating.'”

“I’m not sure if it was that very remark that… alerted whoever it was in the household.”

But who could that person possibly be?

Cheng Chang said, “Actually, there might be a way to narrow down who leaked the information.”

“Go back to the mansion tomorrow morning and ask around—find out who, after you left today, stepped out of the mansion sometime between noon—” he glanced at the sky, “—and the hour of Shen.”

Anyone wanting to inform the true culprit would need to leave the mansion to do so.

The three assassins had arrived at the woodshed around the hour of You, which meant the culprit must have received word by the hour of Shen at the latest.

Yun Xi nodded. “All right, the moment I get back tomorrow morning, I’ll ask Sister-in-law and everyone in the household carefully.”

Cheng Chang gave a “Mm,” then smiled faintly at her. “This isn’t your fault. You needn’t dwell on it too much. The manpower here was arranged by me. After the attack at the waterside pavilion, once those men had crossed swords with you, I should have thought to send more guards then—it was my own oversight.”

By the time all this was settled, the hour of Xu had already passed.

As they left the Jingzhao Prefecture, the sound of urgent hoofbeats echoed from the mouth of the alley, and a retainer from the princely household rode up to Cheng Chang.

“Young Prince, the Princess Consort sent this one to ask—has your official business run into trouble? Why haven’t you returned to the mansion yet?”

Only then did Cheng Chang remember the banquet being held at the mansion today.

He replied, “Yes, official business held me up. I’ll head back right away.”

He glanced at Yun Xi, meaning to ask how she’d be getting back, but then remembered she was on night duty and would need to stay at the yamen anyway. So he simply bid her farewell and boarded the carriage.

Having spent the entire day rushing about, Cheng Chang was utterly exhausted. Sitting in the carriage, eyes closed, replaying the day’s events in his mind, he suddenly remembered something.

He lifted the curtain and said to the servant boy driving the carriage, “That food box I had you keep earlier—where is it?”

“It’s in the cabinet on the left side of the carriage,” the servant boy replied. “Young Prince, are you hungry? Should this one go buy you a late-night snack?”

Cheng Chang waved a hand. “Back to the mansion.”

By the time he arrived, the mansion’s banquet had already ended, though Prince Cong’s consort was still waiting for him in the main hall.

She had always doted excessively on this son, and though he had failed to keep his promise and hadn’t attended the banquet, since it was due to official duties, she couldn’t bring herself to scold him for it.

Seeing Cheng Chang return, she hurried to have the maids and matrons bring water for him to wash his face, personally poured him tea, and asked with concern, “Chang’er, you must be exhausted?”

Before Cheng Chang could answer, her gaze fell on the box he was holding, and her heart lifted with pleasure. She said with a knowing smile, “I imagine you’re not too tired, though—eating those ice lotus cakes should have done wonders to revive you.”

Cheng Chang said nothing, simply opened the box, took out the earring, and handed it to the princess consort. “That Miss Lin accidentally left this earring in the food box while making the cakes. Mother, please find an opportunity to return it to her for me.”

Since he had no feelings for her, the cakes could stay—but this earring, under no circumstances, could he accept.

The princess consort froze, and after a long moment, asked, “Chang’er… what do you mean by this?”

After a pause, unable to help herself, she asked again, “This gesture of yours—it wouldn’t have anything to do with… that marquis’s household young lady, would it?”