“When I first knew her, I thought of her as a pool of clear water you could see straight through — simple in her thoughts, gentle in her nature. Once I discovered how deep her scheming ran — from the fabricated tale of her pitiful background, to her brother’s supposed flight from justice, and then the matter with the Yu family — I thought then that she was a pool of muddy water, filled with cobwebs, murky and filthy. It was not until after Yan Hong died that I finally realized — she was in fact water laced with the most lethal poison.”

Minglan offered her own private commentary: if I hadn’t seen through her for what she was, you’d have been drinking that water down happily regardless of whether it was clear, murky, or poisoned.

“In truth, when I first understood what she really was, I didn’t blame her very greatly. Whether it was deceiving me for years, or sabotaging the Yu family marriage arrangement, or sending Yan Hong to make a scene — I told myself it was only because she felt a deep devotion to me. To be honest, even then, while I was angry at Man Niang for deceiving me, there was still some small hidden part of me that was pleased. After all — she was not after the Marquis title. She wanted me, as a person — she simply wanted to be my wife, properly and legitimately.”

Minglan suppressed the urge to grimace — the man she cared for was not necessarily him; it was more likely a man who could make her dreams real — and that could have been anyone capable and of good standing.

Yet Gu Tingye’s next sentence was: “Only later did I understand. What she was so deeply devoted to was not me at all — but her own obsession, her own delusion.”

Minglan fell silent.

“At that time, even though I didn’t greatly blame her, there was one thing I understood with perfect clarity in my heart. Man Niang had managed to deceive me so thoroughly, for so many years, without the slightest slip — which was proof in itself of how formidable she was. I knew at that moment that she could never be content to take a lower place. Unless I married her as my principal wife, if she were made a concubine, she would not rest until she had destroyed whoever was mistress of the household. And yet — I had never once thought of marrying her as my wife.”

From childhood, his father had praised and affirmed him in many ways, and one of his hopes was that his son would take a fine woman for his wife. But what exactly made a fine wife? His father could never quite put it clearly — he spoke in four-character phrases, as fathers do: one must be of clean and respectable background, of upright and proper conduct, warm and virtuous and kind, dignified and gracious in bearing — and if her family could offer some assistance besides, so much the better.

As a small boy he had not fully understood the deeper meaning in these words — but had taken them in, vaguely, and stored them in the corner of his young heart.

Gu Tingye looked at Minglan steadily, and smiled very slightly. “You once said of me: ‘He looks free and unruly, but at his core he is the most bound by convention.’ At the time I was so angry I nearly threw you back into the river. But afterward, turning it over carefully, I thought — there was actually something in that.”

Minglan instinctively drew her neck in, and gave an awkward, hollow laugh.

“A timid, frail manner, however pitiable and endearing, is not how any principal wife of a distinguished household carries herself. Lowly birth is no sin, but a lack of proper cultivation, an inability to conduct oneself with dignity and ease in the world — these are real failings. Man Niang was skilled at needlework, could sing and dance, and knew something of household accounts — yet her horizons were narrow and shallow, and once she had finished recounting her sorrows, there was simply nothing more to say to her.”

Even when he had thought of Man Niang as a clear pool, he had never considered making her his wife.

That phrase — “when a subject is not discreet, he loses his life” — was something Man Niang could not only never have said, she could never even have understood its meaning had she memorized it by rote. Whereas when he spoke to Minglan of court affairs and human dealings, she not only understood — she could analyze and comment with incisive clarity.

…He had only ever felt sympathy for her circumstances, admired what he thought was her spirit, found comfort in her gentle persuasion, and wished to care for her and give her security in her remaining years — nothing more, nothing less. And then it turned out that even her circumstances, her spirit, and her gentleness were all performed.

“You are different.” Gu Tingye looked at Minglan, his gaze warm and steady. “There is always more for us to say to each other.”

Minglan met his gaze and smiled quietly: “…Yes — there is always more for us to say.” It was like Baoyu and Bao Chai — Bao Chai was perfect in every way, and yet Baoyu loved Lin Daiyu. At the deepest root of it all, it simply came down to being kindred spirits, with more between them to say than could ever be exhausted.

“But when all is said and done — it was nothing more than the noble-born Second Young Master Gu looking down on a woman of performing background. Man Niang had probably seen through that long ago, which is why she kept urging me, goading me, trying to make me abandon family and stand on my own.” Gu Tingye mocked himself lightly.

“In the first days after I left home, I was both irritable and desolate, and in my weaker moments even thought: since I had already become a wanderer among the lower ranks anyway, what was there left to look down upon in others? I might as well just make a life with Man Niang — we had two children together regardless. But then… as fate would have it…” He pressed his fingers lightly to his temples, the dark veins on the back of his hand rising.

“As fate would have it — Yan Hong died.” Minglan completed the sentence calmly on his behalf.

Gu Tingye lowered his hand, his gaze resolute. “…Yes. Yan Hong died. And it was the end of any lingering thoughts I had about Man Niang.”

“She was not the one I wanted to marry, and I was not the husband she wanted. In those brief months together, her conduct was not that of a good wife, and mine was not that of a good husband. But even after leaving home and setting out, I still felt that I had wronged her.”

He reached over and pulled the thin blanket more snugly around Minglan. “I had thought at one time — if she was unwilling to continue living this way with me, I was prepared to agree to an official separation, and let her remarry honorably. Every fault and every bad name would fall on me — my reputation was already bad enough, a little more would make no difference. But when it came to it, I found I had no desire whatsoever to avenge her.”

“Even if, during my absence of five years, she had done something wrong out of loneliness, I could have found some understanding in myself for that. Yet in barely more than a month, there was already another man, and she was already carrying someone else’s child. She truly held me in nothing but contempt…”

Both brows arched, a cold smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “And the one who cuckolded me was someone like Gu Tingbing of all people. If it weren’t for Qin Shi making sure the whole affair blew up into the open, Yan Hong had planned to bribe a physician and pass the bastard off as mine.”

That Madam had not wanted Yan Hong to carry a child to term, bastard or not. The eldest son was already heading toward a childless death, and the second had walked away from the family on his own. If the second son left behind a legitimate son, that added one more variable.

Gu Tingye seemed to feel the humiliation still not fully settled, and couldn’t resist adding: “If you said this to a man of real blood and backbone out in the jianghu, and they took a blade and finished off the adulterer and the unfaithful wife both, more likely than not the others around them would break into applause.”

Minglan’s lips moved slightly — she had quite a few thoughts about the historical customs for handling adulterous men and women, but thinking of the long tradition of practices like being drowned in a pig cage, she kept her mouth shut.

“In the end, we had pledged our vows before heaven and earth. Where love had failed, loyalty ought at least to hold. By this stage, there was neither love nor loyalty between Yan Hong and me. Whether she lived or died, I was entirely indifferent. But it shouldn’t have been… shouldn’t have been Man Niang who brought it about.”

In this matter, what Man Niang had revealed — the viciousness, the wickedness, the meticulous calculation, and the cold-bloodedness — far exceeded anything he had imagined a woman could be capable of. He had only, in a moment of wine-hazed looseness, let slip in front of a servant the merest hint of lenience in his attitude — and Man Niang had had Yan Hong’s life for it.

If he had been able to justify everything that had gone before as stemming from Man Niang’s devoted passion, this — this had finally and completely killed whatever feeling remained.

When he was young, his father had taken the Annals of Famous Ministers and the Chronicles of Divine Warriors, and read aloud to him passage by passage about the conduct and character of the great statesmen and military men throughout history, dynasty by dynasty. “In learning there is learning’s virtue, in arms there is arms’ virtue — only a man steadfast in will and upright in conduct can withstand the assault of every demon and specter in the world.” The earnest instructions still echoed in his ears — a woman with a corrupted and scheming heart, this he would absolutely not accept.

“And yet even so, I had never wanted her dead, or wished any other harm upon her. She had after all kept me company through that period of my life. I had no wish to see her again, but I hoped she and her son would go their own way and make something of themselves — a life of warmth and sufficiency. Saying this aloud, Old Duke Zhang will probably say again that I am hopelessly sentimental… Minglan, do you…?” His look was eager, almost urgent.

Minglan met his eyes calmly and steadily. “I understand. I know.”

Contrary to what many had supposed, he was in truth a man who set great store by feeling and loyalty. Precisely because he had known so little of it, he treasured it all the more — even the beautiful illusion beneath all the pretense had once given comfort to his desperate and turbulent youth.

“The thing about Man Niang I understood least of all — no matter how firmly I cut off feeling and rejected her, no matter how many times I made it clear, said it truthfully, turned her away — she seemed to live inside her own world, locked into her own conviction, insisting on believing that I still had feeling for her.”

Gu Tingye was genuinely puzzled. “Did she need me to break her arms and legs, cut off a few fingers, before she would believe it?”

Sending Man Niang and her son to Mianzhou had been the one last chance he gave her. In truth he had already quietly found several suitable households — had Man Niang continued to interfere, he intended to take Chang Ge’er away entirely and raise him elsewhere. He had suffered enough in his own childhood from growing up without a mother, and told himself that for all of Man Niang’s thousand and one failings, she at least still loved her child.

But then, before setting out on campaign, Shi Keng and his wife had told him of something that had happened some time before, and he had made up his mind on the spot to remove Chang Ge’er from Man Niang the moment he returned. As it turned out — he was too late.

“Man Niang was like a bottomless abyss — there was no bottom to be found. Knowing she could deceive people, I didn’t know she could kill; knowing she could kill, I didn’t know she could raise her hand against someone close to her. Her only brother — used up and cast aside just like that. To achieve her ends, there was nothing she would not do, no act of malice too great to commit.”

Strip away one layer of skin after another, and what lay beneath was something this rank and this foul. He was filled with a bewildered dread, unable to believe that this woman was the Man Niang he had once cared for.

He remembered encountering Man Niang when he arrived at West Liao city — she had a wooden rod in her hand and was laying about herself left and right in the middle of the refugees, precise and powerful, and no one dared come near them. He had known her all those years and had always believed she was a sickly, delicate woman who, at most, knew a few flamboyant but empty fighting stances. Only at that moment did he realize her martial skill was far beyond merely “decent.”

In that instant, a cold sweat had broken over him, and his mind went back to the year Man Niang had thrown herself at his wife, then heavy with child. At the time he had assumed it was the reckless act of a desperate woman seeking mutual destruction in her despair. Now, thinking back — even with Chang Ge’er in her arms, she could have harmed Minglan while perfectly preserving herself. His heart, in that moment, went cold and hard.

“In encountering her, I was the unlucky one. In encountering me, she was unluckier still.”

Time and distance behind him now, he could give himself and Man Niang this simple, calm, final summation.

Minglan straightened her back — she had grown stiff from sitting so long — feeling a faint numbness in her mind, uncertain what to say or what to do. She looked up at Gu Tingye’s subdued and quietly at-peace face, and felt, strangely, a pang of sympathy for him.

“When I sent Man Niang and her son to Mianzhou, you blamed me…” He forced the words out with difficulty. “You were right to blame me.”

Minglan opened her mouth to speak. Gu Tingye pressed his palm gently over it. “Hear me out first.” Minglan acquiesced and listened.

“I don’t want to make any justifications. You said I hadn’t treated you with a sincere heart — and that was the absolute truth. But I wasn’t born heartless either. I had once treated someone with a sincere heart — and what did that lead to? Deceived, humiliated, wrongly accused, with no one to turn to, no one to trust… I could only break free, go outward, strip away the title of Gu Marquis’s son, the sash and the jade pendants, the name, and all of everything — hollow out the heart, bow the head, and start from the beginning, start over from nothing.”

The man’s voice was low and hoarse, like two rough stones grinding against each other.

“In the end, I learned. Before acting on anything — weigh the gains and the losses, the good and the bad, every angle… I learned to guard against scheming, and I learned to scheme against others.” He gave a pained, bitter smile. “Kill the Gu Tingye of the past, in order to survive.”

Minglan’s eyes slowly filled with a warmth that was close to tears; something ached near her heart, with a sharpness that verged on pain. A noble son of the Marquis’s household — who probably had no idea how many coins a bowl of noodles cost — gone to earn a living from nothing. How hard it must have been; she knew, she knew it all.

“In those days, times were not easy. So many people had their eyes fixed on us, watching for any mistake. Old Geng was brought up for censure, Elder Brother Shen was brought up for censure — even a man as honest and straightforward as Elder Brother Duan had people nitpicking at him over nothing. I could not compare to them in how deeply they stood in the Emperor’s heart, and so — I could not afford to make mistakes.”

He closed his palm over Minglan’s hand, his voice breaking with pain: “When I learned you mother and son were safe, the very first thought in my mind was not worry for your fear, not the impulse to avenge you — it was how to quietly and cleanly keep the matter of Man Niang buried and contained. You were right to be angry at me later, to resent me — every bit of it was deserved! And then, being the sort of person I was — having the gall afterward to complain that you didn’t give me your whole heart. I truly was the worst of the worst.”

He pressed his fist together, the knuckles going white, cracking softly.

“When Grandmother was dying, I saw you kneeling at the bedside, crying so brokenly, so utterly from the depths of your soul. To get back justice for the old lady, you threw yourself in without reservation — life, death, wealth, standing — a thousand deaths could not have turned you back. It was as though I woke from a dream — I had walked such a long way, learned so much about gains and losses, about advance and retreat — and in all of it I had forgotten the most important thing… forgotten how to treat someone with a sincere heart…”

His voice had gone almost to nothing, like the sound of an aged sheepskin scroll being slowly unrolled. The words fell, and one tear slipped down. A seam opened in the sky, and light came flooding through. Fate had never offered him level ground — cliff and canyon, danger and long toil, and looking back, he found he had lost something precious along the way.

Minglan’s voice broke into a sob, and she pressed her hand over his clenched fist: “That’s not true. It’s my own smallness of heart. You were working so hard out there, and the comfortable, brilliant days I have here — it isn’t because I’m clever, it isn’t because I have good relationships, it isn’t because I’m good at handling people and things. It’s only because you have standing and dignity at court that everyone fawns on me and flatters me and treats me so well — all of it, every bit of it.”

Tears fell on their clasped hands, burning and scalding.

“You protect me in front of others and behind the scenes, and refuse to let me suffer even the smallest slight. Who in the capital doesn’t envy me? It’s me — it’s my own insufficiency, it’s me…” Minglan bit down hard on her lip, leaving a row of deep marks from her teeth, and the tears came down in large drops. “It’s me who was afraid. Afraid that one day you might not love me anymore — what would I do then? So I was always petty, always measuring out every fraction, refusing to accept even the smallest shortfall. I was just terrified of that terrible day arriving. If it came, I would be heartbroken to death!”

She cried out loud at last, the long-guarded secret of her heart suddenly laid bare to the light of day. All the reasons, in the end, were so feeble, so selfish — so shameful to herself.

“Actually, I’ve long known what you feel in your heart. Your care for me goes beyond wanting a wife who can manage a household and bear you children. You love me sincerely, you respect me, you coax me into happiness, you want me to live without a care in the world… and yet I insisted on pretending not to understand! Because I was afraid, I was afraid…”

Gu Tingye fumbled clumsily with his sleeve, trying to wipe her tears: “Don’t — don’t cry. You mustn’t cry in the first month after birth…” And as he said it, a large teardrop of his own fell.

Minglan cried all the harder.

They held each other — heads touching, bodies close — tears flowing for reasons neither could quite explain, soaking into collars and sleeves, like two children who had been badly wronged and were comforting each other, warming each other.

They had both been worn down early by reality, had sanded off their innocence and enthusiasm, had learned in life every form of concealment and evasion, full of wariness and guard against people and events, walking on eggshells, never easily trusting.

Until, over mountains and rivers, through suspicion and heartbreak and hesitation, after going all the way around a very long circle — they finally realized that what they had been seeking was right here, all along, close enough to reach.

— This was the last time Man Niang appeared in their conversations, in their lives.