Chu Linlang smiled her gratitude at Tao Yashu, and once Miss Tao had gone off to socialize, she settled into the corner seat, sipping tea and nibbling at the refreshments while listening to the other guests play the zither and chat.

Being within the Tao family’s garden, the conversation naturally revolved around the Tao family.

The two ladies seated in front of Chu Linlang were evidently the capital’s foremost gossips.

They were whispering about the history of this garden. Apparently it had been part of Tao Huiru’s dowry when she first married into the Yang family, and she had taken it back with her when she severed all ties with the Yang household.

One of the stout women murmured: “That fourth daughter of the Tao family — how splendid her prospects were back then! Suitors beyond counting all across the capital. How could she have been so blind as to fall for a traitor? If she had married someone else, wouldn’t she be living so much better than she is now, keeping solitary vigil by the lamp?”

The other woman replied softly: “Indeed, wasn’t she blind? Though it’s hardly surprising — the most handsome man in the capital, how many a young lady’s heart did he set aflutter!”

“I heard he secretly betrothed himself and married some accomplished young woman from Lingnan! But they say she later went mad, and that’s when she was divorced on the grounds of serious illness, and then this Tao daughter married in…”

“Oh my — I actually saw the first wife once! She was quite beautiful — called… called what was it again — right, Wen Jiangxue! Though she went mad, she was at least fortunate enough to escape that calamity. If she had still been connected to the Yang family, wouldn’t she have been impossible to save?”

Chu Linlang had been cracking melon seeds when she accidentally bit her own finger at this point, and her body instinctively leaned slightly forward as she held her breath and continued to listen: “That’s right — I heard she’d gone to considerable lengths to marry in, and it was a match she had seized for herself! If she had married someone else, where would all this misfortune have come from? Lucky for her that she was a daughter of the Tao family — anyone else, in that catastrophe back then, would likely not have gotten mother and child out in one piece! Though such an overly emotional woman turns up in the capital once every few years — just like that daughter of Xie Sheng, whose mind was equally clouded by infatuation — she drove out someone else’s rightful wife and went running off to become another woman’s stepmother for nothing…”

The two ladies, warmed to the topic and enjoying themselves, laughed until they shook like branches in the wind, then rose together and moved off arm in arm to another part of the garden — never noticing that the very former wife from the Zhou family they had been gossiping about was seated right behind them.

Chu Linlang sat there blankly with a melon seed still between her lips, forgetting even to crack it. She felt as though a tangled mass of thread had been stuffed into her head, and she needed to find one loose end and slowly work it apart.

This lay devotee Tao Huiru had originally married Yang Yi, son of the great general — and Yang Yi’s former wife was said to be surnamed Wen, who had been divorced and sent away on the pretext of a serious illness when her mad episodes worsened.

Chu Linlang pressed her nails into her palm with great effort, barely suppressing the urge to clap her hand over her mouth.

Because she had suddenly made a connection — Situ Sheng’s childhood surname in Jiang Kou had also been Wen. His mad mother was said to have once married a high-ranking official in the capital, had wounded her husband in a jealous rage, and had then gone mad.

Two people who should have had nothing whatsoever to do with each other had suddenly been inexplicably linked together in her mind.

And in that moment, the mad woman’s mournful lament — “How I regret urging my husband to seek glory on the frontier” — echoed again through her head.

Chu Linlang couldn’t help but shift her gaze back to Situ Sheng, who sat composed among the company in the pavilion.

Around him were many officials of humble origin. Though they were all brilliantly talented men who had risen from poverty, his bearing and appearance among those commoner officials always gave the impression of a crane standing among a flock of chickens — somehow ill-fitting and apart.

Such striking looks and bearing were not the kind that could easily be cultivated in ordinary country soil.

For just one fleeting moment, every shadow of gloom and every trace of mystery about him made Chu Linlang feel as though she were seeing him for the very first time.

She even clearly remembered that the original registered owner of the Lingnan estate he had gifted her was also surnamed Wen.

From that point on, the pleasures of the gathering were lost to Chu Linlang entirely. She had been shaken to her core by the secret she had unwittingly stumbled upon.

She cast her mind back to the household banquet in Ji County — when he had been carefully probing her with words, and when she had let something slip, there had been a flicker in his eyes that looked almost like a killing intent.

Chu Linlang even felt a chill of belated fear — if she hadn’t slapped Situ Sheng that time and made every effort to distance herself, how had he originally planned to silence her?

Just as she sat in silence, the lay devotee appeared at her side without her having noticed, and said gently: “Yashu mentioned you are currently working at the Vice Minister’s household.”

Chu Linlang quickly gathered herself and gave a bow, answering softly that this was so.

Tao Huiru smiled, and began with a few inconsequential inquiries about how her niece was getting on at the girls’ school — then shifted course, and asked as though making idle conversation: “They say Lord Situ is a most devoted son, observing three years of mourning for his late mother, not daring to contemplate a match for himself. I only wonder — where was the Vice Minister’s late mother from, and what illness did she pass from?”

Chu Linlang looked up at her and smiled as she gave her answer.

Though Situ Sheng’s personal history was fabricated, it was flawless in every detail — because his adolescent years had indeed been spent in the care of a foster mother, which was not entirely false.

Hearing Situ Sheng’s impeccable account of family origins and history, Tao Huiru’s expression was indecipherable — neither clearly relieved nor clearly disappointed. She let out a slow, quiet breath and said: “What a pity — that one cannot meet Lord Situ’s mother. She… must have been a woman of rare beauty.”

With that, she smiled once more at Chu Linlang and turned to leave.

Chu Linlang stared steadily at her retreating figure, feeling a dull, faint ache beginning to spread through her head.

On the entire journey home from the gathering that day, Chu Linlang fell into an unusual silence.

Situ Sheng had drunk some wine, but his eyes were still clear and sharp, and he naturally noticed Chu Linlang’s uncharacteristic quiet.

Unable to help himself, he reached out and felt her forehead to see if she was unwell. Finding her temperature normal, he asked: “What is it? Did something unpleasant happen at the gathering?”

Chu Linlang opened her mouth, but didn’t know where to begin.

She now fully understood what kind of untouchable hornets’ nest she had stumbled into. Situ Sheng… was quite possibly the grandson of the late great General Yang Xun — that is, the son of the traitor Yang Yi.

If that were truly so, Situ Sheng would be one of the very few survivors of the Yang family massacre.

On that basis alone, once his identity became known to anyone with malicious intent, it would mean utter and irreversible ruin.

If Chu Linlang had any sense, she told herself, she ought to take advantage of the fact that she was not yet in too deep, and remove herself promptly from this trouble that represented boundless catastrophe.

Situ Sheng watched Chu Linlang open her mouth and close it without speaking, and he said nothing either — only the arm that had been holding her waist loosened slightly.

He said mildly: “What did you hear?”

Chu Linlang looked at him with a complicated expression. If the two of them had only just met, and given her instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm, she should by rights pretend she knew nothing and then gradually put some distance between them.

But now, something seemed to be pulling at her heart, and the usual tricks she used to brush people off simply wouldn’t come.

She only wanted to hear the truth from his own lips and get to the bottom of it.

With that thought, she asked quietly: “Your mother… is her name Wen Jiangxue?”

Hearing this, Situ Sheng’s handsome face showed not a trace of alarm. He only regarded the woman probing him with a silence that was deep and meaningful.

It was not that he hadn’t anticipated it — that if they came to Tao Huiru’s garden today, she might overhear a few fragments of old buried stories. But he had never imagined that Chu Shi would be so brilliantly sharp, that whatever she had overheard, she could piece together the entire chain of events without the slightest effort.

If Linlang had guessed his mother’s identity, she must also have guessed his own — which explained her manner the entire way back.

Between two intelligent people, there was never any need to spell things out too plainly. As for the day she might uncover his true background, Situ Sheng had long been prepared for it.

So he didn’t bother to conceal it any further. He gave a slow, measured nod — and then watched as the face of the woman sitting across from him gradually drained of all color, and she slumped back against the carriage wall.

The rest of the journey home passed in a suffocating silence.

After returning to the Vice Minister’s residence, Chu Linlang didn’t so much as glance at the man beside her. She walked quickly, wanting to get back to her own room to sort out her thoughts.

But when had storms ever waited for anyone? She had barely changed her clothes when Situ Sheng knocked at her door.

Chu Linlang paused, then went over and opened it to let him in. His very first words were: “What I said before about sending you away — it still stands. If you’d rather not go to Lingnan, I can arrange somewhere else…”

He hadn’t finished speaking when Chu Linlang waved her hand to cut him off. She closed the door, then sat down at the table, thought for a moment, and said with quiet certainty: “You have always looked out for me because you feel my circumstances are too similar to your mother’s. You couldn’t save your mother, so you transferred that feeling onto rescuing me instead. Am I right?”

This was something that had long puzzled Chu Linlang — what could she, a woman so thoroughly worldly and common, possibly have done to deserve the admiration of a man like Situ Sheng, with his learning, his bearing, and his air of rare refinement?

In the past, she had indulged in a mild vanity, telling herself it was probably her looks that had made Situ Sheng unable to help himself.

But the longer she spent in his company, the more she realized that Situ Sheng was not the kind of man to be enslaved by a woman’s appearance.

This man’s self-control was frightening in its power. Even during their most intimate, whispered moments together in private, the one who invariably lost composure first was always Chu Linlang — never him. Not once.

In those heated moments, his heartbeat would quicken right alongside hers, his eyes gazing at her would fill with a man’s desire — yet his will seemed wrapped and bound by chains of forged iron, and at every moment, no matter what, he could maintain control of that final threshold, like a monk sunk in meditation, immovable through wind and rain.

Now, Chu Linlang thought she had finally understood — Situ Sheng was no saint, but it was simply that his pity for her outweighed his love.

Hadn’t even those two gossiping ladies hit upon the truth of it in a single remark?

She and that driven-mad Wen Shi were alike in so many ways — both had experienced the bitterness of “regretting they had urged their husbands to seek glory on the frontier.” Both were women of modest birth who had come to possess a “distinguished” husband they were never meant to have, only to have him stolen away by another woman.

So in Situ Sheng’s eyes, she — Chu Linlang — was no more than a reincarnation of his poor mother: an object onto which he projected his childish regrets and sought to make amends.

What beast could possibly bring himself to lay a hand on a woman who resembled his own mother?

At this thought, Chu Linlang was so furious she was nearly ready to curse the heavens aloud.

Was Heaven taking pity on her barren state by presenting her with such an oversized son?

Situ Sheng had mentally prepared himself for Chu Shi to confront him. He had expected her to reproach him for his concealment, his duplicity, and his irresponsibility in dragging her into danger.

Yet this woman’s angle of approach was always so extraordinarily unexpected — she never could be predicted.

What on earth was this woman’s deepest concern?

Not resentment that he had pulled an innocent person down into peril alongside him — but suspicion that he… was cherishing her out of maternal pity as though she were his own mother?

Situ Sheng knew his own inner self was dark — but not dark to that degree.

He couldn’t help but furrow his brow and say plainly: “In what way do you resemble my mother? She was once an accomplished young woman of Lingnan — song, dance, poetry, essays, the zither, and chess: she excelled in all of them. She spoke with a gentleness like the soft waters of a spring month, and she would never raise her voice harshly at another person…”

Situ Sheng spoke the truth — when that woman was not in the grip of her illness, her air and manner of speech were unlike those of an ordinary family’s daughter.

But what did he mean by all this? Was he mockingly implying that she was some crude country wife, unfit to be compared to his celestially descended birth mother?

Chu Linlang ground her teeth and said with a cold smile: “I am not in the best of spirits at the moment, my lord. Mind your words — or the sharp-tempered women of Jiang Kou have a habit of scratching people’s faces when they’re angry!”

Even her anger was as it had always been — like the brilliant sun of a June day. Situ Sheng’s habitual impulse was to reach out and cup her cheek in his hand.

But his hand had extended only halfway before he stopped.

He slowly drew his hand back, and continued explaining: “You are nothing like her. When she discovered that her closest friend from girlhood and her husband were lying together in a state of undress, all she could do was make a scene — seizing a sword, determined to die together with the faithless man. When she accidentally wounded him, her remorse was so overwhelming that she turned and threw herself into the river, hoping to punish with her own death the man who had sworn undying vows to her. She would weep until she was undone, her heart and bowels rent apart, utterly forgetting that she still had a child in swaddling clothes who needed her. When another woman pressed in on her step by step, she would shatter as fragile as scattered shards of colored glass, impossible to piece back together…”

As he spoke these words with quiet composure, what gathered in his eyes was the silent, still depths of a pool deep enough to drown in.

He had been separated from his mother from a very young age, and his mother was an unspeakable taboo throughout the entire Yang household.

Only his grandfather would occasionally, in idle hours, tell him about his mother, and assure him that she did not fail to love him — she had simply fallen gravely ill and was unable to care for him.

It was only much later that he learned the truth: his mother had been secretly conveyed to Jiang Kou under the pretense of seeking a local healer, and had become a family disgrace that both the Yang and Wen households went to great lengths to conceal.

The young Situ Sheng, having survived a sea of blood and carnage on the battlefield and come back from the very edge of death, was left with nowhere to go. When at last he was finally able to return to the mother he had missed so deeply for so long — he found that the woman he had hoped would shelter him from the storms of the world no longer recognized him.

The nightmare that entangled him without release brought him no comfort even in his mother’s arms — arms that flinched from him, offering no warmth.

Instead, this child who was still a child had to behave like a prematurely old adult, and take care of his mother, who was like shattered fragments of colored glass.

At that time, the only thing that could give him the faintest comfort was the knowledge that he was not the only child in the world who suffered.

The little girl next door cried most pitifully every time she was beaten.

And yet this seemingly frail little girl — no matter how mournfully she wept in the night — when he saw her again the next day, she was like a little wildflower that could not be broken, with not a trace of the previous night’s sorrow.

That little girl would lead him cheerfully off to sell clay dolls and earn silver.

She would also use the sweets she bought to bribe the little rascals in the neighborhood, and then, seizing the moment when Chu Huaisheng went to the outhouse, they would secretly toss large stones into the cesspit behind it — sending her father stumbling out covered in filth, clutching his trousers as he chased them, cursing.

And she would stand right there beside it all, with the most innocent look on her face, watching the spectacle.

When they met again as adults, Chu Linlang — by then already another man’s wife — had not changed in the slightest.

When this woman gripped her hairpin, her manner imperious, and pressed it to the Sixth Prince’s throat, the wild fieriness and cunning in her eyes were exactly as they had been in childhood — he had recognized her in an instant.

It was knowing Chu Linlang that had shown Situ Sheng that a woman who appears fragile could actually live in a different and more brilliant way.

Every time he drew near her, he found that his long-frozen inner self could feel the scorching heat of being alive.

So when Chu Linlang said he was rescuing her out of pity… how spectacularly wrong she was.

Between the two of them, the one who had always needed saving was never Chu Linlang.

It was he — this lonely spirit returned from the depths of hell — who, greedily and without restraint, had been scheming to hold onto this warmth that should never have belonged to him, making demands of her without limit and without shame.

As Situ Sheng told her all of this with a calm face, his eyes were still fixed intently on the beautiful woman before him.

He knew her too well. Her silence the entire way home had been her answer.

For a woman with a merchant’s instincts, seeking advantage and avoiding harm was an impulse woven into her very bones.

And he — a man of unknown and dangerous identity — was a festering swamp to be kept at a careful distance, one that would drag anyone who fell into it down to irredeemable ruin.

So Chu Linlang would speak her mind plainly with him — would end this secret, unannounced affair cleanly and decisively, just as she had ended her marriage with Zhou Sui’an — and then… leave this place far behind, never to see him again.

At that thought, Situ Sheng had no need to hide anything. He simply needed to slowly lay bare his own dark and despicable intentions — the long shadow of what he had coveted from her across so many unworthy years.

Who could have known how wildly, secretly overjoyed he had been in his heart when he learned she was seeking a divorce? Because at that moment, there had arisen within him a hope that he should never have allowed himself to feel in this lifetime.

And so, that night, he had “happened by chance” to encounter the homeless Chu Linlang — and had, with intent that was half deliberate, kept her in his household.

Linlang had listened to Situ Sheng in silence the entire time. He spoke slowly, and what he said was something he had never told her before.

So it turned out that so much had happened in their shared childhoods — things she could no longer remember, yet he had kept them all carefully in his heart. He said it was not compassion or pity that drove him — yet it had been he who calculated and schemed, by any and every means, to keep her by his side.

Linlang dug her nails into her own thigh, silently reminding herself that this man — who appeared so cold and aloof — was in truth an expert in honeyed words and feminine bewitchment, the sort who could charm a person to death and owe no penalty for it.

The wisest thing for her to do was to protect herself, to thank Situ Sheng for his care during these months, and then flee the capital without looking back.

But what was she to do? When she looked at those eyes of his — deep and anguished as a still, dark pool — she simply could not look away.

She even heard herself ask, without meaning to: “Your plan to assume a new name and enter the court as an official — what is your ultimate aim? To take bloody vengeance for the Yang family’s annihilation?”

Situ Sheng said evenly: “From birth, I grew up with my grandfather in the military camp. Among all the other members of the Yang family, I was no more than a sickly child born to a cast-off madwoman. They all said a mad-born creature like me would sooner or later follow in my mother’s footsteps — afflicted with the same sickness, unfit to be seen in public. It was my grandfather who silenced those people and raised me. So apart from my grandfather, why should the deaths of any other Yang family members concern me?”

At this point, Situ Sheng paused, then said, one word at a time: “However — my grandfather’s dying wish has yet to be fulfilled. The barbarians of the Jing Kingdom severed my grandfather’s head… And the traitors who colluded from within and without, who sold out my grandfather and three thousand fine Yang family soldiers — whether they are alive or dead, I will not spare a single one.”

Chu Linlang blinked slowly, taking in the meaning of his words.

Of all the Yang family, Situ Sheng recognized only his grandfather Yang Xun, who had personally raised him.

Even his father, who had defected and betrayed his country, was in Situ Sheng’s eyes nothing more than a coward who had betrayed his mother and implicated the entire Yang family in the process.

She thought back to Situ Sheng’s journey to the north, when his blade had been pointed at Prince Tai’s faction.

And Prince Tai’s party was indeed the true culprits responsible for the failure to deliver supplies to the Yang family’s army in time, leaving it surrounded and attacked from both sides. As for his methods, they were open and above board — he could not be called a man who bent the law or acted from extremism.

It seemed Situ Sheng had meant exactly what he said — that he was steadily pursuing vengeance for his grandfather in his own way, following his own course without deviation.

For some reason she couldn’t name, Chu Linlang let out a long, slow breath of relief when she understood that Situ Sheng had no intention of throwing the Great Jin dynasty into chaos or turning against the world.

But then again — what did any of this have to do with her? She was no more than an ordinary commoner, barely managing her own affairs. How could she dare entangle herself with so much of the nation’s enmity and a family’s blood debt?

She pressed her lips together, and finally spoke: “What you said before — about letting me go… does that still hold?”

Situ Sheng’s hand slowly tightened. But her reaction upon learning the truth of his identity had been entirely within his expectations.

This woman was too skilled at seeking advantage and avoiding harm. Now that she knew the truth, how could she possibly be willing to put herself in harm’s way? That she would leave was beyond all question.

Forcing himself to suppress the dark tide rising within him, he managed at last to ask with steady composure: “When will you leave?”

Chu Linlang answered mechanically: “The sooner the better…”

Situ Sheng was silent for a moment, then said: “Very well. I’ll have someone prepare a boat for you tonight…”

With those words, he turned to leave.

He would ride out of the residence shortly, put some distance between himself and her — perhaps to the grave of his foster mother, perhaps to find a stream or a dense grove somewhere.

There was too much gloomy darkness accumulated within him that could not be shown to the world — he needed to find a quiet corner to slowly swallow and digest it on his own.

But before he could step out, Chu Linlang grabbed hold of his wrist, her voice incredulous: “Situ Sheng! I’m actually leaving, and you can’t even be bothered to make a pretense of trying to keep me? What on earth are you thinking? Were all those sweet words of devotion you said just now nothing but hot air?”

In the past, whenever he talked about sending her away, she had always taken it as a joke.

But now, she had raised the matter herself and offered to leave — and he didn’t show even a fraction of reluctance. Could it be that all their tenderness and intimacy had been nothing but a performance for the occasion’s sake?

Was she nothing more to him than a stick of sugar cane worth three coins on the side of the road — something to chew on and spit out without even needing to swallow?

At that thought, she felt she ought to give him a thorough tongue-lashing before she left — after all, he was the one who, in full knowledge of his own entanglements, had gone out of his way to involve her, stirring her heart into a mess and muddling her head!

But unfortunately, Chu Linlang had greatly overestimated Situ Sheng’s self-control.

The moment her delicate fingers closed around his arm, Situ Sheng’s perfectly maintained composure shattered apart like scorched earth cracking open.

Situ Sheng was pushed back against the door, his face expressionless as he looked down at Chu Linlang’s furious face — while what gathered in his eyes was the dark, deep abyss of a snowstorm.

He suddenly reached out and gripped her shoulders with force, pulled his face close to hers, and said through clenched teeth in a low voice: “What am I thinking? Do you really want to know? I think… I have a thousand different ways to keep you here. Even if you were unwilling — even if your feet were in chains, locked in a hidden room, weeping your days away — what of it? At least you would be at my side, before my eyes, where I could see you and touch you!”

That thought was like a tempting, venomous serpent, flicking its tongue in seductive invitation, urging him to act on the impulse.

But he also knew that no matter what forceful means he used to keep her, what remained would no longer be the radiant, sunrise-bright Chu Linlang.

So no matter how unwilling he was, he had to force himself to let go at the right moment — because his Linlang absolutely could not shatter like fine colored glass, broken beyond any hope of repair.

Just a few more steps and he could have walked out, buried this darkest part of himself entirely in his heart, and she would have been left with only the memory of the cool, composed Situ Sheng she had always known.

But she had pulled him back — and demanded an answer in a loud voice.

In the end, he hadn’t been able to hold it in, and had laid the full darkness of his heart bare before her.

The moment Situ Sheng finished speaking, he regretted it — because he saw Chu Linlang’s widened eyes, filled with nothing but shock.

Situ Sheng gave a self-mocking smile. So be it — at least she had seen him clearly now. In the future, there would be no need to harbor any foolish hopes.