Half an hour earlier, in the Left Hall.

“Your Highness is returning to the Eastern Palace at this time?”

Liu Baiwei looked at the half booklet in Zhao Yen’s hand. “This thing is extremely thorny. I fear they will not let the matter rest.”

Zhao Yen gave a faint laugh, her eyes under the blazing midsummer sun appearing pure and clear. “I know. The enemy is in the dark while we are in the open, so we need to use their plan against them, turning passivity into initiative.”

Liu Baiwei almost immediately understood Zhao Yen’s meaning, and looked up in astonishment.

Shen Guang Zhenren had been silenced before everyone’s eyes, and the young prince’s life had hung by a thread. If it had been any other youth of the same age, he would probably already be like a frightened bird startled by the twang of a bowstring, trembling in fear.

But she had only sat with a pale little face and pondered for a moment, then used her disadvantage to make a clear and daring decision. In less than a year’s time, she had grown considerably.

“Then according to Your Highness’s plan, we will split into two routes.”

Liu Baiwei crossed his arms before his chest, thinking. “Your Highness will take the evidence and first hide it away. I will then exchange clothes with Your Highness and sit upon the Eastern Palace carriage to lure them into making a move.”

“No. Liu…”

Liuying paused, then changed her words. “The young grandson’s stature is taller than Your Highness’s. It would be more suitable for this servant to take Your Highness’s place.”

Liu Baiwei swiftly tore off his belt and outer robe, snorting. “This is to lure the enemy, not to send someone to their death! Matters like this have not yet come to the turn of a weak woman like you to step onto the stage.”

“How about… this servant go instead.”

A thin and weak voice sounded. Zhao Yen followed the sound and saw Li Fu timidly raising his hand.

Li Fu was not very old, and since childhood had been a eunuch; his build and height were both close to Zhao Yen’s.

Zhao Yen could see his guilt and unease, and thought: “The Empress Mother has shown you grace. That you deliver messages for Kunning Palace is your duty, there is no need for this.”

“Yes, but Your Highness has also not treated this servant lightly. If Your Highness will not grant me this chance to atone for my mistakes with merit, then from now on this servant will have no face to appear before Your Highness again. It would be better to just dash my head and die…”

Li Fu wrinkled his bun-like face bitterly, kneeling down in prostration. “I beg Your Highness to permit it.”

As he spoke, he kowtowed firmly, making it clear that unless she agreed, he would remain kneeling without rising.

Zhao Yen could not bear to refuse him, and since Liu Baiwei’s and Liuying’s disguises were indeed not very suitable, after weighing again and again, she had no choice but to instruct Gu Xing: “Think of a way to get him a suit of armor, place it inside the carriage. Once he is aboard, let him secretly change into it for protection.”

At once Li Fu burst into smiles through his tears. “Thank you, Your Highness!”

Zhao Yen extended her hand in a gesture of support, deliberately keeping her face stern. “Guard that little life of yours well. When you return safely to the Eastern Palace, I still have to settle accounts with you.”

Li Fu straightened up, patting his chest, a dimple showing at the corner of his smile. “Rest assured, Your Highness! This servant is clever!”

Halfway along the road, the carriage was indeed attacked.

After listening to Li Fu stammering through the account of causes and results, Wenren Lin said nothing. He swung himself onto his horse, pulled the reins with one hand, and turned back.

Zhang Cang closely followed behind, drawing out his token and shouting: “Urgent business of Prince Su, open the gate to the park!”

The gate guards of Penglai Park hastily pulled open the bolt. The moment the great gate opened, Prince Su rode in at full gallop, raising a cloud of dust.

Between the Tongtian Terrace and Penglai Park there was a hidden passage connected.

At this moment the slanting sunlight flowed golden, birds chirped.

Before the Hegui Pavilion, upon the stone steps of the long corridor, a slender “little eunuch” sat hugging his knees, a layer of mottled shadows of leaves falling across his body.

Hearing the urgent sound of horse hooves, Zhao Yen, dressed in a reddish-brown eunuch uniform, lifted her chin and slowly stood up.

The black steed reared high, letting out a long neigh. Wenren Lin, unable to spare the effort to soothe the beast driven to excess speed, merely hung his long bow upon the horse’s back and, stepping through the dappled light and shadows on the ground, strode swiftly toward Zhao Yen.

He walked so steadily, yet so quickly, the rushing wind he brought with him carried a chill breath of frost and snow that did not belong to midsummer, sweeping over her face and setting his sleeves billowing. Zhao Yen could not help but blink her lashes.

“I took the shortcut from the Tongtian Terrace, who would have thought I would just happen to miss you…”

Before her words had even fallen, she suddenly felt her fingertips tighten.

Without a word, Wenren Lin grasped Zhao Yen’s hand, pulled her across the stone steps, turned around the veranda, and pushed open the great door of the Hegui Pavilion.

A cool air brushed across, driving away the heat upon her body.

Zhao Yen stumbled but managed to steady her footing. Perceiving something strange in Wenren Lin, she asked softly: “Are you angry?”

“Not injured?”

Wenren Lin turned to scrutinize her, his tone as elegant and gentle as ever, yet within his eyes lay a dark, cold depth that Zhao Yen could not fathom, utterly different from usual.

She was momentarily stunned, gazing into his eyes, then shook her head. “No… no. Shen Guang Zhenren is dead, and within the Imperial Guards there are traitors. I truly did not know where else I could go, so I exchanged clothes with Li Fu and came here to seek you.”

She had said before that Prince Su would forever be her first choice.

In a moment of crisis, the only safe place she could think of was the Hegui Pavilion where Wenren Lin resided.

A sudden coolness brushed her cheek—it was Wenren Lin raising his fingers to gently stroke, sliding down from her brows to her face, as if to confirm her safety.

“What did I remind Your Highness of last night, hmm?”

Wenren Lin lowered his gaze, his crimson lips lightly parting. “Do you know what it means to take away the Shen Guang Sect’s ledger?”

“I know, that is why I used their plan against them, to lure the snake from its hole.”

Zhao Yen still had not figured out where Wenren Lin’s pale, sickly appearance came from. She hesitated, a vague ominous premonition welling up in her heart. “It was the Grand Preceptor who taught me—though I be but meat on the chopping board, I must not despair and give myself up, but must learn to use my own disadvantages as bait, to set the trap and draw the opponent onto the hook.”

Wenren Lin fixed his gaze upon her, and lightly nodded. “Very good.”

“Your Highness has done very well.” He repeated again with a smile.

Already at the Flower-Adorning Banquet he had known—this outwardly gentle yet inwardly resilient young girl was by no means a reed that lived only by clinging to others. She had her own backbone and tenacity, always drawing in dew and nourishment unnoticed, and flourishing with vigorous growth.

The strange thing was that he, at a fact he already knew well, would lose composure.

That instant of piercing pain in his heart surged like a tide, overwhelming his cold and restrained reason. The ruthless Prince Su, unable to endure even a ten-thousandth of defeat…

Since when had he become so fragile? What was it he feared?

Truly laughable—that one who took teasing cats as mere pastime, how could he lose his head over the possibility of the little cat encountering danger?

Relaxing, Wenren Lin heard within the depths of his heart the faint sound of chains breaking.

As if the Zhaixing Observatory collapsing—first an imperceptible crack, then devastation like rot through dead wood, the repressed emotions in an instant doubled back upon him, burning his five viscera.

He raised a hand to cover his lips, and almost at the same time, a mouthful of hot liquid spurted into his palm.

Caught unawares, the gaps between his pale fingers were instantly drenched in black-red, the glaring color streaming down along his pale, sinewed palm in rivulets, a shocking sight to behold.

Zhao Yen’s pupils quivered slightly, her eyes opening wide in disbelief—shocked and bewildered.

Zhang Cang, who had pursued with medicine all along the way, happened to collide with this scene at just the right moment, and was likewise so frightened that two of his three souls flew off. He hurriedly untied the silk pouch at his waist, pulling out the small red-lacquered medicine box long prepared. “My Lord! The medicine!”

Wenren Lin did not take the medicine.

His entire attention was fixed upon the dazed Zhao Yen. He lowered his hand calmly, letting the blood in his palm wind and cross, trickling down along his knuckles.

“Zhang Cang.” He called.

Zhang Cang respectfully placed the medicine box upon the nearby desk, and immediately turned around at the summons. “Here!”

“Get out.”

“Ah… ah?”

“Go far away.”

“Yes!”

Zhang Cang turned a smooth circle, and trembling with fear, departed, closing the chamber door of the pavilion behind him.

The warm light extinguished within Wenren Lin’s eyes, leaving only a strange, swirling dark red.

He drew a square cloth from his bosom and, unhurriedly, wiped the blood upon his palm. Yet as soon as he opened his lips again, another great rush of dark-colored blood surged out, splattering onto the mirror-like polished floor tiles.

That strange, sinister dark red stabbed into Zhao Yen’s eyes.

Wenren Lin had always been the high and lofty controller, calm and elegant even when deciding life and death—without weakness, without soft underbelly. Thus, upon seeing the unceasing blood spilling from his lips, she was seized by an overwhelming sense of disorientation, as though her very understanding collapsed.

“What has happened to you, Grand Preceptor?”

Only after some time did Zhao Yen recover her voice, bewildered, instinctively raising her sleeve to wipe the blood from his lips. “Are you injured? Should I summon the Imperial Physician?”

Her wrist was seized. Zhao Yen was forced back by the intensity of his aura until her spine pressed against the chamber door, compelled to raise her head and look up at Wenren Lin.

He was pale, cold, and strikingly handsome, the corners of his eyes tinged dark red. That handsomeness was now stained with a strange and terrifying demonic allure that made even the marrow in one’s bones tremble ceaselessly.

This was truly not the appearance one ought to have when injured. It was more like…

Zhao Yen seemed to understand something, and looked toward the red-lacquered medicine box upon the desk.

Yes, she remembered.

Wenren Lin would always suddenly disappear, and after a few days, suddenly reappear. Each time she smelled that frosty, snowy scent upon him, it was always at the beginning of the month or near to it.

During the chaos of that flower-adornment banquet, she had faintly glimpsed such a pair of resplendent, demonic eyes. Afterwards, Wenren Lin had once said to her:

“After all, when Your Highness was detoxifying, you once saw this prince in such a state.”

“Since Your Highness provokes me at truly the wrong time, this prince cannot but be cautious.”

At that time, Zhao Yen had not understood Wenren Lin’s hidden meaning, but now it was as though awakening from a dream: Wenren Lin had been testing her.

When Wenren Lin uncovered her secret of dressing as a man and assuming another’s place, she had also uncovered Wenren Lin’s unknown secret.

“To see this prince in such a visage, Your Highness must surely feel much relieved.”

When Wenren Lin raised his hand to cradle the back of her neck, blood-stained lips still carried a lingering smile. “Wasn’t Your Highness always wishing to find this prince’s weakness? Now, Your Highness has found it.”

Zhao Yen gazed into Wenren Lin’s dark red, chilling eyes, and was very clear on what she ought to do at this moment.

The two pairs of eyes intertwined, locked together, each seeing in the other’s gaze the surging struggle within.

Perhaps it was but an instant, or perhaps it lasted a long time.

In the end, Wenren Lin was the first to lower his eyelids, the hand clasping the back of Zhao Yen’s neck slowly loosening.

He stood before her, tall and towering as a mountain, pale yet unyieldingly strong.

He gave a very low laugh, pressing down the metallic sweetness surging in his chest, the corner of his lips faintly lifting with a trace of mockery. “Let it all end, kill this prince…”

The self-mocking words abruptly halted.

Zhao Yen, by instinct, stepped forward and raised her hands to encircle his waist.

Feeling the softness that pressed into his embrace, Wenren Lin was momentarily dazed.

Zhao Yen knew very clearly, in her reason she knew she ought to seize upon this weakness of Wenren Lin’s and use it for herself.

Yet she only lightly held him.

Just as Wenren Lin, though fully aware that killing her would be the safest course, still chose to hand the power of life and death into her hands…

They were only equal in this: that each had made a choice against reason.

When visiting the Prince Su’s residence, Wenren Lin had once said: perhaps if he lowered himself to hold someone, he might feel better, no?

“Take the medicine, Grand Preceptor.”

Feeling the near lifeless chill of the body in her arms, Zhao Yen unconsciously tightened her hold, soothing him softly: “Take the medicine first, and then we can talk, all right?”

Her gentle voice, because of fear and helplessness, was tinged with a trembling note.

Like sunlight falling into a glacier, for that one instant, Wenren Lin indeed forgot the baleful chill seeping from his very bones.

He said nothing, only raised a hand to touch the back of the girl’s head within his arms, and slowly buried the tip of his nose into the hollow of her neck.

Through the crack of the door panel, sunlight fell upon their shoulders, gilding the motes of dust floating in the air.