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Man's retreating figure, brow creased: "Why is she at Sick Plum Pavilion?" Wei Xuan's expression was equally tense. "Wang recommended her when she entered the academy. The prince should have kept his distance from anyone connected to Wang." Otherwise, why would he have risked allowing Zhou Man's admission at all? Shang Lu felt a flicker of possibility and looked at Wei Xuan with cautious hope: "If the prince is willing to deal with Wang's people, would he perhaps..." Wei Xuan's expression darkened before he could finish. Originally, the dispute between the two Song King factions had driven Wei Xuan back to the city to manage things personally. When the incident at Sick Plum Pavilion broke, he came immediately — but stopped at the door. He knew Zhou Man was inside. He could not let her learn who the young man truly was. After watching with eyes full of things unsaid, Wei Xuan steadied himself and spoke: "I'll go inside alo...

Wei Lingsheng set down his brush. A few drops of ink fell onto the paper below, spreading in silence. His mind was elsewhere. Song Huiya's words from that morning still turned in his ears, cold and deliberate. He sifted through his memories the way a man searches a ransacked room, looking for proof of what was real and what was performance. Which moments had she manufactured? Which kindnesses had been calculated? Life before Bu Liu Mountain felt like someone else's story. It surfaced only in fragments, most of it worn down by time. His family had broken apart early. He had finally found shelter, and then his teacher died, and the world pushed him back onto the road. His past was not something he could look at directly. But when he forced himself to sort through what remained, most of it had Song Huiya in it. For the first six weeks after arriving at Bu Liu Mountain, he was waking from nightmares regularly. He slept only when exhaustion overtook him in the afternoons. At nig...

Ji Pingxuan's world was coming apart at the seams. He stood before the door for a moment, then stepped inside. Two bowls sat on the cracked wooden table. Two sets of clothing soaked in a bucket in the corner. Windows shut. Everything exactly as it had been three years ago. He sat down, lifted a bowl, and let his mind drift back. He had been adopted at six. By nine, the whispers of strangers had begun to teach him his own history. He learned the shape of the disaster that had taken his family before he was old enough to understand what disaster meant. His faith shattered. From that day, a slow and methodical self-destruction began. Late at night, thinking of his parents buried in a mass grave wrapped in straw mats, he felt something murderous move through him. But daylight always came. He stepped outside, looked across the street at the man who had taken him in, and understood that deep hatred collapses under the weight of incompetence. The feeling had nowhere to go. So it beca...

The boy's eyes fixed on the water as Liang Xi turned toward him. A faint spark of awareness had returned to his otherwise hollow gaze. He tried to push himself up on his elbows, failed halfway, and sank back down, eyes shut, catching his breath. Liang Xi grabbed him by the collar with one hand and hauled him upright. The boy shifted, settled himself on the ground, accepted the grilled fish, and ate without argument. He hadn't eaten in days. His muscles had begun to give out, and he knew better than to rush, so he picked through the flesh carefully, pulling bones free with each small bite. The carriage had supplies. Yan Heyi dug out some wound medicine, uncertain whether it was the right kind, and handed it over along with hot water. Liang Xi returned to the fire and went back to grilling his own fish. A short while later, whether from the medicine or from finally having food in him, the boy got to his feet. Unsteady, but upright. He didn't run. He walked to the riverba...

Xue Ranran had not expected the strange-faced man to silence her with a compliment she didn't know how to answer. She stood there, caught between politeness and confusion, when a sharp knock rattled the door. "Ranran, open up! Quick!" Qiaolian's voice came through strained and urgent. Ranran's first thought was relief. Her parents were back. She crossed the room and pulled the door open. What she saw stopped her cold. Qiaolian was half-carrying Xue Liangui, one arm hooked under his shoulder, her face streaked with tears. His face was dark with blood. It had started badly and grown worse. When Qiaolian brought her husband to the village chief to arbitrate the wage dispute with the Ding family, the chief had initially spoken with some fairness. Then Madam Ding, the patriarch's mother-in-law, had leaned in close and murmured something about her second son's connections at the county academy, and how the chief's own boy was hoping to enroll that ver...