The next day, she found Xiahou Dan. "I want to use those candidates for an experiment."
Xiahou Dan: "...what?"
"There are two working theories about King Duan right now. Either he's a level above us, or he's still stuck at the bottom like the rest of the paper people. I want to test which one it is." Yu Wanyin had spent the whole night working out this plan, and now she was too excited to notice the way Xiahou Dan was looking at her. "Can you get in touch with the candidates Xie Yonger submitted?"
Xiahou Dan looked at her.
She was going to hold a secret night meeting to win over the throne's future backbone. Wasn't that basically a surrender?
Xiahou Dan said, "Already looking into it. Should be fine. I'm planning to go out in disguise soon and meet them, see if I can win them over."
"Good. Then we leak the information early so King Duan thinks the meeting is happening at location A, while we actually meet in secret at location B on the same day. With the Dark Guard and Uncle Bei running things now, we should be able to keep it quiet."
Xiahou Dan followed her reasoning. "So you want to see which location he investigates."
"Exactly. If he only gets word about location A and sends men there to watch it, that means he's a paper man too. If he sends men to both locations, he's still a paper man, our whereabouts just got leaked somehow and he's being cautious, not willing to gamble on either side."
Yu Wanyin went on slowly. "There's only one scenario where he abandons location A entirely and goes straight for location B. That he's operating on a higher level and already knows location A doesn't matter."
Xiahou Dan raised his hands in mock surrender. "As expected of Sister Yu."
Yu Wanyin said, "Heh, it's nothing much."
"But have you considered that if he really can anticipate everything, including this very conversation we're having right now, he might deliberately send men to both locations just to throw off our test?"
"He can't play the paper man that convincingly." Yu Wanyin gritted her teeth. "He's already contacted me privately, trying to convince me he's on a higher level and get me to pledge allegiance to him. This is my chance to prove him wrong."
Xiahou Dan lifted an eyebrow slightly. "Is that when you told me about this?"
Yu Wanyin felt a flicker of embarrassment under his gaze and found herself raising her voice without meaning to. "It's not that I don't believe him. Given the choice, I'd obviously rather scheme with you."
"Yu Wanyin."
"Hm?"
Xiahou Dan rubbed his forehead. "What if the results of the experiment prove he really is on a higher level?"
Yu Wanyin: "..."
Xiahou Dan said, "If that turns out to be the case, you should go and pledge yourself to him. I mean that."
He'd said similar things before, and Yu Wanyin had always taken it as a kind of reassurance, nothing to dwell on.
His voice stayed flat. "I won't stop you. But once you leave, you lose my protection. You should understand that much."
Was this... a threat?
Yu Wanyin said carefully, "And then what would you do?"
"Me?" Xiahou Dan seemed to genuinely consider it. "I'd probably kill as many people as I could manage, then sit and wait for whatever ending came for me."
Yu Wanyin's heart went cold. "...You're starting to sound like the tyrant again."
Xiahou Dan said listlessly, "Can't help it. Try having a splitting headache every single day and see how you sound."
Yu Wanyin could never quite bring herself to fear Xiahou Dan, even when he said the most dangerous things.
She had thought about why. Maybe it was his expression, his tone, three parts complaint and three parts gloom, like a coworker grumbling about quitting over hot pot. It was nothing like the man he played in public, and nothing like some untouchable CEO either.
Everything about him said this is one of your own, you can trust him.
She couldn't even bring herself to lie and reassure him with something like "I'd never run even if that happened." Because they both knew the truth. When a company goes under, the employees leave. That's just how it works.
Compared to the heroines in the novels she used to read, her capacity for romantic devotion was maybe a third of theirs, and her nerve was a twentieth. That kind of wispy, sentimental warmth didn't stand a chance against the reality of death.
Yu Wanyin had always known this about herself, but standing in front of Xiahou Dan, it still didn't sit easy.
She changed the subject. "Uncle Bei's been testing for poison on your behalf. He even checked me. Things will get better."
Over the next few days, Xiahou Dan sent out sealed letters to the candidates on one hand, and fed false information to King Duan on the other.
A few days later.
Xiahou Dan said, "The candidates have arrived at location B. King Duan's men have only gone to location A so far."
Yu Wanyin relaxed. "Then it's nine parts certain. That little bastard's still faking it. Let's go to the meeting and see how things unfold."
The so-called location B was a lake used for pleasure boating.
The sky was overcast that day, and there weren't many visitors out. Only two or three boats drifted here and there across the water.
Xiahou Dan and Yu Wanyin once again dressed as young men of wealth and status. Surrounded by their "servants," they rented an ornate pleasure boat and drifted slowly toward the center of the lake.
Once the boat was well away from the shore, a small fishing boat approached from the other direction.
The Dark Guard lowered a plank between the two vessels, and in a moment six people had crossed over.
The Spider Cave duo were once more playing the roles of two kindly gentlemen, rising with folded fans to greet their guests in courtly fashion.
Most of the six scholars had the slight builds typical of men of letters, though the one in front was noticeably sturdier than the rest. After the formal greetings, they removed the human-skin masks covering their faces, revealing six faces, some young, some weathered.
The sturdy scholar leading the group looked to be past thirty, his expression carrying a faint edge of arrogance and dissatisfaction. "We've come at your invitation, moved by the letter you sent, willing to meet a kindred spirit. But now that we're here, you don't seem nearly as eager to meet us as your letter suggested."
The moment this hot-tempered fellow opened his mouth, Yu Wanyin knew exactly who he was. Li Yunxi, the poorest of all the candidates. A man of real talent who had repeatedly failed the imperial exams, upright and unbending by nature. In Eastern Wind, he'd exposed a well-connected cheater and ended up dead in the street for it. In Demon Consort, he'd been drawn into King Duan's camp and become one of his major assets.
Xiahou Dan hurried to cup his hands in apology. "My apologies for the trouble of the journey and the indignity of the disguise. There is good reason for it, which I will explain in time. As my letter said, I have long admired the talents of you gentlemen. Your writings, especially your treatises on taxation and corvée labor, I've often recited to myself and pondered long after closing the book."
As if worried his humility hadn't gone far enough, he then recited several passages from memory, right there on the spot, with feeling and animation, shaking his head and sighing appreciatively at all the right moments.
The scholars: "..."
A little mortifying, honestly.
But scholars are thin-skinned by nature, and after being praised so lavishly, they had little choice but to put on smiles and offer a few compliments in return.
Xiahou Dan seized the moment to invite them to sit, then arranged his face into an expression of deep concern for the nation. "You gentlemen clearly have the talent to govern a country. But the world is in chaos, the imperial exams have become a stagnant pool, favoritism and corruption run rampant, and scholars of humble origin have almost no path forward. Watching you struggle and study year after year, I find I cannot bear it."
Li Yunxi said, "Who doesn't know that this so-called selection of the worthy has become a joke? I simply haven't let go yet. I owe it to the people who raised me back home, and I refuse to believe I'm entirely useless."
His words struck a nerve every candidate shared, and the others quickly joined in.
Someone said the court's able ministers were dying out, that Great Xia was doomed, and that he wished he could bash his head against the ground to wake up the mad tyrant himself.
Someone offered that King Duan had both the literary and martial talent to be called a worthy prince. Someone else scoffed that King Duan only cared about protecting himself and lacked the nerve to step forward.
Someone argued that King Duan was innocent, that the blame lay with the tyrant, who had plunged the common people into misery.
Someone even accused Yu Wanyin, the wicked consort, of ruining the nation.
Finally, someone got a little carried away with the tea and threw up an arm. "Kings and generals and ministers, are they born to their stations?"
Xiahou Dan said, "Are they, indeed?"
The scholar said, "Exactly!"
Yu Wanyin choked and elbowed Xiahou Dan hard in the ribs.
The scholars sobered up as the words sank in, and a few of them looked a bit rattled. "...You certainly speak freely."
Only Li Yunxi sneered. "Why not speak freely? What good has a lifetime buried in books ever done for saving Great Xia?"
Xiahou Dan said, "Exactly right. Reading books won't save the people of Great Xia."
Li Yunxi said, "Look around you and tell me what you see. No clear sky, only mud! The fat rats, the fat rats, leave our grain alone! For the sake of the common people, there is nothing that cannot be done!"
Xiahou Dan clapped with genuine enthusiasm. "Well said, well said! With a heart and ambition like Brother Li's, Great Xia still has hope!"
The scholars all looked at him, moved. "You truly are a man of your word. Since we've come this far, might we ask your honored name?"
Xiahou Dan waved his fan and said, with scholarly grace, "My humble surname is Xiahou."
The cabin went quiet.
The scholars rose to their feet, staring at him. "Xiahou... you don't mean..."
Xiahou Dan said, "A single given name. Dan."
Yu Wanyin wanted to crawl under the floorboards.
She should have been hiding under the boat, not standing in it.
Xiahou Dan gestured toward her. "And this is Yu Wanyin, the consort who has ruined the nation."
The Dark Guard closed in eagerly.
The scholars, frozen in place until now, finally moved, dropping to their knees in a ragged wave, faces drained of color.
Only two remained stubbornly standing.
One was Li Yunxi, of course. The other was Du Shan, who a moment ago had been the loudest to agree with everything said.
Li Yunxi, resigned to certain death, seemed almost calm about it, glaring at the wicked imperial couple with open resentment. Du Shan's legs shook, but since dignity mattered more to him than his own life, he refused to be the one who caved first.
Xiahou Dan waved a hand and dismissed the Dark Guard. "Please, all of you, rise."
He showed not the slightest discomfort, as though the man who'd just called for open rebellion against him hadn't been him at all.
"You gentlemen only know the tyrant as a cruel ruler who feeds on his own people, but you don't know that this emperor has long since been stripped of real power. Half the court is controlled by the Empress Dowager, the other half by King Duan. They gamble with my people's lives, wager after wager, and my heart breaks for it, yet I have no way to stop them. I brought you here today only to open my heart to you."
He gestured again, and the scholars settled sheepishly back into their seats.
Only Li Yunxi remained standing, jaw set. "If Your Majesty truly feels this way, why not reform the exams, gather talent openly? Why make us sneak here like thieves, our faces hidden? This is no way to recruit worthy men. It does no honor to a ruler."
"As I said, there are difficulties I cannot avoid." Xiahou Dan replied. "Too many eyes are watching me. The moment I so much as touch the examination system, I'll face resistance from every direction. If the Dark Guard hadn't gone searching for your writings themselves, they never would have reached my desk. For now I can only reach out in secret, take things slowly, and place each of you where you can eventually put your talents to real use."
He sighed. "The moment you step into court, the Empress Dowager's faction or King Duan's men will notice you, whether to recruit you, use you, or target you, pulling you into their gambles. When that day comes, I only ask that you remember what was said on this boat today, the ambitions you spoke of, and that you stand tall as the backbone of Great Xia."
Yu Wanyin was thoroughly impressed.
Listen to that. Genuinely moving.
What line of business had this so-called CEO been in exactly, that he had this kind of range as an actor?
Two of the scholars already had red-rimmed eyes. Yu Wanyin recognized them: one was Er Lan, the brilliant scholar disguised as a man, and the other was Du Shan, who'd been shaking his legs and refusing to kneel just a moment ago.
Du Shan said with visible emotion, "That Your Majesty places such hope in us is truly..."
Li Yunxi cut in. "Truly disgraceful!"
Xiahou Dan: "...?"
Yu Wanyin: "...?"
Li Yunxi's temper flared. "How lightly the Son of Heaven speaks of hardship! A single word of difficulty, and you would carve scholars of humble birth into pawns, send them to shed blood and lose their heads on your behalf, to overthrow the Empress Dowager and remove King Duan. You survive by threading needles, and so you cannot voice your own will? You face obstacles from every side, and so you cannot clean up your own court? If the Son of Heaven himself will not shoulder this burden, why put on this display of buying bones with gold, only to push others forward to be the backbone in your place!"
Xiahou Dan: "..."
That last line actually rhymed rather nicely.
In the corner, Bei Zhou, arms crossed, shifted his weight slightly, as though he meant to go cut the man down. Xiahou Dan shook his head at him, almost imperceptibly.
Li Yunxi's voice rose, each word bitten out. "The common folk in my hometown, every single household, work themselves ragged from dawn to dusk all year, and what they manage to store away barely fills their stomachs. My own younger brother and sister were born in a bad harvest year, and our parents let them starve to death in tears because there was nothing else to be done. Is this the destination such taxes are meant to serve? The central army fights year after year against the Yan invaders, and the soldiers' rations are cut with thirty percent gravel and sand! Your Majesty, Your Majesty, have you ever opened your eyes and looked?"
Du Shan panicked. "Brother Li, there's no need to go this far..."
Li Yunxi sneered at him. "Who was it, just now, who swore that if he ever stood before the emperor, he'd bash his head to the ground and speak the truth even unto death? The emperor stands right here, and suddenly everyone's gone mute?"
Du Shan flushed red, cornered into silence.
Yu Wanyin genuinely felt a flush of shame at this point.
She was an ordinary office worker from a modestly comfortable household. School had never taught her how to save a country. And living inside a novel had always given her a certain sense of unreality, made it hard to feel the full weight of what these paper people were going through. So when she'd gathered these scholars, she truly hadn't expected to face an interrogation like this.
But then again, she could no longer be sure she wasn't a paper person herself.
So was the suffering of these other paper people really so unreal?
At that point Li Yunxi's tirade had clearly gotten the better of Xiahou Dan, who had gone silent. Yu Wanyin couldn't help but jump in. "His Majesty did have the Minister of Revenue removed, and it caused quite a stir. You gentlemen must have heard of it."
Du Shan opened his mouth as if to speak, hesitated several times, then finally said, "Word reached us a month ago. The people in my hometown were overjoyed, burning incense and praying blessings for His Majesty."
He didn't say anything more after that.
It felt to Yu Wanyin as though someone had struck her across the face.
After that Minister of Revenue died, the Empress Dowager's faction had simply installed another crony in his place.
She didn't need to be told the rest. She could already guess that nothing had improved for the common people. All that incense burned by all those grateful households had been for nothing.
Li Yunxi shook his head, disappointed, apparently done talking, and turned to walk away.
The moment he turned, the Dark Guard moved.
Everyone understood this man could not be allowed to leave. He was carrying this much hatred with him, and he already knew of Xiahou Dan's secret schemes. He was a bomb waiting to go off.
Du Shan's voice trembled. "Brother Li."
The Dark Guard drew their blades. Li Yunxi didn't flinch, striding forward as though he'd already resolved to bleed out right there on the boat.
"Wait!" Yu Wanyin called out.
She hurried to Li Yunxi's side, words tumbling out of her half-formed. "Li... Master Li, His Majesty didn't come here today to drag any of you into a struggle between factions. To put it bluntly, those who occupy their positions and do nothing, including the imperial family itself, deserve death if it comes. But what did the common people ever do to deserve any of this?"
The scholars stared at her, shocked.
Who exactly did you just say that about?
Yu Wanyin continued, "But the situation stands as it does. The taxes fall unevenly, the corrupt clerks cheat freely, the officials run rampant, the treasury sits empty. Our own abilities have their limits, and there simply isn't time to catch up on everything we're missing. We need your help."
She bowed deeply, her voice sincere. "I'm not skilled with words, and I have no grand principles to offer. I only ask, not for the sake of some tyrant or wicked consort..."
The scholars all turned, stunned, to look at Xiahou Dan.
Xiahou Dan showed no reaction at all.
Yu Wanyin finished, "...but for the sake of the families you left behind at home."
She bowed a second time, and when she straightened, she found Li Yunxi watching her, his expression strange.
Yu Wanyin wiped at her eyes, faintly amazed at her own acting.
But at the same time, she wasn't entirely sure anymore whether she was acting or not.
"Your Majesty. My lady consort." A quiet, thin scholar spoke up.
"This humble one was born with a serious illness. I have perhaps two or three years left to live."
Yu Wanyin remembered him now. Cen Jintian, an agricultural prodigy who couldn't really be counted as part of King Duan's faction in the original text. A man with a pure heart who had poured two years of himself into serving the country.
Then the drought came, and he watched the crops wither and the bodies of the starving pile up, and died with the bitter regret of having been born into the wrong era.
His sworn brothers had held a sacrifice to heaven in his memory, King Duan pouring wine before everyone present, swearing revenge on his behalf, and then he'd rebelled.
Cen Jintian asked, "Might this humble one ask Your Majesty, will I live to see clear rivers and peaceful seas, a season of harmony and abundant harvest?"
Xiahou Dan held his gaze for a long moment, then said with weight, "This is the Son of Heaven's promise."
Cen Jintian smiled faintly and knelt. "Then I am willing to serve as your loyal dog and horse."
In the end all the scholars settled peacefully together, discussing matters with Xiahou Dan for two full hours, finishing with a shared cup of strong wine.
Xiahou Dan and Yu Wanyin personally escorted them back to the fishing boat and watched them put their disguises back on and pole away.
The two of them hadn't even turned back toward the cabin when a sharp crack sounded.
Not far off, the fishing boat began sinking rapidly right before their eyes.
The suddenness of it left everyone frozen for a moment.
Xiahou Dan spun around. "Dark Guard, turn back, save them!"
Several scholars who could swim abandoned the sinking boat and struck out for the pleasure boat, while the rest kept bailing water uselessly.
Then the calm surface of the lake broke violently. A scholar who'd made it halfway across suddenly began choking and thrashing, and figures of assassins rose up out of nowhere behind him.
Yu Wanyin screamed. A dark red stain bloomed across the water. Du Shan had already had his throat slit from behind.
Xiahou Dan's Dark Guard leaped into the water one after another to fight off the assassins and protect the scholars.
Bei Zhou stood at the bow, his gaze sweeping the shore like lightning, and pointed toward one spot, his voice clipped. "There."
The moment he spoke, before anyone could even see how he moved, something shot from his raised sleeve with a whistling sound, streaking straight toward the shore like lightning.
A moment later a heavy clang rang out from the shore. Someone had blocked it.
Only then did Yu Wanyin get a clear look at the spot he'd pointed to. Several figures stood there, one of them shielded behind the others.
She couldn't make out their faces, but she didn't need to think hard to know it had to be Xiahou Bo.
More whistling sounds came in rapid succession from Bei Zhou's sleeve, an unrelenting assault. Xiahou Bo's guards raised their swords to block, straining harder with each strike, dodging left and right to shield him. One of them soon fell.
The assassins in the water sensed something had gone wrong and pulled several men off to hold Bei Zhou back.
Xiahou Dan's Dark Guard gained the upper hand at once, escorting the scholars, who were crying out in terror, back toward the pleasure boat.
Yu Wanyin looked left and right. Two wooden buckets meant for emergencies sat on the boat, each tied to a rope. She snatched one up and hurled it out toward the scholars. "Grab on!"
Li Yunxi, sturdy and strong, needed no help from the Dark Guard, swimming fastest of all and seizing hold of a bucket himself. Yu Wanyin began hauling the rope back in.
The slack rope suddenly went taut.
One of the assassins, wounded in the chaos and disarmed, had held his breath and slipped beneath the water to wait for an opening. Now he surfaced and grabbed hold of Li Yunxi. Li Yunxi thrashed violently, but the assassin only clamped down harder, dragging him under.
Water filled Li Yunxi's mouth and nose, and he finally managed to choke out, "Help, cough, cough..."
Yu Wanyin threw everything she had into pulling the rope. "Don't let go!"
She couldn't bear the weight on the other end and slid toward the edge of the boat. Another pair of hands reached from behind her and gripped the rope alongside hers.
Xiahou Dan gritted his teeth. "I can't out-pull this either."
Yu Wanyin said, "Shut up and pull!"
"King Duan is here. So, what were the results of your experiment?"
"I stopped caring."
Whether he had anticipated this meeting or simply tracked them down, Xiahou Bo had come after all.
And having come, he meant to kill every one of the scholars in front of them.
It was control, and it was intimidation.
He meant to frighten them so badly they'd never dare think of resistance again.
Given how timid she really was by nature, Yu Wanyin should have been terrified out of her wits right now.
But things pushed too far tend to turn.
Yu Wanyin's rage boiled over.
She had always felt, from King Duan's perspective, that his actions had their own logic: abused by the Empress Dowager since childhood, bullied by Xiahou Dan, barely surviving until he left the palace and established his own household, growing disillusioned with a corrupt court and wanting to replace it himself.
But the men struggling in the water right now were future pillars of the state, the ministers who would hold Great Xia together, the last hope for stabilizing it.
If he was just a paper person, then this was slaughtering the innocent for nothing.
And if he came from a higher level, if he knew exactly who these men were and still gave the order to wipe them out so easily, then he was condemning countless people to death in the coming drought, all to secure his own future as a warlord of the chaos to come.
"I hate him more than he hates me. He wins that one," Yu Wanyin said, gripping the coarse rope until her palms split open. "But even if he's a god, I will never surrender to him."
Xiahou Dan's own hands were bleeding too. He heard her mutter something through clenched teeth. "What did you say?"
The veins stood out on Yu Wanyin's neck as she screamed toward the sky, "Screw him!"
The shout tore at her throat, the echo carrying far across the empty water.
Yu Wanyin glared straight at the man on the shore. He was too far away to make out any features, but somehow, impossibly, she was certain she saw him smile with interest.
Fury drove Yu Wanyin past all fear. A sudden burst of raw strength exploded through her hands. The assassin in the water, already worn down from his long struggle with Li Yunxi, hadn't expected her sudden burst of force and found himself dragged along helplessly toward the pleasure boat.
Blood squeezed out from between Yu Wanyin's fingers, running down the rope drop by drop.
The resistance she'd been fighting against suddenly vanished. She stumbled backward and collided with Xiahou Dan.
The assassin, finally out of strength, released Li Yunxi and sank alone beneath the surface. Li Yunxi surfaced clutching the bucket, coughing and gasping.
They'd barely had a chance to breathe when a pair of hands burst from the water and clamped brutally around Li Yunxi's throat.
The assassin had been playing dead.
Yu Wanyin locked eyes with Li Yunxi, whose eyes were bulging wide, and terror flooded through her all at once. "Help—"
In the next instant, a figure shot forward like a diving hawk, planting a foot squarely on the assassin's skull. A sharp crack sent him straight to the afterlife.
Bei Zhou had finished off his opponent on the shore and now had a moment to spare to clean up the rest of the mess.
Yu Wanyin scanned the water with trembling eyes. Aside from Du Shan, whose throat had been cut at the very start, every other scholar had been pulled to safety.
The assassins had originally outnumbered Xiahou Dan's Dark Guard several times over, and yet they'd come in with a bang and ended limp and easy. The fight fizzled out with little fanfare, and the men on the shore had retreated at some point without anyone noticing.
The remaining assassins still in the water lost all will to fight and turned to swim for shore.
Bei Zhou glanced at Xiahou Dan.
Xiahou Dan said, "Don't leave a single one alive."
Bei Zhou nodded, finished off the fleeing men, then dove back under to search the water, hauling up one last assassin who'd been holding his breath and killing him on the spot.
Bodies floated everywhere, scattered across the lake, staining that stretch of water a deep red.
The scholars climbed back aboard the pleasure boat, most of them injured to some degree, huddling soaked and shivering in the cabin while the Dark Guard did what they could to tend their wounds.
Bei Zhou pulled a small vial of medicinal powder from his robes and said to Xiahou Dan and Yu Wanyin, "Hands."
The four hands opened. The Dark Guard dropped to their knees in a row. "We deserve death."
Bei Zhou's eyes reddened as he dusted powder over the wounds. "I shouldn't have let that one die so quickly just now."
Yu Wanyin shook her head, looking down at the covered body lying nearby. Du Shan had been pulled from the water.
Just a quarter hour ago, this man had been full of ambition, sharing strong wine with them all. In the original text, though a bit timid and prone to worry, his pride wouldn't let him fall behind his peers, and he'd eventually gritted his teeth through hardship and grown into a capable minister who benefited an entire region.
Yu Wanyin forced her gaze away and walked toward the corner of the cabin.
Er Lan sat curled into herself there, refusing the Dark Guard's attempts to bandage her, her face tight as she stared at the floor.
Yu Wanyin took off her own outer robe and draped it over the girl's shoulders. "Are you alright?"
Er Lan looked up sharply, her expression guarded. Yu Wanyin gave her a reassuring smile and said quietly, "It's fine. This will keep the cold off."
Er Lan managed a small smile in return.
Xiahou Dan had been standing with his back against the cabin wall this whole time, lost in thought.
Once the scholars had their wounds bandaged and hot tea in their hands, their expressions steadying, he finally spoke. "The assassins hiding in the water are all dead now. Even if they overheard our conversation on this boat, none of it will reach anyone else. You gentlemen were all in disguise as well, so King Duan shouldn't be able to identify you. But I can't promise that for certain. If he learns who I met with today, your names may already be on his kill list."
Yu Wanyin and the scholars all looked up at him.
Xiahou Dan continued. "After what happened today, do you still wish to risk entering the court? If you take office now, to avoid drawing attention, you'll need to change your names, set aside the reputations you've built, and possibly stay away from your hometowns for a long time. Come next year's exams, I'll find others to sit in for your old identities and keep up the deception."
Yu Wanyin thought to herself that this was actually rather clever. Neither King Duan nor Xie Yonger had ever seen these candidates' real faces, only their names. So when King Duan went looking for them based on the list Xie Yonger had given him, he'd end up finding a group of fakes.
Xiahou Dan changed his tone. "If any of you now wish to withdraw, that would be entirely understandable. But you've already been made privy to secrets I cannot allow you to simply carry home with you. I ask for your understanding."
Li Yunxi touched the purple-black finger marks on his throat, looking noticeably deflated. "So what will Your Majesty do? Draw a sword and kill me the way you did back there?"
Xiahou Dan smiled. "No. I'll find you all a place far from this mess and settle you there. I won't force any of you to act as advisors or scheme on my behalf. All I ask is that you focus on your studies. Once the capital's situation stabilizes, whoever ends up on that throne, you'll all still be men of clean reputation and real ability."
The scholars exchanged glances.
A little while later, on the carriage ride back to the palace.
Xiahou Dan asked, "Does your hand still hurt?"
Yu Wanyin took two seconds before shaking her head. "Uncle Bei's medicine is good. What about you?"
"I'm fine too. I'll rinse it with alcohol once we're back." Xiahou Dan hadn't noticed anything off in her mood, still caught up in his own thoughts. "What do you make of King Duan?"
Yu Wanyin said, "He's a paper person."
"You're certain this time?"
"Mm. I just worked it out, once I calmed down."
Yu Wanyin continued. "He doesn't have a higher vantage point, that's why he sent men to both A and B at the same time, and clearly didn't anticipate Uncle Bei's fighting strength. He chose to kill people in front of us purely to intimidate us. If even his failure was somehow calculated, I don't believe it for a second. Today's defeat only strengthens our resolve and makes me doubt his real ability, it gains him nothing at all. Except..." she paused meaningfully, "it's done you quite a bit of good."
That last line carried an edge.
Before they'd parted ways, after Xiahou Dan finished his speech, every single one of the scholars had chosen to enter court service without exception.
Li Yunxi and Yang Duojie, the more radical ones in the original text, had led the way. The steadier Wang Zhao and Er Lan followed. Cen Jintian went last, saying, "This humble one doesn't have much time left. I can't afford to wait."
Even Yu Wanyin hadn't expected today's meeting to go so smoothly.
They'd lost one scholar, but Xiahou Dan had won the loyalty of the rest.
Watching the fire in their eyes, though, Yu Wanyin's own anger slowly cooled.
It had all gone too smoothly.
Impossibly smoothly.
Xiahou Dan said, "Really, with these few helping now, we can bring in the yan grain, and there's finally someone to advise us on the economy too. We're not just the two of us staring blankly at each other anymore..."
Yu Wanyin sat across from him, wrestling with herself for a few seconds before finally speaking. "Dan."
"Hm?"
"If King Duan is just a paper person, the only way he could have known where we were is if someone leaked it. But today, only Uncle Bei and the Dark Guard knew our schedule, and in the original text they're loyal to you until the very end. The scholars had no idea who you even were before they arrived, so they couldn't have leaked anything either. So..."
Xiahou Dan said thoughtfully, "I've been thinking about the same thing. Though, King Duan in the original text wasn't nearly this ruthless, was he? When he was cruising along as the male lead, he never needed to play the villain. But we showed up, his circumstances changed, and so did he. Doesn't that track?"
Yu Wanyin slowly looked away. "You're right. Guess we'll have to investigate this carefully."
Could Xiahou Dan have led King Duan to them himself?
There was another question too. Was that really King Duan standing on the shore?
Was it possible King Duan had been kept entirely in the dark the whole time, that he'd only gone to location A, and that everything that happened in the water at location B had been staged by Xiahou Dan himself?
Sacrifice one paper person for a much larger gain. After all, back in the palace, he hadn't seemed to place much value on paper people's lives either.
But even if she, Yu Wanyin, bathed and burned incense right now and ascended to sainthood on the spot, the paper people would still die anyway, and by the thousands. Dying in the drought, dying in the fires of war, dying along King Duan's road to the throne.
To stop all of that, losing one Du Shan now might, perhaps...
A sharp pain shot through Yu Wanyin's palm, and only then did she realize her hand had clenched into an unconscious fist.
A wave of unreasoning anger rose in her chest. She hadn't even found any real evidence one way or the other, and here she was, already making excuses for Xiahou Dan.
At the root of it, she shouldn't have expected goodness and virtue from Xiahou Dan in the first place. No office worker demands sainthood from a coworker. Whatever this expectation was between the two of them, she didn't particularly want to examine it.
Bei Zhou had let King Duan see his real skills today, so to muddy the waters, he switched back into his bone-compression technique and reverted to his female form, becoming a new elderly attendant in the consort's residence.
Xiahou Dan's public persona of favoring only Consort Xie couldn't be broken, so he didn't accompany them back to the residence. Yu Wanyin tended to her own wound alone and gave little Mei some vague excuse to explain away her panic.
Xiaomei said, "My lady, your hand is hurt this badly, how are you supposed to perform at the Flower Dawn Banquet in a few days?"
Yu Wanyin said, "Perform? Why would I need to perform?"
"Because His Majesty named Consort Xie to dance for him, of course! She's been stealing all the attention lately, we can't let her outshine you!" Xiaomei fretted. "Or could you sing a song instead?"
Yu Wanyin, uninterested, decided to use the moment to probe for some hint of her original body's skills. "What do you think of my singing?"
Xiaomei looked pained. "...There's still a few days left. Maybe try practicing hard, my lady?"
Right. No skill points there at all.
Zhang San had been living in this world for a while now, and he was still stuck in hell mode.
Every single moment, he silently studied how ancient people spoke and behaved, terrified of giving himself away with a single wrong word. The little crown prince had lessons every day, and he'd had to relearn brush calligraphy from scratch, never mind the classical texts he couldn't make heads or tails of.
Fortunately, this crown prince's original personality had apparently been quiet and withdrawn to begin with, so nobody found it strange that he played mute all day. As for his lessons, no matter how badly he did, no tutor dared to scold the crown prince. This was, perhaps, the only bright spot of his new life.
Still, his soul was only that of a middle school student, and his body now was even younger, and walking through this palace full of strange undercurrents, he felt constantly unable to protect himself.
Before transmigrating, he'd only glanced quickly at the blurb of this novel and vaguely remembered the female lead was some transmigrated consort, though he couldn't recall her name.
He'd tried to find this fellow transmigrator, and whenever he ran into a consort, he'd study her carefully. But given his status as crown prince, it wasn't easy to have contact with the emperor's harem, and those few seconds of scrutiny never turned up anything useful.
He took a risk once. When the consorts came to pay respects to the Empress Dowager, he shamelessly stuck close to her side, and during a lull in the harem infighting, he announced in front of everyone, "Grandmother, it's been so hot lately. This grandson honestly wishes he could just live in an ice room and never come out."
Was that hint obvious enough? Could another transmigrator pick up on it?
But all the consorts kept their eyes lowered, still absorbed in their scheming, and no one so much as glanced his way.
Only the Empress Dowager frowned and scolded him. "As the future ruler, you should not fear heat or cold, nor indulge in comfort."
Zhang San: "..."
This couldn't go on.
He needed to find some way to leave an unmistakable marker, the kind only another transmigrator would recognize.
The theme of the Flower Dawn Banquet was actually rather creative. Each consort had chosen a flower to pin in her hair, with her clothing and accessories matched to complement it, so that the seated women bloomed like a garden in full color, perfume and silk filling the banquet hall in a pleasing display.
Perhaps thinking the scene unsuitable for a minor, or simply keeping up the usual practice of avoiding contact between Xiahou Dan and his son, the Empress Dowager hadn't brought the crown prince along.
Xie Yonger, dressed as the Begonia Consort, stepped gracefully into the spotlight and performed a solo dance called Sending the Moon.
She'd prepared thoroughly, even briefing the musicians beforehand and teaching them the accompaniment, though since she hadn't fully remembered it herself either, the finished performance came out slightly off key.
Xiahou Dan, remarkably, managed not to laugh this time, possibly because he genuinely hadn't heard this particular piece before. He stayed composed throughout and even found room to put on an expression of rapt admiration.
Xie Yonger finished her dance, twirling her fan, and bowed with practiced charm.
Xiahou Dan said, "Good, good, come sit here."
Xie Yonger crossed past Yu Wanyin to sit at the emperor's right, then glanced sideways at her, her voice sweet. "Consort Yu, I wonder if your younger sister here might have the honor of seeing your dancing today?"
Yu Wanyin: "..."
In the original text, this same line had been spoken, only their positions were reversed. Back then it was Yu Wanyin, riding high, who deliberately called on Xie Yonger to dance, hoping to embarrass her, only for Xie Yonger to stun the whole room with Sending the Moon and turn the scheme back on her.
She hadn't expected that even with fate's course altered, Xie Yonger would still make the exact same move.
Winning meant fighting, and losing meant fighting too. How could anyone be this addicted to court intrigue?
The night Xie Yonger had been summoned to the emperor's bed, she'd woken up with her memory completely wiped, and the palace attendants said she'd seemed to be in a state of terror bordering on madness at the time.
She knew she wasn't that fragile. That bowl of contraceptive tea must have had something wrong with it. Called a contraceptive, maybe it had actually been some other kind of poison.
What exactly had she said while out of her mind?
Judging by the fact that the tyrant hadn't grown angry afterward, and instead had turned around and started courting her with clumsy, earnest affection, she probably hadn't said anything too dangerous.
But still, Yu Wanyin had tricked her into drinking that tea that night, and there was no way that had been done with good intentions.
Once Xie Yonger worked through this logic, she resolved never to be soft-hearted again. She might not particularly like Xiahou Dan, but stuck in this palace with no control over her own fate, if she didn't secure the emperor's heart, all that awaited her down the road was being brought down by someone else.
Yu Wanyin sighed and tucked her wounded palm out of sight. "In reply to Your Majesty, and to the Empress Dowager, this consort has no real talent for dancing and fears she cannot perform."
The Empress Dowager scoffed. "The consort certainly puts on airs. Does she need this old woman to beg her personally?"
Xie Yonger's new circle of followers exchanged smug glances.
A phoenix with molted feathers is worse off than a chicken, Yu Wanyin thought, bowing pitifully. "This consort, this consort has only recently picked up a little tune, and it isn't sung well..."
Xie Yonger froze for a moment, instantly on guard.
Wasn't it clearly stated in the original text of Eastern Wind that the female lead couldn't sing?
Yu Wanyin took several deep breaths, tried to recall the melody Xiaomei had just taught her, struck a pose, and opened her mouth. "In the south you can gather lotus, the lotus leaves so full and lush..."
A flat, unmodulated bellow, robust as a barge hauler's work chant.
Xie Yonger: "..."
The Empress Dowager: "..."
Determined to properly disgust everyone present, Yu Wanyin dragged the entire song out to its bitter end before finally adopting a delicate, wilting air. "This consort has caught a chill and can't sustain her breath properly. Mm, I beg Your Majesty's punishment!"
She glanced toward Xiahou Dan.
He was staring at her, dazed, wearing an expression of pure astonishment, the look of a man thinking she's so pure, so unaffected, nothing at all like those other showy, wicked girls.
Yu Wanyin's gaze met his for barely half a second before she snapped it away. She was afraid one of them was going to burst out laughing first.
Xiahou Dan cleared his throat and said gently, "Since the consort isn't feeling well, there's no need for her to remain seated with us. Go and rest."
Yu Wanyin fled the scene as fast as she could.
Xiahou Dan was simply too funny in moments like this, to the point that it was hard for her to imagine someone like him capable of the kind of scheming and cruelty attributed to him.
But she also knew, at the same time, that this kind of judgment was pure sentiment, nothing more.
Yu Wanyin was mentally reciting "stay clear-headed" for perhaps the hundred and eighth time, paying no attention to where her feet were carrying her, when a familiar voice called out from nearby. "Wanyin."
Yu Wanyin snapped fully awake in an instant.
Whatever was coming was going to come no matter what.
Xiahou Bo led her to a familiar-looking old building, the very same one where he'd once met Xie Yonger in secret. So this was still his base of operations inside the palace.
Yu Wanyin feigned ignorance. "Where is this place?"
Xiahou Bo said softly, "When I was young, before I left the palace, if the servants ever beat me, I would run here and hide, waiting alone until deep night before going back."
And here it came. The villain's monologue segment.
Now that she knew for certain he wasn't some all-knowing god, and that he actually needed her, Yu Wanyin felt considerably more confident, able to play along with him at her leisure. She let her expression flicker with feeling and, after a long pause, said, "Last time we spoke, what Your Highness said..."
Xiahou Bo said, "Mm. Have you thought it through?"
Yu Wanyin tested him. "Can Your Highness see clearly what I've concluded?"
Xiahou Bo said cryptically, "What do you think?"
Yu Wanyin lowered her head and pulled out a small embroidered pouch. "I, I was startled and said some things that offended Your Highness last time. This is an apology gift. I made it myself."
She'd rushed to finish it over the past two days. The embroidery was terrible, a crimson red background with a man and a woman stitched onto it in clumsy black thread.
The man had only one arm, though given how bad the craftsmanship was, it was hard to tell if that was an accident or intentional.
The two of them rode together on the back of some enormous bird, presumably meant to be an eagle.
She already knew King Duan wasn't operating on the highest level, but she still needed to be more rigorous, to confirm he wasn't a mid-level either, that he really was just a bottom-level paper person like everyone else.
But she didn't want to test him with something as blunt and obvious as asking "how are you." Because King Duan himself was still playing coy, acting like a demigod, thinking he'd fooled her completely. If she asked "how are you" and he couldn't answer, he'd realize he'd been found out.
She needed a more sophisticated test.
This embroidered pouch was the question she'd worked out. Any fellow transmigrator who saw it would immediately blurt out, "Condor Heroes?"
Xiahou Bo said, "Swallows in flight, together? There's real cleverness in this."
Yu Wanyin: "..."
She quickly smiled. "As long as it pleases Your Highness."
There it was. His pants had officially fallen off.
Even though she still couldn't work out how a mere paper person could have somehow identified three transmigrators, and even though she still felt real fear facing this dangerous creature whose methods clearly outmatched her own.
But after these last few days of parrying blows, her courage had grown inch by inch, and now she'd finally taken the crucial step. She was going to trick him.
She was betting that King Duan had no concept of "transmigrators" at all. Because in the original text, Xie Yonger had never once revealed the truth of her origins to him. Whenever she offered him advice, she'd always kept it vague. "I calculated it."
So in his eyes, was Xie Yonger some reincarnated strategist, or some kind of demon spirit?
Maybe he'd been puzzling over that himself. Maybe her own slip of the tongue that day, "we're not the same species," had opened up even more room for his imagination.
There was another question too. King Duan already had Xie Yonger wholeheartedly assisting him, yet he clearly didn't trust her completely, since he'd come all this way to try to recruit Yu Wanyin as well. However clever he was, he couldn't have simply calculated out of nowhere that she stood a level above Xie Yonger. So why was he so fixated on her specifically?
Yu Wanyin decided to probe King Duan's inner world.
She drew a quiet breath and slowly asked the question she'd spent days refining.
Yu Wanyin: "When did you open your heavenly eye?"
Xiahou Bo: "..."
In that half second, Yu Wanyin could almost see the gears spinning wildly behind that handsome face of his, nearly sparking from the friction.
Xiahou Bo said, composed, "Not long ago."
Yu Wanyin said, "I suspected as much. When Your Highness suddenly pointed out that I could foresee certain things, it startled me. Thinking it over afterward, I realized Your Highness must have gained the same great clarity. Only your temperament and manner haven't changed at all, which is different from the rest of us, so I wasn't entirely sure of it."
The gears in Xiahou Bo's head spun a few more rounds. "To avoid stirring up unnecessary trouble, I had to disguise it somewhat. My apologies for the deception."
"I see. Then perhaps we can speak plainly now. What has Your Highness foreseen for yourself?"
Xiahou Bo said, without a flicker of expression, "How do you think I found you today, Wanyin?"
Yu Wanyin said, suspicious, "And beyond that?"
"..." Xiahou Bo, clearly afraid of saying too much and giving something away, didn't pick up the thread.
Yu Wanyin's reasoning was simple. According to the original story, King Duan should have been entirely focused on dismantling the Empress Dowager's faction, with little interest in the mad emperor. His suspicion now must have come from noticing that both Xiahou Dan and the two consorts, Yu and Xie, were behaving differently than expected, and Xie Yonger's uncannily accurate predictions had only deepened his suspicion that all three of them were out of the ordinary.
If she wanted to keep hiding her strength, she needed to dismantle his wariness.
But simply insisting "I'm perfectly ordinary" or "my abilities are nothing to worry about" right now would only look like a thief protesting too loudly.
Better to feed him a mix of truth and fiction, and let him arrive at the conclusion himself that this so-called heavenly eye wasn't such a big deal after all.
Yu Wanyin pressed on, guiding him gently. "Your Highness has only just opened your heavenly eye, so you probably aren't used to it yet, are you? Do you sometimes see strange visions in your dreams, without understanding what they mean?"
Xiahou Bo took the opening she'd offered. "Yes. They're quite blurred."
Yu Wanyin smiled. "Interpreting dreams is a vast field of study, one nobody can fully claim to understand. They say those at the very highest level can perceive all beings across the six realms, all things, and see through every illusion the moment they close their eyes. But in truth, everyone's constitution is different, and what each person can see varies quite a bit."
She feigned deep interest and probed further. "Since Your Highness is an imperial prince, can you see further into the future than the rest of us?"
Xiahou Bo understood.
Whatever he saw, she couldn't see, so he could say whatever he wanted.
Xiahou Bo said, "I'm afraid it might upset you to hear."
Yu Wanyin: "!"
Yu Wanyin said nervously, "Please, go on."
Xiahou Bo slowly clasped his hands behind his back. "I saw flames of war spreading across the land, countless dead, and the fall of the dynasty. Wanyin, I also saw Xiahou Dan fleeing the palace in a hurry, and you weren't at his side."
My goodness, clearly a different vantage point produced a different scale of lying too. He went straight for the grand, sweeping visions.
Yu Wanyin drew on every last drop of her acting ability and worked up an expression of uncertain alarm.
Xiahou Bo, quite invested in his own performance now, said, "Have you not seen it?"
"I..." Yu Wanyin hesitated, as if reluctant to say more. "I can only see small, recent things."
"Such as?"
Yu Wanyin thought for a moment. "Once, in a dream, I saw Xie Yonger embroidering a pouch, stitch by stitch. It looked like the very one hanging at Your Highness's waist."
Xie Yonger had embroidered that pouch in secret, so secretly that not even her personal maid knew about it. Yu Wanyin only knew because that was simply how it had been written in the original text.
Yu Wanyin added a note of jealousy to her voice. "Your Highness mentioned before that Xie Yonger has also opened her heavenly eye? But how would she know you well enough to embroider a pouch as a gesture of favor?"
Xiahou Bo paused. When Xie Yonger had given him the pouch, she'd said, "I have some small skill in divination. I calculated that Your Highness is the one destined by heaven, the true dragon emperor."
Xiahou Bo found himself believing Yu Wanyin's account a little more, though his expression stayed gentle. "You must have seen wrong."
Yu Wanyin said, "Impossible. I saw the embroidery thread clear as day!"
"Oh? The images in your dreams are all that clear?" Xiahou Bo continued his assessment.
"Mm..." Yu Wanyin's mind was also racing now. "Clear, yes. There was another time too, when I clearly saw Your Highness being ambushed by someone."
Xiahou Bo: "?"
Yu Wanyin continued, "That was right after I first entered the palace. Your Highness should have still been stationed at the border then. I saw a large, powerfully built man attack from behind, but fortunately Your Highness reacted quickly and turned to block it. I woke up right after that, and I worried terribly until you finally returned safely."
Xiahou Bo now realized which incident she meant.
The man she'd seen was General Luo, someone he was quite close to and often sparred with. That so-called "ambush" had really just been a friendly sparring match.
So she really had opened a heavenly eye of sorts, but it seemed she could only see scattered fragments, and had no reliable way of correctly interpreting what those fragments meant.
Xiahou Bo weighed all this quietly, then asked, without changing his expression, "Wanyin, has His Majesty ever told you what he's seen?"
This was a question Yu Wanyin had already prepared for. "He woke up startled once and said he'd seen me become his empress, that we stood together and the nation flourished under us."
Xiahou Bo said, unimpressed, "Wanyin is a clever woman. Even without any heavenly eye, surely you can see that Great Xia is beset by troubles on every side right now, hardly a sign of coming prosperity. If His Majesty woke from such a vision startled, what was his expression like at the time?"
Yu Wanyin lowered her head, looking troubled.
Xiahou Bo said, in the tone of a man saying your company is about to go under, come work for me instead, "After all your ups and downs in this palace, do you still see His Majesty as a good and worthy ruler?"
"...I'm nothing more than someone who caught a lucky glimpse of a fragment of heaven's will. The distant future you speak of is a fog to me. What is it Your Highness hopes to gain from me?"
Xiahou Bo narrowed his eyes slightly, studying her lowered, pale face.
She'd dressed today as the Peony Fairy for the Flower Dawn Banquet, dripping in gold and crimson splendor, and yet her expression looked like frost-bitten produce, timid and utterly without a mind of her own.
Nothing like the woman on the lake that day.
That day, standing on the shore, he'd heard, faintly, that gut-wrenching scream she'd let loose, "screw him." Even now he half suspected he'd misheard the exact words. But that fearless intensity had carried across the water regardless, as though she'd broken through some kind of shell from the inside out and lit up entirely.
It made him want, for no reason he could name, to seize that light for himself.
A short while later, Yu Wanyin returned to her residence with a face like storm clouds.
Xiahou Bo had said, "A few days ago I dreamed I saw His Majesty and you drifting on a lake, talking with several commoners. I worried a little about your safety outside the palace, so I sent someone to check on you, and to my surprise His Majesty had some skilled fighter at his side who cut down a great many of my men without a word of warning."
Yu Wanyin: "..."
She had truly never met anyone so shameless in her life.
Xiahou Bo even had the nerve to ask her, as if it were the most natural question in the world, "Who were you meeting with? Who was that fighter? Have you ever seen him in the palace?"
Yu Wanyin, still wanting to string this along a little longer and unable to break things off outright, choked back her anger. "I only wanted to learn a little tune, and His Majesty simply pulled in a few commoners at random to teach me. As for that fighter, I've never seen him in the palace before."
Xiahou Bo said, "Is that so? Then can you use your heavenly eye to work out where he might be?"
Yu Wanyin hurried to say, "Doesn't Your Highness know that the images in dreams are strange and unpredictable, gifts of heaven's will, not something we can direct?"
That stopped Xiahou Bo cold.
He fell silent for a moment, then slowly reached out and stroked her cheek with what looked like tenderness. "Try, for my sake. Won't you? Perhaps before too long you'll come to understand who your true match really is."
Yu Wanyin drew on every ounce of self-control she had just to keep from flinching back.
Translated, what he'd said meant: my patience has limits.
The moment Yu Wanyin returned to her residence, she summoned a trusted member of the Dark Guard and instructed them. "Go place some talismans and charms against evil spirits along Consort Xie's usual route."
The guard asked, puzzled, "My lady, is Consort Xie some kind of demon?"
Yu Wanyin said mysteriously, "She knows the answer to that herself."
The guard asked again, "Any particular kind of ward we should use?"
Yu Wanyin said, "Doesn't matter, the creepier looking the better. And throw in some of those storybooks about Daoist masters exorcising demons too, the more miserable the demon's ending, the better."
King Duan was careful and suspicious by nature, trusting no one, not even Xie Yonger completely, which was exactly why he'd come looking for Yu Wanyin as a backup option.
Whatever story she'd fed him, he certainly wasn't going to swallow it whole. He'd turn around and compare notes with Xie Yonger soon enough.
So she needed to scare Xie Yonger first, rattle her so badly she'd be jumping at shadows, so that whatever King Duan pried out of her wouldn't come out as one clean, coherent confession.
As for whatever lie Xie Yonger ended up telling, and whether it would line up neatly with her own story, that part she wasn't going to worry too much about. King Duan didn't trust Xie Yonger fully either, so let him sort out truth from fiction on his own.
If this cost him whatever trust he still had left in Xie Yonger's predictions, that would honestly be wonderful news.
All day long, wherever Xie Yonger went, she kept running into ghastly, misshapen objects. Storybooks kept appearing out of nowhere too, each one hammering the same warning into her: creatures like you get found out eventually, get plastered with talismans, get burned.
Who was doing this? Who could possibly want to harm her?
Did the emperor suspect something was off about her singing and dancing skills? No, if the emperor's suspicions were roused, given his temperament, he'd have simply had her buried already, no need for all this elaborate hinting.
Was it some jealous consort? No, a consort would just quietly go running to the emperor to inform on her. Why bother putting her on guard first?
Then that evening, King Duan came to meet her in secret. In the middle of their tender exchange of poetry under the moon, he suddenly asked, out of nowhere, "You once told me you often have visions of the future. Is that so?"
Xie Yonger's whole body went rigid.
Yes. She'd only ever told him that.
Had the people of this era simply never been able to accept something like this, and quietly branded her a demon instead? Were all those warding charms actually meant to suppress her?
Xie Yonger stammered, "It... it's not that often... and it isn't always accurate either..."
Xiahou Bo asked, "What does it feel like, when you divine something? Do you hear a voice from heaven?"
Xie Yonger no longer dared tell the truth and answered vaguely. "It's nothing so mystical. Just a vague sense of things, that's all."
"A sense?"
"Mm..."
Xiahou Bo glanced at her, his eyes lingering a moment on her knuckles, white from how tightly she was gripping her hands together, then reached out and took her hand, his voice gentle. "Don't be afraid. I'll keep your secret."
Then why test me like this? Xie Yonger thought, a knot of hurt tangling with her fear. She was devoting herself entirely to his cause, and in the end she couldn't even earn a single moment of open honesty from him. This man's mind ran too deep for her to fathom.
Xiahou Bo asked, "Can you divine what His Majesty is planning?"
The emperor? Xie Yonger blinked, caught off guard. "There doesn't seem to be anything unusual."
In the original text, the emperor had basically done nothing at all, just eaten, drunk, and enjoyed himself while waiting to be overthrown.
Had he done something recently that she'd simply forgotten, having read past that part of the story?
Worried King Duan might think her lazy, Xie Yonger added, "Some things simply can't be divined. What comes through depends entirely on heaven's will. Whether it's accurate or not is also up to heaven, really."
Yu Wanyin managed to coax King Duan away and kept a low profile for the next few days.
The library was still under renovation, leaving her with nothing to read, so she spent her time practicing calligraphy instead. Xiahou Dan sometimes joined her, though not every day.
To keep a closer eye on Xie Yonger, his current role had become "wavering back and forth between the White Rose, Consort Yu, and the Red Rose, Consort Xie," gifting jewelry to one today and pushing the other on a swing tomorrow. The palace staff all knew the tyrant's spring had arrived, and even his temper had noticeably softened.
But in reality, in their private moments together, Yu Wanyin hadn't managed to recapture that easy, chaotic warmth from their hot pot days.
King Duan had come to her asking about Bei Zhou, clearly trying to pressure her into becoming his spy.
The more she refused, the more wary King Duan would grow of Xiahou Dan. And once he realized Yu Wanyin could never be turned to his side, he'd move to eliminate her ruthlessly, the same way he had with Xu Yao.
So was she supposed to become a double agent now?
What business did a lowly office worker like herself have doing something like that? And on top of everything, of the two Xiahous, one was undeniably a villain, and now she wasn't even sure about the other one anymore.
The assassins on the lake that day had genuinely been sent by King Duan.
But he hadn't really opened any heavenly eye. So how exactly had he tracked them down to the lake? Could Xiahou Dan have deliberately lured him there?
Yu Wanyin felt deeply lonely and worn thin.
Xiahou Dan clearly noticed her pulling away, but he never said anything about it.
One day he brought Yu Wanyin into the imperial study, swapped out the guards on duty for members of the Dark Guard, and only then said quietly, "All five scholars have taken up their posts successfully. They've each settled into minor positions across the various ministries. I've called two of them here today for a small meeting."
Li Yunxi and the others had expertise in either administration or finance, but every one of them came from humble origins, with no family connections and no way through an examination system that had become little more than a formality.
So Xiahou Dan had taken it on himself, changing their names, fabricating new identities, and giving them money to purchase official positions through grain donation.
Under normal circumstances, scholars like these would have scoffed at the idea of buying their way into office and walked away in disgust.
But after what happened on that lake, they'd clearly grown up.
The two who arrived were Li Yunxi and Cen Jintian. Dressed now in official court robes and caps, they looked almost unrecognizable from the plainly dressed men of that day, already carrying a bit of that office worker weariness about them.
Xiahou Dan quickly waved off their formal greetings. "Please, sit."
Yu Wanyin, quite familiar with small working meetings by now, found herself a seat off to the side without being asked and set out her writing materials, ready to take notes.
But Li Yunxi glanced up, spotted her, and stared in open disbelief. "The consort is here as well?"
Xiahou Dan said, "What of it?"
Li Yunxi's stubborn streak flared right back up, and he charged straight ahead. "This humble official respectfully requests that the consort withdraw."
Xiahou Dan: "?"
Cen Jintian, unable to watch this unfold, tugged at his sleeve.
Li Yunxi ignored him entirely. "The consort listening in on the boat that day was already overstepping. For her to now enter the imperial study is beyond improper. Women meddling in state affairs, what kind of disgrace is this!"
Xiahou Dan casually smashed his teacup against the floor near Li Yunxi's feet. "Get out."
Li Yunxi, seemingly thrilled to have the chance to display his unbending integrity, dropped to his knees with tears in his eyes and kowtowed. "Your Majesty, this humble servant is willing to remonstrate unto death!"
Xiahou Dan: "..."
Even the palace's biggest drama king had apparently met his match today.
Yu Wanyin didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
She'd read the original story and knew exactly how stubborn Li Yunxi's temper was, how firmly he believed himself the most righteous man in the world, his idea of a good death being one where he cracked his skull against the palace floor and lived on in legend for it.
So she calmly turned over her injured hand and gently touched the still-healing scab on her palm. "I nearly forgot to ask. Master Li, how are your injuries from that day on the water? Have they healed well by now?"
Li Yunxi: "..."
Yu Wanyin reached out to pour him tea. "Master Li, calm your temper first, there'll be plenty of time to remonstrate later. Oh dear," her hand trembled, spilling half the pot across the table, and she sighed heavily. "Well, this hand's completely useless now."
Li Yunxi: "..."
Yu Wanyin sloppily poured out half a cup of tea and personally rose to hand it to him. "Please drink first, Master Li. In the meantime, I'll take my leave."
Li Yunxi: "............"
"Wanyin!" Xiahou Dan said, sounding genuinely pained. "You work tirelessly for the sake of the country and its people, giving everything you have, and I see all of it clearly. Why bother with this ungrateful wretch?"
Yu Wanyin gave a sorrowful smile. "This consort is only a woman. There's likely no place for me within matters of state and family. Great duties and grand righteousness surely have nothing to do with someone like me."
Xiahou Dan said, "Sit. Come sit beside me. As for someone who can't even work out that much basic sense on his own, let him crack his skull against the floor if that's what he wants."
Li Yunxi's whole face turned the color of pig liver, and for a long moment he couldn't force out a single word.
Yu Wanyin, thinking this man still had his uses and it would be a shame for him to actually burst a blood vessel out of anger, was about to offer some kind words to smooth things over and coax him back up.
A loud thud rang out as he kowtowed again, hard enough to leave a mark. "My lady's magnanimity humbles me. This humble official is willing to atone with his life!"
Yu Wanyin: "?"
So basically, he just wanted to die. Great.
In the end, everyone still settled down with their tea for the actual meeting.
Yu Wanyin raised the most important question first. "Master Cen, I've heard that you... are quite skilled in farming?"
According to the original text, this sickly scholar had never cared much for typical scholarly pursuits, likely because he'd known from an early age that his life would be short and had no interest in wasting his remaining time composing poetry or debating politics.
Since his youth he'd traveled the country, never sightseeing, never touring scenic spots, but carrying a hoe into the fields at every stop he made. Yu Wanyin, though, found it hard to imagine how someone with such a slight frame actually managed the physical work of farming.
Cen Jintian said quickly, "This humble official isn't actually skilled at farming himself. All these years of traveling through the fields were for this."
He presented Xiahou Dan with a thick, weathered notebook.
Xiahou Dan flipped through it, his expression turning to genuine amazement. "How long have you been keeping this record, Cen?"
Cen Jintian said, "About ten years now."
"What the Ministry of Revenue never managed to accomplish, you've done on your own. I'm truly ashamed."
Yu Wanyin actually had a rough understanding of Cen Jintian's research methods already. In short, he'd set aside small test plots across various regions of Great Xia, planted a range of staple crops, and then, controlling for variables, methodically studied how soil, climate, planting timing, irrigation methods, and other factors affected yield.
Ten years later, he'd built up a complete practical theory of what should be planted where, and how.
When Yu Wanyin had read the original story, she'd barely registered Cen Jintian as a character at all, only remembering him from the part where he died with unfulfilled regrets.
Now she held his notebook as though it were a lifeline, her hands trembling. "Master Cen, does this include yan grain?"
"Yan grain? There should only be scattered notes on it. It's not a common crop in Great Xia, mostly treated as feed for livestock..."
Yu Wanyin pressed urgently, "What about other drought-resistant crops?"
Cen Jintian's expression shifted slightly. "My lady, why do you ask about this?"
Yu Wanyin looked over at Xiahou Dan.
Xiahou Dan propped his head up with one hand, rubbing his temple. "The Bureau of Astronomy has calculated it. The celestial signs are inauspicious. There's an omen of severe drought over the next two years."
Both ministers went white in an instant.
Xiahou Dan glanced at them flatly. "This is an absolute secret."
Since ancient times, disasters sent down from heaven were understood as punishment for a ruler's misgovernance, usually followed by political upheaval or even the fall of a dynasty.
And here the ruler himself was announcing it out loud, as though foretelling his own death sentence.
Yu Wanyin, though, still felt the need to reinforce the story. "Your Majesty, is the Bureau of Astronomy reliable in its calculations?"
Xiahou Dan said, "They haven't been wrong in many years."
Even Li Yunxi didn't dare push further after that. "This official will not breathe a word of it."
Xiahou Dan gave a short laugh. "No need to worry, it hasn't happened yet, has it? We start preparing countermeasures now, and by the time it comes, no one starves. Cen, your thoughts?"
Cen Jintian looked steadily at Xiahou Dan for a moment, as though something in him had been stirred, and smiled. "This official will begin organizing the records the moment I return. Yan grain doesn't taste particularly good, but it can yield two to three harvests a year. Planted widely, it could genuinely save lives during a drought."
Yu Wanyin heard the calm in his voice and felt a little reassured. He didn't sound like a man entirely without a plan.
But Li Yunxi spoke up again. "Great Xia has no yan grain to speak of. If we want to start planting it now, we'll need to gather seed stock first."
Yu Wanyin asked, "Then we'll have to get it from Yan, won't we?"
Li Yunxi's brow twitched. "Your Majesty, this is not the time to start a war!"
Yan had been raiding the border relentlessly, and Great Xia, weakening year by year, was already struggling to keep up. The central army had only barely managed to repel their last incursion, and everyone was hoping for a few years of peace along the border.
What was more, military authority was almost entirely in King Duan's hands now, and Xiahou Dan couldn't mobilize troops even if he wanted to.
Xiahou Dan waved a hand. "No war needed." He knew perfectly well that when Yu Wanyin said "get," she was thinking diplomacy.
Probably another elaborate scheme in the works.
But this wasn't something he needed to hash out with these two, so he brushed it off for now. "Set the matter of seed stock aside for the moment. Li, let's assume for argument's sake that we've already secured enough seed. What comes next?"
"Next?"
"No one can be allowed to know a drought is coming. So what reason do we give the common people to convince them to plant yan grain in the meantime?"
Li Yunxi repeated the same idea Yu Wanyin had once suggested. "Perhaps the court could purchase it directly and distribute..."
"The treasury is empty. The court has no money." Xiahou Dan dropped this new bombshell with the same flat expression as before.
Li Yunxi: "..."
Cen Jintian silently glanced back at the firmly closed doors of the study.
Would the two of them even be walking out of here alive after today?
How many more years could this dynasty even hold on, long enough for him to keep farming?
Li Yunxi furrowed his brow, deep in thought, and said nothing for a long while.
Yu Wanyin had gone to considerable trouble to gather these experts, and now watching even the experts run out of answers, her heart sank. "Master Li..."
Li Yunxi looked up. "What about the kaizhong system?"
Xiahou Dan: "..."
Xiahou Dan said, "The what system?"
Li Yunxi ended up spending the next two hours explaining the details and answering questions.
Once he and Cen Jintian had taken their leave, Xiahou Dan slumped down out of his chair entirely. "My head..."
Yu Wanyin's expression turned somber. She paused a few seconds before asking, "Bad?"
Xiahou Dan hung half out of his seat and glanced at her, a note of hope in his eyes. "A little."
Yu Wanyin paused again, then quietly sat down beside him and reached out to press gently against his temples, rubbing in slow circles.
Xiahou Dan closed his eyes, his expression easing, the corner of his mouth curling up slightly. "Much obliged, my consort."
"It's simply my duty."
Xiahou Dan let out a short laugh.
Yu Wanyin continued massaging as she spoke. "I actually think these two ministers are quite solid. If we follow through step by step on what they've laid out, we might actually be able to stop the drought."
"And King Duan."
"And King Duan," Yu Wanyin echoed.
Xiahou Dan tilted his head drowsily, eyes still closed, and said in a low voice, "I've been thinking, now that we already have Xu Yao's book, and we've got real help on our side now too, could we start dismantling King Duan's schemes one by one?"
"No. We can only afford to spoil one, at most." Yu Wanyin roughly recounted the whole "opening the heavenly eye" farce to him. "King Duan already has his eye on me, but he still doesn't know how capable I really am, or whether I can be turned to his side. The moment I fail him once, he'll blacklist me completely. After that, every one of his plans will change to account for me, and he'll pile on countermeasures just to guard against me specifically."
Xiahou Dan said, "So we just let him do whatever he wants for now."
"It's not a huge problem. Most of what he's planning right now is aimed at the Empress Dowager anyway. Let them fight it out between themselves while we stay low and quietly build up our own strength. We save that one chance to spoil his plans for when it really counts."
Xiahou Dan said nothing.
Yu Wanyin stared blankly at the notes on the table, and after a moment, the silence started to feel too heavy, so she looked down at him.
Xiahou Dan had already lifted his eyelids, his ink black eyes fixed quietly on her.
Yu Wanyin froze. "What is it?"
"We made real progress today. Why don't you seem happy about it?"
Yu Wanyin forced a smile. "I am, of course. Congratulations, you've finally got some real support behind you. No more fighting this alone."
Xiahou Dan smiled faintly and slowly straightened up. "Wanyin, who do you think leaked word of our lake meeting to King Duan?"
Yu Wanyin's heart skipped. "I haven't been able to figure that out either."
"You think it was me, don't you?"
Yu Wanyin: "..."
Xiahou Dan said, understanding dawning. "You think that to outdo King Duan in ruthlessness, I'd sacrifice a capable minister, along with an entire region he could have benefited, without a second thought. Oh, and while we're at it, do you also suspect I set the fire at the library? After all, in the end, it did push Xu Yao into a corner and force him to hand over that book."
Yu Wanyin said, shocked, "I absolutely never thought that."
Something about Xiahou Dan's expression right now felt entirely unfamiliar to her. His eyes seemed to have gone unusually dark, dark enough to swallow any hint of light, and his features, already vivid and striking, took on the beauty of a demon mask. "Your thoughts are written all over your face, Wanyin."
The hair on the back of Yu Wanyin's neck stood on end. That was usually the reaction reserved exclusively for King Duan.
She tried to force a laugh, tried to ask him why he was suddenly acting the part with her too, but her lips seemed to freeze shut.
Xiahou Dan studied her for a long moment before saying, quietly, "Have you considered that this suspicion of yours might be exactly what King Duan wants? He had no idea who we were meeting on that lake. He wanted to kill them to intimidate us. But when he heard you scream out in fury like that, he realized, in that instant, that it was the perfect opportunity to drive a wedge between us."
Yu Wanyin: "What..."
"He pulled back deliberately, letting the outcome favor me. Because he judged that, compared to a handful of commoners, your loyalty mattered far more to him. Once you realize how much I've gained from Du Shan's death, will you still be able to work with me with a clear conscience?"
Yu Wanyin had nothing to say to that.
Xiahou Dan spread his hands. "A person can prove they did something. They can never prove they didn't. I tell you I didn't leak the location. Do you believe me?"
Yu Wanyin knew exactly what she was supposed to do right now.
She should put on an expression of sudden realization, of remorse, curse King Duan bitterly in front of Xiahou Dan, and let the two of them settle their differences.
She'd already run through this exact routine with King Duan several times. She was practiced at it by now.
But she didn't want to.
Even facing this clearly not-quite-right version of Xiahou Dan right now, she didn't want to.
Maybe the strain of performing for both men at once had finally reached its breaking point, because the words came spilling out of her before she could stop them. "It isn't about Du Shan. Not only about Du Shan, anyway."
Xiahou Dan: "Hm?"
Yu Wanyin said, "That day on the boat, we spent two full hours talking with those scholars. Today in the study, another two hours, on the subject of taxation. You said a great deal, showed off a lot of learning, but your actual knowledge of economics is about as pitiful as mine."
Xiahou Dan: "..."
"Which company were you the CEO of? What did that company actually do? When did it go public? What was your stock's market value before you ended up here?"
Xiahou Dan: "..."
Don't ask any further, Yu Wanyin told herself. He'll kill you.
But she clearly heard her own voice ask anyway. "Who are you, really?"
In the long five seconds that followed, one thought circled through Xiahou Dan's mind: just tell her everything.
But he couldn't.
Even if Yu Wanyin had no choice but to keep working with him regardless, he still couldn't do it.
Telling her everything would mean that small, fragile trust and closeness she still held for him would be gone forever.