Li Yuangui had never felt such an overwhelming urge to draw his sword and hack the Kuzhen Guard into pieces as he did at this moment.
From the way Yang Xinzhi stepped into the room only to hastily retreat as if scalded, his expression suggesting he'd rather throw himself off a cliff or into the sea, he clearly shared the sentiment—though in the end, he merely slapped his own face. Outside the thatched wall, he let out a self-deprecating laugh and loudly exclaimed, "How strange! Where have the Fourteenth Young Master and Wei Niangzi gone? It's so dark in there..."
"Stop pretending, you idiot!" Li Yuangui cursed under his breath as he slipped on his shoes and stepped down from the kang, moving to the outer room to ask what was going on. It turned out that someone had arrived from the Pei family estate, accompanied by the foreign girl Fen Dui.
The visitors had brought them some clothes, food, and utensils, along with news gathered by Pei Lvshi and Zhang Zhuangtou—the guards at Xianyang Bridge had indeed delivered the Seventeenth Princess and the foreign youth to the Northern Military Camp, while An San and his trusted foreign followers had been taken into the capital by Cheng Yaojin. The aftermath of the murder case at the Xiaoxi Market's mule and horse trade was being handled through discussions between local officials and foreign merchant leaders, all as expected. Another piece of news was that the Chang'an garrison and Xianyang's local militia had begun organizing sweeps to crack down on illegal ferry docks and boatmen along both banks of the Wei River. Previously, lax enforcement had not only been due to bribes from foreign merchant groups but also rumors that some imperial relatives and nobles in the capital had profited from the arrangement.
The Pei family's people were, after all, only peripheral informants. When A-Chen's two young servants from Prince Wu's residence secretly brought news from the Great Peace Palace, the information edged closer to the core of court politics: Zhang Shigui had indeed been stripped of his general's rank and sent with a reserve force to reinforce the Qinghai front in the Tuyuhun campaign. The Northern Military Camp had been handed over to Cheng Yaojin, and the two were currently going through the transfer procedures. Crown Prince Li Chengqian had not been seen at the Great Peace Palace recently, with rumors circulating that he had been reprimanded by the Son of Heaven and the Empress and confined to the Crown Prince's Palace for reflection, listening to lectures from his newly appointed Grand Tutor. The previous night, High Truth Master Chai Yingluo had violated the night curfew to bring the Medicine King Sun Simiao into the Great Peace Hall to treat the Supreme Emperor...
"Ying-jie found the True Master Sun?" Wei Shufen exclaimed excitedly upon hearing this. "I knew she'd manage it!"
Li Yuangui glanced at her with a faint smile. After several days of recuperation in the vegetable garden's thatched cottage, the daughter of Chancellor Wei had recovered significantly from her knife wounds and burns, her spirits much improved. Youthful vigor ensured quick healing, and even dressed in a peasant woman's coarse brown skirt without any adornment, her natural beauty shone through—truly, "even in rough clothes and disheveled hair, she remains lovely."
Since the day of the flood and fire, he hadn't had another chance to be alone with Wei Shufen, as Fen Dui had also come to live with them. He had written a letter to A-Chen, sending him to the Chai residence to pass it on to Chai Yingluo, but there was no suitable place to relocate Fen Dui.
The tactful foreign girl assumed the role of a maidservant, keeping to herself and staying out of sight as much as possible. But the garden and cottage were too small for six people, making it impossible to avoid each other entirely, and the bashful young Miss Wei no longer dared to speak with Li Yuangui alone.
The two girls, however, quickly grew close. At night, their whispered conversations and laughter could be heard through the thatched wall separating their beds. During the day, they joined the two elderly women in tending the vegetable garden—watering, loosening soil, transplanting seedlings, and weeding—while Li Yuangui and Yang Xinzhi took on the heavier tasks. "After all, it's the Fourteenth Young Master's own garden," they joked. "Might as well put in the work."To be honest, he had attended the Son of Heaven's ceremonial plowing of the imperial farmland many times before, read plenty of poems by Xie Lingyun and Tao Yuanming, and often heard the old scholars from the Crown Prince's Palace wax lyrical about the joys of returning to farming. He never thought farming was particularly hard or troublesome. But once he actually started doing it every day... well, he quickly found himself thinking of nothing but slacking off.
Yang Xinzhi and Wei Shufen seemed to be in the same boat. As the sun set and smoke rose from the thatched cottage's chimney, Wei Shufen walked out toward the firewood shed behind the house, likely to gather kindling for cooking. Her steps were light but slow. Li Yuangui, who was also outside, dropped his hoe and followed her. When they were some distance from the cottage, he saw Wei Shufen emerge from the shed with a large bundle of straw, her brow slightly furrowed and her still-injured left arm held back. He hurried forward and took most of the firewood from her hands:
"Why carry so much? Be careful with your arm."
"It's fine, the wound has scabbed over," Wei Shufen replied. Without thinking much, Li Yuangui reached to lift her sleeve: "Let me see."
His movement was quick—he grabbed the girl's sleeve in an instant. Wei Shufen immediately pulled her arm back: "Let go!"
Only then did Li Yuangui realize his impropriety. An unmarried maiden's skin wasn't something a man could casually look at. He quickly released her, his face flushing as he stammered, wanting to apologize but unsure what to say. Wei Shufen also averted her gaze, her lips parting slightly—
"You're already betrothed, what's the harm in looking? Why not just hug and kiss her already? Go for it!"
This bright, teasing voice... definitely wasn't Wei Shufen's.
Both of them jumped in surprise and turned toward the source of the voice. From beyond the waist-high fence, the laughing voice continued:
"Fourteenth Uncle, you spineless coward! Show some backbone worthy of a Li family man! Go on! Are you really your father's son or not?!"
High Truth Master Chai Yingluo, dressed in men's clothing and accompanied by a eunuch servant, had somehow approached the firewood shed at the back of the vegetable garden. Peering over the fence, she had clearly seen the young pair. Li Yuangui cursed in embarrassment while Wei Shufen fled with a flustered cry. Amidst loud laughter, Chai Yingluo and her servant circled around most of the garden to enter the house.
The eunuch carried a bundle containing a box of travel provisions—nothing more than some cured chicken and preserved meat, but to the group who had been eating millet porridge with pickles for days, it was a treasure. They invited the two old women to join them and devoured the food like a whirlwind.
Chai Yingluo gave the eunuch a meaningful glance, and he promptly led Fen Dui and the two old women to the well with the dishes and dirty clothes for washing and water-fetching. When only the two men and two women remained in the house, before Chai Yingluo could speak, Li Yuangui impatiently fired off a string of questions:
"Yingniang, have you been to the Great Peace Palace? How is the Supreme Emperor? What's the situation inside the palace? Any news about my seventeenth sister?"
"Look how anxious you are. Let me speak slowly." The female Daoist pulled a cloth bag from her sleeve and placed it on the dining table, smiling as she asked:
"Guess what this is?"
The plain, unmarked cloth bag was tied shut with hemp string. By its shape, it seemed to contain a scroll. Li Yuangui answered, "Is it someone's written document?" and reached to open the bag, but Chai Yingluo stopped him:
"Wait! Hear me out first, Fourteenth Uncle, then decide whether you want to open it."
"What's wrong?" The three in the room turned to look at the female Daoist. In the dimming light outside the door, the beautiful face of the cross-dressed woman grew solemn and grave."I have entered the palace and met the Empress..."
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