Chapter 33

Autumn light hung low like a beauty at dusk, all the last warmth of sunset in it, lazily watching blossoms fall and leaves drift away. The wind stirred up a thousand tangled sorrows.

During this stretch of convalescence, Ye Rui had been bored to death. Ri Xi brought her some books, brushes, and ink so she could pass the time by reading and writing. Only now did Ye Rui finally understand why Xie Tinglan’s injuries had healed so quickly back then. The Xie residence had a medicinal pellet called Xianlu Dan, capable of treating both internal and external injuries; it wasn’t sold on the market at all, and it had been personally made by Ri Xi.

Xianlu Dan carried a faint musk fragrance, along with a fresh herbal scent. Back when Ye Rui had been living in that little thatched hut, the place was always thick with the smell of medicine, so even if she had caught the scent of Xianlu Dan, she hadn’t paid it any mind. Now that the familiar aroma drifted over, she understood that at the time, Yin Yue must have been bringing Xie Tinglan the pills on a fixed schedule.

No wonder that woman had recovered so quickly. Ye Rui had always thought it was because she’d taken such good care of her; only now did she realize she’d been far too full of herself.

During this time, Gong Yinzhi had also come by. She never said much, only took Ye Rui’s pulse in silence; it was impossible to tell what lay beneath the mask. Every time, she would simply tell her to rest well.

Today, Gong Yinzhi came again. Ye Rui was sitting at the desk reading. It was the very "Jianghu Chronicles" she had put away in the cabinet and not touched for quite a while. The last time she had left off at the part where the heroine roamed the jianghu, traveled to various cities, killed corrupt officials and righteous sect members alike, and defeated every master with a single ancient guqin—"Frost-Flower Will."

After Gong Yinzhi sat down, she lowered her head and glanced at the book in Ye Rui’s hands; beneath the mask, it sounded as though she gave a faint laugh. "Do you like it?"

"I do."

Ye Rui answered without hesitation. She didn’t avoid the fact that the book’s protagonist was right beside her; instead, it gave her a strange sense that the figure from the story had stepped into reality. She said, "I haven’t reached the later parts yet, but I do have one question."

Since the protagonist was sitting right here, of course she had to ask what she still didn’t understand. This was a rare chance.

"Mm?"

Gong Yinzhi extended her hand, and Ye Rui naturally turned her own hand palm-up on the table. Gong Yinzhi rested two fingers on her pulse, as though this wordless understanding needed no explanation. Ye Rui set the book aside and asked, "Why didn’t you expose Lord Luo’s true face?"

"Too many things were tied up in it. Lord Luo was only helping those corrupt officials raise fine-bred young girls; this even involved the imperial family. If it were exposed, I’m afraid it would only alert the snake."

Gong Yinzhi’s tone was calm, but that one phrase—"raising fine-bred young girls"—was enough to make Ye Rui’s scalp tingle. Fury surged up at once, and her voice rose before she could control it. "Damn it, what do they take girls for? Those people are truly damned!"

Gong Yinzhi’s eyes shifted slightly. Then she went on, "Although I left the Immortal Sound Sect, those people had no intention of letting my sect go. They sent people to attack us several times; my sect… had no choice but to retreat into semi-seclusion."

"Hmph. This rotten trend has to be stamped out. Once I learn real martial arts, I’m going to help you kill them all off too!"

Ye Rui was so angry she felt hot all over. She had never expected herself to develop murderous thoughts, but when she imagined those girls being bought and sold from childhood, each step of their lives a plunge into misery, her hatred burned all the more fiercely.

"You must know the Gu family, right?"

Gong Yinzhi asked. Ye Rui nodded immediately. How could she not know the Gu family? It was precisely because someone from the Gu family had escaped alive that her own left shoulder had taken that slash.

"Gu Xifeng was an elder who had served through two reigns; to the outside world, his image was always one of honesty and dignity. Yet he was one of the biggest beneficiaries of this practice of raising fine-bred girls. When the master learned of this, she used some methods to pull troops away, led people to slaughter his entire household, and took the account books of the girls’ raising. She then investigated the matter in secret."

Ye Rui hadn’t expected the two massacre cases to be connected. Thinking about it that way, this Gu Xifeng really did deserve to die. The kind of death that came with a thousand cuts.

"And precisely because Gu Xifeng used his status as an elder of two reigns to keep picking apart the emperor’s decisions in court, the master’s interests became tied to the emperor’s; that was how the affair of colluding with foreigners and selling out the country came about."

Gong Yinzhi withdrew her hand. Ye Rui also took hers back, but she didn’t immediately reopen the book. She was still absorbed in what Gong Yinzhi had just said. After a moment, she asked, "You’re willing to serve Xie Tinglan because she secretly eradicated this practice of raising fine-bred girls?"

"Not only that."

Gong Yinzhi paused, then said evenly, "Because of my lord’s vision, I am willing to follow her."

Vision. Again, vision. Right, last time Xie Tinglan had said that if Ye Rui became a third-rank guard, she would tell her her vision. Thinking back, if Ye Rui didn’t ask, then Xie Tinglan would probably act as though she had never promised anything.

What a cunning woman.

"All right, rest well."

Just as Gong Yinzhi was about to stand, Ye Rui hurriedly called her back. Under Gong Yinzhi’s puzzled gaze, Ye Rui asked, "Ri Xi knows medicine, but you still come to take my pulse every day. Is there something wrong with my body?"

Gong Yinzhi’s mask hid her expression, and Ye Rui couldn’t catch even the slightest change on her face. That made her a little disappointed.

However, Gong Yinzhi’s silence for those two breaths made Ye Rui feel that things were not so simple.

"No. I’m only making sure your body is well."

With that, Gong Yinzhi left, disappearing into the golden whirl of falling leaves. Ye Rui thought back to when she’d first been injured, half-conscious and saying something about the poison’s effects having dissolved on their own; she was sure she hadn’t heard wrong.

Yet Ri Xi had lied about that matter. Now Gong Yinzhi was coming every day to check her pulse; this was truly odd and left Ye Rui unable to stop doubting.

Could I have some hidden illness?

Hu Tu: [I checked here, and there isn’t one! Besides your injury, your body is very healthy!]

Ye Rui: [Thanks a lot.]

Hu Tu: [You’re welcome!]

That only made Ye Rui more confused. If it wasn’t a hidden illness, then what could it be? Still, if it wasn’t an illness, then at least that was a good thing.

A few more days passed. Ye Rui had a good foundation to begin with, and with Xianlu Dan’s help, her injuries had mostly healed. Once the wounds stopped hurting so much, she couldn’t sit still anymore. She took Li Yun out to Beichenfang and ate her fill. With their recent meals all being bland and plain, and on top of that she had won that 3,000 taels of silver, she had to splurge a little!

While she was enjoying a full meal at Baihe Tower, Ye Rui also heard some recent gossip from the diners. A few playboys on the second floor were chatting loudly about how, a little over half a month ago, more than twenty dockworkers at the west city’s Zhaoyue Lake pier had been killed by jianghu people.

"I heard those dockworkers weren’t exactly harmless either. When they died, they all had murder weapons in their hands. As soon as the yamen saw that, they closed the case as an old score settled by the jianghu."

After one blue-clad wastrel finished, another picked up the thread. "I heard it was that Jade-Faced Qin Demon who did it. Who knows what grudge they had?"

Then a short, fat wastrel laughed and said, "Hahaha, I heard that Jade-Faced Qin Demon is prettier than the girls at Yanyu Tower. If I could… heh heh!"

At that, the group burst into laughter and started talking even filthier. The girls at the neighboring table all flushed red and hurried downstairs, unwilling to stay in the same room with them.

The more Ye Rui listened, the more disgusted she felt. After shooting those bastards a cutting glare, she exchanged a look with Li Yun. With perfect understanding, Li Yun used the chopsticks in her hand as a hidden weapon and sent them flying.

The chopsticks were as fast as lightning, a streak of afterimage flashing by. Before anyone could react, they heard the fat wastrel let out a scream, startling everyone in Baihe Tower.

He clutched the back of his hand, pierced clean through by the chopsticks, and cried out in pain and fear. Ye Rui immediately shouted, "The Jade-Faced Qin Demon is here! The Jade-Faced Qin Demon is here—!"

Those two shouts were like a death warrant. Baihe Tower instantly descended into chaos, and the group of wastrels fled in a panic, rolling and scrambling. The fat one shrieked all the way out, blood dripping after him. In the end, his leg hurt so badly he couldn’t walk, and it was his servant who dragged him out of Baihe Tower.

That finally made Ye Rui feel better. She couldn’t stand the filth spilling from those mouths; this was only a small lesson. If Gong Yinzhi had really appeared, they would not have been frightened off so easily.

Ye Rui sat by the window on the second floor and watched those playboys run like dogs. Thinking of Gong Yinzhi’s reputation in the jianghu, she suddenly became even more curious about the martial world. The Three Sects and Four Schools, along with many smaller sects developing in the shadows; wielding swords in the jianghu and acting with chivalry and justice—everything seemed like a story that had walked straight out of a book.

Then her thoughts shifted, and her brow subtly tightened. Her next main quest was to exterminate the person who had rescued the Gu family’s surviving bloodline. That was the one who had pulled Gu Sheng out during the massacre after Xie Tinglan wiped out the whole household. Later, someone forged Gu Sheng’s corpse, letting a fish slip through Xie Tinglan’s net. The method was indeed clever.

To be able to rescue someone under Xie Tinglan’s nose without her noticing, this person should be from the martial world and quite skilled. If the mastermind behind it all was truly the Yuan Emperor, then this person must belong to the Yuan Emperor. Follow the vine and uncover the melon; if she kept investigating, she might learn which martial force the Yuan Emperor controlled.

Ye Rui guessed it was very likely to be someone from a righteous sect, because only the righteous sects could gather the martial world’s strength and act with relative ease. She just didn’t know how those so-called upright men, who always claimed to protect the people with righteousness and plead on behalf of the common folk where the court couldn’t reach, had willingly become the emperor’s blade for the sake of profit.

The martial world had arisen because the court’s power was insufficient; the people turned to the jianghu because they had nowhere else to seek redress. But now, greed for power had spread through all of Great Yan. Right and wrong were impossible to distinguish anymore; everyone was just acting for themselves.

"What are you thinking about so hard?"

Ye Rui had expected to boast a little about how she’d frightened those wastrels away, but the other woman gradually reined in her smile and seemed to fall into some troubling thought.

"I’m thinking I need to become a martial arts expert as soon as possible. Otherwise I’ll keep getting holes poked through me here and slashed open there; that’d be way too miserable."

Ye Rui said it half seriously, half jokingly. Li Yun didn’t suspect a thing. She was strong in martial arts, but her mind was simple, and since she trusted Ye Rui now, she wouldn’t question whether her words were true.

"Becoming a master isn’t something that happens overnight. You… still need to practice more with Lord Yin Yue."

The moment Yin Yue was mentioned, Ye Rui instinctively started to fear. Her legs even began to shake. Although she could already grit her teeth and endure the lessons Yin Yue set for her, whenever she remembered how, back at the beginning, she would rather have gone be a cosmic trash collector than suffer through that pain, she still felt afraid.

To her, Yin Yue was already a shadow-level existence.

The two chatted a bit longer before preparing to leave Baihe Tower and go wander the market. But just after stepping out the door, they were stopped by someone. Even though that person wore a veiled hat, Ye Rui still recognized her; she was the steward from Yanyu Tower.

That deep purple dress, that full figure, and that distinctive tulip scent—Ye Rui recognized all of it.

And precisely because she recognized her, Ye Rui felt like she’d run into trouble again.

"I heard Miss Ye was injured. This is from our boss. She hopes Miss Ye will recover soon."

The steward handed over a bottle of pills and a letter. Ye Rui did not take them. "I appreciate Miss Mu Xue’s kindness, but my injuries are already mostly healed. The residence has excellent medicine, so there’s no need to trouble Miss Mu Xue with the expense."

The steward didn’t take the things back. Instead, she gave a low laugh. "Miss Ye is so afraid of being tied to my boss?"

At that moment, Ye Rui also didn’t know whether Mu Xue and Xie Tinglan’s transaction had any follow-up, so she didn’t want to offend anyone. She said, "I’m being sincere; I truly don’t want Miss Mu Xue to spend needlessly."

"Oh~ So you’re thinking this much about my boss?"

Ye Rui: "?"

Li Yun: "?"

The steward bowed deeply, every bit the proper professional, and said, "Then I’ll accept Miss Ye’s kindness toward my boss as well. Farewell."

Ye Rui stood there, a little dumbfounded, thinking: Are all the women in this world this wicked? How can they twist someone’s words like that?

Seeing the steward go off in the distance, Li Yun’s mouth twitched. Curious, she asked, "You… really were thinking of that Mu Xue?"

"Thinking of your head. That was just polite refusal. How did you get roped into that woman’s logic too?"

Li Yun scratched her head. She could practice ten sets of punches without a problem, but trying to understand all the twists and turns in these people’s speech was simply beyond her.

Ye Rui almost wanted to crack open Li Yun’s skull and see what was inside, but she held herself back. Suddenly, she felt that being simple-minded was actually pretty good; there was no need to think about so many twists and turns.

Soon, Ye Rui put Mu Xue’s matter behind her and went with Li Yun to stroll through the market, buying a pile of little trinkets to give to the people at the Xie residence.

After walking enough to grow tired, Ye Rui and Li Yun sat down at a roadside tea stall to drink tea. Watching the market’s bustle; the constant calls of hawkers; children running through alleys and along the main street; steam rising from food stalls; and several burly men at the tea stand talking endlessly about everyday family matters, Ye Rui suddenly felt she had finally tasted a little of the worldly warmth she’d been missing during her recovery.

After thanking the tea server for the tea, Ye Rui asked Li Yun about the jianghu. "How much do you understand about the martial world?"

"I was originally from the Wangshu School. After finishing my training and coming down the mountain, I joined the Xie residence, so I do know a fair bit about the jianghu."

Li Yun’s face showed a trace of confidence. Seeing that, Ye Rui asked, "Do people in the martial world have much contact with the court?"

"The righteous sects rarely clash with the court. Sometimes they do, but only because they step in where the court can’t handle things and end up embarrassing it. Still, it’s not really a major conflict. Everyone has their own position."

After listening, Ye Rui rolled her eyes and asked, "Is there any sect that has a good relationship with the court?"

"As far as I know, no. The founding emperor once issued a martial ban. Back then, the court sent troops to deal with a lot of martial sects, and many people in the jianghu died or were injured. With that blood feud there, everyone can keep up a surface-level peace, but there’s always some resentment."

Hearing that, Ye Rui felt she probably wouldn’t find any clues from Li Yun. She thought she might as well ask Gong Yinzhi later; after all, Gong Yinzhi had roamed the jianghu for years and was also secretly investigating the matter of raising fine-bred girls, so she would surely know more of the things hidden in the dark.

When she returned to the residence, Ye Rui hadn’t even had time to rest before Xie Tinglan summoned her to the study. During this period, Xie Tinglan had only come by once—the time she had personally fed Ye Rui. After that, she never came again.

According to Ri Xi, the Duke of Wei was currently locked in an unending struggle with the emperor; Xie Tinglan was claiming illness and not attending court, while secretly arranging for her own people to enter the Grand Secretariat. She had to race against time, so she often stayed up late by lamplight handling official business, leaving no time to look for Ye Rui.

More importantly, Ri Xi had also been coming less these days. Most of the time, it was Gong Yinzhi who brought medicine and food. Ye Rui suspected that Xie Tinglan had fallen ill again, and that Ri Xi had to stay by her side at all times, helping her endure the agony of the cold poison.

Seeing Xie Tinglan today only confirmed what Ye Rui had already suspected.

Xie Tinglan wore a black fur robe today, wrapped herself up tightly, and the room had several charcoal braziers burning. The moment Ye Rui stepped inside, she was warmed until her whole body felt hot, a thin sheen of sweat rising on her skin.

"Did Mu Xue’s people come looking for you today?"

Ye Rui stood in front of the desk. Seeing Xie Tinglan set down her wolf-hair brush and look up, she noticed a trace of gloom between her brows. Her face was pale and bloodless; if anyone didn’t know better, they might have thought the one stabbed that day was her.

Claiming illness to avoid court had been a strategy, but now she was truly sick. Ye Rui didn’t know whether to call that a coincidence or not. And yet, even while ill, she was still reviewing the endless stream of memorials sent to her. Was this the treacherous minister who harmed loyal ministers in the eyes of the common people?

"How did you know?"

Li Yun had come back to the residence with her, so there was no way she’d have had time to report this to Xie Tinglan. "Did you send someone to follow me?"

Xie Tinglan gave a low laugh and beckoned Ye Rui over. Ye Rui saw how weak she looked and softened immediately, naturally not refusing her request. She obediently went to stand beside Xie Tinglan.

Xie Tinglan took Ye Rui’s hand. Ye Rui couldn’t help but shiver; Xie Tinglan’s hand was cold beyond belief, like a piece of frost jade that had never melted over ten thousand years. Ye Rui held her hand tightly, pushing aside the little resentment she’d been nursing over Xie Tinglan not coming to see her these past few days.

"I have eyes and ears throughout the capital city…"

Xie Tinglan’s body unconsciously leaned closer to Ye Rui. Ye Rui was standing; she was seated, and warmth flowed from Ye Rui’s body toward her. Xie Tinglan relaxed and moved toward that heat source, half her body resting against Ye Rui, right against Ye Rui’s abdomen.

Xie Tinglan wrapped one arm around Ye Rui’s waist, pulling her even closer so she could more keenly feel the slight tension in her body and… the increasingly rapid sound of her heartbeat. Xie Tinglan gave a quiet laugh and, sensing how stiff the other woman had become, tightened her arm around her waist a little more.

After two breaths, now that she had found something to lean on, Xie Tinglan’s tone softened, carrying a hint of fatigue. "Even if I haven’t gone to see you, it’s as though I’ve been watching you every day."

Ye Rui’s ears itched at those words, and her whole body seemed to be seeping sweat, especially her lower abdomen, which had turned scorching hot, as if it had been set alight. She didn’t know how to answer, and the other woman continued speaking in that gentle voice.

"Will you stay with me tonight when I sleep?"

-----------------------

Author’s note: Little Ye: There’s a demon in the Xie residence, and its name is Tinglan.

Prime Minister Xie: Yes; I want to strip you clean and swallow you whole.

Little Ye: …

[yellow heart][dog head]