No sooner had Yuan Fuyu settled into the inn than Jinshu returned after keeping watch over He Yichen for two days.
“Following the address you provided, I observed him for two days. I heard that He Yichen returned from the capital two years ago due to his father’s critical illness. Within two months of his return, his father passed away, leaving He Yichen as the sole remaining member of the He family. After conducting his father’s funeral, he became a wreck—spending his days composing poems to curse court officials and mourn the late Guardian Princess. He goes out drinking almost daily… sometimes collapsing drunk in the streets, needing neighbors to carry him home.”
Yuan Fuyu withdrew her hands from the hot water, accepting the towel Jinshu offered as she lowered her gaze to dry her hands. “During your two days of surveillance, did you notice anyone else watching He Yichen?”
“No,” Jinshu replied.
For the past two years, He Yichen had been trapped in a cycle of composing poems to curse court officials, drinking until he collapsed, then rising to repeat the pattern. Even if someone had been monitoring him before, they would have eventually deemed it unnecessary over time.
Yuan Fuyu tossed the towel into the bronze basin and draped a fox fur cloak over her shoulders. “Let’s go see He Yichen.”
·
In the depths of winter, darkness fell swiftly.
By the hour of You, the streets were already empty of pedestrians.
Only the main street’s taverns, tea houses, music halls, and brothels remained brightly lit in Xiaqui.
He Yichen stumbled out of a tavern, thoroughly drunk, carrying two wine pots and humming a tune he’d just heard inside.
Having snowed several days prior, the cleared snow still piled unmelted along the blue stone pavement of the main street. He Yichen carelessly stepped on a patch, slipping awkwardly before scrambling to retrieve his wine pots.
Staggering into a side alley toward home, he hadn’t reached his doorstep when he slipped on frozen snow, collided with a tree, then rolled over and fell asleep clutching his wine pots.
The snow accumulated on roofs and trees remained unmelted, and the icicles hanging from barren branches snapped from He Yichen’s impact.
Jinshu reacted swiftly, grabbing He Yichen’s ankle and yanking him backward just as an icicle stabbed precisely where he had been lying.
Yuan Fuyu adjusted her fox fur cloak, looking down at He Yichen sleeping like the dead at her feet. “Tie him up.”
·
He Yichen, who had passed out drunk in the street, was jolted awake by the piercing, ice-flecked cold water from the jar in his own courtyard.
He struggled desperately, but with his hands bound behind his back and someone pressing his head down, he couldn’t lift it. Freezing water invaded his mouth and nose from all sides, and the more he struggled against his bonds, the tighter they became.
Just as he was about to suffocate, the pressure on his head vanished, and he was hauled out of the water jar.
Gasping violently, his blurred vision focused on the person who had lifted his upper body.
Through racking coughs, his sight cleared to reveal Yuan Fuyu standing against the light, looking down at him with detached contempt.
“I’ll damn you—”
Before the curse fully left his lips, He Yichen was shoved back into the water jar. Sharp ice shards cut the corner of his eye as the icy water forced his profanities back down his throat.
When dragged out again, a cool, calm voice sounded above him: “Are you sober now?”
Meeting Yuan Fuyu’s downward gaze once more, the utter stillness in her eyes inexplicably stirred a familiar sense of oppression within He Yichen.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Jinshu stood guard outside the courtyard gate, while the six guards who had accompanied Yuan Fuyu blocked both ends of the alley, ensuring no one could approach He Yichen’s residence.
Seeing this, Yuan Fuyu made no attempt to conceal her purpose and stated directly, “I am the Princess’s trusted aide, here to investigate the cause of Her Highness’s death.”
He Yichen froze instantly, his eyes filled with utter disbelief.
The Princess had only two trusted aides: Pei Du, who commanded the shadow guards, and He Yichen himself, who oversaw intelligence. He had never heard of a third.
Moreover, the young woman before him appeared to be no more than sixteen or seventeen—how dare she claim to be the Princess’s confidante?
Yuan Fuyu released He Yichen’s hair, calmly wiped her hands dry with a handkerchief, then drew a letter from her sleeve, unfolded it, and held it before his eyes.
At the sight of the handwriting, He Yichen felt as if a heavy hammer had struck his head. His drunkenness vanished completely. He scrambled forward on his knees, leaning close to the letter, reading it word by word. His eyes reddened and grew moist as he lifted his gaze to the figure standing before him.
It had been three and a half years since the Princess’s passing.
The political influence she had cultivated at court had either been absorbed into Xie Huaizhou’s faction or purged and marginalized.
As the Princess’s trusted subordinate in charge of the Xiaoshi Bureau, He Yichen had faced relentless suppression and betrayal in the year following her death.
Disheartened, he had withdrawn from the center of power and returned to his hometown. For the past two years, he had lived in a daze, drowning himself in alcohol day after day.
“If you were someone the Princess trusted so deeply, where were you when she died unjustly?” He Yichen, drenched and trembling—whether from cold or agitation—asked, his lips quivering.
“Three and a half years… The capital and the court have been turned upside down. Where were you then? If you had appeared with the Princess’s handwritten letter right after her death, I would have handed over the Xiaoshi Bureau to you without hesitation. It wouldn’t have collapsed into disarray, scattered like loose sand, only to be absorbed entirely by Pei Du!”
Yuan Fuyu seated herself on a stone stool in the courtyard. “On the night the Princess died, you also went to the estate in the outskirts of the capital. How much do you know about what happened there?”
He Yichen was taken aback that she had uncovered even this detail and saw no reason to hide the truth. “That night, I went to lodge a complaint. The Imperial Son-in-Law, Xie Huaizhou, had endorsed a memorial led by the Censor-in-Chief… urging the Princess to return governance to the throne and allow Prince Xian to act as regent. He betrayed Her Highness! After delivering the memorial, I left. It wasn’t until the next day that I learned everyone at the estate—except Xie Huaizhou and Pei Du—had been killed. Not a single one of so many skilled experts managed to escape to report what happened.”
What followed was a purge and slaughter within the court. In the mere two months after the Princess’s death, the political landscape was completely overturned.
Yuan Fuyu still remembered that night: she had seen flames outside her door and called for Pei Du, but he was nowhere to be found.
Yet, as her trusted aide, Pei Du had survived.
“Did you investigate how Xie Huaizhou and Pei Du managed to survive?”
“It was impossible to investigate. Everyone who knew the truth was dead.” He Yichen had been stripped of his authority and demoted precisely because he insisted on probing the matter. “But Pei Du claimed that before her death, the Princess ordered him to rescue Xie Huaizhou, who had been stabbed, and entrusted both the court’s affairs and Xie Huaizhou to his care! I don’t believe it!”
He Yichen was not alone in his disbelief. Several of the Princess’s veteran generals, who had fought alongside her to secure the realm, also refused to accept this account.
Those who doubted met one of two fates: death or removal from power and office.
Yuan Fuyu rubbed her fingers inside her sleeve. The one who stood to gain the most from her death was likely the one who had killed her.
Therefore, when she received the news that Xie Huaizhou, the Imperial Son-in-Law of the Princess, had been appointed as the Minister of the Ministry of Personnel and The Emperor’s Tutor, she knew her death was inextricably linked to Xie Huaizhou.
But Pei Du…
was truly beyond her expectations.
She had never given Pei Du such an order before her death.
If Pei Du had conspired with Xie Huaizhou to take her life, it would all make sense.