The morning after the banquet, Lian’er returned to the inner chamber with a silver tray of breakfast, her face pinched with quiet anxiety.
Rulan sat by the window, watching the light stream across the polished mahogany floor.
She didn’t touch the teacup.
Her eyes turned sharply to her maid.
“Did she return?” Rulan asked.
“Yes, Your Highness,” Lian’er said in a low whisper, setting the tray down softly.
“Xiao Cui did come back to the servants’ quarters… but not until very late last night. Long after the banquet had ended and the lights in the main hall were extinguished.”
Rulan leaned back, resting her chin on her palm.
“And where did she go after leaving the banquet hall?”
Lian’er had clearly been diligent.
She leaned closer, her voice dropping another octave.
“I managed to ask one of the older laundry maids who was on duty near the eastern passages. She said she saw Xiao Cui slipping into the old storehouses—the quiet section behind the archive halls that no one uses at night. She stayed there for nearly two incense sticks’ worth of time. Someone was waiting for her.”
“Did anyone see who it was?”
“No,” Lian’er shook her head regretfully.
“The passages back there are completely unlit at night. But Xiao Cui looked visibly terrified when she came out. Her face was as pale as paper.”
Lian’er hesitated, then pulled a small slip of paper from her sleeve.
“And… I found out something else, Your Highness. Xiao Cui isn’t from the capital originally, but her family moved here two years ago. She has an elderly mother and a younger brother living in a rented courtyard in the lower northern district. Someone has been sending a small bag of silver to that family every month.”
Rulan’s eyes narrowed slightly.
The picture clicked into place with sharp precision.
‘So that’s the leash.’
Whoever held the purse strings to her family held Xiao Cui’s obedience.
Threatening or bribing a servant’s vulnerable family was the oldest trick in the book.
“Your Highness…” Lian’er looked at her cautiously.
“Should I have the manor guards seize her? If she put something in your cup—”
“No,” Rulan interrupted smoothly, her voice calm and absolute.
“Keep watching her. Act completely normal. Do not let her or anyone else know we are interested in her movements.”
Lian’er blinked, surprised.
“We aren’t going to punish her?”
“A pawn is useless once you knock it off the board,” Rulan replied, giving her a flat look.
“I don’t care about the hand holding the cup, Lian’er. I care about the person who filled it. If we arrest Xiao Cui now, the line breaks, and whoever gave her those orders simply hires another servant tomorrow. Leave her be.”
Once Lian’er left to oversee the morning duties, Rulan turned her attention back to her desk, staring down at her own pale, swollen hands.
She was facing two distinct, lethal threats.
First: someone in this palace actively wanted her dead and was escalating their methods.
Second: her own physical container was a ticking time bomb.
Stopping Physician Zhao’s prescribed ‘tonics’ had halted the fresh intake of poison, but she had no way of knowing how much toxic buildup remained in her system.
The original princess had complained of chronic dizziness, joint inflammation, and sudden fatigue for months.
‘I need a thorough medical examination’, she thought, resting a hand against her ribs.
‘A real one.’
Her mind naturally turned to the Imperial Medical Bureau.
Could she simply request another royal physician?
She dismissed the thought immediately.
If Physician Zhao was compromised—whether bribed, blackmailed, or loyal to another political faction—the entire bureau was likely suspect.
In an imperial court, medical departments were notoriously rife with factionalism.
Requesting a second opinion from within the same institution was asking to be handed a second glass of poison.
Which leaves an outside physician.
A doctor from the capital’s commercial district, completely disconnected from court politics, would be the ideal choice.
But bringing an outside doctor into the inner palace was a logistical disaster.
Every visitor passing through the outer gates was meticulously logged in cabinet records.
An unknown physician entering the Fourth Princess’s manor would immediately draw eyes.
The moment her unknown enemy learned she was seeking a second opinion, they would realize the poison trick had failed—forcing them to abandon subtle methods in favor of something far more immediate and violent.
Rulan tapped her fingers against the dark wood of her desk.
She couldn’t bring a doctor into the palace.
Which meant she had to go outside to find one.
Getting out of the palace, however, was not a matter of simply walking through the front gate.
As the Fourth Imperial Princess, her every movement was constrained by strict protocol.
She couldn’t sneak out in dark clothes at midnight—not with three concentric rings of thirty-foot stone walls patrolled by armored sentries, and certainly not in her current, physically degraded state.
She needed a legitimate, ironclad reason to step outside the walls.
She summoned Lian’er back into the study.
“Lian’er, what are the acceptable reasons for an imperial princess to leave the palace grounds?”
Lian’er looked startled by the sudden question.
“Your Highness? You wish to leave?”
“I am asking for the rules,” Rulan said dryly.
“What reasons would His Majesty actually approve without asking endless questions?”
Lian’er stroked her chin, mentally running through court precedents.
“Well… official imperial banquets at high ministers’ estates, though those require weeks of planning. Participating in seasonal hunting festivals at the royal reserves… or attending religious ceremonies and temple prayers. High-ranking noble ladies often request leave to visit prominent monasteries outside the city to offer incense for health or family blessings.”
Rulan’s eyes glinted slightly.
Temple prayers.
It was culturally unassailable, socially respectable, and perfectly timed.
She had just miraculously survived a near-fatal fever.
It was entirely logical for a princess to visit a mountain monastery outside the capital to offer prayers of gratitude for her recovery.
It wouldn’t give her absolute freedom, but it would place her outside these suffocating stone walls.
“Keep that in mind,” Rulan noted quietly.
“We may need to draft a petition soon.”
The conversation, however, left a bitter taste in Rulan’s mouth.
She was sitting in a carved chair, plotting political moves and escapes, while her physical vessel remained weak, sluggish, and easily fatigued.
To her, an unfit body was a death sentence.
It didn’t matter how sharp your mind was if your legs collapsed beneath you when the shooting started.
She stood up abruptly, brushing down her wide sleeves.
“Clear the inner courtyard,” Rulan ordered.
Lian’er looked confused, adjusting the tea service on the table.
“Your Highness? Do you wish to sit in the garden and rest?”
“I am going for a walk.”
Lian’er’s eyes went wide with sudden panic.
“Your Highness… outside? Without your full retinue of attendants and guards?”
Rulan gave her a long, unblinking look.
“Inside the courtyard, Lian’er. Unless you think the flowerbeds are planning an ambush.”
Leaving her worried maid by the doorway, Rulan stepped out onto the paved stone square of her private inner garden.
She closed the wooden doors, shutting out the eyes of the manor servants, and turned to look at the open space.
It was time to test the machinery.
She began cautiously.
She walked slow, deliberate laps around the perimeter of the stone courtyard.
One lap.
Two laps.
By the third lap, her body reacted with alarming violence.
Her heart began pounding against her ribs like a trapped beast.
Her lungs burned with a sharp, dry heat, as if she were inhaling hot dust.
Her knees thudded with a dull, throbbing ache, and a thick sheen of sweat immediately broke out across her forehead and neck, dampening her silk collar.
Rulan stopped near a red wooden pillar, resting her hand against the carved timber to steady herself.
She tried a series of controlled leg stretches, holding onto the pillar for support, followed by five basic squats.
By the fifth squat, her thighs shook uncontrollably, feeling as weak as wet paper.
‘Pathetic’, she thought, her jaw clenching in deep frustration.
In her previous life, she had routinely conducted twenty-mile tactical marches through ruined cities carrying forty pounds of gear, her pulse barely spiking.
Now, five basic bodyweight squats had her leaning against a post, gasping for breath like a dying fish.
She closed her eyes, forcing her breathing to slow down through sheer mental willpower.
‘Inhale for four seconds.
Hold for four seconds.
Exhale for four seconds.’
She didn’t stop because it hurt.
She didn’t expect a few laps around a garden to miraculously flush months of accumulated toxins from her organs—she wasn’t naive enough to believe she could simply ‘sweat out’ an unknown chemical compound.
She was doing this for a far more brutal, pragmatic reason: if someone pulled a blade on her tomorrow, she needed this body to have at least a fraction of a second’s worth of explosive reaction time.
Survival wasn’t given; it was built.
She straightened her spine, pushed away from the pillar, and forced her legs to take another step.
Then another.
Twenty minutes later, Rulan sat beneath the cool shade of the courtyard canopy, resting her back against a woven wooden chair.
She was thoroughly exhausted, her body trembling with muscle fatigue, but as her breathing gradually settled, her mind began analyzing the physical feedback.
She noticed a critical subtle difference.
During the exercise, her physical stamina had failed quickly, and the familiar, slight dizziness had flared up due to exertion.
But the suffocating, thick mental fog—that heavy, unnatural lethargy that had clouded her brain for the first few days after waking—was absent.
The fog hadn’t returned since she stopped Zhao’s tonic.
That was enough to tell her she’d made the right decision—but not enough to tell her what damage had already been done.
‘The body is broken, but it responds to discipline’, she realized, wiping a bead of sweat from her jawline with a linen cloth.
‘It can be rebuilt.’
Yet, the physical test reinforced her core conclusion.
Exercise could rebuild dormant muscle tissue and improve cardiovascular tolerance, but it couldn’t repair internal organ damage or tell her what specific toxins were lingering in her liver and kidneys.
She still needed a real doctor.
The objective was crystalline: get outside the palace, find an uncorrupted physician who could diagnose her internal state, and keep the court entirely ignorant of what she was doing.
The heavy courtyard gate creaked open softly.
Lian’er stepped through, holding a small wooden tray with a damp towel and a bowl of warm water.
She looked at her princess—sweaty, disheveled, but sitting with a posture as straight and sharp as a thrown spear—and swallowed whatever she had wanted to say.
“Your Highness,” Lian’er said softly, setting the tray down on the side table.
“While you were… walking, I spoke briefly with one of the junior clerks from the Household Bureau who was dropping off the weekly candle supplies.”
Rulan didn’t open her eyes, keeping her breathing steady.
“And?”
“He mentioned that the White Cloud Temple—the prominent monastery situated on the northern hills just two miles outside the capital gates—is hosting a major seasonal prayer ceremony in three days.”
Lian’er squeezed the towel in the warm water, her voice dropping to a confidential tone.
“He said that noble ladies and members of the imperial family who have recently recovered from severe illnesses often submit petitions to attend the morning incense offerings. It is considered a very auspicious way to seek lasting health.”
Rulan’s eyelids fluttered open.
Her eyes, bright despite her physical exhaustion, locked onto her maid.
She didn’t care about auspicious blessings, divine favor, or burning incense.
But she recognized a vector when it presented itself.
A public, traditionally sanctioned religious ceremony held just outside the city walls was the absolute cleanest cover story she could ask for.
A thin, cold smile touched the corner of her lips.
“Lian’er,” Rulan murmured, reaching out to take the warm towel.
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“Find out the exact date and time of that ceremony.”
Lian’er bowed head low.
“Right away, Your Highness.”
As the maid turned and hurried back toward the main gates, Rulan turned her head, looking past the painted courtyard eaves toward the towering, red-tiled stone walls that enclosed the imperial palace.
For the first time since waking up in this strange, dangerous world, she wasn’t thinking about how to defend herself, how to avoid poisoned tea, or how to survive inside the palace.
She was thinking about how to break out.