From the fake emperor to the concubine

Cao Fang suddenly stopped, bent over, supported herself on her knees with both hands, and gasped for breath.

“Young Master Zheng…”

"Let's catch our breath first."

Cao Fang gasped for breath for a long time before finally straightening up. The moonlight shone on his face, which was covered in a mixture of sweat and tears, glistening in the moonlight.

“Chuncao…” he said, “If Chuncao gets caught by them…”

Zheng Yi looked at him.

"You just asked me whether Chuncao can be trusted."

Cao Fang was stunned for a moment.

“I said, ‘She should be able to believe.’”

"Correct."

“You hesitated,” Zheng Yi said. “Hesitation means you can’t.”

Cao Fang's lips trembled slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but she didn't.

Zheng Yi turned around and continued walking forward.

"Manager Cao, do you have any maids from the north?"

Cao Fang followed behind him, panting, and said, "Yes...yes. Chuncao came from the north. When she came, she said that her family had suffered a disaster and she had fled here. I felt sorry for her, so I took her in."

"How many years?"

"Six years."

Zheng Yi paused for a moment, then continued walking forward.

"Six years," he said, his tone flat, revealing no emotion. "How many servants do you have in your household?"

"There are only two. One is Chuncao, and the other is Old Li, the gatekeeper. Old Li is over seventy years old and very hard of hearing."

Zheng Yi remained silent for a while, then suddenly asked a seemingly unrelated question.

"Do you remember, before the Shen family's incident, did Chuncao do anything unusual?"

Cao Fang slowed her pace, as if she were reminiscing.

“Unusual…no. She’s just like that, quiet and efficient, never asking questions.” He paused suddenly. “Oh, there’s something—two days before the Shen family’s incident, Chuncao told me she wanted to go back to her hometown. I said, ‘Isn’t your hometown in the north? How can you go back from so far away?’ She said she wanted to go back and asked if she could get an advance on two months’ wages. I gave it to her.”

"Did she go back?"

“No. The next day she said she wasn’t going back, saying she got a letter from home saying everything was alright.” Cao Fang’s voice began to tremble. “I didn’t think much of it at the time… I thought she was just… just a young girl homesick…”

He suddenly squatted down, in the middle of the vegetable patch, burying his face in his hands.

"It was me...it was me who recruited them...it was me..."

Chi Ya stood to the side, unsure of what to say, and patted Cao Fang on the shoulder.

Shen Yuan walked up to Cao Fang, squatted down, cupped his face in her hands, and lifted his head.

"Uncle Cao, it's not your fault."

Cao Fang's eyes were so red they looked like they were about to bleed, and her lips were covered in scabs from biting.

“You didn’t know they had people in your house, you couldn’t possibly have known. You’re in the grain business, not running a security escort agency or a government office. You can’t investigate a maid’s background for three generations.”

Cao Fang's tears streamed through Shen Yuan's fingers and dripped into the soil.

Shen Yuan released her grip, stood up, and looked at Zheng Yi.

“You knew from the beginning that it wasn’t Uncle Cao.”

Zheng Yi neither denied nor admitted it.

“When you grabbed his collar, it wasn’t because you suspected him.” Shen Yuan’s voice was very soft, as if she were only talking to Zheng Yi. “You were doing it for others to see.”

Zheng Yi looked at her, the moonlight highlighting the sharp features of his face.

“There’s someone listening outside the wall,” he said. “The Cao family’s courtyard wall isn’t thick; you can hear what’s going on inside if you’re right next to it. I don’t know who that person is, but I know someone is definitely listening. If I’m polite to Manager Cao in the courtyard and then turn around and run away with him, what will that person think? He’ll think Manager Cao is in cahoots with us and is deliberately helping us escape. Manager Cao’s family, employees, and shops left in the city will all be lost.”

He paused.

“But if I were to lay a hand on Manager Cao in the courtyard, curse him, and assume that he betrayed us—what that person would hear would be, ‘Cao Fang betrayed the Shen family. The Shen family hates him, but they didn’t kill him; they just ran away.’ Manager Cao would then go from being an ‘accomplice’ to a ‘pitiful person who was used.’ His family and his shop would not be implicated.”

Cao Fang squatted on the ground and slowly raised her head.

His tears were still wet on his face, but the panic and guilt in his eyes were fading away little by little, replaced by something indescribable—like a sudden realization, or like the lingering fear after being pulled back from the edge of a cliff.

"You did this to... protect my family?"

Zheng Yi didn't answer the question, but instead said something that completely stunned Cao Fang.

“When you get back, the soldiers will question you. Just say that you were taken hostage by us and that we would kill you if you didn’t lead the way. You led us out of the city, and we released you outside the city. You said you didn’t know anything, saw anything, or heard anything.”

Cao Fang's mouth hung open, as if he wanted to say, "How can I go back?" "They'll kill me," but he swallowed the words back. He knew Zheng Yi was right—he had to go back. If he didn't, his family would be arrested, interrogated, and suffer because of him.

"I...if I can't hold on..."

“You can handle it,” Zheng Yi said. “Because you have nothing else to tell them. You don’t know where Shen Yuan went, you don’t know anything. You just need to say ‘I don’t know’ a hundred times, a thousand times. Even if they hit you, you still won’t know. Even if they curse you, you still won’t know. You’re in the grain business, you’re just someone in the grain business.”

Cao Fang stood up from the ground, wiped her face haphazardly with both hands, and wiped away her tears and snot.

"Young Master Zheng, little girl Yuan..."

"She's safer in my hands than you are."

Cao Fang looked at him, her lips moved several times, but in the end she only managed to utter four words.

"You are a good person."

Zheng Yi did not respond to that sentence.

He took out a few pieces of silver from the cloth bag at his waist and stuffed them into Cao Fang's hand.

“Take this silver. When you get back, don’t say you’ve seen us. If anyone asks, just say we released you in the south of the city, and you walked back alone. You don’t know anything.”

Cao Fang clutched the few pieces of silver until her knuckles turned white.

"Young Master Zheng, where...where are you going?"

"Southwards."

Cao Fang opened his mouth, as if to say something, but in the end he only nodded deeply, turned around, and walked towards Huzhou City. He walked very slowly, each step like pulling his feet out of a muddy swamp, but he kept walking, and kept walking. Chi Ya stood behind Zheng Yi, watching Cao Fang's figure gradually disappear into the moonlight.

"Young Master Zheng, he's gone back... Will something have happened to him?"

“Yes,” Zheng Yi said, “but if he doesn’t go back, something even bigger will happen to his family.”

Chiya remained silent for a while.

"That maid, Chuncao. She really is..."

“Whether it is or not doesn’t matter anymore.” Zheng Yi turned around and walked south. “What matters is that Cao Fang doesn’t know who she is. He knows nothing, so no one can do anything to him.”

Shen Yuan followed behind Zheng Yi. The moonlight stretched her shadow very long, trailing on the ground like a thin, winding river.

“You guessed it from the beginning,” she said.

"What did you guess?"

"It's unbelievable that someone in the Cao family could guess that there's someone in the Cao family."

Zheng Yi did not deny it.

"How did you guess that?"

“It’s not because of Cao Fang.” Zheng Yi’s voice carried on the night wind, not loud but clear. “It’s because the government troops arrived too quickly. We’ve only been in Huzhou for two days, and apart from Cao Fang, we haven’t had any contact with anyone. The news could only have leaked out through the Cao family.”

Shen Yuan thought for a moment and then asked, "Then why didn't you leave? When you found out the soldiers were coming, you could have just left. You didn't have to take Uncle Cao with you, and you didn't have to take me with you."

Zheng Yi's steps did not stop.

"Because once you leave, you'll never find the answer again."

Shen Yuan didn't understand.

“Cao Fang is the only one willing to help you. If I leave him alone in Huzhou, he will only have two outcomes—either he will be silenced, or he will be forced to reveal the little information he has. Either way, this connection will be severed.”

"So you led him over the wall, led him out of the city, and said those things to him outside the wall—not just to save his life, but also to keep him alive and to keep this thread running."

Zheng Yi did not answer.

But Shen Yuan knew she had guessed correctly.

The three of them walked for a long time in the moonlight. They walked through the vegetable garden, then through a barren field overgrown with waist-high weeds, the tufts of grass rustling in the wind like countless whispers. The moon moved from the east to its zenith, illuminating the entire world in a blinding white light, making even their own shadows appear shorter.

Chiya suddenly sighed.

"What's wrong?" Shen Yuan asked.

I'm hungry.

Shen Yuan glanced at him and suddenly smiled. It wasn't a slight smile, but a genuine smile. Although it was a small smile, it softened her entire appearance.

"You're always hungry."

“No,” Chi Ya said seriously. “It’s been at least two hours since I ran away from the Cao family. If I hadn’t eaten for two hours, I would have fainted long ago in the North.”

Zheng Yi took out two pieces of dry food from the cloth bag at his waist, gave one to Chi Ya and handed the other to Shen Yuan.

Shen Yuan took it, broke off a small piece and put it in her mouth. The dry food was hard and crunchy, like chewing on a handful of pebbles. She chewed slowly, swallowing it bit by bit, then wrapped the remaining half in oil paper and put it back in Zheng Yi's hand.

“You eat it,” she said.

"I'm not hungry."

"You didn't eat either."

"I can endure hunger."

Shen Yuan glanced at him and didn't refuse again. She broke off a small piece of the half-eaten ration and put it in her mouth, then wrapped the rest up and put it in her cloth bag.

The three continued walking under the moonlight, the lights of Huzhou city receding into the distance behind them, and a vast, white-glowing wilderness stretching before them. Occasionally, a night bird would fly overhead, its wings flapping loudly, as if hurrying on its way or searching for a place to land.

Chiya chewed on his dry rations and suddenly mumbled something indistinctly.

"Young Master Zheng, you mentioned Chuncao... who exactly is she?"

Zheng Yi walked ahead of him without turning his head.

"What do you think?"

Chi Ya thought for a moment and said something that surprised Shen Yuan.

"She wasn't a maid. She was there specifically to wait."

Zheng Yi neither said yes nor no, he just said one sentence.

"Hurry up and leave after you finish eating. We need to find a place to rest before dawn."

Chi Ya stuffed the last bite of dry rations into his mouth, puffed out his cheeks, chewed hard a few times, swallowed, and quickened his pace to catch up with Zheng Yi.

Shen Yuan walked at the very back, the wind blowing the stray hairs at her temples, tickling her face. She reached out and tucked those few strands of hair behind her ear. The moonlight shone on the silver bracelet on her wrist, the bracelet flashed briefly, then dimmed again.

She glanced back.

The city of Huzhou is no longer visible.

They had walked for so long without hearing any sound of pursuers behind them. But the quieter it was, the more uneasy Shen Yuan felt.

She looked away, turned back, quickened her pace, and caught up with the two people in front of her.

The place to rest was a local earth god temple.

It wasn't large, just a main hall and a half-collapsed side hall, situated beside a desolate tea grove in the south of the city. The tea grove was neglected; the tea trees grew taller than a person, their branches stretching out haphazardly, their leaves covered in dew that glistened in the moonlight, like trees laden with broken silver.

Chi Ya was the first to spot the temple. He walked in front, and from afar he saw a dark silhouette crouching by the roadside. As he got closer, he recognized it as a temple. The temple door was gone, but the threshold remained, worn down in the middle by countless footsteps, resembling a toothless mouth. Inside the main hall stood a clay statue of the Earth God, its face mostly painted away, leaving only half an eyebrow and one eye visible, watching the approaching figure with a half-smile in the darkness.

"This will do." Zheng Yi stood at the temple entrance and glanced inside. The ground was covered with a layer of dry grass, and there were traces of a fire in the corner. "This will suffice for the night."

Chiya was exhausted. He plopped down on the hay, sprawled out, and let out a long, satisfied sigh. The sturdy horse he'd brought from the north had really worn him out today—actually, it wasn't the horse that was hurting him, but he'd ridden it all night. The horse was fine, but he was practically falling apart.

Shen Yuan sat down a little away from Chi Ya, wrapped a thin blanket around herself, leaned against the wall, and closed her eyes. Zheng Yi knew she wasn't asleep. Her breathing was uneven, deepening every now and then, as if she were enduring some pain.

Zheng Yi didn't sit. He stood at the temple entrance, leaning against the doorframe, looking at the tea plantations outside, bathed in the moonlight. The wind blew through the tea plantations, carrying the scent of damp, decaying leaves, and a faint fragrance of wildflowers. He stood there, motionless, like a wooden stake nailed to the doorframe.

About half an hour later, Chiya's snoring began.

Shen Yuan opened her eyes. She turned her head and looked at Chi Ya—the boy was sleeping like a log, his mouth open, one arm hanging out of the hay, and his fingers slightly curled.

"He's so carefree, he can sleep anywhere." Shen Yuan's voice was very soft, afraid of waking Chi Ya. (End of Chapter)