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Ultimately, Guhui had broken up their hug. She had very politely given them enough time and attention for themselves before she had started demanding it for herself.

The trek back to the Estate was mercifully uneventful, especially since Zhu Li wasn’t sure he would have patience for interlopers after the conversation he’d just had.

Once inside the safety of the walls, Chu Ran followed up on his earlier thought by leaving him to meet up with Zhu Wuji alone. He also offered to keep Guhui company in the meantime, though he admitted that he hoped she wouldn’t crush him beneath her giant head this time.

No guarantees on that front.

He returned to Zhu Wuji’s study first, where she still conveniently was. A stack of papers was to her left, a pot of tea was to her right, and her face was set into lines of concentration—up until his entrance interrupted that focus, of course.

Upon looking up to see him, she smiled gently, stood up, and quite eagerly abandoned her work. “Did you have fun?” she asked as she approached him. “Where’s that warbler of yours?”

He blinked. Warbler? “You mean Yingliu?”

“Yes. He’s quite chatty, although he was pretty quiet yesterday.”

Yeah, well… “He decided to not interrupt. Dad isn’t back yet?”

She shook her head. “No. They must really be holding him back today. That’s alright, though; I can introduce you to your nephew. Ah-Shan’s been asking about you, too.”

Oh, right. Bao Chishan… he hadn’t thought about him in a long while. It made sense that they’d gotten together fully after literally more than a decade being smitten. “You married him finally?”

She rose to her feed with a smile. “Yes, we did. He quit his job as an archivist not too long after you left, so we’ve actually had time to be a couple recently.”

“He quit?” he asked, slightly surprised. “I thought he liked doing it.”

“He did, but it was a really demanding job that didn’t leave much room for a family,” she began. With a beckoning gesture, she led him out of the study to start them on their way. “It was so demanding that he ended up not liking it, eventually. I think he’s much happier being the main branch’s personal archivist, instead.”

Zhu Li furrowed his brow as he thought back. “Elder Tan always was exacting,” he stated simply.

“And now he’s under the Silencing Oath with the rest of them. He should’ve focused on his own morality over someone else’s work ethic,” she said. Her voice was placid, but the sneer in her undertones was undisguised. “Elder Qiu Lanhua took over, and he knows to be kinder, or else things might not turn out well for him.”

They were walking side-by-side. At her mention of the massive trouble the Caves the caves had gone through, he felt the need to ask; their conversation yesterday had only really contained non-work-related topics. “How’s… the sect overhaul going?” he asked awkwardly; he’d never previously cared about sect politics, so it felt weird to ask now.

“It’s going well, all things considered. We had to depose a lot of people in power in not a lot of time, mainly because we had to make sure none of them took flight.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Despite going on and on about not letting anyone leave because it’s dangerous, some of them were quick to try and go out into the ‘dangerous’ open world the second they knew they were caught.”

He huffed in derision. The cheek of them, really. Where had they picked that up from?

“They were caught in full,” she continued. “This is a lesson learned, too—we’ll have to foster some dissent amongst the new ones if this is what happens when things get too chummy.”

He furrowed his brows. “That’s kind of…”

“Cold? I know. It’s proven to be necessary, though. A little conflict is a good exchange for not having fraternizers that have the gall to keep important things from the Sect Head.”

He observed her lack of expression for a split second more, then looked away.

The conversation lulled. They moved silently along the ice-inlaid slab path, all while a sparse amount of clumping snowflakes fell down unencumbered; the fall wasn’t enough to trigger the Estate’s snow-warding array. With how many there were across the sect, having those things going all the time would put far too much strain on the ambient qi. Their entire purpose was to make winter more bearable and traversable, not to make the valley a year-round temperate paradise, after all.

If there was no snow at all, there would be no acoustic dampening. Having even the river’s constant noise be as distant as a dream was oddly comforting, in a way. Maybe their ancestors had seen the value in silence when they’d set these arrays up, too.

“Was the sect always like this?” he suddenly had to wonder aloud, turning to her again.

Her eyes flickered back to him briefly. “Ah-Shan was wondering the same thing, so he did the research,” she answered. “Some generations had attempts at small-scale conspiracy for petty financial reasons, like embezzlement. Every generation had its problem actors and arguments, which is inevitable. No prior generations were ever deposed en masse like this, none of them ever had such disrespect for the founding family, and none of them had done something as serious as forcing a death by inaction. This is a new occurrence.”

That was uncomfortably foreboding. “Why is that?”

“I’m assuming a lack of contact with the outside world. But since this is far from the first time the sect has shut off, I can’t say for certain. Maybe generations of isolation accumulated into this, though the change seems too sudden for that. Their predecessors weren’t this troublesome.”

He nodded, albeit with some dissatisfaction.

That alone didn’t explain everything. Something felt… off. Missing. It would be easy to hand-wave if a lack of camaraderie with the Sect Head was common, but since it wasn’t…

Why would every single Elder commit treason at the same time, in an unprecedented display of self-centeredness? The Han’s Elders were jerks, too, but as far as he could tell, that was just some subjectively messed-up family tradition of trying to make the young Sect Head prove herself against them—or get the position themselves—that had come from a fighting-focused sect. The Caves didn’t work like that. What was the cause, then? What was the reasoning? Had they teamed up on his mother because they figured they could?

That uncomfortable sense of foreboding just got worse.

Yet again, his general lack of care towards learning history and politics was biting him in the ass. Hyperfocusing on medicine and self-improvement had consistently proven to make him kind of crap at a lot of other things, like ‘understanding how the minds of garbage people worked’ and ‘knowing what was going on, at all, ever.’

“How do they get their positions?” he asked.

“They vote their fellows in when an opening comes. The Sect Head’s supposed to have a say, too, but they were apparently just ignoring mother.”

“So they were all friends to begin with.”

“Yes. It’s supposed to be a naturally self-managing process, but that falls apart if almost every fifty-strong member is conspiring together. They voted in friends as opposed to the most qualified people. My only guess as to how they started out is by a few of them having actual qualifications, then vouching for the others until they outnumbered the rest.”

Then they got bold, as larger groups tended to do.

But their mother would never have allowed people to be put in place that would only end up going against her. So who had?

After asking her, Zhu Wuji put on a wry smile. “She didn’t appoint a single one of them. Most of them were voted in during our grandfather’s brief oversight. Thirty-five positions were vacated in his five years of tenure, with the previous Elders having either stepped down or died.”

Chilling shock pierced his stomach. “Died?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but only about four died to yao or accidents. There was nothing suspicious about the deaths. The thirty-one resignations are what’s really weird, since these are supposed to be lifelong positions.”

If that didn’t scream ‘foul play,’ he didn’t know what could. “That sounds like coercion.”

“It does. Ah-Shan can’t find any proof in the archives, though, so that’s just speculation. I’ve been too busy with official business to care about things that are less relevant.”

…What?

He furrowed his brows. “You don’t think the cause of mass collusion is relevant?” he asked, his voice coming out more heated than he’d intended.

“No,” she answered plainly. If she noticed the heat, she didn’t say anything. “All of the Elders are new and have no connection to the old. I already have a plan for if they act up, while the old Elders can’t act up even if they want to. Whatever was going on with them is a thing of the past.”

“The consequences were recent. Really recent.”

“They were. Now the danger is passed, and I have a lot of things on my plate, even with help. I might look into it a year or so down the line, when things are settled.”

A year? That long?

He wanted to argue, but his will to do so was currently warring with a voice telling him to not butt in.

This was his eldest sister she was speaking to. She had nearly a decade on him in age, had been preparing her whole life to take over, and knew a great deal more than he did about how to run a sect. Arguing with her wouldn’t work when he had no stake in the game and no expertise on the subject. Maybe she was right in that her energy was best spent on the present as opposed to the past.

Also… he wasn’t really a member of the sect anymore, was he? He’d forfeited the right the second he left without permission, and was now here as a ‘guest.’ His concern was technically an overstep—and if he argued now, he might ruin what was supposed to be a happy meeting.

He furrowed his brows tight, frowned, and instead asked, “What help do you have?”

“Father mingles in with the older crowd, Junhe mingles with the younger crowd, Ah-Shan helps with paperwork, Pao’r helps by virtue of having big, intimidating dogs at her command. Heng’r was also helping with some more discreet errands, but… I’ve had to start sending Pao’r on them, too. It’s not her ideal.”

“I don’t remember mom having that much help,” he said quietly.

“That’s because she didn’t,” she answered, sounding unsurprised. “Not even father helped her. She preferred to do things alone.”

So it was her against everyone else. Had that been by choice, or pressure? Was she not allowed into this ‘Elder clique’?

Zhu Li sank into silence, trying to weave what he’d learned with what he knew about his mother already.

Over forty years ago, the prohibition had lifted temporarily, allowing Zhu Longmai to go outside for… a year or so, he couldn’t quite remember. Then, she’d very suddenly left the other Spirits in the middle of the night, after which the Caves had shut tight. He’d been under the impression that she’d done that, but apparently, she hadn’t even been the Sect Head at the time?

She’d been around nineteen, twenty when she returned. According to Zhu Wuji, their great-grandfather died five years before their mother had taken over at twenty-three, during which Zhu Qipin had ruled. In her own words, her abrupt return was an emergency in the sect she’d been called back for; the death of the previous Sect Head would be enough of an emergency.

Wait— no. That didn’t line up. If she had officially taken over at twenty-three—which he knew was correct, thanks to the sect studies he had paid attention to—then her grandparents had died when she had been about eighteen. If she had returned to the sect at age twenty-ish, then her grandparents had to have died over a year before she came back. What had the emergency been?

And what the hell had Zhu Qipin been doing? Turning a blind eye while someone stacked the Elders against his own daughter? Twiddling his thumbs while a ton of suspicious resignations happened? While he clearly hadn’t been interested in being the Sect Head forever, did that have to directly translate into neglecting his duties? Keeping imbeciles out of positions of power seemed like something he should have done.

Unless… Unless his inaction was because he signed off on it. A large group of people always needed a de facto leader, so someone had to have been heading this secret-keeping society of Elders. Was it him, with someone else continuing where he’d left off after his death?

Weren’t parents supposed to help create a network of support for their children? Why did it seem like Zhu Longmai didn’t have one at all?

It didn’t make sense. Not one bit.

That, in and of itself, was troubling.

The two of them soon approached what he recognized as a newer, bigger courtyard as opposed to what she’d once lived in, yet distinctly not the Sect Head’s designated residence. She might have objected to moving into their parents’ old home.

Which, now that he thought about it, was a weird tradition.

He spared her a glance either way as she strode up to the gate. If he wanted answers to the oddities that surrounded his mother, Zhu Wuji had made it very clear that she didn’t have them, wasn’t interested in find them, and wouldn’t help with providing them. He would have to consult someone else about it. Junhe seemed to be the most gossip-oriented, his dad might have personal anecdotes, and…

Well, he could always defer to Chu Ran for things like this, couldn’t he? One of the two of them had made a semi-career out of information gathering, and it wasn’t Zhu Li. The morality of actively asking Chu Ran to get even more tangled in this cesspool of drama was questionable, though.

…Then again… he might love to, knowing him.

After pushing the door open and thus deactivating whatever arrays protected it with an audible, sizzling snap, his sister beckoned him inside, which he was quick to oblige. Once he was clear of the door, she let the door swing back shut, and another faint electric zing went through the air as the array reactivated.

Welcoming them was two figures—one large, one tiny—crouched in the shallow snow of the foreyard, their brown-clad backs facing them. The sound of the door clacking shut roused the other two from whatever they were doing, the faces of one child and one man turning in the siblings’ direction.

The man stood up on the spot. The child dithered somewhat, his short limbs making him a lot less graceful, but he caught up to the act in due course.

The second Zhu Li was stopped in front of him, the man bowed with his arms held in front. The little boy looked up at him, watched his movements, then mimicked them in an endearingly stiff and clunky manner.

“It’s good to see you again, Fourth Lord,” Bao Chishan said, smiling. “Or I suppose I should call you my brother-in-law, now.”

Zhu Li nodded once at him. “You seem to be doing well, Senior Bao.”

“Oh, no, don’t call me that. It makes me feel old.”

“You are old,” Zhu Wuji said, her flat effect betraying nothing. “Older than him, at least. Now, Xiao Mo, come say hello to your uncle.”

Bao Chishan placed his hand on Zhu Mo’s little head. “Go on and introduce yourself. He’s nice.”

Said toddler toddled up closer to Zhu Li on command, his big eyes not leaving his own for a second, until he was within arms reach, where they still didn’t leave.

“Hi,” said the itty-bitty creature. He was exceptionally quiet. “My name’s Zhu Mo. I’m four. Mama told me your name is Zhu Li, and that you’re a doctor.”

“Hello,” said the not-so-bitty creature back. “That’s… right.”

Uncle and nephew then held a staring contest for a few moments. It went on for longer than it probably should, primarily because Zhu Li had no idea what he was supposed to say to a child this young.

Should he ask about… his studies? No, that was stupid. Three-year-olds didn’t have studies. Unless playing with toys counted as education? When did kids learn to read? What did kids even… do?

What had he done when he was a kid? His genesis of conscious memory was too fuzzy for this shit.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to think of child-appropriate subjects, because Zhu Mo suddenly said, “You’re pretty like mama.”

…Oh.

The other two adults laughed at the statement, much to Zhu Li’s understated rankling. He passed his sister a blistering look that was instantly ignored.

These two were well aware of how much he didn’t like his ‘enchantingly good’ looks being pointed out. Which made this worse, of course.

Jerks.

“‘Pretty’ is the word you use for people that are like flowers, like your Aunt Junhe,” Zhu Wuji gently coached, coming up to pet her son’s head. “Uncle Li here is more like a tree, so he gets the word ‘handsome.’”

Zhu Mo blinked his big eyes at her. “Mama, you’re handsome.”

Her smile went stiff. Her hand froze in place, too.

Zhu Li pursed his lips for dear life, because it wouldn’t do to laugh at her. Not that he wanted to spare her feelings, but he had a self-imposed standard of self-control to uphold, here.

Bao Chishan was not so tempered. He laughed aloud at his wife’s misfortune while sounding much like a squawking chicken, and even her stone-faced glare didn’t abate it.

They all moved indoors and took seats around a low table. The woven mat beneath them was artificially heated, of course; there was no sense in sitting on cold, hard ground.

“You quit as an archivist, Chishan?” Zhu Li asked when they were all seated and tea had been appropriately distributed out.

“I did. Best decision I’ve ever made in my life,” Bao Chishan answered. He’d retrieved a small wooden box from a shelf in the room, and was now dumping its contents out onto the space in front of Zhu Mo—they were colorful nine-ascenders blocks. “Only after I really sat down and did the math did I realize that between work, sleep, chores, and eating, I was getting maybe half a shichen of time to myself each day. It wasn’t leaving any time for me to actually do what I wanted with my life. And that was compounded by—“

He cut himself off to cast a guilty, slightly wide-eyed look at Zhu Li, like he wasn’t supposed to say what came next.

Before Zhu Li could even raise his brow at him, the other soldiered on. “Well, it was compounded by… your absence, Ah-Li. Wuji was miserable, and it felt horrible just working all the time, unable to help her. I couldn’t even concentrate on that work, so… something had to give. And it was that.

“But I’m not blaming you at all for leaving,” he quickly added on, as if sensing that, yes, him saying that had put a rather despondent blanket over Zhu Li’s mood. “It was understandable, even admirable, all things… considered. Uh, anyways, my work! Yes, my work. I was like an arrow at the end of its travels, almost stuck in the ground—here, Xiao Mo, stack them like this. Elder Tan had absolutely no sympathy paired with the brain of a hog, which didn’t help his case as much as he thought it would. If he’d been nicer, I would have been more pressed to stay. To tell the truth, I’m angry at myself for staying as long as I did, because that was almost a decade’s worth of effort, and I have nothing to show for it but regret for what I missed out on.”

Bao Chishan smiled at Zhu Li. “You leaving was actually part of the inspiration for me, Ah-Li. It was very brave of you.”

The latter furrowed his brow in confusion. “You think me running away was brave?”

“It isn’t running away if you didn’t start the problem.” Bao Chishan pet Zhu Mo on the head, brushing his loose hair back, all with a loving smile on his face. “Knowing your limits is a fine trait to have. If I had known mine a long time ago, instead of blindly sticking to what I was familiar with, stressful as it was… my life would be a lot different. A lot better a lot sooner.”

“Ah-Li’s always been smart,” Zhu Wuji praised, giving Zhu Li a soft, fond smile of her own. “Stubborn in a good way, too. He never backed down from his principles, and now he’s done well for himself. He’s a prized jewel of our family.”

Zhu Li was nearly blinded by their matching bright smiles.

Seriously, what was this? ‘Sappy feel-good’ time?

He turned away from them to hide the involuntary heat rising to his face. It was a rare thing for him to be flustered, but when it did happen, it was usually because of Zhu Wuji acting like a mom. Literal years had passed since he’d last felt like an overpraised kid.

“Enough about us, though,” she continued, prompting him to turn back around. “Why don’t you tell us more about what’s happened with you since we saw you last, Ah-Li? That meeting yesterday was too chaotic for us to get a proper picture. I’m sure you have many other exciting anecdotes to tell us.”

Her smile grew in fulgence. “Especially ones about that friend that likes to cling to your arm.”

There it was.

She best be prepared for a very impartial account, then. He wasn’t giving a single thing more for her to gush over.

Off the back of some very embarrassing, if underplayed cooing from his enthusiastic brother-in-law and collected sister, the time for him to bid them goodbye came. It was, after all, very late in the day by the time they’d asked all they wanted to of the mysterious stranger that he was inexorably close to.

It was inexorable to them only because he’d never been this close to anyone from the Caves. The reason for that was that the overwhelming majority of them were annoying, and being annoying automatically made them unattractive, ruining what little capacity he had for attraction to begin with. It was as simple as that, really.

Zhu Wuji had seemed inordinately proud of him, too. Like he’d accomplished some great task by being interested in someone for once. He really didn’t get what the big deal was.

Regardless, it’d been nice to see them.

At the moment of their parting, Zhu Mo looked up at him with those big eyes again, seemingly expecting something. What that something was, Zhu Li couldn’t fathom.

He looked at Zhu Wuji. She tilted her head at him, smiling as gently as ever.

He looked at Bao Chishan. He met his eyes, yet offered no hints.

He looked back at Zhu Mo.

…The mind of a child was truly enigmatic.

Taking a wild stab at what this strange organism could want, he brought his right hand up to waist height, then brought it down onto Zhu Mo’s fluffy hair.

Zhu Li waited for either positive or negative feedback on this course of action. When no feedback at all came from the lad, a second headpat was added for good measure.

His awkwardly-moving hand was taken back, revealing a red and bashful face that buried itself into his mother’s robes.

Huh. Uh… Interaction with a child, successful?

Mystifying giggles arose from the other two adults. What the hell was so funny?

Regrettably, their giggles had to be interrupted by Zhu Li remembering something both crucial and serious.

“Before I go… Mom gave me homework. She wants me to do my own research,” he started, tongue stiff. “What do you remember about our grandparents?”

Just as he’d predicted, the smile fell off of his sister’s face at the mention of their mother. Less predictably, it went carefully blank at the mention of their grandparents.

By virtue of being the eldest, Zhu Wuji had the most confrontations with Zhu Longmai, and the longest timeframe to have interacted with Meng Ruoxue and Zhu Qipin.

Bao Chishan had also cast a worried glance at his wife.

Reactions like that never meant anything good.

Zhu Li’s gut was filled with a faint sense of foreboding. Was

“That’s a bit much of a story for telling you at the doorway,” Zhu Wuji eventually said, her hand raising to rub the back of Zhu Mo’s head. “I’ll write it down and send it to you.”

“You… need to write it down?” Zhu Li asked, perturbed.

Her gaze went off to somewhere far away. It wasn’t sad or angry or anything of the sort, but its blankness was very, very strange. “Yes. We were well-acquainted,” she said, the vacancy of her tone matching perfectly.

Ominous.

“It’s dark out, Ah-Li. You should head back,” Bao Chishan said softly. “Don’t worry. We’ll help you with that ‘homework.’ I’ll pore through the more recent records to see what I can find on them.”

“Thanks, Chishan,” Zhu Li replied. “It means a lot.”

It really did. While the two of them hadn’t been able to interact much before because of conflicting schedules, Bao Chishan had always been nice to him. Being friends would have been a nice reprieve in this introvert’s hell of sect, yet fate hadn’t allowed them to be.

The man certainly had a point about lost opportunities.

At long last, Zhu Li was freed from this bout of socialization, walking off into a random direction. It was now time to locate Chu Ran, which could… prove to be difficult, in this oversized Estate. Not only did he not have any tracking skills, but Guhui wasn’t loudly screeching her displeasure to the world right now.

Where would she have dragged him off to? A garden? A garden sounded about right. Too bad there were about eight of the damned things around here.

Maybe he should just go wait back at the guest quarters.

Walking alone along the slate-covered ground with the qi lamps lighting his way, his mind was devoid of most thought as he relished in the cold wind’s indifferent sting.

There was so much for him to think about, yet all of it was passing him by in a blur. He was probably done thinking for the day.

As was cosmically inevitable, however, something happened the second he calmed himself down.

In the wake of four unsuccessful searches of the various gardens, he’d gone to one that was, in retrospect, close-ish to Wanming Court. To be fair to himself, it wasn’t the closest garden, so he couldn’t have predicted that his mother would be in this one in particular.

The second he’d turned his head to quickly scan for the silhouettes of a man and a horse, he’d instead caught sight of Zhu Longmai a few zhang away. Her back was to him, illuminated by the light of a qi-powered lantern, its unnaturally bright dome of light somehow making her ghastlier than a dim one ever could.

She seemed to have been staring at something in the far, darkened distance beyond the lantern’s glow, up until she heard his approach and half-turned. It was highly unfortunate that she had, because he would’ve much preferred to turn on his heel and very calmly speedwalk away.

As it was, he stopped in his tracks, one foot in front of the other, like a hare caught in a predator’s sights.

Neither of them said anything.

When Zhu Li was in the middle of wondering whether the whole heel-turn-run-away option was still available, his mother uttered at last, “What are you standing there for?”

His mood instantly soured. You started staring at me first, he snarked on the inside. What the hell were you expecting? For me to skip up to you like we’re good friends?

“Nothing,” he gritted out, beginning to make his escape. “I’m leaving.”

“Hold it.”

Even though he hated it, Zhu Li stopped mid-turn on command.

“You’re looking for Xin Yingliu and your horse,” she stated plainly.

His gut squirmed slightly at being seen through. A part of him patently did not want to acknowledge what she’d said, as if conceding anything to her might cost him.

Without his prompting, she continued to say, “They’re on the other shore.”

All of that suspicion was quickly covered up with surprise. “What?”

This garden was right on the edge of the river, its flowers just two chi away from the stony banks. The Estate stretched just a bit beyond the Weiyi’s other shore, but there wasn’t much over there. It had mostly been walled off for the express purpose of making it harder to get into. Why would they be over there?

Was that what she’d been looking at before?

No, wait. Being in lanternlight would ruin her night vision, and if she could see that far off into the darkness, she wouldn’t need a lantern at all.

“Relax,” she continued flatly. “I saw your mare drag him across the bridge. He’s been trying to redirect her back across, and it hasn’t worked.”

Who said I’m not relaxed? “I see,” he said back, just as flatly.

During the next pause, Zhu Li listened to the ambience around them. It was too cold for bugs or critters and too snow-dampened for anything far enough to carry, leaving only the brook’s semi-loud babbling to fill the air.

“How’s your questioning going?” his mother suddenly asked.

“Canxi doesn’t know much and Wuji is going to write me an essay,” he answered. “I haven’t asked dad and Junhe yet.”

“Hm. Don’t keep your questioning to the family. Ask Junhe how to lift the Oaths on the former Elders and ask them, too.”

Oh, good. More cryptic stuff. Just what he liked.

Irritation made his brow twitch. “What’s the point of me doing this?”

She snorted. “You’re too smart to ask obvious questions.”

Choice words now sprouted up in his mind, all of which he had to swallow down. “I didn’t ask for a backhanded compliment. I’m asking why you can’t just say what you want to upfront.”

The rushing river filled the resulting silence.

Why had he expected anything different?

With a disdainful huff, he started to charge through the garden, towards the shore. He’d just jump over the damn thing, at this point.

“The words are hard to find.”

He stopped, then spun towards Zhu Longmai, waiting for an explanation to that non-sequitur.

“You want to know why I wouldn’t name you. I’m starting from the beginning. That’s all.”

Chu Ran’s words from earlier today pecked at his mind. Closing his eyes, Zhu Li took in a deep breath to stabilize himself, then let it out all at once.

“Here’s a less ‘obvious’ question for you, if you feel like answering,” he began. “The former Elders seemed to have been put in by at least one person’s coordinated efforts. Who was it, and why?”

A faint sigh was heard more than seen coming from Zhu Longmai. “You’re looking for a monster,” she replied. “You’ll find it soon enough.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Is the monster you?”

She looked askance at him. It could have been a play of the shadows, but… for just a split second, she looked to be amused by something.

“You’ll find a bigger, much nastier second monster, then.”

With no further elaboration given, she left the garden, slowly making her way back to Wanming Court.

He watched her go with a frown. His eyes went to the lantern she’d conveniently left behind on a bench beside her.

Why hadn’t she been sitting?… Why had she been ‘watching’ Chu Ran and Guhui?

Well, whatever. No use thinking over something he had no information on.

On account of not being someone to snub a useful gift, he grabbed the lantern in preparation for spelunking in a place where there was no light.

As opposed to finding where the nearest bridge was, he decided to make do on his partially-impulsive previous thought. Qi pulsed through him faster on command, gathering mostly in his legs, and he lunged forwards for the shore. Once the dull point of a taller rock was gently jabbing into his right sole, he gathered power in his jump, crouched, then launched off, soaring faster than a fenghuang snake.

The fifteen or so zhang of water were cleared in mere seconds time. Using more qi to buffer his landing, his feet made soft pats on the ground, his limbs spared from the full-body jolt of landing on solid ground. The lantern he held squeaked on its joints as it swung with the momentum.

This side of the river held precious little to it, to the point where no one even bothered hanging qi lanterns up over here. The worse and early-arriving darkness of winter helped nothing, not to mention how it was too overcast for even the river to sparkle that much. The abnormally bright lantern didn’t even help to that great of a degree.

Peering into the darkness beyond, he called out, “Yingliu?”

“Oh, Doctor Zhu, is that you?” called a familiar voice from a bit away. “We’re over this way. The Lady is being a bit terrible.”

The source of the noise was, predictably, shrouded in total blackness. A blind man and a horse had no need for useless lanterns, he supposed.

He tracked them anyways, and Chu Ran’s silhouette eventually met with the lantern’s range. A big lump on the ground just two chi away also came into view, the unmistakable result of Guhui having come to the conclusion that now was a great time for a nap. She was curled up much like a cat or foal would be, the side of her head resting on the ground near her legs.

Zhu Li looked at her prone figure with some exasperation. “Do you put her to sleep by being around her?” he asked Chu Ran.

“This is only the second time,” the other protested lightly. “At least she’s decided to spare me from being her pillow. Instead, she’s using snow and dirt, which is even less fathomable to me… Ah, I suppose I shouldn’t try to fathom a noble Lady’s mind.”

Horses only laid down and slept around people that they trusted, which was a good, if very unexpected, sign. On the other hand, Guhui’s ‘trust’ could be less like ‘he can keep me safe’ and more like ‘I could take him if he tried anything.’

“You’ve got the right idea,” Zhu Li said.

“Yes, yes, it would be quite the fruitless endeavor. How was your visit to your sister, Doctor?”

“It went fine. She’s going to write down all she knows about our grandparents.”

“She has to write it down? That seems like a bad omen.”

Zhu Li huffed. He’d thought the exact same thing earlier. “No kidding.”

He then went over to Guhui, crouched down, and began to stroke her along the snout, back and forth. “Come on, you. You can sleep elsewhere.”

It took a bit, but she eventually opened her eyes and lifted her head abruptly. Upon seeing who had dared to disturb her, she slowly bobbed her head up and down in hello.

Zhu Li stood back to his full height. “Let’s go,” he said to Chu Ran. “She’ll catch up on her own.”

Chu Ran chuckled, his hand soon finding the crook of Zhu Li’s right elbow. “I should hope so. She dragged me all over the Estate in no obvious pattern, passed over a bridge, and then rolled around in some plants over here. I’m unsure as to whether she had some grand plan, or if she was simply messing with me.”

“Messing with you was probably her grand plan.”

“My, my. How dastardly.”

They walked along the shore peacefully. Heavy hoofbeats behind them told that Guhui wasn’t lagging too badly.

It was a shame that peace left room for thoughts to grow, as Zhu Li’s mind quickly went back to the discrepancies he’d learned of earlier in the day.

Lingering on things he couldn’t do anything about wasn’t in his repertoire.

All at once, he told Chu Ran of what had happened since they’d parted, from Zhu Wuji’s refusal to look into the former Elders to Zhu Longmai’s inexplicable appearance. Venting his confusion and frustrations helped to alleviate the knot in his heart somewhat.

At the end of it, Chu Ran—for some odd reason—let out a breezy little laugh.

The sound eased Zhu Li’s latent irritation, even as it made his brows rise up. “What are you laughing at?” he had to question.

“Ah, not at you, my dear Doctor. Not at anything, truly. Is it not just a little silly that we’ve just about solved our own mystery, only to be saddled with even more? The Zheng family, your family, my family… it comes across as a never-ending cycle, hm? When do the secrets end?”

…Gods. It really did. “At least we’ve already solved the Hans’ problems,” Zhu Li quipped.

“Haha, yes, that is quite true. The Dong family is too stable to need help and the Yin family is too foolish to know it needs help, so they can also be struck off the list, as well. Let us hope that the issues here don’t take too awfully long, and that your… former paramour is cooperative in digging into her own family. That part will go by quickly, then, as well.”

His gut clenched a little at the comment, but it was a dull, ignorable thing. “That’d be great.”

“I must at least say that it’s good that your family’s secrets seem to originate from fairly mundane personality defects, as opposed to things that would displease the Dao. I suppose they physically cannot do those, however… Regardless, I will help you to speak with those reprehensible Elders, if that’s what Senior Zhu so desires. They will not be able to manipulate me in any sort of way—quite the opposite, if I may say so.”

“You’re going to manipulate them back?”

Chu Ran chuckled, the dark tone in it almost a long-lost friend. It’d been a while since Zhu Li had heard this devious, dangerous type last, too.

“It was they who decided to sacrifice you for their ‘greater good,’ as I understand it. They deserve no sympathy or mercy. And I always get the information I want if I know it’s there. If there indeed is a ‘monster,’ they collectively know who it is. I have no doubt about that. Although…”

He hugged Zhu Li’s arm a little tighter, squishing his cheek against his shoulder. “They may be deserving of some thanks. After all, if they had been competent and benevolent, you and I would have never met.”

“And wouldn’t that be terrible,” Zhu Li mused, moderately pleased.

“It would be! Who else could put up with me like this? I’m afraid none would even apply, let alone get the role.”

All of a sudden, he took on a severe tone to say, “That was a joke, of course. I would not hold back against them. Good outcome aside, they did try to sacrifice you for an imbecilic reason, so it’s only reasonable that their treatment be rough.”

The abrupt shift in demeanor would have chilled anyone else. Zhu Li simply took it for what it really was: an outrage against people that had chosen murder by inaction.

Even though he’d never seen Chu Ran really interrogate someone, he knew that those Elders were going to be in trouble.

“You’re right,” he conceded, a tiny flame of schadenfreude alighting within him. “It’s only fair.”

---

The author says: “negligent homicide is hard to prove and no one will ever notice” -those Elders, probably

The puzzle pieces Momo is playing with are similar to tangrams. However, instead of seven pieces, there’s nine, and every single one of them is a right triangle; 3 big, 3 medium, 3 small. They also have notches in them for use as building blocks.
The game is called Nine Ascending People/九升士, and was invented in a far-off kingdom to parody nine scholars that were infamous for fighting viciously over promotions and such, hence the imagery of the triangle pieces climbing on top of each other for dominance. The game’s purpose is to either create a figure with the pieces, or to create a tower from the triangles that doesn’t collapse—which is not an easy thing to do and involves quite a lot of weird balancing, which is yet another reference to the nine scholars’ infighting almost causing governmental collapse.
Do note that this game evolved independently from tangrams. Tangrams were first made in the late 1700s, while this world’s timeline majorly fractured off back in the 1500s, and someone naturally figured out ‘blocks makey the shape’ on their own in the thousand years since then.

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