The rumble of the golden nanmu carriage's wheels rolled over the bluestone slabs, fading away down the long street.
Xiao Jingyan's deliberately raised voice, asking for academic guidance, still echoed in the courtyard, its ripples lingering.
But beneath that calm surface, dark currents were already surging.
Li Sheng led the servants to heavily shut the manor gates, cutting off the prying eyes from outside.
Inside the main hall, the facade of dignity forced up by the prince's visit vanished with the creaking of the door hinges.
Crash!
Xu Youde overturned the square rosewood table in front of him.
Scalding tea splashed all over the floor, the premium Wuyi Dahongpao tea mixing with the shattered fragments of official kiln porcelain in a complete mess.
The purple sandalwood box containing out-of-print ancient ink and Chengxintang paper also rolled to the ground, smashing into pieces.
"This is too much! It's too much!"
Xu Youde's eyes were bloodshot. His plump body trembled with extreme fury, his chest heaving violently.
He snatched the official hat off his head and slammed it fiercely onto the ground.
"Second Brother... my Second Brother is still in the death row of the border town! That Xiao dares to use my son's life as a bargaining chip to negotiate a deal with us!"
"These damn princes, not a single one of them is any good!"
Xu Youde panted heavily, his eyes looking toward the direction of the imperial palace.
"No! I cannot wait! I'm going to the palace right now, to the Hall of Mental Cultivation, to kowtow!"
"I'll return this title of Count Chengyi to him! I'll cough up all the Xu family's silver! I just want Second Brother to live!"
He stumbled forward, lifting the hem of his official robe, ready to rush out.
A hand rested on the doorframe, blocking his path.
Xu Qinghuan stood there, not wearing the luxurious attire of a princess, but only a plain green ruqun dress.
There was no color in her face, and her lips were pressed together until they turned white.
"Father, if you go now, you are handing a knife to the Emperor, letting him conveniently chop off the heads of all three of us."
Her voice was not loud, but it made Xu Youde's boiling anger stall.
"Bullshit!" Xu Youde roared. "Thunder and rain are both the grace of the sovereign! Since the Emperor made me a Count, he wouldn't mind such a trifling matter..."
"A trifling matter?" Xu Qinghuan interrupted him, her gaze falling on the military report he had crumpled in his hand. "Corruption in the Ministry of War, framing by border generals—these are major events that shake the foundation of the state."
"Would the Emperor not know?"
"He knows, but he also knows that the Minister of War is Xu Jie's disciple. The roots below are tangled and complex; pulling one hair moves the whole body."
"To flip the table on the entire Ministry of War and tear off all pretenses with the Xu faction just for an insignificant centurion at the border—the Emperor will not make this trade."
Every word Xu Qinghuan spoke smashed heavily onto Xu Youde's heart.
"What the Emperor wants is balance. Now that the knife has finished cutting, he wants us to behave, not to use this little bit of merit to beg him to handle a private matter that would shatter the balance of the court."
"If you go now, you are telling the Emperor that this knife of his not only has a mind of its own but also wants to turn around and threaten its master."
"When that happens, he will only feel that this knife should be broken."
Xu Youde's outstretched foot froze in mid-air.
The color drained from his face little by little, cold sweat seeping from his forehead. His lips trembled, but he couldn't utter a single word.
Right, how could he have forgotten?
A monarch's heart only holds weighing and balancing; where is there room for justice?
"Sigh, your old father has been blinded."
"Then... then what should we do?" Xu Youde's voice grew weak. "Are we just going to watch Second Brother... watch him be killed by those parasites?"
"No."
"We will break this deadlock ourselves."
She looked up at her distraught father and said, enunciating every word:
"I will go to the Northern Border myself."
"Nonsense! You, a young woman, going to the Northern Border? What kind of place is that! Thousands of miles of yellow sand, with war breaking out everywhere!"
"Those people in the Ministry of War, which of them isn't a man-eating wolf that spits out no bones? If you go, how is it any different from throwing your life away!"
Xu Qinghuan ignored his roaring.
She merely extended a slender finger and tapped on the rough straw paper.
"Father, look."
Her fingertip landed on two names.
"He Minghu, Vice General of the Northern Border, lower third rank; Ma Jin'an, Supervising Censor, primary fifth rank."
"Xiao Jingyan just said that these two are Xu Jie's and the First Prince's men. To touch them would be making an enemy of the entire Xu faction and the Fourth Prince's estate."
Xu Youde was stunned: "Is that not the case?"
"It is, and it isn't," Xu Qinghuan sneered.
"A military officer like He Minghu is nothing in the capital. At best, he's a distant relative of some obscure disciple of the Xu faction."
"This supervising censor, Ma Jin'an, is a bit more noteworthy, but a fifth-rank censor isn't even considered a decent watchdog in Xu Jie's eyes."
"The most likely reason they framed Second Brother isn't for some partisan dispute. They simply embezzled military funds and were afraid of being found out, so they looked for a scapegoat."
"They didn't expect that the batch of new military rations I sent would make such a big splash. The merit was too conspicuous, and it ran right into their blades."
"Xiao Jingyan deliberately exaggerated the backgrounds of these two men. He wants us to think that our opponent is the entire Xu faction, that we have absolutely no chance of winning on our own, and that we can only rely on him."
Xu Youde's mind spun rapidly. Following his daughter's line of thought, he only felt waves of chill running down his spine.
"He... why would he do this?"
Xu Qinghuan's finger moved away from the military report, pointing out the window toward the northern sky.
"Father, do you remember that half a month ago, many of the merchant caravans trading at the Northern Border retreated?"
Of course Xu Youde remembered. At the time, he even thought his daughter was making a mountain out of a molehill.
"I found it strange back then. Although the Northern Border is chaotic, as long as there is money to be made, why would those caravans suddenly run away, leaving not a single one behind?"
"There is only one possibility. They caught wind of something in advance."
"What did they catch wind of?"
"The barbarians are probably about to attack."
Xu Qinghuan kept her voice very low, yet her tone was utterly certain.
"The closure of the Northern Border markets and the southern retreat of the caravans indicate that the Left Luli King on the steppes has already finished assembling his troops. I guess that within a month, there will definitely be a massive war in the North."
"And this monumental military intelligence—I reckon Xiao Jingyan doesn't know about it."
Xu Qinghuan gave a soft chuckle.
"Those so-called strategists of his only stare at their little patch of land in the capital. They only see who drank wine with whom, and who sent gifts to whom."
"Their vision is still far too narrow."
Xu Youde was thoroughly dumbfounded.
He looked at his daughter, feeling a chill shoot straight from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
These subtle, snake-like trails and ashen threads of details, these border rumors ignored by the bigwigs in the court—she had actually connected them all half a month ago and made a prediction.
"So..." Xu Youde's voice was dry and hoarse.
"So, Xiao Jingyan didn't come today to deliver gifts; he came to hand us a knife."
Xu Qinghuan's eyes were icy cold.
"He wants to use our desperation to save Second Brother to force us to go to the Northern Border. As long as we go, we will definitely rip the lid off He Minghu and Ma Jin'an's embezzlement."
"When that happens, the border army will fall into chaos, and the chief officials of the Ministry of War will inevitably be implicated. Those imperial brothers of his, every single one of them, will have to take the fall."
"He wants to use our hands to poke the hornet's nest in the Northern Frontier. He gets to play the good guy, while our Xu family acts as the bloodstained blade, bearing the blame for disrupting the border defenses."
"Once the deed is done, he will step forward to clean up the mess and consolidate military power. Killing three birds with one stone—what a shrewd calculation."
The main hall fell dead silent.
Xu Youde slumped into his chair. After a long while, he finally squeezed a curse through gritted teeth: "That beast..."
He had originally thought Xiao Jingyan was just a fool trying to get something for nothing, but he never expected the man's scheming to run so deep.
Xu Qinghuan, however, shook her head. She walked over to Xu Youde, poured him a fresh cup of hot tea, and pressed it into his freezing hands.
"No, Father. You shouldn't say that."
She watched the steam rising from the teacup and spoke softly.
"We should say that Xiao Jingyan has grown smarter. He knows how to leverage power and how to use human hearts as his chessboard."
"This is a good thing."
"He thinks he is the one playing the game, but little does he know that from the moment he stepped through our doors, he went from being the chess player to becoming our pawn."
"An overeager and smugly clever prince makes for the most useful pawn of all."
