Though Lord Ye Ansheng of the Ye family had seemed utterly terrified that day, who could say whether he had truly been frightened out of his wits—or merely feigned it? Perhaps once he returned home, his courage had crept back into his chest.
Or perhaps he had been frightened, yet was still foolish enough to stir up trouble again.
The destruction wrought by a fool is often the most terrifying of all.
Moreover, Lena Sanders could not be sure whether the killers from Castleton were confined to this single teahouse, or whether they were scattered throughout the city like the fishmongers and mule traders—hidden in plain sight, everywhere at once.
So, for the next few days, Lena rarely left her home, waiting only for the appointed day.
When that day arrived, after lunch, she took Harris Ma and Jack Golden and headed to the Shanzi Teahouse.
The tea master greeted her at the door and led her upstairs.
After a few steps, he turned back with a knowing smile and whispered, "He came early this morning—covered in dust from the road."
"Thank you," Lena replied softly, and entered the same private room as before.
Facing the doorway sat a thin, pale middle-aged man, graceful in bearing and handsome in feature. When he saw Lena, he pushed himself up from the table, expressionless for a long while before murmuring, "So it truly is you."
"You must be Ye Anping," Lena said evenly. "Zhanlu is dead."
She sat across from him, while Harris Ma and Jack Golden stood behind her, one on either side, arms crossed, eyes cold and watchful.
"May I speak with the lady alone?" Ye Anping asked, gesturing toward her two companions.
Lena hesitated briefly, then said, "Wait for me downstairs."
The two men nodded and withdrew, closing the door behind them.
Ye Anping watched the door for a moment, then turned back to Lena with a weary smile. "When I bought Zhanlu back, she had just been born. She had no twin sister—she was the firstborn, with no elder sibling."
Lena regarded him silently.
"But you," Ye Anping said slowly, "you are not Zhanlu. She never had eyes like yours. I do not know what happened, nor do I wish to. The world abounds with strange and inexplicable tales.
"When I bought Zhanlu, I purchased nineteen other newborns as well—ten boys and ten girls. I hired wet nurses to raise them and provided them every care. Now, they are all grown.
"From the time they could walk, I had them trained—to fight, to kill. But of the twenty, only Zhanlu truly learned the art of assassination."
"And the other nineteen?" Lena asked calmly, as if listening to an old, irrelevant story from a distant time.
She felt no connection to the people or events he described.
"Those who could fight became guards of the Ye household," Ye Anping explained. "Those who could not were given other tasks—clerks, servants, house staff. The Ye family runs an apothecary business, six generations strong. We have survived because we never sow evil willingly."
He said it with the self-assured righteousness of a man long accustomed to justifying his actions.
"How did Zhanlu die?" Lena interrupted, unmoved by his explanations.
Ye Anping hesitated, then asked, "Shall I begin from the start?"
Lena nodded and poured herself a cup of tea.
"Nineteen years ago…"
He stopped after the first few words, exhaled, and said instead, "No—better to begin earlier.
"I had a cousin named Zuo Rou-niang."
His throat tightened; it took a moment before he could continue.
"She was five years younger than I. When I was thirteen, I swore I would marry her and no other. She felt the same.
"Twenty-five years ago, I had just begun managing the family's herb trade. In this line of work, knowledge of medicine and the purity of one's stock are everything. That year, I traveled with several uncles from north to south, inspecting fields and forests for medicinal crops. The journey lasted three years and ten months.
"When I returned to Anqing Prefecture, they told me Rou-niang had been dead for three years."
He fell silent again, then went on hoarsely,
"The Zuo family said she had died of a sudden illness. That was not the truth.
"I left in the second month of the year. That summer, the wife of the Prefect of Anqing, Lady Wang, held a grand banquet for all the young gentlewomen of the city. When the feast ended, all the others returned home—except Rou-niang. She never came back.
"The next morning, Lady Wang herself came to the Zuo residence, claiming that Rou-niang and her nephew, Wang Qingxi, had fallen instantly in love, eloped at dawn, and returned to his family's home in Wuwei.
"Wang Qingxi already had a wife and son. He had just passed the provincial examination and was studying under the Prefect. I do not know what promises Lady Wang made, but the Zuo family gladly accepted her story and even celebrated it.
"The next spring, Rou-niang's uncle and elder brother both passed the scholars' exam—by coincidence, of course. That summer, word came that Rou-niang had fallen ill in Wuwei and died.
"When I returned home, she had already vanished three years and lay buried two."
Ye Anping lowered his head. After a while, he lifted his gaze again, his smile bitter.
"I went to Wuwei. The Wang family was powerful, with scholars and officials in every generation. When I arrived, Wang Qingxi's success in the capital had just been announced. The city resounded with drums and firecrackers.
"It was true—three years earlier, he had returned to Wuwei with a woman he doted upon. The next summer, she fell ill and died.
"Rou-niang was not buried in the ancestral tomb. She was a concubine, childless, unworthy of the family's honor. They laid her in a common grave.
"I dug it open myself. The coffin was thin and rotted through, the body—"
His voice broke again.
"Rou-niang and I had loved each other since childhood. Both families had long approved. She was gentle, well-educated, intelligent, and kind. She would never have thrown herself at some passing man, least of all one like Wang Qingxi—short, fat, dark, and already in his mid-thirties.
"She must have been defiled by him—and murdered, with Lady Wang and her husband complicit."
Lena studied Ye Anping quietly. Judging by his story, he was a little over fifty now—still a striking man, likely once far handsomer than the word "refined" could express.
The Ye family, after all, were the foremost merchants of medicine in the realm.
A woman as sensible as Rou-niang would never have chosen a vulgar, corpulent scholar with a wife and children.
"The Zuo family must have gained something from it," Ye Anping continued bitterly. "They accepted the tale with smiles. What was one daughter to them?
"I could not press charges—we were never formally betrothed. I had no standing to speak. But I could not let her injustice go unavenged.
"Nineteen years ago, I spent a year buying twenty newborns—you were the last, born in the twelfth month."
"Whom did you intend to kill?" Lena asked, one brow arching. "The Prefect and his wife? Wang Qingxi? Or have you already killed them?"
"No," Ye Anping said quietly. "I meant to kill all three. But I never had the chance."
He exhaled a long, weary breath.
"How did Zhanlu die?" Lena asked after a pause, her eyes fixed on him.