The Third Prince may have been the youngest of the realm's principal heirs, but his maternal lineage was defined by an unyielding, generational greed. He was heralded across the territories as the "dragon son," for he had been uniquely blessed with the most profound auspicious omens at the precise hour of his birth. The Lord of Dame had famously decreed that Tae Hua's guiding star burned with the greatest celestial brilliance among the three royal brothers. Yet, the boy's heart had never beat for the cold iron of the throne. He routinely declared to the court that his second brother should rightfully ascend the dais, possessing a superior temperament for sovereign rule. But though Tae Hua harbored no ambition to wear the crown, his mother's machinations demanded otherwise, systematically driving a wedge of bitter, unyielding tension between the royal siblings.
Part I: The Heirloom Broken
Yun Ji Wok crossed the threshold of our private chamber, his expression utterly stale and unreadable. I shifted my weight against the windowsill, shrugging my shoulders slightly as I studied his closed posture. "What exactly transpired during your perimeter check?" I inquired.
"Do you retain a memory of the wild stallion we used to ride near the northern garrison gates when we were children?" he asked, his voice flat.
I offered a brief nod. Without another word, he pulled back the heavy fabric of his silk sleeve, revealing his forearm. His elbow was raw, heavily abraded, and bleeding from a fresh impact against stone. I grimaced, stepping forward to analyze the laceration.
"You attempted to mount that beast again?"
He hissed past his teeth as I inspected the wound. A faint, sarcastic smile touched my lips as I turned back toward my personal quarters. "You possess a profound lack of caution whenever you interface with that animal. You undoubtedly provoked its temper."
I walked over to my bedside cabinet, pulling open the lacquered wooden drawer. My fingers brushed against the cool, smooth surface of the small ceramic jar Weicheng had accidentally left in my possession. Turning back around, I casually tossed the vessel across the room. Ji Wok's reflexes were instantaneous; his left hand shot out, catching the jar precisely out of the air. His brow furrowed deeply as he rotated the ceramic container to read the markings.
"This—" he stammered, his voice faltering for a fraction of a second.
I raised a singular eyebrow, crossing my arms over my chest. "It is the signature healing balm of the high Yun Clan, yes."
He traced the delicate indentation of the seal. "No... I was fully prepared to state that I had personally gifted this item to—"
"To Candidate Dan Weicheng," I finished for him, cutting off his explanation. The faint, trace smile on Ji Wok's lips instantly vanished, replaced by a cold, absolute blankness as his eyebrows locked together in a rigid line. He silently tucked the ceramic jar deep into the folds of his inner robe.
An intensely unsettling sensation settled deep in my chest as I watched his movements.
"By what structural logic did that specific artifact find its way into your hands?" he demanded, his eyes narrowing.
"He delivered it to me entirely by accident during our administrative rotation," I replied casually, keeping my voice devoid of inflection.
Ji Wok's gaze dropped to my face, heavy and calculating. I held his eyes, deploying every ounce of my court training to systematically decode the thoughts racing behind his stoic veneer. "You are demonstrating an unprecedented level of familiarity toward that particular commoner," I noted, stating it as a dangerous matter of fact before deliberately turning my head away.
He shrugged his shoulders, drawing a slow, deliberate breath. "I am not."
"You have never intentionally surrendered a personal possession to an outsider in your entire life," I countered, my voice hardening. "Particularly not an object you harbor so close to your heart."
My cousin had historically existed as an aloof, profoundly hostile entity within the capital—entirely consumed by the mechanics of swordsmanship and ancient tactical texts. He systematically avoided communal gatherings, harboring a deep-seated revulsion for noisy, politically charged environments. His social circle was strictly limited to me and Niu Qiu Run. I knew the psychological root of his isolation: his father had always openly favored his eldest brother, leaving Ji Wok fundamentally terrified of forming genuine alliances that his family could weaponize against him.
That specific ceramic jar had been meticulously crafted by his own hands for his mother. The intricate floral carvings perfectly replicated the ancient Yun insignia because his father had carved the original mold while she lay bedridden with a terminal illness. It was the singular material heirloom he cherished above all others.
He stood up from the bench, turning his back to vacate the chamber, but he halted precisely at the threshold. Without turning around, he offered a barely audible whisper.
"Never surrendered an object I hold dear," he repeated back to the empty room. He paused, his spine stiffening before he delivered his final words. "I already did."
The heavy oak door clicked shut behind him, leaving me completely alone with a deepening crease across my forehead.
Part II: The Three Stars of Xie'en
Deciding against pursuing his mood, I abandoned the chamber and made my way toward the outer stone pavilion. Due to the severe structural havoc wrought by the Red Assassins' midnight raid, the faculty had officially excused the candidates from our ministerial duties for the duration of the day.
I crossed my arms against the chill, my boots clicking rhythmically against the rain-slicked pavement. Try as I might, I couldn't purge the image of Ji Wok's defensive stance from my mind. His behavioral patterns had shifted drastically over the last several cycles.
"Ah, look, your profoundly handsome companion, Niu Qiu Run, has graced you with his presence."
The loud, theatrical voice cut through the courtyard air, forcing a dry sigh from my lips. Qiu Run approached from the eastern walkway, aggressively waving his iron-ribbed silk fan despite the freezing temperature. "For what reason do you stand exposed to the elements entirely alone, Your Imperial Highness?"
"Cease the royal titles," I countered smoothly, not looking at him.
He offered a wide, cheeky grin, dropping his weight onto the stone bench across from the cemented courtyard table.
"What strategy is currently occupying your thoughts?" he asked, his voice suddenly dropping an octave as the theatrical excitement drained from his face, realizing I was entirely checked out of his humor.
"Yun Ji Wok is operating under a highly irregular behavioral matrix lately," I stated plainly, leaning my spine against the masonry. "He demonstrates an absolute indifference toward my strategic directives, and he has begun actively countermanding my logical conclusions."
"Are the two of you engaging in a domestic dispute?"
"Don't be ridiculous," I hissed, reaching out to sharply swat the edge of his fan, sending it clattering onto the stone table. "We are not. We have never initiated a physical or political conflict against one another since childhood."
He clapped his hands together with a sharp, resonant sound. "Then that is the structural failure! The pair of you simply require a mutual physical altercations to alleviate the psychological burden. Men require a baseline level of physical violence among peers to discharge internal tension. It would immediately clarify the air."
I shook my head, a rare smirk breaking through my stoic facade. "You are completely insane."
His smile evaporated entirely, his features setting into a rare display of unvarnished gravity. "Are you entirely certain the baseline relationship between you two remains intact?"
"Do you truly wish to comprehend the nature of my calculations?" I asked, shifting my gaze across the square.
"Well, your countenance currently looks like a localized thunderstorm, so I am merely waiting for the data dump," he replied, shrugging his shoulders to bait me into speaking.
Before I could articulate my theory, a sudden, explosive burst of laughter echoed from the far western corridor. I turned my head, tracking the noise to find Dan Weicheng and his immediate circle of roommates navigating the archway. Their voices were ecstatic, loud, and thoroughly unrefined as they migrated toward the training grounds.
I watched Weicheng walk shoulder-to-shoulder with his peers, his smaller frame perfectly integrated into their rowdy formation. They were shouting and jesting without a single care for court decorum.
"Ah..." Qiu Run's voice broke my concentration, a knowing tone lacing his words. "It concerns Candidate Dan."
I turned a stony, unblinking gaze onto him. "Explain your deduction."
"You stated that Ji Wok's internal balance has been compromised? The catalyst is explicitly Dan Weicheng."
I narrowed my eyes into razor slits. "So you have logged the discrepancy as well?"
"Well," Qiu Run sighed, leaning his head back against the stone pillar. "During our initial admissions registration outside the academy gates, I monitored the exact vector of Ji Wok's physical stance the moment Weicheng entered his field of vision. It was entirely anomalous. And I subsequently discovered that Weicheng was the primary structural reason Ji Wok was legally compelled to enter this institution in the first place."
"He was the instigator behind the capital brothel incident?" I asked, my mind rapidly re-stating the facts.
Qiu Run smiled faintly. "Not intentionally. According to the internal watch reports, Dan Weicheng intervened to shield a civilian woman from a severe noble harassment, initiating a massive physical brawl in the process. Ji Wok merely deployed his own blade because he witnessed the dishonorable nature of the assault."
At that specific historical juncture, Ji Wok had harbored a profound, unyielding hatred for the prospect of imperial military service. He was intensely filial; he understood that even if he abstained from the academy, his elder brother would legally inherit the primary Yun Household seal, leaving him completely free of state entanglements. His biological mother had spent years engineering his low profile, desperate to keep him insulated from court controversies so his brother's succession would remain absolute.
But that single brothel brawl had shattered her calculations. His father had been so profoundly dishonored by the public nature of the arrest that he ordered Ji Wok into the academy alongside me to neutralize the scandal. His mother viewed this development as a direct, hostile act against her house. Their maternal bond had been severely fractured as a result.
"So he was the foundational catalyst," I murmured, nodding slowly as the pieces aligned.
"Regardless," Qiu Run stated, his eyes turning serious as he leaned across the table. "The Red Assassin missive from last night has introduced an immense amount of destabilization into the court. Do you calculate their intelligence regarding the Second Princess to be authentic?"
I let out a long, heavy sigh. "The data remains unverified. However, if the premise holds true, Princess Xie'en is currently existing within an unimaginably perilous matrix. Surviving outside the protective walls of the palace is an immense hardship for an exiled royal—but existing under an active state bounty while being hunted by the Crown's covert factions must be an absolute hell."
The Second Princess, Wang Xie'en, had been globally celebrated across the empire as a beauty capable of surpassing heaven and earth. The court chronicles routinely compared her presence to a flawless, fine luminous pearl that radiated an ethereal light whenever she stepped beneath the sun. Her eyes were documented as the most profoundly expressive in the lineage, but her primary physical identifier was entirely unique: her right palm possessed three distinct, dark birthmarks configured in a perfect triangular shape. Those three stars were her undeniable seal.
She had been a child of unparalleled generosity, her voice carrying the soothing resonance of a silver flute across the palace gardens. Her raw intellect and administrative aptitude had surpassed every prodigy of her generation, backed by a devastatingly clever tongue. She was the absolute epitome of imperial perfection—until her timeline was violently severed by the state.
"If the matrix confirms she survived that carriage fire, we must locate her coordinates first to establish a defensive perimeter around her," I stated, my voice dropping into a stern, commanding tone.
Qiu Run nodded in absolute approval. "I concur. That is undoubtedly the exact reason Ji Wok appears completely unsettled today; his personal networks are likely hunting for her intelligence files as we speak."
"We must double our investigative speed before the main branch of the Yun Clan and the Queen of the North can intercept her track," I commanded. "Our immediate priority is to establish a direct interrogation channel with a captured Red Assassin cell to decipher their source code."
Qiu Run pouted his lips, nodding grimly as he prepared to stand.
Suddenly, his eyes flicked toward the eastern archway, and his entire posture dropped into a formal, submissive bow. I closed my eyes, drawing a slow breath through my nose to stabilize my temper. The unmistakable, cloying scent of heavily concentrated rose oil instantly flooded the pavilion, so thick it nearly triggered a physical wave of nausea.
"Tae Hua."
The high-pitched, melodic voice grated against my nerves with the force of a rusted blade. I forced my features into a perfectly pleasant mask, rising from the stone bench to offer a flawless imperial courtesy.
"Princess Xiao'er," I greeted smoothly as she glided into the pavilion, her silk skirts settling gracefully as she took a seat at the head of the table.
I offered her a practiced, entirely hollow smile before reclaiming my seat. Qiu Run shot me a brief, panicked look across her shoulder, his expression silently pleading for an escape route from the First Princess's immediate orbit.
"I require your private counsel regarding a highly urgent matter," she stated, her large eyes dropping toward the teacup I pushed in her direction. Her slender fingers began to nervously fidget with the edges of her silk sleeves—a behavioral tell I had mapped across dozens of noblewomen seeking imperial favors.
I cast an absent-minded glance toward Qiu Run, who pulled a subtle grimace, instantly tracking the trajectory of her impending speech.
"How may I alleviate the burden of your thoughts, Your Imperial Highness?" I asked politely.
"It concerns the traumatic security breach from last evening," she began, her eyes snapping up to lock onto my face. I maintained my smile, keeping my micro-expressions perfectly locked down.
"To what specific metric do you refer?"
"By this hour, the entire Central Empire must be in absolute chaos following the transmission of that letter," she stated, her voice tight with suppressed venom. "If that lost princess is truly wandering the wilderness of our outer provinces, she must be hiding under a fraudulent identity within a common household. I desire to personally oversee the military search detachments."
Across the table, Qiu Run violently choked on his tea, coughing into his hand as he scrambled to swallow the liquid.
"The intelligence contained within that arrow has yet to clear baseline validation, Princess," I countered impassively, my tone smooth as ice. "We currently possess zero tactical proof that the text wasn't a psychological operation engineered by the assassins to destabilize the royal succession."
"But I cannot simply remain idle within these stone walls while my biological sister is exposed to the elements," she protested, her voice rising slightly.
I narrowed my eyes behind my smile, a deeply sarcastic amusement washing over me. Your biological sister? You mean the rival you spent your childhood trying to erase.
"Do not allow your royal heart to agonize over the matter," I replied smoothly, snickering silently at her theatrical performance. "My detachments will set out at dawn tomorrow to extract more granular details from the local garrisons. The absolute moment we verify a single coordinate, I shall personally update you on our operational trajectory."
As if I would ever allow you near her.
She offered a satisfied, elegant nod, rising to her full height. "You have my deepest gratitude, Cousin. I anticipate your report with extreme urgency." She paused, adjusting her gold headdress. "My Lord Father and Mother are scheduled to breach the southern gates tomorrow afternoon, accompanied by a contingent of court elders and Master Pu to permanently resolve the security infrastructure."
Part III: The Riverside Pact
"Ji Wok."
The moment General Niu concluded our emergency security briefing regarding the Red Assassin letter, I broke away from Dormitory 5's line. I intercepted Ji Wok as he moved toward the eastern exit, my voice dropping into a sharp, imperative whisper against his ear.
He turned his head, a flash of genuine surprise breaking through his stoic features as I leaned in closer. "Meet me at the riverside clearing past the secondary gate immediately following the evening meal," I commanded under my breath before walking away.
Throughout dinner, I kept my eyes fixed on the wooden tabletop, occasionally glancing over at Ji Wok as he quietly excused himself from the dining hall ahead of the crowd. My roommates were completely occupied, laughing uproariously over their rations. I cleared my throat, rising casually from the bench. "I am going to utilize the latrines," I noted to Laohu, who merely nodded mid-bite.
The moment I cleared the threshold, I broke into a dead sprint through the darkened corridors, slipping past the primary courtyard. The moon had already climbed high, registering the hour at precisely eight in the evening; we had exactly two hours before the heavy iron curfews were locked down at ten. Navigating the blind spots of the imperial watch towers, I slipped through the broken masonry of the rear exit and descended the rocky path toward the riverbank.
I pulled a small torch from my robe, igniting it with a flint strike as I leaped over the slick river stones.
Through the shifting fog, I spotted the wide, solid silhouette of Ji Wok standing at the edge of the water, his eyes fixed entirely on the churning current. The silver crescent moon reflected flawlessly across the black stream. I slowed my pace, my boots crunching softly against the gravel. When I reached a point exactly two feet behind his shoulder, I let out a dry, deliberate cough.
He turned on his heel, his hands remaining clasped firmly behind his torso. His eyes locked onto mine. "Weicheng."
I allowed a small, tired smile to reach my lips, crossing my arms against the freezing night air. "I require absolute clarity regarding several critical data points," I stated without preamble.
He offered a soft, incredibly rare smile, as if he had mathematically predicted my entire line of questioning before I even arrived. "Your secrets are entirely secure within my perimeter," he answered softly.
My eyes narrowed into lethal slits. "So you have verified it? For what duration have you possessed this intelligence? When did you deduce it?"
"Ever since my eyes first tracked your form at the capital brothel," he revealed flatly.
Shock was an absolute understatement. I felt entirely petrified, the blood rushing in my ears as the river roared beside us. "That is logistically impossible. How?"
"Aside from your physical facial architecture, which is profoundly delicate and inherently soft compared to the standard candidate profile," he began, taking a step closer, "you took a seat directly adjacent to my tactical table and explicitly ordered a pot of chamomile tea. That marked the absolute first instance in my historical memory of a man entering a high-class capital brothel simply to sip herbal tea."
Still entirely unconvinced, I maintained my scowl. "A preference for tea does not constitute a legal deduction."
"When I physically assisted you during the evasion sequence, your uniform radiated a distinct, concentrated scent of lavenders and peach blossoms," he continued, his voice perfectly calm. "Furthermore, you deployed a very specific butterfly-patterned cloth to bind your wounded right hand."
My heart dropped. I routinely carried lavender sachets to numb the chronic nerve pain in my mangled hand. My mind raced back to the night of the brawl; that specific binding silk had been a personal gift from Mu Lin. I shook my head in silent frustration. If I had possessed even a fraction of foresight regarding how that distinctive cloth would compromise my entire operation, I would have burned it to ash the moment I crossed the border.
"And that baseline of data satisfied your suspicion?"
"Initially, I reasoned that you were simply an exceptionally effeminate young man from the southern provinces," Ji Wok admitted, his gaze drifting to the moonlit water. "However, the anomaly solidified when I monitored you inside the dormitory. I witnessed you weeping silently while inspecting your personal embroidery pouch. It was in that precise hour that I formulated the definitive conclusion that you are, in fact, a—"
An involuntary, hysterical laugh escaped my lips, cutting off his pronouncement. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. "And all this time, I was executing complex strategies to shield my identity from your line of sight."
"Your current presence inside this institution constitutes a grave, unpardonable violation of imperial law," Ji Wok stated, his features setting into a serious mold. "You have committed a capital crime against the Crown by falsifying candidate documents. The Emperor would undoubtedly issue a decree of public execution if this data breaches the faculty ring. I do not comprehend the nature of your true objectives here, Weicheng. But because you possess the raw capability, the strategic wisdom, and the sheer intellect required to survive this curriculum, my mouth remains locked. Simply maintain your security protocols, and ensure you never declare to an outsider that I held prior knowledge."
A wide, genuine beam broke across my face. He blinked, clearly thrown off by my sudden amusement. "For what reason are you grinning like a fool?" he asked, his brow furrowing.
"I simply held the absolute conviction that you were a rigid, unyielding rule-follower who would never compromise state protocol," I teased, stepping closer to tap the top of his shoulder in a mocking gesture of praise. "Yet here you stand, actively colluding to conceal a capital crime on my behalf."
"That is an inaccurate assessment of my character," he retorted, his voice rising into a classic display of aristocratic arrogance that only made my laughter ring louder across the water.
"You are an absolute stone face!"
"I am not!" he countered, though his shoulder dropped slightly. "When Qiu Run, Tae Hua, and I operated as children within the capital, we routinely engineered massive structural chaos. I was historically tasked with fabricating alibis to shield them from the imperial ministers." He sat down on a massive, moss-covered boulder as I continued to lightly tap his head in a haughty, teasing rhythm.
"Excellently executed," I cheered in a mockingly grand tone.
"Are you implicitly suggesting that I should increase the frequency of my deceptions?" he asked, looking up at me through his dark bangs.
"No, absolutely not," I replied, my voice softening as I let my hand drop to my side. "What I am explicitly stating is... you should permit yourself to laugh and experience the baseline of human existence more frequently. You carry too much iron."
He looked up at me, a small, genuine smile breaking through his stoic veneer as he slowly shook his head. "You are truly unbelievable, Dan Weicheng."
"I was structurally engineered to be unbelievable," I shot back with a proud toss of my chin.
We settled into a comfortable, quiet rhythm, standing side-by-side as we watched the mountain stream rush past the stones. "Your secret remains entirely secure within my perimeter," he reiterated softly. I smiled, offering him a sincere murmur of gratitude.
"What exact secret is currently being processed within this perimeter?"
The sharp, freezing voice sliced through the fog like a broadsword. We both snapped our heads around to find Prince Wang Tae Hua standing at the crest of the riverbank, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes narrowed into absolute, calculating rings as he took in our proximity.
"Are the two of you..." Tae Hua paused, his face twisting into a bizarre, explicitly entertaining mixture of utter bewilderment and absolute aristocratic horror. "...are you currently engaging in a clandestine romantic affair?"
The sheer absurdity of his expression was an absolute masterpiece of comedy. My survival instincts instantly took a back seat to my desperate desire to see the golden prince completely lose his mental composition for my own amusement.
"Yes," I declared instantly.
Without a shred of hesitation, I lunged forward and aggressively locked my arm around Ji Wok's solid bicep, pulling myself tight against his side. I looked up at Ji Wok, flashing him a brilliantly wide, utterly fraudulent smile. "Is that not the absolute truth, my dearest Wok?"
Our eyes crashed together. Ji Wok froze entirely, his arm turning to absolute marble beneath my grip. For three agonizing seconds, his face was a shifting canvas of profound confusion, sheer curiosity, and tactical panic—before a slow, intensely amused smile broke across his features to match mine. He didn't pull away.
We both turned our gazes back to the top of the ridge, completely savoring the sight of Tae Hua's utterly broken, 'I cannot logically process this data' countenance. The Third Prince stared at us for one final, horrified moment before turning on his heel and marching back toward the palace gates with aggressive, rigid steps.
The second his cape vanished beyond the stone archway, I immediately ripped my arm away from Ji Wok's bicep, stepping back three full paces as a burning, catastrophic wave of embarrassment instantly flooded my cheeks. I practically wanted to slap my own forehead into the gravel.
"I offer my absolute, unreserved apologies for that reckless display, Master Yun," I stammered, my voice cracking as I spun around to hide my flaming face, fleeing up the path before he could witness the total collapse of my assassin's dignity.