Su Mingya had already half-stepped out. The biting wind lashed his face, instantly freezing him in place.
On this snowy night, the sky held no stars. Yet beneath the Star-Picking Tower, countless pinpricks of firelight flickered in a contiguous mass, shimmering like celestial bodies.
Half-asleep, half-awake, Su Mingya stared down at the inferno below the high tower. Fire and water are incompatible, and the sight shattered the illusion before his eyes in an instant.
A cold voice suddenly came from behind him: “Jump.”
Su Mingya’s eyelid twitched. He spun around abruptly. The door to the Bright Candle Room had been opened silently. Gu Jinyu stood there in black robes, reeking of blood. He wore a long saber, his short ponytail soaked with snowmelt. The palm of his left hand was charred black, his right fingertips crimson with blood.
“Jump.”
Su Mingya’s dazed mind snapped sharply back to clarity. Every court official of the Su family was either at the Imperial Palace having an audience with Her Majesty or busy with internal affairs. He had no mansion guards behind him—he was practically a lamb to the slaughter.
He pulled back the foot that had been suspended in mid-air. His gaze became remarkably similar to Gu Jinyu’s. “Gu Jinyu, the new year has just begun. Instead of guarding the New Emperor at the Imperial Palace, what are you doing here?”
Gu Jinyu walked into the Bright Candle Room without a word. His bloodshot eyes swept over the room’s furnishings, as if he wanted to etch everything into his vision, to take away every trace of the years Gu Xiaodeng had spent living here.
He took a brocade pouch from his chest and poured the remaining cannon beads into his left palm, placing them in four corners of the room as he walked.
Su Mingya watched his unusual actions, a sense of impending disaster striking him intuitively. “What are you really here for?!”
“In public duty, to hunt down the traitor Gao Mingqian.” Gu Jinyu, appearing deceptively calm, placed twenty cannon beads throughout the Bright Candle Room. “In private, to find the Gu family’s true Fourth Young Master, Gu Shanqing.”
“What do you mean?”
“He and I were born on the same year, same month, same day. In the summer, the fifth month of the first year of the Tianming era, bandits from the Thousand Schemes Tower switched us. I come from the jianghu but was raised in Zhenbei Prince Mansion. Gu Shanqing comes from nobility but was raised among common folk.”
Gu Jinyu’s filthy hand picked up a sleeping robe set aside on the high bed with its soft pillows. A single cuff told him it was Gu Xiaodeng’s size.
“My origin, Gu Jinyu, is the low-born bastard, the inferior wretch that everyone in Changluo gossips about. He, Gu Shanqing, is the Prince Mansion’s true Young Master, unattainable for countless people… A sickly degenerate like you is utterly unworthy of him.”
From the very first word Gu Jinyu spoke, Su Mingya felt something wrong with his body. At first, he was furious at Gu Jinyu for abusing public office for private vengeance. But immediately after, the sheer volume of information and emotion overwhelmed his already precarious Mind Sea. He could almost hear the sound of his own scorching blood rushing through his veins.
The floodgates of emotion that had been open for days threatened to drown him. He was in a chaotic state, seeing every person and thing around him as a potential threat, his emotional sensitivity stretched to its absolute limit. Every word Gu Jinyu spoke—Su Mingya would use the Su family’s remaining resources to verify it all later. But more importantly, in just a few short breaths, he abruptly realized his perception of Gu Xiaodeng had shifted yet again.
A beautiful, lowly “Cousin Young Master of the Gu family” was naturally meant to be an object of his amusement. That was a plaything, not a Gongzi.
A Gu Family’s “Fourth Young Master” of legitimate birth was a scion of nobility, only one rank below Su Mingya himself. He would be scorned, but not someone Su Mingya could look down upon from a height.
A descendant of nobility could not be a plaything. He should be a fellow superior, an equal standing above all others.
Gu Jinyu said he was unworthy. Yet within the taut flood of his emotions, Su Mingya instinctively thought—So Gu Xiaodeng is worthy of being his lover.
Gu Xiaodeng shouldn’t have to call him “Young Master Su” so fervently for four years. He should address him as an equal, calling him “Mingya.”
Su Mingya was actually thinking that Gu Xiaodeng was worthy of him. But then, he felt an overwhelming, heart-piercing helplessness at his own deep-seated class prejudice.
Gu Jinyu’s eyes were shot with blood, his crimson right hand gripping the saber hilt. “Where is Gu Shanqing?”
Su Mingya’s trembling hand clutched his own neck, struggling to maintain his composure. “The Gu family’s affairs… what do they have to do with the Su family? If you’re looking for someone, go to the Prince Zhenbei, go to the Jingzhao Prefecture…”
Gu Jinyu drew his blade. The steel was caked with the blood of Ge Dongchen, whom he had run through. He didn’t mind going completely mad, throwing away any path to success. He wanted to find the culprit responsible for his shattered hopes, to avenge him, to vent his fury. For that, he was willing to perish together with the guilty.
“I let the Gu family keep him until the New Year. If everything had gone smoothly, he’d be at Vast Marsh Academy right now, reading books and raising his dog. Not having a hundred, a thousand people telling me he was bullied by Gao Mingqian, tormented until he fell into the freezing winter water.”
A thread of blood seeped from the corner of Gu Jinyu’s lips. He roared hoarsely: “Su Mingya! Did you collude with the Gu and Su families to take him to the Winter Hunt?! Did you personally drug him and hand him over to Ge Dongchen with your own hands?! He liked you so much! He liked you so much!”
Overwhelmed by fury and grief, Gu Jinyu lowered his head and vomited a mouthful of blood onto his robes. He lunged forward with his blade, wanting nothing more than to cut Su Mingya into a thousand pieces.
But at that critical moment, Zhu Liu, who had rushed over, used all his martial arts skill to grab Gu Jinyu and snatch the saber from his hand. “Master, Master! You can’t cut anyone else down!”
The accumulated cold ailment in Gu Jinyu’s body erupted all at once. Vomiting blood, he stared blurrily at Su Mingya.
“Su Mingya, you abandoned him and then you hurt him. Why don’t you just die?! Why don’t you jump?! Everyone who harmed him deserves to die without a burial ground!”
Zhu Liu was terrified. Without another word, he struck the back of Gu Jinyu’s neck with a palm chop. Seeing that Young Master Su was also in a trance-like state, he quickly supported Gu Jinyu and fled the Bright Candle Room at top speed, hoping to avoid leaving any more loose ends.
The Bright Candle Room was on the ninth floor of the Star-Picking Tower. Gu Jinyu had already set the lower floors ablaze. The stairway was now covered with the faint, bloody footprints Gu Jinyu had left when he arrived. Zhu Liu was just congratulating himself on a narrow escape, thinking the master hadn’t managed to cut any Su family members down, when an ominous explosion sounded from above.
Zhu Liu’s hair stood on end. A deadly thought occurred to him. This past spring, Gu Jinyu had participated in the Empress’s New Army plan and had possession of a batch of newly developed, precise Army-Breaking Cannons… Those things hadn’t been used on a battlefield yet, had they? Had they just been deployed in this Star-Picking Tower instead?
Zhu Liu didn’t dare turn back to check on the Su family’s Eldest Young Master. He blew his whistle as if his life depended on it, from the seventh floor all the way down to the charred first floor, until he summoned Blossom Ashes the Gyrfalcon.
Unfortunately, the whistle also woke Gu Jinyu. Just as Zhu Liu finished giving orders to Blossom Ashes, he met Gu Jinyu’s icy glare.
Seeing his mad master intent on climbing back up to kill, Zhu Liu hastily deflected to a more pressing issue: “Master, listen to me! I ran here to find you not to hinder you, but because of a major crisis! There are two pieces of news. The good news is, Gao Mingqian has been found. The bad news? He’s about to escape. The Empress is going to let him go!”
Gu Jinyu’s head whipped around.
Zhu Liu’s scalp tightened. “He’s taken the Second Young Lady, Gu Ruhui, hostage. As you know… the Empress and the Second Young Lady…”
Blood vessels spread like webs across Gu Jinyu’s eyes. “Then let them all die together. Where is my saber?”
Zhu Liu broke out in a cold sweat. “Her Majesty the Empress predicted this. That’s why she urgently summons you to the palace. It cannot be delayed, you must enter the palace now, Master. News of you storming the Ge family and cutting Young General Ge has reached the Imperial Palace. Her Majesty requires you to beg for forgiveness… The Third Princess says, at a time like this, you cannot provoke the new sovereign’s authority any further!”
Gu Jinyu wiped the blood from his chin. “I’ll go beg for forgiveness after I finish killing someone.”
Zhu Liu gritted his teeth, about to knock Gu Jinyu out a second time, when the heavy sound of horse hooves came from outside the Star-Picking Tower.
Gu Jinyu’s deputy generals stormed in, pairs of panicked yet feverish eyes fixed on him.
“General! The latest frontline battle report—there’s chaos at the Northern Border!”
