(1) A Strange Case of Vanishing

Barely any time had passed since Tian Xu left when people across Chang'an began mysteriously disappearing, one after another.

Pei Yun, son of the Vice Director of the Secretariat, and Huang En, son of the Vice Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial, had gone drinking and listening to music together at Zuixian Tower in Pingkang Ward; once the music ended and the crowd dispersed, both young men, along with their attendants, vanished entirely, never returning home. Two days later, Cui Shi, son of the Vice Minister of Personnel, likewise disappeared on his way home from visiting a friend. When Lady Hong, wife of the Vice Minister of Personnel, found dinner going cold with no sign of him, she sent someone to inquire, only to learn that Cui Shi had actually taken his leave early to head home—yet by the following day he still hadn't returned, and Lady Cui hurried in a panic to report the matter to the Wannian County office, saying that she had searched the entire night, every place she could think to look, without a single clue turning up; and just as with Pei Yun and Huang En, the servants accompanying him had vanished right along with him. All three young men were sons of high-ranking officials at the capital, and their disappearance placed enormous pressure, almost overnight, on the newly appointed Magistrate of Wannian, Cao Jibin.

These two cases proved deeply suspicious indeed. Wannian County dispatched its full manpower to search Pingkang Ward, radiating outward from Zuixian Tower, searching nearly every corner that could possibly be searched; the singing girls, dancing girls, and everyone else connected to Zuixian Tower were questioned one by one, yet nothing remotely suspicious turned up. Every witness told the same story: the two young men had left together after a thoroughly enjoyable evening, with nothing unusual happening while they were still at Zuixian Tower—no one could have imagined that they would simply vanish the moment they stepped outside, and Zuixian Tower itself only learned of the matter once the authorities arrived to investigate.

Days of exhaustive searching through Pingkang Ward turned up nothing at all, and Cui Shi's disappearance followed the very same pattern—the distance from his friend's house to the Cui residence spanned only a few streets, and yet within that short span of time, he had vanished into thin air, without a trace.

Both cases carried a genuinely eerie quality, seemingly identical on the surface and yet leaving no thread to follow. Cao Jibin privately suspected the same person or people must be responsible for both, yet he had not a shred of evidence in hand to prove it. Pei Yun and Huang En had no particularly close relationship with Cui Shi at all—at most, since their fathers all served together at court, the younger generation shared no more than a nodding acquaintance—which made it seem, from this angle, as though the two cases might have nothing to do with each other after all. Cao Jibin's head ached for days on end, his sleep growing troubled and uneasy; Chang'an truly was the seat of the empire, right beneath the Emperor's own feet, thick with imperial relatives and noble households, and the slightest misstep here could plunge him into utter ruin. As the saying went, rank crushed all beneath it—the fathers of the three missing young men held positions each grander than the last, and the Vice Minister of Personnel had even taken several days' leave from court over the matter; the Emperor, furious, had issued a verbal edict ordering Cao Jibin to solve the case swiftly and bring the young men home at once.

But in a city as vast as Chang'an, where on earth was he even supposed to begin looking? And besides, his jurisdiction covered only half the city to begin with. Without the slightest clue to go on, it was like searching for a needle in the ocean. Days of consulting with his subordinates over the case turned up nothing useful either, leaving him with nothing to do but sigh in frustration; the only thing he could think to do was have portraits made of the carriages each of the three young men had ridden that day, and post notices bearing these images throughout every corner of Wannian County in Chang'an, hoping someone might have spotted where the carriages had gone and would come forward to report it to the county office.

As Cao Jibin's utter helplessness in the face of these two cases deepened, his anxiety spread through the entire Cao household as well. His wife, Lady Liu, watching her husband unable to eat or sleep properly, could only sigh quietly to herself, and took to burning incense and praying at the Buddhist temples, hoping the bodhisattvas might grant their blessing and help bring the matter to a swift and successful resolution. Guo Huilian accompanied her sister-in-law on visits to every major temple across Chang'an as well, and even took up her brush to write a letter to Tian Xu, far off in the great desert, describing the whole affair to him. To think that no sooner had she arrived at the Cao household than her cousin found himself facing such a thorny predicament—she couldn't help feeling almost like a bad omen herself, and the thought genuinely weighed on her.

Far off in the great desert, Tian Xu, reading Guo Huilian's letter so full of distress, felt a strange, indescribable feeling stir within him. Even as her anguished expression seemed to rise vividly before his eyes, he could also sense, clearly, just how deeply the little girl relied on him—some invisible thread seemed to bind the two of them together, and even now that she had left Yueyue Manor, she still wrote to him and his adoptive father whenever they traveled, just as she always had while living at the manor. Before he quite realized it, a faint smile had crept across his face, leaving Yue Heng, watching nearby, utterly baffled; he snatched the letter away to read it himself, but even after finishing it, he still couldn't figure out what exactly Tian Xu found so amusing.

"You're actually smiling at this?" Yue Heng watched as Guo Huilian's troubles practically spilled off the page—and this boy could still smile over it? What on earth was wrong with him?

Yue Heng's remark made Tian Xu realize, for the first time, that he'd actually been smiling at all. He froze for a moment, then coughed lightly twice to cover his own embarrassment.

"I wasn't smiling... I just think Yaya's being a bit silly, that's all." Tian Xu, feeling caught red-handed, offered a hasty, halfhearted excuse.

"The waters in Chang'an run deep, and here she is blaming herself, calling herself some kind of bad omen..."

"Go comfort her, and quickly. Whatever help you can give, give it now." Yue Heng was practically pacing like an ant on a hot skillet—this whole affair clearly wasn't as simple as it seemed, and he suspected someone with an agenda had deliberately engineered the whole thing, meaning to embarrass this Cao Jibin, promoted well beyond his station amid some larger power struggle, and give him a pointed warning while they were at it. Cao Jibin had spent years serving as an official in Lingnan, with no connection at all to the capital—this position as Magistrate of Wannian had nothing whatsoever to do with him, so how had it suddenly landed on his shoulders? The whole thing reeked of the Ministry of Personnel being unable to settle competing factions' demands, and simply reaching for someone with no background or connections at all, yet a solid enough reputation as an official, so that every faction involved would have nothing left to complain about.

"Why on earth did she even have to go back to Chang'an in the first place? Staying comfortably at Yueyue Manor, what grievances could she possibly have had there? You, boy—you're even less decisive than your own father was. Did your mother ever once say she regretted her choice? Yaya might well have made the very same choice your mother did, and you didn't even bother to ask her—just assumed you knew what was best for her and tossed her right out of the picture entirely. That's more domineering than even I am! What truly matters between people is understanding one another, cherishing one another—for those who truly understand each other, even a single day together is worth having. And here you are, dithering back and forth like some fretting old woman—neither Ah Yuan nor I were ever like that, and neither was Xi'er. So who on earth did you take after?"

Whether it counted as a scolding or simply venting, Yue Heng let loose everything he'd been holding back for so long, all at once.

Yue Heng's outburst struck Tian Xu like a sudden, jarring wake-up call. In the days since leaving Chang'an, Tian Xu had constantly felt a strange emptiness inside himself, as though something were missing—even knowing full well how murky the circumstances behind Cao Jibin's promotion to Magistrate of Wannian truly were, he had, as if compelled by some perverse instinct beyond his own control, let Guo Huilian's uncle take her back to Chang'an regardless, and now he found himself regretting it more and more with each passing day. This position as Magistrate of Wannian was hardly a comfortable seat to hold—there was no telling how soon Cao Jibin might lose it entirely. Others might not fully grasp the stakes involved, but Tian Xu himself had always understood the political and commercial landscape of Chang'an like the back of his own hand, and yet, weighed down by too many worries of his own, he had failed to speak up and insist on keeping Guo Huilian here, all out of concern for some uncertain danger that might never even materialize—only to place her, instead, squarely in the path of a danger he could already clearly foresee. Didn't he deserve every bit of his adoptive father's scolding for that? His mother had chosen to stand by his father for the rest of her life, fully aware of just how thorny the road ahead of them would be—and yet she had never once hesitated, walking that path hand in hand with his father regardless. And here he was, unable even to summon the courage to be honest with a mere little girl. His adoptive father's own blunt, straightforward nature carried none of those endless hesitations—if anything, it saw things far more clearly. If they were truly family, then surely they ought to share in both fortune and misfortune alike, live and die together—there was simply no excuse for pushing someone away.

In the three years Yaya had lived at the manor, she had already, quietly, transformed a great deal about the place, both the people in it and the way things were done there. Not only did she share a particularly close bond with his adoptive father, but everyone at the manor, young and old alike, had grown fond of her—even the old grannies and matrons in the kitchen had taken to learning how to make little dishes alongside her. Whenever Yaya made her little snacks, the whole kitchen turned out to help, so that everyone from his adoptive father and himself down to the hidden guards, the servants, and the young errand boys got to enjoy a good meal out of it.

And as for himself—well, with Yueying always at his side, he rarely had to lift a finger for anything at all, which meant that whenever he wanted to serve Yaya food himself, hand her a cup of tea, peel grapes for her... all such things had already been done for him by Yueying before he could even try. Sending Yueying away and refusing to let him stay in the Snow-Watching Pavilion with them had, in truth, been born of his own private selfishness too.

At that moment, he took up his brush, intending to write Yaya a reply.

Under the lamplight, he wrote line after line, each one meant to comfort and reassure her. He asked her not to worry—everything would be fine, he was here for her. She was certainly no bad omen; the situation in the capital was simply complicated, and none of what had happened had anything to do with her at all, and besides, Uncle Da would find a way to quietly lend Magistrate Cao some timely assistance behind the scenes. But since it was meant to be quiet, discreet help, it wouldn't do to make a show of it—all she needed to do was stay calm, free herself of worry, and simply wait for things to resolve. As he wrote, Guo Huilian's face and voice rose vividly in his mind—her warm, easy laughter, her cleverness, her charm, seeping into his heart, quiet and unnoticed as fine rain soaking into soil, without his even realizing when it had happened.

Fate, it seemed, truly worked in the most exquisite of ways. Had his chronic illness not flared up all those years ago, he would never have had the chance to recuperate at the General's residence, and would never have come to know Guo Huilian at all. And had that never happened, though she might well have escaped the Jingyuan army's slaughter regardless, mightn't she instead have simply died somewhere on the streets of Chang'an? This whole chain of cause following cause, link after link, seemed to have been destined all along to bring Guo Huilian into the fold at Yueyue Manor. And in this whole world, the only woman ever to win his adoptive father's genuine favor and affection, apart from his own mother, was surely Yaya alone—the bond among the three of them, himself, his adoptive father, and Yaya, truly did feel like something fated by heaven itself.

Once the letter was finished, Tian Xu summoned a messenger and instructed him to deliver it, along with fresh grapes and preserved fruit from Xizhou, to Guo Huilian by the most urgent express route available, before finally blowing out the lamp and going to bed.