As Xie Zhenqing spoke, he handed over a sheet of paper. "Slip this in among the others."
"Yes, I'll see to it right away!" Hong Dao took it and glanced at Xie Zhenqing again. Seeing that he had nothing more to say, he withdrew.
Only after watching Hong Dao's figure recede into the distance did Xie Zhenqing let his smile fade. Standing beneath the eaves, he gazed at the rain in the courtyard with a furrowed brow. After a long while, he let out a deep sigh.
Ever since that last incident when I silenced the witnesses, I've taken care to reassure Hong Dao, but he still harbors misgivings. After this latest trouble, he seems even more distant.
At any other time, I could let it pass. But we're undertaking something momentous now. If his heart isn't with mine and something goes wrong, what am I to do?
Sighing over what he was to do was something Xie Zhenqing had never done before. Yet now, with his schemes suffering one setback after another, unease had begun to creep in.
He suppressed that unease. Hong Dao is getting on in years, and he saw me silence everyone at the Daoist temple. He knows my methods. Keeping him placated has indeed become harder.
At this thought, Xie Zhenqing's pupils contracted involuntarily.
Dressed in ordinary clothes, Xie Zhenqing pressed a hand to his chest, his expression darkening. "But I can't kill him, either. What a pity."
His gaze swept across the garden, growing a little unfocused and dazed.
"No one knows that Hong Dao is actually the legitimate son of the Earl's Residence, while I'm merely his replacement. I only grafted one flower onto another tree, using illusion to shift the memories a few years earlier."
"That's why I had to take him