Shi Feiyang left the capital and flew to Huaiqing Prefecture, where he first located Prince Zheng's Palace, then sought out Zhu Zaiyu.
Zhu Zaiyu's father had been convicted when he was fifteen. By all rights, he should have lived amid resentment and anxiety, looking older than others his age. In fact, he was robust and hale. Now in his sixties, he wore his graying hair immaculately groomed and secured with a wooden hairpin. He dressed in ordinary cloth robes, yet beneath that simplicity lay an ethereal air, as though he had transcended the mortal world.
Shi Feiyang did not descend straight from the sky. Instead, he landed three li away, revealed himself, and walked to the residence to pay his respects. He had shown little humility even before the emperor, but toward a "worthy" such as Zhu Zaiyu, he was deeply respectful.
Zhu Zaiyu was also quite surprised to see him.
Several days before Shi Feiyang set out, an urgent dispatch had arrived from the capital, announcing that the emperor's newly appointed "Nine Heavens Primordial Yang Perfected One" would be visiting him and instructing him to make preparations.
Zhu Zaiyu had thought little of it. His father had incurred the Jiajing Emperor's wrath and been convicted precisely because he had urged the emperor not to place excessive trust in Daoists and to pay more attention to affairs of state. He had been confined for nearly twenty years. In Mind Reading, he detested Daoists, especially those sinister practitioners who bewitched the emperor with street tricks and lowborn swindles.
Still, however much he loathed them inwardly, he had to show sufficient respect on the surface. Otherwise, he would be slapping the emperor in the face and inviting another undeserved calamity.
Yet upon meeting Shi Feiyang, he had not expected such a young