When her brother revealed the truth of how their mother had died, Baozhu buried her face in her arms and sobbed. Memories of all those years surged through her mind like a tide: her mother's smiling face, an infant's cries, and the memories of her birth father that she had deliberately buried deep inside. Whatever the cause of death, she would never disturb her mother's tomb and remains merely to get to the bottom of it.
She cried for a long time. In the past, letting her emotions out had always brought relief, but this time, something felt wrong-a pebble in her shoe, a hangnail on her finger, a worm in the flesh of a date. Tiny though it was, it made her profoundly uncomfortable.
Bury it. Bury it deep underground. Never let it surface again. Baozhu kept urging herself inwardly.
Instinctively, she felt a terror unlike anything she had ever known, something dreadful enough to overturn every boundary and tear trust apart.
Yet however deliberately she ignored it, that tiny discordant note grew larger and more distorted as her thoughts advanced. It interrupted her grief and ground her heart into a bloody pulp. This possibility hurt even more than the truth of her mother's death.
After an unknown stretch of time, Baozhu could endure it no longer. She raised her head and stared straight at the brother with whom she had depended on for survival, suspicion and anger mingling in her tear-filled eyes.
"All of this makes sense, except for one flaw."
She pushed the square table aside, removing the only obstacle between herself and Li Yuanying.
"Yiwuzhen is ten thousand li from Chang'an. Sending a letter there and receiving a reply takes almost two months. Returning to Chang'an to stabilize the situation, searching the archives for discrepancies, writing