The low-key prince summons trainees from the Imperial Household Department at the start of the game.

The list of prisoners in the imperial jail grew longer and longer, to the point that no one in the imperial court dared to count it anymore.

Every morning when the palace gates open, new names are passed out from the iron gates of the Zhenwu Division, like an endless thread.

Qin Wu's Zhenwu Division was like a tireless machine, its gears meshing and turning day and night, dragging in one by one those connected to powerful families both inside and outside the capital.

Some of them went in defiantly, but when they were carried out, their limbs hung limply, like rag dolls with their bones removed.

Some of them collapsed to the ground before any torture was even begun, confessing everything, even revealing which family's family had received a basket of persimmons from three years ago.

One imperial edict after another ordered the confiscation of property and the extermination of entire families. When the edicts were delivered from the Imperial Study, the cinnabar was still wet. By the time they reached the Zhenwu Division, the property had already been locked in an iron box and sealed. The officers and soldiers responsible for confiscating the property were also sent out at the same time.

Every day, prison carts carrying prisoners were escorted out of the capital through the city gates. The sound of the cart wheels rolling over the snow echoed from morning till night, like a saw blade slowly sawing at the threshold of the city gate.

The whole city was filled with unease and panic; even the storytellers in the taverns kept their mouths shut.

The other day, a storyteller in Dongcheng was telling the story of "The Founding of the Former Dynasty" in a teahouse. He had only gotten to the phrase "the army is at the gates of the city, and the noble families surrender" when a spy from the Zhenwu Division overheard him. That very night, the teahouse was shut down.

The storyteller packed his bags and left the city that very night. Before leaving, he glanced back at the city gate and said to the person next to him, "They're not even letting us tell our own stories anymore. What's going on?"

No one dared to speak.

In the imperial court, all the officials remained silent, as if trembling with fear.

During the morning court session, the huge Golden Palace was filled with hundreds of people, yet it was so quiet that you could hear the sound of melting snow dripping from the eaves outside the palace.

No one dared to mention the words "aristocratic family" again.

The ministers who were originally on good terms with the powerful families didn't not want to speak up, but rather dared not.

After the court session, a censor from the Ministry of Rites caught up with Zhao Gao and said in a low voice, "Your Majesty's large-scale military action may harm the foundation of the state." Zhao Gao only glanced at him and did not reply.

The next morning at court, the official had barely begun speaking when Zhou Qian coldly swept his gaze across him from his throne and ordered, "Take him down." Armored soldiers outside the hall responded and dragged the man away.

As the official was being dragged out of the palace gate, he was still shouting, "I have something to say..." but the rest of his words were covered by the armored soldiers' hands, leaving only muffled sobs.

The next day, his residence was raided.

In the end, even the courage to speak up became a sin.

Some people calculated that after the court session ended that day, no one dared to refill the teapot in the duty room, for fear that the sound of the teacups hitting the table would be reported as "private gossip".

After listening to the list of names confiscated that day in his duty room at the Censorate, Pei Du looked through the list from beginning to end, gently placed it on the table, and did not close it.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at an old water stain on the roof beam, and suddenly asked, his voice low, as if speaking to himself: "How long do you think His Majesty will continue this slaughter?"

Wang Anshi was looking down at a memorial forwarded from the Ministry of Personnel when he heard this and his pen paused.

He didn't look up immediately. He first put down the unfinished annotation in his hand before shifting his gaze from the paper to Pei Du.

His answer was brief, as brief as a single, decisive cut: "Kill until no one dares to plead for mercy anymore."

Pei Du remained silent for a while.

He gently tapped the roster down, pressed his fingertips on the cover, and then sighed.

The breath was long, as if something was being drawn out little by little from deep within the chest, and it trembled slightly at the end.

"That means it will take a very long time to kill them."

He spoke without fear, without that cowering "I'm scared too" kind of timidity, only with a deep weariness, like someone who has walked a long way standing in the middle of the road, looking up and realizing that the mountain is still far away and the road is far from over.

He suddenly envied those old ministers who had been entrusted with important responsibilities. They were probably hiding in their own residences at this moment, tending to their flowers, reading old books, and writing family precepts. They didn't have to stand under this overwhelming anger and dare not even sigh too loudly.

He picked up the cup of tea on the table, which had gone cold, took a sip, and said nothing afterward. He then reopened the register, picked up his pen, and added a note at the end of the list of those whose homes were confiscated that day.

"The widow of Zheng, the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, shall receive a pension of five hundred taels of silver and five shi of rice. The Ministry of Rites is hereby ordered to expedite the process."

While Zhao Gao stood in the imperial study, he watched Zhou Qian draw vermilion annotations one after another.

The stack of folded documents on the emperor's desk was half a foot high. Each one contained a summary of the confession from the Zhenwu Division, Qin Wu's request for arrest, and the Ministry of Justice's proposed punishment.

Zhou Qian's vermilion brush was almost constantly in motion. He would dip it in ink once and draw three lines, the vermilion falling onto the paper quickly and accurately, like a paper cutter slicing across the paper, leaving neat red lines.

But Zhao Gao could see that the vermilion annotations were being drawn faster and faster, and they were getting colder and colder.

The first few comments were followed by a question or two, such as "Who does this person associate with closely?" or "Does this person have any elder relatives in the capital?"

Later on, all the questions disappeared, leaving only one word.

"Accurate." "Accurate." "Accurate."

The vermilion ink, red like blood, was applied in streaks across the folded paper with black characters on white paper.

Zhao Gao lowered his eyes, focusing on his own thoughts, and stood three steps behind the imperial desk, even his breathing was as soft as possible.

But that thought in his mind didn't completely disappear.

"This Emperor was once the most tactful person. In the fourteenth year of Yonghe, when the northern border rebellion broke out, he suppressed his anger, first imprisoning the deputy general and then sending people to investigate. In the nineteenth year of Yonghe, in the salt tax case in Jiangnan, he accepted the petitions of three powerful families but only replaced two salt transport commissioners, leaving them a way out."

"It has always been like this. He never lets his anger show in the open. He always peels it away layer by layer, step by step."

"But is he truly enraged, or is he deliberately putting on a show of madness to intimidate others?"

He prefers the latter.

His king was never just angry.

Beneath Zhou Qian's anger, there was always something else weighing on him.

This time, however, he openly displayed his madness.

In the past, those aristocratic families saw the emperor's calm back as he reviewed memorials in the imperial study; now, they see only the sharp tips of his vermilion-inked annotations falling.

In between them was a mask so thin it was almost translucent, deliberately torn open.

They didn't use any banners or take the official roads; instead, they followed the mountain line, circling down the foothills of the Taihang Mountains and sneaking into the town along an almost abandoned old post road.

The group consisted of twenty riders, led by a silent middle-aged man with an unsealed letter hanging on his horse.

After entering the town, they didn't stop at any inn, but only stopped their horses in front of a blacksmith shop.

The middle-aged man dismounted, handed the letter to the blacksmith in the shop, and said only, "Send it to the Li family in the city." Then he mounted his horse again and, with the group of riders, disappeared silently into the mountain road outside the town, just as he had come.

The letter was rolled into a thin tube and stuffed into a section of hollow iron pipe under the stove in the blacksmith's shop. It was taken away that very night.

The letter contained only a few lines, the ink very light, written with extremely light strokes, as if the writer was deliberately suppressing the force between their fingers from showing on the paper: "If you don't want anyone to know, then don't do it in the first place. Shaoyuan, you'd better still be alive."

This was only the first step for Li Chongxi.

After leaving Jinyang, he did not go to the capital, but instead turned east and entered a more secluded garden.

The garden was located in a valley sixty miles southeast of the capital. The gate was hidden behind a bamboo grove, and the walls were covered with dark green ivy that had been growing for many years. Standing outside, you couldn't tell that anyone lived inside.

Several family members' carriages and horses were already parked in the garden. The horses were led in through a side gate, unsaddled, and tied to the stable in the backyard. The carriages were pushed into an empty woodshed and covered with dry straw.

Li Chongxi walked into the main hall wearing a black cloak.

The hem of his cloak was stained with mud from the road, but he didn't brush it off. He simply stepped over the threshold and stood in front of the long table in the hall, which was illuminated by candlelight.

Among those present were Chen Yun from the Chen family of Yingchuan, Zheng Guan from the Zheng family of Xingyang, Lu Zhaoling from the Lu family of Fanyang, and several other elders from collateral branches who rarely appeared in public.

No one stood up when he came in, but all eyes were on him, like a group of people gathered around a map seeing someone point heavily at a certain spot with their finger.

Li Chongxi did not sit down.

He stood in front of the long table, glanced at everyone present, and spoke.

His voice wasn't loud, but every word was like a block of iron pulled from icy water, carrying a chill as it was placed on the table: "If my son dies, the Li family will open the northern horse market and let the barbarians into the pass."

The expressions of all the family heads present changed drastically.

The teacup in Zheng Guan's hand fell to the ground with a "crack," shattering into pieces of coarse porcelain. Tea splashed onto the hem of his robe, leaving a dark stain, which he did not wipe away.

Chen Yun abruptly stood up, the chair leg scraping loudly on the blue brick floor. He pointed at Li Chongxi, his voice trembling: "Are you insane! That's the national gate our ancestors have guarded for three hundred years!"

Li Chongxi didn't even lift his eyelids.

He stood there, like a mountain that had been moved from afar, blocking most of the light from the doorway.

His voice was eerily calm, so calm that the space between each word seemed measured: "The national gate? My Li family has guarded the horse market for him for three hundred years. Without my Li family, the northern border would have been trampled flat by the barbarian horses long ago. If Zhou Qian dares to kill my son, what use is this national gate to me?"

After he finished speaking, he turned and left.

As he turned, the hem of his dark cloak swept across the corner of a low table, causing the untouched teacup on the table to tilt by half an inch.

He walked to the door, then stopped.

With his back to the brightly lit room and the patriarchs whose faces had changed, his voice, as if he were swallowing ice, rose and fell in a low, steady tone: "Anyone who wants to sever ties with the Li family can leave now, but before they do..."

He tilted his head slightly, the candlelight outlining a sharp edge on his profile in the shadow of the doorframe: "Think about whether anyone in your family is in the prison. Today it's the Li family, tomorrow it will be someone else's turn. Think about it carefully."

He finished speaking and took a step out.

The hem of the dark cloak disappeared into the night outside the door. The door was half-closed by the wind, and the night wind that leaked in through the crack blew the candlelight in the hall down, then straightened it again.

Only a deathly silence remained in the room.

No one stood up and walked away.

Zheng Guan squatted down to pick up the shards of the teacups on the ground. He picked up two pieces and then stopped, his hand hovering above the broken porcelain without moving.

Chen Yun stood in the same spot, slowly lowering the hand that had been pointing at the door, letting it hang at his side, clenching and unclenching.

By the time the news reached Zhou Xing's ears, it was already late at night.

There were no large lanterns in the side hall; only a bronze lamp on the corner of the table was lit, its flame dancing quietly inside the lampshade.

Zhou Xing sat at his desk, reading through the military reports sent from the northern border, one by one.

Those military reports didn't come from the Ministry of War; they were delivered through Lu Changfeng's secret connections, and the edges of the pages still had mud stains from the post road.

The number of troops stationed in each town in the northern border, the number of horses, the winter storage of fodder, and the movements of the various tribes of the Hu people since the end of autumn were all listed on the paper, the handwriting so dense it looked like ants lining up.

There was heavy snow falling outside the window.

Snowflakes pattered against the window paper, making a soft rustling sound, like countless tiny grains of sand running in the same direction.

After reading the last military report, Zhou Xing put it on the corner of the desk and then picked up the secret letter about the Li family's actions.

The letter paper was very thin and had been folded twice. When it was unfolded, the paper fibers at the creases were already somewhat white.

He brought the candlelight close to his eyes and examined it. After looking at it, instead of putting it back on the table as usual, he lit it by the edge of the candlelight.

The flames rose from the corner of the paper, consuming the writing inch by inch, until the entire envelope turned into a small clump of ashes and fell into the dish next to the copper lamp.

The firelight flickered, shining for a moment on his face, illuminating the calm depths of his eyes for a fleeting instant before dimming again.

He sat for a while, then reached out and scattered the clump of ashes in the dish with his finger to make sure there were no remaining words.

Then he spoke, his voice low, almost as if he were speaking to himself: "The North."

Just then, Granny Liu came in carrying a pot of freshly brewed hot tea to add charcoal. When she heard those two words and saw the clump of ashes in the saucer that hadn't completely cooled down, she paused for a moment.

She placed the teapot on the corner of the table, bent down to adjust the charcoal brazier, looked at the prince's profile, and asked softly, "Your Highness, has something happened?"

Zhou Xing looked up at her.

His eyes were clear, a clarity not illuminated by lamplight, but emanating from within himself, like well water in the depths of winter, its surface covered with a thin layer of ice, yet the water beneath remained alive.

He shook his head without answering, only saying, "Go and fetch the map of the North."

Granny Liu responded and left.

She walked to the bookshelf, pulled out the scroll containing the map of the North from the bottom shelf, handed it to the table, and then returned to the charcoal brazier without asking any further questions.

The few newly added pieces of charcoal in the brazier popped once, scattering a few tiny sparks that landed on the rim of the brazier, illuminating it for a moment before going out.

Zhou Xing opened the roll, took out the map on the kraft paper, and spread it out on the table.

The edges of the map had been rolled up too many times, and when it was unfolded, it would automatically roll back in the opposite direction. He used a paperweight to hold down the four corners and looked down at the long edge that stretched from Yanmen Pass all the way into the clouds.

He stared at it for a long time.

The snow was falling softly outside.

He lightly tapped the top edge of the map with his fingertip.

It landed in the northern horse market.

Then he withdrew his finger and slowly wrote a line on the paper that he had only half-written on.

The characters were extremely small, as if he were deliberately pressing the weight into the ends of the strokes: "If the Li family opens a horse market, then the Li family cannot remain!"

After he finished writing the line, he put down his pen and watched the ink slowly dry in the candlelight.

Each character is as if nailed to the paper, the strokes are deep and steady, without a single unnecessary tremor.