Flower Stealing Master

They bantered a while longer, then Zhou Zhiruo seemed to think of something, and looked at him with a half-smile. “You took an enormous risk sneaking in here — and it was all to rescue that young married woman of yours, wasn’t it.”

“That’s right,” Song Qingshu said without any pretence. “She did me a great service, and I was worried she’d be in danger. I slipped in quietly — and finding you here was the last thing I expected. A genuine stroke of luck.”

“A stroke of luck?” Zhou Zhiruo gave a light laugh. “I should think finding me here was something of a disappointment.”

“What are you talking about — is there really any need to be jealous over something like this?” Song Qingshu looked pained.

“My own husband carrying on with another man’s wife, and I’m not supposed to mind?” Zhou Zhiruo gave a small sniff. “Bring that woman here.”

“What?” Song Qingshu stared at her, then said rather sourly, “We’re on the Isle of Heroes. Caution above all else.”

The corner of Zhou Zhiruo’s mouth curved slightly upward. “What — did you think I was going to make trouble for her?”

Song Qingshu laughed awkwardly and said nothing. His expression, however, said everything.

“Relax. I know what matters and what doesn’t.” Zhou Zhiruo pinched him. “I want her here to help you purge the poison.”

“Purge the — ah.” Song Qingshu took a moment to follow her meaning.

“You said yourself that nursing milk can temporarily suppress the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin, which allows you to channel your qi and drive the poison out, yes?” Zhou Zhiruo said it with complete composure.

“I… it doesn’t seem quite right to do that here.” Song Qingshu’s voice was uncharacteristically uncertain. What he and Qi Fang had been doing together under the guise of “purging the poison” was, in practice, rather a different sort of affair — and doing it in front of his legitimate wife was more than even his formidable shamelessness could comfortably manage.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Zhou Zhiruo said quickly. “Your safety comes first. The most urgent thing right now is restoring your cultivation — then I can truly stop worrying. If your cover is blown and something happens to you on this island… what are Ah Jiu and Qingqing — and I — supposed to do?”

Song Qingshu felt a deep warmth move through him. “And you’re truly not jealous?” he couldn’t help asking.

“Of course I’m jealous — enormously!” Zhou Zhiruo shot him a fierce glare. “I’ll settle every last one of those debts with you later, at my leisure. But if something happens to you here first, there won’t be any settling left to do.”

Seeing him still hesitate, Zhou Zhiruo pressed on: “That young woman did you a great service — doesn’t it worry you that she might be mistreated by someone else on this island right now?”

Song Qingshu startled. He had been so absorbed in other things that he hadn’t stopped to think. Qi Fang had originally been set aside for the young lord — no one would have dared touch her. But now that the young lord had clearly chosen Zhou Zhiruo instead, the servants might well assume Qi Fang had been passed over, and deal with her accordingly.

“I’ll send someone for her at once.” He was on his feet and out the door before he had finished the sentence, issuing instructions to the servants in the courtyard.

Watching her husband’s retreating back, Zhou Zhiruo sighed quietly. What woman could truly not care about something like this? But their marriage had always been peculiar. It had begun as a name without substance, then collapsed into enmity over a misunderstanding — so when she had eventually learned that her husband had been pursuing other women, she had felt nothing that resembled jealousy. What she had wanted, at that point, was simply to kill him.

When that plan had failed and she had ended up in his bed regardless — and then this happened, and then that — she couldn’t have explained it herself, whether it was something like attachment born of shared adversity, but Zhou Zhiruo found that feelings for this man had taken root whether she willed them to or not.

She had spent a long time trying to avoid those feelings. But when she heard the false news that Song Qingshu had been caught and executed after a failed assassination of the Emperor Kangxi, every emotion she had suppressed came flooding out at once — enough to drive her into the imperial palace alone to take revenge.

The ending had been a happy one. But she had emerged from it to find that her husband had, in the meantime, acquired several other remarkable women who loved him just as deeply — women who had been willing to risk their lives in the same palace for the same cause. Zhou Zhiruo found she couldn’t entirely dismiss them for that. And the nature of her relationship with Song Qingshu at that time had been so strange, so unlike any ordinary marriage, that she couldn’t very well invoke the authority of a proper wife to drive them away.

So she had maintained this peculiar equilibrium with the others, and then they had all gone through genuine danger together — the kind that forges bonds — and Zhou Zhiruo had gradually understood that these women were now a part of her husband’s life in a way that could not simply be erased. If she insisted on wielding the first wife’s authority and forcing them out, the outcome was far from certain.

And through the storms they had shared with Ah Jiu and Xia Qingqing, she had developed a real, if complicated, feeling for them — something between rivalry and sisterhood. After a long internal struggle, Zhou Zhiruo had chosen silence.

Zhou Zhiruo was, at her core, a woman with a certain calculating streak. As she watched Song Qingshu grow more formidable, and understood that more and more women would inevitably gather around him, and that the circumstances of their marriage had already made sole possession impossible, she had begun to think carefully about how to protect what she could.

Compared to the others, she had one natural and unassailable advantage — she was Song Qingshu’s first wife, properly wed.

Since she could not keep him to herself, she was absolutely determined that no one would displace her from the position of first wife. But she understood that position was not secured by her own will alone. Watching the power that stood behind Ah Jiu, Dongfang Muxue, and Xia Qingqing — and the enormous contributions each had made to his ambitions — she had felt a genuine crisis. That was what had driven her into the White Lotus Sect, seeking to harness the connections her father had built and bring that organisation under her influence. With such a gift as her dowry, she would have the foundation to hold her ground in whatever came next.

All of that calculation, however, was reserved for women she regarded as genuine rivals. A woman like Qi Fang — another man’s wife, their connection obviously a passing affair born of circumstance — Zhou Zhiruo had simply never considered her a threat.

Better to be gracious about it. Better to do her husband a favour and not make a scene over something that didn’t merit one. Though if the woman in question had been someone like Zhao Min — that would be an entirely different matter.

It was not long before an Isle of Heroes servant led a pretty young woman into the room, then discreetly withdrew and pulled the door closed behind him.

Zhou Zhiruo took one look at the graceful, blooming young woman before her and thought privately: That scoundrel has impeccably high standards. Every woman he gets entangled with is remarkable.

Inside her sleeve, Qi Fang’s hand was trembling. The servant who had brought her had told her she was to attend an extremely distinguished guest tonight, and her acupoints had been sealed — she had no capacity for resistance whatsoever, and was entirely at someone else’s mercy.

For days she had been waiting and hoping for Song Qingshu to come. Day after day had passed with no sign of him, and eventually her hope had begun to fade. She understood perfectly well that he was fighting a severe poisoning — self-preservation alone would be a struggle. And yet the stories she had heard in Lin’an’s gentlewomen’s circles, all those accounts of his extraordinary exploits, had kept one thin thread of hope alive in her.

Now even that thread was gone. She had been brought to someone else’s room, and she could imagine well enough what came next.

She had steeled herself to find some repellent man waiting for her. Instead, she walked in and found herself face to face with a woman of exceptional and unworldly beauty.

Qi Fang stood there for a moment, entirely at a loss.

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