The carriage entered the palace road beneath rows of ancient cypress trees.

Outside the curtain, Tianjing’s morning clamor gradually faded. The nearer they came to Zichen Palace, the quieter the world became. Wheels rolled over smooth stone. Palace guards stood in dark armor at intervals along the road, their spears upright, their gazes straight ahead. Red walls stretched beneath glazed tiles, solemn and endless, dividing the imperial city from the dust of ordinary life.

Inside the carriage, Shen Huaili sat upright, his hands resting on his knees.

Madam Xu kept her expression gentle, occasionally reminding Shen Yulan to fix the angle of her hairpin or lower her eyes at the proper time. Shen Yulan answered obediently, but her gaze kept drifting toward Shen Yuheng.

Shen Yuheng sat opposite them.

The moon-white robe made him seem even colder and more refined. His long lashes were lowered, his face pale but calm, one hand resting lightly over the other. He did not appear excited, frightened, or eager.

That composure irritated Shen Yulan more than any arrogance could have.

“Brother,” Shen Yulan said softly, “you have only just recovered. If you feel unwell at the banquet, you must not force yourself. Palace rules are strict. If something happens, Father and Mother will worry.”

The words were considerate. The meaning was less so.

Shen Yuheng lifted his eyes.

His gaze was quiet, but Shen Yulan’s heart tightened for no reason.

“Many thanks for Younger Sister’s concern,” he said. “I will remember not to trouble Father and Madam.”

Shen Yulan’s smile froze.

Madam Xu glanced at him once.

The carriage fell silent again.

Shen Yuheng did not continue. There was no need. In a household carriage, every word could be turned into fault. At a palace banquet, however, some truths could be made to bloom with only one sentence.

He had learned in two lives that restraint was not weakness. It was choosing the place where the blade entered.

The banquet was held in the side hall of Zichen Palace. Although it was called a welcoming banquet for the seventh prince’s return from the northern border, everyone in Tianjing knew it had another purpose. The imperial princes were of marriageable age.

The noble daughters and gers invited today were not random. Each family had calculated bloodline, rank, usefulness, temperament, beauty, and weakness. Each person had been dressed and sent into the palace like a carefully polished offering, hoping to be chosen, fearing to be chosen poorly, and trying to appear as though they had no such thoughts at all.

Great Yao had long lifespans among noble and imperial bloodlines. The emperor was old, but not weak. Succession mattered, yet it was not an immediate death struggle. Princes competed not only for the throne, but for fiefs, military authority, court influence, public reputation, and economic strength.

Marriage was one kind of weapon. A principal spouse could stabilize a household. A side spouse could pull in a faction and a concubine could become a spy, a weakness, or an excuse for later conflict.

Every family understood this and every family pretended not to.

When the Shen family entered the hall, many gazes swept over them. Most passed quickly over Shen Huaili and Madam Xu. The Shen House of Rites had old rank but insufficient power; it was neither worthless nor truly prominent.

Then those gazes reached Shen Yuheng and for a brief moment, the noise in the hall thinned.

He followed behind Shen Huaili according to etiquette, neither too close nor too far. Moon-white sleeves hung neatly at his sides, silver cloud patterns shifting with the light. His black hair fell like ink, bound with a plain white jade pin. His face was still touched by illness, but that faint pallor made him look less mortal rather than weak.

A young ger from another household forgot to lower his teacup.

A minister’s wife stared, then quickly looked away.

Several noble daughters exchanged glances.

Shen Yulan heard someone whisper, “That is the legitimate ger of the Shen House of Rites?”

Another voice answered, “I heard he was sickly.”

“Sickly? With that face?”

Shen Yulan’s fingers dug into her sleeve.

Madam Xu’s smile remained flawless.

Shen Yuheng heard all of it and reacted to none of it. He took his seat as arranged, lifted his teacup, and only touched the rim to his lips without drinking.

【Liquid scan complete. No toxin detected. Mild sedative herb residue from shared pot. Concentration low.】

Shen Yuheng lowered the cup and he thought it was interesting. It wasn't aimed at him specifically and it was likely a palace arrangement to calm nerves among the young guests, or perhaps someone’s quiet attempt to make certain people more pliable. Either way, he had no intention of drinking it.

Then the music began. The emperor entered with the empress and several senior consorts. Everyone rose and saluted.

“Long live Your Majesty.”

The Great Yao emperor was older than Shen Yuheng had expected, but age had not softened him. His hair was streaked with silver, his eyes deep and steady, and his bearing carried the weight of someone who had sat above court storms for decades. Beside him, the empress was dignified and cool, every movement measured.

The emperor smiled and told everyone to rise.

“Today is a family banquet. There is no need for excessive restraint.”

The hall answered with respectful agreement and naturally no one believed it.

A family banquet in Zichen Palace was still Zichen Palace. A relaxed emperor was still the emperor. One misplaced glance could become gossip before sunset; one wrong sentence could travel from noble tables to the inner palace before the wine cooled.

After three rounds of formalities, the palace herald announced the arrival of the seventh prince.

The atmosphere changed and Shen Yuheng raised his eyes and met a young man entering from the side of the hall.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in dark formal court robes embroidered with restrained gold thread. The robes were proper enough for the palace, but they could not hide the hard lines of someone shaped by armor rather than silk. His skin was sun-hardened from the northern border. His brows were sharp, his eyes deep, his nose straight, and his mouth naturally stern when unsmiling.

He carried the cold wind of distant battlefields into a hall full of incense and music.

This was Xiao Jingyuan. The seventh imperial prince of Great Yao. He walked to the center of the hall and saluted the emperor.

“This son greets Imperial Father.”

His posture was faultless. His voice was low and steady. Yet Shen Yuheng noticed the slight pause before he turned toward the empress, the fractional stiffness when a palace attendant stepped too close with ceremonial wine, and the way his fingers flexed once before stilling.

He was a man accustomed to commanding tents, military reports, and armored formations had been placed under layered palace etiquette. He was not incapable of it, but he did not belong to it naturally.

That made him more interesting.

The emperor clearly noticed as well. His expression held a trace of amusement.

“Seventh, you have guarded the northern border for four years. Now that you have returned to Tianjing, do not carry the barracks into every hall. Sit.”

Xiao Jingyuan lowered his eyes.

“Yes, Imperial Father.”

He turned toward his seat. Then he saw Shen Yuheng. The world became very quiet at least, for Xiao Jingyuan, it did.

The young ger sat beneath the palace lamps, dressed in moon-white, his figure slender and composed. Around him, noble guests whispered, smiled, calculated, and performed politeness. He alone seemed separated from the noise by an invisible layer of frost.

His beauty was not the lively brightness that drew immediate laughter. It was colder, quieter, more dangerous.

Skin like first snow beneath moonlight. Black hair like ink over white silk. Calm dark eyes lowered above red lips, elegant bones, a slender waist contained beneath formal robes. He looked like a banished immortal temporarily resting beneath mortal eaves, luminous enough to make people forget propriety, yet restrained enough that no one dared reach out.

But beauty was only the first blow. The second was recognition. Xiao Jingyuan had seen him before in a dream.

Before returning to the capital, while the northern wind battered the military tents and the watchfires burned low, Xiao Jingyuan had dreamed of an impossible sky.

He had seen buildings made of strange metal rising higher than palace towers. He had seen roads of light, weapons without bows, armor unlike anything forged in Great Yao. He had seen monsters pour from a torn sky, black and many-limbed, their bodies gleaming like blades.

He had seen a man in a torn white cloak standing before a passage filled with fleeing civilians.

That man had been beautiful too, though older, colder, sharpened by another world’s war. Blood had soaked his gloves. Strange light flickered around his wrist. He had raised a blade and held the monsters back until the last transport escaped beneath unfamiliar stars.

Then he had died.

Xiao Jingyuan woke from that dream with his hand around the dagger beneath his pillow and his heart beating as though he had ridden through a battlefield.

He had told no one. What could he say? That he had dreamed of a person from beyond the sky? That he had seen a war no historian had recorded? That a stranger’s death had left him with grief so heavy he could not breathe?

Yet now that person was sitting in Zichen Palace. He looked younger and paler. Wearing moon-white robes instead of a bloodstained cloak but the intensity in his eyes was the same. Looking lonely beneath restraint.

Xiao Jingyuan stopped walking.

The emperor noticed first. His gaze followed Xiao Jingyuan’s line of sight and landed on Shen Yuheng. After a moment, the emperor’s brows moved faintly.

The Shen House of Rites's Legitimate ger child Shen Yuheng.

The emperor had seen his name in the prepared list.  His family held an old ceremonial rank, his lineage was cleaner than most and his father is weak and having limited factional entanglement. He looked beautiful, quiet, and suitable.

Initially, he had only considered Shen Yuheng one of several possibilities. But now, watching his seventh son stare as though he had been struck in the chest by an arrow, the emperor changed his mind. He found it truly interesting.

“Seventh,” the emperor called.

Xiao Jingyuan returned to himself.

A court-bred prince would have smoothed over the pause with graceful words. Xiao Jingyuan merely turned, lowered his eyes, and said, “Imperial Father.”

The emperor’s tone was casual. “What are you looking at?”

The entire hall sharpened its ears while pretending not to.

Xiao Jingyuan’s jaw tightened slightly.

His gaze moved once more to Shen Yuheng. Shen Yuheng had also noticed him. Their eyes met across the hall.

For one heartbeat, the palace lamps, music, guests, and court rules all seemed to fall away.

Shen Yuheng looked at the seventh prince’s face and felt the system produce another faint flicker.

【Resonance detected. Source: unknown material in target’s possession.】

【Recommendation: proximity scan.】

Shen Yuheng’s expression did not change.

Xiao Jingyuan looked away first, not from indifference, but because he feared that if he continued staring, the entire hall would see too much.

He answered the emperor honestly.

“This son saw someone.”

A ripple of restrained surprise moved through the hall.

The emperor laughed.

“Only saw someone? I thought you had seen an enemy commander.”

Several princes smiled. Some looked amused. Some looked calculating.

The Crown Prince, seated not far from the emperor, also followed the direction of Xiao Jingyuan’s earlier gaze. His expression remained warm, but his eyes paused on Shen Yuheng’s face for a moment too long.

Beside him, a young woman in the Crown Prince’s household lowered her gaze.

Bai Ruoyao, Bai Liangdi of the Crown Prince’s household, sat quietly in her place.

She had been reborn not long ago.

Only one year of memory had returned to her, and even that year was fragmented by fear, famine, prison walls, and the death of her child. She did not know everything. She did not understand why Heaven had allowed her to return. She only knew that this time, she would not be used as a stepping stone for someone else’s kindness.

When Xiao Jingyuan looked at Shen Yuheng, Bai Ruoyao also looked.

She did not know Shen Yuheng well in the previous life. She remembered only vague rumors: a beautiful ger from an old household, married into a prince’s residence, quiet in the capital’s gossip, not someone who had harmed her or saved her.

But this Shen Yuheng…

Bai Ruoyao’s fingers tightened beneath her sleeve.

For some reason, he felt different from the people in her memory. Not because his face had changed, but because the air around him was too steady.

Like a person who had already crossed disaster.

The emperor did not press Xiao Jingyuan further before everyone. He let the banquet continue.

But from that moment onward, many eyes turned toward Shen Yuheng.

Shen Huaili was both proud and uneasy. Madam Xu’s hand tightened around her cup. Shen Yulan’s jealousy nearly spilled from her eyes and admist all the chaos Shen Yuheng remained composed.

He answered when spoken to, ate sparingly, drank no wine, and accepted attention with the calm propriety of someone raised under old rules. When a senior consort asked about his health, he replied gently that he had recovered enough not to disappoint imperial grace. When the empress asked whether he had studied rites, he answered neither too modestly nor too proudly, citing the old household teachings with exact precision.

The emperor listened to everyone's envy and Xiao Jingyuan listened more carefully than anyone. His eyes never leaving Shen Yuheng

Each time Shen Yuheng spoke, his voice was cool and clear, like jade lightly touching porcelain. There was restraint in him, but not fear. Illness had left him pale, yet it had not made him timid. He was beautiful enough to unsettle a hall, but every answer proved that his mind was sharper than his face invited people to believe.

Xiao Jingyuan had thought the dream would be the reason he could not look away.

Now he discovered there were many reasons.