There is no-one here to watch Nie Mingjue, save for their ancestors, save for him.
Sui Zhou must rise eventually, of course.
Sui Zhou and Tang Fan attend all manner of gatherings with great regularity, but it is rare for them to partake in much mingling as themselves.
Everything is going to plan up until the precise moment it starts to fall apart.
“If there is anything else that can be said of Qinghe Nie,” Lan Xichen recites, helplessly faint, “it is that we take our weddings and our burials very seriously—”
“—For they are, to us, one and the same,” Nie Huaisang finishes for him. “You do remember.”
The good news is that it provides some much-needed confirmation, alongside further clarity: they now know the trick and the twist as to how their current suspect is orchestrating a rather elaborate extortion scheme. The bad news is that Sui Zhou is poisoned.
The deluge of rain that sweeps the capital is sudden.
Silly little ficlet about Bob visiting Gerard.
"Have you no care?" Tang Fan berates. "Or is this clumsiness?"
"I don't step beneath blades on purpose," Sui Zhou bites back, now sufficiently baited.