By dawn the next morning the camp felt less like a refuge and more like a battleground.
Lantern light still trembled over rows of tents, the air smelled faintly of boiled herbs, charred wood and the metallic tang of fear.
Patients moaned in distant tents.
The low, steady rhythm of soldiers' boots was constant, watchful, tense, ready.
Rouyuan slept fitfully through the first thin hour of morning and woke with a fever that set her pulse like a tiny drum.
Paradoxically, that same fever sharpened her mind.
Even fevered, she moved through the camp like a compass—checking charts, listening to young physicians' reports, answering questions with clipped efficiency.
The students watched, stunned, how could one fragile woman carry so much clarity and calm?
Murong Yexuan, however, had not slept at all.
He had left the riverbank investigation in the hands of the Snow Wolf Cavalry that morning—
His riders were scouring tributaries, questioning boatmen, and checking for unusual shipments—
Because one thought would not leave him, people had not died by accident.
Someone had taken advantage of a natural crisis and turned it into a weapon.
He returned to the disaster camp at a run when Yang Bin, a breathless aide, rode in with paper in hand.
"Your Highness!" the man panted. "We have trace evidence at the supply depot near the south well. The barrels bore a merchant seal not used in this district. There's also foreign dye on the staves—someone used that to mark them."
"The forger's touch is clumsy, but deliberate."
Yexuan's eyes caught Rouyuan straightaway.
She sat upright on a low stool, sweating, but directing people.
He moved to her before the report finished, knelt, and pressed a cold cloth to her brow.
Her glance found his, for a single suspended heartbeat they needed nothing more than to know the other breathed.
"What are doing? Please tell me, what are trying to do? " He said softly, the command in his voice drowned by warmth.
A Disease with Two Faces
Rouyuan had already drawn the clinical map in her head, Cholera was the body's bloodless flood—mass fluid loss, white, flaccid tongue, pale watery stool, sunken eyes.
Left untreated it led to heart failure from collapse.
The camp could fight that.
What worried her now, with a clinical neatness she could barely enjoy because the fever hummed behind her temples, was not only the cholera but the anomalies.
"Some tanks show signs of contamination beyond bacterial clouding," she told Yexuan.
"There's organic detritus and, oddly, a pungent oil residue. The water tastes faintly metallic and has a strange chemical note—" she coughed, then shook her head, refusing to form words that might sound like instructions.
"We can test for markers, not methods. Have the chemistry team isolate unusual residues; check for dyes, foodstuffs, and foreign preservatives. Check the ship manifests at Donghai Port—any unexpected shipments?"
Yexuan nodded and immediately ordered the cavalry to data and supply runs,
His eyes never left Rouyuan while he delegated.
He would not let the threads go loose.
"Drink a little," he urged, though his voice was rough. He spooned a small draught of ORS between her lips. She gagged and then swallowed. Her eyelids flicked.
"You shouldn't have pushed so hard," he said, unable to hide the ache in his voice.
Rouyuan managed a thin smile. "The people needed—"
"You are not the people," he interrupted, softer than any command. "You are Rouyuan."
Tired as she was, she pressed her fingers to his palm once, a small protest and a larger thank-you.
It became clear, over the next hours, that the outbreak had two cause-lines tangled together,
Natural Failure — seasonally warm rains had leached into upstream latrines and unsealed wells. The sanitation had been poor; the region always teetered on the edge in late summer. That explained the initial cluster of cases.
Deliberate Aggravation — someone had used the natural crisis as cover. Barrels and baskets that were supposed to contain medical supplies or salt were diverted and emptied into reservoirs and cisterns, some seals were cleverly forged, others bore marks that only a merchant from Xihuai trader used.
The intent was clear: create panic, blame the northern military logistics—political leverage disguised as humanitarian disaster.
Rouyuan's cheeks flushed with fever and something like fury.
"They weaponized our water," she said.
"They turned our wells into a delivery route for chaos."
The Trap Tightens
Yexuan's letter to the Crown Prince had been a small cord pulled taut.
Murong Yunqing did not hesitate.
He ordered the staged 'emergency relief' paperwork, the bait that Yexuan had suggested and placed it in the visible ledger with a hand-seal that meant urgency.
Shao Bowen, the ledger clerk in the Ministry of Trade who had been bribed and grown too comfortable with unusual instructions, took it as an opportunity.
He went to the depot to meet the 'urgent transfer.'
The Shadow Guard—watched in the shadows.
Duke Lin Changyu oversaw the mock approval chain for the relief, he let the bait sit in plain sight.
When Xue Qiwu moved to reroute the relief convoys, men stepped in.
Papers were produced that proved the funneling of funds, The forged stamp, and the merchant mark Yexuan's scouts had noticed.
Simultaneously, men tracing the barrels that had been dumped into Dongming cisterns traced their origins to a private stable of warhorses owned by a noble supplier.
The chain had too many links to be chance.
When the embers cooled enough to be read as fact, the Crown Prince held his breath and then acted, he sent an envoy with writs naming Xue Qiwu and his collaborators for arrest.
The charges were not only embezzlement but deliberate contamination of civic water supplies—a blasphemy against the life of the people and a crime that shook even the most complacent courtier.
In desperation, they shifted tactics.
They began shoving all blame onto the Ministry of Finance, Yan Bingyun—the very man who had reported the corruption.
Que Qiwu quickly produced "new evidence," forging documents with Yan Bingyun's signature, backdating reports to make it appear as though the minister had approved every illegal transaction.
They intended to pin the entire scandal—embezzled funds, the missing disaster relief goods, the siphoned rations, and even the poisoned water shipments—onto the one man who had dared expose them.
Yan Bingyun was arrested along with Xie Qiwu and taken to a prison managed by the Embroidered Uniform Guard.
Where Affection Learns to Breathe
Murong Yunxi, who had watched Xianyi's hands tremble over orders all morning, found excuses to linger in the Yunyan Pavillion.
He carried crates, lifted barrels, and pretended it was duty.
Once, when Xianyi's ink-stained fingers slipped, he caught her, his palm warm and steady.
"Breathe," he told her.
"Ha..ha..ha.." Xianyi swallowed a tiny laugh.
The steady foundation of their affection grew in the creases of this ordinary help—
His gentle insistence she rested, her small reprimands that only deepened when he did.
They taught one another like people learn a new book, carefully, turning pages together.