Mr. Zhao and Nie Yunyi looked at each other, and each saw his own shock reflected back.
If Li Fei hadn't exaggerated, if she hadn't lied, then these few grains of seed were, for the Great Song, a nation-securing treasure in the truest sense of the word.
Ever since the demons overran the land, humanity had huddled behind city walls, its living space squeezed down to almost nothing. Vast stretches of good farmland lay empty of human life, and no one could count how many river-country villages and granary districts the demons had claimed for their own.
Demons could never be fully purged. The court could only break new ground inside the city walls and send armies to hold down the few richest grain-producing regions. Everywhere else was simply beyond protecting.
So the Great Song lived forever on the edge of famine. Meat had become an outright luxury. Every single day, more commoners than anyone bothered to count starved to death, and the ones still breathing went about sallow and skeletal, glassy-eyed, no different from walking corpses.
But Dragon Blood Rice grew even on dry land, and its yield was frankly absurd. It could solve the grain problem at the root. It could mean a Great Song where no one ever starved again.
Mr. Zhao said nothing for a long moment, and something majestic surfaced in his bearing. With great ceremony he picked up a single seed and turned it over and over between his fingers.
In that tiny grain he saw achievement vast as the sky. He saw the merit of a living Buddha to ten thousand households. He saw himself written into the histories, an enlightened ruler whose name would carry down the ages.
"Is what the immortal maiden said just now the truth?" Mr. Zhao asked again, unable to hold the question back.
"Try it and you'll know, won't you? A harvest every half month," Li Fei said with a shrug.
"Quickly — take this to the Ministry of Revenue." Her easy manner gave the others confidence, and Mr. Zhao suddenly couldn't bear to wait another instant. He pressed the seeds into a guard's hands.
The guard, a man normally as steady and cold as stone, was trembling faintly from head to foot. He cradled the seeds in his palm and hardly dared close his fingers.
"No need to be so tense. I've got more." Li Fei took another small pouch of seed from Eva without looking and poured it out across a tray in a soft rattling rush.
A few reddish grains of rice slid off the edge of the tray, and Chancellor Liu — always serene as a drifting cloud — dropped to his knees with a thud. He scrambled to gather them up, wiped them clean on the front of his robe, and murmured under his breath:
"Sacrilege. Sacrilege…"
So the rumor that Chancellor Liu's parents had both starved to death was true after all. Li Fei watched the guards escort the seeds out as though carrying them through enemy lines, and thought it without a flicker of feeling.
"If this seed truly is as miraculous as the immortal maiden claims, then from this day on there will be no more starved corpses under heaven." Mr. Zhao looked at Li Fei, long and deep. "When that day comes, I will call on you in person, to thank the immortal maiden on behalf of the common people."
He didn't say what would happen if he had been deceived, but everyone in the room understood. To toy with an emperor over a matter like this would be a crime too vile to forgive. Not even Nie Yunyi could save her.
"I've only done a small, insignificant thing." Li Fei smiled modestly. "If you gentlemen can spread this seed as quickly as possible, I ought to be the one thanking you."
A treasure like that, handed over as easily as this?
Without even angling for fame or profit, asking only that the seed be distributed fast?
So besides slaying demons, was "doing good and accumulating virtue" also a path to merit?
Nie Yunyi kept his eyes on Li Fei, thoughts churning, and once again some measure of his wariness toward her dissolved. In its place came something close to respect.
After all, if what she said was true, she was a living sage. Such merit, such a contribution to the people and the dynasty — what harm in helping her attain the Way and ascend?
Nie Yunyi's gaze hardened into resolve.
Mr. Zhao stayed silent a while longer before his heart settled, and then he offered his sincere praise: "The immortal maiden's methods are brilliant, her mind subtle and refined. I am impressed. Truly impressed."
"This is nothing at all. Wait until the Emperor's birthday banquet — I still have a great gift to present," Li Fei said with a faint smile.
"Now that is something to look forward to." Light stirred in Mr. Zhao's eyes, and then he turned the conversation without warning. "I heard just now that the immortal maiden is also skilled in the healing arts…"
"Mm-hm. They call me the Sage Hand of Women's Medicine, the Bodhisattva of Bliss— ahem, the Child-Bestowing Bodhisattva." The fish had taken the hook, and Li Fei's eyes creased with a smile.
Nie Yunyi frowned slightly when he heard it.
He had told her plainly where things stood. His Majesty's lack of an heir was not a matter of cannot but of will not, and he was thoroughly sick of the whole court badgering him about producing children.
And here she was, calling herself a Child-Bestowing Bodhisattva — stepping squarely onto His Majesty's landmine.
Sure enough, some of the warmth drained from Mr. Zhao's smile. But after a moment's thought he spoke anyway.
"My wife suffers from a strange illness. I have sought out every famous physician, and yet…"
At the words "my wife," Nie Yunyi's eyelids flickered and his gaze went dim. Then worry crept into it, and at last he looked at Li Fei with open tension.
He had fallen for the Empress at first sight, and knowing full well it could never be, he had buried the feeling and tried to use the years as a blade to cut the thread of longing away.
Instead the feeling proved to be like wine. The years could not thin it. They only made it richer.
And the woman who haunted his dreams, the one he could never stop thinking of, had been shackled to a strange illness for years — while he could do nothing at all.
A quiet desolation settled in him, along with a hope that the unfathomable Li Fei might actually cure her. His expression barely shifted, but his eyes changed and changed again, and they told the whole story.
"Wait." Li Fei cut him off and waved a hand at the others. "We physicians of the immortal realm have a rule: we never disclose a patient's private affairs… Gentlemen, if you'd step out."
Nie Yunyi turned and left without hesitation. Chancellor Liu bowed to Li Fei, gathered the few grains of rice into his cupped palm, and followed him out.
Mr. Zhao hesitated a moment, then waved the guards away as well.
He had assumed at first that Li Fei was merely some gifted eccentric with clever tricks, hungry for rank and riches.
But after this brief meeting, he had come around perhaps thirty percent to Nie Yunyi's report: an immortal maiden descended to the mortal world, seeking merit. Even setting aside the Dragon Blood Rice, whose truth remained unproven, there were things that could not be faked — the impossible house, the paintings inside it, utterly unlike anything from any nation he knew, the foods and drinks no one had ever heard of, that "butterfly sprite" who gave off not the faintest trace of demonic aura, and that face of hers, too refined to belong to this world. It shook him, and in his mind a vague, drifting picture of the immortal realm began to take shape.
But whichever the truth was, Li Fei had no way to harm him — and Nie Yunyi was just outside the door.
"She gets headaches often, especially when her mind is unsettled…" Mr. Zhao steadied himself and began describing the illness.
"Plenty of conditions can produce that symptom." Li Fei made a show of thinking it over. "But from what you describe, if every fine physician in the realm is at a loss, it's clearly no minor ailment. My guess would be a Curse — or an unstable spirit, some injury to the soul itself."
"Of course, that's only conjecture. I'd need a thorough examination to know for certain."
She'd hit it exactly.
Mr. Zhao's pulse jumped, and his faith in Li Fei grew a notch. His face softened further. "The immortal maiden's medical skill is superb. My wife was harmed by villains when she was a child. Of her three hun and seven po, one po is missing."
"That," said Li Fei, her brows drawing together as she hesitated, "is somewhat difficult. Nothing involving the soul is ever easy to treat."
Mr. Zhao's heart sank lower and lower as he listened.
Even one who might be an immortal maiden had no answer for the Empress's affliction?
"But it isn't hopeless either." Li Fei's tone firmed, every inch the compassionate healer. "I have means to ease the pain… but a true cure would require a great many costly materials, some of which are hard to come by even in the immortal realm."
As she spoke she rose, fetched paper and brush, and wrote out in swift strokes the components required for the Succubus Witch Ascension Ritual, annotating each with color, appearance, and properties in case the materials went by different names on the Demon-Sealing Continent. Beyond that, she added every rare and priceless treasure she could recall from the books she'd been reading these past few days. Only then did she hand the "prescription" to Mr. Zhao.
"Mainly these… And of course, I've found that demon crystal cores also benefit the soul. If circumstances allow, Mr. Zhao, you might collect a few — they may substitute for some of the ingredients we can't obtain…"
Li Fei paused, then stressed, "The more the better."
Mr. Zhao's eyes swept down the list, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
He recognized several of the items on it. Every one was a heaven-born treasure seen perhaps once a century, the kind a whole nation's wealth might still fail to secure. Demon crystal cores were relatively common by comparison, but only Innate-grade demons possessed them, and those too were worth a fortune.
Still — when had a formula that could mend a soul ever come cheap?
Thinking of everything he owed the Empress over these years, Mr. Zhao sighed and folded the prescription away. "I will send men to gather these as best I can…"
"It seems you and your wife are deeply devoted to each other." Li Fei let exactly the right amount of envy show, then thumped her chest in guarantee. "But if Mr. Zhao entrusts his wife to me, I'll care for her with the utmost attention. You may set your mind completely at ease."
Li Fei clapped a hand over her mouth and swallowed the giggle that had nearly escaped.
"Then I thank the immortal maiden." Mr. Zhao's smile carried a trace of bitterness, but he shifted direction again. "I've just remembered — there are two others in my household who are ill…"
Li Fei understood at once. This was a test.
The dog emperor didn't trust her completely yet and wouldn't risk sending the Empress over. He'd go back and dig up two patients with the strangest afflictions he could find, to take the measure of her medicine.
So Li Fei didn't ask what ailed them. She simply promised outright: "Don't worry. Leave them to me…"
She paused, then deliberately slowed her voice.
"Even regrowing severed limbs…"
Mr. Zhao's eyelids fluttered, then went still again.
Clearly he had no intention of restoring anything "severed" for Lu the Eunuch-Dog — which told Li Fei immediately which "throne" the Song Emperor occupied in that negative-distance relationship between His Majesty and his personal eunuch.
"…Infertility, too. One dose and the trouble's gone."
At that last line, Mr. Zhao's face darkened a shade.
Li Fei had recognized who he was, and the Song Emperor knew that she had recognized him. Neither of them had poked through that last sheet of paper, both preferring the looser air it gave their conversation.
But the civil and military officials harped on it day in and day out — "the imperial house must spread its branches," "the naming of a crown prince concerns the very safety of the realm" — and the Song Emperor had long since had his fill of it.
Now Li Fei was raising the same worn-out subject, and he couldn't help a stab of disappointment.
Did even immortals, deathless and eternal, care so much about bloodlines and heirs?
But Li Fei seemed not to notice the smile fading from Mr. Zhao's face. Unhurried, she went on:
"Mr. Zhao knows I come from above."
"The customs up there are open-minded. We prize freedom. Never mind romances between humans and demons, or humans and ghosts — those are ordinary sights. Even a woman marrying a woman, a man marrying a man, is nothing rare."
"I have no interest in women myself, but I sincerely wish every pair of lovers under heaven a life together."
Li Fei paused, and then the blade came out from under the map.
"Which is why I have a method that lets a man bear a man's child."
The Song Emperor's breath stopped. His hand clenched on his thigh without his willing it, and his pupils quaked.
Li Fei had noticed earlier that the rules of the Demon-Sealing Continent differed from those of Loxibrook: here, two women together could never conceive a daughter, and two men producing a child was a flat impossibility, the stuff of fairy tales.
So when she'd learned of the Song Emperor's unspoken relationship with Lu Qianfan, she'd realized at once that the question of continuing the bloodline might be her killing blow. Win the Emperor's trust with the grain seed and the elixir of immortality; then use the crown prince question and His Majesty's private longing, with Nie Yunyi applying pressure, to send that Nine Thousand Years trotting obediently home to nurse a pregnancy and devote himself to producing heirs for the imperial house — leaving the post of Commander of the Demon-Suppression Bureau open for her.
But she'd dropped the idea soon enough.
Because she'd discovered that the Song Emperor was soft, while Lu Qianfan had ridden the bureaucratic faction's backing all the way up — a man they'd installed as a puppet who had since clawed his way to covering the sky with one hand. Counting on a benevolent but incompetent ruler, one who was moreover hopelessly in love with him, to bring down someone that ambitious was not a reliable plan.
Besides, Nie Yunyi would hardly relish the prospect of Lu Qianfan's child one day sitting the throne…
So Li Fei changed her plan and played the killing blow early.
"This — this…" Mr. Zhao was visibly shaken, his words tangling. "How could such a thing be? It's absurd."
But the light kindling in his eyes gave him away completely.
Li Fei's smile was radiant and gentle, her eyes full of encouragement. In that moment she truly looked the part of an immortal maiden.
"Love should be the resonance of one soul with another," she said, "not the reaction of one organ to another."
The Song Emperor fell silent. His fist tightened, light guttering and flaring in his eyes, and at last he forced out a single hesitant sentence:
"But the union of yin and yang is the proper way…"
"Small. That's thinking small." Li Fei shook her head and spoke with weight. "Yin and yang stand for all things between heaven and earth, not some narrow division of male and female. If there is love between man and woman, then there is love between man and man, woman and woman — and that is the true Great Way of yin and yang. Isn't it?"
Two or three sentences, and Mr. Zhao had nothing to say.
Naturally so. Before she'd crossed over, Li Fei had spent years doing battle with homophobes online, and her scholarship in rainbow thought outstripped her grasp of feminism by more than a little.
"Mr. Zhao!"
While the Song Emperor's thoughts were still surging and unsettled, Li Fei gave him no room to think. She turned aggressive, pinning his eyes with hers, and laid her cards on the table in a stirring, impassioned voice:
"A nation cannot go a single day without an heir!"
"But your ministers will only force you to have children with someone you don't love, treating childbirth as the whole purpose."
"Not like me. I can fulfill your love and secure your dynasty at the same time."
"So what is there left to hesitate over? You are an emperor. Must you let others dictate even who you have a child with? How is that any different from a stud hog kept in a pen?"
"And if you dare to be the first — if you accomplish this thing that has never been done since heaven and earth were split apart — then ten thousand generations from now, everyone who is like you will be grateful for the example you set!"
The words rang out and echoed in Mr. Zhao's ears like a great bronze bell.
Struck like a monk under the master's staff, the confusion cleared from his eyes and a bright light blazed up in it. He could almost see that figure in red robes, neither wholly male nor female to the eye, standing there with a swollen belly and gazing at him with tender, brimming affection.
"The immortal maiden's wisdom is vast. A single word has woken me from a dream." Mr. Zhao rose and bowed with clasped hands. "I ask the immortal maiden's help."
"Bringing a life into the world has never been one person's affair." Li Fei nodded, warm and gratified, serene as a bodhisattva with kindly brows and gentle eyes. "Mr. Zhao ought to go and ask what his beloved thinks. Shouldn't he?"
If there truly were immortal maidens in this world, surely this was what one looked like.
A warm current welled up in Mr. Zhao's chest, and he nodded gravely. "I understand."
"I imagine your heart is already halfway home. Go on, then." Li Fei showed the Emperor the door without the slightest shame. "We'll see each other again in a few days."
"Farewell." Mr. Zhao gave Li Fei one last long look, then turned and hurried out.
Lu Qianfan, let's see how you answer this move of mine.
Watching the Song Emperor's retreating back, Li Fei crossed her legs, one corner of her mouth curling into a mischievous arc, already picturing an opponent she had never met being hounded for a baby by the dog emperor.
Hee hee.
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