Four years ago, on a cold road outside Heaven Dou City, Qian Renxue found an abandoned infant wrapped in worn cloth beside the remains of a broken cart. She had only paused for a moment out of calculation at first—an infiltrator in enemy territory could turn anything into a useful tool—but the child did not cry when she lifted him. He only stared at her with eyes far too aware for a baby, as if he understood exactly who had picked him up.
That strange awareness never quite disappeared.
He rarely fussed, rarely made trouble, and always seemed to watch more than ordinary children did. When servants tested him with rattles, he ignored them. When he heard adult voices, his gaze followed tone before face. More than once, Qian Renxue had the absurd feeling that the infant was studying her in return.
When he was one year old, she vanished.
Or rather, the woman who had cared for him vanished, and the refined, gentle crown prince Xue Qinghe appeared in her place.
The child did not expose anything. He only cried on the first day, and only where others could see. After that, he behaved exactly as a one-year-old servant child should. Because of that, he was quietly transferred into Xue Qinghe household, given a place among the palace attendants children, and assigned a strange role. Servant in name, playmate in practice.
The crown prince allowed it. Encouraged it, even.
And so the boy grew up in the shadow of the Heaven Dou palace—silent, clever, and too calm—while "Xue Qinghe" watched him with a gaze that was sometimes warm, sometimes measuring, and never simple.
Now he was four years old.
And on this afternoon, Xue Qinghe found him in the library.
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The crown prince's private library was not a place children entered.
The door alone made that clear.
It was a pair of sandalwood panels carved with cloud patterns and imperial swans, polished to a dark sheen that reflected the afternoon light. Palace attendants passed by it with lowered heads. Junior servants dusted the hallway outside, never inside. Even the older stewards only stepped through after being summoned.
A servant child had no business there.
Which was exactly why Xue Qinghe paused when he saw the door standing half-open.
He had dismissed his attendants a moment earlier on the excuse of wanting quiet. In truth, he preferred quiet. The palace was forever full of footsteps, silks, flattering voices, and hidden knives. Peace was rarely found.
But inside the library, the only sound was the slow turning of a page.
Xue Qinghe stepped over the threshold without a word.
Sunlight spilled through the lattice windows in pale gold, illuminating suspended dust and long rows of bookshelves. Bamboo slips, bound manuscripts, spirit beast records, court histories, maps, poems, military texts—the crown prince collection was both broad and carefully curated. Not even some court scholars had seen half of what was stored here.
By the innermost shelf, seated on a cushioned stool that was much too large for him, was a child in plain servant clothing.
He had dragged over a stack of books and opened three at once.
One lay spread across his lap upside down from an adult angle but perfectly readable from where he sat. Another was propped against the shelf. The third had been opened on the floor, and tiny fingers rested on the page as though tracing characters.
He did not notice the prince immediately.
Or perhaps he did, and simply chose not to react.
Xue Qinghe gaze lowered to the titles.
Basic Court Script.
Spirit Beast Encyclopedic Notes, Volume One.
A General Record of the Douluo Continent.
A pause.
Then, with exquisite calm, Xue Qinghe said, "Should I be impressed, or should I punish the little thief who broke into my library?"
The child finally looked up.
He was still small enough that his features retained the softness of early childhood, but his eyes were clear—too clear. There was no panic in them. No guilty scramble. Only a brief calculation, followed by a very deliberate widening meant to imitate innocence.
It would have been more convincing if it were not so controlled.
"Your Highness," the child said, climbing down from the stool with slow care, "I did not steal anything."
His voice was young and soft, but his words were neat.
Xue Qinghe folded his hands behind his back. "No?"
"I only read them."
The answer was so immediate that it nearly drew a laugh.
Nearly.
"A grave misunderstanding on my part, then," Xue Qinghe said. "You entered a room forbidden to most attendants, handled books copied by master scribes, and opened state records without permission. But because you only read them, there is no crime?"
The child lowered his head.
A model apology was expected here. Fear. Trembling. Perhaps tears, if he were clever enough to exploit his age.
Instead, he said, "Then I ask Your Highness to punish me lightly."
Xue Qinghe stared at him for a beat.
Then another.
Such composure was unnatural in a four-year-old. It had always been unnatural. From infancy onward, the boy had reacted too quickly to tone, too sharply to silence. He had learned routines after seeing them once. He had hidden what he understood whenever people were watching. And when he thought no one noticed, he looked at this palace the way a strategist looked at a board.
Interesting.
Dangerous, perhaps.
But interesting most of all.
Xue Qinghe walked farther into the room. "What were you reading?"
The child hesitated.
"History," he answered.
"And spirit beasts."
"And court script," Xue Qinghe added.
The boy nodded.
"Can you understand them?"
"A little."
"A little?" Xue Qinghe stopped beside the stool and picked up the encyclopedic notes from the floor. He opened it at random and turned the page outward. "Then read."
The child eyes moved over the text.
He began slowly, with the halting rhythm one would expect from a bright child still learning. But after the first line, the pauses grew shorter. By the third, they vanished almost entirely.
He was not reciting from memory.
He was reading.
Xue Qinghe turned another page. "This one."
The boy read again.
Another page. Another passage.
By the fifth, the library had become very quiet.
Outside the window, somewhere in the distant courtyard, a bell rang once in the wind.
"You've had lessons?" Xue Qinghe asked.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Not enough for this."
The child went still.
There it was—that tiny pause that told more truth than any answer.
Xue Qinghe crouched until they were nearly eye level. His expression remained warm, elegant, princely. The kind that put ministers at ease and fools into graves.
"Who taught you?" he asked.
The boy met his gaze.
"No one taught me much," he said carefully. "I just remember things."
Remember things.
A strange choice of words.
Xue Qinghe watched him, and beneath the serene face of the crown prince, Qian Renxue thoughts sharpened.
When she had first found him, she had dismissed the sensation as fatigue. An abandoned infant looking too steadily at the world meant nothing. Later, when he grew without ordinary childish carelessness, she revised that judgment. Perhaps he was merely gifted.
But now?
Now he sat in a forbidden library at four years old, reading texts meant for older children and speaking with the restraint of someone far older than his body.
There were many strange things in this world. Martial spirits. Soul bones. Bloodlines touched by gods.
And occasionally, monsters wearing harmless skins.
She should have felt alarm.
Instead, she felt the faintest thrill.
"How many words do you know?" Xue Qinghe asked.
"I haven't counted."
"That means many."
The child said nothing.
Xue Qinghe let the silence stretch. Most people hurried to fill silence. They exposed themselves that way. The boy did not. He simply stood there, small hands at his sides, waiting.
At last, Xue Qinghe rose. "Why come here?"
The answer came after only a brief pause.
"Books are quieter than people."
For the first time, Xue Qinghe actually smiled.
Not the measured court smile. Not the gracious smile of the empire's heir.
A real one, small and fleeting.
"That," he said, "is the most intelligent thing I've heard all day."
The child blinked, clearly not expecting that response.
Xue Qinghe walked to the nearest shelf and drew out a thinner bound volume. He returned and placed it atop the stool.
It was an introductory text: geography, court script, and simplified history, prepared for noble children before formal tutors advanced them to harder works.
"Read this one first," he said. "The others you may look at only when I am here."
The boy's gaze dropped to the book, then lifted again. "Your Highness is not punishing me?"
"Oh, I am." Xue Qinghe's tone turned mild again. "From today onward, you will come to the library openly instead of sneaking in. You will read under my eye. If you prove troublesome, I will increase the amount you must memorize."
The child stared.
That was not punishment. That was adoption by another name.
But he was too careful to say it.
After a moment, he bowed with tiny, practiced precision. "Yes, Your Highness."
Xue Qinghe looked at the bow and almost laughed again.
Too practiced. Too neat.
"Raise your head," he said.
The child obeyed.
"What should I call you when we are alone?" Xue Qinghe asked. "Everyone else says 'that child' or 'the little attendant.' It is tiresome."
The boy hesitated for longer this time. Perhaps because names mattered. Perhaps because he had never truly been allowed one that was his.
Finally he gave the palace name he had been using.
Xue Qinghe repeated it once, as if tasting the sound, then nodded. "Very well."
He turned toward the window, one hand resting lightly behind his back, sunlight outlining the white-and-gold trim of his robes.
The image was perfect.
Noble. Gentle. Refined.
A crown prince from a painting.
Without looking back, he said, "Do you know what kind of place the palace is?"
The child glanced at the shelves, the window, the locked side cabinets, the elegant figure before him.
"No, Your Highness."
Xue Qinghe's eyes half-lidded.
"It is a place where the wrong word can kill a person," he said softly. "A place where being clever is useful, but being noticed for cleverness is dangerous. Do you understand?"
The child was silent.
Then: "I understand."
This time, Xue Qinghe believed him.
He turned at last. Their eyes met across the warm stillness of the library.
One was a false prince wearing a borrowed face for the sake of an empire-sized scheme.
The other was a child who should not have understood nearly as much as he did.
For a moment, each seemed to recognize that the other was hiding something.
Not the shape of it.
Only the certainty of it.
"Good," Xue Qinghe said.
He tapped the book once with a slender finger.
"Then read. And when you do not understand a word, ask me."
The boy sat again on the stool, this time with permission.
He opened the book.
The page trembled slightly beneath his fingers—not from fear, but from something fiercer. Excitement, perhaps. Relief. The first step of a road he had been waiting to walk since waking in this strange world as a helpless infant.
Xue Qinghe moved to the opposite side of the room and selected a volume of memorials to maintain appearances, but his attention was only half on the text.
The other half remained on the child.
On the too-steady gaze.
On the impossible calm.
On the instinctive concealment.
A curious little thing, she thought behind the prince's face.
Then, after a beat.
Let us see what you become.
And in the quiet of the library, beneath the gold of the late afternoon sun, the first thread between them was tied—not by blood, nor loyalty, nor trust.
But by secrecy.