For now, start here: Kelor pulled state-level cables, iron wires hidden in palace walls, to get Lingcai’s revoked Alchemist license back.

She brushed it off like wind over reeds, as if the Alchemy Bureau would march at a finger snap. In truth, stone-seated diehards don’t bow to power alone.

Those leaders wore a mildewed scholar’s air, abacus-straight and stiff. Even imperial edicts hit moth-eaten rules and bounced back like rain off tile.

To haul Lingcai’s license from that briar patch, Kelor burned midnight oil, tugged threads like a spider in storm-silk, and swallowed smoke.

She wouldn’t tell Lingcai how tangled it was. Flaunting hardship draws flies; smoke chokes the room and hearts turn away.

Yet when Lingcai hugged the fresh license like a warm loaf and cheered, Kelor’s face stayed clouded, thunderheads knotted, thoughts grinding like millstones.

Seeing the princess’s mood stuck like mud, Xueyu tiptoed across thin ice and asked, careful as a deer:

“…Is there something urgent still hanging…?”

“The assassin’s purpose. I know it.” Kelor’s voice was cool water. Her face didn’t clear; it sank deeper, a stone vanishing into a river.

“What purpose?” Curiosity pecked at Lingcai’s heart like a sparrow at grain. What reason breeds trouble like weeds?

Kelor rubbed her knotted brows. She drew a scatter of crumpled papers from her skirt pocket, autumn leaves flitting, and spread them on the table.

“Three years now, the Imperial Exams for office barely admit any humans. Ninety-nine percent are elves. The attempt on me was a red flag. Keep this up, and the crowd will riot like a storm tide.”

After the human regime crumbled, the Ariex order rose, and elf numbers shot up like bamboo after rain—from under five percent to thirty.

In this new blended nation where humans still fill the plains, office ladders and treasure barns collect in elven hands. Dissatisfaction swells like heat in August.

Seeing that paper heap scattered like snow, Xueyu and Lingcai didn’t dare a second glance. They edged away as if from plague smoke.

With the princess’s temper, one extra look can kick a hornet nest and send stings dancing.

Watching them retreat another step, Kelor felt their compasses spin crooked today, heads tilted like broken weathervanes.

She waved, weary fingers like a drooping flag. “What’s with you two? Come look. I’m not going to eat you.”

“Your Highness… this small person can’t read it. I fear stirring muddy water and troubling you…”

Lingcai had learned. Don’t look if you can dodge it. Don’t ask if you can sidestep it. Hide beneath eaves; let the rain pass.

Kelor gave her a cat-lazy glance. “You’ve been a princess long enough. In your view, what’s the cause?”

“Your Highness, this fool is ignorant and blind to the roots. Please point the lantern.”

Lingcai kept kicking the gourd down the road, smooth as a street game. It made Kelor’s kettle whistle with steam.

On another day she’d be cursing like a summer thunderstorm. Today she only shook her head, bark peeling in strips. “Fine, fine… You two live to rile me. If my years get shaved short, it’s your work.”

Xueyu finally saw why storm lived on Kelor’s brow these days, clouds heavy as wet wool.

She picked up the thread, weighing words like iron on a scale. “Either the lower officials formed cliques, cheating and lifting their own. Or elves are discriminating against humans.”

Kelor nodded, voice tired like dusk light. “I thought that first. I chased that trail for days, and it turned to mist. If I had proof, they wouldn’t keep their caps—nor their heads on their necks.”

That offhand “heads will roll” wasn’t meant for Lingcai, but it sent a chill through her like wind over reeds.

The old saying stands: serving a ruler is walking beside a tiger. Better to leave before claws flex.

Xueyu hesitated, hawk-shadow in her eyes. She’d heard of elves growing decadent, satin-soft and lazy. Her heart wanted a sharp example, one head on a pike to hush the flock, and to smoke out same-kin termites gnawing the beams.

“Then we strike while they’re unguarded. Raid suspect officials’ homes. If there’s bribery, there’ll be spider-silk traces.”

Kelor didn’t rush to blood. She sighed deep, storm-dark thickening across her face. “I’m not done. If it were that easy, we’d sleep like stones.”

She lifted the curtain and told them what her days of digging had unearthed, truth glinting like a blade under ash.

In a breath, Lingcai and Xueyu’s eyes went wide like lamps in fog. They could hardly believe the shape of it.

Kelor had checked not just lists and numbers. First thing, she cracked open original exam scripts resting in the dust-lit archive vault.

By combing those sheets, peeling page from page, she picked out a needle from straw—a problem sharp enough to prick skin.

In essays on politics, military, and economy, human students’ wells ran shallow. Elven answers drew from deep springs and mountain channels.

Not just in Chulde. Every district, every county sang the same tune. A few humans were admitted—raindrops in drought.

Even with human proctors and graders, nothing shifted. Names were sealed like wax stamps. They marked by rule, iron straight as rails.

After that, four heavy characters rose in Kelor’s mind like a carved tablet: racial disparity.

She knit her brows tight and let a cracked porcelain smile out with those words.

Before, elves were few, fires scattered in forest. Few stepped into city halls. They lived by tribes, picking leaders from their own campfires; no fault showed under the trees.

Set beside humans, sky and earth parted. The difference was the breadth of a canyon.

Elves, tempered by fierce internal competition, ground forward like a millstone. Less competitive human students couldn’t stand against that press, and the result followed like water downhill.

“Th-this…” Lingcai’s tongue tangled like weeds. Words wouldn’t climb out.

Memory flickered: at the higher Alchemy academy, most faces around her were elven. Professor Jelo had said she was the first human in school history to win a scholarship.

Racial disparity. A gorge with mist and sharp cliffs, hard to cross without a bridge of iron.

“Now what? The Imperial Exams choose the best. We can’t just add points for humans. But leave this knot, and the crowd will roar. Both sides are our own flesh—cut either, it bleeds. Mishandle it, and ethnic strife will blaze like a grassfire.”

Kelor sighed heavy, iron bell in her chest. This wasn’t trouble; it was a tightrope over the sky, a hanging blade above the crown.

Being a princess is a hard road, Lingcai’s heart muttered, a knot of twine cinched inside her ribs.

Then Lingcai remembered a thorn still in the paw. “The assassin—Qiange. She’s caught. How do we deal with her?”

Kelor’s head thumped like a drum. Lingcai had pointed at the jailhouse knot. Kelor waved a hand, wind shooing smoke. “…Leave her locked. We’ll speak another day.”

Xueyu added, blade glint in the word. “Attempted or not, an assassin owes a head.”

“Huh?” Lingcai flinched, sparrow-like. “She struck blind, not knowing the truth. Isn’t death too harsh?”

Xueyu shot back, words like arrows. “And the princess did nothing wrong. No grievance, no debt. Do we let her stab for free? Let her go today, and tomorrow every sour heart tries a blade? Is assassination a game now?”

“Stop it!!”

Rattled by their quarrel, Kelor slammed the table. Thunder jumped from wood. Lingcai and Xueyu went silent, candles pinched by wet fingers.

In the sudden hush, Kelor finally spoke, curtain falling at the end of the act. “…We leave it here today. Tomorrow at court, I’ll ask my father what he thinks. Do your work. Dismissed.”

She gathered the scattered files like fallen leaves, shook her head at the wind, and headed for the door.

“Who’s your father…?” Lingcai’s zither string slipped. She asked the foolish question before the tune caught.

“Is your head loose? Who else could the princess’s father be? You tired of your head hanging on your neck?” Xueyu rapped Lingcai’s skull like a walnut.

“She said it too plain… I couldn’t react in time…” Lingcai covered her head, eyes misting like drizzle.

These two clowns could wring water from stone. Kelor’s face turned grimly amused, half laugh, half sigh.

“Honestly, if you’ve got time to bicker, save your brains for real work. Forget it—I can’t count on you this life. In the next, you’ll still kill me with rage.”

After Kelor left, papers tucked under her arm like stacked tiles, Lingcai and Xueyu stared at each other, a long beat of echoing stillness.

Then, in perfect chorus, fingers stabbing like spears, both shouted, “It’s all your fault!”