This chapter opens with a flashback to the events of the previous chapter, in which we learn that the assassins had stepped on the master's hand and killed him. The master is overcome with grief at the loss of his master, and he curses the assassins for stepping on his hand. He is convinced that they will not do anything to the dead man, so he pretends that he is dead and pretends to have died. He then realizes that he cannot defeat the assassins because he is trapped. He can only pretend that he has died so that he will not be able to defeat them. He also realizes that the emperor sent the eunuch, liu Qing feng, out to kill him, but he does not know why. He wonders why the emperor did not send him out to interrogate him. He thinks that if they examine him, he will tell them everything about his situation. He asks if there is something wrong with the princess, and she says that she is tired. He blames himself for the failure of the first attempt to scare her into miscarriage. He says that he thought that the third prince would scare the princess so that she would have a miscarriage, but that he had wasted a good chance. He now realizes that she was not pregnant, and that he can revoke her right to the throne if she is found to be pregnant.