Bao Zhu's next campaign demanded patience and delicacy.

She began the operation in the West Market, choosing a vendor who traded in exotic scents and oils. The shopkeeper was a Persian with a nose for counterfeits and a talent for memory. She commissioned a small batch of perfume—a blend of bergamot, myrrh, and a rare blue lotus that bloomed only at the edge of the marshes north of the city. She called it "Moon Over the Abandoned Garden." The formula was meticulously calibrated: a top note of nostalgia, a base note of poison.

It took less than a week for Zhang Yue's wife, Lady Zhang née Liu, to acquire the vial. She was a collector, after all, and the scent had been engineered to find its way to her through rumor and the threads of envy that tied the women of the capital together. By the time the bottle reached the Liu residence, it had already been the subject of half a dozen lunch conversations and at least one anonymous poem posted to the city's main gate.

Bao Zhu made sure to monitor every step. She paid the Persian an extra two coins to keep her name from the ledger, and a further coin to the runner who would deliver the corrupted final product. Lady Zhang adored the scent, wore it every night, dabbed it on her wrists and neck before bed, even sprinkled it on her pillows. Within days, the staff whispered of strange occurrences: Lady Zhang speaking to herself in the garden at midnight, insisting she saw a woman in blue reflected in the moonlit pond, and complaining of whispers in the corridor. Within a fortnight, Lady Zhang stopped eating. She locked herself in her chamber and refused to let even the maids near her. She wrote letters to her husband—rambling, desperate letters—accusing him of infidelity, of bringing shame to the family, of plotting to have her murdered and replaced.

Zhang Yue, ever the logician, brought in doctors from three different districts. They bled her, dosed her with poppy and prayed over her. Yet nobody thought to look at the perfume, and even if they had, the toxins would have been untraceable—a chemical ghost.

*

The salt was easier.

The Western Ward bustled with a clandestine network of river barges and pack animals that wound through the city under the cover of night, unloading goods into warehouses overseen by apathetic guards. With a touch of bribery—and some discreet favors from one of the older courtesans at the House of Tao—Bao Zhu gained access to the warehouse supervisor, a man plagued by a chronic ulcer and a fondness for fried fish. She treated his ailment first, building his trust over several visits by bringing him tea and cakes. When the moment was ripe, she suggested that his discomfort could stem from "contaminated" salt and offered to assist with the next delivery.

On the night a shipment destined for Zhang Yue's personal stock arrived, Bao Zhu and Xue Ling met in the dimly lit warehouse. They unwrapped tightly bound bundles and carefully set aside three sealed bags meant for his family's personal use—Zigong well salt from Sichuan. They mixed in a fine, silvery powder—arsenic—calculating the dosage precisely: enough to weaken without causing death. Once resealed, the bags were stacked with the others, and the foreman signed off on the shipment as dawn broke, sending the tainted salt on its way.

It took a matter of days for the symptoms to emerge. At first, Zhang Yue felt only fatigue—a paresthesia in the arms and legs, a sense of slowness that no amount of tea or ginseng could shake. He missed appointments and stumbled over his own words in meetings. His son, a beautiful child of six, stopped eating. He complained of stomach aches and spent most of his days curled up on a sleeping mat, crying for no reason. The house physicians were clueless as to the cause and offered ineffective solutions.

Zhang Yue's reputation began to suffer. Rumors circulated that he had grown soft, lost his sharpness, that his mind was unraveling. Clients transferred their business elsewhere. The city's poets began to mock him, softly at first, then more brazenly as the news spread. Inside the house, Lady Zhang grew weaker by the day, and started telling the servants that she was being haunted by the ghost of a courtesan she'd once wronged. The staff whispered that a curse had been laid on the household.

*

The collapse happened slowly, then all at once.

By the end of the first month, the household was in crisis. Zhang Yue's contracts had all but vanished; his name was dropped from invitation lists and his credit lines were quietly cancelled. The family's standing slipped, increment by increment, until even the servants began to talk back. Lady Zhang, no longer able to eat or stand, was sent to her family's ancestral home to be cared for by her maiden aunt. The child lingered, frail and listless. Zhang Yue retreated to his study, emerging only for meals, and even then, only to push food around the plate and sip watered wine.

Bao Zhu observed it all from a distance, gathering scraps of intelligence from the market, and from Xue Ling's spies.

The next morning, Bao Zhu wrote a letter addressed to Zhang Yue, making no effort to disguise her hand: "To lose everything is not the end, but the beginning. You taught me that, once."