Fu Xi Yan sat cross-legged in a tree not far from the residence and watched Pei Yuan Jin head inside. He deliberately stuck out his tongue, stretched both arms forward, and pretended to be an emotionless jiangshi.
Pei Yuan Jin clearly misunderstood. The man who had been about to leave suddenly appeared back in the tree and smoothly wrapped his arms around Fu Xi Yan.
Fu Xi Yan, whose arms had happened to land across Pei Yuan Jin’s shoulders: “…”
Seeing Fu Xi Yan pull his tongue back in, Pei Yuan Jin thought about it and leaned over to kiss him. “Like this?”
“…”
Fu Xi Yan mentally ran through the entire explanation of what a “jiangshi” was, then decided in his heart that he had already cleared up the misunderstanding. He smiled and nodded. “Exactly. Hurry up. The truth is waiting for you!”
Pei Yuan Jin stroked his face. It no longer had the soft, plump feel from before, but his skin was still smooth and pleasant beneath the fingers. Pei Yuan Jin’s gaze darkened slightly. He suppressed an untimely thought and vanished over the residence wall in a flash.
Fu Xi Yan could not hide his envy.
No matter how good someone’s retelling was, it could never be as fun as watching the livestream yourself.
The residence was not large. Pei Yuan Jin used Swift-Wind Concealment, swaggered straight through the defenses, and slipped toward the main room in the center.
Firelight flickered inside, and faint voices could be heard.
But a huge black dog lay outside the door. It was extremely sensitive. Although it neither heard a sound nor saw a figure, the moment Pei Yuan Jin approached, it lifted its neck and stared vigilantly toward the doorway.
Pei Yuan Jin paused and backed away, circling outside the range of its alertness before leaping onto the roof of the main room. Not far away, a guard swept the surroundings with sharp eyes, but from his perspective Pei Yuan Jin never “appeared” at all. The black dog shifted its head a few times, detected nothing abnormal, and lay down again.
The people inside had no idea someone else had appeared on their roof, so they did not lower their voices. Wen Hong Xuan in particular, a man who normally presented himself as elegant and refined, sounded unusually agitated tonight.
“The Great Elder has delayed setting out again and again. One hundred thousand troops are stranded at the northern frontier, exhausting soldiers and wasting provisions until we become a laughingstock. The Second Elder and Third Elder went south long ago and remain missing. If this continues, more than ten years of planning in the Northern Lands will collapse, and Yujing, built with the hands of our Zhou warriors, will fall into Mengwu’s grasp. I ask Your Highness to make a decision before it is too late!”
After a period of silence, a hoarse and indifferent voice slowly answered, “You caused a catastrophe by deceiving everyone, yet still show no repentance. Now you ask others to wipe your backside while crushing them beneath a pile of grand principles, arrest people at random under fabricated charges, and use them as threats. Scholars really do have more twists in their guts than anyone else.”
Wen Hong Xuan said, “The army approaching the northern frontier is the result of an agreement made with the King of Mengwu years ago. A man cannot stand without trust, and a nation declines without it. I have already explained this to Your Highness several times.”
“You and I both know why that agreement was made. I competed openly and secretly with the Prince of Yunzhong for years. I know all his tricks. At least that man still had a bottom line and would never sell his country for glory. You, on the other hand… after more than ten years apart, you’ve become very unfamiliar.”
This time it was Wen Hong Xuan’s turn to fall silent.
After a while came the sound of a teapot pouring water. Wen Hong Xuan seemed to calm down considerably. “Whether we advance or retreat, the Great Elder must depart immediately for the front and stabilize military morale. One hundred thousand troops consume several thousand shi of grain every day. The granaries are already stretched thin. If this continues, we’ll have no choice but to touch the people’s life-saving grain.”
The so-called life-saving grain was the emergency reserve stored against disasters.
Without waiting for an answer, Wen Hong Xuan continued, “If Your Highness has news of the Second Elder, please ask him to return to Yujing immediately as well. The world may be vast, but fallen leaves return to their roots. Another home may be fine, but a man should still return to his ancestors.”
The other man gave a cold laugh. Wen Hong Xuan acted as though he had not heard and continued, “This afternoon, the Great Elder’s son vouched for a group entering the city. Men and women, old and young, whose answers were evasive and incomplete. The War Support Office suspects they are spies from Northern Zhou. If Your Highness sees the Great Elder, please remind him not to invite wolves into the house and repeat old mistakes.”
The prince mocked him. “One moment they’re warriors of Zhou, the next they’re Northern Zhou spies. I’m only a crude military man, but let me shamelessly offer Lord Wen a line of poetry: ‘Born from the same root, why torment one another so cruelly?’”
Elio’s Notes: The line alludes to the famous “Seven Steps” poem traditionally attributed to Cao Zhi, in which beans and bean stalks from the same root become an image for brothers harming one another.
Wen Hong Xuan immediately became agitated. “Has Your Highness forgotten the Prince of Yunzhong’s death?! He was your own brother!”
The prince, who had been mocking him from the beginning, also became agitated. “Wang Yu is my brother too! The land you want Mengwu’s one hundred thousand troops to set foot on is Northern Zhou. The people their weapons will point toward are citizens of Northern Zhou. I would rather be a defeated rebel than an enemy’s dog!”
Crash!
The teapot struck the ground and shattered, fragments flying everywhere.
Wen Hong Xuan stepped over the shards and rushed in front of the man, looking down at him. “Your Highness survived nine deaths for one life. Do you truly feel no hatred?”
“I should have suffered ten deaths and had no life at all.”
The reply was calm and firm, as though he had already lost all attachment to living.
Wen Hong Xuan’s pupils contracted. The fist at his side clenched, then loosened. His foot unconsciously retreated a step and landed on a broken piece of porcelain. The sensation beneath his shoe brought him back to himself. In an extremely low voice, he said, “Do you think I didn’t wish that the one who woke up had been… Your Highness?”
Although there was a prince before him, the unfinished sigh in Wen Hong Xuan’s words seemed to point toward something else.
The darkest part of the night had passed, yet dawn remained far away.
Wen Hong Xuan and his people left the residence as silently as they had come, but its defenses did not relax. Pei Yuan Jin descended from the roof and, before the black dog could make a sound, knocked it unconscious.
Wen Hong Xuan had unexpectedly left the door open. Whether he had forgotten or done so deliberately was impossible to say, but it certainly made Pei Yuan Jin’s entry convenient.
The moment he stepped inside, he saw a man with dry yellow hair slumped in a wheelchair. A blanket covered his legs, one corner hanging nearly to the porcelain fragments on the floor.
After what he had just overheard, Pei Yuan Jin had already guessed the man’s identity.
While Pei Yuan Jin observed him, the man also watched Pei Yuan Jin. Unexpectedly, he did not call out. Instead, he raised a hand and gestured for Pei Yuan Jin to leave quickly.
Pei Yuan Jin looked at him. Rather than retreating, he advanced, walking toward the man step by step.
“The Prince of Longnan?”
The instant the words fell, more than a dozen iron arrows tore through the air. Their speed and treacherous angles made them nearly impossible to evade, yet Pei Yuan Jin appeared not to notice at all and continued forward along his original path one step at a time.
Only when the arrows approached his back did they seem to encounter an invisible vortex. The arrows that had been attacking from different directions twisted together into a single bundle, then plunged straight downward and stabbed into the floor.
The Prince of Longnan’s gaze slowly traveled upward from the cluster of arrows embedded in the ground to Pei Yuan Jin’s face. He appeared calm, but the fist gripping his armrest betrayed his tension.
Pei Yuan Jin stopped three chi away and raised a brow at him.
Only then did the Prince of Longnan seem to remember the question he had just been asked. “I am.”
The moment he spoke, three black-clad guards rushed in from outside. Two more soon followed. In total, four groups entered, nine people altogether.
Pei Yuan Jin turned his head coldly and flicked a glance behind him.
The nine feared he might harm the Prince of Longnan and surrounded him at a cautious distance.
The Prince of Longnan waved a hand. “Withdraw. He is my… friend.” After speaking, he deliberately glanced at Pei Yuan Jin. Pei Yuan Jin did not deny it.
“We are charged with protecting Your Highness. We dare not abandon our posts.”
The nine lingered unwillingly.
The Prince of Longnan’s face chilled. “Out.”
The nine hesitated. Some watched Pei Yuan Jin’s back, others stared at the bundle of arrows in the floor. In the end, they still slowly left the room. They did not go far, however, and remained watching from a distance in the courtyard. One even picked up the black dog and circulated inner force through it until it woke with a soft whine.
The Prince of Longnan’s gaze darkened. Their outward obedience and inward defiance repeatedly reminded him that his existence was little more than a joke.
Pei Yuan Jin had no interest in what those people outside were thinking. All he cared about was that Fu Xi Yan was still waiting for him in the tree near the entrance. He gathered his focus and asked directly, “Aunt Yu came looking for you. Why are you refusing to see her?”
The Prince of Longnan seemed not to have expected him to be so direct. There had been no introduction, only “Aunt Yu” the instant he opened his mouth. After a slight pause, he said, “We will have to part in the end. Why meet again?”
Thinking of Fu Xi Yan outside, Pei Yuan Jin had almost no patience left. He said sarcastically, “Everyone born will die. Why bother living?”
His gaze swept over the Prince of Longnan’s legs hidden beneath the blanket and the wheelchair, clearly assuming that was the heart of the problem. But Pei Yuan Jin was truly terrible at persuading people. Seeing the prince unmoved, he looked toward the outside with a cold expression.
The guards standing in the courtyard immediately tensed, and even the black dog let out a warning growl.
Fu Xi Yan yawned, casually plucked a leaf from the tree, and rolled it between his fingers in boredom. He wondered what Pei Yuan Jin had found inside. Had he seen the Prince of Longnan? Was the prince being imprisoned by Wen Hong Xuan and used to threaten Zhang Zu Rui? Had Zhang Zu Rui simply refused to say anything because he feared disappointing Yu Su Huan if the rescue failed?
The jumble of speculation actually helped wake him up a little.
In the darkness, an orange-red flash flickered among the buildings not far away.
Fu Xi Yan straightened instantly and leapt down from the branch. He no longer cared whether he alerted anyone and charged inside at full speed. A fight! A fight! He had seen the rally signal. It was time to join the team battle!
He entered with all the momentum of one man capable of holding a pass against ten thousand, only to discover a scene completely unlike the bloody, furious battle he had imagined. Nine guards stood obediently in one corner of the courtyard, leaving the entire path clear. Pei Yuan Jin looked down at the huge black dog near his feet with disgust. Every time the dog sniffed his ankle, arched its back, and prepared to attack, Pei Yuan Jin’s pressure crushed the attempt and reduced it to a wronged whine.
Fu Xi Yan nearly failed to stop in time and rushed all the way to Pei Yuan Jin. The black dog apparently decided this newcomer looked easier to bully and immediately pounced. Pei Yuan Jin made no move to stop it, so Fu Xi Yan instinctively reached out, caught the dog with one arm, and pinched its muzzle shut with the other hand.
The black dog, which had been prepared for a great battle, sat frozen like a wooden chicken in Fu Xi Yan’s arms, apparently never imagining its attack would produce this “result.”
Fu Xi Yan bounced the dog slightly. “Pretty fat.”
Then he sniffed. “So smelly.”
Finally he delivered his conclusion. “I miss my tiger sonny.”
If the black dog could understand human speech, it ought to point at Fu Xi Yan’s nose and curse him as a scumbag. Holding one dog while thinking about another tiger. What a damned substitute trope!
Pei Yuan Jin said, “The Prince of Longnan is inside.”
Fu Xi Yan immediately dropped the dog and darted indoors. Seeing the man in the wheelchair, he frowned and used the Spirit-Sight Art to examine his vitality. It was not especially vigorous, but it was green. He showed no sign of impending death.
Because Fu Xi Yan was angry, he skipped introductions entirely and asked directly, “Do you know Aunt Yu is waiting for you?”
The Prince of Longnan looked helplessly at Pei Yuan Jin as though asking whether the two of them always spoke with this much bluntness and so little concealment. Still, he was hardly unfamiliar with this style. Back in military camps, most martial officers he had met behaved just as openly.
He said, “I know. I had General Zhang send her the pastries she likes.”
His expression turned gentle. He clearly believed he had done something good, and a faint smile even appeared at the corners of his mouth.
Fu Xi Yan, however…
“Pah! Scumbag!”
Telling her to move on with your mouth while dangling bait with your heart. Who could look at that and not call you a dog?
The Prince of Longnan stared blankly at him. The word “scumbag” was new to him, but its meaning was not difficult to understand. What he could not understand was why it applied to him.
Fu Xi Yan lifted his chin slightly and demanded arrogantly, “Are you thinking that the way you look now is no longer worthy of Aunt Yu, and that seeing her would only ruin the image she has of you, so you might as well leave her a heroic silhouette to remember? Do you think that as long as you don’t appear, time will smooth over her wounds, and that everything you’re doing is entirely for her own good? Do you think having someone send her a bag of pastries is enough to show you care? That is all your own wishful thinking and self-righteousness!”
The Prince of Longnan said to Pei Yuan Jin, “Would you mind closing the door?”
The guards immediately shouted nervously, “Your Highness!”
The Prince of Longnan waved a hand. “When I’m being scolded, I don’t want too many people listening.”
“…”
The door slowly closed, cutting off the guards’ worried gazes. How much sound it could block was another question. At least judging from Pei Yuan Jin’s personal experience, not much.
The Prince of Longnan did not care. He rolled his wheelchair forward until he was near Pei Yuan Jin. “You are Pei Yuan Jin.” Then he turned toward Fu Xi Yan. “You are Young Madam Pei.”
Fu Xi Yan said irritably, “Do I not have a name?”
The Prince of Longnan looked at Pei Yuan Jin. “Su Huan has always been excellent with accounts. Back then she kept the princely residence perfectly organized. But her health has never been very good, so she cannot overwork herself.”
Fu Xi Yan said, “We all know how capable Aunt Yu is. Talk about yourself.”
Only now did the Prince of Longnan recover from being scolded into a daze. He could not help giving a faint scoff as he leaned back in his chair and looked sideways at Fu Xi Yan. “At a palace banquet years ago, Fu Fu was present as well. I saw him once from a distance. You do not seem very much like him.”
“I take after my mother.”
“…Good fortune.”
“If we keep chatting, Wen Hong Xuan will circle back and kill us by surprise. Or are you deliberately waiting for him to return?” Fu Xi Yan turned toward Pei Yuan Jin, his eyes darting meaningfully.
Pei Yuan Jin raised a brow in confusion.
Fu Xi Yan said helplessly, “I’m asking whether you want to simply… tie him up and take him back.” Although the final five words came out somewhat muffled, both other people in the room heard them clearly.
The Prince of Longnan instinctively gripped the armrests. “Wait.”
Fu Xi Yan asked, “For what?”
Pei Yuan Jin suddenly turned toward the residence gate. “Someone’s coming.”
At the same moment, dozens of black-clad men dropped into the residence like dumplings falling into a pot. The nine guards stationed outside the door turned vigilantly. The black dog also faced the entrance, ready to charge at any moment.
The night suddenly became very quiet. Even everyone’s breathing seemed to stop.
Without warning, dozens of silver points flashed in the darkness. Long cords tipped with spearheads struck the ground at arrow-like speed. Their lengths and distances differed, yet they landed precisely so that the nine men and one dog were separately boxed in and trapped from above and below.
The guards seized the long cords in return and yanked hard, immediately dragging nine black-clad attackers into view.
Each black-clad man held a cord in one hand and a pair of Mother-and-Child Wheels, one large and one small, in the other. As they were pulled close to the guards, they suddenly tossed the cord ends behind themselves and pushed the smaller wheels forward. The child wheels spun out at astonishing speed toward the guards’ throats.
The guards bent backward to evade the child wheels. Just as they straightened again, the mother wheels came flying at their faces. For a time, nine long cords and nearly twenty mother-and-child wheels spun throughout the courtyard, forcing the guards to leap and dodge with almost nowhere safe to land.
Taking advantage of its smaller body, the black dog cleverly darted between the cords. Then, spotting an opportunity, it lunged at one of the black-clad men and smashed its head directly into the man’s fist… knocking itself unconscious.
Inside, the Prince of Longnan said solemnly, “Everything you want to know will be explained after I leave.”
Fu Xi Yan looked at Pei Yuan Jin. Pei Yuan Jin looked back. Both realized that although their arrival tonight seemed extremely badly timed, it was actually perfectly timed. Had they arrived one step later, they would have found an empty building.
They had already come this far. There was no chance they would let the Prince of Longnan fly out of their grasp!
Fu Xi Yan asked, “Where are you going?”
The wheelchair rolled silently and rapidly through the darkness. Pei Yuan Jin strolled in front of it, one casual step covering several zhang, while Fu Xi Yan behind him pushed the chair so fast it nearly became a pair of Wind-Fire Wheels.
But as they continued, they actually seemed to be heading straight out of the city.
Seeing the wall ahead, Fu Xi Yan suddenly stopped and shoved both prince and chair beneath the eaves nearby. “You’re leaving the city?”
The Prince of Longnan seemed to understand what worried him. “Not far. You can return quickly.”
“Those guards saw us. Even if they didn’t see clearly, they can guess who helped you escape, can’t they?” Zhang Zu Rui was one of the Prince of Longnan’s generals, and the two sides had happened to meet earlier that very day.
Ghosts would laugh at anyone claiming Zhang Zu Rui had no part in this.
Fu Xi Yan said coldly, “And Zhang Zu Rui just vouched for a group entering the city today. If we’re gone, what happens to Aunt Yu?” He deliberately omitted the Flower-Guarding Unit. For one thing, he wanted to see just how much of a scumbag the Prince of Longnan truly was. For another, the unit did not have many members to begin with, and some had already been sent elsewhere. Whether they could withstand Wen Hong Xuan’s fury on Northern Lands territory was uncertain.
The Prince of Longnan said, “Wen Hong Xuan is desperate to send General Zhang to the front. He won’t break openly with him at this moment. Su Huan is safe at the Zhang residence.” He turned slightly. “What I do today is not only for myself, but also for the people.”
Fu Xi Yan looked questioningly at Pei Yuan Jin.
Pei Yuan Jin said, “Pay a deposit.”
The Prince of Longnan fell silent for a moment before saying, “I all but returned from the dead. The one who saved my body was Yan Xie. The one who saved my soul was Zheng Jiao Jiao.”
That afternoon when they entered the city, its gate had seemed like an iron wall, stopping outsiders with questionable intentions. Yet by night, the wall abruptly shed its righteous and incorruptible face. The moment the Prince of Longnan appeared in his wheelchair, the gate guards opened the city gate of their own accord without asking a single question. Even when Fu Xi Yan pushed the Prince of Longnan past them and stared deeply at their faces, not one of them changed expression.
Everything went so smoothly it felt like a conspiracy planned long ago.
…Not merely felt like.
“It truly was planned long ago. From the moment I woke out of the darkness, I began preparing for this.” The instant the Prince of Longnan emerged from the city, he could not help taking a long, deep breath.
Fu Xi Yan asked, “Shouldn’t escaping darkness make you happy?”
Perhaps because the plan was proceeding so smoothly, the Prince of Longnan was in the mood to speak more openly. “If the moment you escape darkness, you discover you’ve fallen into something even darker, it only makes you despair.”
Fu Xi Yan felt that if he kept asking, they would still be talking after sunrise. In fact, a trace of dawn was already visible in the east. Following the Prince of Longnan’s directions, they reached what looked like the beginnings of a town.
It could only be called a beginning because there were merely a few crude buildings and a short section of unfinished wall.
The Prince of Longnan chose the building in the center with practiced familiarity. The door was unlocked and opened with the lightest push. A candleholder stood on the table, with flint beside it.
Pei Yuan Jin lit the candle, illuminating the room.
The exterior looked crude, but the inside was another world. It had every necessary table, chair, bed, and cabinet, all made from fine materials. Even the bedding on the bed gleamed with silk.
Fu Xi Yan said, “A golden house?”
The Prince of Longnan said, “This is my first time here too.”
Fu Xi Yan obviously did not believe him.
The Prince of Longnan said, “I have rehearsed this plan in my mind hundreds of times. Every detail is clear to me. General Zhang has described even this room to me no fewer than ten times.”
Fu Xi Yan said, “But we weren’t part of your plan, were we? Getting out of Yujing should have been the most important part. How could you entrust that to two strangers?”
“The same way I once trusted the Immortal Treasury Palace with Su Huan, I trusted the two of you to take me out of that city tonight.”
Fu Xi Yan found his smug confidence extremely irritating. He gave a dry laugh. “What if we hadn’t gone there tonight?”
“That was certainly possible.” The Prince of Longnan tapped his fingers on the armrest. “In truth, meeting you two was merely one possibility I considered.”
“One possibility?”
“You came here because of me. If you failed to receive a definite answer from General Zhang, you would inevitably become suspicious and investigate on your own. Following his movements would be the most convenient and natural method.”
Fu Xi Yan disliked the way the man looked as though everything was under control. He laughed twice. “But there’s one thing you absolutely didn’t predict.”
“What?”
“I lost him.” When someone was smug, the only proper response was to be even smugger. Fu Xi Yan said proudly, “When General Zhang came to see you, I failed to keep up with him.”
The Prince of Longnan and Pei Yuan Jin: “…”
The Prince of Longnan laughed despite himself. “But you still found me.”
Fu Xi Yan said, “I found the shop that sold your pastries and inferred you were probably somewhere in northern Yujing.” In truth, the inference had little to do with geography. He had lost Zhang Zu Rui in the north of the city and had already been searching that area. The pastries merely made him more certain that the Prince of Longnan still existed somewhere in the world.
“Yuan Jin, meanwhile, followed Wen Hong Xuan and happened to arrive at exactly the right moment.” Looking back, Fu Xi Yan felt extremely fortunate. Without Pei Yuan Jin, he might not have entered the residence at all that night and could easily have missed his chance to discover the truth.
The Prince of Longnan smiled. “Then this is Heaven’s will.”