Chapter 51: Chapter Fifty-One

Qingwu woke coughing twice. The sensation of having choked on water still lingered in her throat, leaving an itchy, persistent discomfort.

Her limbs ached, and her head throbbed with the swelling pain of prolonged drowning. Even the slightest shake sent the world spinning.

She tried to move her arms and legs, only to find both hands twisted behind her back. Her spine pressed against a wooden pillar as thick as a man’s embrace. She had clearly been restrained and tied to it.

“Awake?”

A pleasant woman’s voice reached her ears. Qingwu felt her chin being lifted, while a sharp fingernail scraped across the soft flesh and left a conspicuous white mark.

The speaker removed the blindfold from her eyes. Blinding light stabbed into them, making her squint and turn her head aside.

Before her stood a simply furnished bedroom containing nothing more than a bed and a table. She sat on the floor, her entire body bound against the pillar in the center of the room. Even when she exerted half her strength, she could not move.

Apart from a beautiful woman who appeared delicate, there was also a resolute-looking man standing in the corner. He was probably some sort of guard.

The woman sat in a wicker chair and studied Qingwu. Otherwise, she showed no excessive hostility. She even kindly crouched down to give Qingwu some water.

Qingwu kept her lips tightly closed and watched her warily, trying to glean some information from her eyes.

She was completely certain that she did not know either of them. Yet the other party clearly knew who she was; otherwise, they would not have bound her so thoroughly.

“You fell into the water earlier. The strong man beside me was the one who pulled you out.” The woman appeared to be in her thirties, yet her face showed none of the fullness that came with age. Her hair was piled high, and every movement carried the bearing of a noble young lady. “I’m not telling you this to claim credit. I merely wish to prove that we mean you no harm.”

Qingwu lowered her gaze to the ropes binding her hands and feet, suspicion written all over her face. Even so, she still assumed that frail, graceful appearance of a helpless young woman.

The woman smiled gently. Her curved brows, eyes, and lips looked as though they had been carved into place with a knife—so perfectly formed that they seemed unnatural.

“After witnessing your skill, it would have been foolish not to take precautions.”

Qingwu did not know whether the woman had seen the two moves she had displayed aboard the boat, or whether she had known all along that Qingwu could fight.

It was obvious that this woman was another smiling tiger, concealing her true nature behind a pleasant face. Qingwu had no desire to trade riddles with her and asked directly, “What happened to the two people traveling with me?”

Huo Xun’s martial arts were not weak, but protecting Du Jin while facing so many attackers would have been extremely difficult.

Still, those men had clearly been after nothing more than beauty and money. The two men should have been able to protect themselves for a short while.

“I don’t know. After saving you, we left. Perhaps they died beneath the blades, or perhaps they escaped. But if I had to guess, I would say the former is more likely.”

The woman showed no concern for Du Jin or Huo Xun. They were strangers to her, after all.

Her manner of speaking was peculiar, as though she had not spoken with anyone in a very long time and was now making a deliberate effort to enunciate every word clearly.

“What place is this? How far are we from Quzhou City?” Qingwu was searching for an opportunity to escape and rescue Du Jin and Huo Xun.

“Why do you ask?” The woman’s interest was piqued.

Ordinarily, when someone was brought to an unfamiliar place, they should have been curious about the identity of the person before them and the reason they had been abducted.

Yet this bound girl remained calm in the face of danger, evidently possessed of plans of her own. In only a few words, she was already trying to lead the conversation by the nose.

“I’m hiding from someone,” Qingwu replied.

She did not care where this place was. She had only just escaped and had no desire to be captured and dragged back at once.

Besides, she had left herself no retreat this time. Being caught would likely end badly.

“Hiding from whom? Pei Muci?”

The woman uttered the name with practiced ease. Qingwu paused for the briefest moment. The change in her expression was slight, and only someone familiar with her would have noticed the faint surprise that surfaced.

“Then you have come to the right place.” The woman smiled brightly, looking every inch the sort of person others would find easy to approach. “We are hiding from him as well. We brought you here simply to give ourselves another safeguard.”

“You intend to use me to bargain with him?”

Qingwu suspected that the two people before her knew her true identity, but she could not imagine what she had done to deserve such importance that Pei Muci would make concessions for her.

They had only known each other for a few days.

Why did everyone who knew Pei Muci assume he would go to such outrageous lengths for her?

A fresh stab of pain began in the back of Qingwu’s head. With Du Jin absent, she did not wish to torment herself further, so she abandoned the matter and leaned against the pillar, closing her eyes to rest.

If anything unexpected happened, she would at least retain a measure of strength with which to defend herself.

Seeing that she had adopted the leisurely attitude of someone determined to make the best of her circumstances, the woman found it rather amusing.

“Don’t you want to know who I am?”

Qingwu glanced at her through narrowed eyes. She could speak if she wished—or not.

The woman covered her mouth and laughed a few times. At last, several exceedingly faint crow’s-feet appeared at the corners of her eyes.

“You little girl. You truly suit my taste. No wonder my son and that little beast both like you.”

—

After returning to camp, Pei Muci removed his bloodstained armor, still heavy with the stench of gore. Only after bathing and changing clothes did he make his way toward the main tent.

Although the campaign had ended in a great victory, the queen of the Southern Dynasty was not among the army, and no one knew where she had fled.

Gu Hanjiang had summoned every commander to the side camp to discuss their next strategy, but Pei Muci wanted to see Qingwu first.

They had not met for a long time. Perhaps after such a long separation, she might be a little more willing to draw close to him.

There was a commotion outside the main tent. Every soldier who had remained behind had gathered there.

A bad feeling rose in his heart, and he quickened his pace.

Xi Zhi and Xi Xing exchanged a glance, then looked helplessly toward An Qi behind them. All three wore grim expressions, praying that things were not as they feared.

“What happened?” Pei Muci’s gaze swept coldly over the crowd.

No one present dared meet his eyes. Some of the less experienced soldiers were even forced to retreat two steps beneath his stare. Two people emerged from the tent—a man and a woman—and knelt rigidly before him.

Yun Ting told him what had happened over the past few days, then bent forward. “We failed in our duty. We beg our lord to punish us.”

Pei Muci’s movements paused. He seemed to stand there for several seconds before finally bending to help Xu Ying to her feet.

“You are with child. Do not kneel at every turn. If anything happens, I will have no way to answer to the governor.”

Xu Ying refused his help, and he did not press her further. Instead, he entered the tent and summoned Xi Zhi and Xi Xing.

When Gu Hanjiang heard the news, he handed the marching map he had been working on to the bearded man and hurried toward the main tent.

By the time he lifted the flap and entered, Pei Muci was leaning motionless against the edge of the sand table, his brows curved as though he were smiling.

Yet the expression looked less like a smile than the first sign of a storm about to break.

“Perhaps you should let it go.” Gu Hanjiang had known Pei Muci for years, and seeing him like this filled him with unease.

To put it bluntly, the woman was merely a remnant of the former dynasty. In anyone else’s hands, she would have made an excellent sacrifice before the battle standards. Once they returned to the capital, Pei Muci’s position would be far beyond her reach.

Even if she possessed considerable beauty, after Pei Muci ascended the throne, any kind of woman he wanted would be delivered to his bed. The noble ladies eager to curry favor with the new emperor would be far more sensible than this former dynasty princess.

Before he could say much more, Xi Zhi returned with his men and stood rigidly at the entrance like a stone statue, afraid to enter.

“Speak.”

The voice drifting through the tent was deep yet light, as though he were struggling to suppress some violent, churning fury.

Xi Zhi and Xi Xing delayed and deferred for a long while. At last, they stepped into the tent, their feet heavy as lead. After glancing twice at the people inside, Xi Zhi hesitated before saying, “The princess escaped by water. We found signs of a struggle on an island in the middle of the Linxi River. On a small boat by the riverbank, we found this.”

He presented the jade hairpin used to secure the princess’s hair with both hands.

Its pointed end pressed into his fingertip, leaving a small depression shaped like the top of an umbrella.

“Where is she?”

The pain running from his fingertip to his heart kept him from being blinded by rage. He merely stood there in silence, and no one could tell what answer he truly wished to hear.

“We did not alert anyone, but after searching the island, we found no sign of the princess—” Xi Xing began to continue.

They had found the two men who accompanied the princess in a woodshed. Thus, they suspected that she had already been taken by that group of bloated bandits—

But under Xi Zhi’s warning gaze, he swallowed the rest of the sentence.

Pei Muci closed his eyes briefly, then walked to the uncleaned armor and picked up the longsword, whose blade still bore traces of blood.

The sword was mottled, its cold gleam sharp enough to chill the air.

Perhaps the day of the poison’s eruption was drawing near. Even the hand holding the sword trembled.

“Are there any living people left on that island?”

He paid no attention to the obvious changes in his body. The peony tattoo remaining on his thigh seemed to itch faintly.

His black hair had been loosely tied back, with several stray strands falling across his forehead and lifting gently in the breeze.

Gu Hanjiang knew this transformation too well. Remembering the repeated nightmares that had followed the last time he saw Pei Muci kill, he began to retreat inwardly.

“There is nothing I can do to help. I will stay here.”

This time, however, An Qi refused to let him off. No matter how Gu Hanjiang resisted, even scraping sparks from the ground with his heels, An Qi insisted that he go with them.

The lord’s mood was deeply wrong. In circumstances like this, it seemed only the strategist would have the courage to offer even the slightest remonstrance.

“You are going there to kill people. What am I supposed to do?” Gu Hanjiang clenched his back teeth. His stomach already seemed to be churning.

“Not kill. Rescue.”

Pei Muci’s voice resembled a sandy shore repeatedly washed by a narrow stream—hoarse, yet concealing an unshakable determination.

In the brief span of half an hour, he had thought the matter through, and a gentle curve rose at the corners of his lips.

The reason Qingwu kept running away was simply that she had temporarily lost her memory and forgotten him.

His body was covered with traces Qingwu had left behind: the peony she had drawn herself upon his thigh, the marks of her teeth on his shoulder, and the tremors she had given him after every night of passion.

Yet her body bore no trace of him. That was why she continued to regard Du Jin as the most important person in her heart and repeatedly chose to flee with him.

Last time. This time. Inevitably, there would be a next time.

Before she remembered the tenderness they had shared, he would lock her at his side and keep her with him. Only then would this never happen again.

Yes. That was right.

Pei Muci wiped the blade with his plain white sleeve. The light in his eyes reflected the deathly pallor of the sword, and it was impossible to tell which was more chilling.

The veins on the back of his hand stood out. His pale, slender fingers had turned faintly translucent beneath the force of his grip, gleaming with an icy sheen.

—

After exchanging a few words with the woman, Qingwu’s headache became too severe for her to remain fully conscious. Afraid that she might inadvertently be coaxed into revealing something, she simply closed her mouth and said nothing more.

The woman did not mind her attitude. She turned to the man beside her and gave detailed instructions, speaking with great order and precision. She was nothing like an ordinary country woman.

Combined with her earlier remark that her son liked Qingwu, this made it easy for Qingwu to guess the woman’s identity.

She had never expected the queen of the Southern Dynasty—the woman who had troubled her father for so long and was now being driven from place to place by Pei Muci—to be so young.

“Judging by your expression, you have guessed.” The woman wore a warm smile, as though she did not care in the least that her identity had been exposed.

Qingwu nodded without saying anything unnecessary.

With her thoughts so muddled, the more she said, the more mistakes she would make. It was better to remain silent.

The woman did not grow angry. She wrote several brief letters and handed them to the man, instructing him to contact their hidden agents and send the letters to Bianjing.

Just as the two of them were exchanging a seal, a young underling came rushing in from outside. He leaned against the door, gasping for breath.

“Someone has fought their way in!”

“Is it that boy from the Gu family?” The woman was not surprised that he had found them.

More than ten years earlier, she had already discovered that the boy possessed an extraordinary mind. She had intended to destroy his entire family with him, yet he alone had slipped away.

“Your Majesty, I will hold him off. Take the girl and leave first.” The man knew that the woman intended to use the princess to exchange for Qiyu with Pei Muci. For now, the princess had to be kept alive.

“No, no!” the underling cut in. “It is the Second Young Master. He came himself.”

The man gripped the hilt of his sword and pulled with all his might, yet could not draw the blade.

“Then there is no need to leave. We cannot escape.”

The woman took a pill from her dressing case, placed it in a teacup, and stirred it rapidly until it dissolved. Then she pinched Qingwu’s cheeks and poured the medicine into her mouth.

Qingwu assumed it was some poison meant to destroy her internal organs. The woman seemed to see through her thoughts and explained, “The Southern Border is most skilled in the arts of poison and enchantment. As it happens, I have also studied antidotes. It seems you have forgotten something, so I will give you a generous gift.”

The moment she finished speaking, the man shouted sharply toward the door, “Why are you trembling?”

The underling remembered how the newcomer slaughtered men as easily as chickens, leaving the bodies of his companions strewn across the ground in no time.

His throat constricted, and he could barely speak. Even his voice trembled with fear.

“He told me to deliver a message first.”

“What message?”

The underling dug his fingers hard into the web between his thumb and forefinger, forcing himself to remain calm. Yet the man’s demonic face seemed to hover before him, impossible to drive away.

His breathing gradually steadied, but his legs went weak.

“The Second Young Master says that Her Majesty should never have challenged his bottom line.”