17: Galloping away
The mountain forest was on the verge of nightfall.
When Su Zhuoguang finally found Qiao Shilian after searching tirelessly, all he saw was her hair in disarray, clothes torn and tattered, stained all over with grime, and the vivid red of fresh blood flowing from her body, startlingly bright.
Yet it was precisely this usually restrained and timid woman, her delicate hands gripping a gleaming short knife, striking at the assassin without hesitation.
Her hands trembled violently, tears continuously welled in her eyes, her fear was plain to see; she had solemnly told him that day that she cherished her life, yet now she was actively offering it to the enemy.
At that moment, Su Zhuoguang answered the person in his arms as if it were perfectly natural: “There’s a lot of blood on the ground. I’ll carry you over.”
“I can walk myself!” Qiao Shilian retorted.
It’s just blood on the ground, right? I’m already so dirty, stepping on it wouldn’t matter.
But then she heard him say with complete seriousness, “My robes are too long. I’m afraid you’ll get them dirty.”
Qiao Shilian: “…?”
What is he saying? Aren’t I the dirtier one?
Only after Su Zhuoguang carried her into the cave did he begin to understand her earlier desperate act was to protect the person inside. However, seeing this man, rumored to have eloped with her, he felt a sense of familiarity, though he couldn’t immediately recall where he had seen him before.
“Young General Su… put me down now, this is highly improper!”
Qiao Shilian didn’t know how many times she had muttered this to him. When she finally pulled down the robe covering her head and looked up in the dimming twilight, she saw the man remained unmoved, as if he couldn’t hear her. She could only raise her voice in annoyance: “Su Zhuoguang!”
Fenglai, silently following behind, couldn’t help but startle. It was the first time he had heard someone address his master so directly by his full name. A sliver of admiration arose in Fenglai’s heart; he sighed inwardly: Truly worthy of Miss Qiao!
Su Zhuoguang turned his head slightly and said calmly, “Are you sure you want to be that loud?”
Outside the cave, Imperial Guards had already arrived, though they hadn’t yet discovered anyone was there. And now, nestled in his arms as she was, if she raised her voice further, she would draw them closer, allowing them to witness the ambiguous posture of the two of them pressed closely together.
Qiao Shilian: “…”
He was the one who unreasonably picked her up, so why does it now seem like they’re having an illicit affair here, afraid of being seen by others?
Su Zhuoguang reached out to adjust the robe draped over her and gently set her down on the ground, gesturing with his eyes for Fenglai to go deal with the Imperial Guards outside.
Qiao Shilian didn’t have time to argue with Su Zhuoguang. She went straight to the corner to help the injured and unconscious Zhou Shu to her feet. “We need to get back quickly to have a physician treat these wounds.”
Then Imperial Guard Commander Lu Sheng, leading his men, entered the cave in an orderly manner. After confirming everyone was alive, he breathed a sigh of relief and ordered a stretcher brought to carry Zhou Shu.
Seeing Qiao Shilian’s face full of concern as she watched the person on the stretcher, Lu Sheng couldn’t help but recall the rumors circulating in the hunting grounds. He didn’t recognize Zhou Shu disguised as a man. Now, following the signal Su Zhuoguang had sent, arriving at the cave and finding Qiao Shilian supporting a “man,” he found himself believing the rumors a little more.
What was strange was that Su Zhuoguang had actually given his own robe to Qiao Shilian. Lu Sheng looked at the elegant azure brocade robe draped over the young woman, his eyes full of surprise. From what he understood, Su Zhuoguang had never been one to be tender towards women. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be stories of him scaring off every young woman in the capital who tried to approach him until their souls nearly fled.
Suddenly, he heard Su Zhuoguang ask him, “Commander Lu, are you satisfied with my manservant?”
Only then did Lu Sheng withdraw his gaze from Qiao Shilian. He smiled wryly, “Your attendant is naturally outstanding. My group of youngsters couldn’t defeat Fenglai even with a relay of attacks. They were quite discouraged when they returned. These past few days, they’ve been more diligent than anyone when it comes to martial arts training.”
Su Zhuoguang absently wiped the blood from his sword. “I helped you. You need to control your eyes and your mouth.”
Lu Sheng: “…”
So, he was digging a pit for me here!
“These are all my personal guards. They’ve always been tight-lipped.”
Lu Sheng felt helpless. Who told him that although his position as Imperial Guard Commander seemed high-ranking, his actual status within the imperial city was somewhat low?
To the northwest and northeast frontiers, there were tigers and wolves covetously eyeing the borders. The Su and Zhou families separately guarded the frontiers, maintaining a temporary peace. For the past two years, there had been no foreign invasions. In terms of merit, he couldn’t compare to those seasoned veterans of the two families. In terms of palace defense, His Majesty had the independently controlled Fengtian Army. Now, the Imperial Guards were being squeezed by various factions, and their status was far from what it once was.
If not for his own background in the northwestern military camp, he and Su Zhuoguang probably wouldn’t have had much interaction.
Elsewhere, Qiao Shilian saw Su Zhuoguang walk over and asked, “My encounter with assassins actually alarmed the Imperial Guards stationed at the hunting grounds to come looking. This matter must have caused quite a stir, right?”
she wondered how her parents and eldest brother in the hunting grounds were doing. If they know about this dangerous incident, they must be worried sick for her, right?
Su Zhuoguang replied, “I was the one who called him.”
Qiao Shilian: “?”
Su Zhuoguang actually has the authority to mobilize Imperial Guards?
Su Zhuoguang met her astonished gaze and glanced at Lu Sheng not far away. “He owes me a favor.”
Qiao Shilian breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that when Su Zhuoguang learned she had been ambushed in the woods, he had asked the Imperial Guards to search for her everywhere under the pretext of her disappearance. Regardless, she was safe and sound. If the Qiao family didn’t know she had been in danger, it would save them unnecessary worry.
Su Zhuoguang looked ahead, a barely perceptible flicker of emotion passing through his eyes. “However, it did cause quite a stir.”
Qiao Shilian stopped walking, silently complaining: Why didn’t he say that all in one breath?
But seeing Su Zhuoguang’s lips pressed tight, his expression serious, as if frost and snow had settled over his features, his demeanor didn’t seem like he was deliberately teasing her. It was more like he hadn’t previously considered the right words.
On the journey back to the hunting lodge, Su Zhuoguang recounted everything that had happened in the hunting grounds during the day to Qiao Shilian.
He held nothing back and made no attempt to soften the hurtful, malicious words, simply presenting the full sequence of events before her. This included the Eastern Palace’s silence on the matter, and how Qin Shuo, after a secret discussion with Minister Qiao, had discreetly withdrawn the guards searching for her.
In the mountain wilds where the last glow of sunset was fading, as his words ended, he saw the look of post-crisis relief on her face transform into one of deep gloom. The last traces of youthful brightness in the young woman’s eyes vanished in that moment, their light extinguished, leaving only heavy shadows.
He couldn’t help but recall that night in the carriage when she had asked him with that same look in her eyes, “Does the Young General know, if a woman in this world fails to uphold propriety, makes even a slight misstep, her life can be snatched away in a single day?”
As if she had truly died from such a misstep.
The Eastern Palace, the Qiao family… was this their so-called ‘utmost care and protection’? Su Zhuoguang couldn’t help but find it ironic.
And Qiao Shilian remained silent for a long time, her gaze fixed on the hazy treetops as the long night approached.
It’s the same again.
After she was slandered, they each chose the method most beneficial to themselves to resolve the problem, never considering her feelings, her life or death. In the face of profit and power, she was merely a sacrificial pawn.
A suffocating pressure built in her chest. Walking alone on this night path, it was as if invisible hands were tightening around her throat, making it hard to breathe.
She felt a soreness at the corners of her eyes, a painful tightness, yet tears refused to come. Perhaps she had cried enough in her past life, tears flowing until the end without buying a chance at life. Or perhaps she had long been utterly disappointed in them, not daring to invest too much emotion even after being reborn into this life.
What did it matter that Qiao Shilian had lived again? As long as worldly affairs and human hearts remained unchanged, tragedy would repeat itself, a matter of mere days. In this life, in the hunting grounds of Mount Jiunu, they had used the sharpest blade to kill her once more.
For a moment, she felt utterly weary. Even the desperate struggle for survival she had endured today couldn’t lift her spirits. Life felt like chewing wax—tasteless, yet a pity to discard.
Suddenly, a bamboo whistle sounded beside her. Soon after, the sound of hooves like drumbeats approached from afar. In the rippling twilight glow, Yefeng trod over dusty earth and came to a halt before the two of them.
“Get on.” Su Zhuoguang swung himself onto the horse’s back and reached out his hand to her.
Qiao Shilian saw, in the hazy twilight shadows, him asking her earnestly, a trace of some emotion she didn’t understand in his usually indifferent eyes.
Lu Sheng tactfully spoke up from the side, “It’s still quite a distance for us to walk back to the hunting lodge. Perhaps the Young General should go ahead with Miss Qiao.”
As if sensing her worry for Zhou Shu, Su Zhuoguang added, “Fenglai is here. She’ll be fine.”
Then Qiao Shilian placed her hand in his, allowing Su Zhuoguang to help her onto the saddle.
Qiao Shilian initially thought he wanted to teach her to ride again, but after settling into the saddle, she felt Su Zhuoguang’s arms encircle her waist from behind as he took the reins and urged Yefeng into a gallop.
Distant peaks emerged as tiny specks of jade-green, and the mountain wilderness melted into a hazy mass under the twilight colors. The cool wind rushing against her face carried the fresh scent of grass and hidden floral fragrances. The suffocating feeling in Qiao Shilian’s chest gradually eased as Su Zhuoguang’s voice reached her ears.
“When I was young and in a bad mood, I would gallop on horseback for miles.”
He lowered his gaze, looking at her unsettled face. “Those troubling things only stay trapped where they are; they can’t catch up to the horse.”
Was he trying to counsel her, to ease her worries?
Hearing this, Qiao Shilian thoughtfully glanced back at the receding hunting grounds and asked, “But what about after you finish riding and go back?”
Su Zhuoguang didn’t answer. With a crack of the whip, they reached the peak of Mount Jiunu. He reined in the horse and stood still, overlooking the world below.
Beneath the vast sky, the endless earth stretched out before them. Gazing into the distance, Qiao Shilian saw that the prosperous capital city she had grown up in for over a decade was but a tiny leaf. As for the gilded cage she longed to escape, it was so minuscule it couldn’t even be seen.
“After you’ve been elsewhere, you won’t care about it anymore,” Su Zhuoguang finally answered.
Upon reaching the mountaintop, Qiao Shilian understood the answer.
The world was vast. That cage could not hold her, and the people within it could not shackle her. Beautiful landscapes existed everywhere; she didn’t have to perch in that single grove of trees.
As the warm breeze seemed to dissolve her worries, the shadows gradually cleared from her eyes. The hand Su Zhuoguang held the reins with finally relaxed a little.
The sun set in the west; the moon rose over the eastern hills.
Amidst the lingering shadows of night, Su Zhuoguang spurred the horse onward, taking her past many places. Even though the view was dim and the forest scenery hard to make out, and his words remained few, she felt this was just fine.
When she was lost in helplessness, someone extending a hand to her was enough.
“What do you plan to do?” Su Zhuoguang asked.
“Ah Shu is unconscious now; I have no witness. Moreover, she disguised herself as a man to enter the forest hunt. On a serious note, that’s deceiving the emperor. I can’t risk involving her.”
Qiao Shilian knew that as long as the “man” from the elopement rumor was proven false, the whole story would collapse. But if she used Zhou Shu to clear her name, she would put Zhou Shu in the eye of the storm. Therefore, she had specifically asked Lu Sheng to keep Zhou Shu’s involvement a secret.
By the time they returned near the hunting lodge, most of the tangled anxieties in Qiao Shilian’s heart had been soothed. She sincerely said to Su Zhuoguang, “Thank you.”
She sighed silently; this time, she was indebted to him again.
But as she dismounted, her foot slipped on the stirrup. Clinging to Su Zhuoguang’s shoulder, she grabbed his lapel and tumbled into his arms.
Su Zhuoguang caught her, feeling a patch of cool skin exposed at his neck. “…You don’t need to tear my clothes off to thank me.”
Qiao Shilian: “…”
She straightened up, leaned forward to adjust his lapel properly for him, then deftly took off the robe and returned it to him.
Su Zhuoguang felt the lingering warmth of her fingertips on his neck, long after she’d withdrawn. Even as he took the robe she handed back, he remained slightly dazed.
When did she become so practiced at adjusting his clothes for him? Without even blinking. Wasn’t she still too reserved to even look at him directly before?
Qiao Shilian merely assumed that now that they were back here, he was once again the stern-faced general in everyone’s eyes, not even bothering to speak more to her. So, she hurried away and walked straight into the lodge.
Not long after, a voice, weeping and wailing intermittently, reached her ears: “Sister Qiao eloping with a man was witnessed by a group of young ladies. How can Your Highness pin this crime on me and order me to leave the mountain?”
Hah, it really is Fang Yaoyao.
Qiao Shilian slowed her pace, silently approaching the source.
She saw Fang Yaoyao kneeling on the ground, pitifully begging the figure standing with his back to her—Qin Shuo. Her voice was hoarse: “Who knows where Sister Qiao is now, enjoying herself with that man…”
Smack!
A crisp sound of a slap pierced through the silent night.
Fang Yaoyao was still dazed and in pain when she looked up to see the person who had slapped her was none other than Qiao Shilian, who had returned.
**