The South Courtyard was heavily guarded, but Qi Jianshuan’s lightness skill was formidable. Avoiding everyone’s line of sight, he leaped up onto the roof beams and listened closely, catching the sound of conversation coming from inside the room.
Walking stealthily, Qi Jianshuan lifted a roof tile and peered down to take in the situation inside. Li Yan was standing right in front of the bed, completely blocking the person lying on the couch, and spoke condescendingly while bending down.
“You are unwilling for me to call you my sweetheart, so I won’t call you that. But you cannot take out your anger on your own body. Just what will it take for you to drink this medicine?”
The other person remained silent for a long time. When he finally spoke again, his voice was tight and hoarse. Qi Jianshuan wanted to move closer to listen carefully, but fearing detection, he refrained from any further action.
He only heard that person speak in a weak, helpless tone: “Let me leave. My injuries are almost healed; you can let me go now.”
“No. Where on earth have I been lacking in my care to make you want to escape me so badly?” Li Yan’s attitude was unyielding.
“It’s not… Forget it, it’s impossible to reason with you.” Abandoning all hope, the person ignored Li Yan altogether.
“I am not imprisoning you! As long as you promise not to leave, I will satisfy your every condition!” Li Yan gritted his teeth and hardened his heart. “If you don’t like men, I can also find a few women to keep you company—provided you drink this medicine tonight.”
The other person turned a deaf ear.
Having grown up in the lap of luxury, Li Yan had never suffered more grievances anywhere else than the ones he had taken upon himself from this person. Amidst his exasperation and frustration, there was an even greater surge of heartache.
Without another word, he picked up the medicine bowl, tilted his head back to drink the contents into his mouth, and then knelt halfway on the edge of the bed with one leg. He leaned down, pinched the other person’s chin, and forcefully fed the medicine mouth-to-mouth. No matter how fiercely the other person resisted, Li Yan stubbornly finished feeding it all.
The moment their lips and tongues parted, the other person slapped him across the face, furious with embarrassment, and snapped, “Get out!”
Li Yan lowered his gaze and rubbed the corner of his mouth with his thumb. A trace of sadness flashed across the depths of his eyes, but when he raised his head again, it was replaced by a triumphant smile. “My sweetheart certainly packs quite a punch! You’ve been force-fed so many times before and never raised a hand, so it seems I really made you angry today. I won’t annoy you any longer then; get some sleep early, I’m leaving first.”
The moment Li Yan left, that person swept a fierce, piercing gaze toward the small opening in the roof and said coldly, “Since everyone is gone, aren’t you going to come down?”
Once Qi Jianshuan recognized Qi Yan’s voice, he had stopped deliberately holding his breath; with Qi Yan’s martial arts proficiency, he would surely have detected the movement on the roof anyway.
A tumult of emotions surged within Qi Jianshuan’s heart. He sighed, leaped down from the roof beam, and slipped in through the window.
Layers of gauze curtains draped around the bed, and a precious calming incense burned continuously in the room. Every furnishing was of the absolute highest quality. The person on the couch found it inconvenient to get up and couldn’t be bothered to investigate who the intruder was; giving a hazy glance through the gauze curtains, he refused to utter a single extra word.
Qi Jianshuan’s brow furrowed into deep ridges, his expression complex. After a long moment, he slowly opened his mouth and called out, “Yan’er.”
The person on the couch first shuddered all over, then struggled to sit up, frantically and hurriedly parting the troublesome gauze curtains. The moment he laid eyes on Qi Jianshuan’s face, tears streamed down his face.
Qi Yan, usually fierce in his actions and cold in temperament, was finally able to revert to being the child who loved to throw little tantrums in front of Qi Jianshuan. Covered in tears, he sobbed with aggrieved vulnerability: “Foster father…”
“Mn. I’m here,” Qi Jianshuan replied. The instant their gazes intersected, it was as if they were once again witnessing that deep, dark night illuminated by flashing blades.
The cold night curved like a hook, and the edge of a sword tore through the heavy curtain of darkness. Hoofbeats shattered the withered leaves, and Qi Jianshuan whipped his head around abruptly. The swaying of the treetops behind them seemed far too deliberate; he raised a hand to signal, and five thousand Black Iron cavalrymen came to an immediate halt, kicking up clouds of dust and sand with their iron hooves.
“Foster father, it’s an ambush!” Qi Yan lowered his voice, his knuckles turning white around the sword hilt.
Before his voice even faded, countless cold gleams suddenly lit up amid the forest. Merging with the night, assassins dropped from the treetops like ghosts, their curved blades stained with a deep blue luminescence. Arrows pierced the air, and battle cries shattered the dead silence. Qi Jianshuan whipped his sword back to parry the charging arrows.
The assassins’ assault was fierce and lethal, their curved blades specifically seeking out the gaps in the armor, while arrows struck down like streams of light—some even coated with deadly poison at the tips!
Qi Jianshuan was already heavily injured. Amidst the chaos, Deng Hua had roared, “A-Yan! Take the General and retreat! Hurry!!!”
During that time, Deng Hua batted away a hundred poisonous arrows, clearing a safe path of retreat for Qi Jianshuan. Using every ounce of his strength, Qi Yan grabbed the furious Qi Jianshuan, whipped the horse’s flank, and fled at top speed deep into the forest.
Yet the assassins had a clear target and refused to become entangled with the Black Iron cavalry. Risking their flanks being left exposed, they were determined to hunt down Qi Jianshuan.
In the dead of night, it was impossible to see the battlefield clearly. In the blink of an eye, Qi Yan and Qi Jianshuan were separated. Qi Jianshuan’s shoulder was injured; even biting his lip until it bled, his movements were slower than before. Qi Yan threw himself off his horse and tumbled heavily across the ground. Before Qi Jianshuan could curse, Qi Yan lashed his whip against the horse’s rump. The lightweight steed neighed piercingly into the open sky, and Qi Jianshuan instinctively gripped the reins tighter as Qi Yan was left behind in the dust.
“General! Stop giving a damn about me!” Qi Yan screamed at the top of his lungs, his miserable roar echoing through the deep forest, “If you have the ability, kill this young master!”
Qi Jianshuan blinked and suddenly asked, “What’s wrong with your legs?”
Sensing something was amiss, Qi Jianshuan noticed how difficult it was for Qi Yan to move his lower body.
Hearing this, Qi Yan wiped away his tears and smiled bitterly. “They’re broken.”
Both of them possessed cold temperaments, so words were unnecessary. Qi Jianshuan didn’t need to ask those inane, useless questions, and Qi Yan didn’t need to launch into a long-winded complaint.
As long as you are alive, it matters more than anything else.
“I will definitely find a way to get your legs cured.” Qi Jianshuan clamped a hand onto Qi Yan’s back, patted it heavily, and said word by word, “Just stay alive.”
“Foster father too!” Qi Yan turned his sorrow into joy. By the time he spoke again, the nasal tone was gone. “Why did you come here?! How are your injuries?”
“Healed.”
Qi Jianshuan used the most concise words to recount his experiences over the past few months. He kept a quiet, steady watch on Qi Yan as the latter listened attentively, occasionally asking a question or two.
“Yun Zhensong? Is he trustworthy?”
“Trustworthy.”
“That being said, does foster father intend to treat Qing County as a second ‘Black Iron Camp’?” Qi Yan pondered for a moment, his brow deeply furrowed. “But what about the north of Qing County? Once the nineteen tribes push south, the Black Iron Camp will inevitably bear the brunt of the devastation. Right now, they are leaderless and morale is low. Although the only place north of Qing County is Qu County, that place still holds tens of thousands of people.”
Qi Jianshuan calmly replied, “Once I cure your legs, I’ll have Deng Hua escort you back to the Black Iron Camp to take charge of the overall situation. Qu County can only fall back. When they locked the refugees from the northern border villages out in the cold, they should have anticipated that they, too, would one day find themselves with nowhere to turn. But you don’t need to worry; Yun Zhensong will take them in.”
Qi Yan was startled. In the past, his foster father never pinned his hopes on a single person, having once declared, “Human hearts are fickle; the most foolish thing to do is to place complete trust in someone.”
Those earnest teachings felt as though they were given only yesterday—how could he change his tune so quickly?! This didn’t seem like his foster father’s usual style.
Qi Jianshuan glanced at him, pressed a fist against his lips, gave a light cough, and slowly added, “With me here, he has no choice.”
Without noticing anything out of the ordinary, Qi Yan merely sighed, “Let’s hope the nineteen tribes move a little slower, launching their campaign a bit later…”
Currently, Greater Xuan was entirely on the defensive. Should there be an internal traitor from the nineteen tribes within the imperial court who learned that Greater Xuan was riddled with holes, even though they were trying desperately to patch things up, it would still take time.
Qi Jianshuan narrowed his eyes slightly and suddenly asked amidst the silence, “You and the Prince of Hanchuan…”
“Ah, don’t mention him…” Qi Yan frowned. “He’s out of his mind! Anyone else in his shoes, and I’d beat them until even their own father couldn’t recognize them! But… he saved my life, and besides, right now I can’t even beat Lu Yi. If I actually made a move, wouldn’t his courtyard full of bodyguards chop me into pieces?”
“Originally, I planned to swallow my pride and beg the Prince of Hanchuan; if by any chance my legs really could be cured, I could hurry back to the Black Iron Camp. But he just kept pushing his luck! Damn it all! Not only did he kiss me, he even accompanied me when I went to relieve myself! Later on, I couldn’t take it anymore—whatever happens, happens, I stopped humoring him. The day he finally really angers me and throws me out on the street, I’ll crawl my way back even if it kills me.”
Back in the military tents, Qi Yan used to chat often with the soldiers about marrying a wife—fantasizing about what kind of wife he would marry, how well he would treat her, and how dependent she would be on him.
“When I take a wife, I won’t ask for her to be exceptionally beautiful or virtuous, because I look ordinary myself and can barely manage to feed my own mouth. I only have one requirement for a wife: she must be gentle. My temper is hasty; if I were to run into someone hot-tempered on top of that, this life truly wouldn’t last long.”
Unpredictable were the ways of the world; it beat him to death that he could never have imagined himself winding up as a “hot-tempered wife.”
Looking at it from another angle, Li Yan was not only gentle toward him, but also strikingly handsome, wealthy, and powerful. If Li Yan were a woman, Qi Yan would have nodded in agreement long ago.
Qi Jianshuan was neither good at comforting people nor inclined to force himself to speak sweet words, though he hadn’t yet realized that Yun Zhensong was the sole exception to this rule.
Qi Yan was already accustomed to his attitude. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t share these matters with his foster father, but today, Qi Jianshuan’s sudden appearance had instantly reignited hope in Qi Yan’s previously deadened heart, making him talkative.
Sensing the time was right, Li Yan would likely come by shortly—Qi Yan proactively briefed him: “Gongsun Lin is currently staying in the Han estate. He recognizes foster father’s face, so you had best not attend the birthday banquet to avoid any complications. Furthermore, only the Prince of Hanchuan knows my true identity, but he has kept it hidden for me all along.”
A jolt ran through Qi Jianshuan’s heart, as he had nearly exposed his identity in front of Yun Zhensong earlier. Feigning outward composure, he nodded and said, “Understood. Focus on recovering; I’ll find a way regarding your legs. Since I came to see you, I won’t leave you behind alone.”
Trusting him implicitly, Qi Yan nodded vigorously like pounding garlic.
Before leaping out the window, Qi Jianshuan turned around out of the blue and asked, “Two men—do you genuinely find it disgusting?”
Qi Yan replied, “What else?”
Lost in thought, Qi Jianshuan gave a slight, thoughtful nod. With agile, flowing martial arts movements, he slipped back into the side courtyard where Yun Zhensong was staying and returned to his side.
Upon learning that Qi Yan was still alive, Deng Hua was so overjoyed he nearly lifted the roof off the Han estate.
Without daring to delay, Qi Jianshuan quickly penned a letter and handed it to Deng Hua. “The Prince of Hanchuan is keeping a close watch on me. Take this letter overnight and deliver it directly into Lu Yi’s hands; he will know what to do next.”
Tucking the letter into his tunic and patting it twice, Deng Hua smiled. “The person who saved the General’s life back then will definitely be able to cure A-Yan’s legs.”
With that, Deng Hua masked his face and prepared to leave.
“Wait!” Qi Jianshuan suddenly called out to him. Under the corridor’s flickering candlelight, his expression appeared obscure and indistinct. Trembling with shock, he asked in a voice charged with disbelief, “What did you just say?”
His heart hammered uncontrollably against his ribs!
The very next second after Deng Hua turned back to look at him in puzzlement, sudden realization struck him with equal violence.
The identical handwriting, familiarity with his penmanship, awareness of his injuries, and wielding considerable influence within the imperial court and official circles.
At this very moment, that person’s name was written clearly at the very top of the letter hidden inside Deng Hua’s tunic.
To my close friend, Han Yan.