Inside the government office.
Xie Yunjing pressed his fingers against the massive Ningguta Yutu spread over the desk, the ink-drawn mountains and frozen rivers winding beneath his palm: “At the third quarter of the Yin hour tomorrow, the scouts will set out first. Before noon—”
Before he could finish, a sharp rustling sound tore through the air!
The heavy felt door curtain, frozen stiff, was violently flung open as a human cannonball bundled in wind and snow shot into the room. Shen Taotao, covered in snowflakes from head to face, tightened her tattered coat that threatened to fall apart and stood rigidly at the opposite end of the map.
“Give me a piece of land!” Her voice strained to its loudest, her chapped lips cracking with traces of blood. “I want to build a house!” Her breath condensed into frantic white puffs in the icy air.
Xie Yunjing didn’t even lift his eyelids. “In my territory, we only bury the dead, not feed idlers.”
His knuckles tapped on a frozen wasteland to the north of the Yutu as he continued speaking to Zhang Xun, “Make sure—”
Zhang Xun, hugging a warming pot in the corner, rolled his eyes back and forth between the two and clicked his tongue. “Tsk tsk… The moment our lord musters troops, Miss Shen comes demanding land. This…” He chuckled, scratching his head. “Could it be what they call… being of one mind?”
Before he could finish, a paperweight on the desk thudded heavily! Xie Yunjing’s fingers pressed down with sudden force, cutting off Zhang Xun’s teasing remark. “Get out!”
Zhang Xun hunched his shoulders and scurried out the door, hugging the warming pot.
As the door curtain fell, Shen Taotao leaned forward, almost pressing against the map that displayed Ningguta’s mountains and rivers. “Are exiled convicts only meant to freeze to death? Can’t an exiled convict have a warm shelter?”
Xie Yunjing finally looked up.
The candlelight flickered in his unfathomably dark pupils. “There’s no precedent for convicts building houses.” Each word fell like frozen stones.
“My Second Sister-in-law is with child!” Shen Taotao roared back, her voice echoing through the empty room.
“Tch—” An exceedingly soft sound. Xie Yunjing’s lips curled into a cold, sharp smile. “It’s not my brat she’s carrying.”
He leaned back into the spacious armchair draped with a whole white tiger pelt. “With the Di Rong eyeing us greedily from the north, I have no extra mind to care for exiled convicts.”
“All the more reason to build houses!” Shen Taotao slammed the table abruptly. “Count on your precious fingers—how many troops are added each year in this wretched Ningguta? Are the dead enough to fill the ice holes?”
Her outstretched finger nearly poked Xie Yunjing’s nose. “You can’t crush those Di Rong scum because your soldiers aren’t strong enough. Where do soldiers come from? They don’t spring from cracks in rocks—they’re people! Living, breathing people who need parents to birth and raise them!”
“Yes, in the eyes of you officials, we’re nothing! We’re worthless lives, we’re weeds, we’re cannon fodder dragged out to block arrows.” She panted heavily, her chest heaving. “But even cannon fodder are people. Cannon fodder bear children too, and these children grow up with blood vengeance against the Di Rong carved into their bones. They’re a hundred times more useful than the conscripts you drag here from Jingcheng.”
“Believe me, their parents would dare to twist the Di Rong’s heads off and kick them like balls to protect this land where they can live and raise families!” Her earth-shaking roar condensed into rolling waves of fury in the frigid room.
The candlelight, startled, danced wildly, stretching and distorting Xie Yunjing’s steadfast figure on the tent wall.
A long time passed.
Xie Yunjing leaned forward slightly, his elbows pressing against the cold Yutu. The dotted ink lines seemed to acquire a scorching heat beneath his black armguards.
“Where to mark the land?” The voice was colder than a blade scraping iron, yet it severed invisible shackles, carrying a trace of imperceptible indulgence.
Shen Taotao pulled out a half-charred charcoal stick, bent over, and swiftly began sketching on the massive Ningguta Yutu.
The charcoal lines hissed against the coarse sheepskin surface, like a fierce young beast gnawing at the territory.
The relay station took shape. A meandering charcoal line stretched from the southeastern mountain col, skillfully avoiding the snow slope’s wind tunnel, pointing toward a sun-facing, wind-sheltered gentle slope.
“Here!” The charcoal tip emphatically stabbed at an inconspicuous mark on the map. “Three feet underground lies blue stone. We can’t lay foundations now—build wooden cabins first, nestled beneath the mountain ridge’s curve. Winter stores warm winds and shelters from Shuo Xue, summer channels cool air through mountain streams. This spot—I’ve felt out every feng shui bone across Ningguta to settle on it!”
She tossed the charcoal aside and straightened up, her smudged face streaked with soot and frostbite like a tabby cat’s. “An exile’s life may be worthless, but if this life can breed offspring, smelt iron, burn coal, wield blades—isn’t it worth a patch of land that sees sunlight?”
Xie Yunjing nodded, his gaze profound as he watched her.
Shen Taotao snatched the cup from the table and drained it in one gulp. The warm water instantly soothed her parched, burning throat and her thumping heart. She’d been terrified this Jade-faced Rakshasa might halfway through her speech toss her out to feed the wolves.
Suddenly.
An icicle-sharp voice pierced the air:
“The cup. Is mine.”
Shen Taotao choked on the remaining water, tears welling from the strain. Firecrackers of panic exploded in her mind—damn it all.
Now I’m really going to be wolf food.
But her face remained composed as she neatly set down the cup.
“Ahem… well…” She straightened her back, patting her chest with grimy hands, sending dust shaking from her tattered coat:
“Don’t worry—I don’t mind you!”