Early in the morning, Yan Zhou was jolted awake by the chaotic sounds of a brawl. He was a notoriously heavy sleeper, so his initial awakening carried a trace of lingering irritation, but that emotion vanished almost instantly when he realized he was no longer at the Flower Pavilion.
Rushing out in a panic, Yan Zhou discovered a band of armed assailants engaged in a fierce skirmish with Ji Tingzhong, who was barely managing to hold her own and secure a tactical advantage.
“I’ll help you!” Disregarding the chaotic situation, Yan Zhou drew his weapon and plunged directly into the thick of the fray.
“Get back!” Ji Tingzhong spun around mid-turn and delivered a swift kick that sent Yan Zhou flying.
The attackers’ focus instantly shifted toward the crumpled figure of Yan Zhou on the ground.
Discarding one of her twin blades, Ji Tingzhong hurled it straight at the path before Yan Zhou. The resulting shockwave forced the approaching assailants into a hasty retreat. Vaulting into the air, she landed directly in front of Yan Zhou, her twin blades merging into a flurry of blinding steel and rising sword qi.
“Get out of here first,” Ji Tingzhong said, holding her blades crosswise before her. “Leave this to me.”
Abandoning any lingering pride over the kick he had just received, Yan Zhou knew staying behind would only make him dead weight, so he scrambled to his feet and bolted.
The primary target was him; the attackers had no intention of letting him escape. Yet Ji Tingzhong’s formidable combat strength proved insurmountable, her fierce momentum cutting off their advance in a single stroke.
“Does the Jade of Mount Kun truly believe she can protect Yan Zhou all by herself?”
Clenching her dual blades, sweat beading across her forehead, Ji Tingzhong had already spent considerable time locked in combat with these individuals. If Yan Zhou hadn’t slept like a log, she wouldn’t have been dragged down this long. “Was it Crane Manor yesterday, and who sent you today?”
“No matter who we are, if you wish to block us, you’ll have to prove you have the strength to back it up.”
Every single one of their opponents was a fourth-rank martial artist, formidable purely through sheer numbers. Had her martial prowess not advanced recently, she wouldn’t have been able to stall them for so long.
Fearing an ambush awaited Yan Zhou further along, Ji Tingzhong pressed the urgency of the situation. Overlapping her twin blades, she channeled her internal energy until the metal glowed with a dazzling, scorching red, radiating intense heat.
“This, why does that look so familiar?” one of the attackers muttered.
“It’s Old Master Wei’s self-created sword technique! I never thought she actually mastered it!”
“What are we afraid of? She’s only one person. No matter how powerful the technique is, can she wipe us all out in a single breath?”
“Then try me.” Gritting her teeth, Ji Tingzhong raised her twin blades high. Suddenly, the sky darkened as heavy layers of clouds rolled across one another. The blades slipped from her grasp, sweeping across the battlefield in a lightning-fast, intersecting cross-fire that sliced open the throats of three men in the blink of an eye.
“What?!”
While the survivors stood frozen in shock, Ji Tingzhong vanished from her spot.
“After her! She must be completely spent by now!”
Following her memory toward the direction of the Flower Pavilion, presuming Yan Zhou was headed that way, Ji Tingzhong found herself struggling against the sheer number of pursuers, realizing she needed to locate Yan Zhou quickly and shake off the tail.
The enemy refused to relent, and even with her excellent lightness skills, casting them off proved exceedingly difficult.
Morning broke swiftly across Dongcang.
Rising early, Ying Laixian conferred with Jiang Yun, making final preparations for the prince’s return to Yueju. By noon, he saw the prince off according to their pre-arranged plans.
Once their carriage cleared Liaozhou, Tan Congye finally broke his silence: “As a crown prince of a great nation, reduced to holding a remote frontier territory, yet still scheming to strike back and relying on your assistance. Just what other secrets does Gentleman Liuyu harbor? You might as well lay them all out at once so I stop getting surprised.”
Knowing precisely what provoked the man, Ying Laixian replied, “So you’ve held your tongue the entire morning just waiting to ask that? Jiang Yun has secretly raised over fifty thousand private troops in Dongcang, his intentions hardly require spelling out.”
Looking displeased, Tan Congye retorted, “Privately raising troops is a capital offense. Furthermore, even if he is the crown prince and Dongcang serves as his fiefdom, fifty thousand men is no small number. Where on earth did he source the funding.”
Halting midway, Tan Congye stared fixedly at Ying Laixian’s smiling face. “Gentleman Liuyu is truly extravagant. You exhausted your own financial resources and went to such lengths to fund his private army, what precisely makes Jiang Yun worth such painstaking effort? Aside from being the Crown Prince of Yunchen, does he possess some hidden, extraordinary talent?”
Ying Laixian shifted into a more comfortable posture. “Ah, how should I put this? As you know, my ambitions happen to be rather vast. Jiang Yun is simply one piece of that ambition; those fifty thousand private troops are merely a loan I extended to secure his survival.”
“Survival? Setting aside the fact that Yunchen’s current emperor is incompetent and has allowed power to slip from his grasp, even if the emperor intended to protect him, the crime of raising unauthorized troops alone is enough to merit execution nine times over. Are you helping him survive or sending him to his grave?”
Ying Laixian chuckled. “Would Jiang Yun be unaware of that? He is the crown prince; the stakes are obvious. Yet he still chose to follow my method. I didn’t press a blade to his throat—this was a transaction built on mutual consent, exactly like the one between you and me.”
“You and I are nothing alike.” Leaning forward slightly, Tan Congye hooked a finger under Ying Laixian’s chin, fixing his gaze upon those striking eyes. “Some people put on a compliant facade while rotting away into monsters on the inside. I only hope I don’t wind up having to dig this pair of eyes out with my own hands one day.”
Ying Laixian’s natural gaze possessed an inherent warmth, carrying a three-tenths allure whenever he looked at someone. Fortunately, few people had ever laid eyes on him, otherwise his romantic entanglements throughout the martial world would have filled volumes.
“Perhaps.” Ying Laixian retreated slightly to widen the distance between them. “I may not share City Lord Tan’s eloquence, but I excel at making certain individuals realize they have no choice but to rely on me to keep moving forward, Jiang Yun, for instance.”
“Oh? Do tell. How do you plan to pour this soul-stirring brew down his throat?”
“It’s not a soul-stirring brew, merely muddying the waters. This world was already plunged into chaos; if not me, someone else would have stepped in. Jiang Yun recognized my daring, and he understood that across the entire realm, only I could assist him, hence those fifty thousand troops.”
From the very beginning, he had laid his ambitions bare before Jiang Yun. A proud and arrogant individual like Jiang Yun did not desire a virtuous, pedantic teacher, but rather a military strategist willing to support his madness as Yunchen unraveled.
“And what about you?” Tan Congye’s gaze turned sharp and intense, challenging Ying Laixian directly. “What did you see in him? Merely his identity as a crown prince?”
Ying Laixian played coy. “Of course not. I have no intention of entangling myself directly with the imperial court; I simply do what I can to aid Jiang Yun. Believe it or not as you wish. Staring at me like that, what is your game?”
Tan Congye withdrew his gaze with a faint laugh. “Just watching you speak with such earnest conviction almost made me believe it. Ying Laixian, do you have any friends?”
The question caught Ying Laixian entirely off guard.
Did he have friends? Once upon a time, yes, many of them.
And now? Now he no longer dared to have any.
“If you’re trying to undermine me, you’ll have to find a better angle.”
Tan Congye continued, “I was simply curious. Gentleman Liuyu seems burdened by an endless sea of matters; I wanted to see what kind of person could ever be called your friend, worthy of winning your voluntary confidences.”
“You’re thinking too much. Some secrets are meant never to be spoken aloud.”
Certain things had to be swallowed entirely alone, for voicing them to another only served to multiply the burden of grief.
Pondering deeply, Tan Congye asked, “Why do you refuse to practice martial arts? If you possessed martial prowess, navigating these affairs would be infinitely easier, and you wouldn’t need to scheme and rely on others to block blades for you.”
Why not practice martial arts?
It was a question Ying Laixian had heard countless times.
Most people considered him ungrateful for refusing to learn swordsmanship despite taking Wei Heng as his master. In truth, they were right, Ying Laixian often felt he was profoundly ungrateful, but,
“I simply didn’t want to. Some problems cannot be solved through martial arts alone. Being too conspicuous invites destruction, yet showing weakness leaves you powerless. It seems no matter which path one chooses, it is always wrong,” Ying Laixian articulated his perspective in a soft, gentle murmur. “None of it changes the past.”
“Have you tried?”
“I have,” Ying Laixian whispered. “I’ve tried countless times.”
He had returned to the day the nightmare began more times than he could count, living through each rebirth via a fresh approach, exhausting every conceivable method to undo past tragedies.
Yet no matter how elevated his mastery grew, those nightmares remained fundamentally unalterable.
“I once…” Ying Laixian paused mid-sentence, seeming to calculate how distant that ‘once’ truly was. “I don’t remember how long ago it was, a very long time, anyway. I had a confidant, a true friend. Much like you, he never pried or interrogated me, yet every word he uttered effortlessly drew me into his schemes.”
Watching a soft, tender warmth surface across Ying Laixian’s features, Tan Congye felt a sudden stitch of panic in his chest. “I presume he was more than just a friend?”
Ying Laixian let out a low chuckle. Devoid of any awkwardness at being exposed, he simply met the thought.
Tan Congye had no lingering appetite for gossip, yet at that exact moment, he felt an urgent, burning compulsion to uncover the identity of the person Ying Laixian spoke of.
No.
Tan Congye warned himself that the youth sitting before him was unimaginably cunning; not a single word falling from his lips ought to be trusted, it was entirely possible the entire tale was a fabrication woven simply to amuse and torment him.
“And where is he now?” Tan Congye asked in a low voice.
The carriage continued its bumpy advance, the heavy wheels grinding harshly against the rough terrain of the road.
Inside the cabin, an oppressive silence settled instantly.
Fixing his cyan-tinted eyes steadily upon Tan Congye without a single blink, Ying Laixian’s gaze burned with a chilling, unsettling intensity, resembling frost-laden petals drifting across a still lake, sending a shiver of warning through Tan Congye.
He sensed he had brushed against a forbidden boundary the youth refused to cross.
“He’s dead.” Breaking eye contact abruptly, Ying Laixian’s tone reverted to its usual, level indifference as he reiterated deliberately, “He is dead.”
Tan Congye averted his gaze into silence. Ordinarily, he would have seized upon the opening to mock and pick at the scabs of Ying Laixian’s grief, yet for reasons unknown, the words lodged like a thorn in his throat.
“My lord,” the drivers outside called out after a long pause, Jiang Ni’s voice breaking the quiet. “Two letters have arrived via courier.”
“Mm.” Ying Laixian extended a hand to receive them, glancing sideways to find Tan Congye had closed his eyes to rest.
The fellow actually possessed a strange sort of principles.