The Second Prince's Residence.
"Eldest Brother has left, and we didn't even see him off."
"There was no need, was there?" the Fifth Prince said. "Congratulations, Second Brother."
The Second Prince admired the serene green bamboo outside the window.
"Don't worry, Little Fifth. Once my affairs here are settled, it will be time for yours."
The Fifth Prince smiled. "Good. I trust you, Second Brother."
The Second Prince narrowed his eyes slightly. "Little Fifth, you trust me so much. Aren't you afraid I might kill the donkey after it's done grinding the grain one day?"
The Fifth Prince placed an empty cup before him, picked up the teapot, and personally poured him a cup of tea.
The Second Prince raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not afraid of that," the Fifth Prince said calmly. "I lay everything bare before you, Second Brother. You've long known my character. To achieve the desired outcome, I can sacrifice myself without hesitation."
The Second Prince said, "Just a joke. I'll need your help with many things in the future, Second Brother."
After some casual conversation, the Fifth Prince left.
The Second Prince sat in silence for a long time.
He was thinking about the Seventh Prince.
To be honest, although the Seventh Prince made him feel threatened and displeased, the Seventh Prince's residence hadn't recruited any advisors at all, only numerologists and astrologers.
Nor did he seem intent on building a power base in the court.
Win him over? Or eliminate him?
The Second Prince slowly poured the cup of tea the Fifth Prince had poured for him onto the ground.
Upon returning to his own residence, the smile the Fifth Prince had worn at the Second Prince's place instantly vanished.
He activated a mechanism in his bedroom, revealing a narrow passage beneath a bookshelf.
The passage was narrow, with two branches.
The left branch led to a small resting room; the right branch held piles of documents and records.
Second Brother didn't know how much damaging information he had secretly gathered against him, and he didn't know all of Second Brother's plans either.
Second Brother didn't trust him, and he didn't trust Second Brother, yet they were bound together by shared interests.
Entangled like vines; forcibly separating them would only cause a break.
After the departure of the Crown Prince, the capital gradually returned to calm.
The Fifth Prince absorbed much of the influence left behind by the Crown Prince, aiding the expansion of the Sixth Prince's faction.
Qu Dubian attended court every few days, went to the Ministry of War to mark his attendance after court, and spent the rest of his time at his residence and the Ministry of Works.
He was waiting for news.
In just three days, the situation changed abruptly.
The Northern Frontier.
Jirgal failed to annihilate the Second Royal Court in one stroke, but the remaining scattered remnants had already fled to the far east.
The militant faction achieved a great victory. After two years of adjustment, the initial resistance that arose when the new Khan first ascended the throne had long since gradually faded.
With the destruction of the Second Royal Court, the unification of the Northern Frontier was but a moment away.
Agumudo was struck in the back by a poisoned arrow while fleeing and could not possibly have survived.
Jirgal cried out excitedly: "Dispatch a team to continue the pursuit! The rest, return to the Royal Court!"
"Yes!"
Before he even reached the Royal Court, the news arrived first.
"Agumudo is dead! The Khan returns!"
"Agumudo is dead! May the heavens bless the Northern Royal Court!"
The militant faction was so excited they nearly jumped for joy. They all knew the implication of the treaty signed with Great Zhou back then.
Originally, they would have needed just over a year to get in sync before launching an expedition against Great Zhou, but the Second Royal Court had been stirring up trouble for so long.
"War! War! War!"
"War! War!"
Powerful shouts echoed through the Royal Court.
The Royal Court's trusted warriors had already been given instructions by Jirgal: the moment the Second Royal Court was destroyed, they were to seize the Princess of Great Zhou, bind her, and kill her as a sacrifice to the banner when the Northern army marched out.
At this moment, roughly several dozen Northerners surrounded the Queen's tent where Zhiyi resided.
The hundred guards she had brought drew their swords, shouting, "Who are you pointing your weapons at?! Step back immediately!"
Zhiyi quickly changed into practical clothes, removed all the elaborate headdresses, and stuffed everything she needed to carry into a small pouch she slung over her shoulder.
A Northern confidant sneered, "Still think you're the Queen?"
"Brothers, kill them, and let's have a taste of the Queen!"
"Who dares!"
A fight was imminent!
"Fire!"
"Fire!"
Somehow, fires had broken out in multiple locations within the Royal Court. The flames spread rapidly; the sheep pens also caught fire, and the sheep inside were driven out by panicked slave shepherds.
"Go, go, quick, don't let the sheep burn."
A slave shepherd drove about a hundred sheep, their tails on fire, toward the area around the Queen's tent.
He shouted in a panic, "My lords! The sheep! The sheep are on fire! Stop them!"
"Damn it, how did sheep from the pens get here?"
The two groups that had just been fighting fiercely were instantly scattered by the frenzied flock.
These burning sheep caused new fires wherever they ran and also startled the horses.
A woman dressed in the simple clothes of a northern maiden slipped out of the Queen's tent unnoticed. After sneaking about twenty meters away, her wrist was suddenly grabbed.
Zhiyi backhanded him hard, broke free, spun around, and ran wildly for five meters before being caught again.
She thought, "Oh no," turned her head, and bit down, tasting a strong muttony flavor.
"Princess, it's me."
Zhiyi: "?"
She released her bite and looked up. Xie Lishan's face appeared abruptly before her eyes.
He was from the Xie family's second branch. Had she not gone for the marriage alliance, this man would have been her prince consort.
In Zhiyi's memory, Xie Lishan was elegant and steady. Now, his hair was disheveled and dirty, he had become much darker and thinner, and the slap mark on his face was very obvious.
She said in surprise, "You...?"
Xie Lishan pulled her and ran in another direction.
"This way. Jirgal is on the road. The main forces of the Royal Court will return soon. This chaos won't last long. I'll explain everything to you later."
Zhiyi fell silent, grabbed two handfuls of mud from the ground, and quickly smeared it on her face, barely concealing her features.
A great fire burned down the Queen's tent and the surrounding tents.
The charred bodies were all piled together, both men and women.
When Jirgal returned and heard the news, his face was grim. "Burned like this, who can tell which one is the Great Zhou princess?!"
His trusted aides hung their heads; they were injured as well.
"The fire startled the sheep, the burning sheep startled the horses... we lost control..."
The elite troops under the Khan in the Royal Court had all been taken to annihilate the Second Royal Court; not many were left behind. It took a quarter of an hour for people from surrounding tribes to arrive, and by then chaos had already erupted.
Jirgal demanded, "What about her guards then! Did they escape or die?"
"Some escaped, some died. But, Khan, the hundred guards around the Great Zhou princess, their skills are different from the guards of the previous Princess Axiang. They are very formidable."
Their every move was more like the soldiers of Great Zhou they clashed with at the border.
Jirgal said, "Then it's also possible the Great Zhou princess isn't among these corpses. She heard the news and ran." His grim, sinister gaze swept around. "Seal all routes leading to the Great Zhou border. If any suspicious persons are found, capture them immediately!"
"Yes!"
After a moment, someone asked, "What if the Great Zhou princess is among these bodies?"
Jirgal prodded a corpse of a Great Zhou guard with his foot.
Then, pick at random a woman's charred corpse; together with these other corpses, behead them, strip off the flesh, and hang them from the banners of our Northern army.
Zhongcheng, at the border.
Xu Jin emerged from an earthen house, coughing.
Lang Qing quickly stepped forward to support him. "Marquis, you should go inside and rest. It's cold out here." In the northern frontier during the second month, though tender grass sprouts had emerged, the chill remained biting.
Xu Jin wasn't injured; he had been thoroughly chilled by the cold wind during an early morning patrol of the city walls some days before. What he thought could be cured with some ginger soup had instead worsened into a severe cough, forcing him to rest for several days under the insistence of Xia Fuyang and Lang Qing.
Fifteen years had passed since he last returned to the capital to relinquish his military authority and lend support to his grandson.
Having campaigned on battlefields for decades, no matter how unwilling he was to admit it, he could no longer deny that his body was not as robust as it once was.
The son of the Xia family had taken on much of the burden for him.
Xu Jin: "Suddenly couldn't sleep."
He sniffed the air, catching a hint of an unusually sharp chill within the wind.
"I have a feeling war is about to break out again."
Lang Qing: "Marquis, if it's just minor skirmishes, General Xia can handle it."
"No," Xu Jin said, clasping his hands behind his back, the skin on his aged hands deeply wrinkled. He frowned. "I feel this time is different from all the others."
The last time this intuition had struck him was decades ago, when the Northern Frontier forces breached twelve cities of Great Zhou.
Xu Jin was currently recuperating in Central City, which faced the First City of the Northern Frontier, now defended by Xia Fuyang.
"Send scouts to investigate..."
Suddenly, a soldier rushed in, his expression grave. He clasped his fists and reported, "Marquis, the entire Northern Frontier is under strict martial law. Communications are sealed. We don't know what has happened in the Royal Court."
Xu Jin's eyes instantly turned sharp.
Lang Qing: "Marquis?"
Xu Jin: "Pass the order. The entire border is to be placed on high alert. Stand ready for battle."
Before fully recovering from his illness, he donned his armor once more and returned to Central First City.
Hearing of his arrival, Xia Fuyang hurried out to meet him. "Marquis Xu, you've heard then."
Xu Jin wasted no words. "I will garrison here. You go to Eastern First City."
Xia Fuyang nodded promptly. "Understood. But Western First City..."
"Western First City is guarded by Er Sen. Transfer more gunpowder and explosives from Central First and Eastern First to compensate for its defensive weaknesses."
"What about your illness?"
Xu Jin patted the armor on his body.
"While wearing this, I will never fall!"
Three days later.
The Northern Frontier army pressed upon the border.
Upon their banners hung twenty-three bleached white skulls.
Standing atop the walls of Eastern First City, a terrible premonition flashed through Xia Fuyang's mind, and his fists slowly clenched.
Jirgal's Left Wise King taunted them from the front lines, pointing at the skulls and laughing uproariously.
"Using the blood of your Great Zhou princess and her guards to consecrate our Northern Frontier war banner will surely bring us victory from the outset!"
Xia Fuyang's eyes instantly flooded with blood, his palm wrenching a piece of stone clean off the battlement.
That was Zhiyi...
The Great Zhou princess.
Qu Dubian's elder sister.
Amidst his fury, he clawed back his composure.
"Engage the enemy—!"
Boom!
War drums thundered instantly.
Central First City and Eastern First City withstood the Northern Frontier army's charge, but the western flank lost two cities in succession.
The Northern Frontier, historically unskilled in crafting weapons and explosives, had suddenly acquired a massive quantity of gunpowder, using it lavishly and without hesitation on their catapults, catching the western defenders completely off guard.
Xia Fuyang examined the new weapons retrieved from fallen Northern Frontier soldiers on the battlefield.
His expression was cold and hard as ice. "This is unmistakably the design of Nanning!"
Between Nanning and the Northern Frontier lay a natural chasm. When had they joined forces, bypassing Great Zhou to support the Northern Frontier?
"Urgent report—!"
"Emergency military dispatch!"
Two eunuchs, one after the other, ran into the palace hall clutching dispatches marked for eight-hundred-li express delivery.
"Your Majesty, the Northern Frontier army is at our borders! They have captured two cities from our western defenses!"
"Your Majesty, there is unusual movement in Nanning! Zhennan Pass is preparing for battle!"
The Northern Frontier had torn up the peace and marriage alliance, killed the Great Zhou Princess Zhiyi, beheaded her, stripped her bones, and hung them high upon their war banner, declaring war on Great Zhou. Nanning was aiding the Northern Frontier, supplying weapons and explosives, and threatening Zhennan Pass.
Instantly, the atmosphere in the capital became terrifyingly tense.
With wolves at the front and tigers at the rear, Great Zhou's treasury was not overflowing. The three commanderies that produced the most grain were still in their tax exemption period; taxes and grain would not be collected until next year.
Upon hearing the news, Consort Guo cried out her daughter's name once before fainting dead away.
Noble Consort Xuan anxiously summoned the imperial physicians, unable to control her worry for Qu Dubian outside the palace.
Seventh Prince's Residence.
Qu Dubian sat cross-legged on the rooftop, facing north.
He bowed his head, polishing a sword.
In the second month, with branches budding and swallows returning to their nests, the scene was one of burgeoning life, yet no one had the heart to appreciate it for even a second.
A pigeon alighted beside him. Qu Dubian retrieved the secret message.
Only after reading the contents of the letter did the breath he had been holding slowly ease, though only by half.
He was likely the only one in the capital who now knew that his elder sister was safe. Though still within the Northern Frontier, her life was not in danger.
After a long while, he realized his fingers were still trembling slightly.
The distance was too great, the situation too perilous.
But he swore to himself this would be the last time.
Ye Xiaoyuan called to him from below. "Your Highness, everything is prepared."
Qu Dubian closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, all churning emotions were forcibly suppressed.
He flipped down from the roof and strode purposefully outward.
"To the palace!"