The turtle shell's glow had lasted only a flicker, but it had drunk down a full eighty percent of the Lesser Returning Pill's potency. Now it floated silent in the sea of Wang Yu's consciousness, gently rising and falling.
Yet if the shell had taken much, what it gave back was just as great.
"Hm?" Li Yunxiu made a small sound of surprise. "Why does your internal energy flow more smoothly than it did a moment ago?"
Then came the regret. "Too much of the potency wasted. Never mind three years of cultivation — once your circuit is fully open, you'll be lucky to keep three months' worth."
Wang Yu's eyes shifted, and he said nothing.
Perhaps because the shell had made its home in his mind, its function simply came to him, as natural as knowing his own hand: whenever he consumed something rich in potency, the shell would absorb the energy and feed the distilled essence back to its host — improving his gifts and constitution — while the patterns on its back derived and refined whatever arts he had learned.
Just now, for instance, the shell had drunk the Lesser Returning Pill's potency — enough to make its patterns flash for only an instant — and in that instant it had fine-tuned the first three layers of the Flowing Flame Afterglow to fit him exactly, derived the fourth layer outright, and fed it all back to him.
As for the widened meridians and the smoother flow, that was the shell's feedback to his natural endowments. Only a sliver of improvement — but he had never trained a day, and his meridians had been so narrow and clogged that even a sliver was enough for Li Yunxiu to feel the difference.
The shell ought to have other functions besides. But the pill's potency had been too meager to wake them, so Wang Yu had no way to know. That would have to wait.
As Li Yunxiu dissolved what little potency remained through his body, Wang Yu ran the first layer of the Flowing Flame Afterglow on his own — and finally felt it: the internal energy, the true qi, out of his last life's legends.
"Now this is a proper cheat code!"
Wang Yu's eyes were gleaming. One moment Li Yunxiu was declaring he'd started too late and would never amount to much; the next, he had activated his cheat, lit up the talent tree, and smashed straight through the ceiling.
"Three months of cultivation, and look how pleased you are."
The delight on Wang Yu's face got a laugh out of Ziling too, and she couldn't resist needling him. "Well! Now that you're an accomplished martial artist, what do you say the two of us spar a—OW!"
Ziling clutched her forehead. Li Yunxiu had flicked it.
"My lady..." Ziling protested, uncomprehending.
"From now on, it is 'Madam.'" Li Yunxiu said it lightly. "And 'Your Highness.'"
"Understood... Madam." Ziling gave in, thoroughly aggrieved, then turned to Wang Yu with a small curtsy. "Your Highness."
"Mm!" Wang Yu accepted it without a shred of modesty.
But under Ziling's not-so-subtle eye-roll, he did have to admit: "Fine — I have a little internal energy now, but I'm still nowhere near you, and I don't know how to use any of it. I couldn't beat you."
Thus flattered, Ziling's mood soared; she giggled and let him off.
She was a clever, lively girl. For all her sharp tongue — mostly indignation on her mistress's behalf over this sham marriage, and the advantage she felt Wang Yu had gained by it — she had looked after him well enough on the road. That dagger that had come flying at him? It was Ziling who had knocked it aside.
The dagger. That finally reminded him. "Why would assassins be after me in the first place?"
"I'm the Westguard Prince, appointed by His Majesty himself, on my way to take up the post. Who would dare kill me?" Wang Yu asked, baffled. "Isn't that slapping the emperor across the face?"
What he got back were two pairs of pitying eyes.
Ziling burst out laughing. "And whose fault is that? The way you swaggered around the capital, do you have any idea how many people you offended? Now you've left the city for your post — what better time to kill you than now?"
"Me?" Wang Yu pointed at himself, head full of question marks. "Swaggered?"
"You, exactly you!" Ziling nodded. "The former heir of the Westguard Prince — the Westguard Prince that is, Zhao Yu!"
She started counting on her fingers. "Broke the legs of the Minister of Justice's son. Carried off the Vice Minister of Revenue's concubine. Beat Pacification Commissioner Liu of the Capital Guard within an inch of his life..."
Wang Yu was speechless. "I'm a hostage from a border princedom, and I dared act like that in the capital?"
Li Yunxiu smiled faintly. "Because your father was an Innate grandmaster with fifty thousand soldiers. Short of the crime of open treason, His Majesty could not touch you."
"None of those people know Zhao Yu has been swapped out. They believe you are Zhao Yu," Ziling said. "In the capital, they didn't dare move. But you've left the capital now — if they don't strike at this hour, then when?
Commissioner Liu of the Capital Guard was a disciple of a great sect to begin with. And the Minister of Justice and the Vice Minister of Revenue may not know martial arts themselves, but they keep experts in their households — and they can always buy killers."
Li Yunxiu didn't even need to continue; Ziling rattled on for her. "Take the pair who attacked us this morning — the Black Ridge Twin Fiends. They work the Henan Circuit year-round. If some capital grandee hadn't commissioned them, they would never have come to the Hexi Circuit to kill you."
"They're assassinating a prince of the realm," Wang Yu said. "Aren't they afraid of being hunted for it?"
"Jianghu matters stay in the jianghu; court matters stay at court. Step outside the court, and everything is jianghu." To Ziling, this was self-evident. "Besides, they've been on the wanted lists for years. You think they're afraid of being wanted twice?"
"They kill the prince of the Westguard Manor, and they're not afraid the Manor's whole faction revolts?" Wang Yu pressed.
As he remembered it, the entire reason the emperor had sent him to impersonate Zhao Yu was fear of exactly that revolt.
"They're not afraid. When the sky falls, the tall men hold it up." Contempt and disgust flickered through Li Yunxiu's eyes. "A pack of seat-warmers feeding at the trough. If any of them can see three days past his own nose, that's talent."
Piece by piece, as she talked, Wang Yu assembled their situation.
The emperor had detained Zhao Yu and every expert guard of the Westguard Manor in the capital under quiet house arrest, and dispatched a single ten-man squad to escort Wang Yu and his consort back to the fief.
He and Zhao Yu were so alike — and Zhao Yu ten years gone from home — that the emperor had not the slightest fear of exposure, and every confidence that Wang Yu, armed with legitimate title and Li Yunxiu's help, could take the Westguard Manor in hand.
But the Manor was a half-independent power that had always kept the court at arm's length. By rights, the emperor should never have trusted Zhao Yu — the world would assume he had released the heir only because he had no choice. So the escort could not be conspicuous, either, lest it wake the suspicions of the old prince's masters and retainers.
The original owner had known only that he was to impersonate Zhao Yu, and that Zhao Yu had made himself infamous in the capital — not that the capital's great men would buy killers to hunt him. So Wang Yu hadn't known either.
"So we can only rely on our own strength to get back?" Wang Yu asked.
"Correct." Li Yunxiu smiled. "But once you reach the Westguard Manor, you are the Westguard Prince with an army at your back. No assassin alive will dare come for you then."
Reach the Westguard seat, follow Li Yunxiu's lead, take control of the Manor, lie low with a clear conscience, harbor no ambitions, side with the emperor — and there would be no danger of exposure at all. He could be the Westguard Prince for the rest of his life!
Wang Yu nodded along. Apart from this opening-with-assassins business looking a little rough, he only had to clear the newbie zone and the rest of the road was smooth pavement!
Lying flat? Now that, I know how to do!
Once installed, he wouldn't have to lift a finger. He'd use the Manor's wealth to buy up every miracle pill and elixir under heaven, feed himself a world-class talent, train a peerless martial art — then ride out into the jianghu at his own sweet leisure. What a life that would be!
Wang Yu had been an ordinary man before crossing over, and he was an ordinary man after: no ambition, no hunger for power, and no savior complex whatsoever. If someone else was willing to shoulder the responsibility while he enjoyed himself — only a fool would say no.
Provided, of course, that he actually walked out of the Capital Circuit alive and reached Longshan Prefecture in the Anxi Circuit, where the Westguard Manor kept its seat.
Wang Yu couldn't help looking at Li Yunxiu.
Their whole party, apart from Li Yunxiu and Ziling, amounted to one ten-man squad of capital guards. Was that enough to fight with?
At that weak little look, Li Yunxiu laughed despite herself and offered comfort. "Don't worry. His Majesty foresaw all of this. Besides me, a master travels with us. Unless an Innate expert takes the field in person, we are perfectly safe."
She added an instruction. "Once we reach Longshan Prefecture, you will say he is a man you happened to save in the capital — that is why you came home without your household guards, with only him attending you."
"There's a master with us?" Wang Yu asked, curious. "Who? Hidden among those ten guards?"
The words had barely left his mouth when the carriage braked hard. From outside came a burst of footsteps, dense but unhurried — the ten guards closing in from front and rear to ring the carriage.
"Whoa—" At the head of the column, Song Yong, the guard squad's leader, reined up and shouted, "Who goes there?"
Ziling twisted aside and lifted the carriage's front curtain. Over the shoulder of the white-haired old coachman, Wang Yu saw two middle-aged men in blue, longswords in hand, standing shoulder to shoulder across the road.
Li Yunxiu's brow edged up. "Sky-blue robes, sea-green lapels, a finger and a half of blade — Southern Sea Sect."
Ziling jumped. "The Southern Sea Sect sits at the far southern edge of the world — they rarely come even to the Central Plains! Why would they be after the Pri— ahem — after us, fresh out of the royal city?"
Watching the two expressionless swordsmen — and the three slanted stripes on their green lapels — a light flashed deep in Li Yunxiu's eyes. "They are not merely Southern Sea swordsmen. They are two very famous Southern Sea swordsmen."
Ziling picked it up at once. "'Cloud of the sky, wind of the sea — pale cloud, light wind.' The Southern Sea Twin Swords?"
"How rare, to be recognized." The blue-robed man on the left allowed himself a smile.
"We can leave her alive," said the one on the right, his face indifferent.
"And the woman Top Scholar?" the left one asked.
"She married Zhao Yu. That makes her family." The right one's answer was no answer at all — and answer enough.
Li Yunxiu had heard every word. She let go of whatever slim hopes remained — and instead, of all things, turned to Wang Yu and began an introduction. "The Southern Sea Sect sits on the coast of the Guangnan Circuit, in the far south. Their swords run three inches longer than a common longsword and half a fen narrower; their swordsmanship is swift and slashing, uncanny and merciless — in no way beneath the signature arts of the Seven Great Sword Sects.
These two are called 'Pale Cloud, Light Wind' — for a draw so swift and a line so strange it leaves no trace at all, faint as cloud, light as wind. By the time you see their sword, you have already been run through."
Wang Yu looked at Li Yunxiu. Only one question interested him now. "Can you beat them?"
Li Yunxiu shook her head. "No."
In the next breath, the two blue figures came sweeping in, drawing their swords in mid-flight.
"The woman Top Scholar deserves her name — what composure!" the left one called in praise.
The right one showed a cruel smile. "I hope you can stay this calm while you're writhing under me."