Mu Jue smiled and spoke softly, “Good. When you are finished with the war, you can return to your hometown in peace to marry and have children.”
If Da Ning and Northern Di went to war again in the future, he would be the first one dragged before the armies to be sacrificed for the war flags.
However, he might not even live to see that day. He wondered if the Northern Di had a custom of digging up the dead to whip their corpses.
When day broke, the physician brought him a bowl of porridge and medicine. Seeing him speaking to the guard in high spirits, the physician was quite surprised and took his pulse for a longer time than usual.
After finishing, the physician still shook his head.
“Sixth Prince, you must depart after finishing your breakfast. There are pills in this bottle; take three a day, dissolved in water. You must remember this.”
The physician could not go to Northern Di with him. Whatever happened to his illness in Northern Di would no longer be Da Ning’s concern.
Mu Jue took the bottle and nodded in agreement.
He tucked the dagger into his inner clothes. At first, the escorting guards refused to allow it. But after he said, “If I wanted to die, I could just fall off my horse on the road,” they likely thought he had a point and let him keep it.
At a certain point in the rocky plains, the convoy stopped. Through the wind and sand, Mu Jue saw the Northern Di troops. They wore sheepskin coats; their eyes were brown, and their hair was brownish-black, braided into small locks that hung over their shoulders.
The leader of the Imperial Guards rode forward to negotiate with the Northern Di party.
A few moments later, he returned and signaled with a wave. The guards began to withdraw from the carriage one by one. The physician also stepped down. Mu Jue was now surrounded by Northern Di soldiers.
The carriage curtain was lifted. Several Northern Di men scanned him like they were inspecting goods, exchanged a few words in a language he couldn’t understand, and then left him inside the carriage.
The convoy continued forward. Mu Jue sat in the carriage and took one pill as instructed.
The pill turned the water pitch black; it was even more bitter than the brewed herbal medicine.
After he swallowed it, the bitterness forced tears from his eyes. The warm, crystal drops hit the back of his hand, feeling almost hot enough to burn a hole in his skin.
He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand and looked through a gap in the curtain blown open by the wind. The people of Da Ning were long gone.
Even the towering city fortress had becom
After traveling through the night, they reached the Northern Di camp. Someone blindfolded him in advance to prevent him from seeing the military layout and led him into a tent.
“Your Ning Emperor said that once the hostage arrived, he would send envoys to sign the peace treaty and deliver the silver and silk. According to the agreement, the Ning envoys should arrive tomorrow.”
A Northern Di man spoke to him in broken Mandarin.
“The Khan said: when the envoys arrive, you will leave for our capital. If the envoys do not arrive within three days, you will be killed along with the livestock as a sacrifice to the Eternal Heaven.”
He was locked in the tent.
In the evening, after taking his medicine, he tilted the porcelain bottle and found only three pills remained. It was exactly enough to last until he reached Northern Di.
This medicine had kept him alive through his severe illness; the ingredients must have been very expensive, like ginseng, bird’s nest, or reishi mushrooms…
That was why there were only a few. There was no more.
The next day, the Northern Di soldier who brought Mu Jue food noticed his health was very poor.
He barely touched the food placed before his tent for his three meals.
The young man lay in the dark tent. If not for the slight rising and falling of his chest, he would have looked like a cold corpse.
“Your Ning envoys did not come today,” the soldier relayed the Khan’s order. “Breaking a promise is an unforgivable sin before the Eternal Heaven. You have two days left. Only when the Ning envoys arrive will a witch doctor treat you.”
Mu Jue listened with a numb expression. From the fact that the bottle held only three pills, he knew exactly how much his life was worth to others.
His father in name didn’t care if he survived in Northern Di, let alone these enemies.
Seeing no reaction from the youth, the soldier added:
“You can also trade information about your Ning Kingdom with the Khan for medicine. The Khan is merciful; he might agree.”
Mu Jue’s eyelashes fluttered. He struggled to turn his head toward the soldier standing outside the tent.
He suddenly understood why Lu Shiting wanted him to be the hostage.
Because he was like a ghost in the palace. He had lived in the side hall forever; he knew nothing of court affairs or secret intelligence.
If they had sent another prince, that prince might have blurted out everything he knew out of fear. But Mu Jue wouldn’t, because even if he wanted to talk, he had nothing to say.
However, if he had truly died on the road, Lu Shiting probably had a way to send another prince—one with a poisoned throat and severed hands, unable to speak or write.
The Northern Di soldier saw the weak youth’s lips curve into a slight smile. He walked closer, intending to hear what intelligence the hostage was about to reveal.
But the youth quickly turned his back to him, curling into the deeper shadows.
“Lower the tent curtain. I want to go back to sleep.”
The soldier cursed outside, and the tent fell back into a deathly silence.
Another day passed, and the Da Ning envoys still did not come. The food sent to Mu Jue’s tent became a piece of hard, dry bread and a bowl of water.
He was truly hungry. He tore off a small piece of bread, soaked it in water until it was soft, and ate it.
The soldier didn’t come back to ask for intelligence. Mu Jue felt that if the envoys didn’t arrive as scheduled tomorrow, it would be the day of his death.
Before dying, he should eat more.
As Xia Ming used to say, people like them wouldn’t have anyone to burn incense or paper money for them after death. They would just be wandering ghosts. If he didn’t eat his fill before dying, he would never eat again.
He was probably even unluckier. After all, the Northern Di believed in the Eternal Heaven, not the King of Hell. If he died here, he didn’t know if a foreign god would even take him in.
He used to not believe in such things, but now he had become weakly superstitious.
He ate slowly, stopping and starting, until he finished the entire piece of bread.
Then, in a series of strange nightmares, he waited for the dawn.
On the final day, the Northern Di people did not leave him in the tent to fend for himself. Instead, they sent two soldiers to drag him to the training grounds in the center of the camp.
On the high platform of the grounds, several witch doctors were dancing. They wore necklaces made of animal skulls and colorful furs, with silver crowns on their heads and patterns painted on their faces with plant juice.
They muttered ancient incantations. He only understood one phrase: “Eternal Heaven.”
To the side, the Northern Di soldiers stood in solemn ranks. They crossed their fists over their chests and bowed to the witch doctors.
Behind the doctors was a massive altar. Several cattle and sheep were led to the front, and a witch doctor drew a long blade.
Mu Jue could tell those animals were prepared as sacrifices.
He was taken up to the platform by two soldiers. The witch doctors’ cloudy eyes fixed on him, and they gradually surrounded him.
The drums and bells in their hands made strange, eerie noises.
“The Ning Kingdom promised us they would send envoys to sign the treaty immediately after sending the hostage. But it is now the third day, and the envoys are nowhere to be found!”
A Northern Di soldier shouted from below.
“If the Ning Kingdom breaks its promise, the Eternal Heaven will surely send punishment! If the Ning people have not arrived by midnight tonight, the witch doctors will use the Ning Prince as a sacrifice to the Eternal Heaven!”