Night shrouded the narrow mountain path. The rough-hewn men dressed as bandits used the cramped terrain to cut off the Swift Feather guards piecemeal, engaging them separately and gaining the upper hand.
Reinforcements couldn’t push through, and the bandits pressed closer and closer to the carriage. Cold sweat mixed with blood splattered across the deputy commander’s face as it slid down, his heart cursing foully in frustration. He’d thought this would be an easy assignment—make one trip and return with some merit to show for it. Why did these blind bandits have to latch onto them? If anything happened to the princess here, their heads…
“Don’t let her get away! Chase her!”
The deputy commander turned at the sound and saw a figure draped in a crimson crane-feather cloak riding a horse, galloping up the mountain without looking back. The fierce wind whipped the cloak up like the fiery wings of a bird in flight.
Before the deputy could register who that was, another figure stumbled and ran up to him. He recognized her as Liu Ying, the maid who served the princess.
Liu Ying had no time to be afraid of the blood and corpses everywhere. She sprinted without pause to the commander and shouted in a trembling voice: “The princess said she’ll draw off some of them—please, Deputy Commander, take your men and pursue them at once!”
That was the princess who just rode past?! The deputy’s gaze swept quickly over the carriage—the curtain torn, the shaft broken, the traces snapped, and the horse gone. Clearly, that was the one she’d taken.
The wall of men splitting the Swift Feather guards loosened, and the rear guards finally broke through. Though the deputy had hoped to coast on merit, he had some brains after all. He instantly understood Feng Mian’s intent, ordered part of the guards to encircle the bulk of the bandits in reverse, and led his own squad after the direction she’d gone.
Before leaving, he heard Liu Ying urgently toss out: “There’s a watch post a few hundred meters away—Wuliu has already gone to report!”
The deputy couldn’t help but admire the princess. All along the way, she’d seemed frail and delicate, curled up in the carriage. Yet in a crisis, she had such nerve. He, a grown man, had panicked and forgotten to arrange for someone to break through and alert the post. He ought to be ashamed.
Howling winds carried the clash of weapons and the screams of battle onto the official road where bandits had ambushed.
A gleaming spear pierced the last bandit’s throat. Baili Xunzhou sidestepped the spray of blood, then finally turned to look at the Swift Feather guards who’d appeared as sudden reinforcements on the other side.
During the fight, he’d observed their techniques—none seemed battle-hardened, yet they bore traces of military training. Their weapons were standard-issue for the capital’s troops, so they must have come from the capital.
At this time, a squad of elite soldiers from the capital… could it be—
“Thank you all for your aid. I am Baili Xunzhou. Might I ask who you are?” he inquired.
The Swift Feather commander hurriedly dismounted and saluted: “This official is Lu De, tasked with escorting the princess’s procession. Greetings, Young Lord.”
Hearing the answer he least wanted, Baili Xunzhou pressed his lips together in displeasure and asked flatly: “If you’re here, then where is the princess?”
The commander answered with confidence: “There’s another small path on Wolf Bone Ridge. We abandoned the baggage, and the princess has already departed safely under the deputy commander’s escort.”
Since she was unharmed, there was nothing more he needed to do. Baili Xunzhou gave a slight nod, too lazy for pleasantries, and reined his horse to leave. A trembling shop hand from the merchant caravan dropped to his knees with a thud, blocking the horse, tears and snot streaming down his face: “Milord, please save my master! He just—”
“I know.” Baili Xunzhou jerked his horse’s head around, barely avoiding trampling the reckless fellow.
During the height of the battle, several bandits, seeing they were losing, had grabbed the merchant master and a few other hostages and fled into the mountains, likely planning to hold them for ransom while saving their own skins. This loyal servant was still worried about his captured master.
“If you don’t move aside, your master will truly be bones soon.”
The fellow scrambled out of the way, and with a single command, Baili Xunzhou, Shan Yi, and the Swift Feather Camp riders galloped into the mountains, scattering in all directions.
He’d said that to scare him—the moment the merchant master was taken, someone had already tracked their trail, so they could rescue them after settling the battle.
As for the bandit strongholds on Wolf Bone Ridge, half of them had already been mapped out by him.
A month ago, he’d dealt with a small raiding party from the Arna Tribe at Xiaohe Bay, and afterward, he’d been pulled along by several similar minor disturbances. Every time he led his men to the scene, the enemy would fight a bit and then flee, as if deliberately luring him here.
Sensing something off, he’d sent men to investigate in secret and discovered that members of the Arna Tribe had slipped into the northern frontier while he was occupied, heading for Wolf Bone Ridge and colluding with the bandits there.
He’d held his forces still, spent days mapping out the strongholds connected to the Arna Tribe, and secretly repositioned his troops—waiting for today to wipe them all out in one stroke.
The moon leapt among the clouds, and occasional slivers of pale light revealed a figure moving swiftly through the forest.
Feng Mian urged her horse forward at full speed, the wind howling past her ears. She felt as though the cold air had pierced straight through her chest, carrying a biting, icy ache.
With one hand, she unfastened her cloak and draped it over a tangle of branches, creating the illusion that it had been snagged there, then wheeled her horse in the opposite direction.
Using clothing to create misleading decoys was a trick Feng Mian had learned at age five while fleeing for her life through the mountains with others. When you couldn’t outrun them, you had to find ways to shake them off—even if the pursuers were only fooled for a moment, it could buy precious time.
The mountain forest was full of natural cover. As long as Feng Mian could keep using her surroundings to create various illusions to confuse the bandits, she could hold out until the deputy envoy and his men finished them off, or until Wuliu brought reinforcements from the watchtower…
Suddenly, the horse let out a shrill whinny and reared up on its hind legs. Feng Mian frantically yanked the reins and turned the horse’s head. The moon, hidden behind clouds, happened to reveal a sliver of clear silver light from its edge, faintly illuminating a narrow ravine that had been swallowed by darkness ahead.
The path was blocked. Feng Mian immediately turned her horse to find another route. But the bandits behind her, who had been misled by the cloak and chased in the wrong direction, heard the horse’s whinny and angrily gave chase.
Without looking back, Feng Mian fired two sleeve arrows, buying herself a brief two-breath reprieve.
The clattering, powerful hoofbeats drawing steadily closer seemed to pound directly against Feng Mian’s wildly racing heart.
Her riding skills had been learned in the palace archery and riding lessons. Emperor Jiayu didn’t like her learning too much of it—first, it wasn’t ladylike or refined enough, and second, he feared she might get hurt. So he’d only let her learn the basics, enough to keep her fit.
She could only be said to know how to ride, not to be skilled at it. In such a desperate situation, she was practically guiding the horse by pure instinct, her two numb, frozen hands gripping the reins with all her might, praying only that she wouldn’t be thrown off…
The moon slipped back behind the clouds, and her eyes, suddenly robbed of that sliver of light, plunged into deeper darkness. The approaching hoofbeats behind her, the frantic pounding of her heart, and her ragged gasping filled Feng Mian’s ears.
Then, the sharp whistle of an arrow cutting through the air suddenly rang out. A flash of snow-white cold light tore through the darkness.
A fierce arrow shot toward Feng Mian’s direction.
A scream rang out, startling sleeping birds into flight. The arrow flew past Feng Mian and struck one of the bandits who had closed in behind her, followed immediately by the chaos of men and horses tumbling to the ground.
“Go.” A cold, harsh voice like black iron soaked in ice water for a thousand years. A tall, straight-backed youth on horseback burst into Feng Mian’s view, sweeping past her like a shooting star. Beneath his hood, sharp, fierce features were faintly visible, his eyes fixed on the bandits like a hawk’s as he nocked an arrow to his bowstring—without sparing Feng Mian a single glance.
Reinforcements?! A flicker of joy rose in Feng Mian’s heart, only to be cut short by a pained whinny. Her horse’s leg had been pierced by a bandit’s arrow, and the animal reared up in agony, kicking and thrashing wildly.
This was an ordinary horse, and Feng Mian was not its familiar master. Under these circumstances, it went completely mad, intent on throwing her off.
Feng Mian instinctively raised both hands to protect her head, curling her body into a tight ball like a shrimp to shield her soft abdomen.
During her riding lessons, she’d once been startled off a horse by Zhaoning, and from the imperial physician she’d learned that when falling from a horse, you must first protect the most vulnerable parts of your body, to avoid injury from the fall or being trampled by hooves.
Just as the cold, hard scent of earth rushed toward her face, Feng Mian felt a tight grip on her lower back. The world spun in a dizzying blur, and then she was back in the saddle, a warm body pressed against her front.
Startled, Feng Mian opened her eyes to see a broad, dark back before her, followed by the youth’s clear, crisp voice: “Sit tight.”
So she’d been saved by the “reinforcements” after all. Feng Mian let out a breath of relief, reached out to firmly grab the robes at the youth’s waist, and curled up into a small ball behind him.
Baili Xunzhou’s long spear swept through three opponents in one motion, dispatching the bandits who had surrounded them.
He was somewhat puzzled—he’d been chasing bandits fleeing with a hostage, so where had this new group of unfamiliar bandits come from, chasing after a young woman with murderous intent?
Several Swift Feather Camp soldiers charged up from behind. The bandits pursuing Feng Mian saw the situation turn against them and hastily retreated. Baili Xunzhou and his men still had important matters to attend to and didn’t give chase. But the retreating bandits happened to run straight into the Luan Yi Guard members who had been pursuing them. The deputy envoy and his men dealt with the bandits, but found no sign of Feng Mian—and their hearts sank halfway.
Surely it couldn’t be such bad luck that something had actually happened to her…
Feng Mian, who had been “taken away” by this unexpected turn of events, also sensed something was wrong and silently tightened her grip on the dagger at her lower back.
These people seemed familiar with the terrain of Wolf Bone Ridge, heading somewhere with clear purpose…
As she grew increasingly anxious, the horse suddenly stopped. The group formed a circle, facing off against those ahead.
Feng Mian cautiously peered out from behind the horse’s back and saw a group of people ahead, cornered against a sheer cliff face with no escape. A scar-faced man at the front grabbed a plump man dressed in fine silks and shoved him in front as a shield, pressing a blade against his neck.
The scar-faced man threatened viciously: “Heir Baili, if you let us leave, these people get to go home alive. Otherwise…”
The blade pressed lightly against his neck, a hint of blood staining its edge red.
Feng Mian was stunned by the scar-faced man’s words. What had he just called this person? Heir Baili? There was only one Heir Baili in the northern frontier—that would be Heir Baili Xunzhou, son of Prince Dingbei.
This man was actually the Heir of Prince Dingbei?
Feng Mian tilted his head up blankly, scanning the figure seated upright on horseback before him. The high ponytail was sharp and spirited, and as he slightly turned his head, the revealed jawline and profile were strikingly handsome. The lines of his neck and shoulders were clean and powerful, his back straight and tall, his frame lean yet not frail—clearly a fresh and handsome young man.
How on earth had he been rumored to be a savage with a face like Zhong Kui, with green skin and fangs?