Inside the Qingyan Study of the Yun Estate, Jiu Jian finished reporting in a low voice that Shaolin's right leg had been broken by his hand, then couldn't help but steal a glance at the figure beside the tea table.
The probing words that would have tested the other's stance died on his lips before they could be spoken—
"That at least leaves Lady Shao in peace."
He knew his master's temperament well; Yun Cheng disliked having his thoughts speculated upon by others.
Yun Cheng had always been fastidious about cleanliness, and after leaving court, he had just bathed and changed out of his court robes. Now he sat with lowered eyes brewing strong tea, his jade-like countenance inscrutable, the faintly bitter scent of pine resin spreading through the entire room.
His mood had not been good these past few days, keeping all the attendants on edge.
For a moment, Jiu Jian could not discern whether his master truly cared about Shao Zhen or not.
He had overheard every word of the conversation between Yun Cheng and Yun Yao that day. Though shocked, he was still unwilling to believe it easily.
After all, the Fourth Miss was impulsive by nature and had never known how to guard her tongue—she had been warned by the young master on numerous occasions for it. But since that day, Jiu Jian had observed Yun Cheng even more carefully from the shadows.
If his master did not care, why would he have assigned Jiu Jian to secretly watch over Shao Zhen, reporting every detail of her movements, and helping her resolve so many difficulties?
If he did care… Jiu Jian dared not think further along that line.
He had served beside Yun Cheng for over a decade. From childhood, the young master had been groomed by Old Master Yun as the future heir, and every word and action followed established rules and propriety without a single misstep.
The young master was like the moon in the sky, like snow on high peaks—pure and self-disciplined, keeping his distance from women.
Lady Shao did possess a face like a lotus blossom, but beauties were hardly rare in this world. Her family background was poor, and she was already a married woman.
For that latter reason alone, there could never be anything between her and his master.
How could he possibly become entangled with such a woman?
At this thought, Jiu Jian grew increasingly certain that he had merely imagined things. Yun Cheng was likely only helping Shao Zhen out of obligation to Young Master Tao's request.
Yes, that must be it.
Steam rose in wisps from the boiling tea kettle. Yun Cheng gazed at the tea leaves sinking and floating in his cup, thinking instead that Shao Zhen and Tao Wenkan were alike in their magnanimity—even when the Shao family committed such outrages, she was unwilling to crush them completely.
Well, that was true enough. She had suffered no small amount of grievances and insults within the Shao family, and what Shaolin had done today was still relatively restrained.
If Tao Wenkan had been present, after hearing those filthy words with her own ears, she would likely have thrown herself into his arms with reddened eyes, weeping like a trembling flower branch in the wind.
Just like last night, tears without end.
What a pity—her pillar of support, her husband, was not in Yingdu at the moment.
Realizing where his thoughts had drifted, Yun Cheng's expression turned stern.
He had already admonished himself not to think of her again, yet barely a day had passed before he broke his own vow.
His hand tightened around the teacup, and with that single squeeze, his favorite white-glazed cup with snow-white glaze cracked apart. A shard embedded itself into his palm, seeping bright red blood. Scalding hot tea poured over the wound like oil on fire, yet he merely furrowed his long brows and said in an utterly ordinary tone: "Clean this up."
Jiu Jian snapped back to attention and looked up, only to see blood streaming down Yun Cheng's jade-white fingers, slipping through the gaps between them—a sight that struck fear into his heart. "Young master! This servant will fetch bandages and wound medicine at once."
As if feeling no pain at all, Yun Cheng pulled the shard from his palm, uprooting that surge of uncontrollable emotion along with it.
Pain was the best reminder—a reminder that he must never again lose his composure over that woman, never cross that line.
The reason he had helped her today was nothing more than guilt over nearly having taken her life last night.
Never again.
Once Tao Wenkan returned, there would be no further connection between him and her.
That night before sleep, Shao Zhen once again recalled the dream from the previous night. Everything in it had felt so real that even after waking, she still felt her heart ache with sharp, stabbing pains.
It was all fake. All fake.
She cut off her chaotic thoughts in time, telling herself that Tao Wenkan could never be the kind of man who would betray his word. If he truly wanted to marry Wang Jing, he would have agreed long ago—why wait until now?
Even so, she could not help but worry.
Counting the days, Tao Wenkan should have already received the first letter she had written. She wondered what his reaction would be upon reading it.
She thought back to the letter she had hastily written yesterday and reflected on it again, feeling that the wording had been somewhat stiff and sharp—utterly unlike the gentle image she usually presented before him.
Unfortunately, the letter had already been taken by Zhu Yue, and she could no longer make any revisions.
Shao Zhen let out a soft sigh into the empty air.
She wanted so badly to know how he was doing in Lucheng—whether he had been injured… whether he missed her.
Shao Zhen dreamed again. This time, what she saw was no longer the red candles and silk of wedding festivities, but an endless expanse of blood the color of congealed rouge—a scene of utter devastation, silent beyond words.
Following instinct, she stumbled unsteadily across the field of bones. The crunching sound beneath her feet made her shiver involuntarily, a chill burrowing straight into the marrow of her bones.
"Tao Lang, Tao Lang—" Her cries echoed across the empty expanse of heaven and earth, but no answer ever came.
A piercing pain like needles stabbing into her heart spread through her chest. She forced herself not to tremble as she turned over the faces of those who had died with their eyes wide open, until her fair hands were stained with blood and grime. Then, in the corner of her vision, she suddenly caught sight of a shattered piece of green jade pendant.
A flash of white light burst before her eyes, and Shao Zhen nearly stumbled as she crawled toward it.
Tao Wenkan's unfocused eyes were half-closed, his usually warm body now stiff and cold. No matter how anxiously she called out to him, there was no sign of him waking.
"My lord, wake up. Look at me—it's me, it's Shao Zhen."
"Don't leave me, please…"
At a loss, she pressed her hands over his chest where an arrow had pierced through, but the blood wouldn't stop—it flowed more and more, even seeping through the gaps between her fingers…
The overwhelming grief jolted Shao Zhen awake with a start: "Tao Lang!"
Xiaowen heard her cry and came in to light the lamp. Startled to find fine beads of sweat covering Shao Zhen's smooth forehead, she quickly poured a cup of tea and brought it to her lips.
"Milady, it's all right. It was just a nightmare."
Was it really just a nightmare? Shao Zhen took a sip of tea, blinking blankly.
If one dream was a coincidence, then having the same heart-wrenching, terrifying dream two nights in a row was something else entirely.
Her heart clenched tightly.
＊
Before the towering, mottled city walls, mournful crows circled above piles of corpses whose blood had long since dried, flying back and forth, tearing at the mangled flesh with their sharp beaks.
In the deep forest five li outside Lu City were camped the eight thousand elite soldiers Tao Wenkan had brought from Yingdu.
By the bonfire burning that night, Tao Wenkan sat on the ground with the other soldiers, indistinguishable from them.
The only difference was that he wore his armor properly and neatly, unlike the others who had their robes half-open, revealing their bronzed, muscular bodies.
During the days of marching to Lu City, these rough soldiers had initially dismissed him entirely, thinking he was just a pampered noble scion using this as an excuse to gain experience.
It wasn't until they realized he never hid behind his shield, and several times charged with his spear at the very front of the battle to break through enemy encirclements, and saw that he ate no differently than they did, that they gradually set aside their prejudice.
The soldiers were all straightforward and forthright men, clear in their likes and dislikes. Within just a few days, Tao Wenkan was able to call them brothers and mingle with them easily.
Now he picked up a dry branch and stirred the fire, the scattered sparks illuminating the dust and tiny insects floating in the air.
The refugees gathered inside Lu City were far more formidable than they had estimated.
The leader, a man named Lu Zhenyi, not only knew how to stir up people's hearts but also possessed considerable brute strength and courage. He led the refugees in holding the city walls. When Tao Wenkan ordered his soldiers to hurl grappling hooks in repeated attempts to seize the city gates, the defenders dropped hoes and cleavers from above, hacking to death many of the vanguard soldiers.
The rows of bows mounted along the parapets were so densely arranged that they could riddle a man with arrows like a sieve.
On the first day of their arrival, Tao Wenkan tried having his soldiers shout to the civilians inside the city, promising that if they would lay down their weapons, the court would issue them grain and pardon their past offenses. At the time, many among the populace had indeed wavered and wanted to surrender—but Lu Zhenyi executed them on the spot as deserters.
With that precedent, any refugee inside the city thinking of defecting had to weigh the consequences carefully.
Tao Wenkan then conferred with another general, concluding that the only option now was to fight a war of attrition. After all, the grain stockpiled inside the city would eventually run out, while they had brought twenty thousand dan of provisions allocated by the court.
However, things were far from as simple as Tao Wenkan had imagined.
Five days earlier, the grain officer had come to him in a panic, claiming that something had gone wrong with the provisions.
Tao Wenkan had slit open the grain sacks they had painstakingly transported, only to discover that the millet inside was mixed with large amounts of sand and gravel—so much that, like clouds blocking the sun, the truly clean millet was pitifully scarce.
In other words, the twenty thousand dan of grain was a lie. At most, they had less than two thousand dan they could actually eat.
Two thousand dan of grain, eight thousand soldiers—they could hold out for at most fifteen days.
The moment he calculated that number, Tao Wenkan's back was soaked through with cold sweat.
At this rate, they would be the ones to lose their strength and mobility first.
He immediately interrogated the grain officer as to what had happened. The man knelt trembling, shaking his head like a rattle-drum: "This subordinate has no idea either! When—when we left Yingdu, I checked everything and it was all normal! Please, Young General Tao, see clearly!"
Just as he was pacing anxiously back and forth, a dark figure appeared outside the tent, reaching out as if to lift the curtain.
Tao Wenkan narrowed his eyes, his hand resting on his sword, ready to draw at any moment.
Once news of the grain shortage leaked out, morale would collapse, and this hard-fought battle would have even less chance of victory. He could not allow a third person to learn this secret.
To his surprise, the uninvited guest was the Third Prince.
Along the way, the man carried himself with an almost reckless ease in the army, utterly oblivious that Lucheng was no gilded tower where he could drown in wine and slumber. The number of wounded soldiers carried back to the tents each day was beyond counting.
Even Tao Wenkan could not help but feel a quiet disdain for one who treated the battlefield as if it were a game.
But now, the eyes that had always held a cynical, carefree smile gleamed with a cold sharpness that felt utterly foreign to Tao Wenkan. The same face, yet the aura around him was entirely transformed.
Third Prince Wei Quan stepped past the two of them, his gaze fixed squarely on the torn, patched sacks.
Tao Wenkan was the first to react, instinctively moving to shield them with his body while deflecting the conversation: "How did Your Highness find his way here?"
Bound by Wei Quan's status, Tao Wenkan, as a subject, could not resort to force. He could only try to bluff his way through, hoping to send the man away for now.
In his line of sight, Wei Quan seemed to give the faintest twitch of his lips, yet there was no trace of amusement in his eyes.
Then, the words he spoke sent another jolt through Tao Wenkan: "Just as I suspected."