A blood-curdling scream suddenly rang out not far away, the voice sounding very much like Yun Jiang’s. A-Pan desperately suppressed the cry threatening to escape her throat and squeezed her eyes shut.
How tragic!
A tear rolled down and froze into ice in the snow.
No one could escape the Weiren’s pursuit. Her only family, Yun Jiang, was already dead.
She had thought the gleaming blade would surely sever her head or pierce her heart, but unexpectedly, a scream rang out, and the descending blade halted mid-swing.
A-Pan snapped her eyes open and saw an arrow piercing straight through the Weiren’s chest. The man’s eyes bulged in shock, his body tilted, and he toppled from his horse, splattering her with blood.
She instinctively turned to look back. Through the flying snow, she saw a carriage stopped just a few paces away. Two men sat outside it, wearing straw hats and plain cloth garments like ordinary folk, their features indistinct.
One held the reins, seemingly the driver.
The other held a bow—that arrow had likely come from his hand.
The remaining Weiren heard the commotion and spurred their horses over, shouting furiously from a distance, “How dare you! Who are you?! You dare kill a general of Wei Guo! Take this axe!”
In an instant, the Weiren’s murderous axe split the air, whistling as it flew toward her.
A chill ran down her spine. A-Pan staggered to her feet and instinctively fled toward the carriage, crying, “Sir, please save me!”
A sharp twang sounded—the bowman outside the carriage loosed an arrow that pierced wind and snow. The Weiren’s axe veered aside and thudded into the snow.
The remaining pursuers spat blood and tumbled from their horses one by one, wailing like wolves and ghosts.
Trembling with terror, A-Pan prostrated herself before the carriage. Before she could utter the words “thank you,” the driver spoke: “You should thank my master.”
Oh!
A-Pan’s heart warmed—this was the accent of Zhongshan!
Though she didn’t know who this “master” was, meeting a fellow Zhongshan exile in this desperate Wei territory instantly filled her with a sense of kinship.
Never mind that Wei Ying was only half a day’s journey away—if the Weijun learned that all the Zhongshan Yingji had been scattered by Zhao Guo’s troops, they would surely send men to search for them.
Even if they didn’t come, alone and starving in the cold, she couldn’t survive this frozen wasteland.
Filled with awe and gratitude, A-Pan prostrated herself and bowed deeply toward the carriage. “Thank you, sir.”
A long silence followed. No voice came from within the carriage. The world around was utterly still, save for the howling north wind whipping snow through the air without cease.
The sky was overcast, and the savage blizzard continued to fall as if it would never end.
The northwest wind cut her face like a knife, and she shivered in the storm.
After a long wait, a voice finally spoke slowly from within the carriage. “You are from Zhongshan?”
Suppressing her shivers, A-Pan quickly straightened up. “Yes. Please, sir, take A-Pan home!”
The carriage door creaked open. A-Pan looked up and saw a young man of refined bearing seated within.
His simple cloth robes couldn’t hide his noble air, though his face was deathly pale with little color. He coughed dryly from time to time, seeming to be in poor health.
But when he spoke, his voice was clear, warm, and gentle. “You don’t even know who I am, yet you want to come with me?”
She suppressed the tremor in her voice. “A-Pan only knows that you are from Zhongshan.”
From Zhongshan—and her savior.
A savior was one of her own, a kin, family—someone worth entrusting herself to at this moment.
The man sighed with a hint of a laugh. “Zhongshan has already fallen.”
Yes, Zhongshan had fallen. That was why she and her sister had been reduced to Yingji of Wei Guo, and why she had nearly died beneath a Weiren’s blade.
Her heart raced with unease. She didn’t know what to say—relieved to have survived, yet utterly lost about where to go, her heart hollow and adrift.
The snow gradually let up, but the cold had seeped into her very bones.
A-Pan’s straw sandals had long since been lost somewhere. The hem of her robe and trouser legs were soaked through with snowmelt, and her feet had long lost all feeling.
Her entire body was stiff, trembling uncontrollably.
Another long moment passed before the young man in the carriage asked, “Once you board this carriage, your life is no longer your own. Will you still come?”
At that moment, A-Pan had no idea the weight of those words.
She only thought: she had to leave this godforsaken place first. Whatever came after—she’d worry about it then.
People weren’t immortals; who could foresee the future? In any case, they were both from Zhongshan. No matter how bad things got, it couldn’t be worse than the Weiren.
As long as she didn’t go to the Weijun, didn’t become a Yingji, as long as she could find a place to live and be an honest person—what did it matter whose life it was?
The man in the carriage had a pair of cold, clear eyes. He glanced down at her indifferently, saying nothing, simply waiting for A-Pan to decide for herself.
The man holding the reins grew impatient and urged quickly, “My master is asking you a question. If you won’t come, Zhou will drive on.”
No sooner had he spoken than he cracked his whip against the horses. The shaft horse neighed, stamped its hooves, and indeed galloped away.
Why were they leaving?
A-Pan was utterly panicked, like a startled bird that had been shot at. Without a moment to think, she stumbled to her feet and chased after the carriage, crying, “My lord!”
The cursed weather of Wei Guo was enough to freeze one’s fingers and split one’s skin.
The wind whipped through the air, carrying remnants of snow in a blinding flurry. The snow in the wilderness was knee-deep, and her legs felt as if they were weighted with lead—unable to lift, unable to move.
Her feet were no longer her own, stiff as two blocks of ice-cold stone. After only four or five steps, she tripped over a skeleton buried in the snow and tumbled face-first into the drift.
Yes—this was the border between Zhongshan and Wei Guo, where battles had raged for years.
Countless soldiers had died here over the years, and countless bones lay buried beneath the snow.
A-Pan struggled in the snow, crying out, “My lord! My lord, save me!”
The carriage had already sped dozens of paces ahead, but to her surprise, it came to a halt at her cries.
A-Pan’s nose stung with emotion. She scrambled to her feet and staggered forward, suppressing the tremor in her voice. “My lord!”
The person inside the carriage had a change of heart after all. He coughed a few times behind his sleeve, then tossed out a heavy cloak. Only then did he say, “Get on.”
A-Pan paid no heed to anything else. She snatched up the cloak and wrapped it around herself, her hands and feet purple with cold, gripping the carriage rail tightly as she tried to climb aboard.
But she was not tall, and her frozen, stiff soles kept slipping. Covered in dust and dirt, she looked utterly pathetic.
The two men seated at the front merely watched coldly from the sidelines. It was the young man inside the carriage who extended a hand to her.
It was a pale, thin hand.
Once it had been nurtured like ivory—refined and precious, without a single callus.
But from the palm to the wrist beneath the sleeve ran a long, fresh scar.
Though it had already scabbed over, it still looked horrifying.