“General, all the warhorses have been slaughtered.”
Wei Qingyan stood at the mountain’s peak with her hands behind her back. Hearing these words, her fists clenched tight, though her expression remained unchanged.
After defeating the Wudan, she had been ambushed by eighty thousand Beilingjun on her way back to the capital.
The twenty thousand Huguojun she led had lost more than half their numbers, and the survivors had retreated to Huangshaling.
Their rations had run out ten days ago. The enemy ate large portions of meat every meal, the aroma of food drifting in the cooking smoke to wither the soldiers’ will.
Yet, reinforcements never arrived. Hope was fading…
“Light the fires immediately.”
The Huguojun were men of iron; they would rather die in battle than die a pathetic death!
“General, the enemy is attacking again.”
Before the horse meat could even be cooked, the lieutenant arrived to report once more…
The battle cries at Huangshaling shook the heavens!
Everything before Wei Qingyan’s eyes turned a vivid crimson; she had already fought until a mist of blood clouded her vision.
But in the end, they were simply outnumbered.
A sharp arrow pierced her body. She was caught by her secret guard, Abu, as the remaining Huguojun quickly gathered around her.
Abu swiftly stripped off the armor that symbolized her status, then smeared blood over her face to hide her features.
He then removed his own mask, revealing a face that was seventy percent similar to Wei Qingyan’s.
“Master, let Abu be your double one last time.”
He intended to hide her among the mountain of corpses to find her a path to survival.
“The Huguojun General of Dawei is a woman! Everyone, charge! Capture her alive, and the master will give a great reward!”
Hearing the Beiling soldiers’ words, Abu’s hand—which had been about to strike Wei Qingyan’s acupoints—instead gripped her silver spear. He charged fiercely toward the Beilingjun. “Kill!”
Wei Qingyan bolted upright in bed. The soft quilt beneath her reminded her of where she was.
This wasn’t the first time she had dreamed of those events. After sitting quietly for a moment, she recovered her composure.
Three years ago, she had woken up in Fat Monk’s Lianhuawu with a shattered body and no memory.
It wasn’t until the Lianhuayin appeared between her brows that her body began to slowly recover as the mark’s color deepened. Two months ago, she finally remembered her past.
Yes, after dying at Huangshaling, she had returned from the dead.
Glancing at the dark sky outside the window, Wei Qingyan picked up her bundle and left the inn.
The night was no different from the day to her. Finding her horse in the stables, Wei Qingyan set off at a gallop toward the capital.
She had to seek justice for those twenty thousand Huguojun boys.
Splash!
Wei Qingyan felt as if her internal organs had been crushed to pieces.
It was the middle of the night when she reached the capital. The city gates were already closed, so she had come to a hot spring she had discovered in the past to wash up.
Unexpectedly, while she was soaking comfortably in the open-air hot spring, a man fell from the sky. Just as she was about to dodge, she saw the man’s face. Thinking of the jagged rocks at the bottom of the pool, Wei Qingyan caught him.
“Wake up! Wake up!” She slapped the man’s face firmly.
He gave no response.
Wei Qingyan grabbed his wrist; his pulse was weak.
There was another pool above the hot spring. This man must have been carried down by the current; he had likely drowned.
Wei Qingyan dragged him to the shore and pressed on his chest. The man coughed up two mouthfuls of water but still showed no signs of waking, his face as pale as a ghost.
Was he… dying?
“The Protector General died in battle, and the Beiling people wanted to desecrate his corpse. It was Prince Rong who arrived with his troops and slaughtered the remaining Beilingjun.
“He then launched a fierce assault on Beiling to avenge the Protector General, fighting until Beiling took the initiative to offer two cities to beg for a truce. Because of this, Prince Rong was severely injured, and his hair turned white overnight.
“The officials impeached Prince Rong for deploying troops without permission. The Emperor stripped him of his military power and ordered him to recover from his illness in the capital…”
Wei Qingyan had heard these stories countless times, though back then, she hadn’t known the “Protector General” the commoners spoke of was herself.
And the unconscious man before her was the Emperor’s younger brother from the same mother—Prince Rong, Shi Yu.
It was he who had collected Abu’s remains. It was he who had slaughtered the Beiling soldiers who knew her identity, preventing the secret of her being a woman from being exposed.
Yet he had lost his military power and fallen ill because of it.
Wei Qingyan took a deep breath, leaned down, pressed her lips to his, and began to breathe air into his mouth.
Debts of blood must be repaid, but so must debts of gratitude.
To her surprise, her lips were suddenly sucked by the man as if he wanted to swallow her whole. Wei Qingyan was about to push him away when a massive force threw her back into the pool.
Shi Yu spoke, his voice cold and harsh, “Begone.”
Caught off guard, Wei Qingyan swallowed two mouthfuls of spring water before surfacing. “I kindly saved you, and you repay me with such hostility!”
Her body already ached from when he had landed on her, and being pushed like that made her feel as if she were falling apart. Her anger flared, and she struck the water with her palm, intending to splash him back. But as she exerted her strength, her face instantly turned pale.
She had no strength left. Forget internal energy—she didn’t even have the strength to swim.
As her body began to sink, the Fat Monk’s instructions echoed in her mind: “While the mark remains, so do you; if the mark is lost, you perish.”
The Lianhuayin was a Gongdeyin; she could only walk the world because it sustained her.
But how could the Gongdeyin that had stayed with her for three years suddenly vanish?
Looking up at the man who had already stood up, Wei Qingyan’s pupils shrank.
When she was breathing into him to save him, she had felt a flicker of heat at her brow that disappeared in an instant. He must have absorbed her Gongdeyin.
Damn him!
To lose the mark before even starting her mission… Her body grew heavier. Seeing that the man on the shore made no move to help, Wei Qingyan had to struggle to cling to a large rock to keep from sinking. “Pull me up…”
“Who sent you?” Shi Yu’s cold, indifferent eyes looked toward the person in the water.
Recently, the Palace had wanted him to marry, finding all sorts of excuses to send women to his manor, all of whom he had rebuffed.
Tonight, the Empress Dowager had summoned him for dinner, and something unclean had been put in his wine. He had used the hot spring water to force the drug out of his system, only to end up losing consciousness. Upon waking, he had found this woman forcing herself upon him.
Wei Qingyan’s strength was fading fast, and it was difficult to hold on. She explained, “I came to the capital to find my relatives and found this spring by chance. You fell from above. Seeing you weren’t breathing, I gave you air. Pull me up, and consider it repayment for me saving your life just now.”
Shi Yu secretly tested his strength. He hadn’t felt this sense of physical flow for over two years; he didn’t know what this woman had done to him.
However, “Being able to find a mountain spring in the middle of the night, I imagine you aren’t incapable of reaching the shore.”
He had seen plenty of tricks involving playing the damsel in distress and feigning kindness to seek rewards.
The only reason he hadn’t struck her was that he didn’t want this place stained with blood.
Seeing him turn to leave, Wei Qingyan snapped in anger, “You ungrateful bastard… glug… You scoundrel…”