After Exile, I Married the Amnesiac General [Rebirth] Chapter 1

“Splash…”

On the snow-covered riverbank, small groups of women crouched by the shore, scrubbing clothes in river water freshly broken through the ice. They were female convicts and family members recently exiled to this remote northwestern border town.

Not far away stood two soldiers, occasionally glancing in their direction.

Li Chanxiu coughed softly. His frostbitten red hands dipped into the water floating with shards of ice. He lifted a freshly washed robe, twisted it with effort, and tossed it into the wooden basin.

He wore tattered winter clothes; his hair bun was slightly disheveled, his face smudged carelessly with ash. Yet none of it could conceal his fine bone structure and delicate features. Because he had not yet recovered from a cold, the areas not covered in soot showed a sickly pallor.

A woman beside him saw his difficulty. Taking advantage of the guards’ inattention, she quickly took two garments from him and began scrubbing them briskly.

Li Chanxiu was startled, then grateful. “Thank you, Aunt Xu.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Aunt Xu waved repeatedly and lowered her voice. “On the road to exile, my daughter fell ill. If not for Miss’s kindness in giving her medicine, she wouldn’t have survived. I won’t forget that favor.”

Li Chanxiu smiled, deliberately softening his voice. “Auntie can just call me by my name.”

From the moment he was born, his gender had been concealed. He and his father were confined in the northern courtyard of the Crown Prince’s residence.

It was desolate and silent there, with towering walls and heavy gates forever secured with iron locks. Peering through the cracks of the door, he could occasionally glimpse the cold gleam of armor plates on the guards’ uniforms as they changed shifts. Looking up, he could see only a small patch of sky framed by courtyard walls.

Three months ago, under his father Li Xuan’s planning, he assumed the identity of a female exile and finally left the place that had imprisoned him for eighteen years.

According to plan, his father’s old subordinates were meant to intercept him on the road, disguising themselves as bandits to rescue him. But for some unknown reason, they never appeared.

He fell ill along the way, and the escorting officials guarded them strictly. He never found a chance to escape, and in the end, he was escorted all the way to this remote northwestern border town.

Still, after leaving that small courtyard of the Crown Prince’s residence, he could finally witness the vastness of the world: endless mountain ranges, rushing rivers, a sky so high and boundless that even birds could not fly to its edge…

Just as his father had once described.

While washing clothes, Li Chanxiu couldn’t help but lift his head. His clear eyes gazed into the distance where the horizon stretched wide, and mountain ranges blanketed in snow wound like a white dragon, almost blending into the sky in splendid beauty.

This was the realm his father had spoken of.

The thought flickered through his heart.

“Move it! Stop dawdling!” The two soldiers, impatient in the cold, strode over to urge them on.

Li Chanxiu quickly lowered his gaze and resumed scrubbing. Soon after, he lifted the wooden basin and, together with the others, walked toward the frontier garrison camp.

The border town was bitterly cold. After several heavy snowfalls in recent days, even the raging northern winds seemed frozen stiff. Rows of large banners hung motionless on wooden poles in the camp, like iron cloth solidified in midair.

Li Chanxiu’s worn winter clothing was stiff with cold and offered little warmth. By the time he reached the camp, the hands holding the basin were already numb with frost.

The guards behind him continued urging. He cupped his stiff fingers to his lips and breathed warm air onto them until he could move slightly again, then hurried to lift the nearly frozen robes from the basin, shaking off ice shards before hanging them to dry.

Seeing him shiver with cold, Aunt Xu secretly helped again several times when the guards weren’t watching.

When they returned to the tent and the guards were no longer around, she finally couldn’t help worrying aloud: “Ah, what are we to do? You were doing well working in the kitchen before, but you offended that Centurion Jiang and got reassigned to wash clothes for the wounded soldiers. In this freezing weather, you haven’t recovered from your cold, and you’re already weak, how can you endure soaking your hands in ice water every day?”

Li Chanxiu had already wrapped himself tightly in his quilt and was sitting before the only brazier in the tent, shivering alongside the other female exiles as they warmed themselves. At Aunt Xu’s words, he merely smiled.

Aunt Xu’s daughter was a little girl not yet eight, well-behaved and sweet. She thoughtfully brought hot water to the two of them.

Li Chanxiu gently pinched the child’s soft cheek and shared part of his quilt with her.

Seeing that he did not seem anxious, Aunt Xu couldn’t help but sigh.

The Centurion Jiang she had mentioned was a military officer who had recently been persistently harassing Li Chanxiu in the camp.

The court had decreed that any unmarried women of marriageable age among those exiled to the frontier must wed within a set time limit, married off to border soldiers to reclaim wasteland and guard the frontier.

The local prefect was upright and compassionate. Knowing that most of the exiled women were pitiable souls implicated by their families, he could not ignore the imperial order, but he added a clause: the women could choose for themselves. If they did not find a match agreeable, the soldiers were not permitted to force them.

However, this leniency only lasted until the court’s deadline. Once the time limit passed, they would be assigned marriages by force according to regulations.

Li Chanxiu had never seriously considered this matter before. Even though Centurion Jiang hounded him constantly, he ignored it.

He had come here by accident and never intended to stay long. Even if his father’s men failed to find him, he had planned to escape on his own.

Besides, he was a man, how could he marry?

He had already devised a plan to flee, but on the eve of carrying it out, Centurion Jiang, enraged after failing to win him over, abruptly transferred him from kitchen duty to washing clothes for wounded soldiers, intending to make him suffer. He even assigned men to keep watch over him at all times, deliberately making things difficult to see when he would finally submit.

Under such sudden scrutiny, Li Chanxiu found no chance to escape. Then snow fell heavily for several days. After returning from washing clothes in the freezing weather, his cold worsened, and he suddenly developed a high fever, drifting in and out of consciousness for several days.

The illness struck violently, worse than the one he had suffered on the journey into exile. In his delirium, he seemed to dream of many events that had not yet happened. The scenes were vivid and deeply etched in his mind, as if they were experiences from a previous life.

After waking, those events lingered in fragments, disconnected and incomplete, yet carrying the unmistakable feeling of having truly lived through them.

For example, in the dream, he had likewise been tormented by Centurion Jiang, his cold worsening until he fell unconscious with fever.

But in the dream, he had only slept for one day before forcing himself up despite his illness. Seizing the last opportunity before the frontier town heightened its defenses, he escaped. However, weakened by sickness and evading search parties, he failed to leave Yongzhou’s borders before the Hu cavalry shattered the northwestern defenses and swept south, nearly reaching Chang’an.

The Hu plundered and burned as they advanced, leaving devastation in their wake. Li Chanxiu was swept along by the chaos of armies and ended up drifting into the lands of the Western Qiang, only returning to the Central Plains a year later after many hardships…

In reality, perhaps because of that dream, he had slept even longer. When he awoke, three days had passed, and he had completely missed his chance to escape.

Yet Centurion Jiang’s harassment and the heavy snow that had fallen over the past days matched the dream exactly.

If everything in the dream was true, then escaping now would not be wise, especially since he had already missed the best opportunity.

And there was also the matter of the northwest possibly falling…

At this thought, Li Chanxiu frowned deeply.

Still, in the dream, his father’s men arrived not long after. If all else failed, perhaps it would be better to wait patiently for now.

But since he could not leave immediately, another problem loomed, the court’s marriage decree.

If his father’s men arrived only after the deadline, would he not be forcibly married off?

As for Centurion Jiang, although the man had recently violated regulations by sneaking out to drink and had been exposed, thanks to Li Chanxiu’s quiet maneuvering, receiving ten strokes of the military cane, he would not be bedridden forever. Once recovered, he would certainly resume his harassment.

Moreover, Jiang had backing in the army. If Li Chanxiu remained unmarried past the deadline, it was highly likely that Jiang would use his connections to have him forcibly assigned. Other matters would be minor, but if his identity were exposed, it could implicate his father, who was still in the capital.

The more he thought, the tighter his brows knit.

The firewood in the brazier crackled and popped, sparks bursting. The flickering flames illuminated half his face in red. The lines that usually appeared soft now carried a hint of sharpness and restrained severity.

The women warming themselves by the fire all knew of his predicament. Some kind-hearted ones offered suggestions.

“If there’s truly no other way, perhaps you should just marry him. He is, after all, a centurion with a military commandant backing him. His position isn’t bad.”

Another woman shook her head. “I heard he already has a lawful wife. You’d only be a concubine. Better to marry an ordinary soldier and run your own household.”

“But what ordinary soldier would dare oppose Centurion Jiang? I’m afraid none could protect Little Sister Shen.”

The identity Li Chanxiu had borrowed bore the surname Shen, given name Xiu, coincidentally sharing a character with his real name.

They sat around the brazier offering ideas for quite some time, yet none seemed suitable.

Suddenly, Aunt Xu slapped her thigh. “I’ve got it! Why not marry someone with a higher rank than Centurion Jiang? Then you wouldn’t have to fear him.”

The women brightened at once. “Exactly! With Little Sister Shen’s looks, if she’s willing to consider proposals, she could certainly marry an officer more formidable than Centurion Jiang.”

They all turned to look at Li Chanxiu.

He had just lifted an old clay bowl to drink water and nearly choked at their words.

He knew they meant well, but marriage was truly… He hurriedly changed the subject in embarrassment.