Beauty, Power and Intrigue Chapter 4

The young boy seemed to have been running for a long time; his stamina was clearly no match for the six burly men, and he was soon cornered.

The six men were robust and sturdy, clad in coarse hemp garments whose original colors were no longer discernible. Their disheveled hair was twisted into a messy bun on top of their heads. Two of them had their clothes torn into strips, leaving most of their buttocks exposed, while the front barely provided any coverage.

Song Chuyi turned her gaze to the young boy – tattered and ragged, with unkempt hair, limbs as thin as sticks, and a gray bundle slung across his back.

Ha, you little brat, you’ve actually fallen right under my nose again. Song Chuyi recognized him almost instantly – he was the very same boy who had stripped off her outer garment the night before.

At the bottom of the slope, the boy had already been pinned to the ground by the men, who yanked the bundle off him and shook it open.

Song Chuyi’s pupils contracted slightly as she caught sight of the red bridal gown – that wasn’t the clothes she had been wearing. Last night, between bouts of half-consciousness, she had only felt someone pulling at her garments. When she opened her eyes, the boy had already wrapped the clothes up. She had assumed he had taken her snow wolf pelt and outer robe… Could this scoundrel have gone and stolen someone else’s clothing?

She then recalled the spot where she had been lying earlier – there were a few small grave mounds, and beneath her was a straw mat, with a shallow pit nearby. It didn’t seem like she had been left exposed in the wilderness.

The more she thought about it, the more uneasy she felt. When she came back to her senses and looked down the slope again, the boy was already being beaten to the ground, and the men showed no intention of stopping.

Song Chuyi could not count on these men to rescue her. She figured that although she wasn’t much to look at, she was still a woman, and falling into the hands of such brutes would inevitably lead to a miserable fate of abuse. It was best to side with the weaker one.

Having made up her mind, Song Chuyi lay idly on the slope, gnawing on a piece of ephedra grass, and only began to mimic the sound of horse hooves after watching the boy get beaten until he could barely run.

Horses were extremely valuable assets. With the constant warfare among the various states, nearly all horses were requisitioned by the military. The sound of hooves meant that the approaching party was either a military vanguard or someone of great power and influence.

Having spent years in military camps, Song Chuyi was skilled at imitating the sound of galloping hooves, and she could perfectly capture the effect of the sound drawing nearer from a distance.

The six burly men, rough and brutish as they were, immediately panicked upon hearing the hoofbeats. They quickly snatched up the red bridal gown and fled in haste.

Song Chuyi watched for a moment to make sure they wouldn’t return, then scooped up a handful of mud from beside her, formed it into a lump, and tossed it down.

Hearing the noise, the boy looked up and found himself staring straight at Song Chuyi’s pale face, which wore a taunting smirk. Startled, he scrambled to his feet and tried to flee, but his injuries seemed too severe, and after quite a while, he still hadn’t managed to get far.

Song Chuyi thought to herself, Go on, run if you can, but her words came out in a more subdued tone. “Hey, I just saved your life. Surely you’re not going to leave me here to die?”

The boy paused in his movements, looked up, and asked, “Are you human?”

“In broad daylight, what else do you think I am?” Song Chuyi replied testily.

The boy studied her with a probing look for a few moments, as if only then confirming that Song Chuyi was indeed human and not a ghost. After that, he lay down in the grass to catch his breath.

Song Chuyi, who had been both mimicking hoofbeats and raising her voice to speak, was also quite exhausted. Seeing that the boy showed no immediate intention of leaving, she pulled down a stalk of ephedra, lay flat on the ground, and chewed on it.

She had barely rested for a quarter of an hour when she heard rustling footsteps coming up the slope from below. The incline wasn’t too steep, but the boy was badly injured – climbing up should have cost him great effort. Could it be that those men had come back?

Startled, Song Chuyi struggled forward half a foot and peered down. To her surprise, the boy was climbing up at a considerable speed. In no time, he reached the top and slipped into the thicket where Song Chuyi was hiding.

Song Chuyi immediately reevaluated her earlier judgment. It seemed she had miscalculated – the boy’s injuries were not nearly severe enough to render him immobile. Fortunately, he appeared to have a sense of gratitude; otherwise, she might have saved his life for nothing.

“Are you from Qi?” Song Chuyi asked, looking up. The boy had spoken in the Qi dialect just now.

He stood beside her, panting heavily. The sunlight streamed down from above him, casting a harsh glare, and Song Chuyi squinted. She could only vaguely make out that his tangled hair almost completely obscured his face, and he seemed to peer at people through the gaps between his locks. The only part clearly visible was his swollen, puffy lips, and his jaw, along with the corner of his mouth, was covered in a purplish bruise streaked with blood.

Without a word, the boy grabbed Song Chuyi by the arm, hauled her up from the ground, and hoisted her onto his shoulder with ease.

“You’re all skin and bones, yet surprisingly strong,” Song Chuyi coughed as she was jostled about.

The boy paid her no attention and pressed on through the thick grass without a word. He seemed very familiar with the area – after passing through a small grove of trees and winding through what felt like countless detours, Song Chuyi finally heard the sound of rushing water. By then, she had been bounced around so much that her vision had gone blurry.

He dumped her onto a pile of dry hay and turned to leave.

Song Chuyi was about to call out to him when she spotted a small vegetable patch near the pool ahead, enclosed by a crude fence of wooden sticks. It was likely where the boy lived, so she held her tongue.

Having eaten the ephedra earlier, Song Chuyi now lay in the dry hay, basking in the sun, and soon began to feel drowsy. In her half-sleep, she seemed to catch the rich aroma of grain wafting through the air.

She opened her eyes and looked around, spotting the boy crouching by the pool, holding a chipped clay pot and drinking millet porridge. Song Chuyi swallowed hard, cleared her throat, and said, “Hey, let’s make a deal.”

The boy turned and looked at her warily, like a small beast guarding its food.

Song Chuyi rolled her eyes, lay back lazily on the dry grass, and said in the Qi dialect, “You didn’t carry me all the way back here just to bury me, did you? I can tell you’re quite sharp – you must have guessed I come from a noble family. I fell ill on my way to be married, and my escorts must have thought I was dead and hastily buried me along the road. If you save me and take me home, you’ll be handsomely rewarded… at the very least, you’ll get to eat white rice.”

In these remote areas, bartering was still the norm; coins were rarely seen, let alone gold. Song Chuyi knew very well that white rice held far more appeal to common folk than money or precious metals.

Her answer was met with silence. Song Chuyi watched the millet porridge growing cold and grew anxious inside. Say something, damn it! After a long pause, the boy finally blurted out, “How is it that you speak the Qi dialect?”

Song Chuyi was inwardly startled. Could it be that this boy actually knew her? She shot back, “And how do you know that I shouldn’t be speaking the Qi dialect?”

The boy did not answer. Instead, he handed the remaining half-bowl of millet porridge to Song Chuyi.

His hands were filthy, and the clay pot was coated in a greasy black sheen. The fragrance of millet mingled with a strange, sour odor, and the rim of the pot still bore traces of where the boy had drunk from it just moments ago. If Song Chuyi had truly been a pampered noblewoman, she might have found the sight unbearable – but she had endured far harder times than this and paid it no mind.

“I’ve heard that a promise from a noble is worth a thousand pieces of gold,” the boy said, unable to resist reminding her as he watched her devour the porridge with utter abandon.

Song Chuyi thought to herself, This boy has some learning – he actually knows that saying. She mumbled an acknowledgment between mouthfuls and drained the porridge in just a few gulps, nearly finishing it all. The boy immediately grew anxious and snatched the pot back. “That was meant to last two days,” he said coldly.

Song Chuyi’s face flushed with embarrassment, and she forced a dry laugh. “I’m weak right now. I need a few extra bites to keep up my strength.”

A bit of porridge still clung to the rim of the pot. The boy licked it clean with his tongue, wrapped the pot in a piece of cloth, and disappeared into the thicket to hide it away.

Having eaten and drunk her fill, Song Chuyi lay on the dry hay, mulling over what had just happened. She had told the boy that she had fallen ill during her wedding journey – a story she had fabricated on the spot based on the bridal gown. Had the gown not been stripped from her own body, the boy would never have believed such a tale, but he did.

Song Chuyi couldn’t make sense of it no matter how hard she tried. Her head began to feel a bit dizzy, and she unconsciously reached up to rub her brow. Her fingertips brushed against a patch of smooth skin. She paused, then quickly felt more carefully.

Years ago, when she had first been sent as an envoy to Qin, she had ventured alone into the Qin military camp in an attempt to persuade them to withdraw. The Qin commander, testing her mettle, had swung his sword straight at her face. She hadn’t flinched, and the blade’s tip had stopped firmly at the center of her brow, blood immediately streaming down the bridge of her nose.

In truth, it had only been a shallow cut. After the wound healed, the scar was barely visible unless one looked closely. But over the years, she had grown accustomed to rubbing that spot with her fingertip, and could always feel its faint trace. Now, however, it was gone?

Bracing herself against the stone wall beside her, Song Chuyi stood up and made her way toward the pool. After taking the medicine and eating the millet porridge, she had regained enough strength to walk the distance.

The pool water was clear and blue-green, like a mirror, and Song Chuyi could see her reflection clearly in it.

A slender frame, a face no larger than a palm, hair as black as a waterfall – the undergarment she wore was filthy and tattered, yet one could still make out that it had once been white. Song Chuyi studied herself carefully. The face reflected in the water had a forehead slightly fuller than average, and a nose bridge straighter than that of most women – less delicate and soft than the typical feminine visage, still lacking in charm. And yet, this young face was exactly what she had looked like at fifteen.

An autumn breeze suddenly rose, rippling the surface of the pool and blurring her reflection into a wavering haze.

Song Chuyi leaned down, about to touch that face in the water, when abruptly her waist was seized. Before she could even struggle, she was tackled to the ground, the hard stones beneath her jolting her entire body as if it might fall apart.

“You little brat, what the hell are you doing?!” Song Chuyi snarled through gritted teeth at the boy.