Just as the officer was about to scold her again and order her to lower her head completely, Ying Wuji suddenly stepped forward and took hold of Chiji’s reins himself. In one fluid motion, he mounted his horse, then rode away without a single word.
Seeing this, the others paid no further attention and each departed for home. Only the military officer remained standing there in bewilderment. He had always prided himself on his ability to read people’s expressions. Standing so close just now, he had unmistakably sensed the Imperial Grandson’s anger.
But he had merely reprimanded a lowly servant. The Imperial Grandson was known for being wise and benevolent. Why would he become angry over someone so insignificant?
As he stood there uneasily, the newly promoted commander of the crossbow camp, Zhang Mao, hurried out carrying a bundle of blueprints. He was the very man who had ambushed Zhao Shu that day. Having since entered the Imperial Grandson’s service, he had some idea of the complicated history between the two.
He stepped forward, smoothing things over for Zhao Shu, then handed her a set of forgotten mechanical diagrams.
“Idiot!” After everyone else had gone, Zhang Mao turned and barked at the officer. “All you ever notice are what people wear and carry. Don’t you see anything else? With that young master’s bearing and appearance, does he look like someone who belongs as a stable slave?”
The officer finally began to think it over. “Now that you mention it… he is much more refined than ordinary young men. Proud to the bone, too. Could it be… he’s one of the Imperial Grandson’s male favorites?”
“Bullsh*t! That’s Crown Prince Zhao who was sent here as a hostage!”
The officer’s knees immediately went weak, and the riding whip slipped from his fingers onto the ground.
***
The night wind grew ever colder, carrying away even his anger. The moment they reached the official road, Ying Wuji noticed that Zhao Shu had fallen behind. He slowed his horse, thinking that he ought to witness her misery and humiliation for himself.
After sending the imperial guards to follow at a distance, he deliberately guided Chiji closer and closer to the scruffy little horse she was riding.
When they had nearly drawn level, just as he turned to speak, Zhao Shu suddenly averted her face. She squeezed her horse with her legs and surged forward, trying to leave him behind.
Thus the two of them, one ahead and one behind, somehow fell into an unspoken contest.
Zhao Shu’s chest ached with suffocating resentment. Humiliated beyond endurance yet unable to resist, the moment she saw him approach, a reckless determination welled up inside her.
She had been assigned a skinny piebald colt that had not yet fully matured. Naturally, it could not hope to compete with a famed steed from beyond the borders.
She urged the frail horse to its absolute limit, while he rode with effortless ease, as though merely letting his horse wander. Every so often he would urge Chiji into a brief sprint before effortlessly pulling far ahead of her again.
Twice he nearly forced her to stop altogether. It was as though a cat were toying with a mouse.
As they reached a steep slope along the official road, a fierce look flashed through her eyes. She jerked the reins sharply, veering off the road into the rocky woods beside it.
Perhaps her desperate urge to escape him had overwhelmed her reason.
Ying Wuji’s expression tightened. He immediately spurred his horse after her.
This stretch of road twisted over uneven terrain, bordered on both sides by jagged rocks. Even seasoned wild horses often stumbled here. For her to take such a shortcut was little different from courting death.
Spotting a patch of level ground, he guided his horse off the road as well, concentrating completely as he gave chase. Just as he was about to catch up, a shrill scream burst from the horse ahead. Its forelegs reared into the air before its body crashed sideways to the ground.
In that instant, Zhao Shu was hurled high into the air. By the distant glow of the guards’ torches, she found herself facing the star-filled sky and the waning moon, knowing she was about to crash into a towering stone pillar. For one fleeting moment, her mind emptied of every thought. She merely found herself thinking…
So the night sky over Xianyang is this vast.
I suppose… I’ll never see it again.
Yet the agony of stone piercing her chest never came. Instead, her back slammed heavily into someone’s embrace. One arm caught behind her knees, and after a swift turn, the stars vanished from her sight. Looking up, she found herself gazing into a pair of deep emerald eyes, cold beneath the moonlight.
The color and brilliance within those eyes were breathtaking, more beautiful than the stars themselves.
When her senses finally returned, the humiliation of kneeling as a human footstool came flooding back. Pressing her lips tightly together, Zhao Shu silently pushed him away before hurrying to check on her horse.
Ying Wuji remained standing behind her, watching. He watched as she knelt beside the fallen horse, soothing it gently. When her fingers found the shattered leg, regret flooded her face. She hurriedly tore a strip from the hem of her robe and carefully bound the wound.
The crown prince of a kingdom had become remarkably skilled at taming and treating horses.
After she had neatly finished bandaging the leg, she remained stubbornly beside the horse’s head without speaking. From behind her, Ying Wuji said coolly, “With a broken leg, it’s useless now. Leave it here. Don’t delay my return to the residence.”
The moment those words left his mouth, illuminated only by the distant torchlight, he saw the silhouette before him tremble.
It seemed…they were crying.
Yet not a single sob could be heard.
For reasons he himself could not explain, he suddenly drew his sword. Taking two strides forward, he touched the tip of the blade lightly against the injured hoof, then slowly slid it upward until it rested against the horse’s neck.
“It wasn’t much of a horse anyway. Rather than letting wolves tear it apart, I may as well put it out of its misery myself… What are you doing? Let go!”
The desperate pleas for mercy he had expected never came. Instead, a hand clamped firmly around the sword’s edge. The blade, sharp enough to slice through iron like mud, immediately ran with warm blood.
Still crouching on the ground, her hair loosened from its knot, Zhao Shu turned her face up toward him. At some point, tears had completely covered her face.
Seeing her lips tremble as though she wanted to say something, he dared not let his attention wander. Keeping his eyes fixed on the sword point, he yielded to the pressure of her hand. The instant she released the blade, he immediately sheathed his sword.
The wilderness lay silent and desolate. The person before him remained crouched on the ground, so small and slight, her hair crown already loosened. Every so often she would stroke the horse’s head, then wipe another handful of tears from her face. How could this possibly resemble a fifteen-year-old royal prince? She looked more like an abandoned orphan among wandering refugees, a child with no one left to claim her.
Though he himself had driven her to this point, Ying Wuji suddenly felt as though something had lodged in his own chest, leaving behind only emptiness and desolation.
He truly was anxious to return to the residence and review the weapon’s design once more. Letting out a quiet sigh, he lost all interest in continuing to torment her. Striding forward, he scooped her into his arms.
Ignoring her struggles, he waved over the imperial guards behind them, ordering two to remain and watch over the horse while dispatching another at once to summon the stable official with a large wagon.
Once he had finished giving his orders, he realized that the person beside him had gone quiet.
Mud and tear tracks streaked across that palm-sized face. Her cherry-red lips quivered faintly, stained half crimson by the horse’s blood and her own.
Without warning, his heart became strangely unsettled. Suppressing the impulse to wipe her face clean, he lifted her effortlessly onto Chiji’s back, then swung himself into the saddle behind her.
They now rode together on a single horse, one seated before the other.
Chiji let out a whinny. Just as they were about to depart, he felt someone grasp the back of his hand. With sorrow and regret clouding her eyes, Zhao Shu kept looking back at the injured horse lying helplessly on the ground. Barely louder than a whisper, she asked, “After the stable official takes it away… will it still be brought back to the residence?”
“It’s only a twisted leg. The bone hasn’t even broken through the skin. We never intended for him to become a warhorse anyway. Two months of rest should be enough for him to recover.”
The fur cloak completely enveloped her. Amid the howling night wind, he unexpectedly offered her a rare word of comfort.
Chiji galloped onward. Yet the person before him continued to sob quietly from time to time. Whenever her shoulders shook too violently, a tiny hiccup escaped between her tears, nearly swallowed by the rhythm of pounding hooves.
The saddle left little room between them. With his chest pressed lightly against her slender back, Ying Wuji could feel every single tremor that accompanied her crying.
From the Battle of Pingcheng, where this person had willingly accepted punishment by surrendering in order to save two hundred thousand soldiers, to the night she entered Qin as a hostage, standing beneath the city walls and rebuking Prince Yi, to the care she had devoted these past two days to the warhorses…
Looking at her back, Ying Wuji suddenly seemed to see another scene from long ago. After he and his mother had been brought to Zhao as captives, she had approached with a bright, innocent smile. Pretending to be fierce, she had demanded the keys from the slave trader, then crouched before the two of them and personally unlocked their shackles.
Back then, she had worn her hair in the twin buns of a young noble boy, long black strands hanging loose beside her face. When she smiled, she had looked like an immortal child descended from the heavens.
Someone like that…
Perhaps she had been spoiled, reckless, and willful. But how could such a person have deliberately schemed against a half-mad, homeless Hu woman?
Seeing those pale hands, cracked and swollen from frostbite, still instinctively holding the reins, Ying Wuji tore off a strip of his sleeve. Taking her hand, he swiftly wrapped the cloth around it in a few quick movements.
Then, without drawing attention to what he was doing, he adjusted the edge of the fur cloak, hiding her fingertips beneath it.
The only sound for the rest of the journey was the pounding of iron-shod hooves. Neither of them spoke again.
Just before they reached the city gates, he tightened his arms around her slightly and, with forced lightness, joked, “The way you’re crying… anyone who didn’t know better would think I’d abducted a young lady.”
He had meant it as half mockery, half consolation. But to Zhao Shu, those words struck like a bolt of thunder. The sob lodged in her throat instantly disappeared.
Back before she had disguised herself, Lian Yu had teased her with almost those exact words.
Perhaps because her mind was still muddled from crying, she answered without thinking, using the same shameless retort she had given back then. “If I were a young lady, wouldn’t you find out just by trying?”
Because of that single remark, Lian Yu had been so exasperated that he avoided her for an entire month.
Unexpectedly, the man behind her fell silent. After passing through the city gate inspection, he guided Chiji into a narrow alleyway. Lowering his head until his lips nearly brushed her ear, his voice became dangerously coaxing. “So… are you offering yourself to feed my appetite?”
His chin rested lightly against her right shoulder, warm breath brushing her ear. In that position, it felt almost as though she were being intimately embraced from behind. Only then did Zhao Shu fully recover from the earlier humiliation. She twisted her shoulder and turned to explain herself, then froze.
Perhaps because the horse jolted beneath them, he had no time to pull away as she turned. His soft, warm lips brushed lightly across her icy cheek.
Stopping only a breath away from her own lips.
Their eyes met. For the first time, from only an inch away beneath those emerald eyes, Zhao Shu noticed a tiny crimson beauty mark, no larger than a grain of sand. At such intimate distance, she also realized that this face was far too enchantingly beautiful. Aside from the general outline, it no longer resembled her sworn elder brother in the slightest.
She hastily leaned backward, about to explain herself away. Instead, he firmly steadied her upright. Above her head came his cold, decisive voice, filled with unmistakable disgust. “I have no taste for the pleasures of Longyang.”
Chiji continued galloping. A quarter of an hour later, he delivered her back to the stables before returning elsewhere.
She forced herself toward the hay hut on unsteady feet. After only a few steps, however, he rode back again and tossed the fox-fur cloak over her shoulders. “If you don’t want to freeze to death, don’t go to sleep yet. I’ll have someone bring some things over later.”
Holding the cloak’s ties, she turned to look after him, her reddened eyes filled with confusion and worry, watching until his figure disappeared completely.
A quarter of an hour later, Steward Li came hurrying over, his robes and hat slightly disheveled. Behind him followed four or five servants carrying brass braziers, warming pouches, leather medicine bags, fur robes, padded jackets… There was even an entire crock of pickled vegetables.
Clutching his own homemade cucumber pickles, Steward Li pulled Zhao Shu aside, grinning like a plump old fox. “Well, what did I tell you? Wasn’t this old fellow right last time? Just bear with things a little longer. If you gain favor in the future, don’t forget this old man.”
Zhao Shu looked at him strangely. The pain throbbing in her feet reminded her of everything she had endured that day. She neither bothered to argue nor ask any questions. She knew better than anyone what kind of person that man truly was. All she wished for now was that the days ahead would pass without any further mishaps.
