Everyone had been waiting for Qian Jiaoniang to say that. They all breathed a sigh of relief.
Boom! The thunder grew louder. The sky darkened further, black and white reversing as day turned to night.
“Jiaoniang?” Qingya rubbed her arms and looked at Qian Jiaoniang, her voice shaking. If she gave up on the search, how could the little dog survive such a cold stormy night? She treasured the dog so much—how could she not care? “Let’s search a little more.”
“No,” Qian Jiaoniang said. She started to remove her cloak to give to Qingya, who waved it away. Qian Jiaoniang instead draped it over Xing Pingchun. “Let’s go. It’s just a dog. It ran off on its own—then that’s its fate.”
With that, she hugged Xing Pingchun and started walking down the mountain. The others slowly followed.
“Stop right there, all of you.” Xing Muzheng’s voice, calm yet commanding, cut through the thunder and rain.
All the subordinates immediately halted in their tracks, turning in unison to look at Xing Muzheng’s stern face. Among them, Li Qingquan and Ah Da appeared especially awkward—just moments ago, they had moved solely on the lady’s command.
Xing Muzheng continued, “We’ll leave after the dog is found.”
“But, sir, the rain is too heavy—madam and young master won’t be able to withstand it!” Wang Yong shouted over the pounding downpour.
Xing Muzheng replied, “You escort Chou’er and the women to Wuling Temple to take shelter from the rain. Everyone else—continue the search. If the dog isn’t found, no one is allowed down the mountain.”
Qian Jiaoniang raised her head and said to him through the curtain of rain, “I’m done looking.”
Xing Muzheng met her gaze. “If you won’t look, then I will.”
“You don’t need to look. They don’t need to look either.”
Xing Muzheng looked at her slightly pale lips, then removed his cloak and threw it to her. “If you’re not looking, then go wait in the carriage.”
Qian Jiaoniang fumbled to catch the cloak. She looked up at him. Lightning traced a beautiful arc across the sky, flashing briefly in her eyes.
Li Qingquan hurried forward anxiously, “Sir, have you forgotten? In this torrential weather, Prime Minister Hang is still waiting at salei Pavilion.”
“Yes, sir, this is an important matter,” Ah Da added.
“Sir, let us handle the dog search,” Wang Yong urged as well.
Xing Muzheng frowned, “What’s with all the noise? It’s just a crippled dog—what, do you think it could climb all the way to the summit? With this rain, the carriage won’t move anyway. Hurry up and keep searching!”
Once Xing Muzheng made a decision, no one could change his mind. He sent Qian Jiaoniang down the mountain, then led the rest back into the storm to search for a stray, one-eyed dog that most wouldn’t spare a glance if it were lying by the roadside. Even Ah Da and the others, who had followed him for years, couldn’t comprehend why Xing Muzheng placed such importance on a mongrel picked up off the streets. Even clean, the dog was scruffy and ugly. If Madam liked dogs, they could just find her a better, tamer one. Why insist on this one? Why mobilize everyone in the pouring rain and even neglect his meeting with Minister Hang?
The men grumbled in their hearts but dared not speak up. All they could do was search anxiously, hoping that mutt had some sense and would just come out on its own.
On their way to Wuling Temple, Qian Jiaoniang and the others passed a group returning from the temple, but they had no good news. The monks said they had asked around—no one had taken in the little dog. Wang Yong told the group to keep searching the forest and personally escorted Qian Jiaoniang and the others to the temple, asking Master Huineng for rooms to take shelter from the rain. Seeing them all soaked like drowned rats and shivering, Master Huineng quickly had a young monk lead them to the guest rooms and ordered charcoal fires lit. Qian Jiaoniang asked someone to fetch dry clothes from below the mountain, then told Xing Pingchun to stay close to Qingya and not wander off. She took an umbrella and headed toward the temple gates again. Wang Yong tried to stop her, but she refused to listen. Helpless, he left a few guards to protect the others, asked the master to watch over the rooms, and hurriedly chased after her.
Once the braziers were lit, Xing Pingchun and Qingya finally felt alive again. Qingya looked anxiously out the window.
Meanwhile, the young monk returned to the meditation hall where the others were gathered. Due to the rain, there had been no morning lessons, and the novices were chatting quietly. They had heard the guests were searching all over the mountain for a lost dog in the rain and whispered amongst themselves, thinking it absurd. Some even joked that the woman must be like the notorious Daji, bringing ruin for a dog, exhausting servants without care.
Master Huijing walked in and asked what they were discussing. One young monk explained. Huijing asked, “Are you the ones who lost the dog?” The monk shook his head, “No.”
“Then how do you know the dog isn’t worth finding?”
“It’s just a dog, after all…” the young monk muttered.
Huijing said meaningfully, “You see only one side. What you don’t see is the other. Perhaps for the benefactor who lost the dog, what she’s searching for isn’t merely the dog.”
The novices looked at each other in confusion, but Huijing had already left the room.
Qian Jiaoniang left the temple and entered the woods again, searching downhill for Big Sis. Even with an umbrella, her hair and clothes were soaked through, yet she seemed unaware, bending low to look through the thickest underbrush.
Xing Muzheng had nearly reached the mountaintop with his men. But the summit was all cliffs—a crippled dog couldn’t possibly climb up. Still, there was no trace of the one-eyed dog. It may have already ended up in the belly of some wolf or snake. Undeterred, Xing Muzheng ordered them to search once more, this time from top to bottom.
Even with the rain lashing its wings, Lielei soared tirelessly through the forest skies. Birds and beasts scattered at the sight of the king of eagles, fleeing in the storm as the golden-eyed predator shrieked sharply from above.
When Xing Muzheng finally reunited with Qian Jiaoniang, who had climbed back up from below, he wasn’t surprised to see her again. But still, no one had found the dog. A one-eyed, lame dog shouldn’t have been able to get far—if it wasn’t on the road and wasn’t found on the mountain, odds were it had fallen prey to a wild beast. Some guards even found signs of wolves and shed snakeskin in the area. A little dog would be nothing more than a snack.
“Sir, madam—we’ve searched the entire mountain. The dog isn’t here!” Ah Da reported. They had been delayed long enough. Now that the rain had lightened, they needed to set out for Yongan immediately.
Xing Muzheng looked at Qian Jiaoniang. Even with her good health, her lips were pale, and her body was trembling. She kept her head lowered, deep in thought. Xing Muzheng felt a surge of uncontrollable compassion and pulled her into his arms.
Everyone was stunned, quickly turning their eyes away in respectful silence.
The usually unflappable Qian Jiaoniang jerked her head up. “What are you doing?”
Xing Muzheng himself didn’t know why he had embraced her. He looked down, rain dripping from his hair onto her face. He reached out and wiped the droplets away, lips drawn tight. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m not. The marquis must be mistaken.” Even though his clothes were soaked, his chest was still warm. Qian Jiaoniang, cold to the bone, found herself reluctant to leave. But eventually, she pushed him away. “Thank you for helping me search for the dog. Since it can’t be found…”
A shrill cry pierced the skies, sharp and urgent.
Xing Muzheng’s eyes lit up. He lowered his head and said in a low voice, “That’s Lielei’s cry.”
Qian Jiaoniang suddenly clenched her fingers into a fist. “It found Big Sis?”
“It must have!” Wang Yong and Ah Da said in unison.
Everyone immediately began searching for Lielei. Wang Yong leapt up a tree and pointed to the southwest. “Lielei is down there!”
The place Wang Yong pointed to was at the foot of a steep slope in the mountains, overgrown with trees and completely inaccessible—no normal person could get down there. Qian Jiaoniang ran to the edge of the slope. Seeing how nearly vertical it was, she gritted her teeth and grabbed a tree trunk to start sliding down—only to be stopped by Xing Muzheng, who caught her around the waist. He turned her around and said, “Hold on tight to me.”
“I—”
Before Qian Jiaoniang could refuse, Xing Muzheng had already leapt off the edge with her in his arms. Qian Jiaoniang, well-trained by all his tossing and catching before, wasn’t afraid in the slightest. She simply grabbed onto his shoulders.
Holding Qian Jiaoniang, Xing Muzheng made his way to Lielei. The eagle was flying low, flapping its wings, crying out continuously at a clump of bushes. Qian Jiaoniang heard a faint dog’s bark, and her heart clenched. She pushed Xing Muzheng aside and crouched in front of the bushes, peering in.
There, curled up in the underbrush, was a soaking wet, filthy one-eyed dog. Its eyepatch was hanging off one ear. The black, blind eye remained fierce, but its one good eye looked unbearably pitiful.
Qian Jiaoniang’s nose stung for some reason. She crouched closer and cautiously extended her hand toward it.
The one-eyed puppy trembled, lying there motionless, staring at her.
“Come out. No one will scold you, no one will hit you,” Qian Jiaoniang said.
Xing Muzheng stood behind her, holding an umbrella over her.
“Madam, let’s just cut the bush and carry the dog out,” Ah Da said.
Qian Jiaoniang shot him a glare, then turned back to the dog.
It still stared at her, whimpering faintly.
Qian Jiaoniang braced herself with one hand and stretched the other further toward it. She smiled gently and said, “Come out.”
The dog looked at her hand and curled up even tighter.
“With me here, no one will bully you,” Qian Jiaoniang said. “I’ll protect you. I will never… abandon you.”
