The palace gates were locked at the hour of Xu. Su Yan took out his Western pocket watch—it was precisely 7 o’clock.
Since he couldn’t make it back in time, he had no choice but to spend the night in the Eastern Palace. However, he firmly rejected the crown prince’s unreasonable request to share a bed and chose to sleep in the side hall instead.
Zhu Helin didn’t insist this time. Instead, he sat cross-legged on the Luohan couch, holding his burning red face, replaying the moment over and over, occasionally giggling to himself.
Su Yan shot him a look filled with shame and disdain before leaving.
Outside the palace, at the Su residence in Huanghua Alley, Jinghong Zhui, along with Xiao Bei and Xiao Jing, had been waiting an entire hour at a table full of untouched dishes.
Finally, a palace eunuch arrived to deliver a message: Su Yan would be staying overnight at the Eastern Palace.
Su Xiaojing pouted. “Again? Why does the young master keep making our lord stay overnight? He just won’t let him come home and sleep. That last couple of months before we left the capital, when he didn’t have to go to the palace anymore, the young master came straight to our house to fetch him! I nearly had a heart attack!”
Su Xiaobei glared at him. “And whose fault was that?! If you hadn’t blurted it out and led the crown prince straight to our lord’s private residence, we could’ve avoided trouble. If anything had gone wrong, even if our lord spared you, I wouldn’t have!”
Private residence?
Jinghong Zhui’s pupils shrank suddenly, and his grip on his sword tightened.
Su Yan had a private residence? With whom—man or woman? And how did he not know?
…Well, it made sense. Why should he know? Whether Su Yan kept a mistress or took a wife had nothing to do with him. He was just a bodyguard. That casual “little concubine” joke—he had taken it too seriously.
Jinghong Zhui pursed his lips tightly.
Su Xiaojing awkwardly rubbed his nose. “Alright, alright! I get it. Serving the crown prince is like serving a tiger—I’ll be more careful with my words next time.”
Jinghong Zhui abruptly stood up. “You two eat. I’m going to practice my swordsmanship.”
“Brother Zhui, at least eat first!” Su Xiaobei called after him.
“Yeah! Aren’t you hungry? I’m starving,” Su Xiaojing chimed in.
Jinghong Zhui didn’t even turn back. “I’m not hungry.”
With that, he grabbed his sword and left the dining hall, stepping into the snow-covered courtyard.
He slowly drew the sword that Su Yan had given him. The black and white patterns on the blade seemed to ripple under the moonlight and snow. Jinghong Zhui ran his fingers along the edge and whispered two words:
“Vow—”
The sword slashed through the frigid night air, its glinting blade resembling a burst of scattered stars.
Jinghong Zhui practiced through the entire night.
—
The Milky Way shimmered in the frozen sky, the stars appearing so close they seemed about to fall.
In the eighth month, the northern skies brought early snow. In the ninth month, the biting winds sliced through the air like icy blades. Shalidan pulled his horse’s hooves out of a snowdrift, struggling forward step by step. Bound to the horse’s back, Aletan briefly regained consciousness before slipping back into unconsciousness.
Shalidan was at least grateful that he had managed to give the prince the last of their water while he was still awake.
That was the only thing he could be grateful for.
Their journey had taken them across towering mountains, through withered forests, over frozen rivers. They had encountered starving wolves and barely escaped the Dayan hunting parties.
The closer they got to their destination, the fewer people remained.
In the end, only Shalidan remained by the crown prince’s side. But now, he was lost in the blizzard, unable to locate Ulan Mountain or the sacred tree by Lake Baikal.
…Was he really going to die here in this endless snowfield? Shalidan gritted his teeth, unwilling to accept his fate.
The wind lifted the wolf fur draped over Aletan, and Shalidan tucked it back in, drinking the last sip of mare’s milk from his flask before gripping the reins and trudging onward.
Even the finest steed of the northern plains finally collapsed, kneeling in the snow with foam at its mouth.
Shalidan yanked the reins hard a few times but couldn’t budge the horse. Despairing, he stared at the prince’s beloved steed, unwilling to draw his scimitar to slit its throat. In the Northern Desert tribes, people grew up alongside their horses. Unless it was absolutely necessary, they would never kill a horse to survive.
Slowly, he drew out his scimitar.
Just then, amid the wind and snow, he seemed to catch the faint trace of a song.
Shalidan tilted his head, listening carefully. The singing was deep and ethereal, each note landing like a heavy drumbeat—ancient and desolate—as if it had traveled through the vastness of time, coming from a primitive, untamed age:
“Your rolling thunder echoes on the sheer cliffs.
Your roaring wind and snow howl across mountains, forests, and rivers.
Your body, strong as a towering mountain, stands tall like a sacred tree, strikes like a lightning bolt.
You are the master of the drifting clouds, with ten thousand shining eyes…”
—A shamanic hymn!
Joy surged across Shalidan’s face. He untied the ropes, hoisted Aletan onto his back with all his strength, and, braving the wind and snow, staggered toward the direction of the singing.
He trudged forward, sinking deep into the snow with each step. Though the song drifted continually through the air, he could never seem to find its source.
The fierce wind battered him. Shalidan stumbled again and again until finally he collapsed into the snow and lost consciousness.
–
“Aletan… Child of the Sacred Tree, golden one of the prairie…”
To the sound of an ancient voice calling him, Aletan slowly opened his eyes. He saw a dim space, faintly illuminated by firelight.
His entire body was burning with searing pain, as if he were at the heart of a flame. Even the slightest movement of a finger was an excruciating effort. Gasping, he gathered all his strength just to turn his head slightly.
He saw a wall of coarse, gray-brown texture. After a moment of disorientation, he realized—it wasn’t a wall, but an enormous tree trunk, so massive it was awe-inspiring.
In front of the tree trunk sat a small figure, wrapped in layer after layer of long, tattered cloth strips, resembling a cocoon of gray-green bandages. The face exposed was like rough bark, deeply wrinkled.
An ancient man, so old he seemed on the verge of crumbling into dust with the next gust of wind.
A dying old shaman.
Aletan tried to move his lips but couldn’t make a sound.
The old shaman touched Aletan’s white hair and frostbitten face with a drumstick made of camel bone, then dripped some murky, dark green liquid into his mouth.
After a while, the burning sensation inside him eased a little. Aletan managed a shallow breath and whispered weakly, “I’m still alive…”
“It’s not yet time for you to return to the roots,” the old shaman said in a voice brittle with decay. “You are withering, but you can still be saved.”
A fierce will to survive rose within Aletan. He pleaded, “Old shaman, save me…”
The old man stretched out his drumstick, using the bone-wheel end to push aside Aletan’s robe, exposing the tattoo on his abdomen—a Sacred Tree inked onto his skin. Once dark black, parts of the branches had been stained brownish-red by Su Yan’s blood, though now the color had faded to almost nothing.
“If the blood stain had completely disappeared before you arrived here, you would have been beyond saving. You’re lucky, child—the Sacred Tree tattoo is your lifeline.”
As he spoke, the old shaman shuffled over to a stone mortar a few steps away, threw in a handful of large, dark brown fruits the size of fists, and began grinding them forcefully with a pestle.
“The elders of the tribe gave me this tattoo,” Aletan said with great effort. “They said it would protect me from evil blades and deadly plagues.”
The old shaman lifted a strand of black-brown paste from the mortar and said, “The tattoo ink was mixed with this—it neutralizes all kinds of poisons. Even if the poison is too fierce to cure immediately, it can keep you alive long enough for you to find the Sacred Tree.”
“Thank the Sacred Tree, thank the shaman… Old one, did you see my companions—the people who brought me here?”
“There was only one.”
“Where is he?”
“Frozen to death. Such a pity. Just a little closer, and I could have saved him.”
The old shaman lifted his tattered cloth to show Aletan his lower body.
There was none—his body ended at the thigh, and he had fixed himself onto a wooden board with rollers, able to move only a little by sliding.
Aletan fell silent. A deep sorrow welled up inside him, mourning for his companion and praying for the old shaman.
The old man seemed long accustomed to it. He showed no grief, just continued pounding the medicine with full force, the sound sharp and relentless. After a long while, he unplugged a hole at the bottom of the mortar, letting the juice flow out into a bowl made from a skull.
He turned to Aletan and, with unusual gravity, said, “You must decide carefully.”
“Decide what…?”
“To expel the residual poison from your body, I must coat you entirely in the juice made from the Sacred Tree fruit. Then you will enter a state of suspended animation, like a cocoon hibernating for the winter.”
“Suspended animation? How long will I sleep?”
“Depending on how fast your body recovers—maybe two or three months, maybe two or three years.”
Aletan was stunned. “I… won’t starve to death?”
The old shaman gave a smile uglier than a cry. “Your heartbeat will slow, and your blood will flow like a gentle river across the grasslands. You’ll be able to survive several days without food… Of course, I’ll feed you some tree fruits and meat broth from time to time. But I’m old, and my memory’s bad—you’ll have to hope I remember in time.”
Aletan gave a bitter laugh. “I’ll have to endure it, whether I can or not. If I don’t, the poison will soon take hold. I can already feel the fire still burning inside my organs.”
“I’m asking you to think carefully, not just about that,” the old shaman said, tapping his heart with the drumstick. “You might become a different person.”
“—What?”
“The medicinal properties of the sacred tree’s fruit will purge the poison in you, but they may also alter your nature. A brave man might become a coward. An upright man might become despicable. A gentle man might turn violent. Can you accept such a risk?”
Aletan opened his mouth but couldn’t answer.
The old shaman shook his head. “I know. It’s a hard choice.”
He beat the hand drum with the drumstick and began to sing another sacred chant:
“Summon the soul of the self,
Call it, call it, call it.
May all blessings and wishes come true,
Just as you long for…”
Aletan remained silent, torn between dying as himself or living on as someone else.
“I…” he hesitated. “This risk… it isn’t a certainty, right?”
The old shaman shifted from a long chant to short, urgent drumbeats but did not answer. The steady pounding, like a racing heartbeat, pressed him to decide.
Aletan didn’t hesitate for too long before making up his mind: “If you want to hunt wild wolves, you risk their fangs. If you want to catch eagles, you risk being torn by their claws. How can anyone hope to survive desperate times without risking anything? Old shaman, I accept it. And no matter how much I might change, I, Aletan, will still be Aletan!”
The old shaman struck one final, heavy beat on the drum and gave another twisted smile.
“But that’s not all. Your tattoo has absorbed another person’s blood. I believe the one who tattooed you must have warned you.”
Aletan recalled, “Yes. I was told never to let anyone touch the tattoo, except for my parents… or my partner.”
“Therefore, that person must become your partner. Within three years of your awakening, if you haven’t bonded with them — body and soul — and knelt together before the sacred tree to vow your union, you will suffer backlash from the tattoo.”
“The blood of that person will become a lethal, incurable poison inside you.”
“You will die.”
Aletan’s eyes widened in shock. He slowly raised his arm, where a faded, pale blue hair ribbon was tied. After the long journey through wind, snow, and dust, the ribbon was now dull and gray; the jade leaf charm at its end had broken, leaving only a single fragment.
Su Yan… would he agree? Could they reunite within those three years? Even if they met again, would Su Yan — a high-ranking official of Great Ming — be willing to bond body and soul with a prince of the northern steppes, who might have become a different man?
It felt like an unreachable dream, even harder than holding onto his true nature under the medicine’s effects…
Aletan shook his head unconsciously, trying to recall every smile, every glance from that Central Plains youth, hoping to find even a glimmer of special regard.
But to his deep regret, he realized that while he himself harbored intense feelings for Su Yan, Su Yan seemed to treat him as no more than a casual acquaintance — a friendly one, perhaps, but still distant. A friend, and even that only within the bounds of loyalty to his own country.
He vividly remembered Su Yan’s joking warning, heavy with meaning: “Even the young horse traders of the Oirat tribes can now recite poetry about our capital. Surely your people don’t harbor dreams of breaching our gates?”
At the time, Aletan had wanted to say, I only admire Great Ming, I harbor no thoughts of invasion. But the words stuck in his throat—was that really true? Was it purely admiration, with no tinge of covetous ambition?
Aletan exhaled deeply.
The old shaman asked, “Have you made up your mind?”
Aletan nodded firmly. “I want to live, even if I don’t know how long I can. Maybe three years later I’ll die, but at least I’ll have tried, I’ll have fought for it. The poplar trees root themselves in the desert, the eagles build their nests on cliffs — how can I, a man, retreat without even trying?”
The old shaman nodded. He reached into the skull bowl, scooped out a handful of the dark brown, semi-solid ointment, and smeared it over the tattoo on Aletan’s abdomen, spreading it across his body.
One bowl wasn’t enough; he pounded the stone mortar three more times before he managed to cover Aletan’s entire body.
Aletan, now naked, was coated in the drying, hardening ointment like a mud statue. After removing all his clothes and golden ornaments, the shaman tried to remove the ribbon from Aletan’s arm, but Aletan insisted on keeping it.
“You’ll have rings of discoloration on your skin, like a snake shedding its skin. It’ll look ugly,” the old shaman warned.
“I don’t care,” Aletan said. “I want to keep it.”
Since he insisted, the shaman didn’t argue further. He continued drumming and singing sacred songs while watching Aletan slowly lose consciousness.
Suddenly the drumbeats paused. The old shaman scratched his dirty ear and muttered to himself, “Ah, I’m really getting old. I forgot to mention — there’s one more risk. You might forget parts of your past. Some people, some memories… maybe even the one who gave you that hair ribbon.”
He let out a long sigh and chanted:
“You are the master of the lands and fields,
Blessed with ten thousand strong hearts.”
