Li Jing sat upright behind his desk, head lowered in contemplation. He wasn’t rushing to ask Yun Ye how to write this type of cipher symbol, but rather feeling ashamed of his own pettiness. He had sworn brotherhood with Hong Fu and Qiuran, vowing to live and die together. The youthful impetuosity of his youth seemed very distant from him now. When had he lost even his enterprising spirit? Today, being lectured by a youth with a mixture of praise and criticism, he was left speechless.

He had long prepared to write his half-life of military experience into a book, yet had repeatedly delayed putting brush to paper. He had even thought up the title—it would be called “Mirror of the Six Armies.” But he dared not write it. He always felt there was a pair of wolf-like eyes watching him. Time and again he picked up his brush, and time and again he put it down. Before he knew it, five years had passed. Now his temples were already showing white hair. If he didn’t write it soon, even if willing, he might lack the strength.

Hong Cheng returned, holding a note in his hand, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

The matter of information leakage had been perfectly demonstrated right under his nose. If Yun Ye were truly a spy and had placed the evidence right in front of him, he would have only thought it was casual doodling and easily let it pass. This exceeded his understanding, exceeded the limits his nerves could bear.

When Xu Jingzong similarly casually deciphered what he considered heavenly script while reading a book offhandedly, everything he had previously been proud of collapsed in an instant. Such miraculous cipher symbols absolutely could not be mastered by everyone. Absolutely not.

Great Tang military men were proud, especially the Hundred Cavalry Bureau. Aside from His Majesty, he had never knelt to anyone. After hurrying back to the commander’s tent and seeing Yun Ye yawning listlessly, he lifted his battle robe and heavily knelt on one knee before Yun Ye. This was his final plea. Both knees only knelt to His Majesty. If Yun Ye didn’t agree, he would use every means to eliminate Yun Ye, this root of disaster.

“Xu Jingzong decoded it for you?” Yun Ye didn’t help Hong Cheng up. There was no need. His own noble rank was originally higher than his. Having saved his life, receiving a bow from him was reasonable and proper.

Li Jing took the note from Hong Cheng’s hand. The content was not one bit different from his military order. He remembered Yun Ye had said that even love letters between men and women could be transmitted clearly.

Yun Ye handed the “Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters” in his hand to Li Jing and said to Hong Cheng: “An extremely simple little trick and you developed murderous intent toward a national marquis? And would stake your entire family’s lives? Utterly foolish. For these little things, how many lives do you have to stake?”

Li Jing took “Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters” and flipped through a few pages. Suddenly enlightened, he said to Yun Ye in astonishment: “It’s this simple?”

“It’s just this simple. Things in this world sound extremely mysterious, but after seeing through them, they’re often simple to an outrageous degree. Jiang Taigong used the length of bamboo joints to transmit messages and was praised as divine strategy. Military strategists have lauded it for two thousand years. Speaking plainly, what unfathomable supernatural mechanism is there? It’s a game even a shepherd boy could play. But this game can be played in countless variations. I merely changed them from bamboo joints to a type of numerical symbol from the Great Food countries, and it made your subordinate develop murderous intent, single-mindedly wanting to eliminate me?”

Li Jing, ashamed, turned completely red. He raised his leg and kicked the kneeling Hong Cheng over with one foot. The old master’s martial prowess hadn’t diminished from his youth. Bewildered, Hong Cheng toppled with Li Jing’s kick. With his intelligence, he still couldn’t figure out what Yun Ye and Li Jing had been talking about.

Yun Ye wrote on white paper the eleven digits from zero to ten, explaining them one by one to Li Jing, and combining them into tens place, hundreds place, thousands place, and various combinations. Li Jing learned with flying eyebrows and dancing expression. He composed a passage himself, then found each part in the book one by one, then represented the page number, line number, and character position with numbers, then reverse-deduced it, playing to his heart’s content.

Hong Cheng leaned over several times but still couldn’t understand. This made Yun Ye very worried about the overall quality of Great Tang’s intelligence department.

Taking leave of Li Jing, Yun Ye felt very drowsy and planned to return to his tent to sleep. Lifting the door curtain, he discovered Na Rimu alone hiding at the foot of the bed, shivering. Seeing Yun Ye enter, she jumped up and ran two steps, then quickly retreated back, assuming a submissive posture. She even folded her hands together and placed them on her lower abdomen. She wore Han clothing, and her hair had been combed into a three-part bun. She looked quite like a Han woman.

Yun Ye was furious. Who had turned her into this state? A perfectly good grassland girl had been ruined into this ghostly appearance! Her liveliness was gone, her innocence was gone—only a strange neither-fish-nor-fowl creature remained.

“My lord!” Na Rimu called out “my lord” in a strange tone and accent. This gave Yun Ye goosebumps all over the ground. He couldn’t bear it, really couldn’t bear it. Before, when she called him “older brother,” it was still tolerable. Now suddenly calling him “my lord”—was this still that brave and tenacious Na Rimu? Whoever taught her this, Yun Ye wanted to silence them.

In two or three moves, he redressed Na Rimu to her original appearance. She was still unwilling, clutching the beautiful silk clothing and not letting go. Zhuang Santing had just lifted the door curtain, saw the bizarre situation, and went back out, even chasing the guards far away.

“Where did the clothes come from?” Yun Ye pointed at the clothing in Na Rimu’s hands and asked her. After gesturing several times, he finally figured out they were given by someone else.

There were women in Li Jing’s great army? Yun Ye wasn’t currently a person within the army’s organization, so naturally he didn’t care about bringing women or not. But you, Li Jing, dignified Grand Commander of the Dingxiang Circuit, hiding women in the military camp? What was the reasoning? This needed to be asked.

His gossipy heart greatly aroused, could it be that Li Jing was like Chang Yuchun, who needed robust women accompanying him every time he marched? In legend, if Chang Yuchun didn’t have women, even a mother cow would do as a substitute. Who knew what Grand Commander Li used as a substitute? Could it be that famous generals all had the same appetites?

Zhang Gongjin—an old acquaintance. His second son was at the academy. Right now he was serving as Li Jing’s deputy. He was honest and decent, a rare good old fellow. His tent was right next to Yun Ye’s. Having just returned from inspecting the camp, he was the most standard well-informed person. Asking him was the right choice.

Old Zhang didn’t hide anything from Yun Ye, only had one small condition—to get his youngest son enrolled at the academy. Yun Ye agreed readily. After returning, teachers from all quarters would arrive. He had long prepared to expand enrollment. At that time, Yun Ye would go door to door requiring the various big shots of Great Tang’s military to send all their out-of-school youths to study at the academy. Old Zhang was even using this as a trade—it really suited his appetite. What harm in having several more such trades?

Good heavens, it turned out to be Emperor Yang of Sui’s wife, Empress Xiao. She was said to be one of the top beauties. She had been next door to Yun Ye for two days, and he actually didn’t know! A great beauty—not seeing her would be a great loss. Yun Ye felt that having inexplicably run to the Tang Dynasty and not seen a single real beauty was truly too much of a loss. Although this Empress Xiao was a bit older, if he couldn’t see young beauties, seeing an older beauty wasn’t bad either. He heard she and Li’er would also have something happen between them.

Bringing Na Rimu along, he went to pay respects and thank Empress Xiao. A remarkable person of a generation! She always married emperors, and had married five times in succession. She was a strange woman in history. Having experienced multiple dynastic changes, she always made those monarchs fall at her feet. Such a woman could be said to be unprecedented and unrepeatable.

He didn’t see her. He was chased back by Li Jing, who pointed at Na Rimu and questioned him for a long time, saying things like young people should guard against lust, must preserve their essence and guard their unity, only then could learning advance. He should know how many young heroes had fallen due to not knowing self-restraint.

“You have the face to lecture me!” Yun Ye grumbled inwardly. “In your youth, when you went to Yang Su’s residence and saw Hong Fu’s beauty, your lustful heart arose, and you staged a lewd drama of Hong Fu’s Night Flight. Over a thousand years later it’s still being performed. Now you have the face to lecture me? I’m just coming to see an old woman. Does this also interfere with your business?”

“Hmph, as long as this old man still holds the seal, you youngster shouldn’t have crooked thoughts. This old man heard you like eating cucumbers in brothels. What kind of habit is that? So young and not learning properly. That woman is a fox spirit. Every single person who touched her body came to no good end. Emperor Yang of Sui, Dou Jiande, Yuwen Huaji, two generations of Turkish khans—which one didn’t die miserably? You youngster settle down for a while.”

Superstition kills people! Clearly those bastards were no good—why pin the blame on a weak woman? Listen to this—of those several men Empress Xiao found, was there one good bird among them? Even without Empress Xiao, would they not have died? What kind of reasoning is this?

Yun Ye dejectedly walked back. He always felt he seemed to have forgotten something, but right now his mind was full of imagined pictures of beauties, so he neglected this small matter.

He Shao had set up his large pot in the military camp again. The horse legs picked up on the grassland were cooked pot by pot, then rubbed with spices. For a time, the entire military camp was filled with the fragrance of meat. Military officers kept coming to ask the price. If they knew these horse legs had been stained with human blood just a few days ago, who knew if they’d still have the desire to eat.

Yun Ye didn’t eat. Sun Simiao didn’t eat. Xu Jingzong wanted to vomit at the sight. Only Cheng Chumo held a large chunk of meat and tore at it like eating steamed buns, occasionally tearing off a large piece for Na Rimu.

He really liked that Na Rimu had recovered her former liveliness. Her appetite had also improved greatly. Death was a very common thing on the grassland. She felt she had already expressed her mourning and fulfilled a Turkish woman’s responsibility, no longer melancholy as in those past few days.

Yun Ye still captured a trace of sorrow from the bottom of her eyes. She was just trying hard to conceal this sadness. Even rabbits grieve for dead foxes—how could the wounds of war be healed in just a few days?

She knew everyone in the convoy hoped she would forget those sorrowful past events. This carefree little girl was rarely delicate. She sweetly called everyone “older brother,” and aside from using the words “my lord” to address Yun Ye, no one else heard her say them to anyone.

She was actually very clever, clever beyond everyone’s imagination.

Yun Ye suddenly remembered what he had forgotten. History had recorded that the Imperial Jade Seal was in Empress Xiao’s hands. She and Crown Prince Yuande presumably still possessed this jade seal inscribed with “Having received the Mandate from Heaven, may the emperor enjoy longevity and eternal prosperity.”