Only three days after the incident at the entertainment district on Lantern Festival night, Cai Chunxu personally came to South Locust Street to invite Ni Su to a banquet at the Grand Commandant’s residence.
Aside from Grand Commandant Miao’s eldest son, Miao Jingzhen, who served as Vice Commander of the Palace Command and was still on duty at the palace, the Grand Commandant’s family was fairly complete.
Grand Commandant Miao didn’t speak much during the feast. Only after the banquet concluded did he find an excuse to invite Ni Su to sit in the pavilion. He had now shaved his beard clean, making him look more spirited than before. “My wife and A’Cai don’t know about this matter, so I didn’t toast Miss Ni during the feast.”
He picked up a pot from the brazier and poured a bowl of hot tea, handing it to Ni Su.
“Grand Commandant, sir, you needn’t do this. Back then, I was able to leave the Night Patrol Bureau early thanks to the second young master and Sister Cai. Later, I imposed on your residence for many days and still don’t know how to repay you.” Ni Su accepted the tea bowl with a smile.
“Your family has shown kindness to A’Cai’s family, and A’Cai married into our family—it’s all the same to us.” Grand Commandant Miao sat down, hands braced on his knees. “On Lantern Festival, Miss Ni went to the entertainment district for enjoyment?”
“Yes. I’ve been in the capital for such a long time but had never truly seen the capital’s prosperity. I heard the entertainment district was lively, so I went to take a look.”
Ni Su answered.
Grand Commandant Miao nodded. “The prosperity and liveliness of our capital is hardly limited to just the entertainment district. I only wonder how much longer Miss Ni will remain in the capital?”
Though it hadn’t snowed tonight, the night was still cold. Ni Su pressed her palms tightly against the porcelain bowl: “I should be staying for quite a while.”
“I had thought Miss Ni wouldn’t want to stay here any longer.”
Grand Commandant Miao’s eyes held a smile.
“I don’t want to, but I can’t abandon someone just because of my reluctance.” Ni Su blew on the hot steam at the bowl’s rim and took a sip of hot tea.
“What does Miss Ni mean?”
Ni Su knew Grand Commandant Miao was thinking of the back view he had glimpsed that day at the entertainment district. She shook her head: “Someone who helped me on my journey to the capital.”
She lowered her eyelids. On the ground, a pale white shadow floated.
“It’s good that Miss Ni stays here. If you feel lonely, you can also come to the Grand Commandant’s residence to keep A’Cai company.” As Grand Commandant Miao spoke, he ultimately couldn’t help but ask: “I just very much want to ask you—that day at the entertainment district, who was the young gentleman accompanying you?”
For three consecutive days, Grand Commandant Miao had thought about that back view and always felt it was very familiar.
“Actually, he and I are not acquainted.”
Ni Su said.
“Not acquainted?” Grand Commandant Miao furrowed his brow slightly.
“That day, when I saw you at the entertainment district, I wanted to come forward and speak with you. Who would have known that after just a few steps, he stopped me. He told me you might be in danger and asked me to hide you.”
“With so many people upstairs and downstairs at the entertainment district, how did he know you and I were acquainted, that I must have come for you?” Grand Commandant Miao’s face showed puzzlement.
“I actually also wanted to ask you, Grand Commandant—could he be someone familiar with you? My petition case caused such an uproar in the capital, and I’ve been close with your family. Could it be he already knew me?”
This series of counter-questions actually left Grand Commandant Miao somewhat stunned. He found himself following her train of thought, his brows knitting into a “chuan” character. After a long while, he irritably wiped his face: “God damn…”
The remaining words hadn’t left his mouth when he looked up to meet Ni Su’s gaze. He laughed awkwardly: “Miss Ni, please forgive me. I’m a crude person—I’m used to such coarse language…”
Ni Su suppressed her laughter and shook her head.
“Does Miss know what kind of people were waiting for me in that private room?”
“When you and Censor Jiang took advantage of the chaos to leave that day, I also left the entertainment district.” Ni Su pretended not to know.
“Barbarians.”
Grand Commandant Miao’s expression became much more serious. “If I had truly gone then, I’m afraid my entire family would now be sent to the Night Patrol Bureau prison for interrogation.”
“Though I don’t know who that gentleman really is, both he and you helped me tremendously. I guess that if he didn’t know about it beforehand, then he must be a military general who has been to the battlefield.”
Grand Commandant Miao instinctively wanted to stroke his beard but only touched his bare chin. “Otherwise, how could he understand barbarians so well?”
Military general.
Hearing this, Ni Su was somewhat startled.
She thought of Xu Ziling’s hands. She had seen those hands hold a brush, seen them turn pages of books, and also seen him grip a sword. But she often forgot that he also had a sharpness like a blade’s edge concealed beneath that slender, upright appearance.
Just as Grand Commandant Miao said, he understood barbarians so well.
He knew the barbarians’ habits of wearing blades, knew their bearing and gait, knew how vast their grasslands were, how precious their cattle and sheep… as if he had truly been there.
“Perhaps.”
In the end, she responded to Grand Commandant Miao softly.
If that barbarian were still alive, he would inevitably continue to target Grand Commandant Miao relentlessly. Fortunately, that young gentleman had killed all eight people, so that when the eight corpses were carried into the Night Patrol Bureau, Night Patrol Commissioner Han Qing couldn’t investigate anything.
Grand Commandant Miao had invited Ni Su today under Cai Chunxu’s name precisely because he wanted to know who had helped him escape this calamity. Who would have known that after this conversation, he became even more confused.
The night had deepened. Grand Commandant Miao couldn’t keep Ni Su any longer. After asking his second daughter-in-law Cai Chunxu to see her off, he sat alone in the pavilion for a while longer.
Miao Jingzhen, Vice Commander of the Palace Command, returned from the palace carrying a body full of cold air. Still in full armor, he saw his father drinking alone in the pavilion. Walking forward, he discovered that what Grand Commandant Miao was pouring into his mouth wasn’t wine at all, but clearly tea.
“…Father, what did Miss Ni say?” Miao Jingzhen removed his sword and placed it on the table, then lifted his hem and sat down across from Grand Commandant Miao.
“She said she’s not acquainted with that person.”
Grand Commandant Miao spat out tea dregs. “To say she lied—but why would she need to lie and deceive me?”
“Danqiu wants to increase the annual tribute. You just submitted a memorial refusing to give Danqiu tribute and advocating for war, and unexpectedly someone immediately used Uncle’s matter to lure you in.” Miao Jingzhen’s complexion wasn’t good. “And they used a barbarian to incriminate you—this is deliberately insulting you.”
“Father, I hope in the future you’ll think three times before acting. Don’t disregard everything just because you hear Uncle’s name.”
“It’s because the letter mentioned matters in Yongzhou. You know your uncle died in Yongzhou, but I was severely wounded and not at the border at the time…”
Grand Commandant Miao changed from his usual forthright manner, revealing some melancholy. “Jingzhen, when your uncle died, he was only in his twenties and hadn’t even married yet. Now I have you two sons and two daughters-in-law, but his bones were hacked to nothing by barbarian golden blades. Now, I can only erect a cenotaph for him.”
“Just because the letter said there were other circumstances to Uncle’s death, you lost your composure?”
Miao Jingzhen was helpless. “Father, the military reports from back then still exist, and those officials who returned from Yongzhou are all still here. Take Censor Jiang—he’s also one of the officials who returned from Yongzhou. Everyone knows that back then, the Danqiu general Meng Tuo used the lives of the entire Xu family from Qingya Prefecture as leverage, forcing the criminal official Xu Hexue to lead thirty thousand Jing’an troops to defect. But Meng Tuo went back on his word and slaughtered Xu Hexue’s thirty thousand Jing’an troops at Mount Mushen. If not for Uncle defending Yongzhou City with his life, I’m afraid we wouldn’t have lasted until reinforcements arrived, and Yongzhou City, that crucial military stronghold, would have fallen into the barbarians’ hands.”
When these three characters “Xu Hexue” came from Miao Jingzhen’s mouth, Grand Commandant Miao’s complexion immediately darkened. With one hand, he gripped the tea bowl so tightly that it shattered into porcelain shards in his palm.
“I…”
Grand Commandant Miao’s voice was hoarse. “If I had known back then what a spineless person he was, I should have told him to get lost back to the capital. How could I have let him… bring calamity to Great Qi?”
If he had stayed in the capital, perhaps he could still have been a young scholar who passed the imperial examinations.
Being in the court would have been better than being on the battlefield.
At least he wouldn’t have lost himself in the wind, sand, blood, and shadows—from heaven’s favored son to utter defeat.
The night sky was thick and black as ink, dotted with a few sparse stars.
When Ni Su entered the Grand Commandant’s residence, it wasn’t yet dark, so the lantern she now held in her hand wasn’t one she had lit herself. She passed through the bustling streets and walked into a quiet, deserted alley. All along, faint mist had been lightly tugging at her sleeve.
She crouched down, took out a fire starter from her bosom, opened the lantern, blew out the candle inside, then relit it. A handful of firelight swayed unsteadily. Ni Su raised her head and saw not far away a child at their doorway tilting their head, watching her strange behavior.
That child suddenly showed her a toothy grin, then threw the snowball in their hand at her.
However, the snowball didn’t hit her—it was transformed by the faint cold mist into fine snow particles that fell at her feet. That child’s eyes widened. As if having seen a ghost, they turned around, tripped over the threshold, and tumbled into the courtyard gate, letting out a loud cry.
Ni Su couldn’t help but laugh.
“Xu Ziling, you’ve learned to scare people.”
She said.
The faint mist lightly brushed her sleeve edge, transforming into a tall, slender figure. He depended on her, from beginning to end.
He didn’t speak, just watched her quietly with both eyes.
Ni Su stood up holding the lantern. “Let’s go home.”
It seemed these two words “go home” could always find for him a trace of warm belonging. Every time Ni Su said this, she could discover some different emotion in his eyes that were desolate as severe winter. At such times, he always appeared very compliant.
So she also very much liked speaking to him this way.
Actually, making such a ghost spirit who had long been separated from the mortal world feel happy wasn’t an easy thing, but Ni Su always wanted to try.
The two walked side by side past that residence with crying sounds, hearing the child inside still sobbing intermittently while clamoring to their mother about a female ghost.
Ni Su laughed aloud again.
“Does it still hurt?”
Xu Hexue felt somewhat uncomfortable.
The injuries on Ni Su’s body hadn’t fully healed yet. That day at the entertainment district, she had pulled the injury on her lower back again. These past few days had been somewhat difficult to endure, but she shook her head: “It doesn’t hurt very much anymore. I apply medicine every day. Don’t worry—I’m a physician myself. I know what to do.”
“Mm.” He responded.
“Did you hear what I said to Grand Commandant Miao?” Ni Su asked him.
“I heard.”
“Do you think there were errors in what I said?”
“No. You answered very well.”
As soon as Xu Hexue’s words fell, he suddenly recalled her words to Grand Commandant Miao: “I’m unwilling to abandon someone just because of my reluctance.” Walking in the lamplight she held, he suddenly added: “Ni Su, though I don’t remember many things from before, I think I must never have encountered a young lady like you before.”
Ni Su paused, raising her eyes to look at him: “What… am I like?”
“You dare to hold to your aspirations. You don’t fear hardship and danger, don’t fear worldly opinion because of social conventions.” Xu Hexue stopped walking and met her gaze. “You are a woman worthy of admiration.”
She didn’t avoid him because of his ghost spirit form and was willing to temporarily remain in this place to fulfill his request.
She was precisely such a woman worthy of his admiration.
Ni Su was almost stunned. The firelight from the lantern she held illuminated the sparkling dust pervading his body. In the interweaving warm and cold bright light and shadow, he was as beautiful as a phantom dream.
Somehow, her cheeks felt a bit hot. She avoided his clear, cold brows and eyes, mumbling: “I’m not as good as you say…”
“I’m not lying to you.”
He said.
Ni Su felt a bit embarrassed. After two “mm-hmm” sounds, she urged him to walk forward.
Silence fell between the two, but Ni Su secretly glanced at the young man walking beside her. She reached out to brush a handful of accumulated snow from withered branches and stood still: “Xu Ziling.”
Hearing her voice, Xu Hexue turned his head, only to see her raise her hand. A handful of snow hit his sleeve beneath the lamplight.
Snow fine as salt grains stuck to the edge of his sleeve.
He looked up in confusion.
“Why don’t you throw some at me?” Ni Su gathered another handful of accumulated snow.
She was smiling, her eyebrows slightly raised.
Xu Hexue reached out to grasp a handful of snow from the branches. Tentatively, restraining his force, he threw it at her.
Ni Su looked at the small snowball that landed not far from her feet and deliberately teased: “Do you need to eat candles to have the strength to hit me?”
“…”