Cao Sheng had stepped forward in person to restore the iron-masked army’s name.

As for the likes of Qiu Zhen — he was nothing but a corrupt scoundrel of the rebel forces, swollen with ambition, and had already been beheaded by his own daughter, Cao Pei’er, after she had endured long years of hardship in secret waiting for her moment.

Cao Sheng made it plain: any member of the rebel forces who still carried ambition for their homeland in their hearts was welcome to come and rejoin them without delay. Once the army was assembled, they would resume the campaign to recover the twenty lost prefectures.

With this, the rebel soldiers who had scattered and fled to all corners finally found a rallying point once more. Though some still held back in hesitation, as the iron-masked army continued to strike several more lightning raids with near-ghostly precision, its reputation soared — and the number of scattered rebel fighters coming to join the cause grew steadily larger.

With such significant upheaval occurring on the rebel side, Zhao Dong naturally received word of it.

He sought out Han Linfeng to ask about the situation with the rebel forces.

Han Linfeng had been sent on orders these past several days to coordinate grain supplies in other areas — occupied with whatever it was he had been doing — and Zhao Dong had not seen him in quite some time.

He only noticed that the man seemed to have grown even leaner and more sinewy, all knotted muscle, and that when he walked toward him there was a quality about him — a kind of lethal stillness — that was difficult to put into words.

The powdered fop in his peony-brocaded robes, as he had been back in the capital, had now left not the faintest trace behind.

Zhao Dong clapped him on his firm arm and gave a satisfied nod, then began to ask about the iron-masked force that had risen out of nowhere.

Upon hearing Zhao Dong’s question, Han Linfeng clasped his hands and lowered his eyes. “When Commander Cao received word that amnesty was no longer possible, he made other arrangements. Surely that was what the General had anticipated.”

Zhao Dong’s brow furrowed. “In truth, regarding your proposal, I did raise the matter with His Majesty. But I received a personal letter from him, scolding me at length for it. The court’s intent is not to drag out a drawn-out war of attrition against the Iron Foe. With no grain and no silver, the court simply cannot afford to sustain the losses. And while Cao Sheng harbors no rebellious ambitions against the dynasty, he has been fighting the Iron Foe relentlessly. His Majesty fears that offering him amnesty would be misread by the Iron Foe as a silent declaration of war by the Great Wei, making the conflict even harder to resolve.”

The court’s reasoning was this: since the rebel leaders had already been brought to justice, Zhao Dong needed only to sweep up the remaining stragglers as swiftly as possible and then withdraw.

As for the Iron Foe — what they were presently contesting were the prefectures and counties the rebel forces had occupied, in other words the twenty prefectures that had been ceded in years past. Given that, Zhao Dong was best advised not to send forces to stir things up further. Once the Iron Foe reclaimed the territory lost when the rebels had held it, they would naturally put down their own banners and fall quiet.

So His Majesty had issued a personal imperial edict: Zhao Dong was to hold Jiayong Prefecture and its surrounding counties at all costs, and was forbidden from engaging in offensive action.

For the Emperor who had gone to the trouble of building nine burial mounds for himself, ending the border fighting quickly and halting the drain on military funds was the only thing that truly mattered.

It was said that the peace faction at court had already dispatched envoys to begin negotiations with the newly ascended Iron Foe King — following the path of Lady Zhaojun, seeking harmony across generations through a royal marriage. Beyond this, a suitable unmarried woman from among the imperial kinswomen was to be selected as a consort for the Iron Foe King.

But what the Iron Foe King lacked most was not women — it was a massive annual tribute in silver. In their eyes, the Great Wei was a fat sheep good for milking. Without being given a few sharp blows, how could it be relied upon to produce milk obediently?

Beyond reclaiming territory, it was precisely because the Great Wei had not been willing to produce substantial annual tribute promptly that the Iron Foe cavalry had continued harassing the border, applying pressure.

Zhao Dong understood perfectly well what the noble civil officials of the court were calculating. They had no desire whatsoever to fight the Iron Foe to the last. Here he was at the front lines, and yet his hands and feet were bound at every turn.

He understood it clearly: both he and every Great Wei soldier deployed along the border were nothing more than bargaining chips for the peace faction to negotiate over at the table. The Supreme Commander had not been without his private misery over this, and had been drinking to drown it out.

Now Han Linfeng was claiming to know nothing of the iron-masked army, and Zhao Dong pressed no further. He simply said to Han Linfeng with a kind of helpless melancholy: “You and I carry the title of general, yet we cannot compare to a masked man from the wilderness — at the very least he can defend the people and territory of the Great Wei openly, standing weapon to weapon against the Iron Foe cavalry in genuine battle.”

Han Linfeng understood perfectly the frustration and impotence beneath the Supreme Commander’s words. He said nothing in response — only poured wine and offered Zhao Dong a cup in silence.

What else was there to say? Tell him that this man from the wilderness was sitting across from him right now, drinking alongside General Zhao?

So the two of them said nothing more, and sat on the city walls drinking, the clear moon overhead, their eyes looking out over the boundless territory stretching beyond the walls.

For a moment, all that great ambition within them had no one to speak to — only the last of the wine to coax out more grey.

Unlike the Great Wei soldiers, hemmed in on every side, the iron-masked army that had risen so suddenly was growing at speed. Waves of Cao Sheng’s former soldiers came flooding in to join.

Though several of the iron-masked army’s commanders would occasionally remove their masks and show their true faces to those under their command, the identity of the Iron War God himself remained a mystery to all.

These fighters, capable of driving back the formidable Iron Foe forces, gave the common people an inexhaustible wellspring of hope.

The reputation of the rebel army, so devastated by Qiu Zhen’s wolfish ambitions, was swiftly being restored.

In the teahouses of Liangzhou, storytellers had once again begun recounting the tales of the righteous Cao family — father and daughter.

When Luoyun brought Han Yao out to stroll the streets and do some shopping, they stopped in one of the teahouses and listened to a segment recounting how Cao Pei’er — the gallant daughter of Cao Sheng — had used her beauty to lure the rebel traitor Qiu Zhen, seduced him into her tent, plied him with drink, and put him to the sword.

“See how she gently knits her willow-leaf brows, feigning shy demureness — those cherry lips pressed together just so — truly like a flower bud about to bloom! The sight of her sets the rebel traitor’s heart aflame, his desire stirring and restless, wishing he could carry this beauty straight into the bedchamber for three hundred rounds of battle… Yet little did he know this beauty was a flower with thorns — a slender blade concealed within that willow-waist of hers…”

Han Yao felt the story was rather improper — it made her face flush to listen to it — yet somehow she still wanted to hear more.

So the young commandery princess could only pretend to be absorbed in her food while secretly straining her ears to catch every word.

Unfortunately, once the bedchamber was entered and before anything untoward could unfold, the knife had already fallen — a swift stroke, and the deed was done. This gratifying elimination of a villain brought the tea-drinking audience to their feet in applause, while some expressed just a touch of regret that the heroic young woman had drawn her blade a touch too early.

After listening to the segment with great relish and emerging from the teahouse, Han Yao leaned close to her sister-in-law and said in a low voice: “These storytellers are rather wicked — imagine ruining a girl’s reputation so! That daughter of the Cao family sacrificed her own honor to cut down the rebel leader, yet these men use it for entertainment to line their pockets. If I were her, I might just be so furious I would draw a blade and spill blood right there on the spot!”

Hmm… Luoyun rather doubted that. Based on her understanding of that particular Miss Cao, the storyteller would probably have earned a ten-tael reward just for the passage about the flower bud about to bloom.

She had heard Qing Yang mention it: after Cao Pei’er returned with her father to the northern territories, she apparently had nothing better to do than to slip into the city in disguise and listen to the storytellers. And the young lady was lavish with her silver — she particularly loved listening to passages about how the rebel traitor Qiu Zhen had been driven mad with infatuation by the heroic Miss Cao, and would scatter silver coins on the spot if the performance was good.

Which explained why the teahouses of Liangzhou were full to bursting with tales of the heroic Miss Cao’s bewitching charms.

Qing Yang, who was serving as escort for the two ladies, shook his head repeatedly, muttering under his breath: “Which means most of what these stories say is probably made up anyway. Does that mean the seven fairy maidens who descended from heaven were actually hideous as night-demons — unable to sleep in the heavens and deliberately coming down to earth to attach themselves to poor young men?”

Han Yao could not help bursting out laughing. “Guard Qing Yang, what on earth are you talking about?”

Qing Yang turned his world-weary gaze toward the sky and let out a long, mournful sigh. What he had been through — how could an unworldly young commandery princess ever understand?

As the rebel army’s reputation continued to improve, the iron-masked army’s expansion did not slow. Its ranks grew steadily larger.

What was strangest of all was that this newly risen rebel force had access to far more money than before, as though some immensely wealthy patron were backing them from behind the scenes — outfitting expanded battalions, with weapons arriving in endless supply.

Across the northern territories, something was unmistakably taking shape: a beast lying in wait, its true ferocity not yet fully known.

After long deliberation, Zhao Dong felt he had no choice but to report this to the court. Yet when his memorial arrived, the assembled ministers’ assessments and debate were even more divorced from reality than the teahouse storytellers.

“A force this formidable — is this not simply another Qiu Zhen? Someone must be secretly backing them. We must investigate to the bottom of this.”

“General Zhao Dong was sent there to suppress the rebels! How is it that the more he suppresses them, the more rebel leaders appear? What is this iron-masked army? How could it simply materialize out of thin air? I rather suspect the General is feigning compliance while secretly defying orders — nurturing a tiger to bring disaster upon ourselves.”

In no time at all, the ministers’ denunciations — steered by the Wang family’s maneuvering — were turned, seemingly without effort, toward implicating Zhao Dong.

Emperor Weihui listened for a while, feeling the discussion was growing increasingly absurd, and spoke up: “General Zhao is at the front lines, fighting in blood and battle. Is it not rather inappropriate for all of you to be sitting here in the rear making such accusations against him?”

The ministers read the shift in the wind at once and restrained themselves, saying nothing further. After all, Zhao Dong was Emperor Weihui’s son-in-law — there were words that, if they did not please the imperial ear, were best left unspoken.

After court was dismissed, however, the Emperor retained several key officials from the Ministry of War and held a lengthy, behind-closed-doors discussion in the imperial study.

Some days later, another imperial edict was dispatched to the border.

The edict declared that the iron-masked army was to be deemed remnant rebel forces, and that Supreme Commander Zhao Dong was required to eradicate this band of outlaws with all haste, before returning in triumph to the capital.

This edict was less a message to Zhao Dong than a message directed at the Iron Foe.

Emperor Weihui had no desire to let the front stretch on indefinitely, nor to let the Iron Foe misinterpret the iron-masked army as a force covertly dispatched by the Great Wei court. His intent was therefore to wait quietly while the iron-masked army beat the Iron Foe into a more manageable posture, and then formally issue an edict to publicly sever all ties with them.

As for ordering Zhao Dong to eradicate the iron-masked army — this was naturally also meant to set the record straight, to give Zhao Dong the opportunity to clear his own name, and to prevent court ministers from accusing him of dereliction of duty. So long as he visibly pursued the iron-masked army, the rumor that Zhao Dong had secretly been backing them would collapse of its own weight, and the Wang family would have no opening to demand his military authority.

In recent days, Empress Wang had been outwardly still, yet continuously making small moves behind the scenes through intermediaries. The Emperor’s loathing of the Empress grew deeper by the day, yet constrained by the Wang family’s power, he could not afford to break openly with her, and so had to maneuver carefully.

Truly a ruler of his generation — what a full calculation.

When the edict reached Zhao Dong’s hands in Jiayong Prefecture, he sat in silence for a long while.

He rubbed his temples with a weary hand. If it were possible, he genuinely wanted to drag all the noble personages of the capital to the city walls and villages of the border region, and let them see clearly for themselves — who was it, truly, that preyed on the peace and safety of the border people like wolves and tigers? Was it the so-called rebel iron-masked army? Or was it the Iron Foe, whom those nobles believed they could simply sit down and negotiate with?

Just yesterday, Iron Foe scouting cavalry had swept through a nearby village — on the mere suspicion that some of its people had secretly joined the iron-masked army. Those Iron Foe soldiers had burned, killed, and plundered without mercy, sparing not even women and children. Every house in the village had been reduced to ash by fire, every grain of food and every possession swept away, and the bodies of the slaughtered women and children lay scattered across the village paths.

When the scout who had gone to gather intelligence returned to make his report, even a veteran soldier who had held the northern territories for many years could not hold back his sobbing — which gave some measure of how horrifying and brazen the massacre of the village had been.

Yet he — the Supreme Commander, no less — had been rendered unable to send out troops by the Emperor’s edict forbidding him to leave the city walls.

Fortunately, the iron-masked army had arrived in time, annihilating the Iron Foe scouting force to the last man and rescuing some of the villagers who had been dragged away. It could only be imagined that even more villagers, having lost their loved ones and their homes, would now join the ranks of the iron-masked army without hesitation.

Zhao Dong understood it clearly in his heart: the fundamental reason the iron-masked army was growing so rapidly was precisely the complete inaction of the Great Wei soldiers.

If he were a few years younger, with no ties binding him, he might well have shed his uniform and thrown himself into the rebel forces without a second thought, indulging his nature by cutting down a good number of Iron Foe bandits first and asking questions later.

But now, he was past forty, with wife and children still living, bearing the weight of his sovereign’s trust and too many obligations on his shoulders — he could no longer do things as he wished.

This perpetual weighing and calculating, this hedging and hesitating, had once been the quality Zhao Dong in his youth had despised most in others.

He had not imagined that now, holding high rank and commanding a powerful army, he would end up becoming the very thing he had once most despised.

But the Emperor had issued the edict, and Zhao Dong had no choice but to comply.

The Great Wei forces, which had been hunkered down behind the closed gates of Jiayong Prefecture, assembled their troops the moment they received word that the iron-masked army had pushed its advance to Iron Cliff Mountain, and swept forward rapidly in a flanking movement — finally engaging the iron-masked army in several chance encounters.

Yet strangely, this same iron-masked army that had fought the formidable Iron Foe with ferocious skill, when it encountered Great Wei soldiers, pursued a policy of eel-greased evasion.

Dodge when you can, flee when you must — in any case, never engage the Great Wei forces in direct confrontation.

After this happened several times, the Great Wei officers commanding the pursuit grew frustrated and furious, shouting that the enemy facing them were spineless cowards, not daring to fight face to face.

The iron-masked army, retreating, actually shouted back in a chant as they went:

Twenty homeland prefectures haunt our dreams — A man’s hot blood flows for the people’s sake, Our blades drink only the flesh of the foreign wolf — Why turn brother’s sword against brother’s face?

Every line of this chant was a stab to the heart — a clear mockery of the Great Wei soldiers for their failure to drive out the Iron Foe invaders who preyed on the common people, while instead turning their aggression against those who were actually driving away the aggressors.

Among those Great Wei soldiers, many were native sons of the northern territories, men who had lost their own family members to Iron Foe blades. Hearing a jingle that mocked them in such a way, some were too overcome with shame to grip their weapons properly.

Zhao Dong heard the chant as well. What he felt inside was even more excruciating than what his soldiers felt.

He simply could not understand it: how could the entirety of the court’s civil and military officials keep loyalty and righteousness and virtue perpetually on their lips, yet when it came to matters of such consequence to the people of the realm, fail so completely to distinguish right from wrong — accommodating a predatory foreign enemy at every turn?

The more he thought on it, the heavier the weight on his heart grew.

That evening at supper, Zhao Dong found himself reaching again for the wine, unable to help himself.

He was not ordinarily much of a drinker, and his tolerance was not particularly high. With grief already weighing on him, strong wine poured into an empty stomach hit him all the harder, and after just a few cups, he was thoroughly and helplessly drunk.

It happened that this day was the Beginning of Summer, a day with the custom of eating what was called the Three New — the season’s first fresh offerings.

Princess Yuyang had come especially to the front camp to bring her husband candied preserved cherries, stone-roasted five-spice fava beans, and cold-dressed fresh bamboo shoots.

Before coming, wanting to please her husband, she had taken special care to have her maids find a small remaining supply of an old fragrance she had kept, and used it to scent her garments.

This fragrance carrying the note of Sichuan pepper — she had very little left. That Su Luoyun girl, for reasons she still could not quite explain, had flatly refused to blend it for her again, insisting the scent was no longer appropriate and that wearing it now would seem dated and mismatched. Even when Princess Yuyang feigned anger, the girl would not budge.

Princess Yuyang had dressed with great care, intending to give her husband a pleasant surprise.

But when she entered the tent, she found her husband insensible with drink. She knew Zhao Dong’s nature well — nothing short of great joy or deep sorrow could ever bring him to touch wine. The border region was not in any state to offer joy. So it could only be an inner grief too heavy to bear that had driven him to drink himself into this state.

Her heart ached for him. She immediately called for attendants to help lift Zhao Dong up and settle him onto the bed.

Then she sent the guards out, and herself loosened his clothing, afterward pressing her fingers to the pressure points at his temples to ease the discomfort of the drunkenness.

In the haze between sleep and waking, Zhao Dong caught a vague trace of a familiar fragrance. In that drifting, disoriented state, he seemed to be transported back to his youth — a time when he had been drinking with colleagues and been put under the table, and had come home to fall with his head in his first wife’s lap.

Enveloped in that familiar scent of Sichuan pepper, Zhao Dong’s whole being relaxed, as though the thousand-weight burden pressing on his chest had swept away in an instant.

He reached out and groped around, catching hold of a slender, soft hand, and mumbled with eyes still shut: “Hui’niang, I had a dream… I dreamed you were gone. And I became a prince consort… high rank and great power, oh so impressive… heh, heh, heh… But in reality — I’m living neither like a man nor a ghost… God, what a miserable existence this has been.”

He was still talking when the person beneath him seemed to try to move away, settling him more carefully onto the bed.

Zhao Dong would not have it, and continued groping with an outstretched hand: “Hui’niang, don’t go. I haven’t seen you in so long… Don’t leave, if you leave…”

Then, it seemed Hui’niang was speaking: “Zhao Dong, open your eyes and look — I am not…”

How could he open his eyes? Only feeling that she was about to leave, he mumbled on without thought: “You are. Who else but you would scent my clothes with Sichuan pepper? Every time I smell this fragrance, I feel as though you’ve come back… Don’t go…”

He wanted to say more, but the wine had long since overtaken him. His breathing deepened and slowed into a heavy snore as he sank into sleep.

Princess Yuyang stood before the bed, her eyes blank and staring. She lifted her sleeve slowly.

Today, wanting to come and see her husband, she had deliberately used the fragrance she knew he loved — the one she had originally commissioned Su Luoyun to blend for her, which he had praised without fail every time he caught the scent of it.

She stood motionless for a long while. Then, all at once, she spun on her heel and rushed outside, not even waiting for her maids to help her, and flung herself into the carriage: “Back to the Beizhen Prince’s Household in Liangzhou at once.”

The road from the front camp to Liangzhou was by no means short. Yet the jolting of the journey did nothing to cool Princess Yuyang’s fury.

When she finally arrived at the prince’s household, the fire inside her had risen all the way to her throat. Without waiting for a servant to announce her, she went straight to the Young Lord’s Consort’s chamber and shoved the door open with her foot.

The force of that kick bore a striking resemblance to her husband Zhao Dong.

Luoyun had been inside sorting through account books. When she saw the Princess come storming in with such force, she could not help but startle.

Before she could rise to offer her greeting, Princess Yuyang had already crossed the room in a single stride, seized Luoyun’s slender wrist, and hauled her to her feet.

“Your Highness — what is the meaning of this?” Luoyun asked in bewilderment.

When Princess Yuyang’s eyes lifted into that sharp, angular expression, she bore a resemblance of perhaps four parts to her mother, Empress Wang. The innate authority of an imperial princess, once unleashed in anger, was overwhelming in its force: “Let me ask you — when you blended that fragrance for my husband, why Sichuan pepper of all things? Why not any other ingredient?”

Su Luoyun knew the Princess had gone to the front camp to visit her husband, and had now returned in a fury, asking her this question. It could only mean she had learned the story behind the Sichuan pepper from her husband’s own lips.

She had no desire to deceive the Princess. After a brief silence, she replied honestly: “The Princess originally asked me to blend a fragrance that the General would not dislike, so I made inquiries. I learned that when the General used to go to the front, his late wife would scent his clothing with Sichuan pepper to keep away the mosquitoes in camp — so it would be a smell he was very familiar with. And so I ventured the idea, and added that ingredient.”

Princess Yuyang had already suspected as much.

She was a woman of strong pride. On any ordinary day, even had she learned the origin of the fragrance, she would have felt unsettled — yet it would not have brought her to such fury. After all, her original request had simply been for Luoyun to find a fragrance her husband would not dislike, with no stipulations about what she could not use — so using Sichuan pepper was not a wrong in itself.

But today was not an ordinary day. She had first endured the humiliation of being mistaken for Hui’niang by Zhao Dong, and then heard the words that told her Zhao Dong regretted having married her at all.

Now she listened as Luoyun confessed without the slightest concealment, calm and open about it. That nameless, aching, unacknowledged pain came flooding in, and the humiliation and fury of a proud princess made her hands tremble.

Even this girl — who had been blind when they first met — had known to win the General’s favor by walking the path of his late wife. Yet here she was, having spent so many years in devoted effort, still foolishly believing that her sacrifices had been enough to carve out even a small place in his heart.

“You — after all the genuine kindness I have shown you, you repay me by humiliating me like this!” At these words, the Princess could no longer contain herself. She raised her hand and gave Su Luoyun a slap across the face — not heavy, but not light either.

Luoyun did not dodge it. She took the blow squarely, and then straightened her face, as though waiting for the Princess to strike again.

The Princess looked at the red mark rising on Luoyun’s fair cheek, and felt a strange, uncomfortable pang.

When her hand had connected with Luoyun’s face, she had already regretted it and pulled back some of the force — so how was the mark still so vivid on this girl’s cheek?

At this, the Princess said with some frustration: “Why did you not dodge?”

She knew this girl too well. That cunning little mind of hers — she would never simply stand there waiting for a beating out of fear of offending a princess.

Luoyun said plainly: “When I first came to know the Princess, I was following the ways of a scheming merchant — thinking only of how best to curry favor with noble patrons and earn money. But now, the Princess has shown me genuine friendship. I have since reflected on myself. This slap — I deserved it. Why would I dodge?”

If Princess Yuyang had not been so angry, she would almost have been amused by the disarming candor of the phrase “ways of a scheming merchant.” “Tell me then — what exactly is the way of a scheming merchant?”

Luoyun continued in the same forthright manner: “Make money quickly, and satisfy the patron’s needs as fully as possible. The Princess said at the time that the General disliked common fragrances, and indeed the General never used any. I could only think of another approach and look for a scent the General was already familiar with. The original intent in asking me to blend a fragrance was to get the General to actually use it. I achieved that, I received the Princess’s commission — that was the merchant’s way.”

Princess Yuyang gave a cold laugh. “Yet you stopped blending that fragrance for me afterward. Does that mean you no longer cared to earn my silver?”

Luoyun said quietly: “The Princess and the General are husband and wife. The Princess came all the way to the northern front to be at his side, willing to share life and death with him, caring for him in every detail. I have seen it all with my own eyes. With such a devoted wife as the Princess, that fragrance had plainly become unnecessary.”

Hearing this, Princess Yuyang’s pride deflated all at once. She sank down into a seat and said in a low voice: “You are wrong. How could I compare to his late wife? The late Madam Hui’niang was gentle and virtuous, yet beneath that softness was a quiet strength. All who ever met her could not help but love her — even I found myself holding her in genuine admiration.”

At this, Princess Yuyang looked at Luoyun, and smiled with a faint, melancholy quality: “You know, I have been wondering all this time why I have been so fond of you. In truth, the way you carry yourself and deal with people — you are rather like her. I wonder if it is because both of you come from humble beginnings, and that gives you both a kind of natural warmth that draws people in.”

Su Luoyun asked softly: “If the Princess admired the late Madam so much, may I ask — why was it that you were willing to remain unmarried your whole life rather than give up your wait for the Supreme Commander, a man who was already wed with children?”

Princess Yuyang was taken aback. No one had ever dared to ask her this to her face before.