Today was the last day that the Xuzhou Prefect had given Li Wu.

Shen Zhuxi waited at home in a state of nervous restlessness, the neatly made bedding concealing the bundle of essentials she had packed and readied for a quick escape.

She couldn’t sit still, and kept walking to the entrance of the courtyard to peer out.

For the sake of making a swift exit, she had even sent Niang away home.

Everything was prepared, and she was waiting only for Li Wu’s signal to grab her things and go.

She waited from before dawn until the evening sky blazed red along the horizon — and still no word from Li Wu.

Could it be…

She didn’t dare let herself think of the worst possibility.

Li Wu was so clever, and his two brothers were such capable men. Nothing could have happened to them.

Just as Shen Zhuxi was checking for the ninth time to make sure the valuables and the phoenix token in her bundle hadn’t been forgotten, a flustered voice rang out from outside the courtyard.

“Mistress Li! Mistress Li! Something’s happened — come quickly!”

Shen Zhuxi’s legs went weak beneath her.

She forced herself to walk to the front courtyard and opened the gate.

Niang flinched at the sight of her pale face.

“Mistress Li, you…”

“Who is it? What happened?” Shen Zhuxi asked.

“It’s Master Li — there are so many people crowded around the east city gate looking at the bodies —”

Before Niang could finish, Shen Zhuxi had already shoved past her and started running.

“Mistress Li!” Niang’s startled voice rang out from behind her.

Shen Zhuxi didn’t look back.

She forgot entirely what propriety meant. The ornaments on her person jangled and clinked as she ran.

The main street was busy with people coming and going. Those who recognized her looked at her with startled expressions.

Though it was not the busiest early morning market hour, the street was packed with idle onlookers who stood about with their arms folded, each wearing a different expression.

From the scattered strands of conversation blending together around her, Shen Zhuxi caught the two words that cut most sharply: bodies, total annihilation.

“…You said the bodies have been brought back — is it true?” Shen Zhuxi lost all composure and frantically grabbed the nearest person.

“Of course it’s true — I saw it with my own eyes!” The man she had stopped was only too pleased to show off his firsthand information. He said with great self-importance, “I happened to enter the city at the same time as they did. There were so many bodies they had to use ox carts to haul them in. I’d advise you not to go — the smell alone is enough to make your head swim, and one look at it will give you nightmares for a year…”

Clinging to one last thread of hope, Shen Zhuxi pressed: “Where did the bodies come from?”

“From the attack on Jinzhu Stronghold, of course! Judging by your accent you’re not from Xuzhou, are you? Do you know about Jinzhu Stronghold? Jinzhu Stronghold is —”

The man hadn’t finished speaking when the person before him had already turned and bolted in the direction of the east city gate.

“I told you not to go and you still went… don’t blame me if you get sick.” The man muttered to himself.

He glanced around, hoping someone else would come to ask him about the east gate — but the people nearby had already heard him tell the story several times over, and not a single one met his expectant gaze.

The man shook his head in disappointment and shuffled slowly away.

A figure in a pale artemisia-green dress ran through the street lined with shop after shop.

The closer she got to the east city gate, the fewer people there were on the road. What faces remained were mostly gathered inside teahouse and tavern halls, where people instinctively covered their noses and mouths and exchanged whispers with strange expressions.

A peculiar, acrid burning smell drifted through the air.

She had smelled this smell before.

After the city fell. In the imperial palace.

Amid a sky full of fire and a sea of blood and bodies.

She had smelled this smell.

Her heart slammed violently against the walls of her chest, as though someone were beating a war drum next to her ear. Shen Zhuxi struggled to breathe. The sharp pain in her eardrums pierced like a silver needle, driving deep into her chest.

She refused to believe it.

The things they were saying could not possibly be true.

Just four days ago, she had still seen Li Wu. How could he possibly — how could he — how could it be that he had already become a corpse?

From the courtyard to the east city gate, the journey on foot was at least two incense sticks’ worth of time.

For Shen Zhuxi, it felt like the blink of an eye.

She pushed through the able-bodied men in plain clothes who were blocking the mouth of the alley. They turned back cursing, but when they found themselves looking at a face like a rain-drenched begonia, every last bit of their remaining abuse was strangled in their throats without a trace.

“The bodies… where are the bodies?” Shen Zhuxi forced out a trembling voice.

The men hesitated.

The chaotic sound of hoofbeats and footsteps drifted faintly from the far end of the main street. Shen Zhuxi immediately abandoned the still-hesitating men and ran onto the deserted main road.

She stood in the middle of the road, eyes unblinking, watching as a great procession gradually emerged from the evening glow.

The formation, clad in sturdy armor and bearing weapons, had its back to the soaring east city gate. Like a surging river of deep color, it poured with tremendous force into the wide road.

Soldiers covered in blood and soot crowded around three figures at the head of the column.

Her eyes could hold nothing except the one who stood in the center.

Li Wu, in full battle armor, rode a reddish-brown warhorse. Blood stained the leather pauldron on his chest. The smell of battle clung to the cold blade at his side. Dark grey ash and soot had smeared across his resolute face, and within his jet-black eyes shone a composure and calm unlike anything ordinary.

The blazing evening light fell across his broad shoulders like heaven’s own reward for his victory.

In him, Shen Zhuxi saw the most courageous spirit a man could possess.

She stood rooted to the spot, her gaze fixed on Li Wu as he moved, and the taut string inside her — stretched to its very limit — snapped the moment he appeared.

Her legs gave way beneath her at the same instant the reddish-brown warhorse came charging straight toward her.

Before her knees could meet the ground, Li Wu bent down from the saddle and scooped her up into his arms.

“Shen Blockhead, how did you end up here?” Li Wu said with delight.

The joy of seeing her burst from those clear, bright black eyes. The air of battle and bloodshed that had been hovering over Li Wu just a moment ago dissolved like morning dew in sunlight the instant she looked at him, vanishing without a trace.

“I heard something happened to you…” Shen Zhuxi instinctively clutched his waist as she swayed on the jolting horse’s back. “If you’re all safe, then the bodies they were talking about are…”

After the violent rush of emotion, her senses gradually returned to their usual state.

A smell of scorched flesh that she had been too overwhelmed to notice before suddenly flooded into her nostrils.

She was just about to look past Li Wu when a large hand pressed her face into his chest.

Li Wu held the back of her head and said, in a tone that brooked no argument: “Don’t look.”

The reddish-brown warhorse stepped forward at a steady, measured pace. Its iron shoes rang against the uneven stone road, the sound of hoofbeats blending with the loud footfalls behind them and the heavy rumble of cart wheels into a single continuous sound.

Li Que, taking Li Kun with him, tactfully fell back to a slower pace, and the column of vehicles behind them slowed as well.

One horse, two people — separated from the soldiers behind them, separated from the noise of the world.

The slender figure in artemisia-green leaned against the dark armored form, like a flowering kerria rose blooming from stone.

Over a hundred soldiers followed in silence behind, and not one opened their mouth to break this living picture.

Shen Zhuxi, up on the horse, also didn’t speak a word.

Just moments ago she had run across half of Pengcheng County in a single breath. Now she had no strength left even to move a finger.

The smell of blood and smoke still lingered on Li Wu.

And yet she was not afraid at all.

The smell of Li Wu wrapped around her like a cloak — more reassuring than anything else in the world.

“You blockhead, why didn’t you stay home? What were you doing running out onto the street like this?”

Li Wu reached out and, with the pad of his finger, gently wiped away the traces of tears at the corner of her eye.

“I thought you…” She choked on the words.

“What was there to be afraid of?” Li Wu said. “I’m going to live a thousand years — even the King of Hell wouldn’t dare take me. You think a few mountain bandits are enough to finish me off?”

Shen Zhuxi asked: “Are you injured?”

Her voice still carried the remnants of tears. Her soft, damp almond-shaped eyes looked up at him with a pitiful, helpless expression.

Li Wu fell silent, seized by an impulse to keep her embedded in his arms forever.

“Say something. Are you hurt or not?” Shen Zhuxi asked again.

She spoke in standard Mandarin, her voice still softened from crying — silky and gentle, carrying within its warm, tender tones a trace of a coquettish pout that she herself had not noticed.

Li Wu noticed it.

Which was precisely why his heart was itching and restless.

In just one short year, she had blossomed from a naive and unworldly young girl into a graceful young woman standing in full bloom.

When those moist, luminous almond eyes shifted even slightly, they became a shimmering pool of spring water rippling with light.

“What are you thinking about?” Shen Zhuxi reached out and waved a hand uncertainly before his eyes.

He was thinking about when he would finally get to kiss those eyes.

“Thinking about a certain blockhead.”

Her face flushed. She said weakly and without much conviction: “Stop talking nonsense!”

“I missed you.” Li Wu pressed his chin lightly against her soft cheek and murmured: “Blockhead — did you miss me?”

“Stop taking liberties!” Shen Zhuxi struggled to push away the chin that had been rough and stubbly for a day without grooming. “We made an agreement — you’re not allowed to take advantage of me —”

Li Wu thought to himself: You’ve been leaning on me, touching me, holding me for so long — just who is taking advantage of whom here?

“It’s not like I’m charging you anything.” He frowned.

For some reason, this blockhead seemed startled by those words, and looked at him with a suddenly pale face.

“Fine, fine — I won’t take advantage of you.” Li Wu couldn’t stand her wide, startled, small-creature-in-distress gaze and immediately backed down. “I won’t touch you. Are you satisfied?”

Shen Zhuxi nodded, and the tension in her body slowly eased.

Feeling the warmth nestle back into his arms, Li Wu couldn’t help the corners of his mouth lifting: Shen Blockhead — I said I won’t touch you, and here you are coming to touch me anyway.

The column gradually advanced into the densest part of the crowd on the main street.

At the sight of the throngs of people up ahead, Shen Zhuxi suddenly came back to herself. “…I need to get down!”

“Get down for what.” Li Wu wrapped one arm around her and kept her firmly in place. “Let them see what a fine wife I have. If it weren’t for your bandit suppression strategy, I’d already be halfway down the road on the run right now.”

Li Wu’s words stopped her struggling.

“Did those strategies actually help you?”

Shen Zhuxi looked at him in astonishment.

She herself had never expected that what she had written in desperation, like a sick person reaching for any cure, had actually made a real difference for Li Wu.

Li Wu suddenly lowered his head.

His forehead touched hers in a gentle bump — the kind of playful, intimate gesture common between children — yet between the two of them, it set off an undeniable current of tenderness.

Even as Shen Zhuxi worked hard to suppress it, her ears betrayed her and burned with warmth. And deep within her, her heart — casting off the exhaustion of a moment ago — leaped and danced with light, excited beats.

“I owe half my victory to your bandit suppression strategy.” Li Wu said.

Shen Zhuxi’s face was entirely red. She filed this away as being wholeheartedly happy for Li Wu.

“And the other half?” she asked.

“The other half,” Li Wu said, “is because I wanted the day to come when you could introduce me to others and say with pride — this is your husband.”

Shen Zhuxi looked at him in a daze.

The crowd parted on all sides as the lead warhorse drew near. When the ox carts came into view, the truth behind the acrid, burning smell was finally revealed. Some clapped their hands and cheered. Some turned and fled. And there were those who simply couldn’t take it and retched right there in the street.

Countless gazes, a mixture of awe and fear, converged from every direction. The dried blood on the soldiers’ armor infected the watching townspeople with its gravity, and a solemn atmosphere spread swiftly outward as the column advanced.

Pengcheng County’s busiest street fell into complete silence in that moment. Only the sound of water boiling in the teahouses persisted — a steady, unhurried bubble, bubble — and kept on sounding without cease.

Li Wu sat tall and held his head high, meeting every kind of gaze with open, fearless calm.

The way he looked made Shen Zhuxi think of what she had always yearned for — a bird soaring free across the open sky.

Shen Zhuxi tugged at his lapel.

Li Wu looked down at her, puzzled.

“I have always been proud.” She said.