Nearly three thousand soldiers gave Shen Zhuxi the confidence to speak her mind. No matter how much Bai Rongling stomped and fumed, she resolutely set out on the road back to Shouzhou.
Previously, she had been in a rush to rendezvous with the army and had not passed through any towns; now, in her urgency to mount a rescue, she had not passed through any towns either.
For a full eight days, Shen Zhuxi pressed on without pause. Fortunately, she had a carriage — bumpy as it was, at least she was spared the agony of traveling on foot. Whenever she passed through a mountain village, she would stop to resupply, and she bought up every horse the village had to offer, cobbling together a light cavalry unit of a hundred riders to serve as scouts.
After much effort, she finally returned to the place in Shouzhou where she and Li Wu had parted ways. The deputy general spurred his horse forward and addressed the carriage respectfully from outside: “Baoyan Valley is just ahead. Shall we continue?”
“Stop here.” Shen Zhuxi had already made up her mind. “Send the scouts to gather intelligence in the surrounding area, and bring one local over to me — do not alarm anyone else. I have questions for him.”
“Understood.”
After the deputy general left, the scouts departed from the formation shortly after.
Shen Zhuxi sat inside the carriage, paying no mind to Bai Rongling’s sullen expression.
After about the time it takes an incense stick to burn, the scouts came riding back. Atop the lead rider’s horse sat an additional figure — a man dressed as a woodcutter, his face etched with fear.
“My lady, we found this man in the mountain forest. He is a local resident who has lived here since childhood.”
Shen Zhuxi gestured for the scouts to let the woodcutter down, then sent her maidservant out of the carriage to hand him a silver ingot.
The moment the woodcutter saw the gleaming silver, the terror on his face vanished at once, replaced by an enormous, beaming joy that spread across his weathered, dark, groove-lined face.
“There is nothing to fear. I only have a few questions, and then you are free to go. Do you know of any bandit strongholds in this area?” Shen Zhuxi asked gently from behind the carriage window.
“Bandit strongholds?” The woodcutter looked utterly bewildered. “I have lived here my whole life and never heard of any such thing. The families around here are all poor — even bandits would not give us a second glance!”
Shen Zhuxi glanced at Bai Rongling. He immediately averted his eyes, lifted his teacup with a guilty conscience, and took a sip.
“Has anything unusual happened around here recently?” Shen Zhuxi continued.
“…Unusual?” The woodcutter wracked his brain for a moment, then suddenly remembered something and exclaimed, “A while back — about five days ago — I was up in the mountains cutting firewood when I suddenly heard a great boom, like the mountain itself was collapsing! The next day, out of curiosity, I walked in the direction the sound had come from and found that a cliff face had caved in. Lucky there was no one around that area — I never heard of any casualties. But at that height, anyone who fell would certainly not have survived!”
“A cliff?”
Just as Shen Zhuxi was about to press further, Bai Rongling cut in with frantic urgency.
“I know! I know! It was when that group of bandits was chasing me —”
An uncharacteristically stern look from Shen Zhuxi cut off his last-ditch fabrication.
“Right, there’s a cliff nearby, and below it is what the elders call the Thousand-Blade Pit. It’s blanketed in miasma — anyone who goes in is doomed to die!”
“How do you know for certain it means death?” Bai Rongling could not help asking. “Have you been inside?”
“I haven’t, but that’s what the elders all say!”
“Hearsay and rumor-mongering!” Bai Rongling did not dare look at Shen Zhuxi’s increasingly pale face, and instead vented his agitation at the woodcutter.
The woodcutter looked thoroughly confused, unable to understand why the man inside the carriage was arguing with him over this particular point.
“…Thank you. You may go now.” Shen Zhuxi said.
The soldiers stepped back, and the woodcutter looked left and right, clutching his silver ingot for fear it might be taken back, then fled into the forest as if running for his life.
Shen Zhuxi pushed the carriage window open a crack and ordered the deputy general to march the troops to the spot where the blocking tree had previously been discovered.
After the column set off again, Bai Rongling stared out the window, dreading the moment Shen Zhuxi might question him — yet she said not a single word to him.
He had feared she would press him hard about what had truly happened that day, but her silence was, if anything, more unbearable than interrogation. He sat as if on pins and needles.
In the tense, suffocating silence, the column arrived at the place where the fallen tree had been found blocking the road.
Shen Zhuxi stepped down from the carriage with her maidservant’s support, and the deputy general came to meet her, bowing as he spoke: “My lady, no signs of fighting have been found in the vicinity… and even if there were, the past several days of wind and rain would have erased them. The sheer drop lies not far ahead. Please take care.”
Accompanied by the deputy general, Shen Zhuxi walked to the edge of the cliff. She only had to glance downward once to nearly lose her footing.
Her maidservant clutched her arm in alarm, and it was only because of that firm grip that Shen Zhuxi did not sink to the ground.
“The break in the cliff face is peculiar — it does not look like a natural collapse, but more like it was blown apart by an explosion.” The deputy general ignored Bai Rongling’s increasingly frantic attempts to signal him with his eyes, and addressed Shen Zhuxi with a grave expression. “I suspect the General encountered an ambush here, that he was struck down by treachery… and fell from the cliff along with all the soldiers at his side. There is no other explanation for why there are no signs of a struggle, and yet not a single Zhenchuan soldier returned to report afterward.”
Shen Zhuxi gripped her maidservant’s hand tightly, struggling to maintain her composure.
“There is one more matter…” the deputy general hesitated, “Earlier, with so many eyes and ears around, I was afraid of shaking the troops’ morale and said nothing. When we found the woodcutter, he also shared some news from Xiangzhou.”
“…What has become of Xiangzhou?” Shen Zhuxi asked.
“The court, citing the General’s dereliction of duty, has removed him from his post and launched an official investigation. The military authority over the Zhenchuan Army has been taken back. A new Military Commissioner of Zhenchuan has already taken office — someone from the same clan as the former Commissioner, Li Qia. At present, the Zhenchuan Army has split into two factions: one supports Li Qia’s clansman, the other supports the General. Those who do not support the new appointment, under General Niu’s leadership, have defected from the Zhenchuan Army and taken up arms as outlaws in Jinzhou.”
“…I understand.” Shen Zhuxi said.
The deputy general searched her face for any trace of panic or fear, but found only composure. At least on the surface, only composure. It allowed him to breathe a quiet sigh of relief: with General Li absent, if even the lady lost her nerve, there would truly be no one left to hold things together.
“Since there is no returning to Xiangzhou,” Shen Zhuxi said, “then we will not return.”
Shen Zhuxi ordered the deputy general to find a safe position nearby to make camp, and out of caution, left nearly half the soldiers to guard the encampment while the other half conducted a thorough search of the entire mountain. Afterward, she gave the deputy general careful instructions to go to the surrounding villages and find a particular person. By the time half the day had passed, a simple camp had been established, and Shen Zhuxi had also located a local guide.
The elderly man, past his fifties, was brought to her tent. The moment she mentioned wanting to descend into the Thousand-Blade Pit, he immediately began waving his hands.
“You must not — you must not!”
“Why not?”
The old man said, trembling, “I once heard the elders of the village say that the Thousand-Blade Pit was formed over a thousand years ago, carved out by chance during an earthquake. The depths are filled with miasma, and only venomous creatures such as poisonous serpents can survive within it. My lady, clearly a person of noble standing, why would you risk your life for this?”
“My husband may have fallen to the bottom of the pit. I must go down to find him.” Shen Zhuxi said.
“If he has fallen in, then you have all the more reason not to go!” the old man said immediately. “Falling from such a height — how could anyone survive? If my lady goes down, would she not be throwing her life away —”
He was just about to utter the final word when the furiously glaring expression of the deputy general standing beside Shen Zhuxi startled him into silence, and he hastily swallowed back the inauspicious word.
“Thank you for your concern, elder, but my husband is quick-witted and resourceful, both brave and astute. He has encountered many dangers before and emerged from all of them unscathed.” Shen Zhuxi said with a smile. “Even Heaven would have to ask his permission before taking him. Until I see his body with my own eyes, I will not believe he has met with misfortune. Please, elder — tell me how one can reach the Thousand-Blade Pit at the base of the cliff.”
Seeing she was resolute, the old man at last relented. “There is only one path down to the Thousand-Blade Pit, through the Sky-Swallowing Cave at the foot of the mountain. In normal times, we warn the village children never to go near it, because the cave is filled with miasma year-round, and not a single blade of grass grows around its entrance. Only during the rare stretches of heavy rain that fall for seven or eight consecutive days can the miasma be dispersed enough for outsiders to safely approach the Sky-Swallowing Cave.”
“However…” The old man hesitated for a moment, then sighed. “This is not me trying to discourage you — the Sky-Swallowing Cave is unfathomably deep. Even those of us who live nearby would get lost wandering in circles inside. In all these years, I have never heard of anyone who made it through and came out the other side.”
Bai Rongling, who had long since resolved to keep his mouth shut given his current predicament, had been listening silently in the tent — but at this point, he could no longer hold back.
“If no one has ever come out, how do you know that the other side of the cave leads to the Thousand-Blade Pit?” Bai Rongling pressed.
The old man glared at him. “There are none now, but there were in the past! People made it through before — though that was hundreds of years ago!”
“How do you know what happened hundreds of years ago?” Bai Rongling asked again.
“It was passed down by word of mouth from the elders!” The old man, displeased at having his account questioned, huffed and blew at his mustache. “If you don’t believe it, why are you asking me?”
“I believe it.” Shen Zhuxi said.
With Shen Zhuxi having spoken, Bai Rongling said awkwardly:
“It’s not that I don’t believe it either… I was just being extra cautious and asking a few more questions — surely I’m allowed to worry that His Highness might be deceived…”
Shen Zhuxi gave him a look and said, “You not deceiving me would be better than anything.”
Bai Rongling, thoroughly deflated, tucked his tail between his legs and fell silent.
“In your estimation, elder, when might we next be able to enter the Sky-Swallowing Cave?” Shen Zhuxi asked.
The old man stroked his long beard. “It must be during the rainy season, when the rains fall continuously for seven or eight days. But even during the rainy season, such long stretches of rain do not come every year — hard to say, hard to say!”
Seeing this, Shen Zhuxi had the soldiers courteously see the old man off, with instructions to also go take a look at the Sky-Swallowing Cave and report back to her.
After the soldiers and the old man had gone, Shen Zhuxi turned to look at Bai Rongling, who stood off to the side.
He averted his eyes guiltily.
“Even now, do you still intend to lie and keep things from me?”
Under her gaze, Bai Rongling could barely hold himself together.
This cousin of his, who was a princess by birth, had never looked down on him, never ordered him about with a lofty air. She had been nothing but good to him — and yet he had deceived her again and again.
For a single fleeting moment, Bai Rongling almost wanted to throw caution to the wind and blurt out everything.
But then he thought of the several hundred souls of the Bai Family, and of Fu Xuanmiao’s ice-cold gaze, and he could not say a single word.
The lies would not come out.
The truth would not come out either.
He could have wished for someone to cut out his tongue, so that his silence in this moment might feel righteous.
Shen Zhuxi said: “The fallen tree blocking the road was on one side, and the cliff on the other. Why would Li Wu, who had gone to clear the road, end up at the edge of the cliff?”
Bai Rongling remained silent.
“There were no signs of a struggle nearby because he went there willingly.”
Shen Zhuxi looked at Bai Rongling as he played mute, and said slowly:
“Why would he go to the cliff’s edge of his own accord? Because you were there… isn’t that right?”
Right. Perfectly right.
So perfectly right that Bai Rongling found it nearly impossible to part his lips.
“I am sorry.” Shen Zhuxi said.
Bai Rongling looked at her in bewilderment.
“I respect you as a member of the Bai Family, but that is no reason for you to conspire with outsiders to harm my husband.” Shen Zhuxi rose to her feet, her expression without a trace of hesitation. “Seize him.”
The deputy general at Shen Zhuxi’s side immediately twisted Bai Rongling’s arms behind his back.
“Your Highness!”
Bai Rongling stared at her in shock.
Only in this moment did he feel as though he were truly seeing the person before him for the first time.
Princess of Yue — she was not the overbearing, imperious figure of rumor, nor the soft and naive girl he had first taken her to be after their initial meeting. Nor was she the silver-tongued chatterbox he had briefly mistaken her for.
She was a true princess.
She possessed every quality a princess ought to have.
Shen Zhuxi regarded him with an unmoved gaze.
He had crossed her bottom line, and in this moment, she had withdrawn the trust and warmth she showed to family.
“When you are ready to speak, come and see me then.”