The sun was sinking in the west, and a rushing great river cut across a boundless wasteland. Golden sunlight danced upon its surface, the water glittering with shifting light. The river wound its way forward, finally surging into a narrow, low-lying, unfathomably deep cavern, from which the deafening roar of water echoed back.

Two light cavalry soldiers clad in leather armor patrolled along the bank, their gazes inevitably drawn to the thundering mouth of the cave.

One of them spoke up with a worried expression: “Are we really supposed to swim through there?”

“Orders from above say we swim — you’re not swimming, do you want to be dealt with by military law?”

“But who knows what’s inside… look how pitch-black it is, there could be all manner of water ghosts lurking in the depths…” A flash of fear crossed the soldier’s face.

“It’s not just you alone who has to swim — what are you afraid of?” The soldier patrolling alongside him was somewhat older and spoke with calm reassurance. “The scout they sent in before made it back safely, didn’t he? There’s a way out down there, and we can all swim. As long as we don’t frighten ourselves, this is far safer than going into battle. After all, there are no arrows suddenly flying at you in the water.”

“But I still don’t understand — why do we have to swim down there—” the soldier grumbled sulkily, “What’s down there? A treasure map? Rebels? You can’t see a thing inside… I’d honestly rather go into battle.”

“You’ve never been to battle yet. Once you have, you’ll never say that again.” The older soldier said. “As for why we need to go down there… have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

The older soldier glanced around, leaned close to his comrade, and lowered his voice: “…The Princess of Yue seems to have fallen down there as well.”

“What?” The younger soldier was shocked. “Wasn’t the Princess of Yue taken hostage by a young man from the Bai Family?”

“If she’d truly been taken hostage, why would there be so many soldiers at the entrance to the Swallowing-Heaven Cave?”

“But how could the Princess of Yue have fallen off the cliff?”

The older soldier dropped his voice even lower: “Have you heard what the Princess of Yue said at the hunting banquet?”

The younger soldier’s expression grew tense as well. He glanced around alertly and then murmured: “I’ve heard a little.”

“…In my opinion, what she said was very likely the truth.” The older soldier made a chopping motion with his hand. “The Princess of Yue was silenced…”

“Ah?”

The younger soldier was just about to press further when a lean horse appeared on the distant wasteland. The soldier atop it gestured to them, signaling them to return to formation at once.

The patrolling soldiers dared not linger any longer. The two horses that had been side by side quickly split apart, galloping toward the rally point. A yellowed-green leaf coated in dust was swept up by the wind stirred by the horses’ hooves, drifting and rolling until it fell into the rushing river.

The river carried the leaf toward the cave mouth. Water roared like a dragon’s cry and a lion’s bellow, echoing through the narrow cavern on all sides — like thunder before a torrential rain.

The current slammed the spinning leaf into the cave entrance and, swift as a bandit, swept away the cold stone milk dripping from the stalactites. It surged through the dark, cramped underground passage, forming rapid waves that beat endlessly against the cone-shaped rocks hanging from above.

Pitch-black and ice-cold, the river water churned and scoured, swimming through the long, frigid tunnel, jostling and rushing to pour out through an exit roughly forty zhang wide, just tall enough for a small child to pass through standing upright.

Light burst open all at once. Great swaths of dense forest towered along the banks, homeward-bound birds swept across the sky and vanished into the canopy that blotted out sun and sky. A herd of spotted deer had gathered at the river’s edge to drink, their lean and agile silhouettes reflected in the clear, cool water, while several powerfully built stags stood watchfully on guard not far away.

A robust woman clad only in animal hide covering her lower body pressed a clay jar into the river. Once the jar was full, she lifted it up and carried it cradled against her chest as she walked back.

The sun had already sunk to the horizon. Night was swallowing the last remnants of dusk, and the light was fading into dimness — yet inside the Rong tribe’s settlement, warm orange-red light flickered and swayed. Torches burned outside every wooden dwelling, and the men and women who came and went all covered only their lower bodies with animal hide, their expressions easy and at peace. Several children, bare from head to toe with their hair loose, laughed loudly as they chased each other across the square, their hands and feet adorned with bone ornaments made from animal teeth.

The altar at the center of the settlement blazed as bright as daylight, the great bonfire burning fiercely beneath the sky shifting between light and dark, the crackling and popping of splitting wood never ceasing.

The large wooden dwelling before the altar was heavily guarded — four tall, powerfully built women stood holding stone spears, chests out, on watch. From within the large wooden dwelling, the sound of Dong Miji’s translations drifted faintly out.

“…You, you, stay… eat…” Dong Miji said, making a chewing motion of stuffing something into his mouth.

“What if we want to leave?” Li Wu asked.

Dong Miji, wrapped tightly head to toe in animal hide worn as a cloak, stared at him in confusion.

The chieftain, a woman who appeared to be only around thirty years old, sat on a rattan couch draped with bearskin, her expression grave as she scrutinized the two outsiders in the hall. Her upper body was equally bare, while her lower body was wrapped in the intact hide of a white tiger. Her muscle lines were smooth and taut, exuding a sense of raw power.

Bare-skinned, she was entirely unembarrassed — utterly without shame about her own body. It was rather Li Wu and Shen Zhuxi whose gazes involuntarily avoided her, their eyes fixed on the empty air around her in every direction.

“We want to leave — go outside.” Shen Zhuxi further explained Li Wu’s meaning.

Dong Miji understood this time. He turned and relayed their meaning to his mother behind him in the local tongue.

The word “outside” seemed to stir some memory in the chieftain, causing her previously smooth brow to furrow.

She did not move, and from her thin lips came a few words.

“No.” Dong Miji turned to look at the two of them. “You came, know, us. Cannot, go out.”

“We won’t tell the people outside about you.” Shen Zhuxi said urgently.

This time Dong Miji did not translate. He simply shook his head: “Mother, not trust, outside people, tell lies. You, stay… have food, I, teach, you, our, language…”

Shen Zhuxi was about to protest further when Li Wu quietly tugged her aside.

“If you’re going to feed us and treat us well, we don’t mind staying.” Li Wu said.

Dong Miji didn’t understand most of it, but he understood “not leaving.” He immediately turned and happily relayed Li Wu’s meaning. The chieftain’s displeased gaze fell on Li Wu. She spoke, and Dong Miji listened, then looked at the two of them: “Come with me… moon, food… send to the sky…”

Dong Miji set off cheerfully toward the door of the dwelling. Li Wu lowered his voice and quietly asked: “What did your mother just say?”

“Said you, not good…” Dong Miji glanced at Li Wu and advised, “Men, speak, behind women…”

Li Wu was indignant and was just about to respond when the sight of the many bare-chested men and women outside the wooden dwelling made him instantly forget those minor details. In a reflexive motion, he reached back and covered Shen Zhuxi’s eyes just as she stepped out of the dwelling behind him.

“Wh — what’s wrong?!” Shen Zhuxi was startled and took an uneasy step back.

Li Wu pulled her into his arms, one hand on her shoulder and one hand covering her eyes, his own eyes instinctively shut — but in the next moment he was forced to open them again in order to find his way.

He glared furiously at the Rong tribespeople who had neither male nor female modesty, utterly scandalous in their behavior, and said through gritted teeth to Dong Miji: “Can’t you people cover yourselves properly?”

“Covered, covered.” Dong Miji understood half of it, and slapped vigorously at the animal hide on his own body, looking greatly aggrieved.

This was truly like a duck lecturing a chicken.

Li Wu, exasperated beyond measure, pushed Dong Miji aside and turned to take Shen Zhuxi back the way they had come.

“You, go where…”

Dong Miji hurried after them. Li Wu did not look back, keeping his arm around Shen Zhuxi as he strode in the direction of the small wooden dwelling where they had been staying these past few days.

“Are we really not leaving?” Shen Zhuxi said in a small, anxious voice.

“Leave — how could we possibly not leave?” Li Wu also replied in a low voice. “We infiltrate from the inside first, and as soon as we find a way out, we go immediately. This wretched place — I can’t stand it here for another moment…”

Li Wu’s words were swallowed up by the sudden, blaring call of a horn.

The horn call was urgent and rousing, accompanied by drumbeats of varying length. The previously cheerful and harmonious scene within the settlement changed in an instant. Adult men and women of the Rong tribe seized their spears and bows and arrows, running with excited expressions, crying out words that Shen Zhuxi and Li Wu could not understand.

Li Wu was also thrown into confusion by this sudden turn of events, and he forgot to keep shielding Shen Zhuxi’s eyes. His hand slid away unconsciously, and when Shen Zhuxi opened her eyes, she was greeted by an exceptionally chaotic scene.

The incident had come so suddenly that she could not find it in herself to feel embarrassed by all the pale and bare figures before her eyes.

“What is happening…” She looked toward Dong Miji in shock.

Dong Miji no longer had any mind to spare for the animal-hide cloak that kept slipping off him. He wore an entirely different expression now — grave and solemn — and let the cloak fall from his body, drawing a sharp stone dagger from beneath the wolf-hide at his waist.

“Outside people… you, hide quickly…”

Before Shen Zhuxi and Li Wu could make sense of this, the tall and powerfully built chieftain emerged from the large dwelling.

Her face was full of fury, her blazing gaze shooting directly at the two of them.

“Ciwa Daoren, Pikou!”

The chieftain cried out in fury, and Rong tribespeople wielding weapons from all directions closed in on the two of them.

Dong Miji stood nearby, startled and angry, shouting something, then in a single stride stepped forward to place himself between the two of them and the crowd. The spears hesitated and stopped before him. The chieftain said something angrily to Dong Miji, and Dong Miji answered back loudly without backing down.

The two outsiders who understood not a word of the Rong tongue could only stand there blankly watching. When at last there was a pause in the exchange between Dong Miji and the chieftain, Shen Zhuxi seized her opportunity and asked: “What has happened?”

“Outsiders… have broken in!” Dong Miji said angrily. “Someone said, you two are, with them! Are you?!”

Li Wu was indignant and wanted to deny it vigorously: “Of course we’re not!”

“I also said, not!” Dong Miji looked angry. “You, I brought back. Do wrong thing, you die, you die, I will also die!”

When Dong Miji finished speaking, he raised his voice again toward the chieftain. The expression on the chieftain’s face gradually softened — and on top of that, a bloodied Rong tribesperson came stumbling forward to report something to her. The chieftain swept her hand broadly, and several Rong tribespeople immediately surrounded Shen Zhuxi and Li Wu —

This time Dong Miji did not move. And since Dong Miji did not move, Li Wu and Shen Zhuxi did not struggle further.

In the end, they were escorted into the chieftain’s large dwelling and placed under the watch of a ferocious-looking Rong woman holding a stone spear.

There was one advantage to not sharing a language.

After entering the dwelling, Li Wu, perfectly at ease, found himself a spot and sat down, gesturing for Shen Zhuxi to sit as well.

The fruits that had been set out specifically for the chieftain’s enjoyment — he helped himself to them just as naturally and comfortably as if he were strolling about his own home, handing one into Shen Zhuxi’s mouth and popping one into his own.

“What outsiders could have come, and why would they suddenly attack?” Shen Zhuxi was full of worry, and she held the fruit in her hand without any heart to eat it. “The rainy season has not yet arrived — by rights the Swallowing-Heaven Cave should not yet be open. Through what passage did the people from outside find their way in?”

“Who cares what they’re about—” Li Wu said, unperturbed. “Whatever sort of stray cats and mongrels they are, outsiders stirring up trouble works in our favor. Only in muddy water can we bide our time and escape. If they managed to get in, there’s no reason we can’t get out. As long as we can get our hands on one of these outsiders and find out how they came in, we can leave this place immediately!”

Li Wu’s words kindled hope of escape in Shen Zhuxi’s heart.

If the Swallowing-Heaven Cave was not the only way out, then however those outsiders had come in was how they could go out — there was no need to wait for the rainy season at all.