Xie Yuzhang asked in surprise, “How could it be me?”
Dielitele stared at her steadily.
“A few days ago, I found an opportunity to question the Lieyang King. He swore an oath that the matter was absolutely not his own doing — that he had not set up a deception to falsely implicate my father Khan, just to have an excuse to leave the royal encampment.” The young man stated this calmly. “But long before that, my father Khan had also sworn an oath that the matter was absolutely not his doing either.”
“My father Khan, my mother, and I — we guessed many times over who the person truly pulling the strings behind the scenes could be, and we never could figure it out. We had never once considered you.”
“The Zhao Princess was the woman my father Khan cherished most. Her homeland had already been destroyed. The Da Mu dynasty was her enemy. She was meant to remain on the steppe forever. She had absolutely no reason to do such a thing.”
“However, if all of those assumptions are overturned — if the premise is replaced with ‘the Zhao Princess wished to return to the Central Plains’ and ‘the Zhao Princess was capable of returning to the Central Plains’ — think of what happened a hundred years ago, when there was a princess willing to disfigure herself rather than be denied a return home. Then look at this matter again: who was the one who ultimately benefited?”
“When you think about it that way, you discover that although the path was convoluted and obscure, you — in the end — achieved the goal of returning to the Central Plains.”
The atmosphere inside the tent shifted all at once.
Xie Yuzhang’s smile faded.
She gazed at this robust and powerfully built young man, and genuinely felt the passage of time.
Dielitele was only one year older than her. When she first arrived on the steppe, he had still been a youth with green, innocent, and tender eyes. Yet now, how swiftly he had matured.
As expected, hardship and adversity were the true fires that tempered a person.
“Yes.” Xie Yuzhang admitted, “That matter was arranged by me.”
Dielitele asked, “Then those rumors must have been spread by you as well.”
“It was me,” Xie Yuzhang said. “However, the reason your father and his uncles came to a breaking point was because they all wished to become Khan. That is a fact no one could have changed.”
Dielitele also acknowledged, “Yes.”
What Xie Yuzhang had done was merely push things to accelerate faster.
“Then,” Dielitele asked, “my grandfather — was he killed by someone you sent?”
“Are you overestimating me, or underestimating Silifubu? Your grandfather — the hero of the steppe?” Xie Yuzhang said. “What a ridiculous question to ask.”
Dielitele said, “Yeli Cixie believed until his dying breath that it must have been done by people from the Central Plains.”
Xie Yuzhang said, “That is impossible.”
Dielitele said, “But the ones who benefited were the people of the Central Plains.”
Xie Yuzhang said, “When you calculate the timing — although the news had not yet reached there, Yunjing had already fallen to the chaos of war. My father had become someone else’s puppet. The Hexi region was beginning to descend into internal strife. For anyone to insist it was done by Central Plains people, I could wrack my brain and not think of a single faction in the Central Plains that could have foreseen all of this, then calculated the timing precisely enough to reach a location so close to the royal encampment and carry out a sniper assassination of Silifubu. Unless he were a deity.”
This matter had always been in doubt, and so Dielitele did not press further.
“One final question,” he said. “My father Khan — how did he die?”
In the young man’s eyes something like frost had gathered, and his hand closed around the hilt of the blade at his back.
The temperature inside the tent seemed to freeze in an instant. Xie Yuzhang felt very cold.
The handmaidens — where were the handmaidens?
She remembered — they had just withdrawn.
On either side outside the entrance of the great tent, there was a smaller tent. The one on the left was the tea room, doubling as a resting place where the handmaidens could wait to be called. The one on the right was where the guards on duty rested.
The guards — where were the guards? They were supposed to be protecting her.
Xie Yuzhang knew that the guards were right outside the tent, not far at all. If she cried out, they should be able to hear her.
But the speed at which they could rush in would certainly not surpass the speed at which Dielitele could draw his blade.
Xie Yuzhang had seen this brave and powerful young man kill before. The blade swept out a flash of light, and a head went flying; crimson blood sprayed upward toward the sky.
If she were to die right now, what would happen?
Nothing would happen. The great affairs between Da Mu and Mobei had already been settled; nothing would change because of her death. Her name might earn a line in the history books owing to this submission, but she herself would dissolve into a handful of yellow dust and remain on the steppe forever.
Beauty was utterly useless in a moment like this. Such a thing was only useful when a man was willing to indulge and dote on you.
……
……
No — she had already come this far. Tomorrow, she would be returning to the Central Plains.
She absolutely could not die here!
Xie Yuzhang raised her eyes and stepped forward.
“He was drunk, and he choked to death on his own vomit. That death is an acceptable one.” She ruthlessly stripped away the reality that Dielitele did not wish to hear. “Better than what might have come later — when your mother, pushed past the limits of her endurance, would have removed the obstacle with her own hands.”
The muscles in Dielitele’s face twitched.
His teeth ground together with a rattling sound. “You venomous woman!”
Before his grandfather and his father, she had appeared so harmless, drawing them to dote on her — yet all along she understood deeply how to drive a blade into the most vulnerable place in a person’s heart.
Xie Yuzhang said, “If I were like you — if I had that great strength, if I could slash off an enemy’s head with one stroke of a blade — I would have no need to resort to such despicable methods.”
She stepped forward again and rose onto the tips of her toes, speaking softly into his ear: “If I had been fourteen when I was sent over here, and had been married to you — someone a fitting match for my age — perhaps I would have been willing to stay on the steppe.”
“All of this is lies from you.” Dielitele turned his head and fixed his gaze on her eyes. “I will not be bewitched by you.”
“As expected. You truly are so much like Silifubu.” Xie Yuzhang lowered her head and let out a long, slow breath, then raised her eyes and said, “Silifubu was never bewitched by me either. He simply chose to dote on me because he was willing to.”
Dielitele’s eyes reddened, and he said through gritted teeth, “My father Khan treated you so well!”
Xie Yuzhang looked at him, and understood.
“Your mother must not have told you,” she said coldly. “Your great father Khan intended to send me to Jiang Jingye.”
Dielitele froze.
“Even a single handmaiden of mine — you insisted on not returning her to me, refusing to let her follow me back to the Central Plains. Yet your father, a man of the Ashina name, was going to hand his most beloved wife — a legitimate princess of the Central Plains — over to his enemy.” The Zhao Princess said, “I was right to kill him. Even if Silifubu knew of it from the heavens above, he would only say I killed well. If he were still alive, he would certainly kill this son who disgraced the blood of heroes with his own hands.”
Dielitele wanted to say “you are talking nonsense,” yet his instincts told him that this time, Xie Yuzhang was speaking the truth.
He thought of the cold and detached look in his mother’s eyes whenever she mentioned his father Khan, and had to admit that Xie Yuzhang killing Wuwei had spared him from a more agonizing event that might have unfolded in the future.
Father and son were separated by only fourteen years in age; their prime years overlapped for far too long. There would inevitably have come a day when his mother could no longer hold herself back.
Yet still, he was in anguish now. Because Wuwei might not have been a heroic father, but he had truly been a gentle one.
Xie Yuzhang looked at him and said softly, “Dielitele, gather yourself. You are already Khan.”
The young man’s face was streaked with tears.
He asked, “Then tell me — at least before all of this happened, did you ever love my father Khan? Or my grandfather — did you ever love him? He was a true hero.”
A strange and indescribable expression appeared on Xie Yuzhang’s face.
“Before asking me such a question, one must first define what love is.”
“A woman adrift like duckweed, with no choice but to entrust herself wholly and completely to one man in order to survive — does that count as love? A man who regards a woman as a beautiful jewel sewn onto a fine garment, and yet still wishes to stud that garment with ever more jewels — does that count as love?”
“And even as you ask me whether I loved, your hand is still gripping your blade. Every day of my life was spent alongside men with blades in their hands. Yet you do not actually wish to hear the answer ‘no’ from me.”
“Dielitele, you are far too unfair to me.”
Dielitele closed his eyes and finally released the blade.
“When you return, will you marry again?” he asked.
Xie Yuzhang said, “If there is no force that cannot be resisted — if it can be avoided, it will be avoided.”
Dielitele said, “You are lying.”
Xie Yuzhang sighed. “The Central Plains is an entirely different place from the steppe. It will never be that a father’s rank passes to his son, or a brother’s to another brother. Wuwei and I never shared a formal accounting together, but having married into the same bloodline across two generations, I can already imagine the ridicule I will face upon my return.”
Dielitele said, “And yet you still refuse to stay and marry me. Is the Central Plains truly so wonderful?”
Xie Yuzhang smiled, and a dreamlike radiance flowed through her eyes. “You would have to see it for yourself before you could understand.”
Dielitele said, “One day I will march all the way to Yunjing, and when that day comes, I will have you dance for me alone.”
“Very well.” Xie Yuzhang rose onto her toes and pressed a light kiss to the young man’s cheek, then said with gentle warmth, “But first — defeat Chuluo of the Tianshan, and take care of your uncles.”
She removed the golden blade from her waist and placed it into Dielitele’s hands. “This belonged to Silifubu. From now on, it is yours.”
Dielitele stared at her for a moment, then abruptly turned and strode away in long, swift steps.
Arriving at Zhadayali’s great tent, he saw his mother. Since his father’s death, he had not seen even a trace of grief on her face.
“Dielitele, where did you go?” When she saw him, a smile bloomed in her eyes.
“I went to bid farewell to the Zhao Princess,” he said.
“Oh.” Zhadayali said, “She can go home now. She must be very happy.”
Dielitele was silent for a long while, then said, “Mother, our Ashina clan must establish a rule.”
Zhadayali blinked.
Dielitele said, “From this day forward, no descendant of the Ashina clan is ever to take a woman of the Central Plains as wife.”
Zhadayali smiled with heartfelt relief.
Dielitele said, “For now, first go with Jiang Jingye to fight Chuluo. As for later… sooner or later, the day will come when I march to Yunjing.”
Zhadayali said, “When that day comes, capture all the princesses of the Central Plains and make them our slaves.”
Dielitele said through gritted teeth, “That is exactly what should be done.”
Xie Yuzhang watched Dielitele’s departure with a smile on her face — but the moment that tall young man’s silhouette disappeared, she immediately quickened her steps and rushed out of the tent with eager impatience!
Outside, though cold, the sunlight blazed and dazzled the eyes.
The guards bearing halberds stood tall and straight before the tent. Not far away, Lin Fei and Yang Huaishen were standing there in conversation.
The Zhao people were all packing up their things, faces carrying smiles, footsteps hurried, working with tremendous energy and enthusiasm.
No one knew that Xie Yuzhang, in broad daylight, surrounded by crowds of people, had just fought a battle against death’s hand closing around her throat.
Xie Yuzhang gasped for breath in great gulps! Her heart hammered painfully in her chest!
Lin Fei glanced toward the great tent, her brow creasing, and she let go of Yang Huaishen to walk straight over.
“Zhuzhu?” she asked. “What is wrong? Why is your color so terrible?”
She reached out and took Xie Yuzhang’s hand, startled. “Why are your hands so cold? Why are you covered in so much sweat?”
A cold wind swept past. Xie Yuzhang shivered.
Her inner garments were already soaked through with cold sweat.