Wu Xiaoliu had, after all, spent several years working in the Tian household. When it came to navigating the intricacies of aristocratic households, he had a real knack for it. Xiao Nanhui showed nothing on her face, but she knew deep down that she could never match him in this regard, and quietly congratulated herself for having bet on the right person.

All things considered, this matter was not terribly difficult to arrange. Even the most devoted of maids would be unwilling to follow their young mistress to her death. Everyone knew the Sun household was no place to live a good life. As early as half a month ago, some of the younger maids had tried to flee before the day arrived, only to be dragged back, beaten half to death, and thrown out of the estate — frightening the rest into abandoning any such notions.

Wu Xiaoliu knew that if he wanted to slip an unfamiliar face into the group, he would need to find someone who would not draw attention. The people around the Tian family’s young mistress were all known faces — there would be too much watching and worrying on all sides.

After much deliberation, he settled on two positions: the laundry-and-mending servant and the sedan-chair attendant. As luck would have it, there was a pair of siblings, both around fifteen or sixteen years of age, the children of a household steward. Having been chosen to go serve at the Sun household, they had been miserable about it for quite some time. The moment Wu Xiaoliu came to them, he had barely said two words before they agreed tearfully, terrified the two of them might change their minds. They spent the whole night going over every trivial detail of the Tian household, top to bottom, so there would be no slip-ups — and they even rushed to sew a maid’s outfit tailored to Xiao Nanhui’s frame.

Xiao Nanhui was simply delighted to have a clean set of clothes to wear, and did not feel anxious in the slightest. Only Wu Xiaoliu went around with a furrowed brow, sighing more in two or three days than most people sigh in a lifetime.

And just like that, the day the Tian family married off their daughter arrived.

The wedding procession spread across the road in a swathe of blood red, yet it set out just past the Hour of the Ox, with no one crying out, no gongs, no drums — just a column of people carrying the bride away in utter silence.

It did not feel like a joyful occasion at all. It felt like a funeral.

The entire eastern city was still lost in darkness. Xiao Nanhui walked behind the bride’s sedan chair, turning to look back at the crumbling ancient city half-swallowed by yellow sand, and pulled her face cloth tighter.

She was one step closer to her goal.

Suyan’s eastern and western cities had once been separated by nothing more than a river, but ever since the Sun clan had diverted its source and redirected its course, the Tianmu River no longer flowed through this place. Over time, as wind and sand eroded the land, the original riverbed had sunken and collapsed, becoming a long ravine stretching for more than a hundred li, impossible for any person to cross on foot.

So to enter the western city from the east, one had to circle back to the Lingxi Gobi and pass through the Sanmu Pass.

Seen from above, the Sanmu Pass resembled a fish’s mouth — a canyon entrance that narrowed from wide to thin. If Bijiang could be thought of as a round cloth sack, then the Sanmu Pass was the drawstring at the top.

It was here that Xiao Zhun had once suffered his defeat, which was also why the Sun clan and Bai Shi needed only to station troops at the Sanmu Pass and send mounted patrols to sweep the Gobi in order to hold Bijiang firmly in their grasp.

In recent years, with Bai Shi sowing chaos throughout Bijiang, few people traveled outside the Gobi. What had once been an official road was now strewn with coarse, sharp sand and gravel. The cart wheels lurched violently over it, and those on foot developed blisters on the soles of their feet. Xiao Nanhui had planned ahead and wrapped her feet in two thick layers of cloth before setting out, yet by the time half a day had passed, both feet still ached terribly.

Even so, she refused to waste a single moment, and kept Wu Xiaoliu at her side, pressing him in a low voice about the power dynamics along the Suyan region over the past years. Wu Xiaoliu talked until his mouth ran dry. At first he was willing to say a little, but gradually, no amount of threats or coaxing could get another word out of him.

At midday, the sun blazed mercilessly overhead. Just as it began to tilt slightly westward, the wind and sand ahead thinned a little, and the group finally caught sight of that strange and distinctive pass, flickering in and out of view.

It was a towering stone idol — built from piled sandstone — that had somehow stood for hundreds of years in the wind and sand without falling, though its features had grown blurred. On the idol’s face were three hollows: two where the eyes should be, and one at the center of the forehead, which from a distance made it look as though it had a third eye. That was how this place came to be called the “Sanmu Pass” — the Three-Eyed Pass.

As they say, mountains that look close can exhaust a galloping horse to death. After spotting the idol, Xiao Nanhui and the others walked for nearly another hour before they reached the entrance to the canyon. A camel-mounted escort from the Sun clan was waiting at the pass, their manner utterly arrogant — they could not even be bothered to ride forward a few steps in greeting. Only after the procession reached them did one man slowly dismount from his camel, speaking in the thick local dialect of Suyan, his expression a mask of smiles that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Is this the young mistress of the Tian family?”

The ceremonial official at the head of the procession quickly stepped forward. “Indeed.”

“We are subordinates of Governor Sun, here to receive you.”

Xiao Nanhui frowned slightly. So this Sun fellow had managed to secure the position of Governor. He had some ability after all.

The man paused, then continued: “All female servants and women traveling with the procession, step forward. We need to take a count.”

The people in the procession all startled, then exchanged glances. None dared speak, and the women stepped forward one by one.

Another man from the camel escort held a list of the dowry gifts provided by the Tian family, confirming each person’s identity by name as they came forward.

This man looked distinctly different from the others around him. He wore fine soft armor, and the saddle at his side was inlaid with seven-colored gemstones — ostentatious to the extreme. His thin, narrow face bore a pair of naturally yellowed wolf-like eyes, and above them, a nose that curved like an eagle’s talon. He was almost certainly someone difficult to deal with.

But none of that was what caught Xiao Nanhui’s attention. What she noticed first was the long rod strapped to his back. It was not the ordinary kind of staff a martial practitioner might carry, but rather a type of spear shaft unique to the southwestern regions — at first glance somewhat resembling an elongated flat-stringed crossbow stock.

The southwestern regions of Jizhou had once been home to nomadic hunting peoples, fierce and difficult to subdue. The rulers of that time, seeking to prevent private armies from forming, had decreed that no household could keep weapons — even iron implements had to be registered with the local authorities.

But the common people had their own way of dealing with this. Because bandits roamed frequently, some villagers kept long wooden poles at home, then hammered iron hoe-heads straight and sharpened them to create makeshift spear tips. In a dangerous moment, shaft and tip could be fitted together in an instant, and suddenly one had a weapon for self-defense. This tradition of separating tip from shaft had been passed down ever since.

The one strapped to this man’s back was the most typical variety. He had very likely been an outlaw at some point before eventually finding his way into service with the Sun clan. There were many riders of similar background in the area — most did not pledge loyalty to any single master, but shifted between factions depending on who held the upper hand. The Sun clan and Bai Shi’s forces probably drew a great number of such men. If so, breaking apart their coalition was not entirely without a starting point.

Lost in thought, Xiao Nanhui looked up to find that the people ahead of her had already been checked one by one, and it would soon be her turn. She quickly lowered her head. She knew her frame was considerably taller than most, and her manner of walking bore the marks of martial training — undetectable to an ordinary person, but anyone with even a little skill and a sharp eye would notice. If she walked up there stiff and upright, she was liable to be called out.

Strangely, the first person who flashed through her mind was him.

That first night at the rainy-night inn, he had already been hunching his back, looking sickly and wan — she supposed he had been doing the same, disguising his frame to avoid drawing attention. Thinking of this, she too pulled in her neck, let her shoulders droop, and shortened her steps, shuffling forward in small, careful increments.

Finally it was her turn. She sensed a pair of eyes linger on the top of her head for a moment, and the surrounding air went quiet. After a beat, that cold voice rang out again: “You — raise your head.”

Xiao Nanhui’s heart hammered wildly. She forced herself to assume a cowed, downcast expression and timidly lifted her face.

Since coming to Jizhou over a month ago, she had spent her days out in the open, and the wind had darkened her skin somewhat. Before setting out, she had asked the steward for half a bowl of ginger juice mixed with kudzu powder, which she rubbed over her face to dull the striking sharpness of her features, and then wrapped her face cloth around her head. At a glance, she looked no different from a village girl from some remote corner of the countryside.

The man on the camel swept her with a brazen look, then laughed and said something to the person beside him: “Take a look at this one.”

The four or five men nearby all turned their eyes toward her at once, each pausing involuntarily, then with strange expressions they all curled the corners of their mouths: “She does look quite a bit like someone.”

Like whom? What was so funny?

Xiao Nanhui was dying of curiosity on the inside, but kept the dull, vacant expression firmly in place. At last the man waved her off, signaling her to move along.

She let out a slow breath and shuffled over to the side.

A few more people were checked, and all the women and maids from the wedding procession had been accounted for. Xiao Nanhui hid behind a camel’s hindquarters and raised one eye to look at Wu Xiaoliu on the other side of the group — he seemed to be sneaking glances at her too, his expression uneasy.

The man who had spoken first wiped his nose and said nothing, only exchanging a glance with his left and right attendants. More than ten men then swung down from their camels and walked toward the remaining men in the wedding procession.

Xiao Nanhui’s heart went cold.

Something was wrong. They were going to —

Thud. A muffled sound.

The ceremonial official at the very front of the procession clutched his throat and went down. The scream was caught in his windpipe, coming out only as a broken hiss.

More than ten riders flung back their cloaks. Curved blades were drawn from behind their waists, and in the blazing afternoon sun, the tips of those blades caught the light and flashed a blinding white.

Leave the women. Kill all the men.

Truly the way of bandits.

The rest of the procession then realized what was happening, and scattered in screaming panic. But aside from the four sedan-chair carriers, the remaining men were all boys barely in their teens — still half-grown children, without so much as a single object to defend themselves with. In less than an eyeblink, their lives were gone. A procession of dozens of people was butchered in an instant, like cutting melons and chopping vegetables.

Xiao Nanhui’s body was strung taut as a bowstring. Everyone around her was consumed in the slaughter, and for the moment no one was paying attention to her. Her fists were clenched until her knuckles went white — but in the end, she did not move a single inch. She might have been the only person present who could have saved those people, but she could not act. She was a soldier of Tiancheng. She still had something she had to do.

Watching as those at the front fell one after another, Wu Xiaoliu — who had been standing toward the rear of the procession — barely managed a moment’s breathing room in the chaos. He stumbled in a panic and dove into the bridal sedan chair where the young mistress sat. Finally, the last man from the Tian family fell. The leader of the riders brought his blade down on the sedan-chair pole — the timber, as thick as a bowl, was sliced clean through, and the entire chair lurched violently.

“The boy inside, if you know what’s good for you, come out yourself. Don’t go dirtying the chair with blood.”

The red curtain of the bridal sedan chair trembled, as though the person inside was shaking uncontrollably, yet not a sound came from within.

The leader let out a cold laugh when he saw this, then viciously kicked one of the chair poles. The sedan chair tipped sharply forward under the blow, and two cries rang out from inside — the next moment Wu Xiaoliu and the Tian family’s young mistress, Tian Weiér, tumbled out through the curtain door.

Tian Weiér landed in the sand, rolling across it and coating herself in dust. The ornaments in her hair scattered. She was in a wretched state. Wu Xiaoliu was no better — dazed and disoriented, he raised his face only to find a gleaming curved blade hovering at his throat, the blood of its last victim not yet fully dry on its edge, the reek of iron hitting him full in the face.

This was a double-edged beheading blade. A single flick of the wielder’s wrist, and his head would drop like an overripe persimmon.

The sound of the knife-wielder’s knuckle joints creaking reached his ears. Wu Xiaoliu shut his eyes in despair.

“Great sir! Please spare my life!”

A shriek rang out from behind — a voice pitched high and cracking, utterly broken — and simultaneously a force slammed into him. The curved blade at Wu Xiaoliu’s throat scraped across the bottom of his chin as it was deflected, leaving a line of blood.

The would-be killer looked down to find a pair of lean but powerful hands wrapped around his thigh in a death grip, and for a moment he could not quite make sense of what he was seeing. Everyone else present was equally startled — no one in the camel escort had noticed how, in the space of a blink, that dull village girl had appeared right at the side of the sedan chair.

Inside, what little remained of Xiao Nanhui’s reason was slapping itself across the face. But things had already gone this far — regret was useless. All she could do now was hope to muddle through this ordeal as quickly as possible.

A great force came crashing down — the thigh’s owner had kicked her savagely, trying to shake her off.

But Xiao Nanhui had poured every ounce of strength she had into her grip. That kick only sent her flying up slightly before she snapped back like a rubber band, howling: “Soldier! Spare my life! My family’s only son — I only have this one brother — if he dies, our bloodline will be broken!”

Xiao Nanhui spoke in thick, authentic Suyan dialect, and none of those present particularly doubted her identity — they just thought she was a busybody fool, and the looks they gave her were pure contempt.

The words had barely left her mouth when she felt the icy flat of the blade shift to her own throat.

“Bloodline broken? No need to complicate things — I’ll just stop your breath entirely, and that’s the end of it.”

Xiao Nanhui shot a fierce glare at Wu Xiaoliu. He was staring at her with a pitifully wretched expression. Her mind raced.

If she fought back now, every plan she had laid would be ruined. A perfect opportunity was right before her eyes, and she was about to see it buried. She could not stomach that. But if she stood by and watched Wu Xiaoliu die, her conscience would not sit easy either — after all, the steps that had brought them here had depended on Wu Xiaoliu at every turn, and the reason he had been dragged into this was because of her.

Xiao Zhun had always taught her one thing: in this life, one must act with a clear conscience.

She had always kept that in mind. And so, even though she had spent years on the battlefield killing enemies and had honed the ability to take a life in an instant, she never used violence recklessly, and she could never stand by and watch someone die. Pity she was no actress either — this little scene was something she had cribbed from a script she had once read, and now she had no idea how to bring it to a close.

In this situation, perhaps only one person could save them.

Xiao Nanhui forced herself to ignore the blade swaying back and forth in front of her throat, and abruptly pointed all her accusations toward Tian Weiér, who was in the process of crawling back into the sedan chair.

“Young mistress! You cannot abandon Xiaoliu like this! He is the child of the third daughter-in-law of your aunt’s maternal granduncle — you cannot just leave him to die!”

Tian Weiér, who had seldom encountered scenes like this, had already been frightened senseless. She turned back with a shudder to look at Wu Xiaoliu’s round face, and for the life of her could not remember any such person.

Given this brief moment of breathing room, Wu Xiaoliu’s survival instinct finally exploded. He immediately seized Tian Weiér’s skirt hem, his face a picture of aggrieved suffering: “Young mistress, have you forgotten how I used to sneak you out to buy cakes on the sly? That time the master found out, my legs were beaten half-broken. And now, to come serve you, I even left behind the wife I’d just taken — you promised me silver, and that’s the only reason I came along. Not only has the silver never appeared, I’m about to lose my life along with it. Please don’t let me come to harm!”

At this, not only did Tian Weiér fail to make sense of things — even Xiao Nanhui stood there dumbstruck.

Wu Xiaoliu truly was born for the life of a scoundrel. That stream of shameless grievances and false claims poured out of him without a single stumble, as smooth as water — he had clearly been spinning tall tales for years.

The man who had been on the verge of killing found himself in an awkward position. On one hand, he couldn’t quite figure out what the fat little attendant and the Tian family’s young mistress were playing at; on the other, he was reluctant to simply let the matter go. The others on the scene had all had their momentum broken by this unexpected scene, and everything stalled in a tense, uncertain pause.

Xiao Nanhui’s heart lurched into her throat. Life and death might hinge on the thoughts passing through someone’s mind in this very moment. She prayed silently that the invisible scales would tilt toward the side that favored her.

Just then, something faint broke the dry, still silence.

A cough.

It would not have been strange — except that the sound came from very far away. And that very far away seemed to be somewhere above their heads.

The man holding the gift-list ledger, the one who appeared to be the leader, was the first to notice. His sharp gaze cut toward the soaring cliffs on both sides. But they were empty — not half a shadow in sight. What was more, those sheer walls were extraordinarily steep. No human could scale them — a monkey might have trouble. How could anyone appear or disappear up there at will?

Perhaps he had misheard.

Yet it did serve as a reminder. This was a season of troubles, and certain matters could not afford complications. They had lingered here too long.

With that thought, he suddenly called out: “A’Qi — the young mistress of the Tian family will belong to the Governor from here on. Even if you don’t respect the monk, you should respect the Buddha. Do not make this any uglier than it needs to be.”

Those words were four parts earnest and six parts mockery, carrying a contempt that came from somewhere in the bone.

Think of all those empty, hollow mansions back in the eastern city, and one would know how many young women like Tian Weiér had been swallowed up by that desert — swallowed by the Sun clan of Yanxi City, where there was meat to eat and wine to drink.

One more or one less made no difference at all.

The one called A’Qi finally received his order. With the magnanimous air of one bestowing a great mercy, he pulled the blade away from Xiao Nanhui’s throat, wiped the blood on the hem of his robe, returned it to his waist, and cast a cold look at the three cowering people before turning and remounting his camel.

Xiao Nanhui let out a long breath with barely concealed relief, then hauled up Wu Xiaoliu — who had collapsed into a heap on the ground — and staggered back into the procession. Tian Weiér was lifted directly onto a camel by two riders.

Aside from the carts of gold and silver dowry gifts, all the horses and sedan chairs from the original procession were left behind where they stood — left together with the red bridal chair and the bodies scattered across a ground of fresh blood, presenting a bleakness impossible to put into words.

As they moved into the great shadow of the Sanmu Pass gateway, Xiao Nanhui instinctively looked back. She could not tell whether it was her imagination, but two human figures seemed to be standing on the shoulders of the towering idol, as though they had been watching the whole time.

A gust of wind rose, swirling sand into the air. By the time it settled, she looked again — the idol stood alone, as it always had. There was no one there.

She must have been seeing things.

Xiao Nanhui drew the cloth wrapping tight around her head and hurried to follow the procession deeper into Bijiang.