Xiao Nanhui had once been close with an old lieutenant from the Suobei Camp. That person had once saved her life on the battlefield, and afterward she had treated him to drinks at the Wangchen Tower.

The old lieutenant, after three rounds of wine, had clapped her on the shoulder and passed along his personal experience from years on the battlefield: in dire straits, what saves a person’s life is often not intelligence or courage or strategy — but instinct.

And instinct, more often than not, is forged through countless moments of peril.

This heavy fog reminded her of that last day in Bijiang, when An Lu and his companions had arrived on the heels of the frost and cold wave. That feeling of danger drawing near was so vivid — once experienced, it could never be forgotten.

After entrusting Jixiang to another’s care, Xiao Nanhui had never had a fixed mount. Relying on her earlier exploration of the encampment, she decided to head toward the closest watchtower to the west.

It was at this moment that within the thick white that refused to disperse, some sound came drifting from far away, drawing nearer.

Clip-clop, clip-clop.

The sound of hoofbeats.

She tensed, and listened carefully — she could only make out the sound of one horse.

The hoofbeats grew closer and closer, unhurried — as though someone were taking a horse out for a leisurely walk.

At last, a silhouette gradually emerged from the thick fog — a black shape.

It was a horse — a black horse.

Its back was bare; the rider was nowhere to be found. It appeared to be nothing more than a war horse that had wandered out from the stables.

The horse came closer still, showing no sign of stopping.

Xiao Nanhui hesitated a moment, then stepped forward, intending to take hold of the horse’s bridle.

The instant she saw the saddle clearly, her hand paused.

No — this was not an ordinary war horse.

An ordinary war horse would not have red tassels fastened to its bridle, nor white gemstones inlaid on its saddle, nor a saddle cloth made of fine silk that would not survive rough wear.

But none of that was the most important reason. The reason she had an impression of this horse was because she had seen it before.

This was Su Pingchuan’s horse.

That tall, magnificent black horse — full of bold spirit.

She grabbed the reins and applied a little force. The horse finally slowed to a stop, its four jet-black hooves settling firmly on the ground.

Only then did she notice that all four of the horse’s shoe covers had been removed. That was why the hoofbeats she had heard earlier had not been loud.

She leaned in for a closer look and saw that the edges of the hooves were nearly frayed apart. That was a mark left from traveling a very long distance, and the dried foam at the corners of the horse’s mouth confirmed the same.

Because of the black coat, it had not been obvious at first. But now that she was close, she noticed that between the horse’s two eyes, someone appeared to have drawn a strange symbol.

Xiao Nanhui gently raised her hand to touch it. After lightly rubbing her fingers together, her fingertips were left with a patch of darkened red.

Blood — not yet dried.

The next second, the horse suddenly reared and whinnied as though startled. It took considerable soothing before it gradually calmed down.

Looking in the direction the horse’s tail pointed, a faint line of shallow depressions stretched away into the mist along the ground.

Those were the prints left by the horse’s hooves.

Xiao Nanhui’s heart sank slowly to the bottom.

— * — * — *—

The hour between dusk and dawn — heaven and earth are most formless, and it is also when people are most slack and weary.

From the start of the chou hour to the end of the yin hour is often the best time for surprise attacks during wars between two armies. Military encampments therefore typically strengthen their defenses, and the squads on night patrol are led by the most experienced squad leaders.

The squad leader on duty for the patrol inside the camp tonight was a veteran soldier of the Yanchi Camp, who had only been pulled back from the southern border garrison a few months prior. When it came to encampment security, he was thoroughly seasoned — but this bitterly arid and brutal Suoyan weather, he had been deeply unable to adapt to.

That discomfort had only eased a little two days ago. Unfortunately, good conditions did not last — and tonight, something had gone awry again.

A quarter-hour ago, he had heard the angle-drum on the western side of the camp sounding.

For a military encampment on the march, beacon fires and signal torches were the usual means of warning and communication — but given tonight’s conditions, even the largest flame could not penetrate this dense fog. Yet beating the drums was a measure reserved for the most extreme emergencies. His heart was somewhat uneasy, though he still harbored a thread of wishful thinking.

This fog was indeed somewhat unusual — but it would not go so far as to throw them all into a panic over nothing. When he was in the south, he had seen all manner of fog and miasma.

The drumming had stirred commotion in the camp — yet before he could lead his subordinates to where it was, the drum sound stopped. Shortly after, a sound of rapid hoofbeats came from the very center of the camp — as though someone were galloping at full speed.

Within the military camp, save for urgent dispatches, riding at a gallop was strictly forbidden. Once caught, it was no simple matter of taking a few strokes of the military rod — demotion in rank or even implicating one’s superior officer were the lighter consequences; severe cases could lead to harsher penalties.

Carriers of urgent dispatches would signal with a whistle; this person had none. The squad leader signaled his subordinates to prepare to intercept whoever was coming, wanting to see exactly which blind fool had chosen this of all moments to come knocking at his door.

However, before he could exercise his duties, a tall black horse burst out of the fog and charged straight toward him. The rider who had galloped over yanked the reins taut in an instant and dismounted right in front of him.

He drew his saber sharply. Through the blurry fog, he made out at last who had come.

“Right General?”

“Where is Lu Songping?”

Although Lu Songping was hardly a popular figure, he was at the very least the camp’s captain — how could one call out his name directly?

This young woman, made a general at such a young age — she really didn’t know her limits and was shockingly reckless…

The squad leader frowned: “General — are you aware that riding at a gallop inside the camp is a grave offense? If you were to collide with—”

Xiao Nanhui seized the man by the collar and her eyes looked as though they might shoot flames.

“I am asking you — where is Lu Songping?!”

The squad leader was stunned by the woman’s frenzied expression, and then recovered: “Was it the General who just struck the angle-drum? What in the world has happened—”

“Something bad.” Before Xiao Nanhui’s words had fully left her lips, a figure appeared behind her like a ghost.

Lu Songping took only one look at that black horse, and the color of his face instantly turned grim.

“That is the Left General’s horse.”

Xiao Nanhui nodded, urgently showing him the marks on the horse and giving a rapid account of the matter of Su Pingchuan having been captured at Bijiang back then. She had not yet managed to voice her own deductions when Lu Songping had already formed his judgment.

He unhooked the bronze horn that had always hung at his waist.

“Pass word to all camps at once — as per the prior deployment, prepare to receive an enemy attack.”

— * — * — *—

If she had to attach a single character to Lu Songping as a person, Xiao Nanhui would choose the character “calculate.”

Just as that night in the Prince of Kang’s detached palace in Tong City, when she had used the “lure the tiger from the mountain” ruse on him — he had almost immediately calculated that something was about to happen and turned right back around, very nearly cornering her inside the Snow Labyrinth Hall.

Not to mention the night hunt of the bat swarms and the subsequent thorough investigation of the traitors.

Perhaps it was not difficult to understand why — even though his martial skill might not match Ding Weixiang’s — he was capable of serving as a camp captain.

But this time, even Lu Songping had not calculated for this.

He had calculated that once Suoyan entered the ninth month, the north wind would rage, and the wind would carry away the smell of smoke from the camp — so he chose to pitch camp at the downwind side of the Tianmu River. But he had not calculated that a great fog would roll in from the west.

He had calculated that carrier pigeons might expose the camp’s location, and so had long since standardized the method of transmitting military dispatches. But he had not calculated that a defeated general’s horse from months ago would find its way back to its homeland of its own accord.

Xiao Nanhui could understand Lu Songping’s chagrin — yet she also had a faint sense that none of this was due to his oversight, but rather the Bai Family acting in defiance of heaven and reason.

Suoyan was dry enough that not a drop of water could be wrung from it — how could fog arise?

Horses have an almost human sensitivity and are attuned to their riders’ hearts. War horses in particular are deeply bonded with their masters. How could one simply submit to the command of a stranger?

If she were told there had been no Southern Qiang hand in all of this, she would not believe it for ten thousand reasons.

The blood symbol drawn on the horse’s forehead was the clearest evidence.

Yet had someone spoken to her of spells and symbols a few months prior, she would have rolled her eyes straight up to the sky. Visiting temples each year did not make her someone who believed in gods and spirits — but ever since she had crossed paths with that person, strange things that her former understanding could not explain had frequently occurred in her life.

The wire-kill, the mysterious and elusive Pu Huna, the slight and vicious An Lu with his wind-swift strikes, the untold strange legends of the wilderness, and that person himself.

Perhaps she had not grown on her own — but had been changed by someone, without even noticing.

The person she had been before kept her eyes fixed on sunny skies and never saw the shadowy depths — a martial practitioner who saw only the bright side. But now she had even come to appreciate figures like Lu Songping — dark, crafty, and full of cunning schemes.

She didn’t know if this change was good or bad. She only felt that perhaps when she returned to Quecheng and encountered that wretch Xu You again, she might have grown considerably in combat power — and would never have to take a loss from him again.

If she still had her life to go back, that is.

This Western Campaign had divided its forces into three lines. The northern line, led by Prince Xuanyuan Su Che, commanded the main force of the Guangyao Camp in encircling Bijiang from the Famang Ridge. The central line, led by Qinghuai Marquis Xiao Zhun, led the Suobei main forces west from Tong City to drive straight into Sanmu Pass. Only the Emperor’s personally led force had moved in an unpredictable manner.

According to the legends, Tiancheng’s Black Feather Camp followed the Emperor’s carriage alone. Yet the Bai Family had found Black Feather Camp arrowheads in the Sanmu Pass gorge. This greatly distorted the Bai Family’s judgment of the situation in Bijiang — causing them to miss the moment to block Tiancheng’s advance eastward into Suoyan. Though afterward the Bai Family had used agents planted deep inside Tiancheng long before to break the Guangyao Camp’s flanking ambush, the seemingly deadlocked battle situation had in fact been developing in an irreversible direction.

For the Bai Family, the two sides’ military strength was too far apart. If they could not rapidly reverse the situation in a short period of time, it was only a matter of time before Tiancheng pushed into the interior and swallowed Bijiang whole.

It was all merely a matter of time. Unless — they could cut off the throne directly.

The Emperor, being in the midst of it all, could not have failed to understand this reasoning. Though there was a geographical advantage to camping on the western bank of the Tianmu River, beyond that he seemed to have taken very few precautions — in order to coordinate with the deployment plan for destroying the dam three days hence, he had even transferred away the majority of his forces from the royal tent, leaving only half the Black Feather Camp and a total of fewer than twenty thousand troops from the various other camps combined.

Years later, when Xiao Nanhui dreamed back to the events of that day, she would still wonder whether that man had done it intentionally — luring the enemy to reveal themselves — or whether he had truly suffered a single momentary lapse and nearly lost his life.

There was only one possibility she feared to confirm in her heart: that he, like the time he had gone incognito in Huozhou, had been driven by a terrifying desire to seek death — and that was why he had taken risks at every step.

But of course, all of that was talk for later.

At this moment, Xiao Nanhui had no leisure to think on any of these things. She was swept up in the vast anxiety of an imminent storm and left only her body to mechanically execute Lu Songping’s orders for deploying troops.

Tiancheng’s armies used banners for formation changes on the march — only in moments of crisis and attack did they sound the horns. At this moment, the land beyond the camp for a hundred li was still shrouded in dense fog, black as ink and not a finger’s breadth visible. This situation was an enormous challenge for every Tiancheng general and soldier alike.

Lu Songping’s gloomy face, so dark it had an almost sickly cast to it, now radiated through the fog a convincing sense of reliability. After all, everyone believed: to deal with a clever and ruthless enemy, only a cleverer and more ruthless general would serve.

Within the camp, the first cleverest was on the throne. The second was Lu Songping.

During the chaos in Tong City, Lu Songping had concealed his rank as camp captain and gone in the guise of a regional governor to stabilize the situation — this alone spoke to his ability to command and control circumstances. Rumor had it the Black Feather Camp was the most adaptable and versatile, with no fewer than eighty-one variations to its military formations — both attack and defense were mastered, effective whether fighting few or many — making it the most formidable of all the camps.

But the current situation was extremely grave. The Black Feather Camp was heavy with archers; it excelled at long-range offense but was weak in close combat, and could only hope to defeat the enemy by occupying advantageous terrain and open fields of vision. The heavy fog was an enormous blow to Tiancheng’s military strength — to say nothing of the mostly flat terrain around Suoyan. If it escalated into a chase, they could easily be wiped out in one sweep by the Bijiang cavalry.

And at this point, the nearest Tiancheng forces would need at least three days to arrive even if sent for immediately.

By that time, the Emperor’s corpse would long have gone cold.

Lu Songping understood this. Every Tiancheng soldier understood this.

So — this battle could not be lost.

Even if it came down to the last man standing, the throne must be defended.

And Xiao Nanhui’s position was precisely that last person beside the throne.

So that not a single breath of wind’s movement would be missed, everything that could produce sound had to remain silent at this moment.

The water clock in the bronze cauldron had been stopped. Only an incense stick the length of a forearm was quietly burning, its thread of pale smoke coiling through mid-air, teasing at the tautly strung nerves of everyone present.

Time continued to drip past, moment by moment. Yet through the gaps of the carriage, the sky outside showed no difference from an hour before — still black as ink.

Xiao Nanhui sat inside the carriage, her palm around Pingxian damp with cold sweat.

She had never been timid or afraid on the battlefield before — charging forward into a hail of blades and arrows, fighting to win. She had never flinched. Yet sitting in this carriage now, she felt a fear she had never known before.

The responsibility on her shoulders was too heavy. One mistake, and she would pay a price far exceeding any reckoning — the heaviest price imaginable. And perhaps that price was not something even her own death alone could bear.

“What are you thinking of?”

The Emperor’s voice rose low and deep in the darkness.

For reasons she could not explain, hearing this somewhat hoarse voice now, Xiao Nanhui’s heart felt a sense of calm.

This voice told her — even though she was in the dark, there was someone here with her.

She drew a breath and tried to make her voice sound less tense.

“In reply to Your Majesty — waiting for the light of day.”

In the darkness came the soft rustling of the finest silk shifting and brushing.

She felt a warm presence draw near, stopping a few inches from the right side of her face.

“Yesterday the chou hour ended and dawn broke. It is already long past the hour of sunrise.”

Xiao Nanhui turned her head slightly. In the dim obscurity, Su Wei’s face looked even more inscrutable — like the dark figure in her distant dream.

“Today — there will be no light of day.”

On the inky-black horizon, not a sun, moon, or star was visible.

The sun had been devoured.