Shen Rujian offered no words of comfort, because she understood this kind of feeling better than anyone. No consoling words had any power here. Most of the time, when people recovered from whatever environment had wounded them, they relied on themselves to do it.
So many years had passed. If she had needed to rely on others to find her way forward, she would long since have ceased to be in this world.
Much well-meaning consolation was, at the same time, a reopening of wounds again and again — especially when the other person had not brought it up themselves, and you assumed that consoling them would make you appear kind.
She had contemplated death countless times. Yet she knew that a person must always have a reason to live. If she herself had none, then she would think of the people she cared about.
And so she had come — because Xie Xiu was a person cared about by someone she cared about.
General Xie Cunhao had cared about every single one of his brothers.
That time, Shen Rujian had rescued not only Xie Xiu — she had rescued seven in total. All seven of them were still alive today, though most of them had chosen to never see one another again for the rest of their lives.
Shen Rujian was the exception, because she was their General’s betrothed, their elder sister. The General had been only in his twenties that year, yet men of forty would call her Elder Sister without a second thought.
And so every year Shen Rujian made a point of traveling around, visiting at least one of them — to let them know she was well, and to hope that they too were all well.
General Xie was gone. But the General’s betrothed was still here.
Because she was still here, these men who had survived might still have something to hold onto, still have someone to look after them — and something to motivate them to look after others in return.
For example… Lü Qingluan.
He too was one of those who had survived that time, and because he could not face the past, could not face Shen Rujian, he had chosen to leave — and then, because he could not cast aside the responsibility in his heart, he had returned.
Having experienced both flight and the return to face things, Lü Qingluan understood better than the others what it was that those who had survived needed to do.
“Elder Sister, please don’t go.”
When Xie Xiu stopped weeping, Shen Rujian’s tea had long since gone cold.
He looked at Shen Rujian and said, “I have had people searching for you for a long time — searching for all our brothers for a long time. Aside from you and Elder Brother Qingluan, I have found everyone. Yet none of them were willing to come. If you were able to stay, I would send people to invite them, and they would certainly be willing to come.”
There was a full measure of desolation and helplessness in his voice.
“If they knew you were here, they would come no matter how far away they were. That way they might be able to live somewhat better. I now have the means to take care of them. I…”
He was speaking when he looked toward Shen Rujian, and the rest of the words died in his throat.
Because in Shen Rujian’s eyes, he had read her answer.
She was not going to stay.
After a moment, Shen Rujian slowly exhaled. “You need not think so much of it. And on behalf of all the brothers who fell in battle, I should also say thank you — if not for you, their families would certainly never have received the compensation payments from the court.”
Xie Xiu shook his head. “The court never paid.”
Shen Rujian was taken aback for a moment, but quickly understood what Xie Xiu meant.
Xie Xiu lowered his head and said, “When I returned, the first thing I did was ask my family whether the man I had arranged to carry the message had returned, whether the name roster and my blood letter had been brought back. In truth, before I even arrived home, I had more or less guessed what the answer would be — but I couldn’t let it go.”
When he returned and made inquiries, his family had not received his blood letter. That attendant had never returned at all.
Half a year later, the Xie family found that attendant in Yuzhou and brought him before Xie Xiu.
Xie Xiu asked him why. He said he had been afraid.
The attendant had reasoned that if he returned, bringing the young master’s blood letter and name roster, the Xie family would not let him go on living.
The young master was dead and he had come back alive — what use would there be in keeping such an attendant?
He knew what his fate would be, and so he chose to flee — taking all the money Xie Xiu had given him at the moment of their parting, and fleeing to Yuzhou to live under an assumed name.
Xie Xiu’s voice was very low and heavy. “I killed him. Even though I knew that his reasoning wasn’t entirely wrong, he should not have burned the name roster.”
Xie Xiu raised his hand and pressed his fingertips hard against his own temples — so hard that his nails had already drawn blood there.
And at his temples were many such marks, which made clear this was not the first time he had done this.
He pressed so hard; it was the hatred for that attendant who had burned the name roster, and the hatred for himself.
“At that time I had not committed those names to memory. I truly wanted to remember them…”
His voice trembled.
Shen Rujian stood, took his hand and pulled it away, and in that moment she felt Xie Xiu’s pain truly and completely — that boundless, unending pain.
Xie Xiu had gone to Xifeng Pass for a year, and for the first eleven months of it he and those border soldiers had been mutually at odds with one another. How could he possibly have cared to learn each person’s name?
At that time, he had been filled with disdain for the rough bumpkins around him — one might even say contempt.
In the last period of less than a month, those brothers had accepted him. He could remember the names of his own subordinates, could remember the names of the General’s personal guards — but the others, he could not. In truth, he had never known them at all.
Every family had received their compensation — but that was only two years later.
Even so, he remained in torment, because now, though he had come to know those names, he could not match them to the faces in his memory.
He could find no name roster, and had no choice but to commission people to make inquiries at the Dachu Ministry of War — only to discover that the Dachu Ministry of War had no name records at all for the soldiers of that small city. Not just the soldiers — even the General’s name was not there.
Because the General had severed ties with the Xie family, and in truth it was the Xie family who had worked behind the scenes — the Xie family had deliberately had the Ministry of War withhold provisions, supplies, and military funding for that small city, intending to force the General to come home.
And yet…
This too was one of the reasons Xie Xiu was in such torment. When he was straining with every effort to find those people’s names, he discovered what an ugly role his own family had played in it all.
Later, he sent people the long way around to Liangzhou to seek an audience with General Dantai Qi, and in the Liangzhou Army’s records they found the complete name list.
At that point Xie Xiu had in truth barely held any hope, because he knew that General Dantai would have no reason to have such a name roster — they were not under direct command.
But what he had never anticipated was that General Dantai had sent a message back by the hand of the person Xie Xiu had dispatched, telling him that in Liangzhou, the name of every border soldier at every frontier pass in the Western Frontier could be found.
In that battle, the Dachu troops from within the passes had not come to their aid — because their own forces were thin, and they felt that going would only mean sending themselves to their deaths.
It was the Liangzhou army, eight hundred li distant, under the command of Grand General Dantai Qi, that had traveled through the night and arrived in time.
They drove the Western Region people back, and avenged the brothers who had died at Xifeng Pass.
After obtaining the name roster, Xie Xiu immediately arranged for people to deliver compensation to the families of every soldier who had died in battle — ten times the standard amount. Every coin of it came from his own pocket, and he sent it every year thereafter.
Yet he felt it was not enough to atone for the debt he owed.
Because the Xie family had had those names struck from the Ministry of War’s records, they had died without ever knowing that, in the eyes of the authorities, they had never counted as soldiers of Dachu.
Every time he revisited it, the pain was unbearable. The only method was to torment himself.
The marks on both of Xie Xiu’s temples from where he had pressed his nails — those were the marks left behind from the countless times he tried to match names to faces in his memory, and failed.
Because he was the last one to have survived, he had been present at the final arrangements for nearly every single brother who had fallen. He remembered every face — but the names?
Did names matter?
They mattered.
Without names, how would people of later generations know they were heroes — how would they know that these men had fought and died to defend the Central Plains?
Tell someone that you remember every face — what hollow, powerless words those were.
Shen Rujian patted Xie Xiu gently on the shoulder, then returned to her own seat and sat down again.
What Xie Xiu had experienced, the pain that lived in Xie Xiu’s heart — she had all of it too.
“Elder Sister… when are you leaving?”
Xie Xiu asked.
“Tomorrow.”
Shen Rujian said. “I still need to hurry back.”
Xie Xiu asked again, “With the business — is everything alright? If you need the Xie family’s help…”
The rest of the words he couldn’t bring himself to say. Over these years, the relationship between him and his family had in truth not been very harmonious.
His choice to fight a fierce battle with Yang Xuanji’s Tianming Army before surrendering was the furthest extent of his resistance against his family’s commands.
Others all assumed that his leading troops to fight the Tianming Army was to demonstrate his capabilities to Yang Xuanji.
But did he actually need to do that? Did the Xie family need to do that?
He simply did not want to be at the mercy of his family, yet he could not break free of the fetters bound about him.
Shen Rujian spoke evenly. “Affairs on the business side are all manageable — I have been in trade long enough that everything has been smoothed out.”
Xie Xiu kept his head lowered. “That’s good… that’s good.”
Shen Rujian took something from her sleeve and set it on the table, then rose. “I will return to the inn first. If there is anything else you wish to say, you may send someone to the inn to let me know. I am not leaving until early tomorrow morning.”
Xie Xiu glanced sideways at what she had placed on the table, first going still, then his eyes suddenly flying wide open.
A moment later, he lunged forward and seized the object in both hands, cradling it, and both his hands were trembling violently.
It was a military identification plaque — the border army’s plaque from Xifeng Pass.
Such a plaque bore no name, only the serial designation of which unit it belonged to.
On the plaque were only five characters: *Western Frontier, Xifeng Pass.*
It was impossible to determine which brother this plaque had once belonged to, yet to Xie Xiu, this was the most precious thing in the world. His own plaque could never be found again.
After they had been captured, the Western Region people had thrown the plaques of the few survivors to the ground and stomped on them viciously.
“Elder Sister…”
Xie Xiu rose, cradling the plaque in both hands, and bowed deeply to Shen Rujian.
Shen Rujian said, “Take care of yourself. Your General would want you to take care of yourself.”
With that, she turned and left.
Outside, on the carriage, Lü Qingluan flicked the reins, and the carriage slowly started forward.
Inside the carriage, Shen Rujian asked, “Why were you so insistent on not going in to see him?”
Lü Qingluan was silent for a moment before answering. “Didn’t dare to go in. Didn’t know what to say, and was afraid of saying anything. What I feared most was that we would see something unfamiliar in each other’s eyes — and even if that would be followed by a surprise and then the joy of reunion, just imagining it, I was already afraid of what might come after the joy — the holding each other and weeping.”
Shen Rujian only made a quiet sound of acknowledgment and said nothing more.
After quite some time, Lü Qingluan asked, “Boss — he didn’t ask you anything, did he? Like whether you had come from Jizhou.”
“He didn’t ask.”
Shen Rujian slowly exhaled. “He knows where I came from, because by now he must know that Shen Medical Hall is mine. And I know where he is going — Yang Xuanji will certainly have summoned him to participate in the battle for Jingzhou. He doesn’t ask, I don’t ask. He doesn’t say, I don’t say.”
Lü Qingluan fell silent again.
Neither asking, neither saying — because this meeting had never been about anything practical to begin with.
If that battle had never happened, General Xie Cunhao would have come, with those three hundred or so betrothal gifts prepared by three hundred or so men — priceless in their way, and yet not worth much in the world’s reckoning — to take her as his bride.
Perhaps at this very moment, those three hundred or so betrothal gifts would still be placed in the most important spot in their home.
Lü Qingluan was in truth very worried. More than ten years had passed, and people’s hearts can change.
He feared that Xie Xiu might make things difficult for the Boss, might hold her there and use her as leverage against Prince Ning.
He had tried to persuade the Boss not to come, yet the Boss had said… I am willing to believe in the goodness of people’s hearts.
In the Jingzhou Military Governor’s residence, Xie Xiu held the military plaque in both hands, and slowly knelt down — facing the direction of the northwest, he knelt.
—