Zhu Yu – Chapter 61

Fan Changyu’s sleep was restless, and she ran a fever again during the night.

She fell into a nightmare, surrounded by a vast, white snowy plain with large flakes of snow falling heavily.

Wearing thin clothes and barefoot, Fan Changyu ran through the snow. Her feet were nearly numb from the cold, but she dared not stop.

At first, Fan Changyu didn’t know what she was chasing, until she saw a couple walking hand in hand in the distance. Then she finally understood why she was so anxious.

It was Father and Mother!

She ran forward with even more effort, her heart aching with a bitter pain, and her eyes instantly filled with warmth. “Father, Mother!”

The two figures ahead weren’t walking fast, yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t catch up. She became increasingly anxious, almost on the verge of tears.

The woman in the snow finally turned her head, her face still wearing the gentle expression from Fan Changyu’s memories. She said, “Changyu, be good and go back.”

Fan Changyu didn’t know why she felt so sad. As tears streamed down her face, her heart throbbed with pain. She asked helplessly, “Where are you going?”

The woman didn’t answer her, only turning her head to continue walking forward with the man.

Fan Changyu stood there, stunned, feeling as if she had forgotten something. Her chest ached terribly, and breathing became extremely difficult as if she were drowning.

When Xie Zheng prepared a basin of warm water to lower her fever, he found her trapped in a nightmare. Her entire body was convulsing uncontrollably, sweating profusely, soaking her hair and undergarments. Her originally pale face had taken on an unnatural flush due to the high fever. She was mumbling incoherently in her sleep, and the corners of her eyes were slowly dampened by tears.

“A nightmare?”

It was the first time Xie Zheng had seen her in such a disheveled and vulnerable state. His heart felt as if it were stuffed with damp cotton, softening yet suffocating. He nudged Fan Changyu, “Wake up.”

But Fan Changyu was too deeply caught in her nightmare, showing no signs of waking.

Seeing that Fan Changyu might accidentally press on her left arm during her unconscious struggle, he had to use one hand to avoid her injured arm and press on her shoulder to restrain her movement. He then coldly ordered the guard outside the room, “Go find a physician!”

Earlier in the day, after the physician had examined Fan Changyu, Xie Zheng thought her condition had stabilized, so he sent the physician back home with his guards. After all, there weren’t any extra rooms in the old woman’s house for the physician to rest.

Who would have thought that Fan Changyu would suddenly have a seizure in the middle of the night?

What kind of nightmare could she be having?

Xie Zheng unconsciously furrowed his brow. When he noticed that her lips were bleeding from biting them too hard, he raised his hand to pry open her jaw, but accidentally got his finger bitten.

He tried to pull away, but Fan Changyu’s teeth clenched even tighter, almost instantly breaking the skin and leaving a ring of bloody teeth marks.

Xie Zheng only slightly frowned before deciding to let her continue biting his index finger.

Feeling the person in his arms shaking all over, the curled-up, frail back awakened some of his buried memories. He had never comforted anyone in his life, yet at this moment, he hesitated for a bit before softening his tone, “It’s just a nightmare, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

In his childhood, the image of that woman’s skirt hanging from the crossbeam had once been an inescapable nightmare for him too. Every time he woke up in terror, he was either alone in the endless darkness or in a brightly lit room with Wei Yan standing by the bed, looking at him coldly as if he were a dead dog.

Wei Xuan would bring the children of the Wei clan to mock him, imitating his nightmare seizures for amusement.

Later, he stopped being afraid of nightmares.

Having crawled out alive from mountains of corpses and seas of blood, the blood on his blade was more than that of the ghosts in his dreams.

At this moment, Fan Changyu’s trembling form seemed to overlap with the memory of his younger self.

Xie Zheng’s eyes deepened. While waiting for the physician to arrive, he let Fan Changyu bite his finger, half-embracing her, awkwardly patting her back gently.

The phrase he repeated the most was, “Don’t be afraid.”

Don’t be afraid, all nightmares will end.

By the time the guard had roused the physician from his bed, put him on horseback, and galloped back, Fan Changyu had already calmed down and fallen into an exhausted, deep sleep.

Xie Zheng sat casually on a wooden chair in the room, his left index finger wrapped with a row of teeth marks, bloody and mangled. His gaze was unfocused, his eyes half-lowered, with strands of hair falling in front of them. It was unclear what he was thinking about.

Only when the trembling physician was carried through the door did his gaze, casual yet full of pressure, glance over: “She had a nightmare.”

The physician, having been pulled from his warm bed in the middle of the night, only to find out it was just a nightmare, felt a surge of frustration. However, he didn’t dare express it. Just one glance from the man in the room made his back break out in a cold sweat. He could only resign himself to carefully checking the pulse of the sleeping woman.

As soon as he felt her pulse, the physician was surprised to find that the woman, who had been weak in the afternoon, now had a much more stable pulse.

He secretly glanced at the handsome yet gloomy man beside him but didn’t dare say that the woman’s condition was quite good. After pondering for a while, he prescribed a calming medicine, saying, “Your wife seems to have been frightened. This calming medicine will help her sleep more soundly.”

The guard looked at Xie Zheng, and seeing him nod, took the physician to the kitchen to brew the medicine.

When the calming medicine was ready, Xie Zheng, as before, pried open Fan Changyu’s jaw and fed it to her spoonful by spoonful.

It was only then that the two rows of bloody teeth marks on his left index finger began to sting.

He glanced at it after finishing feeding her the medicine but said nothing.

The guard offered some wound medicine: “Marquis, would you like to apply some medicine to the wound on your hand?”

Xie Zheng didn’t consider such a small injury worth mentioning and simply said, “It’s nothing.”

As the guard retreated with the bowl, he secretly glanced at the sleeping Fan Changyu, his heart secretly churning with waves of shock.

Although this woman was beautiful, she could hardly be called a peerless beauty. How had she captured the Marquis’s attention to such an extent?

However, recalling the scene of her lifting a grown man with one hand and throwing him far away, the guard suddenly shuddered.

That arm strength was probably on par with their Marquis, wasn’t it?

After drinking the calming medicine, Fan Changyu indeed slept more soundly in the latter half of the night and didn’t develop a fever again.

Xie Zheng dozed lightly by the bedside for two hours. Just as the sky began to lighten, there was a very light knock on the door.

He glanced at the sleeping Fan Changyu, saw that she was sleeping quite deeply, and left the room almost without making a sound, taking the large cloak from the low stool beside him.

Seeing him come out, the guard outside the room quickly lowered his voice and said, “Marquis, we’ve found Sui Yuanqing’s whereabouts. He was indeed hiding in Qingfeng Stronghold! When Qingfeng Stronghold was raided, he escaped with some of the bandits through a small path in the back mountain. Now our men have driven them to Yansong Mountain.”

Xie Zheng’s eyes were full of coldness: “Guard the mountain paths, send in the hunting dogs. Let’s see how long he can hide.”

The guard’s face couldn’t hide his excitement as he saluted: “This subordinate will go and arrange it immediately!”

A gust of cold wind blew past, and Xie Zheng, looking at a withered leaf covered in frost and snow that had fallen at his feet, suddenly said, “Today’s wind is from the southwest.”

Before the guard could understand the meaning of his words, he heard Xie Zheng say, “Light thick smoke at the windward side, and bring the corpse of that bandit leader along to flog it.”

The guard was startled, then his face showed even more joy: “This subordinate obeys!”

Flogging the corpse of Qingfeng Stronghold’s leader at the foot of Yansong Mountain would surely terrify the remaining bandits hiding on the mountain.

When they were suffocating from the thick smoke, they would release the hunting dogs to chase them. There was no doubt they could force out the remaining bandits hiding on Yansong Mountain. By then, they only needed to guard the main paths down the mountain, and it would be like catching turtles in a jar-

It was another snowy day, but Yansong Mountain was covered in thick smoke. Several large piles of pine and cypress branches were burning, the thick smoke carried by the wind toward the depths of the mountain forest. Hunting dogs darted through the dense forest, their barking echoing back and forth, like wolves chasing prey.

The bandits hiding on the mountain were driven to scatter in all directions. As soon as they appeared on the mountain paths, they were surrounded by the government troops who had set up ambushes early on.

However, when the smoke on the mountain had dissipated and the government troops were counting the number of captured bandits, they found neither Sui Yuanqing nor the female bandit from Qingfeng Stronghold.

The young commander leading the troops put his sword to a bandit’s throat and demanded, “Where are Qin Yuan and the Yan woman?”

The bandit begged for mercy, “I don’t know, sir. When the smoke started, everyone couldn’t stand it, and we were chased by the dogs. We all scattered in the forest.”

Seeing that he couldn’t get any information, the young commander had to send men into the mountain to search, but they only found two government soldiers whose throats had been cut and their armor stripped off.

When the young commander saw the bodies, he cursed, “Damn it! Quickly, chase them down the mountain!”

At the foot of a mountain, where a stream flowed gently, two people dressed as government soldiers, who had been galloping on horseback for dozens of miles along the official road, finally pulled their reins to stop. They rolled off their horses and rushed to the riverside. Ignoring the snow on the bank, they lay flat on the ground and drank several mouthfuls of the chilly river water like cattle.

One of them, kneeling by the riverbank, suddenly began to cry with a whimper.

The voice was high-pitched, clearly that of a woman.

The man lying in the snow catching his breath nearby showed no intention of comforting her. After he caught his breath, he took off his armor and threw it into the river, then got up and strode towards the warhorse.

Seeing that he seemed to be leaving alone, the crying woman was so shocked that her sobs caught in her throat. She quickly chased after him, “Brother Qin, where are you going!”

These two were none other than Sui Yuanqing and Yan Shisanniang, who had killed two government soldiers and changed into their clothes to escape from Yansong Mountain.

Sui Yuanqing was about to mount the horse when someone firmly grabbed his arm.

He lowered his eyes to look at the woman gazing at him with tear-filled eyes. She was tall for a woman, her features unremarkable, with a light redness on her face common to mountain girls from years of exposure to cold and sun. In Prince Xin’s mansion, she would at best be considered a rough maidservant.

He thought he had fallen for this type of woman who knew some martial arts and was hard to tame, but looking at it now, it seemed that wasn’t the case.

The only one who made his heart flutter was that woman.

He had a pair of enchanting peach blossom eyes, especially charming when he smiled.

At this moment, he raised the corner of his lips, but it was to slowly pry off Yan Shisanniang’s hand that was gripping his arm: “The world is vast, I have my place to go. This is goodbye.”

The smile at the corner of his mouth, though so cold, was still beautiful.

Yan Shisanniang was stunned. When she came to her senses, she was already gripping Sui Yuanqing tightly, her nails seemingly about to dig into his flesh through his clothes, almost hysterically questioning him: “What do you mean? You’re going to abandon me and leave me alone?”

Sui Yuanqing raised an eyebrow slightly, as if he thought her question was too stupid, and chuckled, “Why not?”

The woman’s nails were too sharp, scratching his arm painfully.

He frowned, completely losing patience, and pulled the woman’s hand away to mount the horse.

Yan Shisanniang said hatefully, “Qin Yuan, you have no conscience! My brother went to distract the government troops so we could escape, how can you face my brother?”

Sui Yuanqing sneered, “Escaping from the government’s hands, isn’t it each to their ability? Otherwise, how do you think those people on Yansong Mountain died?”

Yan Shisanniang wailed loudly, only saying, “Have you forgotten that I rescued you from the riverside? You can’t treat me like this…”

Sui Yuanqing suddenly smiled, even lowering his body on horseback to be at eye level with Yan Shisanniang: “You saved me, but didn’t I also bring you out of Yansong Mountain? Why can’t I treat you like this?”

With that, he straightened up, pulled the reins, and galloped away.

Yan Shisanniang cried hysterically, cursing, “Qin Yuan, you won’t come to a good end!”

Sui Yuanqing ignored the woman’s cries and curses behind him. After riding for a while, he took out the painting he had later found when searching the Fan family’s home.

The painting seemed to depict a family of three. The man was extraordinarily handsome, the woman’s sweet smile had a natural vigor, and the little girl who looked very much like the woman had mischievous eyes.

The wound on his shoulder where Fan Changyu had stabbed him still hurt, but Sui Yuanqing’s mood suddenly became extremely good.

From the moment he got this painting, he had guessed that the masked man who had injured him earlier was Xie Zheng.

As for the relationship between the woman in the painting and him…

Could she be a woman he kept outside?

Then the child in the painting would be their daughter?

Sui Yuanqing’s gaze scanned the painting several more times. The woman in the painting looked like she was still just a young girl. If she had a daughter that big, she would have to be at least in her twenties.

But then he thought of his brother’s favored concubine who had escaped, who still looked like a young girl after giving birth to a son for his brother, and he slowly began to believe this guess.

No wonder that woman had desperately guarded that dry well in the backyard that day. Xie Zheng must have left Qingping County due to the war, and she knew she couldn’t escape with a child, so she hid the child in the well.

Thinking that the woman had already borne a daughter for Xie Zheng, Sui Yuanqing’s face darkened. He put the painting back in his bosom and continued forward, spurring his horse.

Regardless, with this painting, the trip to Qingping County wasn’t a complete loss.

At least he now knew where the Duke of Wu’an’s weakness lay.