The scent of blood, earth, and burning pine resin from torches permeated the rainy night.
Sui Yuanqing charged through the Yanzhou army formation with Chang Ning, his long spear impaling soldiers as they rode. Chang Ning’s face was splattered with blood, her voice hoarse from crying.
Despite the blood on his face, Sui Yuanqing laughed wildly and even teased Chang Ning: “Kid, if your old man doesn’t have the guts to save you, you might as well stay at my Changxin Prince’s Manor. My nephew quite likes you; you’d make a fine little maid for him…”
As he thrust his spear to unseat another Yanzhou commander, a halberd suddenly parried his weapon and struck horizontally. Sui Yuanqing barely blocked it with his spear shaft but was still forced back two steps by the impact.
He looked up and met the halberd wielder’s gaze, his lips curling into a provocative smile. “I thought the Marquis was too precious to show himself.”
The drizzle had turned into a downpour. Xie Zheng stood in the rain, lightning shattering the black sky behind him. Water dripped from his soaked cloak down his horse’s back. His halberd rested diagonally across his back, its blade dripping blood. His phoenix eyes coldly regarded Sui Yuanqing, offering no response.
Noticing the blood on Xie Zheng’s blade, Sui Yuanqing quickly glanced at his arm and saw a gash. Rain-soaked fabric stung the wound, the pain finally registering. He frowned. Such swift swordsmanship.
Xie Zheng coldly mocked, “Bringing a child onto the battlefield—the Heir of Sui truly has courage.”
Stung by the sarcasm, Sui Yuanqing’s expression soured. Rather than lingering, he turned his horse and fled with Chang Ning.
Traumatized by the night’s carnage and unable to recognize Xie Zheng in the darkness, Chang Ning cried out when she heard his voice: “Brother-in-law—”
Sui Yuanqing pressed the child back onto the saddle as she nearly fell off, his expression suddenly turning strange. “What did you call that man?”
Emboldened by Xie Zheng’s presence, Chang Ning glared at Sui Yuanqing with her swollen grape-like eyes: “My brother-in-law won’t let you get away with this!”
Sui Yuanqing looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “So you’re not his daughter at all?”
Hearing Chang Ning’s cries, Xie Zheng spurred his horse to give chase. His deputy, scrambling to his feet, warned urgently, “Marquis, this could be a trap.”
Xie Zheng narrowed his eyes, assessing the retreating Sui Yuanqing. He ordered only a few personal guards to follow him, instructing the deputy, “The rest of you stay here. Do not follow.”
With that, he dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and gave chase. The deputy wanted to say more but could only watch as Xie Zheng’s dark cloak cut a sharp arc through the cold wind.
Arrows whistled past Sui Yuanqing’s head in the night, forcing him to duck low to avoid the pursuing white-feathered shafts. Memories of being hunted in Qingping County resurfaced, filling him with indignation.
Chang Ning pressed against the horse’s back, knew someone had come to her rescue. She mustered her strength to fight against Sui Yuanqing, either pulling his hair or biting the hand holding the reins.
Feeling the sharp pain in his hand, Sui Yuanqing hissed. He pinched Chang Ning’s cheeks with his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to open her mouth. He threatened coldly, “If you don’t behave, I’ll throw you off this horse right now and let you be trampled to death!”
Chang Ning’s cheeks stung from his grip, tears welling up in her eyes once again.
Seeing her comply, Sui Yuanqing released her and resumed zigzagging with the Chongzhou cavalry to avoid the arrows. He weighed his options, wondering if this girl, who wasn’t Xie Zheng’s daughter after all, was worth the risk of rescue.
Their original plan was to use the child as bait to lure Xie Zheng into an ambush. Even if they couldn’t kill him, they intended to leave him badly wounded.
But the bait wasn’t as valuable as he had anticipated. Xie Zheng had taken the bait anyway, and Sui Yuanqing suddenly had an ominous feeling.
Where had their calculations gone wrong?
From what he knew of Xie Zheng, he shouldn’t have been one to act so impulsively.
His father’s rebellion wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. The seeds of discontent with the royal family were sown when the Grand Princess Consort died in the Eastern Palace years ago.
His father believed the fire that claimed the Grand Princess Consort and her son was the Emperor’s warning. For self-preservation, he had been biding his time for over a decade.
To deal with Wei Yan, they first needed to break his sharpest blade. Since Xie Zheng’s rise to fame, his father had been grooming Sui Yuanqing to be the one to defeat him.
The Art of War emphasizes knowing both yourself and your enemy. Sui Yuanqing studied everything Xie Zheng learned. His father’s strategists would review each of Xie Zheng’s victories with him multiple times, looking for weaknesses and devising counter-strategies.
After years of replicating everything Xie Zheng had done, Sui Yuanqing sometimes felt like he had become Xie Zheng’s shadow.
Apart from Xie Zheng himself, Sui Yuanqing believed he understood him best.
If it were that woman’s flesh and blood, Xie Zheng’s pride might have driven him to take this risk.
But for merely that woman’s sister? For men like them, it wasn’t worth risking the lives of countless soldiers.
Could it be… that he had overestimated Xie Zheng?
Lost in thought, Sui Yuanqing didn’t notice his horse’s front leg being struck by an arrow. The animal neighed in pain and was about to stumble forward. Sui Yuanqing snapped back to reality, his face darkening as he grabbed Chang Ning with one hand and used his spear to vault onto a nearby cavalryman’s horse, narrowly avoiding being thrown.
Xie Zheng had caught up. He positioned his horse across the road, blocking Sui Yuanqing and his guards’ escape route. With one hand lightly holding the reins and the other holding his halberd at an angle, he looked at Sui Yuanqing with an amused expression. “It seems the Heir of Sui didn’t learn his lesson last time, to be so forgetful.”
A thunderclap boomed, and lightning illuminated Xie Zheng’s chiseled features, the night trailing behind him.
One man and one horse blocked over a dozen Chongzhou cavalry, yet the pressure was so intense that the mounted soldiers found it difficult to breathe.
Sui Yuanqing was also provoked by these words, barely suppressing the anger in his eyes. He quickly regained his composure and smiled roguishly, “They say the Marquis’s horsemanship and archery are unparalleled. It’s my honor to experience it twice.”
The few personal guards who had followed Xie Zheng finally caught up, blocking Sui Yuanqing’s retreat.
Unperturbed, Sui Yuanqing tilted his head and asked Xie Zheng with a smile, “I didn’t think the Marquis was one to treat his soldiers’ lives as a game. You seem quite willing to sacrifice for this child.”
As he spoke, he stroked Chang Ning’s rain-soaked hair as if petting a small animal.
This was an attempt to sow discord, hoping to make Xie Zheng’s soldiers resent him.
Xie Zheng merely asked in return, “Is this spring rain heavy?”
The rain intensified, large droplets hammering the ground, creating small craters in the mud visible in the firelight.
At first, Sui Yuanqing didn’t understand why Xie Zheng suddenly mentioned the rain. When he realized, his face darkened abruptly. Thinking of the fifty thousand troops surrounding Lucheng who would likely perish in this spring flood, a vein bulged on his temple. With barely suppressed anger in his eyes, he raised his spear tip towards Xie Zheng. “You knew this was a trap all along? The twenty thousand borrowed troops from Jizhou were also fake?”
Xie Zheng neither confirmed nor denied.
Sui Yuanqing glared at him, gritting his teeth. After a moment, he burst into laughter. “So be it. We may have lost the battle of Lucheng, but capturing you would be far more satisfying than taking Jizhou!”
He lifted Chang Ning from the saddle and sneered, “Marquis, your strategies are superior. I concede defeat. That being the case, there’s no need to keep this child alive.”
With that, he tossed Chang Ning into the air and thrust his spear towards her.
Chang Ning let out a short, terrified scream. Xie Zheng’s eyes flashed. He deflected Sui Yuanqing’s weapon with his halberd and, using his horse as a springboard, leaped to catch Chang Ning. Seizing the opportunity, Sui Yuanqing drove his spear diagonally into Xie Zheng’s side, where the armor was weak.
Without the armor’s protection, the spear tip pierced flesh, likely hitting bone, as Sui Yuanqing felt a dull resistance in his hand.
It all happened in an instant. Xie Zheng, still holding Chang Ning with one arm, saw a guard approach and tossed her to him. With his free hand, he pushed down on the spear shaft, using the dark gold spearhead to pry open his chest armor. Landing back on his horse, he swung his halberd at Sui Yuanqing.
Terrified, Sui Yuanqing pushed off his saddle with one hand, leaping into the air to dodge the strike. He hadn’t anticipated that Xie Zheng would use his halberd as a pole vault, springing up to deliver a horizontal kick to his chest.
As the kick connected, Sui Yuanqing felt his ribs crack. His entire chest cavity seemed to compress and tear apart in pain, and the taste of blood rose in his throat.
Instinctively trying to get up, he found the blade of the halberd already at his throat.
The rain was too heavy, and the intense pain made his vision blur, preventing him from clearly seeing Xie Zheng’s expression at that moment.
But Sui Yuanqing was acutely aware that he had lost, and lost completely.
With his capture, the Chongzhou cavalry didn’t dare to move. Yanzhou cavalry soon arrived to bind Sui Yuanqing.
Xie Zheng looked down at him and ordered, “Take him back.”
Sui Yuanqing’s guards watched helplessly as he was taken away, not daring to intervene. One of them, seizing a moment when Xie Zheng and his men were distracted, mounted a horse and fled to report back.
Xie Zheng instructed a few of his guards: “Head to Yixian Gorge immediately.”
Originally concerned about luring the Prince of Changxin’s army into the gorge, capturing Sui Yuanqing proved even more effective than using himself as bait.
As the group rode back, Xie Zheng sat straight-backed on his horse, but his lips had a faint pale tinge. Blood continuously seeped from the sleeve of the hand holding the halberd, trickling down his hand and dripping from the weapon’s blade.
The brown inner robe successfully concealed the blood’s color, and the heavy rain masked its scent, preventing his guards from noticing his condition.
Chang Ning, sitting on a guard’s horse, had been shocked into silence. As she regained her senses, she began to sob, calling incoherently for her “Sister” and “Brother-in-law.”
Xie Zheng glanced at her and, realizing they would have to pass through the corpse-strewn battlefield on their way back, ordered a guard: “Blindfold her.”