Her gaze fell coldly from the treetop, slicing across Cheng Yu’s throat like an ice blade.
Cheng Yu missed his strike and immediately tried to flee.
Qin Chang Ge raised her hand and with a sharp crack, severed the long arrow protruding from Xiao Jue’s body. Taking a deep breath, she raised her hand and hurled it.
Lightning could not match the speed of this arrow’s light—accurate, ruthless, fierce.
The earth-shaking lightning could not match the fury of this arrow’s intent as it erupted with murderous aura.
The arrow flew, the arrow struck—the broken arrow accurately pierced the back of Cheng Yu’s heart as he hid among the soldiers, penetrating completely without a trace visible.
Cheng Yu died.
With Cheng Yu’s death, all his carefully laid plans crumbled. In that instant when Prince Wei was in danger, in the split second of lightning and flint, he had calculated that rather than save Prince Wei, he would shoot and kill the assassin Qin Chang Ge. If Prince Wei died, with his prestige, he would become the next Prince Wei. Even if Prince Wei survived, his merit in killing Qin Chang Ge would be enough to offset the crime of failing to rescue his lord.
However, he never expected that Xiao Jue would desperately come to the rescue, ultimately dying under Qin Chang Ge’s flying arrow.
Thus, after Cheng Yu’s death, his fate was extremely miserable. Prince Wei settled accounts after autumn, and with slight thought understood his selfish motives. In great fury, he stripped Cheng Yu of his titles and ranks. He was the only general who followed from the beginning who, after Northern Wei’s founding, did not have his memorial tablet placed in the Hall of Meritorious Officials, and the only general without any hereditary honors. The Cheng family’s descendants suffered miserably in Northern Wei ever after.
But this is all a later story.
At that time, Qin Chang Ge held the heavily wounded Xiao Jue, trapped in the heavy encirclement.
She dared not pull out the arrow, could not bandage the wound, could not move him violently. In this chaotic battlefield under siege, in circumstances lacking medical care and medicine, doing any of these three things without immediate follow-up care would cost Xiao Jue his life.
She also could not carry him and leap out of the encirclement—that would be like making Xiao Jue a target for arrows.
Qin Chang Ge pressed her fingers together and struck several of Xiao Jue’s major acupoints, immediately stopping the blood flow. She then fed him a Heart-Protecting Pill to preserve his remaining vital energy.
Flying up into the tree, her hands strong as metal and stone stripped the bark from the withered tree beside her. With one hand continuously deflecting the arrows flying toward them, her other hand swiftly carved a hole half a person’s height into the tree trunk.
Though the tree was dead and its crown lost, the trunk was quite massive. Qin Chang Ge placed Xiao Jue inside—his body was wrapped within the tree. With a glance, Qin Chang Ge had already determined the trunk’s thickness; no one could pierce through the tree trunk with a single arrow to harm Xiao Jue in the tree hollow.
Qin Chang Ge herself sat on the branching limb beside the tree hollow, taking Xiao Jue’s precious sword. One hand pressed against Xiao Jue’s chest, continuously channeling true energy to maintain his shallow breathing and thread-thin life. Her other hand wielded the long sword, transforming it into countless starlike points of light, deflecting arrows from all directions. Anyone who climbed the tree was killed with a single sword stroke.
At this time, Yu Zixi, who had secretly rushed to Pingzhou and Yanling to transfer troops, had already led reinforcements to arrive, but could not immediately break through. Though the Wei army was in chaos, they still had vast numbers. The central army protecting Prince Wei maintained its formation and escorted the wounded prince to safety. Before leaving, Prince Wei issued an order: they must capture Qin Chang Ge and Xiao Jue, dead or alive. Bring their heads and receive promotion to company commander plus ten thousand taels of silver; capture them alive and receive promotion to general plus ten thousand taels of gold.
Thus people surged like a tide, fighting desperately to advance. Life was important, but wealth and future prospects were also important. Everywhere there were those with lucky hearts attempting to risk danger for riches. Of the guards who had charged into the central army with Xiao Jue, few remained, just a handful trapped in the heavy encirclement unable to provide support. Only Qin Chang Ge remained high in the treetop, one person against a thousand troops.
Yet she still wore that smile without mirth, her long sword falling like snowflakes—light and cool. Those who received it felt their throats touched by falling snowflakes, just that ghostly cold touch, and life was mercilessly harvested.
Blood splattered, and snow actually began falling from the sky, landing on Qin Chang Ge’s black eyebrows and lashes. Her smile swayed as if she were a fairy from the Jade Terrace, but her eyes were cold as ten-thousand-year glaciers.
Corpses piled higher and higher, gradually surging toward her feet. The remaining soldiers stepped on their comrades’ bodies to charge up, only to be swept by her sword and become new flesh-and-blood stepping stones for those who followed.
Those bodies pressed into human platforms gave off thick, nauseating bloody stench, yet Qin Chang Ge remained extremely calm. Amidst countless blood, corpses, entrails, and flesh fragments, her hands moved and eyes directed with clean efficiency as she ended lives, her expression gracefully serene as the distant moon. The soldiers below looked up at her as if seeing an indestructible, unbreakable divine being, their hearts and souls shaken as fear of battle grew within them.
Of the Wei army’s central troops that night, fewer than one in ten survived to return home. However, all who lived could never forget that night’s vision above the withered tree, under the blood moon—that woman beautiful as the Goddess Luo, who stayed by her beloved’s side without moving a step, regarding thousands of troops and ten thousand horses as nothing. Her smile light as mist, her divine charm like poetry, graceful and beautiful as an elegant prose under moonlight. With each sweep of her sleeve blood filled the sky, yet she remained untainted by dust, her posture sublime, like a sacred fire lotus blooming in a sea of blood.
In their remaining years they dug through memories day after day, day after day recalling that night’s incomparably bright and noble features, unwilling to let fade that moment’s feeling of beauty and震撼awe. After learning her identity, they quietly called her “Divine Empress,” and after her death, faced the direction of Xiliang and silently burned incense, mournfully lamenting the passing of the world’s most beautiful legend.
In truth, at that time, only Qin Chang Ge herself knew that with each seemingly effortless sword stroke, she could faintly hear the creaking sounds of bones unable to bear the burden, her arms so sore and weak she wanted to cut them off herself.
She was not a god; she did not have inexhaustible strength.
Her mouth was full of fresh blood—the hot blood of internal organs she forcibly swallowed, mixed with blood from biting her own tongue to keep from fainting from exhaustion.
She smiled, slowly turning her head to look at the unconscious Xiao Jue, her gaze like water, flowing over his pale face.
In the long wind their garments fluttered and intertwined together—hers and his.
To die together would also be quite a pleasant thing, wouldn’t it?
…