A deafening rumble!
It was the thunder of ten thousand galloping horses, echoing across Eastern Qin’s entire southern frontier at the crack of dawn!
Ziqing jolted awake in the cave and rushed urgently to the entrance, where she found Xuanyuan Lige sitting cross-legged at the cliff’s edge, the Blood Zither resting on his lap. He hadn’t moved at all — his ten fingers rested lightly on the strings, his gaze fixed far off toward the east.
Ziqing furrowed her brow and looked east as well — and immediately drew a sharp breath.
How could this be?
There, in the northeast, at the border between Eastern Qin and Great Zhou, a massive dark army was advancing straight toward the Three Realms Territory!
Eastern Qin had actually mobilized troops — now, of all times?
That vast, dark mass — cavalry, no less. Eastern Qin, the weakest of all the kingdoms — how could it possibly have amassed such a force? That army looked to number no fewer than fifty to seventy thousand strong!
Great Zhou defended against Xijing to the west and Western Chu to the north — but to the south and east, it had never needed to raise arms at all. There was still a modest defensive garrison along the border with Nanzhao, but along the Eastern Qin border, only ordinary guards stood watch.
This was because the three tiger armies were stationed nearby, and more importantly, because Eastern Qin and Great Zhou were bound by a friendship treaty — an eternal non-aggression pact, personally signed at that very border by Eastern Qin’s Empress and Emperor Tianhui himself, years ago.
And now, with all of the northern frontier’s forces committed to the assault on Western Chu, the northern frontier itself stood virtually undefended — not a single soldier remained.
What exactly was Xuanyuan Lige planning? An attack on Great Zhou? Or a joint strike against Western Chu alongside someone else? Neither possibility seemed particularly likely.
Ziqing’s brow tightened. She glanced back at the smoke and fire still rising over Western Chu in the distance, then turned again to look at the army now sweeping southward — and suddenly, everything clicked into place. She gasped, “The rebel generals in Western Chu — they’re all your men!”
Only now did she realize — many of Western Chu’s military commanders had once served under the old Eastern Qin royal house.
Back when the Chu clan first rebelled against their homeland, how many of those generals had been forced to surrender against their will? Even in death, they had never stopped longing to restore Great Qin.
“Mm,” Xuanyuan Lige’s response was utterly indifferent, his lowered eyes sweeping over the vast Eastern Qin army below, then over the emptied northern frontier of Western Chu, as though none of it had anything to do with him at all.
And yet all of this — every bit of it — was something he himself had carefully constructed over the full thirteen years since he’d been sent away from the Eastern Qin royal house at the age of seven.
Ziqing finally understood the true nature of this entire war.
The gold hairpin she’d lost must have passed from this man’s hands into Chu Tiange’s. And Western Chu’s rebel generals had timed their uprising perfectly, knowing full well Chu Tiange would pour everything into this battle at Three Realms Territory — which was exactly why they’d chosen this precise moment to rise up.
Once Jun Beiyue advanced into Western Chu, pursuing Chu Tiange’s hundred-thousand-strong cavalry, and once both armies had exhausted themselves in the fighting, this Eastern Qin force would flank them from behind while the Western Chu rebels struck from the front — trapping both Chu Tiange’s forces and Jun Beiyue’s between them in a devastating pincer attack.
What a masterful scheme — luring the enemy into a trap, closing the door to beat the dog, the mantis stalking the cicada unaware of the oriole behind, letting the fisherman reap the rewards while the snipe and clam exhausted each other!
Once this Eastern Qin cavalry crossed the border and seized the Three Realms Territory, it would first block Jun Beiyue’s route back to Western Chu and cut off his supply lines. Second, it could then march straight into Great Zhou’s own Youyun provinces — and at that point, no one would be able to stop Xuanyuan Lige at all.
“You truly are despicable,” Ziqing sneered coldly, though privately she couldn’t help but admire this man’s sheer cunning. Who in this world would ever imagine that the renowned Xuanyuan Lige — the greatest zither master under heaven, as free and untethered as drifting clouds, bowing to no power, submitting to no ruler — was in fact Eastern Qin’s crown prince, the true mastermind orchestrating this entire war?
“Princess of Prince Yao. Between nations, between rulers, between subjects — no one ever questions the process, only the outcome. History has always been written by the victors — it’s both a hymn of praise and a lie.”
“This is a grudge between your Eastern Qin and Western Chu — why drag Great Zhou into it? Why drag Jun Beiyue into it?” Ziqing shot back. Xuanyuan Lige’s scheme had clearly used Jun Beiyue as a tool against Chu Tiange, only to eliminate him next.
Hearing this, Xuanyuan Lige suddenly burst into laughter. “Ha! And you call yourself his wife, Princess of Prince Yao? If Great Zhou’s Prince Yao had no ambitions of his own, would he really have driven so recklessly deep into Western Chu territory? Let me tell you this — if not for Western Chu’s watchful eyes over the Three Realms Territory, my Eastern Qin would already have fallen entirely under Jun Beiyue’s rule long ago!”
Ziqing felt a flicker of surprise, and fell suddenly silent. Belatedly, she realized she’d been unconsciously trying to argue on that man’s behalf.
How could she not know there was no such thing as fairness in a conflict of interests like this? The strong made their own justice.
She watched in silence as Eastern Qin’s army poured into a narrow gorge — an obscure path skirting the edge of Innocence Gorge. Compared to the open plains, it was far more difficult terrain to traverse, but it offered exceptional concealment.
Had they not been standing at such a height, they never would have spotted this advancing army in time. And right now, Jun Beiyue was surely still deep within Western Chu territory, commanding his troops — she had no idea how he’d react upon learning Eastern Qin had cut off his retreat.
Ziqing found herself lost in thought, an image surfacing unbidden in her mind — that moment at the imperial hunting grounds, when he’d lifted the carriage curtain, his cold face deadly serious, tossing her only four words: “Go back. Wait for me.”
Was she still waiting?
“Young Master Xuanyuan, I’m of no more use to you now. Surely you can let me go?” Ziqing said flatly. Jun Beiyao was somewhere in that army — if she didn’t kill him now, when would she ever have the chance again?
But just as Xuanyuan Lige opened his mouth to respond, a mass of dark figures suddenly erupted from both sides of the narrow gorge, seemingly out of nowhere!
What was happening?
Before either of them could fully grasp it, a series of deafening booms echoed through the gorge, the sound reverberating all the way back toward Innocence Gorge itself!
Hearing that sound, Ziqing — with her considerable combat experience — understood immediately what was happening. This was an ambush, the deadliest kind: boulders and debris raining down from both sides of a canyon. Throughout history, countless elite armies and renowned generals had met their end through exactly this kind of trap.
“So the White Tiger Army was here after all,” Ziqing said flatly, glancing south. She’d noticed the odd uniformity and numbers of Jun Beiyue’s three tiger armies before, puzzled but not particularly concerned by it — never imagining that the gray uniforms had been a deliberate disguise all along. That man had kept an entire tiger army stationed right at Eastern Qin’s border gate the whole time!
The moment Ziqing spoke, Xuanyuan Lige suddenly threw out his hand — a deafening “Ching!” rang out, the sound so violent it caught even Ziqing off guard, jolting through her entire body and sending a mouthful of blood spraying from her lips.
Clutching her chest, brow furrowed, she looked up — and saw that a string on the Blood Zither had been snapped clean off, Xuanyuan Lige’s index finger sliced open in a deep gash, blood flowing freely.
Even a man as detached as Xuanyuan Lige, it seemed, could reach a breaking point of fury after all.
He, more than anyone, understood exactly what it meant the instant those boulders came crashing down — it marked the end of the battle, and the end of his own defeat.
Jun Beiyue truly was the fisherman here, reaping every benefit of Western Chu’s rebellion while paying nothing for it.
How much had Xuanyuan Lige sacrificed for all of this? How immense must his fury be, how crushing his sense of loss, to make him sever the very string of the zither he cherished most, with his own hand?
Ziqing found herself inexplicably aching for him, for that zither. Wiping the blood from her lips, she said flatly, “As long as the general lives, there will always be another day to fight.”
For a long, long moment, Xuanyuan Lige said nothing, finally turning to look at Ziqing. His already pale, handsome face had gone utterly bloodless. Then, suddenly, he struck a fist against his own chest and collapsed backward.