A thunderous roar suddenly rose up from behind them, shaking heaven and earth, startling birds and beasts into panicked flight—within moments, the sky was thick with fleeing birds, blotting out the sun.
Jun Beiyue and Ziqing exchanged a single glance, both filled with alarm. Jun Beiyue, without wasting words, immediately pulled her tight against him and leapt skyward!
But he was already wounded, and the sheer, straight walls of the ravine on both sides offered nowhere to gain leverage to keep climbing.
Jun Beiyue simply couldn’t get high enough in the air—within moments, the flash flood came roaring in, and that thundering wall of water, rivaling even an ocean tide, slammed Jun Beiyue and Ziqing down brutally in an instant!
The great wave surged forward in a single unstoppable torrent, roaring on like a herd of startled wild horses bursting out of the valley, unstoppable—and within the churning floodwaters, all trace of the two of them vanished at once…
A long while later, after the flash flood had passed, the scene was one of utter devastation, the water level in the riverbed rising up to neck height. There, beside a massive boulder beneath the murky floodwaters, Ziqing was held tightly trapped between the rock and Jun Beiyue’s arms, her face buried against his neck as she held her breath, his own face buried against her neck in turn.
In that roaring, rushing flood, had it not been for this boulder blocking her, had it not been for this man shielding her from the force of the current, there was no way she could have held her breath this long.
Sensing the surrounding turbulence finally easing, Ziqing lifted her head urgently—only to be horrified to discover that Jun Beiyue hadn’t been holding his breath at all; he had already lost consciousness from drowning, his hands still braced rigidly against the rock on either side of her.
Ziqing, ignoring the pain in her legs entirely, immediately grabbed hold of him and hauled him upward. Fortunately this boulder rose higher than the water’s surface, otherwise—had she needed to drag him all the way to the shore—there was no telling how much time would have been lost that could have meant the difference between life and death.
She pushed Jun Beiyue up onto the rock, then climbed up herself, still relying on the strength of her arms to pull herself up—and the moment she managed it, she collapsed weakly on top of him.
She didn’t dare waste a moment, lying over him, urgently clearing his nose and mouth of water, mud, and debris, then pressing down on his abdomen, forcing the water out of his chest and stomach!
With every motion Ziqing made, water kept spilling from Jun Beiyue’s mouth—yet he still wouldn’t wake.
Ziqing didn’t even notice her own rising panic, pressing down harder still—just how much water had this man swallowed?
Even husband and wife would each look out for themselves when disaster struck, wouldn’t they? And what were the two of them to each other, anyway? Nothing more than a marriage in name—nothing at all, really.
Finally, the water stopped coming up, and still Jun Beiyue didn’t wake.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Ziqing leaned down—mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!
With one hand pinching his high, straight nose and the other pulling his mouth open, calm despite the urgency, she pressed her soft lips down against his in a steady rhythm, breathing air into him.
Ziqing kept at it, up and down, so focused and earnest, her small face deadly serious—she never noticed his eyelashes flutter.
She kept going, drawing another deep breath before leaning down again to cover his mouth—and it was exactly then that Jun Beiyue’s eyes suddenly snapped open, and as if by pure reflex, he pushed her hand away and clamped his mouth shut!
No!
Was he… kissing her!
Ziqing froze completely, utterly unprepared for this, her mind going entirely blank.
And Jun Beiyue seemed just as stunned—what had this woman been doing a moment ago? Stealing a kiss from him?
Their faces were close, no more than a few inches apart.
Every person’s heartbeat begins in the womb, keeping its own particular rhythm all the way until death. It’s said that two people whose heartbeats fall into perfect, identical rhythm are exceedingly rare to find, even among countless millions.
And beneath their chests, pressed together, two hearts were pounding rapidly, thump, thump—and their rhythms, it turned out, matched exactly.
Suddenly, Jun Beiyue shoved Ziqing away with tremendous force, so hard she nearly toppled straight into the river.
He felt something rising in his throat, but the moment he shoved her away and it was gone, he couldn’t sense it anymore—he simply let out a single “hah,” not even so much as a cough.
He frowned, looking over at Ziqing, only to be met at once with her gaze, cold and nearly devoid of any feeling. What was wrong with this woman?
That hadn’t seemed like a kiss a moment ago.
“What were you just doing?” he asked flatly.
Ziqing gave a cold snort. “Don’t misunderstand. You were drowning—I was only giving you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?” Jun Beiyue didn’t understand.
“It’s something like channeling breath, except not underwater, no need to…” Ziqing steeled herself and pressed on anyway—she had nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, after all. “You don’t need to press your mouth so tightly against mine.”
That shove of his a moment ago had been forceful indeed! As if he found something disgusting, as if he were afraid of something, desperate to push her away!
In this supposedly enlightened modern age, everyone still carried a deep-rooted obsession with chastity, herself included—let alone in this ancient era, which prized virtue above all else.
She understood perfectly well that he would care about her purity; she’d never intended to be a true wife to him either, harboring no expectations of any kind when it came to feelings. And yet, when he had shoved her away like that, she found, to her own surprise, that it actually hurt.
Only then did Jun Beiyue understand, giving a flat “oh”—it seemed he’d taken advantage of her without even realizing what was happening.
Seeing how deadly serious Ziqing looked, Jun Beiyue had originally thought to tease her a little about it, but time didn’t allow for it—once he got back to the capital and rooted out the spy, there would be plenty of time to settle old scores with her properly, starting from that whole matter of “unmatched beauty.”
The river had risen high, the current running swift. Jun Beiyue said nothing further, finding a fallen tree trunk that had washed ashore and hastily fashioning it into a makeshift raft, pushing it over to the rock, ready to come carry Ziqing onto it.
But Ziqing refused, saying flatly, “Don’t come over. I can manage on my own.”
With that, her small face set with pure stubbornness, betraying not a hint of pain, she forced herself up and climbed onto the little raft unassisted. Jun Beiyue sensed something wasn’t quite right, but when it came to women, he genuinely lacked the insight to read between the lines.
The little raft sped down the swift current, Jun Beiyue steering with careful concentration, with no time to spare for conversation with Ziqing. Ziqing sat far off at the stern, watching his figure in silence, her face utterly expressionless…
Even as Jun Beiyue and Ziqing made their way back toward the capital, the capital itself had already fallen into chaos.
The night of the autumn hunt, the moment Emperor Tianhui fled back to the temporary palace, he received urgent military reports at once—Western Jing’s great general, Dugu Xianyun, was personally leading a hundred thousand troops bearing down on the western border. General Ouyang’s officers had immediately sealed off every pass along the western frontier and were urgently requesting reinforcements.
By the time the sun was already high in the sky, the morning court session at the Xuanwu Hall still hadn’t concluded.
“Your Majesty, Western Jing has a mere fifty thousand troops—should war break out, their defeat is all but certain. This old subject requests that Prince Yao’s military authority be temporarily withdrawn—”
Before General Ouyang could even finish, Prime Minister Han immediately cut in, displeased. “Why must General Ouyang so undermine our own morale while boosting the enemy’s? The battle hasn’t even begun, and already you’re sapping our fighting spirit! Is this truly the extent of your ability as a general?”