All the ladies’ maids had their ears tilted, listening to General Li’s negotiation with Grand National Preceptor Abazha.

They had learned the frontier tongue on the road. But no one in Zhaoxia Palace lacked for cleverness — they had set out in the ninth month, and it was now early in the twelfth month, three months of travel along the way. Most of the young women had already reached the point where they could communicate the basics with gestures and halting words. A few, two or three of the quickest learners, could roughly make out what General Li and Grand National Preceptor Abazha were saying.

General Li spoke the frontier tongue as fluently as the princess. When he spoke, his tone was sharp and pressing, his hand never leaving the hilt of his sword — even those ladies’ maids felt the tent weigh heavy with a suffocating force.

Abazha, of course, felt it all the more keenly. And the misfortune for him was that he was clearly in the wrong.

Who could have guessed that the Khan, having drunk too much, would want to go sleep with that flower of a princess? Word among his followers was that the Khan had specifically brought two wives and many female slaves with him on this journey.

Sigh. The blame lay entirely with the Zhao princess for being too beautiful.

The ladies’ maids caught many half-understood words, and roughly piecing them together, it seemed that General Li believed the Khanate had failed to uphold the agreement made with Da Zhao. He was extremely displeased, and had decided to take the princess back home.

At hearing this, how the ladies’ maids wished with all their hearts that what General Li said was true! But even they understood — this was nothing more than an opening move, a gambit in the bargaining to come.

The ladies’ maids sighed.

In the end, General Li pressed and cornered until that Grand National Preceptor raised his hand and swore a long oath before some deity of theirs.

This was most likely the result General Li had intended to achieve — because after this, he nodded.

But the princess, and all of them… returning home was still impossible.

The ladies’ maids lowered their heads. Their eyes turned red.

Once the Grand National Preceptor had left with a thoroughly sour expression, Li Gu turned and walked once more to stand before the curtain of the inner chamber, calling carefully, “Your Highness?”

“I’m here.” Xie Yuzhang’s voice came from inside. She seemed to have calmed somewhat. She said, “I heard it all. He is the Grand Shaman. Now that he has sworn before the ancestral gods, he must abide by it. Even the Khan would not dare lightly violate an oath made to the ancestral gods.”

Xie Yuzhang’s depth of understanding of the Khanate’s customs left Li Gu briefly silent.

“Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow, when the Khan’s drink has cleared, he will have the Khan swear the same oath before the ancestral gods as well.”

From inside, Xie Yuzhang said, “Then for these three years, I may rest easy.”

Li Gu hesitated for a moment.

“In matters like this… men cannot be relied upon.” He said it at last. “Your Highness must remain vigilant at all times. Not only the Khan — others as well. The frontier peoples have always been without the customs of propriety. Their notions of proper relations are vastly different from ours.”

In Da Zhao, a widow remarrying was not prohibited — but what was absolutely not included was a son inheriting a father’s wife upon the father’s death, or brothers taking each other’s widowed wives. To people of Da Zhao, that was a complete violation of the natural order of human relations.

This, Xie Yuzhang knew. But… men cannot be relied upon in matters like this?

That night, the moonlight was so beautiful, and she had even taken the initiative to kiss him — yet he had done nothing at all.

Xie Yuzhang gazed at the shadow on the curtain.

To be able to say such things, he must understand quite clearly what it was like for men — what desires men carried. It meant that he too, as a man, harbored such desires.

So that young Li Gu on the other side of this curtain — as a man, in that snowy night, how much willpower had he used to restrain himself?

And why?

For a moment, Xie Yuzhang found herself lost in thought.

Li Gu walked out of Xie Yuzhang’s tent. Wang Shitou and his men stood huddled outside, not one of them daring to raise his head.

“All of you,” Li Gu said, “guard the princess well. Without the princess’s permission, no one is to be allowed into this tent.”

His tone was very calm, but beneath that calm was a tempest held in check. Everyone bowed their heads and answered, “Yes, sir!”

Wang Shitou’s head was bowed especially low — he did not dare to look up at all.

He had barely finished answering when Li Gu’s hand came down on his shoulder. Wang Shitou felt instantly as though half his body had gained the weight of a thousand pounds. That great force gripped him and dragged him outward, and he could do absolutely nothing to resist it.

Qian Fugui watched with wide eyes as Wang Shitou was dragged away by Li Gu in silent, wordless manner — like someone hauling along a dead dog — and did not dare to say a single word.

Wang Shitou dared even less to make a sound. With his neck bent sideways, he let himself be dragged along without protest. The entire way, between two grown men, there was no sound at all save for the crunch of boots on the packed snow underfoot.

Fortunately, the banquet had long since ended, and most people had returned to the warmth of their tents. Outside, there were only a few patrolling frontier soldiers. They caught sight of these two figures moving strangely, glanced once, and looked away. What went on between Zhao people and Zhao people was none of their business.

Li Gu dragged Wang Shitou the full length of the great Khan’s encampment, then out beyond the bridal procession’s own area of encampment, and further still — several dozen more feet — until they reached the Flying Tiger Army’s position.

In the open stretch of ground between, there was no one at all. Li Gu hurled Wang Shitou hard into the snow, came down on top of him, and proceeded to beat him thoroughly and without mercy from start to finish!

Wang Shitou was more than ten years older than Li Gu. Yet all along this journey, Li Gu had taken Xie Yuzhang’s commission to heart, giving Wang Shitou everything he knew without reserve, teaching him relentlessly by sheer force — and though they held no formal title of master and student, the reality of that relationship had long since taken root.

And yet this useless thing was what all that teaching had produced!

Li Gu was consumed with fury!

Those fists showed not a shred of mercy. And yet even at the worst of the pain, Wang Shitou did not dare utter a single sound — only curled his body in on itself, arms wrapped around his head, protecting his vital points.

What had he expected? One beating was getting off lightly. When the Khan had left earlier and the general had looked at him — that look had been ready to flay him on the spot!

Why Li Gu was this furious — Wang Shitou understood perfectly: the general was in love with the princess. That, everyone had long since quietly murmured about among themselves.

Even though the general always kept a stern face that made people afraid just to look at him — he was still a young man. No matter how deep one’s natural reserve, it crumbled in an instant in the presence of the woman one admired.

Every time the princess appeared, the general’s gaze was impossible to pull away. Even the tone in which he spoke to the princess was so gentle — as though he feared the slightest startle or fright.

Everyone had seen it. Probably only the general himself had not noticed — still thinking he was concealing it well.

“Who are you!” Li Gu, in the grip of his fury and rage, wrenched Wang Shitou up and bellowed in his face. Without waiting for an answer, he sent him back down with another punch, and told him, “You are the princess’s guard!”

“Do you know what you are here for? How to do it properly!” His eyes were full of fire, his chest rising and falling. Li Gu rarely let his emotions show so plainly on his face, but what had happened tonight had shaken him to the core. And the more it shook him, the deeper his fury and rage became!

“What did I say to you from the beginning? Tell me — what did I say!” He drove in one more kick. Wang Shitou rolled two full turns in the snow before coming to a stop, and spat blood.

You are the princess’s guard. Your duty is to guard Princess Baohua. When anything or anyone comes into conflict with that duty, you can only choose the princess. Do you understand?

At the time, the general had said those words with patient, earnest care. He had said “anything” and “anyone.”

At the time, Wang Shitou had not really understood what was meant by “anyone.”

Wang Shitou pressed a hand to his chest, enduring the burning pain, his mind — ordinarily not the sharpest — suddenly blazing clear, as if a torrent of light had broken through.

So that was it. So that was it!

So the princess and the general had been of one mind all along!

So what they had been guarding against, through every precaution — was the aged Khan!

But he was the princess’s husband! He was, by every law and human feeling, a man the princess could not defy!

And so the general could only drop veiled hints, and the princess could only speak in circles. Neither of them could say it plainly: protect a wife from her husband.

That wasn’t something that made sense anywhere. Back in their village, when a man beat his wife, the neighbors could at most try to talk them down, to step in and stop it — but once that man shut his door and kept beating her, no one could do a thing. Because they were husband and wife.

So the general and the princess had both been counting on him to work it out himself — and his thick skull hadn’t managed it! One word from Ma Jianye and he had wavered, nearly bringing about a catastrophe!

Wang Shitou was slow, but he was not stupid. And besides — three cobblers put together can rival the wisdom of Zhuge Liang. Xie Yuzhang had singled him out, promoted and guided him, sought out someone as formidable as Li Gu to train him — all those incidents along the road, he and Li A’da, Qian Fugui, and the other brothers had turned over again and again in their minds, and in truth they had been drawing ever closer to the truth.

The princess — the princess meant to use him to replace Ma Jianye!

But today, he had let her down!

Cold sweat broke out on Wang Shitou’s forehead. The color drained from his face. That mouthful of blood he had spat fell into the snow, red spots against white, and it was enough to bring some measure of calm back through Li Gu’s storm of fury.

He clenched his fist, crouched down, grabbed Wang Shitou by the collar and hauled him up, and asked in a voice tight with anger, “Do you know where you went wrong?”

“I — I do.” Wang Shitou wiped the blood from his lip with his arm, gasping. “I… I should not have disobeyed the princess.”

Li Gu was taken aback. He asked, “What did the princess say?”

Wang Shitou said, “It was — today, in the daytime, the princess called me to…”

He told Li Gu what had happened: Xie Yuzhang calling him over in the afternoon and giving him her instructions. Li Gu’s expression grew serious and grave. He pressed him again and again, forcing him to go back over it all, until Wang Shitou slowly recalled every detail — every word Xie Yuzhang had said — and recounted it in full.

Li Gu felt as though his chest had grown so heavy he could not breathe.

She… she was a young girl of this age — and she had already anticipated, long in advance, what might come to pass, and had already made arrangements for herself!

And the person she had entrusted it to had failed her utterly!

Of course. She had no one truly capable at her disposal. The princess’s guard had been drafted from the capital garrison — Yunjing hadn’t seen real blood in eight generations. The central army was corrupt and rotten to its core, utterly fallen apart. What competent warriors could be found among them?

Otherwise, why would she have placed such high hopes on someone as ordinary as Wang Shitou?

Li Gu’s hand, gripping Wang Shitou’s collar, hauled upward again slightly. Wang Shitou genuinely wondered whether that small, almost imperceptible motion was the prelude to Li Gu snapping his neck, and that the only thing that had stopped him from completing it was — he let go.

“Get up.” Li Gu rose to his feet. In this brief interval, he had already fully regained his composure.

Ma Jianye was even more useless. He could see it plainly — when it mattered, Wang Shitou had at least tried to step in. It was Ma Jianye who had stopped him.

Without Wang Shitou, Xie Yuzhang would have no one of any use at all.

Wang Shitou shakily got to his feet.

Li Gu’s sword rang out of its scabbard in one clear note. The blade caught the moonlight on snow, giving off a chill, cold radiance.

Wang Shitou’s back went cold. He thought his life was about to end here tonight.

But Li Gu did not kill him.

“Wang Shitou,” he said. “This is my sword.”

“When I was eleven years old, I enlisted. Being tall for my age, I lied and told them I was already fourteen. The very year I enlisted, I followed the unit into battle against the Mobei people. I killed someone.”

“I have been killing since I was eleven years old. To this day, I no longer remember the exact number.”

“But any man I, Li Fuchen, have set my mind to kill — to the ends of the earth, he will become a soul beneath my blade.”

“Wang Shitou, I am giving you one more chance.”

“For the rest of your life, you are Princess Baohua’s guard. In your entire life, you need do only one thing well — protect her.”

“I once told you that when anything or anyone comes into conflict with this duty, you can only choose the princess. That ‘anyone’ refers to every person other than the princess herself.”

“Including her husband, her ladies’ maids, her trusted retainers — every person other than herself.”

“Do you understand?”

Wang Shitou, his face drained of color, nodded.

Li Gu said with a quiet severity that chilled the air, “I am stationed in Hexi. I once rode three hundred miles across the steppe in a single campaign — reaching the royal tent is only a matter of days. If she suffers any harm and word reaches me — that will be the day of your death.”

Wang Shitou had spent the past month or more mingling with the Flying Tiger Army, and had heard far too many of the iron-blooded legends surrounding Li Gu. He knew clearly that when Li Gu said he would see a man dead, it was not an empty threat.

Wang Shitou nodded emphatically again and swore: “If that day ever comes — I won’t wait for the general to arrive. I’ll cut my own throat first!”

Li Gu stared at him for a long moment, then returned the sword to its scabbard.

“Your name is poorly chosen,” he said. “Your head is like a stone. I’ll give you a new name.”

“In this life, you are loyal to her alone, and to her protection alone.”

“I give you the character ‘Zhong’ — loyalty. From now on, you will be called Wang Zhong.”

Wang Shitou said, “Good. From this day forward, I am Wang Zhong.”

Previous Life —

“Previous Life: Li Gu”

There is one regret that has never left me.

In those days, I was right there — and yet that slight young woman was still subjected to that violence while I was present. By the time I knew of it, there was no longer anything to be done.

This matter weighed upon my heart for many years, impossible to release.

Many years later, when we met again, she was already someone utterly different from the one I had first known.

I never allowed myself to dwell on the suffering she had endured that night.

But I told myself: for the rest of my life, I would never force her.

As long as I, Li Gu, live — no one will ever force her again.

If she is unwilling, then I — I will let go.

I was wrong.

I should have kept her at my side by any means necessary, and tended to her with care, and watched over her gently.

Perhaps then she would not have left so early.