When a voice from inside called out “Ready,” Xiao Li finally reined in all his emotions and lifted the vines to enter the cave.

Wen Yu sat by the fire, her body wrapped tightly in that felt cloak, with only her long hair—wet and clumped into strands—hanging outside the cloak.

The clothes she had changed out of were neatly folded to one side.

Xiao Li picked up the dried vines, shook them out to remove the leaf debris and dust, and spread them out again before saying to Wen Yu, “Leaning against the stone wall is cold. Make do with sleeping on these withered vines for the night, and we’ll look for a way out tomorrow.”

Wen Yu murmured a soft acknowledgment. She already felt somewhat lightheaded and heavy, with her head throbbing intermittently. She understood in her heart that her cold had likely worsened.

When she walked over to lie down, Xiao Li noticed her listless expression and general lack of spirit, and guessed it was probably due to the cold. He asked her, “Did you drink the medicine in the pot?”

Wen Yu nodded slightly and said, “There’s still plenty left. Your injuries are severe, and you were drenched in rain all night. You should drink some too, to prevent the cold from entering your body.”

The medicine in the copper pot had been brewed in a dosage for two servings. Her body felt weak, and her stomach was churning quite badly. After changing out of her wet clothes, she had only forced herself to drink a small portion despite the pungent medicinal smell, afraid that drinking more would make her vomit it back up, wasting the medicine. She also needed to leave some for Xiao Li, so she hadn’t drunk any more. At this moment, she just wanted to curl up and sleep for a while.

Xiao Li said, “You sleep. I know what I’m doing.”

Wen Yu felt severely dizzy and uncomfortable all over. As she wrapped herself in the cloak and weakly closed her eyes, she only said, “Just help me roast my outer garment until it’s half-dry. The other clothes are thin and light—they should be dry by tomorrow.”

Xiao Li agreed. When adding wood to the fire, he moved the fire pit slightly closer to where Wen Yu was lying.

Fortunately, being close to the south, the nighttime weather here wasn’t as bitterly cold as the north. With the fire roasting, they could make do for one night.

He picked up the medicine pot and immediately felt it was quite heavy, guessing that Wen Yu definitely hadn’t drunk much.

They were trapped in these mountains, and the pursuing soldiers would certainly seal off the mountain to search. If they ran out of medicine later and her cold worsened, it would only become more troublesome.

He placed the medicine pot by the fire pit, warming it at a short distance for Wen Yu, keeping it ready for when she woke during the night to drink.

Noticing that Wen Yu’s hair was still wet, but having no dry clothes left to wipe her hair with, he picked up her neatly folded outer garment to roast it dry for her. However, the dress was covered in bloodstains and reeked heavily of blood. The clothes she had folded separately also had bloodstains on them, so he thought to take them outside to the spring to wash them all together.

When he picked up that stack of clothes, the carp wood carving that had been placed inside fell out and landed on the ground with a soft sound.

Under the effects of the cold medicine, Wen Yu seemed to have fallen into deep sleep and wasn’t awakened by this slight noise.

Xiao Li picked up the wood carving and ran his hand over it. When he raised his eyes to look at Wen Yu lying with her back turned toward the inside, his ink-black eyes in the firelight held too many inexpressible emotions.

In the end, he gently and carefully placed the wood carving back and took Wen Yu’s changed clothes outside.

The sky was too dark, and Xiao Li couldn’t see things clearly. When scrubbing the clothes at the spring’s water flow, a piece of fabric that had been folded inside the clothes fell out. At first, he didn’t understand what it was and thought it was Wen Yu’s handkerchief. But after rubbing it twice, he discovered it was much larger than a handkerchief, and the material wasn’t the silk gauze commonly used for handkerchiefs either—it was more like silk cloth, extremely smooth to the touch, with ties at the corners.

In a flash of realization, he seemed to understand what it was. His entire body froze, and he didn’t dare continue scrubbing it so directly. After a moment’s hesitation, he wrapped that soft, silky piece of fabric in Wen Yu’s outer garment and carefully washed it.

After wringing it dry and bringing it back to roast by the fire pit, he didn’t dare roast that piece of fabric directly either. He still folded it inside Wen Yu’s outer garment to roast together.

The sound of rain in the second half of the night didn’t stop. Outside the cave, one could even hear the dripping sound of rainwater falling from the vine leaves.

Xiao Li didn’t know if he had been dazed by tonight’s bloodshed, but while roasting the clothes, he felt his head becoming somewhat heavy. Finally, he forced himself to roast Wen Yu’s clothes dry. When he got up to fold and put them back, he felt even more dizzy.

He shook his head lightly and, supporting himself against the stone wall, sat down on the other side of the fire pit, leaning back against the cave wall and closing his eyes in light sleep.

The firewood in the fire pit burned out amid the pattering rain outside the cave. When the firelight extinguished, the cave interior fell back into complete darkness.

At daybreak, Wen Yu was awakened by the chirping of birds outside the cave.

She had drunk the medicine and, wrapped in the cloak under the fire’s roasting, had sweated profusely. When she woke from this sleep, she felt much better, though her throat was still terribly hoarse.

The morning light streaming through the gaps in the vines at the cave entrance illuminated the inside. Looking at the person sleeping against the stone wall not far away, she softly called out “Xiao Li,” but that person who usually slept lightly didn’t respond to her.

Hearing his obviously abnormal heavy breathing, Wen Yu immediately felt something was wrong. Supporting herself on the withered vines beneath her, she got up, walked to him, and gently shook his shoulder: “Xiao Li?”

Xiao Li still didn’t respond. His breathing was labored, and his face was flushed bright red.

Wen Yu raised her hand to feel his forehead. The moment she touched it, she felt it was scalding hot, and even his exhaled breath was burning.

“How could this happen…”

Wen Yu hurriedly reached for the medicine pot. Picking it up, she found its weight hadn’t decreased at all, and she knew that Xiao Li definitely hadn’t drunk any last night.

Looking at the person burning with fever and unconscious, she felt half heartbroken and half annoyed, saying hoarsely, “Why wouldn’t you listen?”

The stone wall was quite cold. Wen Yu worried that Xiao Li had absorbed too much cold from sleeping here all night. She struggled to lift one of his arms, saying, “Don’t lie here anymore. Go sleep on those withered vines over there.”

Unfortunately, Xiao Li was too heavy. She couldn’t move him at all, and his sleeve also carried a sticky dampness.

Wen Yu withdrew her hand. Spreading her five fingers to look, she discovered that what had gotten on her hand was blood.

Her face immediately turned pale as she murmured, “Weren’t the wounds already bandaged?”

As if realizing something, she hurriedly opened Xiao Li’s garment to look, and saw that several of his wounds wrapped in cloth strips had all seeped large patches of blood. Obviously, no medicine had been applied at all—they had only been wrapped with cloth strips.

With such severe injuries, if medicine wasn’t applied and they were only wrapped with cloth strips, the wounds would become inflamed!

Wen Yu stared blankly at the bloodstains covering Xiao Li’s body, a surge of bitter hoarseness rising in her throat. She bit out through clenched teeth, “Liar!”

He simply didn’t have enough medicine to bandage his wounds!

Afraid she would worry, he had deliberately wrapped up the wounds to deceive her!

The urgent matter was to reduce his fever and treat his injuries. Wen Yu forcefully suppressed the bitter feeling churning in her heart, picked up the medicine pot, and, not caring that the medicine was cold, carefully placed the spout to his lips to feed him the medicine.

Unfortunately, Xiao Li’s teeth were clenched tightly shut, and the medicinal liquid all spilled out from the corners of his mouth.

After Wen Yu tried many times with the same result and too much medicinal liquid had spilled, she didn’t dare waste any more. Looking at the person who already had one foot in death’s door, her eyes stinging, she raised her arm and embraced him.

Every scene from this escape journey slowly passed through her mind: the sweat rolling down his temples when he carried her over mountains and ridges to evade pursuers, the wounds he had blocked for her one after another, those eyes that looked at her when he was pressed into the mud and beaten until he coughed up blood continuously…

A scalding tear fell just like that into his collar.

She had already lost too much.

Wen Yu’s gaze gradually solidified amid that endless sorrow as she slowly said, “I already owe you several lives. I won’t die, and you’re not allowed to die either.”

She straightened up, picked up the medicine pot, took a mouthful herself, cupped the young man’s face, and pressed her pale, soft lips against his, prying open his teeth to carefully transfer the medicine to him.

This time at least it didn’t spill out.

It was a matter of life and death. Since this method was effective, she had no time to consider anything else. Following the same method, she continued to feed him medicine.

—

Xiao Li hadn’t dreamed in a very long time. Perhaps it was this night’s slaughter and suppressed emotions that awakened some of his distant memories.

He saw soft fragrant curtains and red silk flying throughout the room.

The girls in the brothel always gathered their silk on one side, wearing light gauze clothes and half-leaning against doorways, eyes full of emotion as they saw off their patrons.

His thin figure knelt on the ground, his hands frozen red, wringing out a cloth that had been soaked in ice water, wiping the footprints left by the coming and going of people on the wooden floor. From those countless doors, whether open or closed, came countless giggles or seemingly crying yet coquettish sobs.

At five or six years old, he still didn’t understand what that was, but he knew he couldn’t listen, couldn’t look.

He kept his head down as much as possible. Toward those sounds, he felt only endless disgust and nausea.

The thugs patrolling the corridor would reveal lewd and filthy smiles when hearing those sounds. And whenever men familiar with his mother came looking, after mother and the other went upstairs, those thugs would look at him with similar expressions—malicious and mocking.

Xiao Li hated everything upstairs.

He would rather scrub the chamber pots that even the old women in the brothel were unwilling to clean than go wipe floors in the girls’ rooms upstairs.

But those thugs always enjoyed tormenting him. When Xiao Huiniang and his godmothers couldn’t watch over him, they would order him upstairs to work.

The cloth for wiping the floor was stepped on by a black boot. The thug whose face couldn’t be seen clearly shoved a tray into his hands, disdainfully yet with the excitement of a prank about to succeed, barking at him, “Little bastard, take this wine to Nichang’s room.”

Xiao Li kept his head down, pulling hard at the cloth being stepped on, his voice cold yet childish: “I won’t go.”

He received a kick, and a ferocious curse drilled into his eardrums: “If you don’t go, should I go? If you offend the customer, just wait and see if the madam doesn’t find a slave trader to sell you! Wanting to rely on that whore mother of yours to eat for free in the brothel—where is there such a good thing?”

His thin body was kicked over backward. Afraid of being sold and never seeing his mother again, he endured the pain and got up, taking the tray handed to him. Under his shortened sleeves, the bruises on his arms overlapped old and new.

Some were from beatings by the madam, some from the thugs tormenting him and making him bump into things. In his memory, he rarely had a time when his skin was intact while at the Drunken Red Brothel.

Knocking on the door, a broken voice from inside told him to enter.

Xiao Li didn’t know what was happening. He pushed open the door, holding the tray with his head down as he walked in. The flying red silk hung all the way to the floor.

He heard the woman behind the curtains cry out briefly as if in great pain. He looked up in panic, and what he saw was the woman’s snow-white arm being folded and pressed onto embroidered bedding. Inside the incompletely closed curtains was half a face, covered in fragrant sweat, whose features couldn’t be seen clearly.

The man behind her, whose face was even more blurred, was like a copulating wild dog.

The tray in his hands was knocked over. He cried out hoarsely too, covering his ears and wanting to flee this place.

But as he backed away, it was as if he had shattered countless mirrors with one step. The cramped room shattered along with them, transforming into an enormous palace. He too changed in this instant from a young child to a young man, and the woman on the bed’s appearance also gradually became clear.

A face beautiful as a lotus flower, but possessing a pair of eyes as cold and clear as the pale moon, her arm folded and pressed as she lay prone on the bed, black hair spread across the pillow, eyes slightly reddened as she looked toward him.

It was Wen Yu.

Xiao Li’s entire body froze.

In that instant, all panic and disgust vanished completely.

A sudden burst of violence tore him apart, ferocity and killing intent howling out from the depths of his heart.

Who?

Who was doing such things to her?

Prince Chen?

Was it that Prince Chen she was going to marry?

Jealous hatred was like a wildfire sweeping across a plain, burning through his internal organs. Black malice surged madly, gripping his entire heart until it went numb.

He stared fixedly at that cold yet gorgeous lotus-like face. Only one voice shrieked in his mind: She’s his!

His entire being seemed to have been split in two. He instinctively advanced toward the bed—he wanted to wring the neck of the person behind her and snatch her back!

As heaven and earth spun, the person pressing Wen Yu’s snow-white arm and pinning her against the headboard suddenly transformed into himself.

Those cold eyes looked at him with unconscious allure and sorrow, as if saying: It already hurts.

His head felt like it was about to explode, throbbing with pain.

Xiao Li somewhat helplessly released the wrist he had pinched red marks into, hastily wanting to retreat, but his entire body felt like it was falling into a sea of fire, the scorching heat nearly splitting his skin and flesh.

He dimly felt that this must be his punishment for having this bizarre and grotesque dream.

He was about to be burned to death.

But at this moment, a soft warmth came to his lips, with a slightly cool liquid passing over—like sweet rain after a long drought.

However, in just a moment, that soft warmth along with the slightly bitter liquid disappeared.

His fingers moved slightly. Still unclear about what was happening, he only instinctively wanted more.

So when that soft warmth covered him again, he rather urgently sought it out, sipping up the slightly bitter sweet rain. Then, faintly, he tasted another flavor from within that soft warmth.

Warm, with a light sweetness, like the bowl of honey water his godmother would make for him when he was sick as a child.

That little bit of sweetness he could only taste when sick—he remembered it for many years.

Each time he drank it, he would cherish it preciously, holding it and slowly sipping in small mouthfuls.

This taste was even more intoxicating than that slightly bitter sweet rain. He rather forcefully sucked and stirred at it, unwilling to easily let that soft warmth leave. As his breathing gradually grew urgent, his lips suddenly felt a sharp pain, and that warm touch finally withdrew completely.

Wen Yu sat back on the ground, struggling to calm her breathing, her lips and tongue faintly numb.

She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, staring blankly at the person still burning with fever and unconscious.

She was trying to save him by transferring medicine to him—what was he doing?

Her chest full of annoyance couldn’t be vented at an unconscious person. The cold medicine had been fed to him, but she still needed to find a way to treat the wounds on his body.

Wen Yu changed into her own dress, planning to go outside to look around and see if there were any usable medicinal herbs nearby.

She had previously seen herb farmers drying medicinal herbs at her uncle’s medicine shop and could recognize quite a few.

While dressing, she discovered that the stack of clothes she had told Xiao Li not to roast wasn’t folded using her original method, and the bloodstains on them had all been washed clean.

Inside… were even her undergarments!

Wen Yu couldn’t help but glance sideways at Xiao Li. Various feelings surged up together, finally transforming into a daze that even she herself couldn’t articulate.

Annoyed?

But during the night, dragging his injured body, he had still washed and dried her clothes for her, and because he had given all the medicine to her, he had fallen ill to this state. She couldn’t feel annoyed.

Wen Yu stared at him for a while. In the end, with complicated feelings, she covered him with the cloak, parted the vines, and walked out of the cave.

—

Dingzhou, Central Military Tent.

After Pei Song finished reading the letter delivered by eagle messenger at eight hundred li express, a cold smile bloomed on his refined and scholarly face. Looking at the eagle messenger, he said in a gentle tone so chilling it made one’s blood run cold, speaking especially slowly, “Tell this general properly—how did the Qian-character death warriors end up with only six remaining, and how exactly did Pei Thirteen die?”

Cold sweat immediately rolled down the forehead of the Gen-character death warrior delivering the message. His body, kneeling on one knee, bowed even lower. After recounting the situation from that day, he said, “Before Captain Thirteen died, he had us report to the master that there seemed to be something wrong with the martial arts used by that former dynasty remnant’s guard, but unfortunately, Captain Thirteen’s injuries were too severe at the time, and he couldn’t finish his dying words.”

Hearing this, Pei Song’s voice became abnormally cold as he stared at the death warrior: “You’re saying that not only is that former dynasty remnant’s guard’s blade technique formidable, but his boxing technique has origins as well?”

The Gen-character death warrior said, “The opponent’s breathing is sustained and long. That five-chi seedling saber he wields is far heavier than ordinary swords and blades. Captain Thirteen had us use wheel battle tactics to surround him, but after several rounds, he still hadn’t reached the point of exhaustion. This subordinate suspects he must have practiced martial arts aided by some internal energy cultivation method to have such physical strength. Captain Thirteen may have discerned something from his boxing technique.”

Pei Song’s fingertips lightly tapped the long desk, cold light suddenly appearing in his eyes: “Transport Thirteen’s corpse back. I want to examine it personally!”