“…Tang Rong will lead the scout camp to enter Hukui Mountain first, avoiding the sentry posts at Xieyang Valley, reaching behind Luoyang Town via the narrow mountain path at Yingzui Cliff, and lying in ambush in the valley. When the front army engages, use red smoke as the signal to attack Luoyang Town from behind, making the Qi army fight on two fronts and unable to attend to both…”
Before the sand table, Xie Queshan was explaining military formations and deployment strategies. Impeccably dressed and serious, Nanyi forced herself to focus, but listening to his voice, her mind kept wandering.
Xie Queshan swept his gaze over everyone in the scout camp, happening to meet Nanyi’s inadvertently drifting eyes. He paused nonchalantly for a moment.
“During the surprise attack, remember not to engage in direct combat. Use multiple-point encirclement. When the Qi army turns around, you retreat. When they relax their vigilance, continue attacking. Repeat this pattern, and the enemy will surely tire.”
Tang Rong pondered for a moment, somewhat uncertain: “This mission in the mountains will take at least five or six days, possibly over ten days. Will the entire camp deploy?”
What Tang Rong was really asking about was Nanyi—he wasn’t sure if Xie Queshan wanted Nanyi to accompany the mission. Although the scout camp consisted entirely of familiar Yucheng Army soldiers, and they had developed good coordination during recent cooperation, Nanyi was after all a woman, and would inevitably have differences in physical strength and living conditions compared to the others.
Nanyi also detected Tang Rong’s hesitation, feeling somewhat indignant. Mountain survival—that was her greatest expertise.
“Yes, full camp deployment. Everyone must complete this mission together.” Xie Queshan didn’t look at Nanyi, answering Tang Rong firmly.
Nanyi immediately straightened her back.
“This subordinate accepts orders!” Tang Rong clasped his fists in response.
Tang Rong led the scout camp members to depart immediately. Nanyi hadn’t expected it to be so urgent—there wasn’t even time for a private farewell.
When leaving the tent, she walked at the rear and exchanged a glance with Xie Queshan.
He smiled at her gently, filled with trust and affection. His confidence should have made her feel reassured, but she felt as if she’d forgotten something and couldn’t help looking back. He sat alone in the tent with the same smile—he seemed very happy, but how could someone as cautious as him be so composed before victory?
This thought flashed through Nanyi’s mind. She suddenly wanted to turn back and grab his hand regardless of everything, yet felt herself absurd—what was wrong with letting him be happy? Finally being able to hold his head high, winning would silence those people’s mouths—wasn’t this worth celebrating? The tent flap fell the moment she hesitated, and she could no longer see him.
Nanyi caught up with the scout camp. At this moment she was a soldier who had received military orders—she shouldn’t have these distracting thoughts.
They soon began a new trek, spending several days and nights crossing through untrodden thorny areas of Hukui Mountain, climbing treacherous rock faces, all to bypass the blockade and reach behind enemy lines.
Every step they took brought them closer to victory.
This was Nanyi’s belief every time she was utterly exhausted.
Jinling.
Only when the palace gates were about to lock did Qiu Jie’er emerge from the palace. For some reason, Princess Imperial Xu Kouyue had been frequently summoning her to the palace as company lately. Probably because she owed the Xie family so much from Li Du Mansion, and her family was the only Xie clan relatives in Jinling, the Princess Imperial showed her special favor.
They mostly chatted about trivial romantic matters, occasionally interspersed with Qiu Jie’er inquiring about battle conditions at the front. And Xu Kouyue seemed to have hidden meanings, casually asking about Qiu Jie’er’s father Xie Zhu—what he’d been busy with recently, whom he’d been meeting.
On the surface it sounded like casual family small talk, but Qiu Jie’er had been feeling uneasy lately, so these words struck home.
She perceived that the Princess Imperial seemed not to trust her father.
Could this also be His Majesty’s intention?
The carriage carried her rumbling through Jinling’s crisscrossing streets back home as dusk gradually fell.
Passing through the front courtyard, she discovered her father was hosting guests at Yaohua Garden tonight. Her father was now highly respected and virtuous in Jinling—their home had long been bustling with visitors coming and going endlessly, even with people occasionally coming to propose marriage to her. Hosting banquets at home had become commonplace.
But what struck Qiu Jie’er as strange was that tonight many household guards were standing watch outside Yaohua Garden.
Her suspicions accumulated drop by drop from a small shallow pool into a raging flood.
Family thieves are hard to guard against—once she set her mind to it, approaching Yaohua Garden wasn’t difficult for Qiu Jie’er. Her steps moved as if possessed toward the densely shaded area. This was in the inner courtyard with no patrols, and it could conceal her form. Through the carved openwork windows, she could see the night banquet scene in the garden.
Xie Zhu sat in the host’s position, with seven men of various ages seated below. Judging by their clothing and bearing, they were probably all palace nobles. Qiu Jie’er recognized two of them as former Jiangnan court officials who frequently visited their home; the rest were unfamiliar faces.
Qiu Jie’er’s heart leaped to her throat. Though this was her own home, the act of eavesdropping made her already timid legs go weak. She hadn’t noticed anything suspicious yet but was already on the verge of mental collapse, wanting to turn and leave, when suddenly a sentence struck her ears like thunder.
“We calculated everything except that Master Xie’s nephew was hiding so deeply. We thought he was also one of us—all that important intelligence flowed into his hands for nothing, all delivered to the Bingzhu Division as ammunition!”
Qiu Jie’er’s feet suddenly rooted to the spot.
“Although Li Du Mansion suffered a great defeat and General Wanyan fell, fortunately Princess Imperial turned the tide brilliantly, cleverly using Xie Queshan’s identity as leverage. In the current situation, as long as he remains in Li Du Mansion for even one day, the court cannot possibly send troops. But if he leaves, the siege defense will inevitably fail. Li Du Mansion is already in the bag!”
“To gain the upper hand now, Master Daman also deserves great credit. Without your mediation in Jinling, how could we have so quickly removed the foundation and reversed the situation?” That person raised his cup from afar to toast Xie Zhu.
“But I heard Imperial Consort Zhang went to Li Du Mansion—His Majesty wouldn’t still have some strategy to turn the tide, would he?” The speaker had a shrill voice, sitting to Xie Zhu’s left, probably a high-ranking eunuch from the palace.
Xie Zhu’s eyes darkened as he raised his cup to those two men: “How many people from my Xie family have died serving him one after another? If he could be supported, I and all you gentlemen wouldn’t be sitting here tonight.”
Qiu Jie’er leaned against the wall, struggling to keep herself steady. Every word she heard was shattering her understanding.
Yet she had never thought so clearly and rapidly as at this moment. Many past fragments suddenly assembled themselves in an orderly fashion.
In the twenty-first year of Yongkang, her father, serving as an official at court, strongly advocated war and promoted new policies but suffered setbacks, being demoted home. In public, to maintain some dignity, he remained the unperturbed great scholar Master Xie, but privately he drank heavily daily, and when drunk would treasonously curse the court—with such a ruler, the dynasty was doomed.
It took several years for her father to accept the situation, serving as supervisor in that small Shipping Bureau, engaging in empty talk about aspirations with those Imperial Academy students, accomplishing nothing. In Qiu Jie’er’s eyes, her father was frustrated and unrecognized, with a persistent dejection beneath his calm expression, yet he also had integrity, unwilling to curry favor with the powerful or compromise his ideals.
Until the twenty-eighth year of Yongkang, three months before Bianjing fell, her father went on official business for Shipping Bureau affairs. When he returned, that air of dejection that had lasted several years was completely swept away.
At the time she had felt somewhat relieved, thinking her father had finally found some life’s joy in the Shipping Bureau, able to cast aside his brooding melancholy and look forward. Thinking back now, perhaps it was then that he reached some understanding with Great Qi.
After that, accidentally glimpsing her father’s secret conversation with Wanyan Puruò in Jinling’s ancient temple, the night Secretariat Director Shen Zhizhong died when her father unusually didn’t return home…
All of this pointed to one possibility.
Qiu Jie’er finally understood that after Sixth Cousin’s death, when her father said “useless thing,” he was cursing His Majesty.
He wanted a stronger sovereign.
Qiu Jie’er quickly turned and ran away. All of Jinling’s night wind seemed to pour into her body, trying to pierce through her, to send her into deeper darkness. Ahead was the River of Forgetfulness—one bowl of Mengpo soup, one sip, and she could forget everything seen and heard, returning to the former carefree, colorful beautiful dream.
But she couldn’t forget.
She had to firmly remember every person’s face, every detail of the banquet, and do something with her meager abilities. She returned to her room, spread out painting paper, ground ink as quickly as possible, grabbed her brush and began painting.
By noon the next day, a lifelike night banquet painting was complete. She didn’t dare wait a moment, immediately taking the painting to the palace to see Princess Imperial Xu Kouyue.
Just as she stood at the palace gate waiting for the eunuch to enter and announce her, a swift horse carrying urgent documents for Li Du Mansion, still carrying the not-yet-dried ink scent from His Majesty’s presence, swept past her side.
History was brushing past in a coincidental manner.
Nanyi under the tree shade suddenly jolted awake, her heavy heartbeat almost nailing her limbs to the ground.
After several days of trekking they had reached the hill behind Luoyang Town, waiting only for the agreed signal to rise before they could surprise attack Luoyang Town, sandwiching the Qi soldiers between themselves and reinforcements. For now all they could do was wait and rest. Taking advantage of a shift change interval, Nanyi had dozed briefly under the tree.
But in just this drowsy while, she seemed to have experienced sleep paralysis. She was conscious, knowing she was in the crisis-filled mountains, knowing she was sleeping, wanting to wake up but unable to move her entire body. Then she actually saw Xie Queshan walking toward her.
He said, get up quickly, we’re going to fight.
She wanted to speak but couldn’t open her mouth. Xie Queshan didn’t wait for her and had already turned to leave. She was extremely anxious—wait for me!
She felt trapped in dense, invisible mud—the more she struggled, the deeper she sank. Suddenly her heart gave a real sharp pain, and only then did she wake up, drenched in cold sweat.
The surroundings were still quiet mountain ridges, making the cicada cries seem even more piercing. Scout camp soldiers rested in small groups, with still no news from the front lines.
Nanyi inexplicably remembered another trivial detail. She vaguely recalled that after their stolen pleasure in the tent that night, he had said something in her ear, but she was too drowsy then and hadn’t even processed the words in her mind.
What exactly had he said?
This should have been something not worth pursuing—what meaning could words in such circumstances have? But ever since they’d traveled farther from Li Du Mansion over mountains and ridges, small strange unease had grown in her mind day and night.
Perhaps it came from that sudden lovemaking—he seemed to forget his pain too quickly, carelessly unlike himself at all.
Half-remembered things are most torturous. Her heart began to drum as she pondered hard while pacing to the cliff edge, wanting the mountain wind to blow her clear.
The signal hadn’t come—could he have deceived her again somewhere? The reinforcements weren’t coming, were they?
He sent her away—could it be because Li Du Mansion was about to fall?
Once this discouraging thought emerged, Nanyi felt even the ground beneath her feet becoming insubstantial. Each step seemed about to plunge into an abyss. She didn’t want to believe this possibility, looking anxiously into the distance with worry.
Then Nanyi’s entire body shook.
From the lush forest in the distant valley, towering red smoke was rising!
“Red smoke!” She nearly screamed.
They’d waited for it, waited for it—that was the battle signal, reinforcements had arrived! He hadn’t deceived her!