The moment they passed through the Sanmu Pass, the scenery around them changed entirely.

In the distance, the Gobi still stretched without end, but the deeper they moved into the interior, the more lush the vegetation became. Beneath their feet, the ground was no longer hard, parched gravel — it had given way to soft, sandy earth. The air was filled with an intoxicating fragrance, the kind that only fresh trees and flowers can release.

Though no troops were visible anywhere on the surface, the traces of deployed forces were unmistakable. The more Xiao Nanhui observed, the heavier her heart grew. It seemed Xiao Zhun had been right: the battle for Bijiang would very likely be a grueling one.

Yanxi’s western regions had by now been thoroughly absorbed into the ways of the Southern Qiang. The Southern Qiang did not favor building walled cities — instead, they divided their territories by pastoral domains, each domain containing independent settlements. Within each settlement, a matriarch held authority, and power grew through clan ties. Outwardly, the structure looked loose and scattered; inwardly, it was tightly knit and almost impossible to crack.

This was a fortress built of human loyalty — more unyielding than any wall of bronze or iron.

The people who had assassinated the Kang Wang most likely came from one of those settlements. But which one, and what role Bai Shi had played in all of this — everything remained unknown.

The procession finally slowed its pace, and the sky around them had already darkened. Xiao Nanhui estimated they were somewhere around the Hour of the Pig.

The sentries around them grew far denser. Watchtowers rose one after another. Xiao Nanhui did not dare look up to study them closely — she could only use the torchlight from the rider beside her to take in what lay within arm’s reach.

They seemed to be entering a mountain hollow, though there were no true mountains in the Gobi. What surrounded them was more like a massive sandstone formation, and the gates of the Sun estate stood at the foot of this stone mass.

The Sun fellow was, after all, a man of the Lingxi region. Even if he had long since thrown in his lot with Bijiang and the Southern Qiang, in his bones he could never grow accustomed to low, earthen buildings, much less the crude huts of wattle and wood that the local nomadic settlements used. This courtyard was still built in the style of a Lingxi estate — though its ambitions were enormous, modeled after the layout of a royal palace complex, and every part of it betrayed the owner’s extravagant taste.

The lead rider brought his mount to a halt, swung down from the saddle, and began counting the women and goods in the procession.

After the slaughter they had witnessed, the entire wedding party had gone silent as a tomb. When their tears had run dry, the faces of the female attendants were left with nothing but numbness. On top of nearly ten hours of travel, every person moved under a weight of exhaustion impossible to describe. The riders did not even need to put on fearsome expressions — they herded these twenty-odd people like a flock of sheep.

“You — a few of you — follow him over there.”

One of the riders suddenly spoke up, pointing toward the other side. Xiao Nanhui raised her eyes toward the Sun estate’s main gate, which was almost within reach, and could not bring herself to be content with being turned away right at the threshold.

“Hurry up! Stop dawdling!”

The group moved slowly forward. The one lagging at the very back kept glancing over her shoulder toward Tian Weiér on the camel, then seemed to make up her mind and turned and rushed toward her.

“Young mistress, I can’t leave you alone!”

Tian Weiér stiffly looked down to see a maid with a sallow face clinging to the hem of her skirt and refusing to let go — she thought the face looked vaguely familiar.

The rider sharing the camel with her glanced over in disgust and raised his foot to kick her away.

The maid did not dodge. She took the kick squarely, stumbled back a few steps, and then grabbed onto the camel’s tail with both hands.

The camel let out a screech, spun in a circle on the spot, and flung both the rider and Tian Weiér off.

Xiao Nanhui muttered a curse under her breath, gritted her teeth, stepped forward, let Tian Weiér fall onto her, serving as a human cushion, and seized her hand. In a loud voice she said: “Young mistress, have you forgotten? If your falling sickness takes hold and there is no one here who can prepare the medicine, how will your body bear it?”

Tian Weiér stared blankly. Not far away, Wu Xiaoliu clamped his eyes shut and looked as though he were about to faint dead away.

Xiao Nanhui did not dare look at the faces around her. She tightened her grip, held Tian Weiér’s hand firmly, looked her in the eyes, and said slowly and clearly: “Young mistress, Xiaoliu and I came from the Tian estate. We are yours — living, we are your people; dead, we are your ghosts. Please let us stay by your side to look after you.”

The young mistress of the Tian family — who had been moved about like a puppet since the wedding procession began — now finally came back to herself.

Even she was not foolish enough not to understand: the Sun household was no good place to be. The show of force at the Sanmu Pass had been proof enough of that. True, these two in front of her didn’t look particularly capable, but were they not at least people she had brought from her own home? If she waited until she was already deep inside the Sun estate before looking for a way out, she would truly be crying to the sky and the earth with no one to hear her.

“Wasn’t that the one who made a scene earlier? She looks like a troublemaker — barely any time’s passed and she’s at it again. Why not just slaughter her and that fat brother of hers too?”

“Exactly — look how plump she is. She’ll probably eat too much.”

The riders’ ill-intentioned laughter came from behind her. Xiao Nanhui could almost feel the killing intent closing in on her from the rear.

“Soldiers.”

Tian Weiér finally spoke. Her voice was a little weak, but it was clear and melodious, and it stirred, without any particular reason, a flicker of pity in a listener’s heart. Especially the word “soldiers” — it flattered those few riders considerably. They made their living in ways that could not bear scrutiny, and nothing irritated them more than being looked down upon. The word was a rank or two too high for them, but falling on the ears, it was remarkably pleasant.

“Soldiers, I have been sickly since I was small, and these two servants have more or less always been with me. I cannot say they are particularly clever, but they are absolutely loyal and well-behaved. In view of your kindness to a helpless young woman, please let them stay with me.”

Xiao Nanhui watched Tian Weiér’s delicate, yielding manner, and only now realized that the easiest skill in this world to master was telling brazen lies. Under the tutelage of herself and Wu Xiaoliu, Tian Weiér had made truly astonishing progress.

The riders looked to the eagle-nosed man for a decision.

“Kexiang, it’s yours to decide.”

The one called Kexiang — the leader — was noncommittal. He walked slowly toward the three of them, looked over Tian Weiér first, then without warning reached out and seized Xiao Nanhui by the throat.

“Woman, I remember your face. Do not try anything. This is Bijiang. There are more ways to kill a person here than just removing their head.”

Xiao Nanhui was choked so badly she could not breathe. She struggled with every ounce of willpower not to fight back. Finally, he released her.

Between gasping gulps of air, she heard him give the order:

“Let both of them come along.”

The hour was deep into the night. The Sun estate seemed, on the surface, completely still — yet if one listened carefully, one would notice that embedded within this stillness were faint, minute sounds that set the skin crawling.

Tian Weiér’s face drained white in an instant. Xiao Nanhui exhaled quietly.

Those were the muffled, suppressed sobs of a woman. Accompanying them were occasional thuds — heavy objects hitting the ground, blunt impacts — muffled and indistinct, like the wailing of ghosts and the howling of wolves in the depths of hell.

The old nanny who had been leading the way ahead suddenly stopped walking. She turned around slowly, revealing a face utterly devoid of expression.

“The master has accepted several Southern Qiang beauties as companions today. He is currently teaching them to appreciate tea and painting. He has no time to receive you.”

Tian Weiér let out a breath she had clearly been holding, not entirely concealing her relief. The nanny caught it, and the corner of her mouth curved into a cold smile.

“Even so, the young mistress of the Tian family is, by any reckoning, our Sun household’s newly arrived bride. The proper courtesies must still be observed. Since the master is otherwise engaged tonight and cannot complete the rites, you will wait in your wedding clothes. If the master has any instructions, I will send someone to call for you at any time.”

With that, before Tian Weiér could react, she turned a blade-sharp gaze on Xiao Nanhui and Wu Xiaoliu.

“You two — come with me and learn the rules, so you do not embarrass your mistress in the future.”

Wu Xiaoliu’s calves began to tremble. Xiao Nanhui nudged him to the side, stepped quickly up beside the nanny, and in the roughest Suyan dialect imaginable, spoke timidly: “I will follow nanny’s arrangements in all things. But…”

“But what?”

Xiao Nanhui stuck her fingers into her hair and scratched vigorously. A few suspicious black specks came hopping out.

“Water is too precious here in the eastern city — my brother and I haven’t bathed in half a month, and we’re itching something terrible. But if nanny doesn’t mind, we’re still willing to learn the rules first!”

The nanny immediately retreated three steps, revulsion written plainly across her face.

“You filthy creatures, go wash yourselves in the rear courtyard stables before you set foot in this part of the house! If you dirty the master’s eyes after, I’ll flay the skin off your backs!”

Xiao Nanhui nodded and bowed repeatedly. The nanny, fearing she might pick up lice or fleas, made her escape at speed.

The large courtyard fell quiet again, and those faint, elusive sobbing sounds crept back into one’s ears.

A day’s worth of shocks now surged up all at once. Tian Weiér could bear it no longer. Her eyes rolled back and she collapsed in a faint.

After half an hour of bustle, Tian Weiér was finally tidied up and settled down. There was perhaps another hour before dawn.

Xiao Nanhui used the cover of night to go over every accessible corner of the Sun estate, and only then sauntered back to Tian Weiér’s courtyard.

Tian Weiér’s room had no lamp burning. The surroundings were pitch dark.

In the darkness, a rotund silhouette sat hunched on a stone bench in the courtyard — just as Wu Xiaoliu had been sitting when she left half an hour ago.

“Wu Xiaoliu.”

The figure slowly turned to face her, revealing a round face wearing an expression of profound grievance.

“Hey, what is that look on your face? Is that any way to treat the person who saved your life?”

Wu Xiaoliu seemed to come unsealed — he spat furiously: “Ptui! If you hadn’t dragged me into this hellhole, would you even have needed to save me? If I’d known, I’d rather have had you gut me back then than come here and live in terror like this! I’ve got no father and no mother anyway, no one to miss me in this world, so if I died it would at least be clean—”

A waft of sweet, fragrant cake floated into his nostrils, cutting off the aimless outrage. What had a moment ago been a heart bent on death was now completely submerged under the vigorous flood of saliva pooling in his mouth, and his stomach chose that moment to emit a loud, resonant rumble.

Xiao Nanhui raised an eyebrow, entirely unsurprised, and held out the half of a warm, milk-scented cake in her hand.

Wu Xiaoliu’s pride made one last, desperate stand.

“Who — who wants to eat anything you pilfered!”

Xiao Nanhui said nothing. She set the cake on the stone table, found a place to sit down herself, and with practiced calm proceeded to pull from inside her robe a large bundle wrapped in coarse cloth — steamed buns, sweet yams — and last of all, a teapot filled with water.

“Oh? So you’ve made up your mind and chosen the path of starving to death?”

Wu Xiaoliu’s eyes were glued to the cake. In the end, his hand — the chubby one — reached out.

“Go ahead and eat. Even if you’re going to die, you should die on a full stomach. Otherwise you’ll become a hungry ghost — and in your next life you’ll be reborn as a pig.”

Wu Xiaoliu’s cheeks were stuffed full of cake. Perhaps it was the memory of all the hardship they had been through — his eyes were bright with tears he refused to shed, and his stubborn mouth mumbled indistinctly: “You’ve never been reborn. How would you know?”

“I may not have been reborn, but I’ve gone hungry.”

Xiao Nanhui spoke offhandedly, stuffing a steamed bun into her mouth as she talked. Wu Xiaoliu only now noticed that this woman ate even more than he did — she had already put away three buns in the short time he had been looking.

“Going hungry is truly an awful feeling. Sometimes you think dying might actually be easier. But back then I was too young — even if I had wanted to die, I didn’t know how. So the days passed, one by one.”

Wu Xiaoliu ate too fast and let out a belch. “What does that have to do with being reborn as a pig?”

Xiao Nanhui reached for the teapot and poured him a cup of cool tea. “Don’t you know? When a person dies carrying an obsession, that obsession carries over into the next life. Die without enough to eat, and in the next life all you think about is eating enough — everything else gets forgotten. The Buddha sees that and thinks — well, that’s simple enough — and tosses you straight into the realm of animals.”

Wu Xiaoliu drank his fill of water and looked at the woman beside him with faint skepticism. “The way you talk, so plausibly — but you look tall and sturdy and strong as an old tigress. You don’t seem like someone who’s ever gone hungry.”

Xiao Nanhui endured that unpleasant comparison, her temple visibly twitching: “And you, being this well-fed, don’t seem like someone who’s gone hungry either.”

Wu Xiaoliu turned serious. “This is just how I’m built — always been this way. Back when our family counted millet grains to eat, I once snuck some and then refilled the bag with husks to cover it up. When they found out, I was beaten within an inch of my life.”

He wanted to compete in suffering? Xiao Nanhui let out a cold laugh.

“Your family still had millet? We didn’t even have a rice jar. The closest thing to a food container I can remember was the horse trough that the merchants coming into the city used to tie their horses. When the hunger was bad enough, I had to fight the animals for food. Sometimes a wealthy merchant would come through, and his horse’s trough would have oats in it — and I’d be happy for days. Looking back on it now, it’s both funny and pathetic.”

Wu Xiaoliu stared at her for a long moment, then finally gritted his teeth and said:

“You win.”

The courtyard went quiet again, with only the sound of chewing.

A long while later, Xiao Nanhui had finally eaten her fill. She lay flat on the stone table, looked up at the sky, which was just beginning to pale, and abruptly spoke: “Wu Xiaoliu, are you a true native of Suyan?”

Wu Xiaoliu made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a hum — which counted as confirmation.

“Let me ask you — have you ever heard of any assassin organization around here, or any strange and unexplained deaths?”

“How strange?”

Xiao Nanhui tried to find the right words. “This organization — all its members look alike. Well, not exactly alike — more as if they’ve all had their faces disfigured. And they use flying wire to kill.”

This time, Wu Xiaoliu’s side went silent.

She waited a while, heard nothing back, turned her head — and found that the fat man had long since face-planted onto the stone table and begun snoring loudly.

She really had lost her mind, she reflected, letting the winds of Yanxi bewitch her into trying to pry underworld secrets from a household servant-lackey.

She lay there a moment longer, then simply got up and went inside.

There was still a little time before dawn. She decided to borrow the Tian family young mistress’s soft couch for a while, to rest and recover her strength.

Listening to the footsteps entering the room, and hearing the door creak softly shut and fall still, Wu Xiaoliu’s snoring stopped.

He opened his eyes, pushed himself up from the stone table, and wiped the cake crumbs from the corner of his mouth. His face carried a look of hesitation and confusion.