The morning after, the Sun estate was completely still, thick with the stale, sour stench of dissipation that lingered after a night of revelry.

In the secluded corner of the estate where Tian Weiér’s courtyard lay, a figure crept stealthily out of a room, dressed in a serving girl’s clothing, hair loose and unbound.

She tiptoed past two young attendants and serving girls who were sound asleep, looked around in all directions, and slipped out of the courtyard.

Listening to the sound of those footsteps fade into the distance, Xiao Nanhui opened her eyes. She glanced at Wu Xiaoliu beside her, sleeping as if a thunderclap could not rouse him, then got up and followed out of the courtyard herself.

Tian Weiér’s steps grew more and more hurried, her heart pounding.

This was the first time she had ever dressed herself without anyone to help her. Her wedding clothes had been too conspicuous, and the hairpins in her coiffure too elaborate, so she had changed out of all of it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t manage a flowing-cloud knot herself — which meant she wouldn’t be able to wear the hairpin she liked along with it.

But these small frustrations all dissolved the moment she thought of the person she was about to see.

The smile at the corners of her mouth was like something dipped in honey. Her steps had entirely lost the measured composure of a well-bred young lady — she was very nearly running.

The guest rooms reserved for distinguished visitors in the Sun estate were all situated on the eastern side, to spare them from the scorching heat of the afternoon sun as it moved to the west.

Though the seven or eight guest courtyards were separated from one another, they were in fact all connected. Only the innermost courtyards had a rear gate, meant to allow the sweeping and cleaning servants easy access.

At this hour, the masters of each room and courtyard were still deep in sleep. Apart from the nightwatch attendants, no servant with a whit of sense would be out sweeping courtyards at this time of morning. Yet at the rear gate of one of the guest courtyards, a figure was already standing.

That person shifted from foot to foot, pacing restlessly, glancing in both directions down the corridor at intervals.

Shortly, Tian Weiér’s figure appeared at the far end. She saw the person at the rear gate, and the excitement and joy she had been suppressing for so long finally spilled over her face.

“My Jia Han!”

Jia Han’s face, somewhat pale from lack of sleep, found a flush of color again at that call. He carefully caught the girl who came flying toward him, but did not dare let his hands touch her body.

“Weiér.”

The girl urgently clasped her beloved’s hands, as if she had a thousand things to say — yet when they reached her lips they became all grievance and bitterness, and before she could speak, tears fell.

The young man panicked and reached to wipe them away, his eyes full of both heartache and remorse. “Weiér — please don’t cry. It’s all my fault. I should have come to find you sooner.”

Tian Weiér shook her head and finally spoke quietly: “That you came at all — that is already enough.”

Jia Han gently smoothed his hand over the girl’s soft hair, feeling a soreness and ache all the way to his heart. He bit down on his determination and said: “I will take you away from here. I promise.”

Tian Weiér thought of what her beloved had said at the banquet the night before, filled with both joy and emotion. She was just about to say something when, from the grass along the corridor nearby, two muffled thuds suddenly sounded, followed by the noise of something heavy dropping to the ground.

The pair, at the height of their tender moment, were given a start. Jia Han forced himself to steady his nerves and turned his head slowly to look at the scene behind him — only managing to catch a glimpse of two feet being slowly dragged into the grass.

“Who — who is there?”

Jia Han’s voice was somewhat unsteady. No one answered from the grass. Only a rustling sound came through.

He drew a breath and raised his voice: “Who is there—”

He had barely gotten out those two words when the grass erupted with a whoosh and someone stood straight up.

“Stop shouting. Do you want the whole estate to come out and watch?”

Tian Weiér stared wide-eyed at the serving girl wearing only an undergarment, finding her somehow familiar. “How did you come to be here…?”

Xiao Nanhui made a silencing gesture, listened carefully, and confirmed there was no one in the immediate vicinity. Only then did she look at Jia Han with some impatience and wave him over.

“Come here and give me a hand.”

Jia Han stood there blankly for a moment, then walked over to discover that three or four figures in the shape of guards were lying sprawled at odd angles throughout the grass.

“Drag them behind the trees. Don’t let anyone find them.”

After a flurry of work, Xiao Nanhui looked at the still-bewildered Jia gentleman and said: “You think that when Sun’s man kept you here, he was genuinely considering whether to sell the person to you?”

The other party looked completely convinced. “Was he not?”

She drew a long breath and decided to knock some sense into this somewhat oblivious young fool. “Tian Weiér’s family is not of slave registry — they married off a daughter, they did not sell a household entertainer. There is no deed of ownership. Without a deed, even if you pay Sun’s man and walk away with her, the Sun clan can take her back anytime they please.”

The young gentleman’s face had gone white again. “How — how can that be?”

“What is more — I saw that Sun fellow sizing you up and seeing you spend freely. He may very well want to hold you here as well. Just now, when you slipped away to meet secretly with a woman of his household — if I had not already dealt with the men standing watch, you would have been caught red-handed, and the charge of luring a new bride away in secret elopement would have been placed squarely on your head. If you had wanted to live, you would have needed your family to come and ransom you.”

Tian Weiér, listening nearby, had gone pale too. “Then what do we do?”

Xiao Nanhui held up two fingers. “Two choices. First: you go back and continue being Governor Sun’s wife. For whatever remains of your life, do not think of eloping with anyone. Master Jia finds some excuse — a family member gravely ill, a need to go home and retrieve silver — whatever it takes, just leave this place quickly and never come back.”

She paused, about to say the second option, when Tian Weiér cut her off with a look of absolute resolve.

“There is no need to say it. We choose the second.”

Xiao Nanhui blinked, and felt that the girl in front of her was considerably more resolute than she appeared.

An incense stick’s time later, near the rear gate of the Sun estate, a guard who had been keeping watch for several hours on the night shift was nearing the drowsy end of his stretch. He saw from a distance that his replacement was approaching, and felt a flicker of puzzlement.

The drum-beat announcement of the time-keeper hadn’t passed yet, and there were still a few moments left before the shift change.

Before he could even open his mouth to ask, the man approaching had already called up from below the watchtower: “Kexiang sent me to take your shift. He wants you to keep watch over the guest courtyards instead.”

The guard’s expression settled into understanding. The boss had long since said that whoever was staying in those guest courtyards — that young man called Yanzi — was a difficult character, and that the Governor had quietly given orders to keep a close eye on him.

Without thinking further, he climbed down from the watchtower, and was about to hand over his post to the newcomer when he looked up and realized — this was an unfamiliar face.

He was about to step forward and question the man when a shadow suddenly dropped from behind him, and he was knocked out cold.

Xiao Nanhui tossed aside the rock in her hand, checked quickly and confirmed the man had truly lost consciousness, and dragged him to a concealed spot.

Jia Han, dressed in a guard’s uniform, his heart still hammering, called Tian Weiér out from where she had been hiding near the rear gate. The three of them led the guard’s camel away and headed for the exit toward the Gobi.

Beneath their feet, the ground turned back to the hard dry yellow sand. Xiao Nanhui handed the camel’s reins to Jia Han, thought for a moment, and — unable to restrain the question she had long wanted to ask — let it out: “Actually, I’ve always wondered — without a guide, and alone — how did you get through the Sanmu Pass the first time?”

At this question, a peculiar light came into Jia Han’s eyes, and his voice took on a note of excitement. “Even now when I think about it, I find it a little hard to believe. That night I arrived at the Sanmu Pass in the small hours of the morning. My water pouch had been empty for several days, and I was desperately thirsty. I wanted to find an oasis somewhere to see if I could beg a little water, and that was when I ran into a wolf pack.”

Xiao Nanhui listened in silence, not at all surprised. In the Gobi, water was the most precious thing. The wolf packs at night liked to guard water sources and wait for thirsty prey to deliver themselves willingly into their jaws.

“I thought my life was over right then — and then, from somewhere, came the sound of a zither. That music soared so high and far, like a lone eagle passing over a range of peaks, like a dragon gliding over a deep abyss—”

“Wait.” Xiao Nanhui felt something increasingly wrong as she listened. “How could there be zither music in the middle of the Gobi?”

Jia Han grew more animated still. “I thought it strange as well, but what came after was even stranger. The wolf pack seemed to be struck still by that music, not daring to move. Then a black-robed hero appeared as if dropping from the sky, and in an instant of lightning speed sliced off the head of one of the wolves. The rest scattered like startled birds. They say the Sanmu Pass is like the gate of hell — and the nights are said to be especially deserted. Thinking back on it now, perhaps even the heavens were watching over the fate between Weiér and me.”

Xiao Nanhui listened with a growing unease. Something was stirring in the back of her mind, some trail of association she couldn’t quite catch hold of. “You said someone rescued you from the wolf pack — were the zither player and the hero the same person?”

“Not the same. The hero was the hero; the zither player was someone else altogether. In truth, before I saw the zither player, I had assumed all along it would be a white-haired elder. Because the kind of realm expressed in that music — even a zither master past the age of forty seldom achieves it. But when I actually saw the person, I found he was barely past twenty — truly astonishing.”

Xiao Nanhui was listening, and at these words something finally caught. Before her mind’s eye flashed the glimpse of a silhouette on the cliff at the Sanmu Pass that day — and almost on instinct she asked: “Did the person playing the zither have anything on his hands?”

Jia Han paused for a moment, then seemed to remember something and nodded. “He did have something — looked like a string of beads. Come to think of it, zither players generally don’t wear anything on their wrists, since it might interfere with their playing — but this person seemed completely unaffected. I imagine he must have worn them for so long it had become second nature. Oh, and we talked about the art of the zither, and his insights were truly remarkable—”

Whatever he said after that, Xiao Nanhui could no longer really follow.

A young man. Prayer beads on his wrist. And a black-robed fighter of extraordinary skill.

Only one thought occupied her mind: could this really be a coincidence?

But why was he everywhere she turned?!

Perhaps her expression was too tangled to hide, because Jia Han seemed to notice and blinked at her with perfectly guileless eyes. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

She could hardly explain what was wrong. She brushed it off: “Nothing — just found it unusual, and thought about it a bit.” Then, seeing that the Gobi was practically upon them, she stopped walking, considered briefly, and gave her instructions:

“The Sun clan will find out you’ve escaped sooner or later, and they will certainly send people after you. Once you’re through the Sanmu Pass, don’t head straight back to Suyan. The Gobi is dangerous, but it’s also good for hiding in. If you ration your food and water carefully, you can last about half a month. Get through that stretch, and then find a way to go directly to Tong City.”

Tian Weiér looked at Xiao Nanhui once more, seemed to wrestle with something for a moment, then said: “Why don’t — why don’t you come with us?”

Xiao Nanhui shook her head. “I still have other things to do. I can’t leave just yet.”

“But what if they find out we escaped and take it out on you?”

A warmth moved through her chest, and in her mind the image of a certain round, plump silhouette surfaced.

In truth, she had already been planning that once she saw these two safely away, she would find a nearby cave to hide in and wait for an opportunity to follow Pan Meiér when she returned to her settlement. The only thing giving her pause was the thought of Wu Xiaoliu.

She had already let Tian Weiér go. If she too slipped away and disappeared, Wu Xiaoliu would certainly suffer for it.

She smiled and said lightly: “Being a servant means always getting pushed around one way or another. I’m used to it.”

“Thank you.” Tian Weiér suddenly seized Xiao Nanhui’s hand and said quietly: “Actually, I knew from the beginning you weren’t one of our household’s people. Even though I’m the young mistress, I still know the faces of our own servants.”

Xiao Nanhui looked into the large, fawn-like eyes of the rosy-cheeked girl before her, and felt, for a moment, a little flustered.

“As for that — don’t give it another thought. I really only did what little was easy to do.”

Jia Han, following the example of men of the jianghu, clasped his hands together in a salute. “My name is Jia Han, from Wancheng in the north of the river. We owe this young heroine a tremendous debt of gratitude. Should there come a day in the future—”

Xiao Nanhui couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “Never mind the future — if you two don’t leave now, the next shift of guards will come to change posts before long, and everything will be exposed. Then none of us will be going anywhere.”

Tian Weiér gave a solemn nod. She said nothing more in the way of farewell, took Jia Han’s hand, climbed up onto the camel, and the two of them swayed off into the distance.

Xiao Nanhui watched those two awkward figures disappear into the horizon, her expression complicated.

One was the son of a wealthy merchant family; one was the young mistress of a prominent household. From birth they had lived in silks and fine food, with people to wait on their every need. And yet here they were, about to weather the yellow sand with no shelter and no attendants. To look at them, they could barely even manage a camel between them, let alone take care of themselves in such a harsh environment.

Yet the way they looked at each other was so at ease — as if so long as they were together, they would never fear any unknown hardship that might come.

Love. It makes a person lose all reason — and yet, at the same time, makes a person strong.

This kind of feeling, Xiao Nanhui had never experienced for herself.

What she felt for Xiao Zhun held three parts reverent awe, three parts gratitude, two parts painstaking care, and one part cowardice. What remained for the small sweet part — perhaps there wasn’t even one part of that.

She gazed blankly at the sky and the yellow horizon for a while, then turned and walked quickly back toward the Sun estate.