The year draws to a close, the hour already dim. Cold winds accumulated, clouds of sorrow gathered.

So the rivers and seas gave birth to cloud, and the northern desert sent up swirling sand.

On the second day after leaving the Tianmu Riverway and moving northward, snow began to fall over the skies of Suyan.

In the height of summer, this land burned a parched yellow. Now, all was a sheet of pale white. Ice crystals formed in the frozen sand and stone, so that the gently rolling hills extending into the distance shimmered with cold, silvery light. The wind’s eddies swept them up and flung them against people’s bodies with a steady series of soft tapping sounds, grinding the skin of one’s face raw with sensation.

In such severe and bitter conditions, even the local inhabitants were unwilling to venture out and travel in the cold.

Xiao Nanhui glanced back briefly at the figure behind her.

His face showed almost no sign of hardship or hunger. Only when he was utterly exhausted from walking would he occasionally, through the labor of his breath, show the faintest suggestion of frailty — beyond that, not a word of complaint.

Had one not looked at the desolate landscape all around them, or at the travel-worn state of both their appearances, one might have thought this was a springtime outing.

For most of the time, the two of them simply moved across the wasteland in silence.

There were moments when she seemed to drift back to that night at Bai Yaoguan in Huozhou — when she was not a general of Tiancheng freshly promoted, but only young Master Yao with a disagreeable manservant. And the person ahead was no longer the Emperor of the Su clan, but Master Zhongli — dressed in his scholar’s robe, slight of frame.

Civilization and prosperity create the distances of rank and station. But the wild and the barren can level the chasms between one person and another.

At times she entirely forgot to address him by the proper terms of sovereign and subject. Her manner often crossed over boundaries — yet she noticed no awkwardness in it, and felt nothing like the terror she had experienced when first brought before an Emperor.

There were more pressing things to fear and worry about now. Survival.

The torrent of the Tianmu River rushing downstream was violent, and the banks were nearly impassable with tumbling stones. Before finding the first spring, she could only try to collect water using pieces of her armor.

This was a method commonly used on desert marches — roughly involving burying an iron implement in the soil, then padding it with dry grass and stones. By the following morning, some condensed dew could be drawn from within.

Beyond that, they relied on sour, astringent fruits like desert dates to supplement what little moisture they had. Though what they managed to collect each day was pitifully small, it was still better than nothing.

Beyond water, food also posed a challenge. The easiest thing to obtain in this desert — the most filling and safest to eat — was a small four-legged lizard. Though extremely difficult to choke down, it posed no safety concerns. She might manage it herself, but whether he could was another question entirely. She repeatedly racked her mind trying to catch some small creature, only to return empty-handed time and again.

Her mouth was parched and bitter, her stomach hollow. When hunger reached its most extreme, she found herself almost hoping she might spot the shape of an An Dao Academy night owl in the distance. She would find a way to shoot it down and roast it for a proper meal — he would never dare touch the bird, but as long as they survived to return, that was all that mattered.

Yet every time she cast her gaze toward the distant horizon, there was nothing there at all.

War strips away not only the souls of the fallen, but the living breath of the land itself. Every creature with legs capable of flight had been driven off by months of ceaseless carnage, scattered in all directions. Only a few passing vultures would occasionally drift across the sky, flying so high and so far that they appeared as tiny as sesame seeds.

But food and water were not the most pressing danger. What was most urgent in the present moment was staying warm.

Night fell in Suyan about an hour later than in Quecheng — but once it came, the temperature dropped swiftly. In the depths of winter as it now was, even the days had grown cold enough to freeze, to say nothing of the cold after nightfall.

She herself wore the double-layered coarse cotton padded jacket common to soldiers on the march, which offered some resistance against the wind and cold. His clothing, however, was considerably thinner. She had taken care early before setting out to tie the cuffs of his robe tightly, and had done her best to tuck the hem of his garments into his boots — all to prevent cold air from seeping in and carrying away the warmth of his body.

When the sky began to take on just the faintest tinge of amber, Xiao Nanhui would look for a sheltered spot against the terrain, then use Pingxian to chop up dried wood for a bonfire and get it started. With all of that done, she would then search the area for stones of a suitable size to stack a windbreak wall for the place where the two of them would spend the night.

While she did all of this, he sat quietly off to one side. Had he not occasionally let out a soft cough, he might have seemed to blend entirely into this silent earth.

It was not as though today was the first time she had learned how much this man could endure. But just because he had not opened his mouth did not mean Xiao Nanhui had failed to notice the discomfort and exhaustion in his body. They had already been traveling for two or three days straight without a single proper mouthful of food. She might be able to hold on for a few more days — but at this rate, this man was likely to collapse before long.

After turning the matter over in her mind, she took advantage of the last sliver of light before nightfall, picked up Pingxian, and set out again — hoping to try her luck.

Fortune was kind to her. As she passed by a small thicket of scrubland, she discovered the half-eaten carcass of a yellow gazelle.

Yellow gazelles were not creatures that ought to be wandering this kind of desert. In all likelihood, a few had strayed from flocks kept by nomadic people crossing from Bijiang and become prey for a wolf pack.

But what was strange was this: in a season with food so scarce, a wolf pack would ordinarily leave nothing — even the vultures would rarely be left a single scrap of cold remains.

Was it possible that something had frightened the wolves away?

A sense of unease stirred in her, but looking at the half-remaining gazelle carcass before her, she simply could not bring herself to leave it behind. She was also worried the wolves might return. So she cut away just a portion of the meat and bone with the small knife she carried, carefully masked the smell of blood, and then left.

By the time she returned to the bonfire, the smile on her face was nearly overflowing.

“Your Majesty, I have found some food. You will not have to eat fruit anymore.”

Assuming he was too exhausted to speak, she went about her business without waiting for a reply, gathering dry branches nearby to fashion a spit, and carefully suspending the piece of gazelle meat over the fire.

The flames licked at the slowly melting fat with a crackling snap and pop, and the aroma of food began to drift outward.

“My roasting skills are nothing remarkable, and in the haste of leaving I had no seasoning of any kind. It may be rather difficult to swallow, but please, Your Majesty, eat as much as you can manage. There is no telling when we might come across proper food again.”

The man beside her leaned in somewhat, and the light of the dancing bonfire cast a faint warmth across his face.

“Your ability to look after others is unexpectedly quite good.”

She paid it no mind, her attention fully on the meat. “A modest skill — with much room still for improvement.”

“Weixiang came to this one’s side after leaving An Dao Academy and grew accustomed to certain things long ago. As for you — you were born into a Marquis’s household, and ought to have been someone who is waited upon. How is it that you take to serving others so naturally?”

She paused in her motions with the branch, then quickly and nimbly added more dry wood to the fire.

“I am not someone who was accustomed to being waited on. And besides, there was someone in our household who was often ill and could not be left alone — someone who always needed a person watching over them. When I had time, I would often lend a hand.”

From the other side came a brief silence, followed by a mild and noncommittal remark.

“Ah — practice makes perfect, then.”

She found the phrasing a little off-putting, and opened her mouth to clarify.

“It was not quite that — serving others, I mean. She was someone close to my adoptive father, so naturally I came to regard her as family. When family members look after one another, that is not called serving.”

On hearing that, he suddenly leaned slightly toward her, propped one arm against his brow, and the long hair over his shoulder slid down heavily, sweeping across her face.

“Then in your eyes — am I someone you serve, or someone you care for?”

He had always carried a certain quality that defied easy classification — yet ordinarily he was so composed and distant that it gave rise to no untimely thoughts. But now, with just a slight hint of leisurely ease in his manner, there was something about it that made one’s face flush and heart quicken.

Xiao Nanhui’s hand jerked, and she nearly lost the meat into the fire.

She sensed a trap somewhere in that question, though she could not quite identify what kind.

In any case, she could hardly say: because you are the Emperor, therefore I must protect you — and if you were to die, would my entire family not follow?

She kept her gaze fixed on the meat in her hand, not daring to let her eyes move even slightly. She feared that if she so much as met that person’s gaze, she would be scorched through in an instant, just like the meat.

She swallowed, and then suddenly spotted Pingxian lying on the ground.

The silver engravings on the shaft were now a deep reddish-brown — the color of blood that had seeped in and dried to stillness.

“Your Majesty is this subject’s benefactor — a life-saving benefactor! And so what this subject is doing counts as repaying a debt of gratitude.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to applaud herself.

She was truly, brilliantly resourceful.

Before he could speak again, she quickly thrust the meat toward him.

“Your Majesty, it is ready.”

After a moment, she saw that fair hand accept the food — then extend it back toward her, with half the meat missing.

She looked at the food, then looked at him.

“Why are you looking at this one like that? Could it be that you poisoned it, and are unwilling to eat it yourself?”

She quickly took it back and bit into it to clear her name. He gave her an amused look and, without a word, put his half of the torn meat into his mouth.

That evening meal was utterly simple, yet both of them ate with great deliberateness — as if eating slowly might extend the act of having a full stomach, making each bite seem like more.

With a warm meal in their bodies, even the surrounding cold seemed somewhat easier to bear.

Xiao Nanhui added one more round of firewood, making certain the bonfire would hold some warmth until dawn.

Snowflakes turned in spirals above the flames. The sand and stone ground, originally bone dry, had grown damp and cold with the fallen snow. She shifted the fire to the side, exposing the ground beneath — dried and warmed — and was about to call the man over when she noticed he had already closed his eyes. She could not tell whether he had fallen asleep.

The wound on his palm was wrapped in strips of cloth torn from the hem of her garment, faintly showing through with a darkened red, dry and faintly blackened.

After a moment’s thought, she said quietly: “Your Majesty, the wound on your hand should be re-dressed.”

The man, still with eyes closed, extended his hand outward just a little.

Xiao Nanhui leaned over, unwound the cloth strip, and exposed the scabbed wound beneath. Since there was no clean water to wash the wound, she had been using plant sap as a substitute. Even with the medicinal powder she carried on her person, the wound still showed some degree of raised and irregular healing — the flesh a little raw and uneven around the edges.

It would probably leave a scar.

Such a fine pair of hands — that was, in a sense, a small pity.

Though considering everything they had survived together, a faint pale scar was perhaps already the best possible outcome.

Then, unexpectedly and without quite knowing why, she found herself saying something entirely out of place.

“It was so close, back there at the cliff’s edge. If it ever happens again, Your Majesty should let go.”

The man’s lashes gave a faint flutter. He glanced at her.

“You should know — this one is not skilled at letting go.”

She hesitated, and pressed on regardless. “Thanks to the grass at the cliff’s edge this time — next time there may not be one. This subject was wearing armor then, which is extremely heavy, and would quite likely have dragged Your Majesty down the cliff along with her. In that case, neither of us would have survived. Does Your Majesty not fear death?”

The part that followed — about Huozhou, and about why he had gone himself, with only one guard, for something as dangerous as the matter of the secret seal, when it would have been far safer to entrust it to someone reliable — all of that, she kept to herself.

She expected he would not answer what was, on the face of it, a rather foolish question. But the man only paused for a moment, as if genuinely giving it thought.

“Before — I was not afraid.” He paused, then slowly added the second half of his thought. “Now I am afraid.”

She did not quite understand what he meant, and was about to ask — but he spoke first.

“If you had fallen from the cliff and died, the road ahead would have been left for this one to face alone. That would, one imagines, have been considerably more dangerous.”

Xiao Nanhui was somewhat at a loss for words. She had intended to advise him to value his own life — after all, his identity was unlike anyone else’s, and he carried the hopes of countless ten-thousands of people. He could not afford to be put at risk. And yet now she could not quite determine whether all of this was nothing more than one of his calculations.

She finished redressing the wound in short order, changed to clean cloth strips and wrapped it up. As she tucked the medicine vial back inside her garment, something tumbled out from within her waist sash with a small clatter — three small, blackened lumps.

She was startled herself. She picked them up and took a close look — and felt the warmth rise to her face.

Three apricot pits. From a few days ago, while they were still at camp — she had sneaked three apricots from near the small tent.

Because she had been hiding it from Mo Chunhua and her wide mouth, she had eaten them tucked inside her sleeve, and had not dared to discard the pits carelessly afterward — instead stuffing them into her waist sash, intending to throw them outside the camp when the opportunity arose.

These three must have been eaten and forgotten, wedged in the folds of her clothing ever since.

She was well aware this was not entirely to her credit, and tried to pick them up discreetly — but that man’s eyes were sharper than she had bargained for.

“What fell out of your clothes?”

She felt a flush of awkwardness, picked up the three pits, and held them in her palm for a while before reluctantly showing them to him.

The Emperor stared at those three small blackened pits for a good few seconds — then suddenly laughed.

He rarely laughed, and laughed aloud even more rarely — and even when he did, it was never quite the kind of laughter one usually knew. It tended to leave a chill in the heart. But that laugh just now had something of an ordinary person about it, so that even the layer of dust on his face seemed to come alive.

Xiao Nanhui stared at him in a daze, feeling that this man was behaving strangely tonight — strangely enough to make her vaguely uneasy.

“I wonder what else you have tucked away in those clothes of yours. Why not shake it all out together?”

She could hear the teasing in it, and was a little reluctant to let the moment stand. She made a firm effort to turn things around.

“Even apricot pits count as something worthwhile — a waste to throw them away.”

With that, she picked up a nearby stone and cracked all three pits open in a few quick strikes, then carefully extracted the kernels within.

Three apricot kernels — about the size of a fingernail, but round and plump.

She picked one up and tasted it. Slightly astringent, but with a faint sweetness and fragrance. She placed the remaining two in the man’s palm.

“Your Majesty, at a time like this — let’s not waste anything.”

Two bitter apricot kernels — ordinarily they might not even merit a mention. But under present circumstances, they carried something of a precious quality.

He looked at them quietly for a moment, then slowly put one in his mouth.

He ate it very slowly, as if he intended to grind it completely to powder before swallowing.

Then his palm turned over, and the remaining kernel disappeared along with his hand into the wide sleeve of his robe.

The bonfire crackled and popped. The long cold night was truly very difficult to endure.

After some time she could not measure, Xiao Nanhui shifted her curled-up body in the other direction and brushed the snow from her hair.

She had been keeping watch at the windward opening with Pingxian across her arms. When she turned, she found that the man’s posture had not changed either — still leaning in that slightly sideways inclination.

She thought of the carriage leaving Huozhou — he had slept that same way through his illness.

How could anyone be accustomed to sleeping like that?

“Has Your Majesty not yet slept?”

Her voice was very soft, barely on the verge of being carried away by the wind.

The dark figure turned over, and said briefly: “Cold. Cannot sleep.”

She rubbed her hands together, then rose, picked up the coarse outer garment she had been warming by the fire, and put it on backward, wrapping it in front.

Crunch, crunch.

That was the sound of her footsteps over the thin layer of snow.

Then warmth came from behind him.

She carried the smell of the bonfire’s dried wood smoke — warm and a little rough, a little prickly, like a clumsy hound that had simply pressed itself against his back.

“When I left home, I was only six or seven. Most things have grown dim in my memory — but hunger and cold, those I remember clearly. There were many children like me in Suyan back then. At night we would press together for warmth, and the older ones would comfort the younger ones.”

A pair of slightly calloused hands moved across his back, giving it a gentle pat.

“Sleep. Once you sleep, you will not feel the cold anymore—”

The voice behind him was low, faint in the wind and snow — vague and not quite real, carrying the weariness of a traveler at the end of a long road.

The snowflakes continued to fall in their gentle, cascading drift, as if foretelling that this cold night had no end.

The Emperor’s closed eyes slowly opened. The light of the bonfire illuminated his pupils — like the ancient mythological fire that had descended from heaven onto the earth.