Xiao Nanhui closed her eyes for a while.

She had not fallen asleep — because she could not afford to yet. Even though they seemed to have temporarily escaped Bai Family’s pursuit, the road ahead was unpredictable. Until they found Tiancheng’s main force, she had to maintain the utmost vigilance.

So she simply had her eyes closed. Nothing more.

Without the distraction of vision, she could focus more intently on her other senses.

The air carried the smell of dampness and sand, mingled with a faint bitter coolness — the scent drifting from the reliquary beads on his wrist.

She could hear the sound of her own breathing and heartbeat, and the rhythm of his breath. The entire world seemed to hold only the two of them.

The outer edges of the bonfire had gone out. Only a single point of flame remained burning at the center. The charred wood was dampened by the melted snow and gave off a waterlogged, softly creaking sound.

The snow was still falling. There was the sound of tiny ice crystals colliding with one another.

The wind blew from somewhere far away — a low, mournful keening, like a weeping child.

Xiao Nanhui’s eyes snapped open.

Something was wrong. That was not the wind.

She pressed her body low, as close to the ground as she could, and listened carefully again.

Sure enough — the keening sound abruptly ceased, and when it rose again, it seemed closer than before.

She rose swiftly to her feet, quickly smothered the bonfire, and moved with quick steps to the man’s side. She gave his shoulder a light push, lowering her voice: “Your Majesty, wake up.”

The man only paused for a moment before sitting upright — he did not appear to have been fully asleep either.

“What has happened?”

Xiao Nanhui was already rapidly gathering the scattered items from the ground, and knocked apart the stone wall she had stacked earlier.

“I am not certain. Perhaps wolves, perhaps something else.”

He rose to his feet, observing her with a rather composed air. “I have heard that General Wu Sunzhuo, in his time, once encountered a tiger and a leopard in the wild while alone and unarmed. He grappled with them bare-handed and captured both.”

“General Wu was truly mighty and formidable! This subject admires, admires greatly!” She made a perfunctory cupped-hand salute with her hands, but her feet were not idle — one foot stamped out the last remaining ember in the bonfire.

“Back at Sanmu Pass, Weixiang also once killed several wolves alone, with a start and finish of less than half a cup of tea in time.”

She was already using Pingxian to dig into the ground to bury the remaining gazelle bones from their meal. Without turning her head: “Worthy of Mister Ding — exceptional martial skill, a true hero’s bearing!”

“This one also recalls the autumn hunt two years ago—”

She finally could take no more, and spun around abruptly. “Your Majesty, every general of yours is formidable, and this subject concedes entirely. This subject’s martial skill is lacking. Right now we are both hungry and frozen, and this subject has truly no desire to grapple barehanded with a wolf pack. Please, as an act of consideration for those below, do not say another word.”

She was genuinely frazzled, her characteristically bold and clean brows knitted together — she even looked a little cross.

The man relinquished his teasing manner and sat up properly.

“This one was only joking. Are you angry?”

Joking? Since when were you the kind of person who jokes? And besides, in what sort of situation are we right now — and you still have the mood to joke?

Xiao Nanhui drew a deep breath and produced a smile. “What is Your Majesty saying? How could this subject possibly—”

She had not yet finished her explanation when her sharp ears caught the sound of a faint, intermittent snuffling breath.

“Hush.”

She clapped a hand over his mouth, pulled him far from where they had been camping — several dozen paces away — then pulled him down to crouch low against the ground.

She had spotted this section of the terrain earlier — a concealed depression in the ground, impossible to detect unless one walked directly up to it — and the position they occupied was downwind, which would help mask their scent.

The sound grew nearer, mingled with the faint scraping noise of claws against the ground.

Her heart rose into her throat. Before long, a figure half a person’s height tall materialized through the wind and snow, moving slowly toward them.

It was a wolf — its mane bristling, teeth slick with drool — four paws caked in sand and snow, as though it had traveled a great distance or had been digging at something. It kept its head low to the ground, sniffing as it went, moving at a very unhurried pace. When it reached the vicinity of the bonfire, it gradually stopped, then began scraping and digging at the ground with its front paws — and pulled a strip of cloth up from the sand.

That was the blood-stained cloth from the bandages she had changed on the Emperor’s wound.

Xiao Nanhui’s heart sank.

It was not that she hadn’t considered this possibility. But a wolf’s sense of smell was even keener than a common hound’s, and she had not dared to risk carrying something blood-stained on her person.

She waited. No other wolves appeared. Her heart eased slightly. Just one wolf — she was confident she could kill it.

Yet the more she thought, the more something nagged at her. This was not the season for wolf packs to breed — lone wolves that failed to find mates were not a typical occurrence now. On the contrary, this was the harshest time of year in the southwestern desert, when all wolves would be united with unprecedented solidarity to endure the difficulty together. They would not easily separate from the pack.

She thought back to the half-eaten yellow gazelle, and the sense of foreboding within her grew stronger.

Then, a faint, indistinct sound of bells drifted through the wind. She watched as the wolf suddenly froze, lifted its head, and let out a long howl into the air.

On that upturned head, unmistakably, was a strange symbol drawn in blood — identical to the brand on Su Pingchuan’s black horse.

The drawn-out howl ceased abruptly, as if in answer to some kind of summons. The wolf turned and departed in the direction it had come from.

It had left — but it would certainly return.

Perhaps with the pack. Perhaps with an enemy she had yet to learn the name of.

Bai Family’s assassination attempt on the sovereign was perhaps far from over, and the most dangerous moment had yet to arrive.

The signal for Tiancheng’s general offensive had sounded in the moment the Tianmu River dam broke — but she had lost contact with the main camp, and had no way of knowing whether Xiao Zhun had already entered Yanxi City. Naturally, she could not predict whether the road ahead was safe or full of danger.

Xiao Nanhui rose from where she was hiding and looked toward the northwest.

“Your Majesty — from now on, we must travel with our days and nights reversed. Before daylight, we must find a place to conceal ourselves.”

He said nothing, only gave a quiet nod.

Xiao Nanhui gripped his hand solemnly, holding it firm in her own.

“Do not let go of my hand.”

Wild creatures track by scent. Her only option was to move first in a downwind direction, then choose the nearest shortcut through the last stretch of wasteland — the gravel desert that lay on this side of Yanxi Ancient City.

By her estimation, they had likely already reached the outskirts of the ancient city. Perhaps only another half day’s walk remained — but though it was nearly dawn, the sky was heavy and grey with snowfall, and she could not make out the contours of the land at all. She could only determine their rough direction from the way the wind was blowing.

She could not afford to travel as slowly as before. She was nearly dragging the man along at a run.

When they encountered gullies or obstacles, she hoisted him onto her back and leaped across. When they came to a steep downward-sloping hill, she did not slow down — she borrowed the angle of the terrain and half-ran, half-tumbled, barreling her way through.

She could hear the heavy sound of his breathing behind her, but she could not stop, could not even spare a moment to turn and offer him a brief reassurance. She could only do her utmost to haul him forward — forward, forward.

At last, she caught sight of a silhouette in the distance that looked something like hills.

By her earlier calculations, even at the pace she had been pushing, reaching Yanxi Ancient City would still require about half a day’s travel.

Which meant the shape before her was not the outline of a city — but dawn was nearly upon them. This area was no longer the uninhabited wasteland it had been; if they continued moving through the open desert in daylight, the moment they were spotted by the enemy, the consequences would be unthinkable.

In the pale, cold morning light, she finally made out the contours of the hills ahead. They were presenting, at this moment, a strange and vivid deep red — standing out sharply against the white expanse of the surrounding desert.

She recalled a passage she had read in an old geographical record before setting out from Quecheng: ten-odd li south of Yanxi Ancient City are several wind-carved hills. At sunrise they appear deep purple; at midday, pale blue; at sunset, violet. They were known in ancient times as the Colored Hills.

If the hills before her were indeed the Colored Hills, then passing through them would bring them directly to Yanxi Ancient City, which bordered Sanmu Pass. Tiancheng’s great army would be moving through there before long — and the “flight” she and the Emperor had endured would come to its proper conclusion.

The day she would see Xiao Zhun again would not be far off.

At the thought, Xiao Nanhui’s heart filled with a soaring elation, and even the wretchedness of sleeping on ice for several days and eating nothing of substance seemed somewhat easier to bear.

The sun had finally risen. The snow seemed to be lessening slightly, and the world around her was bright with daylight. Xiao Nanhui settled Su Wei in a sheltered hollow, then took up Pingxian and went ahead to scout the path — hoping to obtain some food and water before they reached their destination.

Earlier she had only been focused on moving forward and had not observed the surrounding terrain carefully. Now that she took the time to look properly, she found it extraordinary.

The rock faces all around were no longer that dried, pale yellow color. Instead they were blended with purples, russets, reds, and oranges of varying depth — layered and sweeping, like unfurled bolts of silk, spreading and flowing across the entire face of the hills.

In all likelihood, this was the reason: as the sun rose and fell and the light shifted within these colors, it produced three distinct hues at different hours.

This peculiar landscape seemed almost too remarkable to belong to a place as desolate as Suyan. Or perhaps it was simply that she had never before stopped to look closely at what this land held — and only now that she had the inclination to look, she truly saw it.

That was a strange thing in itself. Given the circumstances, she ought to have had no inclination to look at scenery at all.

Following the valley floor along the edge of the hills, she pushed deeper in and found that the ground here was not like the hard, rough surface of the land beyond the pass. Instead, a thick layer of sand lay beneath her feet. This made her quite wary, and as she walked, she carefully brushed away the tracks she left behind.

The rocky hills here all looked alike. A person moving among them could easily feel the illusion of going in circles. She did not dare to leave any markers — worried that someone might follow the trail back. So she could only travel a hundred paces, then stop to study the terrain around her carefully, committing it to memory again and again.

In her time in Bijiang, relaying topographic information regularly to Tiancheng’s rear lines had required her to slip out of the village alone for half a day at a stretch, covering those mountain forests, small shoals, wastelands, and broken rocky banks over and over again. Practiced over time, she had naturally developed the skill of memorizing routes. Even so, she had no intention of wandering too far. Daylight was nearly full upon them, and she was uneasy leaving the man alone for too long.

As she made her way along the winding path between the hills, the trail gradually widened. Rock faces on either side began to show small thorny shrubs. She knew she was likely entering a shallow basin. In a dry region such as this, only a low basin surrounded on four sides by hills could collect some moisture. It was deep winter and bone dry — she held no great hope of finding any open water. But she knew these spots tended to attract small animals, and if fortune was kind, she might catch something to fill their stomachs, enough to last until they reached the city.

She followed the faintly damp ground forward, feeling her way. There were already footprints worn into the earth by animals coming and going. She examined them carefully — no wolf tracks. A small measure of relief settled within her.

At that moment, a flash of tawny yellow appeared ahead for an instant — quick as a small clump of sand thrown up by the wind.

Xiao Nanhui startled. She blinked rapidly, but the tawny shape had already vanished.

She had a sense of what this was. She moved her footsteps with care, and drew from her person a small fragment of pale armor plating — a section from the chest guard of the light battle armor, still gleaming with a silvery-white luster. Over the last few days she had used it to start fires, making good use of what she had.

She extended the armor fragment forward a little, using the faint sunlight to cast a patch of light onto the ground.

With the movement of the fragment in her hand, that patch of reflected light skittered this way and that across the sandy ground, finally settling on a stretch of earth nearby — a bright, shimmering pool, like the dancing reflection of water.

Sure enough — before long, a small furry head poked out from behind a rock, ears swiveling in all directions listening for movement, whiskers first tentatively extending.

It was a fat, plump desert hopping mouse. It had likely ducked into a burrow just a moment ago, which was why it had vanished.

This type of mouse was not uncommon in Suyan — but it was very seldom that desert travelers managed to get one on their plate. The reason was simple: they were extraordinarily cunning and fast, and rarely strayed far from their burrows. At the first hint of movement, they could vanish underground in an instant.

Sometimes the energy spent chasing a single one would exceed what eating ten of them could repay — a thankless task that no one with sense would bother with.

For Xiao Nanhui, however, these mice were not quite so difficult to deal with.

As a child, when food was scarce, she had learned to catch mice from the older children. The creatures had an acute sense of smell, but poor eyesight. They would mistake anything bright and shiny for a water source — sometimes, a single piece of broken copper mirror was all it took to lure them out.

All she needed now was to wait for one clear, certain moment, and today’s meal would be settled.

She was filled with anticipation, and flexed her fingers around Pingxian with quiet readiness.

The tawny ball of fur sniffed here, then there, apparently puzzled as to why it could not detect the scent of water. As it edged closer and closer to the patch of reflected light, just at the moment Xiao Nanhui was about to strike—

A thin, bright light flashed past. She saw the hopping mouse go suddenly, completely still — then slowly come apart in two halves on the ground, blood pooling out in every direction.

At the same moment, the rock beside the dead mouse split cleanly in two, as if sliced through like a block of bean curd.

The shock and impact stopped her hand mid-motion. She stared, wide-eyed, then swiftly pulled the armor fragment back, lowered her body, and peered slowly from behind the concealing rock.

Nothing moved on the silent sandy ground. Only that spreading pool of blood continued to slowly widen.

After a long while, a human voice came through, cold and flat.

“What are you doing? It’s just a mouse.”

That voice — she knew it all too well.

In the next instant, a slight, slender figure stepped out from behind a rock a hundred meters away. Its features appeared even more gaunt than a month ago, the eye sockets deeply sunken, and the entire person emanated a dark and sinister quality at odds with their age. It was An Lu.

Behind him, a dozen or so figures filed out in turn — each one in grey. They wore their heads wrapped in the kind of cloth desert travelers typically used. Yet Xiao Nanhui could not help but notice the halves of faces exposed beneath those wraps.

A row of blurred, featureless faces — like wax that had melted and hardened again.

“Everyone calls them Pu Huna.”

Wu Xiaoliu’s words seemed to still echo in her ears, reverberating through her head like a bell’s toll, while her body had turned to stone — she could not move at all.

She still remembered the first time she had encountered these assassins. Then, she had known nothing of them, and feared nothing. Now, she not only knew what dark and lethal things they had done, but she had a fatal vulnerability traveling with her.

“Wolves never go wrong. I have indeed seen signs of them nearby. Given their pace, they could not have gone far — they must be somewhere close.”

She could not make out which of those blurred faces belonged to the speaker, but she saw someone with bells tied at the wrist take a few steps forward.

Those bells were muted and dull, as if they had been soaking in rain for years and had rusted completely solid — yet she did not dare let her guard down. She had seen bells of this kind in Bijiang, worn by the great shamans there. They called them “spirit bells” — according to legend, when the gods descended into the mortal realm, they used bells like these to sense one another. Later, these bells had spread among the southern Qiang tribes and become ceremonial objects for rites and spirit-summoning.

Perhaps this was how Bai Family had been tracking their movements — observing them through the eyes of birds and beasts.

“Where are they?!” An Lu kicked the bisected hopping mouse’s carcass aside, his voice taut with fury. “Was it not said there was only one woman accompanying the Emperor? And you still cannot catch them—”

The Pu Huna who had been reprimanded showed no anger — or perhaps their voices were simply always flat and without feeling: “This is empty land. In a place like this, finding two people is far harder than finding an army.”

A cold gust swept through the valley, and Xiao Nanhui shrank back involuntarily.

The Pu Huna who had just spoken suddenly raised his head, as though he had caught something in that gust of air. He gestured to An Lu for silence, then lowered his body and pressed himself to the ground, closing his eyes to listen.

Xiao Nanhui held her breath. Even the faintest flutter of her own lashes made her heart seize.

Cold sweat was gathering at her temple on the verge of dripping. She moved with swift precision and caught that drop in her palm — the sweat soaking into her skin without a sound.

At last, the man slowly rose from the ground and shook his head toward An Lu.

“No sound at all. It seems they are not nearby.”

An Lu’s expression darkened further. He said nothing, only repeatedly turning something over in his hands — restless and agitated.

Xiao Nanhui noticed his movement and strained to make out the object in his grip.

Her position was too far, and she did not dare make any large motion — she could only vaguely tell that it appeared to be a slender-necked bottle in a vermilion red color.

Before she could examine it further, An Lu had already stilled his hand, as if he had reached a decision.

“No rush. As long as they have not yet entered the city, they must pass through here.” His gaze swept over the surrounding hills. “Go to the highest point nearby. Unless they stop breathing and stop moving entirely, there will be some sign of them eventually.”

With that, he walked away without looking back, and the dozen or so grey figures followed in silence, vanishing into the hills like wandering spirits drifting through a fog. In an instant, they were gone.

Xiao Nanhui waited until she could no longer hear any sound before slowly stepping out from behind the rock. The world around her fell back into a dead silence. If not for the small hopping mouse’s carcass on the ground, it would have seemed as though nothing had happened here at all.

She drew a steadying breath and set off at a near-run along the route she had memorized, heading back to where she had left him. She looked left and right but could not find the man anywhere, and broke into a cold sweat.

She did not dare call out loudly — she could only urge in a low, urgent voice: “Your Majesty? Your Majesty—”

It was some time before a figure emerged slowly and somewhat reluctantly from the shadow behind a rock.

She let out a long breath, took up Pingxian, and walked quickly over.

“Your Majesty, you had me searching everywhere — I was nearly convinced you had vanished. You gave me a terrible fright—”

He said nothing. He raised his hand and wiped the sweat from the corner of her forehead.

Xiao Nanhui was so startled by the gesture that she was left stunned for a moment, standing still — by the time she reacted, that hand had already quickly withdrawn.

“Once the sun rose it lit up the whole ground. This one’s clothes are far too conspicuous here.” He explained, lightly, and pointed toward where he had been hiding. “That spot was just right. I could also see you passing by from there.”

She nodded and, recalling the danger she had just encountered, found herself deeply agitated.

“Your Majesty, we must first find a place to hide. When it grows dark, I will go and see if there is any news of the Tiancheng army.”

“Very well.” He gave her one concise syllable in reply, then looked at her quietly — like an obedient child waiting to be told what comes next.

Facing a gaze like that, she felt instead an unprecedented weight of pressure. As if, should she fail to offer any solid arrangement, she would be betraying the full and unconditional trust he placed in her.

After a period of searching her mind without success, she studied the surrounding colorful rock faces for some time — and finally, something stirred. A vague, indistinct memory from long ago began to surface.

The Colored Hills was an ancient name. Few people in present-day Suyan still called it that.

So she had assumed all along that she had never set foot in this place — and even when she entered it, she had not thought to look in any other direction.

She seized that thread of memory and turned it over carefully, and gradually the light of recognition came into her eyes.

“Your Majesty — I know of a place. It may serve to shelter us for the time being.”