Xiao Nanhui had expected to see Xiao Zhun — instead, when the door swung open, in walked Su Pingchuan.

She had been standing close to the door and didn’t stop herself in time, stumbling straight into him.

To save them both from embarrassment, she took advantage of the momentum and gave him a quick, perfunctory embrace.

“Why, it’s Pingchuan — what a long time it has been! A very long time indeed!”

After the greeting, she stepped back. Su Pingchuan remained planted in place, stiff as a post, only his eyes following her as she moved.

Xiao Nanhui found it a little odd, and leaned forward to look at him more closely.

“What’s the matter? Your face is so red—”

Those words seemed to break whatever had frozen him. Su Pingchuan stepped back quickly.

“You’re awake? No serious injuries?”

She patted her stomach. “None. Just some surface wounds — nothing to speak of.”

“Good. I’ll take my leave then.”

He spun around fast to go — and ran straight into a broad, solid wall of a person blocking the doorway.

Wu Xiaoliu’s head poked in. The moment he saw Xiao Nanhui he looked on the verge of tears, and took a few steps forward, pressing Su Pingchuan back into the room.

He seemed to be working himself up to let out a good wail, but the moment a sound escaped him, Xiao Nanhui clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t make noise. My head still aches.”

Wu Xiaoliu, good-natured as ever, reined himself in immediately. His tears were apparently something he could summon and dismiss at will — his face cleared in an instant, sunshine after rain. “I’ve made quite a bit of food. If you feel up to it, I’ll bring it in.”

After sleeping three days, she really was hungry.

“That sounds fine. There’s room enough here, and the table’s big enough.”

Bolao cheered, grabbed Wu Xiaoliu, and the two of them headed out to fetch the food.

Xiao Nanhui glanced up and saw Su Pingchuan still standing there rigidly, and felt a little bad about it.

He might not have come specifically to see her at all — and now, caught in the middle of the others’ warmth and commotion, he simply couldn’t find an easy way to excuse himself.

In any case, they had all shared hardship together before. Now that everyone had come through safe and reunited, it was right to celebrate a little.

After a moment’s consideration, she spoke earnestly: “Pingchuan, since you’re already here — please stay and eat before you go.”

Su Pingchuan looked even more awkward, but after a pause he nodded. “As you wish.”

Bolao, who was just walking back in with a pot of soup, caught that exchange and shot Xiao Nanhui a glare — then looked pointedly down at the pot, the meaning unmistakable: she was not pleased about having one more mouth to share her food with.

Xiao Nanhui kept her expression perfectly blank and ladled a bowl of soup for Su Pingchuan.

“You still haven’t told me — after we separated, how did you all get to Wancheng? Did the journey go smoothly?”

Su Pingchuan flicked a glance at Bolao, gave a soft snort through his nose. “It’s over and done with. Better not to speak of it.”

She heard something out of the ordinary in those eight words.

“It sounds like it didn’t go very smoothly?”

Just at that moment Wu Xiaoliu came in carrying a food box, caught the last half of the exchange, and fell naturally into the story.

“Not very smoothly doesn’t even begin to cover it — it nearly cost us half our lives. This Bolao here has truly formidable skills, and she chose routes that only monkeys and hounds could navigate. Yes, it was a shorter distance, but it was brutal to travel. No sooner had we come out of the Gobi than we went into a field of broken scree. On that rubble slope your feet sink in the moment you step on it. Physician Hao and I both came down rolling and tumbling. Pingchuan here thought it was beneath his dignity and insisted on sitting down and sliding — got back up with half his backside practically hanging out. Even thinking back on it now, I can’t bear to.”

Su Pingchuan’s face cycled through a series of colors as Wu Xiaoliu narrated each detail in his unhurried, matter-of-fact way. Xiao Nanhui could barely stand to watch, and pretended to find the peanuts in front of her very interesting and looked away.

She had imagined the journey must have been somewhat eventful — but not quite this eventful. She also had the sense that Wu Xiaoliu probably didn’t yet know Su Pingchuan’s identity, or he would never have spoken so freely.

She gave a small cough and did her best to push down the corner of her mouth that kept trying to lift. “Given all that — when you arrived at Wancheng you must have rested for a while. What brought you all the way back to Lingxi?”

A brief, odd little silence fell over the room. Then all three of them spoke at almost exactly the same moment.

“It’s not as though we came back for you.”

She was genuinely caught off guard. “When did I say you came back for—” She stopped, and a smile she couldn’t quite suppress stole across her face. “Did you really come back for me?”

Bolao rolled her eyes, her tone thoroughly icy. “We did not. I heard you had petitioned to stay on with the Black Wing Camp, and I thought I’d go and report to the Marquis on your behalf and let him know your situation. It’s been months since you petitioned to head west — months with not a single word from Sideboard Mansion. By now it seems you were simply having too good a time to want to come home.”

She paid no attention whatsoever to the sarcasm laced through those words. The mention of Xiao Zhun made it difficult to keep her composure.

“Is my adoptive father here? Why haven’t I seen him? Has something happened — is he injured—”

“The Marquis isn’t here.” Bolao cut off her spiraling guesses quickly. Seeing the poorly disguised disappointment on her face, she tacked on a few more words in a rush: “The Guangyao Camp successfully crossed the river at Wamang Ridge, catching the Bai Family completely off guard. The battle at Sanmu Pass was a great victory. The Marquis planned to press the advantage while they still had it — once he heard you’d been brought out alive, he took the Subo Camp and moved out heading southwest. Given that tough hide of yours and all the beatings you’ve survived over the years, in a few days you should be fit to go find him yourself.”

So he had finally won, after all.

He had set out for war as a young man, and now returned in his prime.

Though he had not set foot in this southwestern land for many years, she knew: that battle had never ceased in Xiao Zhun’s heart.

His long-held wish was on the verge of being fulfilled — and yet at this moment, she was not at his side.

She would go find him. Even if it might take a little longer.

While she was still lost in thought, Wu Xiaoliu had already brought a golden-brown baked flatbread to the table.

“I mixed in butter and cultured milk. Best eaten warm.”

Bolao’s eyes lit up. She sat down at the table and immediately tore into the bread.

Su Pingchuan watched, brow slightly furrowed, and said nothing — nor did he touch the chopsticks or bowl in front of him.

Xiao Nanhui noticed from the corner of her eye and asked with concern: “Pingchuan, why aren’t you eating? Is the food not to your taste?”

Su Pingchuan looked at Bolao, then said earnestly: “She is your servant — how can she be eating at the same table as you?”

The moment those words left his mouth, Xiao Nanhui knew it was going to go badly.

Sure enough, the next second Bolao’s voice rang out like a cracked brass gong, loud enough to reach the ceiling beams.

“Servant?!” Bolao’s expressive face underwent a dramatic upheaval — brows and eyes all in motion at once, like a few beans rattling around on a plate — crumbs of flatbread raining down around her. “Which eye of yours saw me as a servant?”

Su Pingchuan assumed the posture of a young gentleman who did not lower himself to argue with common people, and turned back to Xiao Nanhui. “You weren’t wrong — this servant’s temperament really is quite dreadful.”

Xiao Nanhui felt two sets of eyes bore into her simultaneously, like a pair of chopsticks being jabbed at her from both sides.

She lowered her head into her hand, and mouthed silently at Su Pingchuan: Stop. Don’t say another word.

The young lord finally deigned to close his mouth, extended his chopsticks, and made directly for Bolao’s beloved roasted lamb leg.

“Since neither of you minds, I won’t say more. I suppose I’ll have just a little.”

The roasted lamb leg was, of course, only one — one that was meant to be sliced with a small knife before eating. Of course, Su Pingchuan knew none of this. He believed he had merely “taken a little,” and in one perfectly matter-of-fact gesture, relocated the entire lamb leg to his own plate.

Bolao’s eyes could have shot fire.

Xiao Nanhui grabbed her before she could become a fire-breathing dragon, and steered her swiftly out of the room. The poor woman had barely managed two bites of her flatbread.

“Xiao Nanhui, you ungrateful, traitorous woman—”

Out in the covered walkway, Bolao’s big voice stretched out into a long, trailing note, drawing the attention of several passing soldiers.

Xiao Nanhui clapped a hand over that howling mouth, teeth clenched: “Goodness, please lower your voice — this is a military camp, not Madam Dai’s courtyard.” She paused, her own mood tipping into exasperation. “Who’s the master here and who’s the servant? How exactly am I being ungrateful and traitorous?”

Bolao yanked her hand away and huffed loudly, pushing out her lower lip to a remarkable degree. “Then it’s being traitorous to the servant and ungrateful to the master — same result, you’ve wronged me terribly either way. I kept watch for you in that awful Tongcheng all those days without a break, passing messages and intelligence day and night, then trekked over mountains to escort three absolute idiots you picked up from who knows where. I played both mother and father to all three of them, and now that I’ve finally survived it all, I still have to come here and eat humble pie—”

Xiao Nanhui glanced at her sideways and said coolly: “When I was at the Black Wing Camp, I ran into an old acquaintance by the name of Lu. He said he’d taken in someone who could really eat, and that person had eaten every last one of his grapes. Said she was doing very well for herself.”

Bolao blinked. Her voice suddenly dropped several tones. “It was only one bunch a day.” She held up one short, stubby finger, and then seemed to lose confidence, curling it slightly.

She looked at that finger and was seized by the urge to laugh and scream at the same time. “While you were having your one bunch of grapes a day, your master here had her leg broken.”

Bolao’s head sank lower. “And whose fault is it that you wouldn’t let me come with you? If the Marquis were to ask—”

“He is not to know about this.” Xiao Nanhui cut her off decisively.

Bolao first brightened, then looked genuinely puzzled. “Not to know? Why not? Did you do something to feel guilty about?”

“What would I have to feel guilty about?” She was getting flustered. “It was just a broken leg — it’s not as if I haven’t been hurt before. Besides, it’s already healed properly. What’s the point in saying it again and worrying him for nothing?”

Bolao made a sound of acknowledgment, and then suddenly leaned forward and peered at her closely.

“But why do I feel like you’re different from before since you came back?”

Different? In what way?

The other girl was looking at her with skeptical eyes, and the scrutiny was beginning to make her uncomfortable. She was acutely aware of a vague guilt stirring in her chest — though she knew perfectly well she hadn’t done anything wrong — and before she could examine that feeling more carefully, Bolao had already looked away.

“Never mind. Hao Bai told me already. It’s clearly because you spent too long in that Bijiang village being waited on by all those men. If I’d known you were this starved for attention, I would’ve let you pick a few from Yaoyi’s place before you left — at least those would’ve been people you knew something about.”

Xiao Nanhui felt a rush of blood to her head and had a sudden urge to grab this shameless, loose-tongued little quail and pluck it bare before throwing it in a pot.

Bolao must have sensed the killing intent, because she immediately oiled the bottoms of her feet and vaulted up onto the top of the wall.

Reassured now that her secret would not be reported to Xiao Zhun, her big round head sat up smart and perky once more. From behind, she rather resembled a winter gourd that had grown a personality.

Looking at her made Xiao Nanhui furious enough to give chase, but her waist wound was still giving her some pain, and that exchange of words had left her in a restless, faintly agitated mood. She turned and walked off in the other direction instead.

She had only meant to take a short walk nearby and get some air, then go back and finish eating — but when she passed through the covered walkway and into a courtyard, she recognized the familiar stone table and stone stools at a glance.

She had thought this was just some local landowner’s manor somewhere in Yanxi. Only now did she realize she had come back to Governor Sun’s own mansion.

She had come full circle over these past months, and returned here.

Yet it was nothing like before. The violence that had unfolded here had left the place a ruin, and after the Tiancheng forces moved in they had cleared away everything unnecessary, leaving the surroundings so clean and bare it looked like a newly built estate.

A pity, though, for Governor Sun’s several wives and consorts — beautiful as flowers. She had no idea what fate had found them in the end.

She was still musing on this as she wandered along, and found she had gone rather far without noticing. Just as she was turning back, a figure suddenly appeared ahead of her out of nowhere.

“Greetings, Right General.” The man halted about five paces from her, saluted respectfully, and showed his identification token — clearly well-trained. “I am an auxiliary under the Yangyi Camp’s Fuwei Commandant. Lieutenant Ding has sent me to ask you to come to the council chamber.”

Ding Weixiang?

This visitor did not seem to come in good faith.

Her inner alarm bells rang loudly. She put on a look of great inconvenience, and tried to stall with the feeblest of tactics: “And where exactly is this council chamber? It sounds as though it may be quite far. I have only recently recovered from my injuries, and I am not really fit to be walking around—”

“That is no difficulty at all. I can have a sedan chair brought round for you immediately.”

If she rode through the camp in a sedan chair in broad daylight, she would never be able to show her face there again.

Xiao Nanhui waved her hands emphatically, very nearly ready to unleash a whole palm technique’s worth of refusals. “That really isn’t necessary. I merely feel a little unwell — a few days of rest and I’ll be fine. If Lieutenant Ding’s matter is not urgent, perhaps we could rearrange for another—”

“It is urgent.” He cut off her words almost before she had finished them, his tone remaining flawlessly correct throughout. “If the General truly does not wish to walk, I can carry you on my back.”

My friend, are you seriously not going to let me off?

“Being carried is also unnecessary.” She managed a strained smile, and readjusted the white bandaging wrapped around her waist. “Please, lead the way.”