Xiao Nanhui had absolutely no intention of actually bringing Su Pingchuan back to her room.

His situation was entirely different from Hao Bai’s. If she truly did that, it would arouse Akuang’s suspicions in no time.

So, reluctant as she was, she had him locked in a hastily constructed cell. She put on a show of letting him go hungry for three days, under the stated pretense of waiting until he was too weak to resist before she “handled” things personally.

Akuang hadn’t said anything aloud, but she estimated that the Bai Family’s people might be coming to collect the prisoner within a few days.

She was burning with urgency inside, but outwardly she had to maintain an air of perfect composure. By the third night, she had finally managed to drink the bandits under the table.

After dismissing the Southern Qiang guards at the door with a few words and checking repeatedly that no one was around, she sent Hao Bai in first to examine the unfortunate fellow’s injuries.

Roughly half an incense stick’s worth of time passed before Hao Bai walked back out, small medical case in hand.

Xiao Nanhui had been rubbing her hands and stamping her feet impatiently while she waited. She hurried forward the moment she saw him.

“How is he?”

Hao Bai tucked his hands into his sleeves and assumed an air of inscrutable profundity.

“There’s a poisoned dart embedded in him — the kind of frog venom commonly used by the Southern Qiang people here, which causes instant total-body paralysis. Fortunately he has a strong constitution, and despite the delay of these several days, there’s no serious damage. His tendons and meridians in his limbs have been blocked, however, leaving him without strength, and he’ll need the antidote before he can recover.”

“And can you provide the antidote?”

The other man gave a cold snort, his voice saturated with bloated self-confidence and thinly veiled contempt for someone’s ignorance.

Xiao Nanhui gave him a sharp slap. “If you can treat him, just say so — what are you snorting about?!”

Hao Bai shot her a vicious glare, clearly wanting to snap back, but thinking better of it with those forceful hands of hers in mind. He shrank his claws back with an aggrieved air and headed back to his own room with his medical case, muttering resentment every step of the way.

Xiao Nanhui stood outside the cell door for a moment, figuring Su Pingchuan had had enough time to make himself presentable, then stepped inside.

The cell had been thrown together on short notice. It was on the crude side, but reasonably clean, if poorly lit. Now that deep autumn had set in, the nights had turned bitterly cold.

Su Pingchuan’s armor was nowhere to be seen — in all likelihood stripped off by Akuang’s people and stashed away for selling. What remained was his white inner garment, faintly stained with blood. He had curled himself into a corner, and didn’t look up at the sound of someone entering.

Xiao Nanhui cleared her throat softly. After a long pause, Su Pingchuan finally raised his head, his voice anything but welcoming.

“What are you here for? To see if I’m dead yet?”

She had been about to offer a few words of comfort, but hearing that, she felt a flash of irritation instead. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead long ago. Why would I bother checking in person?”

Su Pingchuan gave a cold scoff and lapsed back into silence.

He was still only half-grown, and without the armor he looked no different from any other young man from a good family in Quecheng.

She sighed and pulled two steamed buns from inside her garment, holding them out to him.

Su Pingchuan looked at the two buns — taken straight from her inner clothing, not even wrapped in oiled paper — and turned his face away. “I’m not hungry.”

Xiao Nanhui methodically peeled the thin outer skin off both buns and pressed them into his hands. “A general who’s just lost a battle, refusing to find fault with a plain steamed bun — word got out about that, and people would die laughing.”

Su Pingchuan had gone several days without a single grain of rice, surviving on nothing but dirty water. His stomach had long since been reduced to nothing but bitter dregs. After one more struggle with himself, he took a savage bite.

Once the bun was down, some of the color came back to his face. She passed him the water.

“Tell me — how did you get yourself captured? How could you be so careless?”

Su Pingchuan drained half the canteen and wiped his mouth before speaking, his voice tight with fury. “If someone hadn’t leaked the route of this strike, how could anything have gone wrong at Famang Ridge?!”

This caught Xiao Nanhui off guard. “What do you mean? There’s a Bai Family informant inside the Tiancheng army?”

“The Guangyao Battalion has always had the strictest vetting of any unit. I refuse to believe there’s a spy within it, but the facts are what they are. My men and I have already suffered badly. If that informant continues unchecked—”

“Do you have anyone you suspect? Any leads on who the informant might be?”

Su Pingchuan came to an abrupt stop, as though he’d choked on the last bite of bun, and it was a long time before he squeezed out two words.

“Nothing.”

Xiao Nanhui had to fight back the urge to roll her eyes, stopping only out of consideration for his current state of mind.

“It doesn’t matter — such is the deception of war. It goes both ways.”

Su Pingchuan turned an odd look on her. “Don’t tell me — you’re a spy as well?”

This little wretch. Of all the things to say. She should never have considered his feelings — she should have given him a thorough dressing-down when she had the chance.

She was just about to fire back when he continued: “I heard that someone sent a topographical map of Bijiang to the army earlier — it was you, wasn’t it? But the surprise strike has failed, and the Bai Family will have been put on alert. You really can’t afford to stay here much longer.”

Xiao Nanhui blinked and swallowed the retort back down.

She had only dealt with this General of the Left a handful of times, but it wasn’t hard to see that he was an earnest, straightforward young man. Arrogant and aloof perhaps, yes, but not truly bad at heart.

A person of this gilded background — and apparently not the sharpest tactician — sent to carry out an encircling surprise assault? And how would Duke Xuanyuan ever have agreed to send his only son into such a killing ground?

“I’ll ask you something directly,” she said, weighing her words before deciding that directness was best. “This campaign — you didn’t slip out on your own, did you?”

The moment the words were out, she saw his partially recovered color become noticeably uneasy.

That was answer enough — seven or eight parts out of ten, at the very least.

She thought of how hard she had worked to distinguish herself, staking her life on the task the Emperor had given her. And here was someone who had a safe place to be, and chose of his own accord to squeeze into this knife’s-edge of a situation.

Truly — comparing yourself to others is enough to make anyone furious.

“What’s so bad about Quecheng? And yet you had to come here, of all places. Now that things have gone so wrong, you may not care about yourself, but think of Duke Xuanyuan. If he were to learn you’d come to harm—”

“What — you’re afraid Father would hold it against you?” Su Pingchuan cut her off, the chill and mockery in his voice entirely undisguised. “Rest easy. He won’t. My dear concubine-mother has been with child for several months now. The physicians say it’s a son. Even if I died out here, his line would continue.”

She had been completely unprepared for this particular blow from the depths of a man’s household grievances, and for a moment had no idea how to respond. In the end she simply held out another bun.

Su Pingchuan took it and began shoving it into his mouth. “You really are at your ease — you even have the leisure to come and laugh at me.”

Xiao Nanhui felt somewhat wronged. “It’s not that I enjoy being stuck with you in this wretched place — it’s just that the hour is still early.”

Su Pingchuan shot her a glare. “It’s the middle of the night. What do you mean, still early?”

Xiao Nanhui blew the dust off a corner and shifted her position. “I told the guards I was coming in here to have a bit of fun — I gave myself half an hour. If the time isn’t up and I walk out, won’t that just cause complications?”

Su Pingchuan went blank for a moment, then understood exactly what she was implying. The bun in his hand instantly changed shape from the pressure of his grip.

“You woman — have you no shame?!”

This time she finally lost control of herself and rolled her eyes — a full, magnificent, sweeping roll. In the days of close quarters with Hao Bai, she had absorbed some of the finer arts of the eye-roll, and this one was executed to perfection.

“You’re a grown man who needed a woman to come rescue him, and at the end of it all you’re calling me shameless? If it weren’t for the fact that we’re colleagues, I should have left you to the Southern Qiang people and let them give you a proper lesson in what shame really means.”

Those words landed like a resounding slap, and Su Pingchuan’s face went crimson.

He lowered his head and was silent for a long while.

She glared and waited half a beat, then glanced back — and saw that his lashes were glistening, a large teardrop hovering there, barely held back.

“I know I’m useless. My mother is gone, and my father no longer cherishes me. After being captured like this — even if I survive, returning home would be nothing but humiliation. If this makes things difficult for you, hand me over to them.”

She had always been utterly at a loss when people cried — and a man crying, most of all. Though she found this sudden despondency rather childish and overwrought, she could not help the pang of compassion that rose in her chest.

“How could that be? You’re overthinking it.”

Su Pingchuan looked up at her with a wan, weary gaze. “You really are terrible at comforting people.”

Xiao Nanhui was speechless — and he went on of his own accord.

“They say the battlefield is the most dangerous place there is. From where I stand, it doesn’t hold a candle to the inner quarters of a great household. The schemes that rear out of that place — I witnessed them from childhood. My mother died when I was three. I was raised by a concubine-mother. Until I was nine years old, I knew nothing but poetry and painting, admiring flowers and beauties. I had utter contempt for the sort who practiced with weapons and spears — I thought them coarse and vulgar.”

Xiao Nanhui had something of a revelation. “No wonder you couldn’t even beat me — a girl — back then. But how did you end up a military officer? Don’t tell me that punch of mine rattled your brain.”

Su Pingchuan’s mouth twitched. This woman really did have a talent for prodding at exactly the wrong places. He drew a deep breath and tried to speak as evenly as possible. “When Father heard about that punch you gave me, he finally discovered that my concubine-mother had long since bought off the masters who taught me riding and archery. What passed for martial training and physical conditioning was all for show — I hadn’t learned a thing about riding, archery, blades, or swords. What I had mastered was cricket-fighting and appreciating popular tunes. That very night he gave me a severe beating. The next morning he had me sent to Taozhi Mountain of Zhongtian, to study under the Liusha Sword-Breaking Sect. I trained alone on that mountain for five years before Father finally brought me home.”

At the mention of Taozhi Mountain, Xiao Nanhui’s interest was immediately piqued. “Your sword technique — you learned it on Taozhi Mountain? No wonder the form is so beautiful to watch. Your bones and frame don’t quite suit swordsmanship though — you’d be better suited to the broad blade, the Dao. When we get back I can introduce you to some truly formidable masters—”

“I come from the illustrious Sword-Breaking Sect — how could I possibly take another master?!” Su Pingchuan’s face flooded with indignation, and he seemed to feel the entire conversation had been a mistake from start to finish. He turned sharply away and refused to look at Xiao Nanhui again.

Fine, don’t then. What are you getting so worked up about? With a temper like this, how on earth did you survive in the army?

“All right, all right.” Xiao Nanhui collected the rebuff without fuss and rolled her eyes inwardly. In his presence at least she would be the bigger person, she told herself — he was younger than her after all, and young people were allowed their hot-headed pride. She, as a senior figure, naturally could not stoop to quarreling with a junior. “Time’s nearly up, so I’ll head out. This is still a bandit’s den, and the Bai Family’s people may arrive in a few days. Keep your wits about you. I’ll find a way to get you out.”

She had said her piece and was rising to leave when she remembered something halfway to the door and turned back.

Su Pingchuan was sitting with his face to the wall. The next instant, a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders and spun him around. The woman who had turned back reached out with both hands, seized the front of his garment, and wrenched it open — half his chest laid bare in an instant. He was still too stunned to react when that hand reached down toward his waistband and gave a sharp tug, snapping his only belt clean in two.

Xiao Nanhui stepped back to assess the effect and decided it still wasn’t disheveled enough. She moved in again to grab Su Pingchuan by the hair — and at that point he finally came to his senses and clapped her squarely across the face.

“What are you doing?!”

Xiao Nanhui pressed a hand to the red mark blooming on her forehead and turned sharp. “You need to look the part of someone who’s been taken advantage of! I can’t exactly walk out after spending all that time in here with you while you’re still perfectly neat and tidy — wouldn’t that give the whole thing away?!”

Su Pingchuan must have suffered no humiliation quite like this in all his years alive. His eyes had gone red with fury. He was delicate-featured by nature, and in this state he looked exactly like an aggrieved rabbit — utterly, helplessly pathetic.

At the sight of it, Xiao Nanhui felt the surge of irritation deflate back down.

She knew very well what it meant to be the legitimate son of a Duke — how proud a person in that position had to be. To have fallen this low must have already cost him dearly. She softened her voice. “You’ve been starved for days — you don’t have the strength to match me. I know this is hard to stomach, and that you couldn’t bring yourself to do it on your own. Don’t worry — what happened tonight, I will not speak of to anyone.” She paused, then added one more thing: “Being alive is what matters most. Don’t be at war with your own life.”

And with that, Xiao Nanhui turned and left.