After Dong Miji translated Li Wu’s words with visible unease, quite a few Rong tribespeople showed expressions of anger.

After a long pause, the female clan chief gave a brief and low-voiced reply.

“Impossible.” Dong Miji conveyed the female clan chief’s answer.

“Name your conditions.” Li Wu said.

“Impossible.” The words Dong Miji translated were still those same two words.

Li Wu persisted: “The word ‘impossible’ doesn’t exist in my world. Name your conditions and I’ll see about agreeing to them.”

Dong Miji showed a puzzled expression. Though he hadn’t fully understood everything, he had grasped Li Wu’s persistence. After conveying Li Wu’s intent to the female clan chief, the female clan chief’s brows furrowed slightly and she said something different.

“You no longer want — treat illness?” Dong Miji pointed to Li Kun, who was eating away energetically with a steamed bun in each hand.

“Don’t want to.” Li Wu said plainly and directly. “Give me elephant soldiers.”

“Your brother — you don’t care anymore?” Dong Miji’s face was full of shock.

“Don’t care.” Li Wu said without hesitation, with perfect confidence. “Give me elephant soldiers.”

Even Shen Zhuxi wanted to hide her face. That Li Wu could still hold his head high and square his shoulders — one could see just how formidably unshakeable Li the Scoundrel’s spirit was.

“My mother — will not agree!” Even Dong Miji was close to losing composure, and rather than translating Li Wu’s words, he gave an answer directly.

“Fine, if you won’t give them.” Li Wu said.

Dong Miji’s eyes went wide. Before he could ask, Li Wu placed his index finger and thumb in his mouth and let out a loud, clear whistle.

Several swift horses charged out from the dense forest nearby and galloped toward the grass awning. The Rong tribespeople were both startled and furious, filled with tension. In a moment, the clanging sound of weapons being drawn rang out one after another throughout the grass awning.

Even Shen Zhuxi was frightened and pressed nervously toward Li Wu beside her. He, however, could sit unmoved beneath so many guarded and hostile glares, leisurely picking up the flask for another large swig.

When the group of horses reached outside the grass awning, the cavalry riders did not dismount — instead they threw down a Rong tribesperson who was bare-chested and visibly panicked.

Upon seeing this tribesperson, the female clan chief’s expression darkened.

The tribesperson stumbled into the grass awning and knelt before the female clan chief, babbling out some kind of report. The expressions of everyone in the awning changed. Shen Zhuxi caught a strong smell of medicinal herbs after being dried over a fire. She suddenly understood from where Li Wu had taken this person.

“You want — to do what?” The female clan chief had Dong Miji ask.

Li Wu smiled. He leaned back with one hand behind his neck, upper body tilted back, posture relaxed, expression composed and self-assured.

“It’s simple: right now, I can make things difficult for you, but I have no desire to do so. And you — cannot make things difficult for me.” Li Wu said. “I want to do business with you — a fair exchange. If you’re not willing, then forget it. I’ve already found a way out of here anyway, so I have no need to beg anything of you. It’s not as if you’re the only people in the world who know how to tame elephants. Wild elephants roam in great herds in the Huainan region… Well, you wouldn’t know where Huainan is even if I told you. You only need to know this: once I leave, the next person who comes here to do business with you will not be as easy to deal with as me.”

Li Wu said a long string of words. Dong Miji’s expression was bewildered at first, but at that final sentence, he gave a sudden start and blurted out:

“You want to tell others — our location?”

“You saved my woman — I owe you for that, and I swear I will not let so much as a fraction of your whereabouts or means of access leak to the outside world. But — the soldiers under my command will not be so obedient.” Li Wu heaved a long sigh with an expression of regret. “Originally, if I had elephant soldiers, I would have been able to keep them well in check and make them keep absolute silence about this place…”

A threat — if this wasn’t a threat, there was no such thing as a threat in this world. Only Li Wu’s threat was wrapped in a coating of sweetness, using people’s instinctive nature to seek gain and avoid harm, and had the Rong tribespeople completely at his disposal.

What Li Wu did here — in the eyes of a scholar, it ought to seem utterly shameless.

But as a princess of the imperial family, one who had grown up absorbing what she heard and saw in the imperial study, Shen Zhuxi perceived something else entirely. She looked at Li Wu with a complex expression, and for the very first time saw in him a quality of extraordinary rarity.

In her childhood, playing in the imperial study, when the Crown Prince came for an audience — she had sat on her father the Emperor’s knee and listened as he earnestly impressed upon the Crown Prince below:

“Ceremony before force, mercy paired with authority —”

“Suzhuang, this is the way of the ruler.”

“When will you ever come to understand it?”

Dong Miji relayed Li Wu’s words to the female clan chief with much hesitation.

The Rong tribespeople’s expressions varied — some began to feel fear, some showed anger. The female clan chief, who held authority here, and the two female elders seated beside her, wore somber expressions as they exchanged glances.

Shen Zhuxi sensed a flicker of unease from the dangerous look in the female elders’ eyes. At the same moment, Li Wu picked up a small strip of dried fish, tossed it into his mouth and began chewing. He said in an offhand tone, “I would advise you not to get any bad ideas. I’ve said it already — I have no desire to make things difficult for you, and you cannot make things difficult for me.”

After Dong Miji had translated his words, just as the female clan chief was about to speak, a regimented chorus of voices rang out. The earth trembled as if in an earthquake, a deep rumbling rolling in from the distance. Shen Zhuxi looked up and saw the Qingfeng Army soldiers in leather armor, with Niuwang at the head, chanting the Qingfeng Army’s battle cry at the top of their lungs. With each step they stamped the earth, advancing in overwhelming force toward the grass awning.

The Rong tribespeople in the awning went utterly pale. A stone knife was pressed to Li Wu’s throat. The female elder who had once given Shen Zhuxi the ivory ornament glared with round, furious eyes, fixing Li Wu with a ferocious stare.

Shen Zhuxi was anxious enough to half-rise from the bamboo mat. But Li Wu still showed no change in his expression — he even tilted up the corner of his mouth in a light laugh.

“I’ve said it already…”

Li Wu abruptly rose. With the speed of lightning, before anyone could react, he had already countered the female elder in a single move.

A cry of pain rang out in the grass awning.

The female elder was forced into a reverse arm-lock, and knelt facing away from Li Wu, unmoving. Li Wu restrained her struggling with one hand alone.

The triumphant, high-spirited smile appeared on his face once again.

“You cannot make things difficult for me.” Li Wu said.

Silence fell inside the grass awning.

The advancing Qingfeng Army had also stopped not far outside the awning.

The grass awning stood isolated between the Rong tribe’s village and the Qingfeng Army. The quiet was so complete that even the wind coming through the valley fell still when it reached this place.

“I’ll give you one more chance to make a deal.” Li Wu lifted his head. His fearless, dauntless gaze swept across every Rong tribesperson’s face in the awning. His composed, resolute voice flowed slowly through the space. “This time, we each give a little ground and both stand to gain.”

“I won’t ask for the elephant-taming technique anymore — simply lend me five fully trained elephants and elephant riders for three years. After three years, I’ll return both the people and the elephants to you. Not only will I give you the wheat seeds and farming techniques I promised before, along with the wine-brewing technique — I’ll also, for the duration of the loan period, leave behind a physician and a craftsman to pass on medical knowledge and construction techniques to you. If we reach an agreement, I can also swear on my life that the specific location of the Rong tribe and its means of access — my people and I will never breathe a word of it to anyone until the day we die.”

Dong Miji worked very hard to convey the gist of Li Wu’s words to the female clan chief. She looked at Li Wu without blinking, as if weighing how much of his words were to be believed.

After the earlier demand for the elephant-taming secrets — an outrageous opening bid — the three-year loan now sounded considerably more moderate. The Rong tribespeople looked back and forth among themselves, murmuring in discussion. The resistance on their faces had eased considerably.

After a long silence, the female clan chief’s gaze finally relaxed, and she spoke a sentence.

Dong Miji said: “My mother says — she will consider.”

“I can’t let you consider until the end of time. Let’s say this —” Li Wu pressed his advantage and set a firm deadline. “In three days, I will be taking my people and leaving this place. If three days pass and you still have not given me a satisfactory answer, as for what happens after that — we’ll have to leave it to fate. I hope your elephant god is able to bless you, so that the next time you encounter someone as easy to deal with as me.”

After the female clan chief had listened to Dong Miji’s translation, she looked at Li Wu in silence for a moment, then rose and led the way out of the grass awning toward the Rong tribe’s drawbridge.

The remaining Rong tribespeople rose one by one and fell in behind her.

Li Wu called Dong Miji back and said, “Are you free tonight?”

“What — what is it?” Dong Miji looked bewildered.

“You and I, let’s talk privately about something.”

Dong Miji looked at Li Wu’s sly eyes. His animal instincts immediately put him on guard, and his two bare feet began inching backward. “No — no… I have something to do…”

“You have something to do?” Li Wu hooked an arm around him and hauled him back. He draped his arm over the poor boy’s neck and pressed down on his tousled head with casual ease, then said airily, “You have something to do, that’s fine — as long as I don’t have anything to do, it’s all fine. Come on, come back to camp with me for a drink —”

“No — no — I…”

Dong Miji’s protests were useless. He was forcibly loaded onto a horse by Li Wu. Shen Zhuxi had been afraid that Li Wu’s rash move would provoke a conflict between the two groups — but to her surprise, when the female clan chief heard Dong Miji’s cries of protest, she only turned to look back from a distance, and after a brief moment turned her head back and continued walking forward.

The gangly, slender boy struggled pointlessly atop Niuwang’s horse. Niuwang ran out of patience at last and gave him a smack on the backside: “Stop yelling! Nobody’s going to do anything to you — you yell so loud, are you some kind of rooster?!”

Dong Miji hadn’t even properly learned the official language, let alone Niuwang’s half-official, half-Sichuan dialect.

He didn’t need to understand what “rooster” meant. Because once he arrived at the riverside camp, something even more alarming would occur than Li Wu hooking an arm around his neck and calling them brothers.

Li Wu had prepared a table of good food and fine wine — Niuwang and the others had waded rivers to get here and had brought little food, so producing such a spread was no small feat. Li Wu hadn’t used it to host the Rong tribe’s clan chief; instead, he had brought it out to entertain a Rong tribe boy who could barely hold a conversation and could only barely serve as a goodwill ambassador between the two groups. Shen Zhuxi didn’t understand why.

After a few cups of wine, Dong Miji had forgotten about needing to return to his village. His posture swayed, and his speech grew increasingly incoherent.

“…Outside — really, really that good?” Dong Miji listened to Li Wu’s tall tales with rapt attention. “Out — outside there’s really a… dog that talks…”

Li Wu swore an oath: “Why would I lie to you — that dog not only talks, it can read books, write characters, and even looks like a proper person. If I didn’t tell you, you’d never guess it was a dog!”

“Re — really good…” Dong Miji said, his face taking on an envious expression. “I — I also want…”

“You also want to go see?” Li Wu finished the thought for him.

Dong Miji responded twice in agreement.

“Simple —” Li Wu hooked his arm around Dong Miji’s neck and drew him closer to himself. His tone was earnest and heartfelt, but the gleam in his eyes was that of a cunning fox. “You — just come with us to the outside, wouldn’t that do it?”

“Ah?” Dong Miji, though drunk, understood this sentence. He let out a stunned “ah” and stared at Li Wu with his mouth hanging open.

“This was all predestined by the elephant god —” Li Wu said.

“…Ah?” Dong Miji seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

“Look — I am a duck —” Li Wu said, and began pointing, starting from Shen Zhuxi, who was equally dumbfounded. “This one is a pig, this one is an ox —”

He pointed to Niuwang, who was grinning from ear to ear.

“This one is an eagle —”

He pointed to Li Kun, who was wolfing down his food.

“This one is also a pig —”

Shen Zhuxi: “?”

“There’s also a magpie, but he’s not here — I’ll introduce you to him another time.” Li Wu said, and then pointed his index finger at Dong Miji. “Add you — a rooster — and our whole family is complete.”

“Tell me, is this not the will of the elephant god?” Li Wu asked Dong Miji in return.

Dong Miji was struck dumb.

Li Wu’s bearing was righteous and his expression calm and self-assured. If Shen Zhuxi hadn’t known him well enough, she would almost have believed that some elephant god had truly come to him in a dream, allowing him to say all this without the slightest twinge of conscience.

“I — I… don’t know…” Dong Miji said in a panic.

Li Wu gave his chest a gentle pat and said gravely:

“Knowing it in your heart is enough. This matter is settled then. You’ll act when the moment comes — we’ll meet again in three days.”