After swallowing the hot food, the gnawing hunger that had been clawing at her insides was finally soothed. Hua Zhi silently mocked herself — someone like her was fortunate to have been born into the Hua Family, a household of great wealth and status. Had she been born into a poor family, how would she ever have managed?
Seeing the exhaustion written all over her face, Yu Mu said softly, “Jinyang is now fully under control. Why don’t you rest for a while?”
Hua Zhi shook her head. She only feared there was not enough time — feared that if her arrangements were not thorough enough, she would drag Yanxi down. How could she afford to let her energy scatter now and go rest?
Still, sitting on a full stomach was making her drowsy. Hua Zhi rose and stepped out of the room. The cold wind struck her, and that heavy, half-asleep feeling dissipated greatly, sharpening her mind at once.
“Where is Zhu Ling?”
“This subordinate had him bound and tossed into the room next door. He has operated in Jinyang for many years — keeping him under our eye is the only way this subordinate can feel at ease.”
“Take me to him.” Whether it was historical records or the legends passed down through generations, everything concerning the Chaoli tribe had mythologized them. She wanted to see him face to face — to find out just what made them so different.
But when she laid eyes on Zhu Ling — a man of unremarkable height whose appearance was no different from that of a Daqing native — Hua Zhi knew she had assumed too much. Zhu Ling was not a pureblooded member of the Chaoli tribe. It was precisely because his looks resembled his maternal people that he had been cultivated as an inside agent.
Though Zhu Ling was bound, he had not struggled. He sat on the floor, leaning against a pillar, his composure still intact. When the group entered, he did not stir.
Bao Xia dragged over a chair and helped her mistress sit down, her eyes fixed warily on the restrained man across from them. Everything she had been through that day made her unwilling to let down her guard even for a moment.
After studying him for a moment, Hua Zhi asked, “Zhu Ling, like Yuan Shifang, is your maternal people also from Daqing?”
Zhu Ling gave a scoffing laugh. “You know who I am, yet I have no idea who you are — isn’t that rather unfair?”
“I am Hua Zhi, granddaughter of Hua Yizheng.”
“The former Chief Academician of the Hanlin Academy, Old Master Hua?”
Hua Zhi gave no indication that she noticed anything else layered beneath his words. Her expression did not shift in the slightest. It was clear that Zhu Ling was not a man easily dealt with. She had not expected to get much out of him — yet she heard him say, “That’s right. My maternal people are from Daqing.”
“Oh? I am curious — you all carry half the blood of Daqing in your veins, yet in the end you always choose to stand on the side of the Chaoli tribe. You were born in Daqing, raised in Daqing, and everything you have eaten, drunk, and used came from Daqing. Why, in the end, did you choose the Chaoli tribe?”
Zhu Ling looked up at the ceiling. After a long silence, he said, “It is simple. Because even if we chose Daqing, there would be no road left for us to walk. The Chaoli tribe would not suffer a disobedient person to live. And as for Daqing — it could not accommodate people like us, with half of Chaoli blood in our veins. The moment our identities were revealed, ordinary people would stone us to death. When one can live, who would willingly choose to die?”
“And how do you know the Chaoli tribe would still be able to accommodate you once they take over the realm?”
“We have actually discussed that question.” Zhu Ling smiled. “Yuan Shifang said that if we could survive long enough to see that day, we would certainly be able to go on surviving. The reason Chaoli was destroyed in the first place was that things were done too ruthlessly. If they wished to rebuild their kingdom, they would inevitably need people like us — experienced, capable thinkers — to take charge and prevent history from repeating itself.”
There was nothing Hua Zhi could say. How powerless — and how innocent. They had not been able to choose their birth, nor could they choose their future. They could only be pushed forward by others. In the eyes of Daqing, they were irredeemable criminals, yet in their own eyes, they were doing nothing more than trying to survive.
This was their only choice.
National righteousness, loyalty and filial devotion — none of these things had anything to do with them. They were neither Chaoli people nor Daqing people. They leaned on both sides and were recognized by neither. They did not even have a side to whom they could pledge their loyalty or their devotion.
An impulse welled up suddenly in Hua Zhi’s heart. “What if I could give you all a way to live openly and with dignity?”
Zhu Ling froze, then shook his head. “There is no need to set me a trap like that. Ask whatever you wish to ask. Yuan Shifang is probably dead by now, and I do not have his kind of backbone. As long as you promise to give me a clean end when I am no longer of use, I will tell you everything I know.”
“It is not a trap.” After the initial impulse passed, Hua Zhi’s mind had already turned through countless thoughts. This was not impossible, was it? Daqing was vast — what was stopping them from setting aside a piece of land for these people? As for the other problems that would follow, could they not simply be governed the same way as ordinary citizens? Some things, the more one thought about them, the more complicated and difficult they seemed. Yet when it truly came time to resolve them, it need not be so.
Zhu Ling instinctively tried to stand, but his bound hands and feet pulled at him before he even remembered that he was still tied.
“Untie him.”
Yu Mu obeyed without a word, stepping forward to loosen the bindings. He even kicked a chair over in front of Zhu Ling as an invitation to sit, though he did not return to his original position — instead, he moved to stand at Hua Zhi’s side as her guard.
Zhu Ling did not wish to appear overly eager. He sat down and collected himself before speaking. “You say it is not a trap. How can you guarantee that your words are true?”
Hua Zhi produced the seal of the Qisu Division’s commander. “This is my guarantee.”
Zhu Ling recognized the seal. Yet — “When did the Qisu Division ever have a female official?”
“The commander of the Qisu Division is my betrothed.”
For any ordinary young woman, the weight of being a fiancée would not have amounted to much. But daring to present the seal in a moment like this was equivalent to placing the entire city of Jinyang in her hands. This went far beyond trust — it spoke to this woman’s own capabilities being great enough to bear such a commission.
The words of a woman like this carried a weight that few others could match.
“If I agreed, what would you do?”
“From this day forward, you would all be people of Daqing. You would have a nation to serve, countrymen willing to shelter you, your own land, and a household registry that is truly yours. No one would ever again be able to use your identities to threaten you. You would no longer wake in terror from your sleep. You would no longer live each day in fear and dread. You could live in peace — the same as every other ordinary citizen of Daqing.”
Hua Zhi’s words fell like stones into still water, each one sinking into Zhu Ling’s chest. The thing he had secretly wished for in half a lifetime now lay before him — and it was even more than he had dared to want, so much more that he could scarcely believe it. He feared it was nothing but a delusion of his own making.
Hua Zhi lowered her gaze and added another weight to the scale. “I am the Sixth Prince’s teacher. As long as he ultimately sits on the throne, what you hope for will not be difficult to realize. Of course — the prerequisite is that we both survive the Chaoli tribe’s invasion before I can make good on my promise.”
“And if the one who ascends the throne in the end is not the Sixth Prince?”
“That will not happen.” Hua Zhi raised her head. Her expression was unruffled, yet behind her eyes roared a storm. If that day truly came, she would use whatever means necessary to turn the impossible into the possible.
Zhu Ling understood the unspoken meaning behind her words. It was precisely because he understood it that the unsettled heart within him settled quietly back into place. If one could live, who would choose to die — let alone to live in a manner so perfectly suited to one’s heart?
Zhu Ling rose and made a deep, sweeping bow. “All that I have sought in this life amounts to no more than this. From this day forward, I shall follow only your commands.”