Yun Xi crossed to the main courtyard in just a few strides. Before she even entered the hall, she heard Qin Zhong inside, scolding A’Jiu: “You’re always so reckless—how am I supposed to feel at ease? Take, for instance, when the emperor’s edict reached the northern frontier and the three of you set out together—I told you again and again, over and over, to protect them, protect them! And what did you do? Charged to the front lines time after time, and once you reached Jinling, went running around all over the place. I’d bet that once you get to Lingnan, you’ll just be busy killing the enemy and won’t spare a thought for the Young Miss’s safety!”
Squatting on a chair, thoroughly indignant, A’Jiu pouted and said, “How much better are those two than me anyway? What do they need my protection for? And don’t underestimate A’Ting either, Old Zhong—her skills are quite good now, she can hold her own against me evenly.”
“I told you to protect them not because they’re less capable than you. It’s because—”
Before Qin Zhong could finish, he caught sight of Yun Xi stepping into the main hall out of the corner of his eye, and fell silent at once.
A’Jiu snatched up the sword resting beside her, leapt down from the chair, and said excitedly, “A’Ting, you’re back! Let’s hurry and go!”
Yun Xi nodded, then, remembering what they’d just been discussing, asked, “Who were you two talking about just now?”
A’Jiu startled for a moment, then said, “Oh! Didn’t I tell you already? Two friends I ran into on the road. We came back to Jinling together, the three of us.”
Seeing Yun Xi still looked doubtful, she pointed at Qin Zhong. “Old Zhong, you tell her.”
Qin Zhong nodded. “That’s right. Friends of Jiuzi’s. The two of them used to serve under the Marquis in the old days too, then got wounded and settled long-term at Jishan Fu. You and Jiuzi were still little back then, so you never met them. When the edict came down last year, they heard His Majesty had recalled us and wanted to come to Jinling too, so Jiuzi traveled back together with them.”
With that, he glanced at the sky and urged them on. “All right then. That brat Pei Lan specially granted me a day’s leave to come see you off, and here you’ve kept me waiting till this hour. The two of you—one a general, one the head of the vanguard camp—need to set your own discipline in order first, or even the finest troops will fall apart into a disorganized mob. Get going, quickly now.”
Yun Xi and A’Jiu reached the gate of the residence, where Zhao Wu already had two fast horses ready. Fang Fulan was waiting outside the gate, and seeing Yun Xi, handed her a soft case, saying gently, “For keeping your jade hairpin safe.”
Yun Xi took it, and thinking of the dust and hardship ahead, pulled the jade hairpin out and carefully placed it inside the case.
Fang Fulan then took a travel bag from Mingcui’s hands and passed it to Yun Xi. “The spring clothes I had made for you at the start of the year are packed inside—they should still be wearable for a while yet. I hear it gets brutally hot in Lingnan once summer comes. You’re going there to lead troops into battle, so your health matters most—remember not to indulge too much in staying cool.”
Yun Xi smiled. “The year my brother came back from Lingnan, he brought dried taro cakes from there—Sister-in-law loved them. This time when I go, I’ll bring some taro cakes back for you too!”
Fang Fulan said softly, “Sister-in-law doesn’t want anything. I only hope you come back safe.”
Then, turning to A’Jiu, she bowed with her hands folded. “A’Ting is impulsive—I hope Sister A’Jiu will look after her along the way.”
A’Jiu reached out to steady her and nodded. “Sister-in-law, don’t you worry.”
The two of them mounted their horses together and urged them forward a few steps, but Fang Fulan, unable to bear the parting, couldn’t help chasing after them a few steps, calling out, “A’Ting.”
Yun Xi reined in her horse and turned back.
The moonlight was thin. Fang Fulan stood alone in the lane, wrapped in a pale cloak, like some celestial maiden who had wandered into the mortal world by mistake. Her eyes shone with welling tears as she called out to Yun Xi, “You always bear everything alone and hold it all in—that’s not good. Once you’re in Lingnan, remember to act within your limits in all things. Sister-in-law… will be waiting for you to come home.”
Yun Xi said, “Don’t worry, Sister-in-law. Once I reach Lingnan, I’ll be sure to write home often to let you know I’m safe.”
Yun Xi and A’Jiu rode swiftly together and reached Xishan Camp, where the great army still had a quarter hour before assembling into formation. The guards stationed outside the camp came forward and bowed. “General, shall we sound the horn to summon the men?”
Yun Xi said, “Wait until the exact hour of mao.”
The guard assented, then added, “Commandant Tian came by in the middle of the night—it seems he wishes to accompany the General to Lingnan. He’s waiting in the camp now. Will the General see him?”
“Tian Si?” Yun Xi was taken aback.
Though she had confidence in herself for this campaign, Lingnan was, after all, a wild and untamed region, and there was no telling how the fighting would actually go once they arrived.
Tian Si had followed her for several years, but had never once been to the battlefield, and besides, his brother Tian Ze was to sit for the imperial examinations the following year—a matter of the utmost importance. Yun Xi had long urged him to stay behind in Jinling.
She hadn’t expected he would actually come find her at Xishan Camp.
Yun Xi said, “I’ll go see him.”
Tian Si was in fact waiting by the watchtower. Seeing Yun Xi arrive, he hurried forward and said, “A—A’Ting, take me with you to Lingnan, please. I—I won’t hold you back, and I’ll—I’ll protect you too.”
Yun Xi said, “It’s not that I’m unwilling to bring you, but Wang’an’s spring examination is next year—”
“Th—this is also, this is Wang’an’s idea.” Before Yun Xi could finish, Tian Si cut in. “He’s the one who told me to go with you.”
“All these years, if—if it weren’t for you, how could Wang’an and I have found our footing so ea—easily in Jinling?” Tian Si said. “The Marquis Zhongyong’s household has done a great deal for us.”
Seeing his determination, Yun Xi didn’t try to talk him out of it any further, and nodded. “All right then. Stay by my side—you’ll be my personal commandant.”
With that, she urged her horse into the camp. Turning back, she noticed A’Jiu hadn’t followed. A’Jiu was still outside the camp, reining her horse in place, pacing back and forth. “A’Ting, I want to go see someone.”
Yun Xi was startled for a moment, then understood. “Those two friends of yours?”
A’Jiu said, “Mm. They know I’m marching out today—they said they’d come out of the city to see me off. I want to go check nearby and see if they’ve arrived.” She paused, then quickly added, “I’ll definitely be back before the horn sounds.”
Yun Xi, having heard that these two had also once served under Yun Shuguang, had thought about going along with A’Jiu to meet them herself. But as the general, with the army about to set out and countless matters still to attend to, she could only say, “Go on, then.”
About two li outside Xishan Camp stood a rather shabby little tea stall, said to have been opened by an old soldier who’d retired from service. It normally opened at the second watch each night and closed at the exact hour of mao, meant to give generals a place to rest before marching out—unless one was a soldier long used to army life, one wouldn’t even know the place existed. But the old soldier’s health had been poor, and the stall had lain unused for a long while now.
Yet this particular morning, lanterns had been lit outside the stall again, and beneath the awning in front, two people sat at a table drinking tea.
Peering through the morning mist, one of them wore a brown cloak, hood pulled tight, his face hard to make out. The other wore dark robes, appearing to be past thirty, the corners of his mouth slightly downturned, a strip of white cloth covering his eyes—likely from some old eye injury that couldn’t tolerate light.
A’Jiu tied her horse to a post outside the stall and called out to one of them, “Hey, she’s about to leave—aren’t you going to go see her?”
The man in the brown cloak lifted his tea to his lips, paused mid-motion, and answered with something unrelated. “The mountains of Lingnan are treacherous. Have you memorized the terrain maps I drew for you, and the tactics I taught you?”
“Yes, yes, I know them.” A’Jiu said, unbuckling her sword and setting it on the table, then flipping over a teacup and pouring herself some cold tea, downing it in one gulp. “You’ve gone over it with me back and forth seven or eight times already. I could recite it in my sleep.”
“You never take anything to heart. If you want to forget something, you’ll forget it no matter what—I should have made you write it all down.”
“Write it down and carry it with me? On the road to Lingnan, A’Ting and I eat together, sleep together—what if she finds it and gets suspicious? Besides,” A’Jiu added, “the bandit troubles in Lingnan won’t be easy to put down. If you’re so worried, why don’t you just go with her?”
The man in the brown cloak didn’t answer, but he did seem genuinely worried—his fingers tightened slightly around the teacup, his gaze drifting toward the direction of Xishan Camp.
“All right, all right.” A’Jiu said. “The two of you, just stay put here in Jinling and try to find the Fifth Prince soon, to clear the Marquis’s name and get revenge. Leave A’Ting’s safety to me—I’ll guard her with my life.”
Hearing this, the man in the brown cloak looked at A’Jiu, fell silent for a moment, and said, “A’Ting can protect herself. You should take care of yourself.”
Meeting his gaze, A’Jiu paused for a moment, startled, then lowered her eyes and poured herself another cup of tea, downing it in one go. She pulled something from her waist pouch and set it down on the table with a slap. “This is for you.”
It was a rolled-up bundle of bamboo slats.
The man in the brown cloak unrolled it and looked—pasted onto the bamboo were three little red paper cutout figures, one man and two women. If Yun Xi had been there, she would have recognized them at once as the figures Bai Ling had cut on Flower Festival day: Yun Luo, A’Jiu, and herself.
A’Jiu rubbed her nose, looking a little embarrassed. “I was originally planning to keep this for myself. But since you look so pathetic, I’ll give it to you. If you ever… miss A’Ting, take it out and have a look.”
A gust of morning wind blew past, lifting the hood off the brown-cloaked man’s head, revealing brows and eyes of striking, commanding presence—exactly like the general holding a long spear, mighty and imposing, on the bamboo slat.
He looked down at the bamboo slats and smiled faintly. “Thank you.”
“All right, I need to get going.” A’Jiu picked up her sword from the table, untied her horse from outside the stall, swung up onto it, and without turning back, waved a hand behind her before riding off with a crack of the whip.
Not long after, a horn sounded long and clear in the distance.
Hearing the horn, the man in the brown cloak looked around, then pushed off the ground and leapt lightly as a swallow up onto the more than ten-foot flagpole outside the stall, gazing off into the distance.
The man in dark robes beside him, hearing the commotion, came out of the stall as well and stood by the flagpole’s base. “Battlefields change in an instant. Tactical principles are fixed things after all—when it truly comes down to the critical moment, they may not be of much use. You’ve earned merit in Lingnan before. If you went with her, you could surely help her win a decisive victory from the start.”
“No.” The brown-cloaked man shook his head. “The girl has always wanted to carry on the will of the Yun ancestors, to become a general, to go to the battlefield. Back when I led her against the enemy on the northern frontier, in the end I only ever let her serve as my follower. Leading troops into battle—only by truly living through it firsthand can one see a wholly different world. Everything will be different this time.”
The morning wind grew stronger, stirring his cloak. As it flared and billowed, it revealed an empty sleeve hanging loose underneath.
Though he had lost his right arm, the sharpness of his brows had not dulled in the slightest since the old days.
Listening to the horn sound again and again as the great army set off, Yun Luo gazed into the distance, as if he could see, several li away atop the watchtower, a slender figure clad in armor.
He curved his lips into a smile. “That little girl. All grown up now.”
Grown into someone even better than he had imagined.
The horn’s sound faded. Yun Xi came down from the watchtower, urging her horse forward, inspecting her army of twenty thousand column by column. Arriving before the ranks, she called out in a ringing voice, “Soldiers—!”
“Here—!”
“We march to Lingnan this day, across ten thousand li of yellow sand. This general hopes that you—”
She paused for a moment, remembering what Cheng Chang had told her the day before.
You never need worry about being unconventional. Someone who can stay true to their own heart and devote themselves wholly to what’s in front of them—that’s a remarkable thing.
“This general hopes that you will fear no danger and no enemy, no matter how fierce—even should your armor be shattered beneath iron hooves, your resolve shall never be broken!”
The soldiers answered as one, their voices roaring like a tidal wave: “Even should our armor be shattered beneath iron hooves, our resolve shall never be broken—!”
Yun Xi nodded.
The spring light poured down over her, tracing a note of resolve—and a confidence unlike any she’d shown before—across her already striking features.
She sat tall on her horse, clad in silver armor, a crimson cloak billowing behind her, the brisk morning wind catching it and sweeping it back, cutting a truly heroic figure.
“Move out.” Yun Xi reined her horse southward and flicked the reins.