For a moment, Changling thought she had misheard.
"Shen Yao... the son of the Shen family in Luoyang?"
Mingyue Zhou did not finish his thought, but the implication was clear enough. She had been far from the Central Plains for too long. The world had moved without her.
"The Shen family," he said, "was always the weakest of the four great clans. Inferior to the Heyue family in both arms and wealth. Yet in the end, they took half the Central Plains."
The words struck like a needle through the chest, each heartbeat driving it deeper.
Shen Yao.
How could it be him?
She remembered the first time Shen Tiannan brought his son to call on the Yue family. She had barely glanced at the boy. Among the four great clans, the Shen family's only real asset was Shen Tiannan's standing in the martial arts world. The man had spent half his military influence to drive Changsheng forward, then assassinated the Prince of Beiyan as a gesture of submission, and so earned the Yue family's trust.
The alliance formed. In time, Changsheng and Shen Yao became something close to friends. Yet even then, he had never struck her as remarkable. Articulate. Passable with a sword. The Wang family's sons outshone him without effort.
When Shen Tiannan pushed for his son to take the position of Alliance Leader, so that the Shen family could help the Yues contend for the realm, Changsheng considered the matter carefully. The Wulin League had no tradition of hereditary succession. To win the seat, a man had to win the Wulin Conference outright. Changsheng decided to send Changling to clear the path.
Changling had objected. It would be cleaner for her to simply take the position herself. But an Alliance Leader could not ride at the head of the Yue army. So the logic held, and she accepted it.
She set out alone, blade in hand, and challenged more than a dozen of the great martial sects from south to north. Shaolin and Wudang declined to compete. Everyone else fell. In under six months she closed that journey without a single defeat. The martial world gave her a name from that road: Heroine's Tomb.
She taught Shen Yao every counter-technique she had learned against each faction. In the Wulin preliminary rounds she swept the field ahead of him, clearing the elite from his path. She carried him through five obstacles and past six opponents until he stood at the threshold of the final.
Then the Demon Cult arrived to wreck the proceedings. She had seen the opportunity clearly. She staged a wound, made a scene with the Demon Cult fighters, and withdrew. Shen Yao took the prize.
She could have thrown the final match directly, as the original plan required. She chose differently at the last moment, and deliberately so. She wanted the world to understand the truth: that Shen Yao's victory rested on fortune, and that the one person who genuinely deserved the title of best under heaven was Changsheng.
Even after Shen Yao held command of the alliance and earned a name among the heroes, she never thought much of him. In her private assessment, he was not even an ordinary hero, let alone a great one.
After the betrayal at the Battle of Taixing, she had gone over it many times in the years since. Her conclusion had always been the same. He had gone over to the Yan army. A man like that would never amount to anything of substance.
But Mingyue Zhou was telling her that Shen Yao was the reigning emperor of Eastern Xia.
Was the world truly so absurd?
"After the two Yue brothers died in battle," Mingyue Zhou continued, "the Shen family army regrouped under the banner of revenge. They produced Chang Yongsheng's handwritten letter and used it to rally the soldiers of the four Yue counties in Bashu, driving a counterattack at Taixing that nearly broke our Yan forces completely. After that, our army pulled back from the south, and the Yue troops gradually passed under Shen command. Shen Yao won battle after battle. The people gave him their loyalty. He destroyed the remnants of Former Liang, took Linzhang in Runan, established his capital at Yecheng, and named his state Eastern Xia. All within two years."
He was speaking without watching her face. Changling had gone pale by degrees.
She drew a slow breath and asked: "Eastern Xia. Then there is a Western Xia as well. Who rules it? The He family?"
Mingyue Zhou's expression shifted at the mention of that name. He shook his head. "The He family tore itself apart in an internal struggle. By the time they recovered, the situation was already decided. They had no real choice but to submit to the Shen family. The emperor of Western Xia is Yuan Jue, the last crown prince of Former Liang. He is half a puppet. The man who actually holds power is Wei Xingyun."
"Wei. Xingyun."
"You know him?" Mingyue Zhou looked at her. "From what I heard, after Wei Xingyun broke with the Yue army he retreated south. By chance he found Yuan Jue, installed him as emperor, and drew the surviving loyalists of Former Liang to his banner. That is how the current division between north and south came to be."
He was still speaking when the sound came: a soft, wet report, and then blood at Changling's lips. Not a small flow. The kind that comes when rage breaks something inward.
Mingyue Zhou caught her before she fell. Her forehead was cold with sweat, her eyelids dragged down by their own weight. "What is wrong with you?"
She pressed a hand to her chest. Something had struck her there, from the inside.
She seemed to see it all at once: herself, teaching Shen Yao to climb. Herself, swearing an oath beside Fu Liujing. Taigugou, handing the Yue vanguard to Wei Xingyun and walking away into nothing. The memories moved through her like smoke, each dissolving before she could fix it, and then the ground itself was gone, and she was falling, and both sky and earth went dark.
Mingyue Zhou checked her pulse and found it barely present, a thread that seemed on the verge of simply stopping. He understood nothing of medicine. He did what he could, cycling his inner energy into her until his own ran dry, resting, then beginning again. He spent most of the night that way and did not stop until some color returned to her face.
He was too exhausted to sleep. When the sky began to lighten he lifted her, put her in the saddle, and pushed forward, afraid the Tomb King's Fort pursuers were still behind them.
Things rarely go as intended.
They were nearly out of the mountains, the Acropolis almost within reach, when a band of soldiers from Tomb King's Fort appeared on the road ahead and closed a ring around them.
Mingyue Zhou looked at the man leading the group: Tao Feng, who served at Cangyun's side.
Tao Feng smiled through the road dust covering him. "Ahead of you at last."
Mingyue Zhou's voice went flat. "It seems Mr. Tao expected us on this road."
"You have the skill to break out of Tomb King's Fort. Of course you could make it down Luming Mountain. I simply waited."
"True enough. But you forgot something He Jin taught you." Mingyue Zhou paused, then let a faint smile reach the corner of his mouth. "Behind you is the Acropolis. And that is the boundary of this king."
Tao Feng felt it before he understood it. He spun around.
A black iron spear crossed the air like a sweep of bamboo. He twisted and avoided most of it, but not enough. The spear caught his shoulder and drove him into the ground.
After that came the sound of iron in flight, dozens of spears in quick succession. Before Tao Feng's soldiers could react, most of them were down with holes through the chest.
Tao Feng raised his head. His face had gone white. "Xuantie Battalion!"
Soldiers in black armor emerged from the forest on both sides of the road. The officer at their head walked forward at an even pace, stopped before Mingyue Zhou, and clasped his fist. "Forgive me for arriving late, Your Highness."
"Li Hu. You're here." Mingyue Zhou's gaze moved back to Tao Feng. "I was struggling to find sufficient evidence to persuade the king that Cangyun had turned against us. Unexpectedly, you delivered yourself."
Tao Feng pulled himself upright and yanked the spear from the earth with both hands. Li Hu stepped between him and Mingyue Zhou. The black iron soldiers raised their weapons. Then Tao Feng turned the shaft and moved to kill himself. No one was close enough to stop it.
At the moment the spear's hook came level with his own throat, a knife came out of nowhere. Bright as snow, spinning in a flat arc, it took Tao Feng cleanly across the right wrist. The spear dropped.
Tao Feng spat blood and looked for the source. The Gou Po knife finished its arc, humming, and fell back into the hand of the man who had thrown it. The man was broad in the shoulder but lean in the face, the look of a scholar on a soldier's frame. He covered the ground between them in an instant, struck Tao Feng at the base of the skull, and put him out before he could try again.
The whole sequence had taken no longer than a breath. Unhurried. Absolute. The kind of efficiency that creates unease without explaining itself. The man went to one knee before Mingyue Zhou.
"Tianpo." Mingyue Zhou's brow creased. "Why are you not with the princess?"
A voice answered from a short distance away. "Because I came as well."
Light, easy, carrying the simplicity of someone who has not yet thought to be careful. It stopped Mingyue Zhou cold. He turned.
A young woman was coming toward them from down the road, red dress brilliant against the pale morning, moving without any particular hurry. Her hair hung low and a jade hairpin sat crooked in it. The effect here, surrounded by soldiers and blood, was entirely out of place and entirely vivid.
She looked at Mingyue Zhou for a moment and her eyes moved through many things quickly. When she got close enough she reached up and caught his sleeve. "Third brother. If I hadn't noticed Tomb King's Fort moving Li Hu, you would be face-down in the dirt right now."
Mingyue Zhou had no good answer to that, and they both knew it. Tao Feng's arrival had been a genuine surprise. Without the battalion already positioned in the trees, it would have gone differently.
He let her have the silence. She smiled at it, then noticed the woman in his arms and made a sound of discovery. "Third brother. You went out with your hands empty and came back with a sister-in-law."
"Ming Yuefei. Stop."
"Stop what? Look at her hand." She pointed at the gilt ring on Changling's drooping fingers, then held up her own hand. She had an identical one. "That is not just fondness. That is devotion."
The soldiers nearby were trying very hard not to look. Even Tianpo was not entirely still. Mingyue Zhou coughed and turned to Li Hu. "Is there a military doctor?"
Li Hu nodded and moved to take Changling from his arms. Mingyue Zhou walked past him without looking, which produced more laughter from Ming Yuefei behind them.
Inside the carriage, an old military doctor worked on Changling's shoulder while he spoke.
"Her meridians have been badly damaged. Old damage, and gradually mending on its own, but she is extremely weak." He looked up. "Has she used martial force recently?"
Mingyue Zhou had not yet recovered from the phrase old illness. "She cannot exert herself?"
"A man with a broken leg can hobble a few steps once it starts to heal. If he tries to run on it..."
Mingyue Zhou thought of the blow she had struck at the cliff face of Beiyu Mountain. With her level of skill, she would have known exactly what she was doing to herself.
Ming Yuefei, hanging at the edge of the carriage curtain, called in: "Does that mean the sister-in-law drops dead before she even gets to bow at the wedding?"
The old doctor swallowed. "Not at all. The injury is serious, but she still has enough inner energy guarding her heart. Several months of genuine rest and recovery, and there should be no lasting harm."
Mingyue Zhou let out a breath. "Good. You can go."
The old doctor hesitated, looking over the bruises covering Mingyue Zhou from shoulder to rib. "Your Highness's injuries..."
"Dispense the medicine first."
He was wise enough to leave. Mingyue Zhou ignored Ming Yuefei's expression and said: "Did you bring a change of clothes?"
Ming Yuefei rolled her eyes, crawled into the carriage, and dragged a set of men's clothes from a low cabinet. Mingyue Zhou looked at it. "This is a summer layer. Nothing heavier?"
"I wasn't planning a winter campaign."
"Then give her what you're wearing. You take the men's clothes."
Ming Yuefei stared at him. "I'll freeze."
"She is injured. You are not. Wear less."
Ming Yuefei: "..."
I am still your sister.
The Xuantie Battalion formed up and moved toward the city. Most of the Tomb King's Fort fighters were dead or in custody. The living were shackled and marched with the column. Tao Feng was the worst hurt of any of them. Li Hu had the military doctor keep him alive, just barely, for questioning at home.
Mingyue Zhou spoke with Li Hu a while, then returned to the column in armor, riding beside the carriage. Through the curtain he heard nothing and finally called out: "What is taking so long?"
"You can come in."
He dropped from the horse and stepped up onto the board. He stopped when he came through the curtain.
Changling was still unconscious. But Ming Yuefei had dressed her in the brocade and changed her hair, braiding it long over her shoulder. The effect, lying there with her eyes closed, was something outside the ordinary world. Not of this place or time.
Ming Yuefei, now in men's clothes and propping her chin in her hand, said: "Where did you find someone like that?" When Mingyue Zhou didn't answer, she leaned toward him. "Third brother, we can't afford to take in people of unclear origin right now. Especially not..." she glanced at the figure on the pallet, "attractive ones."
"She got me out of Tomb King's Fort."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"That makes it worse, not better."
He looked at Ming Yuefei steadily. "Who told you to leave the palace? The entire Eastern Xia martial world is looking for you."
"We are in Wild Goose territory, and I have the battalion with me." She set her chin. "Besides, half the Central Plains martial world has been neutralized, and their leader is already in our hands. How much of a storm can they raise?"
"How," Mingyue Zhou said quietly, "do you think I ended up in Tomb King's Fort?"
Ming Yuefei paused. "I have been meaning to ask you that. I waited all night at Zuixian Pavilion and you never came. Two weeks later I finally got your eagle message. I couldn't imagine you were actually locked up in there."
"It was Second Brother."
A beat. "What?"
He described what he had found in the dungeon. Ming Yuefei's expression moved through several things as she listened, and then she hit the table hard. "Second Brother. Very skilled. Works with outsiders to undermine his own. If Tianpo hadn't pulled me out of the palace himself, I would still know nothing. You've had enough looks at Mingyue Yuesheng's real face by now. If you spare him again after this, I said it before and I'll say it again: he cannot be allowed to remain."
No trace of her usual lightness when she said it. She was young and could look guileless, but when the lightness left her face something colder showed through. "Those Eastern Xia people dared to reach into our territory. I am not inclined to be gentle with aged bones. I want them in sacks."
"That is not our goal. We cannot afford the noise." Mingyue Zhou's voice stayed level. "But since Mingyue Yuesheng has already given information to foreign agents, we should assume he has also revealed where we are holding the leaders."
"I moved them while you were missing. Used your transfer order. Transferred the whole group out of Anding Mansion." She read the question on his face. "They will not find that location. And even if they do, they will not break in."
Mingyue Zhou was still turning this over when Ming Yuefei smiled faintly and began: "Josho..."
He gestured for her to stop. She disagreed. "She's not actually unconscious anymore. And even if she heard everything, what does it matter? Even a monk's martial arts don't stay vegetarian."
"Eighth Sister. Mind your mouth."
Ming Yuefei shrugged and went quiet.
Mingyue Zhou looked at Changling for a long moment. Then he took Ming Yuefei by the arm and brought her out of the carriage. The two of them rode back toward Li Hu at the end of the column.
They were barely out of earshot when Changling, who had not moved since Ming Yuefei dressed her, slowly opened her eyes.
She had been conscious since the change of clothes.
Ming Yuefei had used that time to study her from every angle, clearly trying to get a read. Changling had not been able to determine what the girl wanted, so she kept her breathing shallow and stayed still.
Now she sat up carefully and looked through the gap in the curtain. The carriage was moving through a ravine with the army around it. She turned it over in her mind.
The name Mingyue Zhou had felt familiar from the first time she heard it, though she had not placed it. She had not expected him to be a prince of Yan.
The crown prince of Yan was Ming Yueyun, eldest son of the emperor, a man who had faced Changsheng on the battlefield more than once. Everyone said he had a mind for strategy and would carry Yan forward.
The Yue generation of the Ming family. She should have seen it. But there were many people with the surname Ming in Yan, and ten years ago Mingyue Zhou had been a child. She had not paid close attention to the internal affairs of the enemy's royal house.
No wonder Grandmother Chu never let a single word about her grandson's identity slip. If I had known from the start that Mingyue Zhou was a Yan prince, I doubt I would have bothered to pull him out.
His words about fighting enemies rather than fighting enemies were reasonable enough, as words go. But enemies remain enemies. Especially the kind who have trespassed on what is hers.
She was still working through what she had overheard, the phrase "half the Central Plains martial world neutralized" not yet fully parsed, when the sound came from outside: rapid hoofbeats, and a soldier's shout.
"Ambush!"
The cry broke into screaming before it finished. A rain of arrows fell into the canyon. The black iron cavalry churned in all directions, horses pierced and screaming, riders thrown. The formation collapsed in an instant.
Mingyue Zhou steadied himself quickly and assessed. The high ground above was bluffing. Too few men. He ordered the Xuantie cavalry to raise shields and hold the first volley. One wave withstood, and the angle reversed.
But the archers stopped on their own. The men in black on both sides of the canyon dropped into the gorge, drew swords, and came on directly.
What?
Fighters with the high ground abandon it and come down into a press of armored cavalry?
The next moment, it became clear. These were not soldiers. They were martial artists, every one of them, and every one of them was driving toward Mingyue Zhou.
Li Hu was already cutting his way back when he understood. He turned and bellowed: "Your Highness, watch yourself!"
Mingyue Zhou put Ming Yuefei behind him and looked at Tianpo once.
Tianpo unhooked the Gou Po blade from his belt. He waited until they were within three feet. Then the knife came out, and it became a thing of light, splitting into dozens of angled paths that were not paths, moving through the ring of blades around him. Blood followed. The knife was everywhere. The man was difficult to see at all.
The swordsmen saw they could not break Tianpo's defense and that the army was beginning to close around them. They did not wait. As though a signal had passed between them, they turned and went back up the canyon walls and were gone.
The whole attack had lasted minutes. Ming Yuefei looked after the empty ridge. "Where did they come from? Why leave before they finished?"
Mingyue Zhou looked around the terrain, and then something hit him and he turned fast. "Li Hu. The carriage."
Li Hu's face changed. He had been protecting the prince and the princess. He had not thought about what was in the carriage. From somewhere ahead, a soldier's voice came, ragged with panic.
"Your Highness! The carriage has been taken!"
Mingyue Zhou went still. Ming Yuefei said faintly: "That can't be possible."
Changling had a different view of it.
When the shout of ambush came, the carriage lurched forward like something with no rider and no sense, rocking hard enough to throw her into the wall. She grabbed the curtain and pulled it back to look.
Below the canyon ridges, men in black masks were dropping into the army, swords already moving.
That formation...
The techniques nagged at her. She had seen something like this. She could not place it before the wheel hit a rut and threw her sideways. She caught herself on the wall and found the driver's seat empty.
The horse was running loose.
She moved to jump clear. Before she reached the door, a figure landed at the shaft from above, took the reins in one hand, and in the same movement reached back and caught the curtain with the other.
"My apologies, Miss Tangut."
The wind pulled the scarf from his face. The face beneath it was young, clear-featured, the kind of face that does not worry itself. His dark eyes were warm with something that looked very much like amusement.
"I came all this way," he said, without apparent regret, "and I could hardly go back empty-handed. I'm afraid you'll have to bear with the inconvenience for a little while, Princess." He smiled. "Please, come with us."