She stood at the end of one regime and the beginning of another, looking down on the surging current from where the great wind rose. Circumstances turned as her mind turned. Causes and conditions arose and ceased, the sun rose and the moon set, and the land itself could be overturned. All of it rested on a single thought of hers.
And no one stood in front of her anymore.
This was what people called the highest, the supreme.
She shivered without meaning to, struck by a reverence she had never felt before, and by a loneliness she had never felt before either.
In this moment Yu Wanyin suddenly understood what "the lonely sovereign" meant. Perhaps everyone who reached the very top had passed through this turning point. Some turned away, some cast people aside. They loosened hands that had gripped theirs and threw themselves into a vast emptiness.
But why her? Why did it have to be someone like her, a lazy, weak office drone whose only pleasure in life was squeezing onto the subway to read a few novels? Why had she fallen into this world and ended up standing in this place?
This question should have been put by a sage and answered by a hero of a thousand ages. Instead, Heaven had stubbornly shoved the answer board into her hands.
Since it insisted on asking her...
Yu Wanyin gave a sudden laugh.
Then her answer was that she wanted all of it.
"General Lin," she said. "His Majesty ordered you to take your orders from me, did he not?"
Lin Xuanying and the Giants all went still.
Since she was pressing him to pledge his loyalty in front of everyone, the order she was about to give was probably one they would not like.
Lin Xuanying looked down and met her eyes. Compared with the pampered favored consort he had first met, she was pale and thin now, with faint bluish shadows beneath her eyes.
Strangely, this only made her features look more striking. Her brows tilted upward, the corners of her eyes were blood-red, and a faint curve touched her lips, at once alluring and commanding.
After what felt like a long time, he knelt and said, "I am willing to serve you, Empress, with all I have."
In the great hall of the palace, the assembled officials kept a frightened silence. Only the boldest dared to glance up in alarm.
Xiahou Bo's wheelchair stood beside the empty dragon throne. He sat slumped in it, looking down at the court. "His Majesty was harmed by the demon empress and is gravely ill, unable to rise, so he has ordered me to manage court affairs in his place. Does anyone have a matter to report?"
His appearance was truly frightening. Half his head was wrapped in gauze. Bei Zhou's shot had not only blown off one of his ears but also ruined the skin around it, so disfigurement was certain.
Worse were his two legs, bound up like dumplings. Many had seen it at the foot of Beishan that day: the fallen boulder had crushed his legs solidly, and by the time they were dragged out, the legs had changed shape. No one knew how many pieces the bones had broken into.
To save the legs, the old men of the Imperial Academy of Medicine had been replaced three times over, and for now the hope still looked slim. Officials with even a passing knowledge of medicine muttered privately that an injury this serious could lead to sepsis and death.
Even so, with his face deathly pale and cold sweat beading his forehead, he insisted on attending court.
The man's hunger for power had reached the point of madness.
Perhaps he had been a hidden madman all along, even crazier than Xiahou Dan.
But even the officials who knew perfectly well he was seizing the throne only lowered their heads and kept quiet. Outside the hall, his rebel army was still patrolling everywhere, suppressing any force that dared to resist. Beyond the capital, three more armies were on their way.
It was only a matter of time before this man held supreme power. Why throw away one's own life for nothing?
Xiahou Bo urged again, and a few old ministers came forward trembling to report some trivial local matters that had no bearing on anything.
Before he could respond, someone said in a clear voice, "I have a matter to report."
Li Yunxi strode out of the ranks with his head held high.
That day at the foot of Beishan, the border troops had just heaved up the boulder and dragged away the Prince of Duan, his legs crushed, when the earth began to shake. The ground heaved and the mountain rocked, soil and stone burst apart, and even the best-trained soldiers were thrown down. Almost no one on the field remained standing.
In all that chaos, Li Yunxi and the others on the mountain had miraculously kept their lives. The soldiers chasing them had been shaken off, while they clung to tree roots and survived. By the time they had scrambled and tumbled down the mountain, both Xiahou Dan and Xiahou Bo were gone. All they could see were several carriages hurrying away toward the palace under the escort of the rebel army.
Because of this, the officials had carried the same question in their hearts ever since.
Now Li Yunxi asked it aloud. "May I ask Your Highness the Prince of Duan when we may have an audience with His Majesty?"
Xiahou Bo lowered his eyes to Li Yunxi, his gaze cold and dark.
But Li Yunxi had not feared Xiahou Dan in the past, and he feared this man even less. He might have been standing center stage, looking back with fearless heroism.
After a few seconds of this, Xiahou Bo seemed to try for a smile. It moved only half his face and came out savage. "I just said that His Majesty is gravely ill and needs quiet rest. Besides, the demon empress is still at large, and no one knows what sorcery she may use to disrupt the court. It is better for the palace to keep thorough guard in these days. That is why I dare not let suspicious persons into His Majesty's presence."
He leaned hard on the word "suspicious," and his dark gaze swept over several of the ministers.
During the mutiny at Beishan, the officials in their panic had instinctively fled toward whichever camp they had chosen. Because of that, many hidden loyalists of the Emperor had been exposed to the Prince of Duan.
Now, as his gaze passed over them one by one, they shivered, sank their heads lower and silently cursed their luck. Who had told them to bet on the wrong side?
Xiahou Bo withdrew his gaze and said slowly, "I am rather curious what urgent business Lord Li has that he must disturb His Majesty at a time like this."
Things had gone this far. Clearly, if Li Yunxi kept being stubborn, the charge of "accomplice of the demon empress" would come down on him.
Li Yunxi raised his head and faced the Prince of Duan squarely. "I believe," he said, "that the incident at Beishan that day was highly suspicious. Many doubts remain unresolved, and they must be reported to His Majesty."
Yang Duojie walked slowly to Li Yunxi's side and stood level with him. "On the word of one lone assassin, you would convict the empress of an entire nation?"
"Quite right," Er Lan said, following close behind. "Vice Minister Yu is the empress's own father, and he was thrown into prison without any trial. What law is that supposed to follow?"
"Insolent!" someone from Prince Duan's faction began to shout. "Your Highness, these men are stirring up trouble with malicious intent. They should be seized and thoroughly investigated!"
Xiahou Bo narrowed his eyes and raised a hand toward the guards.
"Lord Jin is mistaken!"
A young official suddenly strode out. "Lord Li asks to see His Majesty because a matter of such secrecy and importance truly needs His Majesty's own decision. I wonder what Lord Jin means by 'stirring up trouble.'"
This man was one of the loyalists who had been exposed at Beishan.
With him taking the lead, the rest of the loyalists looked at one another, and some of them grew restless.
When they had seen the murderous light in the Prince of Duan's eyes just now, they had more or less understood that it was too late to hope to stay safe by staying out of it. Even if they played the cowering quail for now, given the prince's careful and suspicious nature, there would be no day in this life when they could hold their heads up again.
Rather than sit and wait for death, they might as well stake everything on one throw.
At this point some of their old spirit was stirred up in them. A usurper this brazen, and no justice in heaven?
One after another, more than twenty men stepped forward and faced Prince Duan's faction. A few others had not spoken but had finally lifted their heads and were looking straight at the prince.
Countless gazes shot toward him at once, and for a moment the force of them was overwhelming.
Xiahou Bo's heart filled with a boundless hatred.
He could kill one man, or two. But while the resistance inside the capital had not been fully wiped out, he could not bear the consequences of killing dozens of senior ministers.
He had to grit his teeth and endure a few more days. Once the three armies arrived, he would have nothing left to worry about.
He drew a deep breath and said gently, "Later today, when His Majesty's health has improved a little, he will naturally summon you all. Court is dismissed."
The moment he finished speaking, he raised a hand to signal the attendants to push him away. His back had something of a fleeing look about it.
Li Yunxi and the others were of course not going to be brushed off by such a vague answer.
After court, they led a crowd of young officials straight to the door of Xiahou Dan's residence and knelt there in a great mass. When the guards came forward to drive them off, Li Yunxi answered with an air of righteous grandeur: "We are only kneeling here to pray for His Majesty's blessing and to wait for him to summon us."
They were all scholar-officials without the strength to bind a chicken, and their banner was prayer for the Emperor. The guards did not dare to use force on their own, and went to ask the Prince of Duan for instructions.
No one knew what Xiahou Bo had ordered, but no one came to drive them off again. They were left to kneel in the cold wind by themselves.
By the afternoon, the scholar-officials were swaying on their knees, and even Li Yunxi, the strongest of them, was shivering with cold. Beside him Er Lan had gone ashen and looked ready to collapse.
Li Yunxi lifted his head with an effort and looked at the residence gates, still tightly shut. He began to weigh whether to try forcing his way in, or to go home for now and press the matter again at tomorrow's morning court, threatening to die on the spot if he had to.
Just then the gates opened, and a palace maid ran out at full speed and vanished along the corridor.
Li Yunxi narrowed his eyes and watched her go, a bad feeling rising in him.
Before long the maid came hurrying back with a doddering old physician. The guards shut the gates again at once, cutting off their prying eyes.
After another short while, Xiahou Bo arrived in person with a cold, stern face, pushed through the doors. Li Yunxi and the others had already risen and chased after him, calling out, but he turned a deaf ear.
Li Yunxi turned to the guards. "Let us in."
"I have my orders," the guard said. "I cannot let you pass."
Yang Duojie, shaking, pulled Li Yunxi aside and stepped up to negotiate with the guards. He had barely said two sentences when a shrill wail of grief came from inside.
Li Yunxi and the others pushed past a crowd of sobbing palace maids, squeezed into the inner room in the confusion and reached the bedside.
The physician was kneeling and the Prince of Duan was seated. The man lying on the bed had a bluish-white face, and his eyes had not closed in death.
Li Yunxi still refused to give up. He studied the face carefully, three times over. Something roared in his head, and all he knew was that he had knelt down, his mind a complete blank.
How could it really be Xiahou Dan?
How could Xiahou Dan have died like this, so silently, so alone and forsaken?
This should not have been him, and it should not have been his kind of death.
Xiahou Bo sat slumped in the wheelchair, leaning forward with effort to take Xiahou Dan's hand, grief written all over his face. "Rest assured, Your Majesty. I will raise the little crown prince well."
The taste of blood rose in Li Yunxi's mouth; he had bitten his back teeth until they bled. He raised his head sharply and glared at the Prince of Duan with murderous fury.
Xiahou Bo seemed not to notice. He raised a sleeve and delicately dabbed at his eyes, and the undamaged half of his face was still all gentle refinement. "In these troubled times, the realm cannot go a single day without a ruler. Let us prepare the crown prince's enthronement as quickly as possible. Someone!"
"Yes!" Voices answered together from beyond the window, with a startling force.
Xiahou Bo's gaze brushed past Li Yunxi and drifted lightly into the distance. "Escort the lords home to rest for now, and have them prepare for mourning."
Dong... dong...
The low tolling of the funeral bell drifted out of the capital and echoed on without end beneath the leaden sky.
Lin Xuanying received the news on horseback. The death of the Son of Heaven was not something that could be kept quiet, and the whole column erupted in an uproar.
He stared blankly for several breaths, then snapped back to himself and turned quickly to look behind him. Yu Wanyin, disguised as his personal guard, was riding along in his wake.
Most of her face was hidden by the armor, and he could read no expression on it.
Lin Xuanying gathered his reins and slowed to ride beside her, and for the first time he hesitated, not knowing how to begin.
In the end he only asked, in a dry, low voice, "What do you think?"
"It's good news," Yu Wanyin said.
"What?" said Lin Xuanying.
He looked at her with something close to dread.
Yu Wanyin's voice was perfectly level. "If the body is real, then the Prince of Duan no longer has any bargaining chip to hold over us. If the body is fake, then he never found His Majesty, and he has no chip in his hands either. In both cases we can keep moving the plan forward."
Lin Xuanying tried hard to sort out his thoughts. "Could it be that the body is fake, but His Majesty is still in the Prince of Duan's hands, held back as his hidden card?"
"Impossible." Yu Wanyin shook her head calmly. "The whole realm now knows His Majesty is dead, and he was the one who put out the news. If he conjures up an emperor later, who would accept it?"
Lin Xuanying was horrified. "Wouldn't you accept it?"
"I would. But the Prince of Duan doesn't believe I would. He was born cold, so he's convinced everyone else is too. He won't gamble on human nature. I worked that out when I was drawing up the plan."
Put simply, Yu Wanyin's plan was crude and direct. The Prince of Duan was eager to see the reinforcements from the three armies, and sooner or later he would have to meet their commanders in secret. Lin Xuanying only had to hold back until then, and shoot everyone dead on the spot. With the commanders all dead at once, the rest would scatter like monkeys when the tree falls.
If the other two armies still harbored ideas by then, it would not be too late for the Right Army to slaughter them as well.
Lin Xuanying had originally wanted to strike hard before the Prince of Duan grew suspicious, purely because he was used to the thinking of a cold-weapon age. He had never considered that overwhelming firepower gave them limitless tactical freedom.
So what if the Prince of Duan grew suspicious? So what if he set up any number of defenses? Unless he invented bulletproof vests, it would all be for nothing.
Under this plan, if they could catch the leader first, casualties could be kept to a minimum. Delaying the operation also gave them more time to search for Xiahou Dan and make sure he was not put in danger.
Only, this "good news" from the capital...
Lin Xuanying glanced worriedly at the person beside him.
Yu Wanyin was too calm, calm to an abnormal degree.
He was about to speak and go over the question of whether the body was real once more, but she said, "Since His Majesty isn't in the Prince of Duan's hands, we still have to hurry and find him."
"..." Lin Xuanying said nothing.
She was flatly refusing to discuss the possibility that the body was real.
Yu Wanyin refused not only to discuss it but even to think in that direction. Once she opened that valve, her thoughts would stop at once and her hands and feet would stop obeying her.
Somewhere in the dark a voice seemed to press on her: Don't stop. Don't think about him. Keep going forward.
She knew she was holding on by a single breath. She could not let that breath break here, because there were things she still had to finish.
After a day's march, the army made camp.
Lin Xuanying assigned Yu Wanyin a tent of her own, still guarded by Twelve and Forty-Seven.
She also had a new little follower. After they entered Peiyang City, she had meant to pay the mute girl's fee and part ways, but the girl's eyes had rolled around a few times, and with a flurry of gestures she made it clear she wanted to stay and work. Stealing was too exhausting, and she no longer wanted to keep at it.
Yu Wanyin hesitated. The mute girl had had countless chances along the way to hand her over to the pursuers and had never betrayed her, so her nature did not seem bad. Besides, a woman traveling with an army really did face a great many inconveniences. So for the time being she took the girl on as a maid.
The mute girl was quick-witted and efficient. The two shadow guards had only just put up the tent when she had already made up Yu Wanyin's bedding. She had even come up with a hot water bottle, filled it with hot water and handed it over, motioning for her to hold it for warmth.
Yu Wanyin had not yet shaken off her cold. She held the warm bottle to her chest and let out a breath, deciding not to ask for now where the girl had found it.
She had thought she would lie awake all night, but thanks to the exhaustion in her body she slid into a dull, drowsy unconsciousness.
In the middle of the night, someone suddenly shook her awake.
The mute girl was crouching in front of her with a lit fire starter in her hand, her face wary, and she gestured for Yu Wanyin to listen closely.
Yu Wanyin forced herself awake. All she could hear was the wind and snow howling outside the tent.
"What's wrong...?" she said.
Before she finished, she paused slightly. There seemed to be something else in the storm: a noisy jumble of voices. But before she could make it out, the noise cut off abruptly.
Yu Wanyin pushed aside the bedding and took the fire starter from the mute girl's hand.
If something had gone wrong, why hadn't Lin Xuanying sent anyone to tell her? Why hadn't even Twelve and Forty-Seven raised the alarm?
Suspicion rising, she blew the flame out. To keep up appearances, the tent had been divided down the middle by a cloth curtain, and the two shadow guards kept watch on the other side.
Yu Wanyin crept over on tiptoe and lifted the curtain. Sure enough, both shadow guards were gone.
She lifted the tent flap next and squinted out into the snow and wind that hit her in the face.
The camp was quiet, and it did not look like an attack. Not far away, though, unsteady lamplight showed from Lin Xuanying's commander's tent.
She had not yet reached its entrance when the flap was thrown open and Lin Xuanying strode out, still talking over his shoulder to someone behind him. "Wait here, I'll go and ask right now. Empress!" He nearly collided with Yu Wanyin and only avoided her in time thanks to his agility. "...Why are you awake?"
"I'm looking for my shadow guards," Yu Wanyin said.
Lin Xuanying blinked. "They're missing? Don't worry, I'll send someone to look. It's cold out here, come in and talk."
Lin Xuanying found her a blanket. "Sit. Why did you run out in so little clothing? Have some hot tea..."
He had said he would send someone to look for the shadow guards, but for some time he made no move to do so.
Yu Wanyin gave him a probing look and did not touch the tea, but her eyes quietly made a circuit of the tent. A cloth curtain hung inside the commander's tent as well, dividing off the other half of the space. She could not tell whether the firearms and ammunition were behind it or something else.
Lin Xuanying sat across from her, seeming a little distracted, and drank a mouthful of tea on his own. "Wanyin, I want to ask you one more time."
It was the first time since their reunion that he had called her by her given name.
Lin Xuanying's expression was serious. "We're about to reach the capital. Once we do, there's no turning back. If you want to leave, this is your last chance. I'll take you somewhere safe, and you can have a life of your own. You never had to carry all this."
His eyes were far brighter than the single flame of the candle, and he gazed at her with burning intensity.
But the question, at this moment, was badly timed. What filled Yu Wanyin's head was: who had he been talking to just now? Where had the shadow guards gone?
"If I don't carry it..." She smiled. "Who will? You?"
The light in Lin Xuanying's eyes dimmed a little. "I've told you I have no interest in that."
"Then who?"
Lin Xuanying said nothing.
Yu Wanyin had asked only casually, but seeing his calm face, she suddenly stopped short.
"Then who?" she asked again. "Is there someone else in charge here?"
Lin Xuanying blinked.
His gaze slid lightly to one side.
Yu Wanyin shot to her feet, moving so fast she nearly knocked over the lamp beside her.
Lin Xuanying seemed to want to steady her, but she had already stumbled to the cloth curtain and yanked it open.
Xiahou Dan smiled at her. "It's been a while."
In the dim candlelight he sat wrapped in a fox-fur cloak with a brazier in front of him, his face utterly drained of color, a ghostly bluish-white. The wind from the lifted curtain set the shadows of the lamp swaying. Half his body was hidden in deep darkness, his hair hung loose, and the violence around him spread like ink soaking into paper.
"Where have you been?" Yu Wanyin said.
Xiahou Dan answered calmly. "Just as A-Bai said a moment ago, if you want to leave, now is your last chance."
Yu Wanyin took another step closer and caught a faint smell of blood. "What happened on the road? Where is Uncle Bei?"
Xiahou Dan acted as if he had not heard. "Have you read the letter?"
A sudden heat flared in Yu Wanyin's chest, and she was burning with anger. "Shut up and answer my questions!"
"So you've read it. Since you know everything now, you can think it over carefully before you choose..."
Smack. Yu Wanyin slapped him across the face.
His whole head turned to one side, and for a long while he did not move.
Her chest heaved. "So you came back, but you hid instead of coming to find me, and you sent A-Bai to send me away."
"..." Lin Xuanying said nothing.
Lin Xuanying poked half his head out from behind the curtain. "I'll give you two some privacy."
Neither of them in the tent paid him any attention.
Lin Xuanying left quietly.
Yu Wanyin's voice grew colder. "Do you really think that at a time like this I would just storm off?"
Xiahou Dan finally moved. He slowly turned his head back to look at her, his eyes flickering, and said weakly, "No... no woman has ever dared to hit me."
"What?" said Yu Wanyin.
Her anger had nowhere else to go. She raised her hand again.
Xiahou Dan ducked his head and stubbornly finished the line. "You have caught my attention."
Yu Wanyin's rage had been swelling in her chest, and now it was like a balloon pricked by a needle. For a long moment she could not think what expression to put on her face.
Xiahou Dan, for his part, had a trace of a smile in his eyes. He reached out and tugged at her sleeve. "Don't be angry."
Yu Wanyin shook off his hand.
Xiahou Dan said nothing.
She grabbed the collar of his fox-fur cloak with both hands and pulled it off, then started on his inner robe.
Xiahou Dan dodged. "Such warmth after a long parting..."
Yu Wanyin did not bother with his banter. With a few quick tugs she pulled his robe open and bared the skin beneath it. At the same time she understood where the faint smell of blood had come from.
There were no weapon wounds on Xiahou Dan's body, only patch after patch of bluish-purple bruises and scratches running in every direction. At a glance the flesh looked torn open, scab piled on scab, and some wounds that had not yet healed were still slowly seeping blood.
She seized his wrist and pushed up the sleeve, and as she had expected, she found bloodstained bite marks.
She turned her head away as if her eyes had been burned, and asked through gritted teeth, "You had an attack on the road?"
"Yes," Xiahou Dan said.
It was also the reason he had not reached Peiyang in time as agreed.
At the foot of Beishan, in the chaos of the earthquake, the badly wounded Bei Zhou had carried him on his back and fought his way out of the encirclement together with a group of shadow guards. After they shook off their pursuers, Bei Zhou had stopped halfway, handed Xiahou Dan over to the shadow guards, given him one long look, and left the group to walk alone down a different fork in the road.
He had not left a single word behind. So Xiahou Dan did not know whether Bei Zhou had worried about slowing everyone down, or whether he had chosen to part ways after learning Xiahou Dan's true identity.
Afterward, thanks to the shadow guards protecting him with their lives, they had escaped from several more close calls. Peiyang was almost in sight when the poison suddenly flared up in Xiahou Dan.
This attack came with a violence worse than any before. Xiahou Dan held out for only as long as an incense stick takes to burn before he lost his mind. What he did afterward, in the pain and the frenzy, he had no idea.
At first the shadow guards had not dared to tie him up. Later they could not stop him from hurting himself, and they feared the commotion would draw pursuers, so they had no choice but to bind him hand and foot and hide him.
When he woke from unconsciousness, two days and two nights had passed. By then Lin Xuanying had already led the army out of Peiyang.
Xiahou Dan had sent someone to contact Lin Xuanying and confirmed that Yu Wanyin was safe. But he himself was too weak. Appearing before the Right Army now would only shake the troops' morale. So he had waited until nightfall, when Lin Xuanying's trusted men brought him into the camp.
"I only meant to sneak a look at you first... ssh." Xiahou Dan broke off and sucked in a cold breath. "Gently."
Yu Wanyin was putting fresh medicine on his wounds, and at his words her fingertips trembled. "Does it hurt that much?"
Only after asking did she suddenly catch on. This man had lived with a head-splitting pain for more than ten years. Would he hiss at such a small wound?
But Xiahou Dan pressed his lips together and said shamelessly, "A little. Maybe you could blow on it."
Yu Wanyin could stand it no longer. After a few seconds of silence, she looked straight at him and asked, "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"
"Hm?"
"You deliberately made me angry, and deliberately let me find your wounds myself?"
Xiahou Dan said nothing.
Then he said, "Yes."
Yu Wanyin lowered her eyes and finished the medicine, then took the clothes warming by the brazier and gently drew them around him. In a low voice she asked, "So A-Bai coming to look for me was also on purpose. You wanted me to grow suspicious and come to the tent to find you, didn't you?"
Xiahou Dan lowered his head. "Yes."
A sudden ache rose in Yu Wanyin's heart. "What do you want? You hid it from me for so long by every means you could find, yet you sent me off to escape alone, and left a letter confessing everything. And in the end you appear before me like this and ask me whether I want to leave. What do you actually want?"
Xiahou Dan did not answer.
As she started to stand, his five fingers climbed gently onto her wrist.
The candlelight wavered and reflected in his fathomless eyes, and at last a spark of light showed in them.
Yu Wanyin shivered at the cold of his touch.
The fingers that had been holding her loosely suddenly tightened, with such force that for the first time she felt pain.
Xiahou Dan lifted his head to her. The light smile he had deliberately put together was gone, and even the misty gentleness that always clouded his face when he looked at her had faded.
Like a scorpion raising its stinger, like a wolf king baring its fangs, a ruler who had smiled last through long and calculating schemes looked at her without expression. No mask was left between them, only bare, bloody honesty.
He did not say a word, and yet he had said everything. All of it had been inside the plan, of course. Using himself as bait, each link joined to the next, every step secured: it was his most intricate and most ruthless scheme.
Yu Wanyin should have felt startled and uneasy, but it was as if she had been waiting a century for this moment, and her mind was perfectly clear. She did not struggle. Instead she raised her free hand and touched his lips.
The cruel, solitary sovereign closed his eyes and kissed her palm.
"I want you to love me."
Lin Xuanying spent a miserable night.
He had worried the two of them would quarrel when they met, and had stood outside the tent for a while, eavesdropping. Later the sounds from within gradually turned wrong. He stood dumbfounded for a moment, then walked off, swearing under his breath.
After a few steps he circled back, and still had to signal the trusted men around him to strengthen the guard.
Xiahou Dan had taken over his tent, and he had nowhere to stay. In the end he fumed his way into one of his subordinates' tents, stirred people up in the dead of night to hold a meeting, and forced a few of the Giants to stay up with him for half the night.
In the morning, before the army woke, Lin Xuanying slipped back into the commander's tent. Outside the cloth curtain he coughed heavily, then said in a sour tone, "Did Your Majesties sleep well last night?"
Rustling came from inside, and after a moment Yu Wanyin ducked out with her clothing in order, her eyes heavy with sleep. "Thank you for your trouble," she said wearily.
Lin Xuanying thought: if you're like this, the injured man must have been put through half his life.
But Xiahou Dan came out behind her looking relaxed, with a hint of color back in his face. Compared with the half-dead state he had arrived in last night, he looked like an old demon that had drained someone's vital essence and put its painted skin back on.
Lin Xuanying said nothing.
He did not want to know how they had spent the night.
Lin Xuanying said, worn out, "What do we do next? Please give me your orders."
Before dawn, when the army set out, two inconspicuous guards had been added to the supply wagon carrying the firearms and gunpowder.
Xiahou Dan had decided to keep lying low according to Yu Wanyin's plan, so he had met in secret only with a few of Lin Xuanying's trusted commanders. He needed to recover from his injuries as fast as possible, so that when the day came to reveal himself and rally the troops with a single shout, he could lift their spirits and steady their hearts.
Yu Wanyin, as a matter of course, went along with him.
The shadow guards rode ahead and the wagon rolled on with a rumble. The inside had been arranged as well as possible so the two of them could sit in comfort.
Xiahou Dan looked through the gap in the window at the troops marching in silence outside. "Really, it would be safer for you to stay in Peiyang and hold it. Once the storm in the capital has settled..."
"In your dreams," Yu Wanyin said flatly. "I won't let you get away with that a second time."
Xiahou Dan looked at her, half sighing, half smiling. "Wanyin, don't you want to travel the world anymore?"
"The world will still be there. It doesn't matter if we go later," Yu Wanyin said lightly. "Later we'll have a child and raise it until it can stand on its own, then put down the burden and retire and travel together."
Xiahou Dan paused. "All right."
Both of them looked serious, though they both knew perfectly well it was only a vision like the moon in the water.
Xiahou Dan's hope of surviving his next attack was already slim. That was exactly why he had to use these clear-minded days to set things right, racing against time and laying the road for the future.
And Yu Wanyin, by not leaving now, had made a far heavier promise with her actions: she would take this burden from his hands.
Long before she arrived, he had exhausted his heart's blood and burned through his years, burning himself like lamp oil down to the very end. If she let this flame go out, she would be erasing the meaning of his existence.
So she could go nowhere. She would guard the peace of the four seas and the calm of the eight directions, for a long, long time.
Small snow drifted on and off all along the way. Lin Xuanying was terrified that the two sickly people in the wagon, neither of whom could fight, would catch cold again, and he stuffed blankets and hand warmers in as if they were free.
The carriage became cramped and warm as a result. The two of them huddled together like animals wintering in a tree hollow, with nothing to do but talk on and off.
The mood was warm and yet a little awkward.
Only now did they truly feel that although they had already gone through life and death together, in a sense they had only just come to know each other.
It was Yu Wanyin who had started the conversation. "You still don't know my real name."
"Right," Xiahou Dan said. "I had a guilty conscience before, so I didn't quite dare open that topic with you. What is it?"
"...Wang Cuihua," Yu Wanyin said.
"What?" said Xiahou Dan.
"Your parents didn't do badly either," he said.
"You're too kind."
After a moment of silence, Yu Wanyin could not help laughing again. "But I never thought you'd be a junior high student. I'm having a hard time with this younger-brother romance..."
Xiahou Dan's face darkened. "There may not be an age gap between us."
"What do you mean?"
"I've been in the book for more than ten years, and in reality I may not have come over at the same time as you. To be honest, when you used to talk about the outside world, there were a few trendy words I actually couldn't follow. So I've had my suspicions for a long time."
Yu Wanyin was startled, then suddenly remembered Xie Yong'er's reaction to "tube maglev." The concept of tube maglev had only become popular two years before Yu Wanyin came over. So back then she had already suspected that The Devil's Favored Consort was an old story.
"What year did you come over?" Yu Wanyin asked.
"2016."
Yu Wanyin was stunned. "I'm from 2026."
Xiahou Dan looked incredulous. "You said before that this novel was pushed to you on your phone? A trash story like that, and it stayed popular for ten years?"
However it had happened, this news finally made Yu Wanyin give up her hope of going back. She had originally counted on the two of them leaving their bodies, while their real bodies lay in a hospital as vegetative patients. If one day they woke, they might pick up their story again in reality.
But it looked now as though Zhang San's soul had been out of his body for ten years, and the chance that he was still alive was truly slim.
Xiahou Dan, for his part, had never planned in that direction at all. His attention was still on one serious question. "Well? It's not a younger-brother romance, is it?"
"Well now..." Yu Wanyin deliberately drew out the words.
"Hm?"
"I don't know," Yu Wanyin said, touching his chin. "Why don't you call me big sister first and let me hear it?"
The carriage suddenly lurched, as if a stone had caught under a wheel. At the same moment a faint whistling sound came from outside, and a shadow guard's sword scraped out of its sheath.
Xiahou Dan's eyes went cold. He reacted very fast, pulling Yu Wanyin into his arms and dropping down behind the crates of firearms. Only then did he ask, "What is it?"
"It's nothing," the shadow guard said quickly. "Just displaced people making trouble."
"Displaced people?"
The shadow guard's tone was somewhat complicated. "Villagers along the road. They may have mistaken us for the rebel army. They hid behind trees and threw stones at us. They've already been driven off."
All along the Right Army's route, the people of the various provinces had not dared to stand in the way of the column like a mantis blocking a cart, but they had done plenty behind its back: rolled their eyes and spat on the ground.
Many of them still remembered the benefits of Xiahou Dan's light taxes and corvée, and did not believe the tale the Prince of Duan spread about a demon empress and a foolish emperor. Now that they had heard of Xiahou Dan's sudden death, they were even more certain that the Prince of Duan, relying on the troops in his hands, was openly seizing the throne.
So when they saw an army marching toward the capital, naturally they had no kind looks for it, and the boldest simply began throwing stones.
Yu Wanyin understood the whole story now, and her expression turned complicated too. "How should I put it? I'm actually a little moved."
Xiahou Dan smiled as well. "That's all thanks to the Empress."
Before she came, his strength had been only enough to fight the Empress Dowager and the Prince of Duan to a mutual death.