Chapter 35

Chapter 35

That did strike me as strange.

“Lord Helan would rather offer his own neck than let me live. Why?”

Helan Zhiyan answered quietly, “This subject is a child of Southern Xu. Even if the princess takes my life, I would never dare hate you.”

Trembling, he lifted his head, glanced at Naihe, then looked at me. “But… the princess is an ill-omened person. Unless you die, calamity will befall the world!”

Ill-omened? Before I could react, Naihe seized his jaw with his free hand. A crisp crack sounded. Helan’s jaw dislocated, leaving him unable to speak.

I stared at Naihe in surprise. He had always been serene and gentle. This was the first time I saw ferocity in him, so intense that it was difficult to meet his eyes.

“Lord Helan’s mind is clouded,” Naihe said without expression. “If opening his mouth produces only delirious falsehoods, then he need not speak.”

We had reached a patch of woodland. Beyond it lay the road down the mountain. If Zheng Long’s people were still following by then, our prospects would be grim.

I smiled at myself. “He is not entirely wrong. No one connected to me has ever met a good end.”

“Their suffering came from cruel fortune. Xihe is chosen by destiny and naturally protected by gods and spirits.”

I had never seen Naihe’s face so cold. Even as he answered me, his hand closed around Helan’s throat. Blood flooded Helan’s face. He could scarcely breathe.

“Stop!”

Afraid he might kill Helan Zhiyan without meaning to, I hurried to intervene.

Naihe glanced at me, then leaned toward Helan. “Do you understand, Lord Helan?”

Helan nodded with difficulty. Naihe released him, and he collapsed, gulping air.

Seeing Helan escape Naihe’s grasp, Zheng Long’s men quickly surrounded us, though some lingering concern kept them from charging.

A full moon hung in the sky. Naihe calmly adjusted his sleeve and regarded them. “I do not wish to create needless bloodshed. Do you truly imagine I fear you?”

Zheng Long scratched his head in frustration and shouted, “Helan! What kind of damned nonsense was that? Apologize to the princess!”

Still gasping in pain, Helan shook his head repeatedly. It took me a long time to understand the words he forced through his dislocated jaw.

“…Run…”

Only then did I realize how unnaturally silent the forest had become. Not a cicada or bird could be heard.

Naihe pressed his palms together and softly recited something.

A deer’s cry rang out, resonant as a great bell and sharp enough to numb my scalp. Then an enormous white deer emerged from the trees.

Linnan had many deer and worshiped them as sacred, but I had not known Linbei possessed deer of such size.

White as the moon, it radiated gentle light and stood nearly as tall as the ancient trees. It approached step by step and stopped beside Naihe.

Everyone stared, stunned by the divine creature. Suddenly, a bloodcurdling scream erupted. One of Zheng Long’s soldiers clutched his head and rolled across the ground. When he lifted his face, blood streamed from every orifice. “General… ghosts…” he groaned in agony.

Clang.

Zheng Long’s sword fell from his hand. He gazed upward in terror, then dropped to his knees. Every soldier behind him followed.

The men of Linbei were hardened fugitives. Now they wept and pleaded in near-hysterical anguish.

“I only wanted to live! I don’t want to kill anyone!”

“Please, please don’t send me to hell.”

“I want to die! Kill me – kill me now!”

I watched their madness in confusion, then slowly raised my head to follow their gazes.

A bodhisattva.

Naihe sat cross-legged with his hands forming a demon-subduing seal, the white deer beside him. Behind him, among the mountains, an enormous bodhisattva sat as tall as the moon, its face compassionate and its radiance filling the eye.

The bodhisattva’s eyes were amber. They rested quietly upon me. Tears streamed uncontrollably down my face, and I nearly knelt as well.

But Naihe rose and caught me.

“An illusion.” He wiped my tears and spoke softly. “We should go.”

Only when he took my hand did I awaken from it. The bodhisattva was smoke, rolling from some unseen source until it obscured sky and earth. The deer was real, though merely larger than an ordinary one. It was stretching out its tongue to lick Naihe’s face.

Naihe helped me onto its back. Zheng Long and his followers continued kneeling in tears.

When we passed Helan Zhiyan, Naihe stopped. “The dragon has a reverse scale; touch it and die. The phoenix has a vulnerable neck; offend it and perish.”

Helan did not seem deceived by the illusion. He lay trembling on the ground, unable to speak.

Naihe led the white deer down the mountain. I had faced Northern Qian killers without changing expression, yet for some reason, I hesitated to speak before this young man.

“Are you angry because he called me ill-omened?” I finally broke the silence with a laugh. “Why be angry over that? The world is full of wagging tongues. If every insult angered me, I would have died of rage years ago.”

“Then kill them all.”

…
He walked beside me, young and straight as a pine, still and beautiful as jade. I could only stare.

Seeming to realize he had misspoken, he lowered his head and hid it with a smile. “I simply believe Xihe is the best person in this world and deserves every blessing beneath heaven.”

The night wind stirred the trees with the first scent of autumn. I shivered.

At the foot of the mountain, a carriage waited. Before we reached it, a small figure bounded toward us. “At last! At last!”

Lord Rat!

All his sinister mystery from our first meeting had vanished. Trotting beside us in quick little steps, he chattered without pause. “Was Our smoke timely or what? When We saw the fire on the mountain, it nearly frightened half the life out of Us!”

“These are two elders I met before,” Naihe explained softly. “This is Elder Brother Rat, and this is Uncle Qin.”

A middle-aged man descended from the carriage. He had a long, clean-shaven face and wore an exquisitely tailored gown, giving him the air of a wealthy merchant. He bowed. “This humble man is Qin Liuyuan. Greetings, Princess.”

“Yes.” Naihe reached up to lift me down from the deer. I drew back, and he murmured, “The ground is dirty.”

Lord Rat led the deer away. As Qin Liuyuan walked, he reported, “The arrangements are nearly complete. The situation in Linnan remains reasonably favorable, but Linbei is in utter chaos. For the princess’s safety, we should take her south…”

“Is the tea hot?”

Naihe asked while carrying me into the carriage. It had actually been furnished with blankets and soft cushions. He shook out a blanket and wrapped it around me.

“Naturally,” Qin Liuyuan said quickly. “We also prepared provisions, though they are inevitably coarse in these wild mountains. Things will improve once we reach Jingxi.”

Jingxi was a small city in the Central Plains and a strategic prize. Something stirred in my mind as I began to consider it. Naihe took the hot tea from Qin Liuyuan, tested its temperature, and handed it to me. Then he said, “Xihe has not recovered. We will not go to Jingxi. Find somewhere nearby for her to stay first.”

Qin Liuyuan was momentarily speechless. So was I. “Should we not leave quickly? What if Zheng Long attacks?”

Naihe smiled quietly and tucked the blanket around me. “He will not dare.”

At the time, I did not know that a pair of eyes looking down from the sky would have seen bandits covering the mountainside – and countless soldiers in crimson armor standing behind the trees less than ten paces from us, silently confronting them in the dark.

Deep in the nearby forest stood a residence resembling a temple, with a tall tower in its courtyard. The white deer arrived ahead of us and was poking its head out to eat leaves. At the sight of Naihe, it bounded over in delight.

“You raised this deer? I thought some divine creature had truly descended from heaven!”

“Of course it is divine. It eats two qian of silver every day. How could it not be?” Lord Rat called from the side, only to be pulled away at once by Qin Liuyuan.

Naihe stroked its head. “I found it in Linnan when I was small and have kept it with me ever since. Before the smoke could form the illusion, something had to hold everyone’s attention. So I summoned it.”

“How did you create that illusion?”

“Smoke, and… mushrooms.” He smiled serenely. “I mixed hallucinogenic mushrooms into their dumplings. With a little gelu art added, the visions emerged.”

“You knew I would quarrel with them?”

“I had long intended to take you away.”

He led me up the tower, the deer following close behind. From the highest floor, we could see Linbei’s vast mountains and forests and Nancheng shrouded in dawn.

“Xihe, is there somewhere you wish to go?” he asked softly.

I looked into the distance. “I want to go home.”

But where was my home?

“Then we will go to Yanzhou.”

The former Southern Xu capital had been renamed Yanzhou after Northern Qian seized it.

I thought for a long time. “No. I do not want to see the place unchanged and everyone gone.”

My last glimpse of it had been through a sky filled with blood. For ten years, I had never returned. I knew my home no longer existed.

I looked up and smiled. “Let us go to Xipan City. Is your master not there?”

“We may. But my master has already come here.”

“What? Why would he come all this way?”

“He is a great general. Naturally, he came to war.”

I followed the direction of his finger. Smoke and battle flames could be seen above a nearby city. Naihe said calmly beside me, “While you recovered, Xipan City declared war on Great Qin. It has already captured five cities.”

Combined with Linbei’s war against Chen Dong… had another age of chaos begun?

Cold spread through my limbs. The white deer nudged my hand with its warm muzzle. Naihe smiled, stroked it affectionately, and said, “Its name is Little Persimmon. This is Xihe – the real Xihe. Little Persimmon, you like Xihe very much, do you not?”

In the morning light, the image was holy and beautiful. Yet a chill ran through me. Who was he, and what role did he play in this chaotic age?