Peace
Bai Jingyan glanced sideways at Xiao Rongyan's guard. The man's gaze was fixed unwaveringly on her alone. Without so much as a blink, she burned the letter right there before his eyes.
"Please convey my gratitude to Master Xiao."
Bai Jingyan watched as the flames slowly devoured the letter.
"I accept these words with thanks. Master Xiao has gone to such lengths to send word to me across such a distance — is there anything he desires of me in return?"
Xiao Rongyan's guard lifted his head and looked at her, his expression one of genuine bewilderment.
The wind off the river made the torch sway and crackle, its light playing across Bai Jingyan's elegant features.
The guard studied her tone and expression carefully. Only after confirming that hers was a courteous question rather than mockery or displeasure did he slowly exhale.
"He gave no further instructions."
Bai Jingyan nodded, then turned her gaze back to the white horse.
"Then convey my thanks to Master Xiao on my behalf."
The guard bowed respectfully, left the white horse he had been leading standing where it was, and mounted his own steed. At that moment, Bai Jingyan's voice reached him.
"Reclaiming Nanyan will take more than merely winning a war. Nanyan has followed the outdated institutions of Great Yan, and for over a decade its people have lived as the beasts of burden of their king and nobles. To fall from prosperity into frugality is far harder than the reverse. The people who once enjoyed Empress Xi's New Policies must harbor grievances against the Nanyan court that are anything but small."
Bai Jingyan offered this as a light reminder.
The power of the people was the greatest force of all. When the great army of Great Yan entered the cities of Nanyan, if the people stood along the roads to welcome them — was that not the very art of achieving victory without waging war?
Then Great Yan could seize this turbulent moment as an opportunity to reclaim Nanyan at the smallest possible cost.
The people of Nanyan would suffer less hardship too.
For in war, the greatest victims were always the common folk.
Xiao Rongyan's guard was stunned. It felt as though even his scalp had gone numb. How had Lady Bai known that his master intended to reclaim Nanyan?
Could it be that this was written in the letter?
Or had his master already reached some private agreement with Lady Bai, and only they, the guards, had been left in the dark?
The look in the guard's eyes as he regarded Bai Jingyan grew steadily more reverent. He dismounted once more and bowed deeply to her.
"Lady Bai, thank you. I will deliver your words with all haste!"
Bai Jingyan inclined her head. So every person around Xiao Rongyan was clever indeed.
In her past life, Xiao Rongyan had been a man of ruthless methods. Not once had he ever resolved matters in such a leisurely and peaceful manner.
Bai Jingyan had clashed with Xiao Rongyan many times in her previous life. On the surface he seemed warm and gracious, but to his very marrow he was a man who thought dangerous thoughts. Those who followed him survived; those who defied him met only death. Whether through threats or baited lures, he employed every scheme without hesitation. He exterminated the entire households of those who stood in his way, sparing not even their livestock. He was a formidable adversary, and his handling of affairs was always cold as ice. Bold yet meticulous.
The clever, the wise, and the self-assured are, in truth, the people who fear nothing. He scorned the affairs of the world, feared neither gods nor spirits — neither the public order of heaven and earth, nor morality and propriety, nor even the words of men. Nothing occupied his attention except the goal he must reach.
He kindled war without cease, sparing neither conspiracy nor dirty means as he drove the noble clans and loyal ministers of rival states to their deaths. Unifying the world and returning peace to the people had been his original purpose, but somewhere along the way it warped, and he grew ever bolder in his methods — as though nothing in all creation could catch his eye.
To storm a city meant countless commoners sacrificed, meant misery for the people. In her past life, he had even stripped the people of their own grain to feed his armies.
Even now, recalling those days sent a chill down her spine.
Bai Jingyan feared Xiao Rongyan. Though this life's Xiao Rongyan had not yet become the man of her past, the dark shadow he had cast over her then seemed never to have fully faded.
They say the barefoot fear not the shod. Bai Jingyan had family to protect, and so she wore shoes. But the lands of Great Yan had been torn to shreds, and so Xiao Rongyan walked barefoot.
The reason Bai Jingyan offered him this hint was that she believed a good and merciful heart still remained in him. She hoped that when Great Yan's forces were insufficient, he would reduce its losses in this way; that he would come to understand just how precious the hearts of the people were.
She hoped that when the day came that Xiao Rongyan fully reclaimed Nanyan, he would not forget how the people had risen to aid him, and would hold benevolence toward them in his heart.
"Go on, then."
Bai Jingyan spoke to Xiao Rongyan's guard.
The guard mounted his horse and offered a parting salute in Bai Jingyan's direction. Then, cradling his thundering heart, he rode day and night without rest. He was desperate to return to his master and deliver Lady Bai's words.
Once the guard's figure vanished into the darkness, Bai Jingyan spoke.
"You Xing, let's head back as well."
As Xiao Ruogang reached out to take the white horse's reins, the horse snapped its head around sharply. Had Xiao Ruogang been an ordinary man without martial skill, he might well have ended up in the river.
"What a wild beast this is."
Far from anger, Xiao Ruogang seemed almost delighted.
"When His Highness the Crown Prince first brought Jifeng home, I believe Jifeng looked much the same!"
Xiao Ruogang couldn't hold back a smile.
Jifeng had been a wild horse too. His master's father had been utterly worn out bringing him back to the capital. Bai Jingyan had still been young then, and Bai Qishan had intended to gift the horse to her only after the grooms had tamed it. But Jifeng had thrown off six seasoned grooms in succession — two of them injured so badly they had nearly lost their lives.
When she heard the news, Bai Jingyan slipped off to the stables behind her father's back. She spent the entire day wrestling Jifeng into submission, and when she returned she was a mud-caked monkey, bruised all over. She paid the bruises no mind at all, waving her horsewhip around in high spirits, boasting that she had tamed the wild horse that even six of Baiqi Mountain's grooms could not. And she had named the horse 'Jifeng' — Gale.
"I'll do it."
Bai Jingyan dismounted and stepped toward the white horse.
Xiao Ruogang held the reins, and unable to break free of them, the horse kept kicking at the stones along the riverbank, snorting harshly through its nostrils.
When Bai Jingyan reached out to stroke its mane, the horse shrieked in refusal. It reared up on its hind legs, but no matter how it strained, it could not tear free of the reins.
"This one's a fierce brute, my lady!"
Xiao Ruogang hauled back on the reins with all his strength.
Bai Jingyan's interest only deepened. She gripped the saddle and swung herself up — and the horse rebelled all the harder, thrashing its body like something possessed, determined to throw her off.
"You Xing! The reins!"
Seeing Bai Jingyan take an interest in something for the first time in ages, Xiao Ruogang decided his job was simply to watch over her carefully so she wouldn't come to harm. He tossed her the reins and raised the torch high.
Perhaps because she had tamed Jifeng once before, Bai Jingyan moved with remarkable ease. Both hands locked tight on the reins, she leaned into the wildly bounding horse and clung to its body with effortless grace. However hard it bucked, she would not fall.
The white horse rampaged this way and that, raising havoc for roughly half a shichen before its strength gave out entirely and it could rear no more. In that moment, Bai Jingyan yanked hard on the reins in her hands. With a scream of pain, the horse began to buck all over again.
One shichen later, the wild horse at last showed signs of yielding to her. Bai Jingyan gave the reins a light shake, and the horse, thoroughly deflated, trudged forward a few steps.
Xiao Ruogang watched the scene in open wonder. It was a mercy that Bai Jingyan's horsemanship was so superb — anyone else would surely have been thrown.
When she dismounted, sweat beaded on Bai Jingyan's face. The white horse, its spirit broken, paced a few steps around her before turning its head away with unmistakable sulkiness.
Bai Jingyan smiled and stroked its mane.
"Let's call this horse 'Ping'an.' We'll send it to Jinchi. She'll love it."
There was nothing more important than living in peace.
Xiao Ruogang had been swept up in Bai Jingyan's delight, enjoying the moment alongside her — but now a shadow passed over his eyes.
He remembered the first time he had gone with his elder brother to the Duke Estate and seen the newborn Bai Jingyan. A tiny, lovely child. Their mother had told him and his brother that they must protect the young lady for the rest of their lives — for she was not only their milk-sister, but the daughter of their benefactor.
A child born into the Duke of Zhenguo Estate, the most powerful family in the capital. He had assumed she would grow up spoiled, drenched in everyone's love. That both he and his brother would treasure her like a pearl held against the eye, cherished beyond all harm.
But Bai Jingyan had not grown up that way. As the eldest granddaughter of the Bai clan, she had been made to live a harder life than any of the other young ladies and young masters of the family. Then, wounded on the battlefield, she had grown somewhat melancholy, as though she had lost the high-spirited brightness of her childhood.
As if that were not enough, when calamity struck the Bai family, she had been the one to step forward and hold the household upright. She had worried for her younger siblings' futures as well.
Even after coming to this treacherous Southern Border, the young lady had assigned every capable secret guard to her Third Aunt and the second young lady who remained in the capital — keeping nothing for herself.
And now, with a fine horse in hand, she meant to give it to the fourth young lady.
Was this what it meant to bear the duty and burden of being the eldest granddaughter? She lived always thinking of her young siblings — just as Crown Prince Bai Qishan, while he lived, had always looked after the children of the Duke Estate first.
He wanted to ask why the young lady shouldn't keep this horse for herself, but the words died in his throat. Instead, he resolved that once his elder brother returned, he would discuss it with him and find her an even finer horse.
After they returned to camp, Bai Jingyan had Xiao Ruogang bring Bai Jinchi. When she was told the white horse was to be hers, Bai Jinchi's eyes sparkled with joy.
"Really?"
Bai Jinchi reached out to stroke Ping'an's mane, but the horse snorted hot breath fiercely into her face, then trotted off with haughty, dignified steps back to Bai Jingyan's side.
Bai Jinchi's eyes went round. She had never seen such a wild horse, and her astonishment only fed her delight.
"This horse has real spirit! It's just like—"
The two syllables of 'Jifeng' caught in her throat, and Bai Jinchi never finished the sentence. Jifeng had died trying to save his master, and even his body had never been found.
"Big Sister, I think this horse's fate lies with you more than with me!"
Bai Jinchi adored Ping'an, but her wish to give the horse to her sister was genuine too. Ping'an's temperament seemed so like Jifeng's. If Ping'an could stay at Bai Jingyan's side, she thought, it might bring her sister some small measure of comfort.
"You remember what Father promised you, don't you? That when you marched to war, he would gift you a fine horse like Jifeng."
Bai Jingyan smiled and stroked Ping'an's mane.
"I'm giving it in his stead. Ping'an's temper is fierce, but that doesn't mean it can't be tamed. I've already tried. If you don't fall when you ride it, it will likely come to accept you as well. And once you've kept it with you for a while, you'll grow attached — and then it will acknowledge you as its true master."
She had never kept the promise made to Ayu. And Ayu had never kept her promise to her either.
Her father was gone from this world now — but might she not keep his promise in his place?