A Peace Marriage Alliance
By the time Xiao Rongyan's guard, riding without rest through night and day, finally caught up with Xiao Rongyan's party, it was already the morning of February sixteenth.
He dismounted and hurried into the grand estate.
Xiao Rongyan was training his sword by the lakeside. His sword qi had sliced clean through the bamboo leaves scattered all around.
Wang Qiuzhou, who stood at one side attending to him with tea and a towel for his sweat, spotted the guard galloping toward them and spoke to Xiao Rongyan.
"Master, Yue Shi has returned!"
Xiao Rongyan sheathed his sword. His body was soaked with sweat. He tossed the longsword in his hand to Wang Qiuzhou, wiped his face with the towel, and turned to look at the approaching Yue Shi.
"Master, I delivered the letter safely. Lady Bai said, after reading it, 'Pass this along to your master. Tell him I am deeply grateful.'"
Yue Shi relayed Bai Jingyan's words exactly as they had been spoken.
Xiao Rongyan set the towel on the tray Wang Qiuzhou was holding, lifted his teacup, and asked.
"Is that all?"
Yue Shi nodded. Then a white horse suddenly came to mind, and he continued.
"There was nothing else. But it seems Lady Bai gave that white horse to Third Lady Bai. When I arrived, she had just come riding on it. Third Lady appeared to have already tamed the horse."
The hand holding Xiao Rongyan's teacup stilled. Only after a long moment did he look up at Yue Shi.
"Understood."
Before he knew it, Xiao Rongyan's thoughts had drifted to his elder brother. From childhood, whenever there was something good, his brother had always given it to him first.
Well — I can simply find him another fine horse later.
"The men we sent out to spread the word have finished their work for today. We set out on the road again early tomorrow morning."
"Yes, Master!"
Wang Qiuzhou answered respectfully.
When midday came, Bai Qingjue, who had remained at Xiao Rongyan's side guarding him as his duty required, set down his sword and went to eat lunch. Just then, however, a whistled signal that only Bai clan soldiers would recognize rang out.
Bai Qingjue hung his sword back at his waist and, avoiding other people's eyes, climbed over a wall to a secluded spot.
Xiao Ruogang was waiting for him beneath a willow tree in the estate's back garden. The moment he saw someone scaling the wall, he hid behind the tree at once. He hadn't even been able to see who had come over when a cold aura drew near — and before Xiao Ruogang could draw his sword, something icy was already leveled at his throat.
So fast! What speed with a blade!
Bai Qingjue's master was Gu Yijian. Could the student truly have surpassed the master?
"Don't move."
Bai Qingjue looked down at Xiao Ruogang's back and spoke in a low voice.
"Seventh Young Master... it's me!"
Xiao Ruogang felt as though his throat were closing up.
Hearing Xiao Ruogang's voice, Bai Qingjue hastily withdrew his sword and asked in apparent surprise.
"You... what are you doing here?"
Xiao Ruogang and Xiao Ruohai had been scouts under their eldest sister. They had trained with the Bai family army in the past, but at some point something had happened, and the Grand Princess's household had ordered the two brothers to return home to recuperate — after which they had never come back to the Bai family army.
Turning around, Xiao Ruogang looked at Bai Qingjue — upright in his straight-backed official's robe, tall as a pine — and his eyes reddened. He pushed back the hem of his robe and knelt.
"Seventh Young Master... Eldest Sister ordered me to come find you!"
Xiao Ruogang's voice was choked with tears as he spoke.
"Eldest Sister has set out with the Crown Prince on this campaign to the Southern Border — she came to find you and Ninth Young Master. Master Xiao, the one who saved you, is someone who helped our Bai family back in the capital. When the Grand Princess heard the account recorded on the bamboo slips of how the seventeen young masters died, she nearly dashed her head against the coffin and ended her own life — but Master Xiao's guard saved her."
Bai Qingjue's lips parted slightly. So Master Xiao had saved not only him, but his mother as well.
"Master Xiao guessed your identity and sent his guard to deliver a letter to Eldest Sister. Eldest Sister said you must not be left without people at your side, and ordered me to bring Fourth Aunt's four guards and meet with you!"
Xiao Ruogang drew a jade token from his breast and handed it to Bai Qingjue.
"Eldest Sister said to give you this. It is a jade token with the authority to command Fourth Aunt's four guards!"
Bai Qingjue gripped the token tightly and looked up.
"Why Fourth Aunt's guards?"
Xiao Ruogang told Bai Qingjue everything — the arrangements Bai Jingyan had made for Bai Jinxiu and Bai Jindong, and how the personnel had been deployed. He did not omit a single detail of how much hardship Bai Jingyan had endured, or how she had protected the Bai family in the treacherous capital of Dadu.
The longer he listened, the redder Bai Qingjue's eyes grew. Clutching the jade token, he asked.
"Besides Jinchi, who else is at Eldest Sister's side? Xiao Ruohai?"
Xiao Ruogang shook his head.
"My brother went after Lady Shen Qingzhu. He set out to find you and Ninth Young Master."
Bai Qingjue clenched his jaw.
"Eldest Sister cannot be left without people. I'm staying by Master Xiao's side, so I'm in no danger. Leave two men with me and take the rest back. Tell her not to worry — her safety matters far more."
Xiao Ruogang was worried about Eldest Sister as well, but if he returned like this, he would have no excuse to offer her.
Sensing what troubled Xiao Ruogang, Bai Qingjue spoke again.
"Go and tell her this: it was because I worried for her that I ordered you to bring the shadow guards back. I am safe beside Master Xiao. Leaving guards here would be a waste. If I ever need more, I will be sure to send word asking her to send people."
With that, Bai Qingjue pressed the jade token into Xiao Ruogang's hand. He could not linger outside too long. Leaning close to Xiao Ruogang's ear, he spoke in a small voice.
"This Master Xiao is said to be the Deputy Regent of Great Yan, but watching him closely, his identity doesn't seem so simple. He actually seems connected to Great Yan. So tell Eldest Sister to be especially careful when she deals with him."
Bai Qingjue had not been at Xiao Rongyan's side for long, and these two things were all he had managed to discern so far. The rest he could not yet be certain of.
Xiao Ruogang performed a cupped-fist salute and answered.
"Seventh Young Master, do not worry. I will be sure to relay your words to Eldest Sister!"
"Look after Eldest Sister well. And tell my brother and Shen Qingzhu too... they must find our ninth brother."
As he said this, Bai Qingjue's voice trembled slightly.
Back then, Bai Qingjue and Bai Qingyun had set out together under orders to attack the Xiliang capital, and had fallen into a trap. As the elder brother, he should have protected his ninth brother Bai Qingyun at the cost of his own life — but he himself had been wounded at the time.
Bai Qingyun had hastily changed Bai Qingjue into the clothes of an ordinary soldier, shoved him down the slope, and drawn the Xiliang ambushers away in another direction. That was how Bai Qingjue had survived.
Bai Qingyun had said it was the rule their grandfather had set down: the sons of concubines must protect the sons of the principal wife.
When legitimate and concubine-born sons faced danger together, the concubine-born son must protect the legitimate son with his life.
Bai Qingyun was concubine-born; Bai Qingjue was legitimate. For that reason alone, Bai Qingyun had risked everything to open a path of survival for him.
Even if it was the family's rule, Bai Qingjue, as the elder brother, had always felt he owed Bai Qingyun a debt, and it had tormented him endlessly. So he prayed, with all his heart, that Bai Qingyun was still alive.
In following at Xiao Rongyan's side, Bai Qingjue had heard the news that a strange plague had broken out in the Xiliang capital, that the Xiliang Emperor had been assassinated and died, and that the Xiliang Empress had ascended the throne.
Bai Qingjue had privately suspected that it might have been Bai Qingyun who assassinated the Xiliang Emperor.
The descendants of the Bai family were all the same. Once given an order, they saw their mission through to the end, no matter what hardship stood in the way.
Bai Qingjue could only hope that after the assassination, Bai Qingyun had escaped safely.
Worrying that Bai Jingyan might fret over Bai Qingjue, Xiao Ruogang made the decision himself to leave ten of the four guards behind. After bidding Bai Qingjue farewell, he led the remaining men toward Youhua Road within Xiliang territory.
On February fourteenth, the great Jin army had won a crushing victory, and Bai Jingyan — leading the thirty thousand garrison soldiers of Pingyang City together with the force of over forty thousand under her command — had set out for Youhua Road. By now, she had most likely arrived there.
Xiliang had once marched its seven-hundred-thousand-strong army into Jin with thunderous pomp. Not one of the rival states had dared to step forward — all had scrambled merely to stay out of the way. Yet at the Battle of the Southern Border, Xiliang and Nanyan had met with utter defeat.
The Empress had ascended the throne in the Xiliang capital, and the six princes had committed treason, so Yun Paxing could no longer go on fighting Jin. He had led the less than eighty thousand Xiliang soldiers who remained and raced back to the Xiliang capital of Yunjing, put the six princes to the sword, and protected the Empress. Thus he brought to an end the civil war that would go down in history as the Yunjing Rebellion.
Once the Yunjing Rebellion in Xiliang had been quelled, the Empress Dowager conferred on Yun Paxing the title of Pillar State General, and in Xiliang he became a man whose name blazed across the land overnight.
Yet to Yun Paxing, the humiliation of the Southern Border battle had shaken every nation to its core.
Bai Jingyan, the legitimate granddaughter of Bai Weiting, had repelled the combined armies of Xiliang and Nanyan with a force of a mere sixty thousand — the exhausted Jin army plus barely ten thousand Bai family soldiers — and had not even spared the Xiliang soldiers who surrendered, earning herself the name "Living Slaughter." The news struck terror into the whole world.
In an instant, Bai Jingyan had established herself as Jin's Living Slaughter. No nation dared harbor so much as a thought of attacking Jin.
At the same time, Great Yan had suddenly marched its troops deep into Nanyan's heartland under the banner of restoring Yan's legitimate rule. The common people, long crushed beneath antiquated governance, had struggled against the garrison soldiers, thrown the city gates wide open, and lined the roads to welcome the great Zhou soldiers.
Nanyan's elite troops had been slaughtered to the last man at Yaoguan Pass — this after Xiao Rongyan had already slipped into Nanyan and grasped the situation there.
Nanyan's soldiers, too, had long been oppressed by antiquated rule and waged the war half-heartedly. What was more, Yan's rising young general Xie Xun had never once tasted defeat in battle, so the Nanyan army quailed at the very thought of him. To Xie Xun, Nanyan was no different from a highway open on all sides.
Nanyan sent appeals for help in every direction, and every one was refused. The rival states all knew that Nanyan had lost the hearts of its people. Once Great Yan raised the banner of legitimacy, the common people had cheered and flocked to support it — and so the other states chose to close their eyes and pretend not to see.
The Emperor of Nanyan knew full well that Jin would not wish to see Great Yan grow powerful, yet he lacked the shamelessness to go to Jin and beg for aid. And Jin, for its part, had no pretext to send troops — so it simply watched as Nanyan crumbled before its eyes.
In the last days of the second month, the Empress of Xiliang sent envoys to open peace talks with Jin, negotiating with the Jin Crown Prince who had led this campaign. Just as Bai Jingyan had said, they offered territory and compensation in silver. But instead of sending a hostage, they intended to send the Empress's own younger sister, Li Tianfu, to Jin in order to seal the alliance through marriage.
The one who had come following the envoys sent to negotiate peace was none other than Li Zhijie, Prince of Yan — who had earned merit in the Yunjing Rebellion by protecting the Empress.