Buried as Sacrifice
"You—!"
Li Zhijie seized Princess Li Tianfu's slender wrist, cutting her off before she could say anything more, then turned to the Crown Prince with a look of open provocation.
"General Bai, your Crown Prince is sitting right here at this table, and yet you throw the entire funeral rites into chaos like this. It seems His Highness means nothing to you at all."
"Prince of Yan, you'd best stop straining yourself here. And spare us your sowing of discord! Our court of Jin is nothing like the filthy Xiliang court. In Jin, ministers render their loyalty and the sovereign never doubts them! Is it not precisely because of that that we've returned from this great campaign in such high spirits?"
Seated at the head of the table, the Crown Prince had no reason to tarnish Bai Jingyan's dignity in front of Li Zhijie. The two nations were in open confrontation now, and if a fight broke out within the negotiation tent, it would only make them a laughingstock.
Besides, Bai Jingyan was at this very moment securing advantages for Jin—which was to say, for the Crown Prince who would one day sit on the throne as Emperor. Why on earth would he lend his authority to Li Zhijie and bow his own nation's pride in the process?
The Crown Prince answered.
"General Bai is right! I trust the Bai family army completely. That is exactly why I handed the military tally over to General Bai."
Li Zhijie had never imagined the Crown Prince would surrender the military tally to Bai Jingyan. Suddenly her brazen, unyielding conduct made a certain sense—and he realized with cold clarity that the Crown Prince of Jin's authority alone could never bring her to heel.
Li Zhijie calmed his fury and spoke with deliberate composure.
"On the battlefield, swords and spears have no eyes—everyone knows this. So was it your Zhenguo King's design, when he brought children to the Southern Border campaign, to let them claim all the glory but never expose them to the dangers of a fight where lives are actually staked?
"And General Bai, even while the two nations sit in talks, you threaten at the drop of a hat to flatten our Xiliang territory into open ground. Whether this is truly for the people of the world, or merely a personal revenge for your family members lost on that battlefield—only you can say."
"If Yun Paxing had slain my Bai family's descendants in open, honorable battle, I would have accepted it! But he cut off my young brother's head, then slit open his belly and desecrated his corpse. Was that cowardly act—the work of a blade without eyes, was it?"
Standing in the lamplight, Bai Jingyan looked at Li Zhijie and Li Tianfu with a cold smile.
"Xiliang led troops to provoke us first, and now you are the defeated nation that lost the war. You come here on your knees to negotiate, yet instead of reflecting on your defeat you throw tantrums and twist black into white. Personal revenge, you say—desecration of the dead, you say. Why, if I didn't do as you claim, I'd almost feel ashamed of myself."
"Where do you get off—"
Li Tianfu glared at Bai Jingyan, rage boiling up until she was on the verge of tears.
Bai Jingyan's cold voice cut through the tent.
"Twenty-three more coffins stand in the Bai household because our men perished in the Southern Border! Xiliang will surrender twenty-three walled cities to our Jin! And the Pillar State General Yun Paxing will give us three generations of his men—twenty-three males of his line—beheaded, their bellies slit open! Even if it means defying the Crown Prince and the Emperor's command, I will lead the Bai family army into Yunjing myself, root out the Xiliang imperial house and every last one of the Yun clan, and bury them! That is the only way to comfort the honored dead of the Bai family. So when that day comes, all of you will wait in Yunjing with your necks scrubbed clean—so that my soldiers' blades need not be fouled!"
Bai Jingyan's words were breathtakingly arrogant. Her armor gleamed with a solemn, lethal cold, and a killing intent seemed to bleed out of her—the same aura that had once soaked the waters of the Asura's pool with blood as she cut down all before her. It chilled everyone to the marrow. Not a single soul dared meet her eyes.
"Twenty-three Bai family coffins? And why is that? Father—our Xiliang Emperor died at the hands of your Jin! Then what will Jin pay for our Emperor's life with?"
Li Tianfu screamed until her throat threatened to tear. It was a voice pushed to the very limit of indignation, humiliation, and grief.
"How will you repay my father's life?!"
Bai Jingyan felt her tension ease. The Xiliang princess, at last, could hold her tongue no longer.
No matter how viciously Bai Jingyan provoked her, Li Zhijie had gritted his teeth and never once let slip the fact that her ninth brother had been the one to assassinate the Xiliang Emperor. Because he refused to use that incident to strengthen Xiliang's position, Bai Jingyan had remained in constant unease.
But now Li Tianfu had opened her mouth. All she had to do was watch how Li Zhijie handled the assassination.
If he claimed the assassin was already dead, then Shen Qingzhu and the others would have to go rescue the ninth brother at once. Not a moment could be wasted.
If he claimed they had captured the assassin, then what bargain might be struck would depend on the Crown Prince and the negotiation envoys.
Li Zhijie's eyes narrowed. It seemed he truly had not expected the princess to lose her composure and blurt out the whole affair.
"Your Highness the Princess—doesn't that claim of yours contradict itself? A man of Jin killed the Xiliang Emperor? Then where is this assassin of yours?"
Bai Jingyan regarded Li Tianfu with eyes as deep and still as a well.
"The assassin died on the spot."
Li Zhijie lowered his tone to one of calm deliberation.
"At the time, the assassin was wearing Jin attire, which is why Your Highness has mistaken him for an agent of Jin. Xiliang is still investigating the matter. As General Bai said, we came to these talks with lowered heads. If Jin intends to use this incident as a pretext to slander us, then we would owe you greater compensation, would we not? That is why the subject was never raised from the start. I, too, am waiting for the findings of the investigation."
At those words, Bai Jingyan's gaze darkened in an instant. Just as she'd suspected—Li Zhijie was scheming something with her ninth brother as his leverage.
Bai Jingyan turned and made a small, discreet gesture toward Shen Qingzhu, who stood in her Xiliang palace maid's garb—take the Haoying Battalion and rescue the ninth brother. Shen Qingzhu gave the barest nod and slipped quietly out of the tent.
If her ninth brother was being held for some ulterior purpose, then he had to be pulled out of Li Zhijie's hands as quickly as possible.
Had they intended to offer the ninth brother up as a formal condition of the negotiations, they would never have brought him here at all—they would have kept him confined at Chuishanguan.
The envoys of both nations had chosen their meeting place at the midpoint where the soldiers of each side stood garrisoned. As a safeguard against any eventuality, the Crown Prince had brought five thousand elite troops along with the Haoying Battalion. Xiliang, no doubt, had brought its full complement of crack soldiers as well.
If Shen Qingzhu led the Haoying Battalion to rescue the ninth brother from Chuishanguan while it stood utterly undefended, then even if word of it reached Li Zhijie, there would be no way to undo what was done.
Li Zhijie himself had just declared, before the Crown Prince's very face, that the assassin had died on the spot. Would he really reverse his own words and name that assassin as Bai Jingyan's ninth brother?
And even if Li Zhijie spoke the truth outright, the two nations were in the midst of negotiations. While each side jockeyed for advantage in these talks, there was no chance the Crown Prince of Jin would simply take the Xiliang Prince of Yan at his word.
Certainty settled over her, and Bai Jingyan sank to her knees in a cold smile, looking up at Li Zhijian from her place. All she had to do now was keep the Xiliang delegation pinned here so that they could not slip away.
Bai Jingyan spoke again.
"Then the words of the Xiliang princess are baseless ravings, I take it! Don't tell me this really is some Xiliang tradition? Is this how Xiliang conducts negotiations—spouting whatever nonsense comes to mind and levying one groundless demand after another upon our Jin?"
Li Zhijie turned to look at the weeping Li Tianfu. The original plan had been to make the Crown Prince of Jin fall head over heels for the princess's beauty, but judging by the state of things, that hope had come to nothing. Li Tianfu was impatient and spoiled rotten from birth—leaving her here would only ruin everything for nothing.
He let out a sigh and gripped her wrist firmly, speaking in a low, urgent tone.
"Escort Her Highness the Princess to Chuishanguan. She is clearly exhausted."
Bai Jingyan clenched her fist and spoke slowly.
"Just a moment."
"Now what?"
Anger simmered in Li Tianfu's thin voice, though beneath it there was a tremor of tears as well.
"The mood inside this negotiation tent is already so taut, and yet that Bai Jingyan is nothing but a lowly schemer. It worries me to think why the Prince of Yan would send the Princess off to Chuishanguan. Are you perhaps planning to bind our Crown Prince of Jin here in this place and hold him up as a condition of the talks?"
"You—!"
Li Tianfu was about to shriek, but Li Zhijie stopped her.
"How would a mere defeated nation dare harbor such designs! If General Bai is so worried, then Her Highness the Princess can simply remain here!"
Li Zhijie bowed respectfully to Li Tianfu, then murmured to her.
"Your Highness, please endure this a little longer! Negotiations are, by their nature, a battle of tongues. The words you spat in anger could become Jin's pretext. One misstep, and war could break out all over again."
"Then let them fight! Is Jin so frightening? Xiliang is a rich land with strong soldiers! All because of a single defeat. Xiliang brims with magnificent men! Send every army marching and it's done—we crush Jin. If the other nation doesn't live, then I will!"
Bloodshot veins webbed Li Tianfu's eyes. Her breath came short and ragged, her chest heaving, her whole body trembling.
"Your Highness—if the other nation doesn't live, then you will? Do you mean that no matter how this ends, our Jin must die while Xiliang survives at any cost?"
Liu Yushi covered his mouth with his sleeve and smiled coldly.
"Even if Xiliang conscripts its entire populace and flings them onto the battlefield, our Great Jin needs nothing more than the army General Bai leads! Since the Xiliang Princess is so abundantly confident, then—troublesome though it will be for General Bai and the other commanders—let us open hostilities. We can march all the way to Yunjing and hold our talks there; it wouldn't be any too late."
"You—!"
Li Tianfu snatched the wine cup from the table and made to hurl it at Liu Yushi.
"Your Highness!"
Li Zhijie intercepted the cup in her hand and murmured quickly.
"Soon you will repay this indignity to Bai Jingyan many times over—so look far ahead, Your Highness. Be as one who sees nothing, hears nothing. Your Highness, you must trust me. Xiliang cannot endure another war! If war breaks out, we will not be able to hold the Empress's throne!"
Fury that seemed fit to rend the sky welled up in Li Tianfu, but in the end she yielded to Li Zhijie's words.
After a long silence, Li Tianfu sat back down in her place, exactly as Li Zhijie had counseled. The humiliation still burned, but there was nothing to be done about it.
"Your Highness, don't worry. As for everything concerning Xiliang, I have plans already in hand."
Li Zhijie made a small gesture of reassurance to Li Tianfu.
"Whether we fight or not—let the Prince of Yan and the Xiliang envoys do the talking! And stop toying with our Jin with your absurd nonsense! Once Xiliang has become a sea of blood, it will be perfectly fine to discuss negotiations anew!"
Liu Yushi spoke slowly.
Li Zhijie looked at Liu Yushi's handsome, refined face. Somehow, this Lord Liu seemed less strikingly handsome than he had on first meeting.