Danger Chasing Its Own Tail
The Crown Prince nodded along repeatedly as he listened to Bai Jingyan's analysis.
"General Bai speaks the truth. Then let us summon your general at once."
Having said this, he lifted his head again to look at Bai Jingyan and spoke in a low voice. "Then again, it would be no trouble at all if you governed the Bai army yourself. Did I not say so? I trust you."
As those final words left his mouth, the Crown Prince felt a faint sting of reluctance.
Bai Jingyan answered with her head bowed, her tone impeccably courteous.
"Your Highness, do you not know the true state of my health? Your ambitions lie with the realm, and I merely do what I can in your service! Once we return to the capital, I intend to go back to Suyang. Only by placing the Bai army in Your Highness's hands can it be put to use in accomplishing your great purpose. Of course, I will honor every word I have spoken. If Your Highness wills it, and if the people will it, then I will hurl myself into a pit of fire without hesitation, even at the cost of my life."
Such displays of loyalty from a subject moved not only the Crown Prince but even Zhan Yu, standing at his side, whose eyes reddened at the rims.
"General Bai, what extraordinary devotion! I shall bear it well in mind."
The Crown Prince bowed to Bai Jingyan in earnest.
"This is simply my duty. I could never accept a bow from the Crown Prince of Jin."
Bai Jingyan hastily returned it.
Seeing that the moment had ripened, she finally opened her mouth.
"The third matter is... in truth, I have come to beg Your Highness's forgiveness!"
"General Bai, what do you mean by that?"
The Crown Prince straightened where he sat.
"Today, inside the peace talks tent, Li Zhijie, the Prince of Yan of Xiliang, tried to send the Xiliang Princess to Chuishanguan. When that failed, he proposed postponing the talks until tomorrow. Your Highness refused, and at that he slandered you, claiming that you had sent a maidservant into the talks tent, and that she had gone on to kill Xiliang soldiers. And then he tried to push the talks off to yet another date!
Just as Your Highness said — it was the Prince of Yan who set today's hour for the talks! Yet Xiliang kept trying to change the time. I could not help but be wary! So I sent my fourth younger sister Jinchi to lead the soldiers of the Haoying Battalion to Chuishanguan and keep watch on Xiliang's movements!"
The Crown Prince's brow creased. That part was undeniably strange. But recalling Bai Jingyan's unwavering loyalty, he chose to believe there was nothing more to it. "You did it out of concern for my safety. I do not blame you! But... the peace accord has only just been concluded. If the Fourth Young Miss Bai is caught spying on Chuishanguan by Xiliang, it would put us Jin at a disadvantage."
Bai Jingyan furrowed her brow and wore an expression of bitter self-reproach.
"You are right, Your Highness. But the Xiliang Princess and the Prince of Yan are soon to return to the capital alongside you, and for the sake of your safety on the road, I could not rest easy without learning everything I could!"
When Bai Jingyan said she had no choice but to act for his sake, the Crown Prince was both moved and comforted.
"My excessive worry has driven me to rashness. So I beg Your Highness to grant me leave to take my men and go secretly to Chuishanguan to retrieve my fourth sister. She absolutely must not fall into Xiliang's hands."
The Crown Prince was silent a moment before answering. "Very well. Go quickly, General Bai, and return soon! Hurry, but do not delay past a reasonable hour. If you can extract any intelligence, all the better — but if not, so be it! Only come back safely!"
"Do not worry, Your Highness. I will take a dozen or so elite soldiers of the Haoying Battalion and bring back only my sister, in secret. I will never do anything that could bring harm upon Your Highness."
So Bai Jingyan answered.
With the Crown Prince's leave granted, Bai Jingyan stepped out of the carriage and ran swiftly to the head of the column. She reined in her horse and spoke to General Zhang Danyue.
"By the Crown Prince's order: Generals Shen Kunyang, Cheng Yuanzhi, Wei Zhaonian, and Gu Wenchang are to return to Youhudao at once! General Zhang, I have other orders and must ride ahead. Escort the Crown Prince back to Youhudao."
Zhang Danyue raised a fist in salute and immediately dispatched a messenger to Fengcheng.
Bai Jingyan went to the Haoying Battalion, gathered some sixty fierce scouts and hardened messengers, and rode hard for Chuishanguan to meet up with Shen Qingzhu.
Before departing, Bai Jingyan checked the map once and gave her instructions to Xiao Ruogang.
"Send two operatives to fetch Physician Hong from Fengcheng, and have him come quickly to Shaoyang Prefecture, east of Donggu Mountain. Tell him to meet the Ninth Young Master there!"
"I have already sent men to bring Physician Hong. But... I did not tell him to go to Shaoyang Prefecture. However, to reach Shaoyang one must pass through Youhudao anyway, so I will relay the order there."
Xiao Ruogang answered in a low voice.
Bai Jingyan nodded, rolled up the map, folded it neatly, and handed it to Xiao Ruogang. Then she mounted her horse, her voice cold and brimming with force.
"Take every operative we have. We ride now!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Fewer than a hundred riders — Bai Jingyan and Xiao Ruogang among them — spurred their horses forward at a gallop.
Bai Jingyan raced along the mountain roads. Never once in her life, in this life or the last, had her heart been so desperate.
With no word of her ninth brother's condition, her urgency only sharpened.
Her ears were filled with nothing but the roar of wind and the hammering of her own heart. They rode the whole way without torches, trusting solely to the moonlight to carry them to Chuishanguan.
"Hyah!"
She pushed the pace until she could have cursed herself for having no wings.
The assassin who had slain the Xiliang Emperor — her ninth brother had surely been subjected to the cruelest punishment and the foulest degradation. Without question he had been trampled under every torment and agony his captors could devise.
Bai Qingyun, the Ninth Young Master of the Bai family, had always been the proudest of all the Bai sons — a man of high bearing and unyielding dignity, a child of iron stubbornness. In the ancestral shrine he had knelt more times than he could count and taken the cane again and again, yet never once had that stubbornness been broken.
When told that a concubine-born son must shield the legitimate heirs, Bai Qingyun had always scoffed. But when that great calamity truly fell upon them, the boy had made his choice without hesitation — he had shielded his elder brother, the seventh son Bai Qingjue, the legitimate heir of the Bai line. He had thrown his own body forward to draw off the pursuing troops, pushed all the way into Yunjing, the capital of Xiliang, and completed the assassination.
In the moment of catastrophe, her ninth brother Bai Qingyun had acted on pure blood instinct, on the bond of kin. He had thrown himself between danger and his brother — thrown himself in the way to preserve the legitimate line of the Bai family.
The world sermonized endlessly about the proper precedence of legitimate and concubine-born blood, but to Bai Jingyan nothing weighed as heavily as the bond of family. In this moment, she wanted only one thing: that her ninth brother had survived.
A bitter taste rose in her throat, and she forced it down. Her eyes, gripping hard on the reins, were deep and unbreakable. She had to save her ninth brother. Whatever price it demanded.
Xiao Ruogang, gazing down from the mountainside at the broad road below where the Xiliang negotiating delegation was slowly making its way back toward Chuishanguan, called to her in a hushed voice.
"My lady, look there!"
Below, the torch-bearing Xiliang column wound its way along the road in a long, snaking line — the very delegation the Prince of Yan, Li Zhijie, had led to the talks, now heading toward Chuishanguan.
Bai Jingyan stared down at the Xiliang soldiers and ground her teeth.
"Xiao Ruogang, take the lead and guide us through the shortcuts to Chuishanguan. We must rescue the Ninth Young Master before Li Zhijie's column arrives."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The formation shifted, and Xiao Ruogang raced ahead alone to scout the way. The riders quickly interleved into a single file and followed him along the steepest, narrowest paths.
Darkness had fallen completely, and the wind blew hard. In the still, pitch-black forest, black shadows wavered as they plunged along the treacherous terrain, riding so fast it seemed the hooves of their fine horses might strike sparks from the stones.
Branches whipped at her face in the rushing wind, but Bai Jingyan rode on headlong as though pain meant nothing to her. Until she laid eyes on her ninth brother, she could not rest easy. Hot blood surged through her, and her anxiety mounted with every stride. Faster — just a little faster...
Chuishanguan sat within the Chuishan gorge, sheer rock walls rising on either side. It was Xiliang's first fortress, and there was no route from Youhudao to Donggu Mountain — or back — that did not pass through it.
Beneath the sheer cliff face on the Chuishan–Donggu Mountain side of the fortress lay the broad Tianshen Lake, the Lake of the Heavenly God. Short of growing wings, there was no way up to Youhudao or Donggu Mountain except through the ground of Chuishanguan — though, it was true, one might spend days of effort circling around the whole of Chuishan and the Chuanling range.
Inside the market town of Chuishanguan, the upper floor of a tavern abruptly went up in flames. Drums and gongs clanged through the streets. From a distance it looked as though something vast and crimson were smothered in black smoke — the blaze raged so furiously that even the tower beside the tavern was charred black past all recognition.
Down in the streets, commoners dressed only in their underclothes hauled water in buckets and basins to beat back the fire. But no sooner did the flames seem to die than they roared back with a whump, burning hotter than before, with a ferocity that threatened to consume the very clouds. Then, in an instant, the fire raced along a stream of spilled liquid, spreading with a rush, and the crowd could do nothing but fall back.
The people of Chuishanguan went white with terror.
"Oil! It's oil! Water won't put this out! Someone set this fire!"
"Run to the magistrate's office and sound the drum! Someone set this fire!"
The fire, clawing at the heavens, finally drew the attention of the garrison commander of Chuishanguan, who sent soldiers out with orders to douse it.
Inside the burning tavern, blade-light and sword-shadows flashed. The soldiers of the Haoying Battalion and the Dong family operatives were locked in brutal combat with Li Zhijie's men.
Shen Liangyu understood perfectly well — with the tavern aflame, they had to withdraw at once, this very moment. Otherwise, the Xiliang garrison holding Chuishanguan would come running, and once they did, no one would be getting out at all!
He had never imagined the Prince of Yan kept operatives this clever. They had known that setting the fire would drag the eyes of every Xiliang defender in Chuishanguan straight to this spot.
When Shen Liangyu realized the Xiliang operatives were fighting to the death to pin them here, he clenched his jaw, his eyes blazing, and roared.
"Break through the encirclement — now!"
Xiao Ruohai, wounded all over his body, stood with a longsword in one hand and a dagger in the other, his eyes perfectly calm. Strapped to his back, bound fast with rope, hung the unconscious Bai Qingyun, soaked in blood.
Shen Qingzhu, Shen Liangyu, and Bai Jinchi formed a protective ring around Xiao Ruohai and his burden. The operatives and Haoying soldiers circled them in turn — but the tightening trap had them sealed in, unable to advance a single step.
Bai Jinchi's eyes had gone bloodshot. Backing up against Bai Qingyun's bearers, she gripped her silver whip in one hand, jaw clenched, glancing warily all around. She was guarding against an attack from behind.
Suddenly an arrow shrieked through the air. Bai Jinchi's eyes went wide — and she shoved Shen Qingzhu, who stood at her left, out of the way.
"Look out!"
The cold iron barbed itself deep into Bai Jinchi's arm before she could dodge. She bit down hard on a heavy groan.
"Fourth Young Miss!"
Shen Qingzhu swept her longsword up and sheared the arrows still flying toward them clean out of the air.
"Southeast!"
Bai Jinchi clutched her arm and shouted.
At her words, the Haoying soldiers pinpointed the archers' positions on the rooftops with lethal precision. Three of them launched themselves skyward at once; after two swift movements, arcs of blood bloomed and sank slowly beneath the moonlight, then vanished around the three Haoying warriors.
In close combat, operatives raised in noble households were simply no match for the Haoying warriors who had fought for their lives on real battlefields. Every strike carried killing intent; every step could open an enemy's throat.
Shen Liangyu, his eyes red with battle fury, flung his head up and glared at the flames devouring the tavern's main hall. The pounding of hooves and the heavy clank of armor were drawing near.
"No more fighting — withdraw! Move! Cut a path with your bodies! Move, NOW!"
At his command, the Dong family operatives and Haoying soldiers pressed in tight around Shen Liangyu's group and carved their way out at any cost.
For the first time in her life, Bai Jinchi stood on the knife's edge between life and death. She watched Haoying soldiers drop one after another beside her. She watched the Dong family operatives take blades to the chest so the party could advance a few more steps, fighting to fell just one more enemy — and her head began to pound. For an instant the hot stench of blood seemed to flood her nostrils completely. Without a moment's hesitation, she snapped off the arrow lodged in her arm and turned to guard all four directions behind Bai Qingyun's bearers.