She just had not expected that blood ties were something very mysterious. Even without that jade pendant as evidence, when Lu Huan saved the emperor today, the emperor had actually paused for an instant— and in that moment, it was not fear of the thread about to slice his throat, but the even stronger sense of seeing a familiar shadow in Lu Huan.
When the emperor interrogated the assassins, he was somewhat absent-minded, his gaze repeatedly falling on Lu Huan.
In the end, he even forgot to bestow any reward. His expression not very good, he waved his hand, ordering the assassins to be taken back to the capital and handed to the Dali Temple for judgment, then dismissed everyone.
───♡───
Lu Huan returned with the Zhenyuan General and the others from the temporary palace to the camp outside the city, but before going back, he first went to a place outside the city. That day when he came out of Changchun Temple, he had already had someone inquire about it— it turned out that Lady Qing’s birthplace was precisely Yunzhou. The emperor had buried her in the imperial mausoleum, but because of his longing that drove him into illness, he had erected a cenotaph for her here in Yunzhou.
The cenotaph was also heavily guarded. Relying on his high martial skill, Lu Huan slipped in without anyone knowing.
The night was very cold. Yunzhou was close to the northern border, the weather frigid, and a layer of frost had already formed on the ground. The cenotaph looked as though someone had visited only a few days ago, leaving a box of jewelry that women liked— it should have been from that self-proclaimed infatuated ruler. But even so, the surroundings were desolate and empty, steeped in endless loneliness.
Lu Huan lowered his eyes and quietly looked at the cenotaph, his expression somewhat complicated.
Su Xi tugged at his sleeve, and only then did he return to himself, his expression turning gentle: “You’re here.”
Su Xi felt that although Zai Zai did not believe the female Daoist priest’s words from the bottom of his heart, matters concerning his birth mother, Lady Qing, must have touched him somewhat. After all, he had no memory of his birth mother from the moment he was born. Not to mention Lady Qing, he didn’t even know what the lowly concubine from Prince Ning’s manor looked like. He grew up in Prince Ning’s manor, and although he had a status, he was actually not even as well off as an orphan.
Su Xi felt pity rise in her heart, so her voice softened as she asked, “What are you thinking about?”
Zai Zai gazed at the cenotaph and said, “I’m thinking she must have been a very good person. Unfortunately, the Son of Heaven is heartless. I never even saw her face, and I heard all the portraits in the palace were burned.”
After Lady Qing died, the emperor had gone mad for a while and ordered the place Lady Qing had lived in to be burned down completely.
But after the burning, he became lost in spirit and overwhelmed with pain, and built a temporary palace in Yunzhou for the deceased. The Son of Heaven’s emotions were so complicated that no one could understand them.
Su Xi couldn’t help sighing. After a moment of thought, she said, “Don’t be sad. At least you have me with you.”
Lu Huan lifted his eyes to look at the line of floating words in the night, the crease between his brows easing as he smiled: “Mn.”
The Zhenyuan Army continued on its journey the next day, and as for the Yunzhou temporary palace, the emperor did not sleep all night. Suspicion arose in his heart, and he secretly summoned someone, giving orders: “Secretly investigate the matter of Lady Qing from back then. Bring me the imperial physician who diagnosed her miscarriage in those days, and interrogate him again.”
───♡───
In the northern border, heavy snow flew and the situation was dire. When the Zhenyuan General led the army to arrive, the border forces were in the midst of capturing enemy spies from the neighboring country.
And the neighboring nation had already quietly brought troops to the city gates— war could break out at any moment.
Even before arriving at the northern border, Lu Huan had already been endlessly busy, and after reaching the northern border, he was even more unable to spare himself.
In the first two days, Su Xi merely saw starving corpses lining the roadside on the northern border through the screen, bodies piled like mountains. Places that were once inns or taverns had now become mass burial pits. The worsening disasters and rebellions year after year had turned this place into a living hell on earth.
Shocking to the eye.
And on the fifth day, a spy sent by the neighboring nation killed two common civilians. He was caught by the Yan soldiers, and the Zhenyuan General, enraged, personally hung a noble son of the neighboring nation— who had been captured a few days earlier— atop the city wall, letting him freeze to death alive. Tooth for tooth, a clear signal that the Yan Kingdom would never yield!
This became the fuse, and full-scale war erupted entirely.
Su Xi and Lu Huan both received Mission Twelve at the same time:
【Pacify the rebellion, establish military merit, repel the enemy forces. Reward: 2000 gold coins, 18 points.】
But at this moment, facing a border city that looked like a human hell, neither of them could pay attention to the mission.
It was Su Xi’s first time seeing such a blood-soaked scene. Her eyelids twitched violently.
It was nothing like those TV costume dramas where they lazily toss a few fake corpses on the ground. Here, everywhere were rotting corpses of soldiers and civilians, flesh and bone scattered. Though the northern border was frigid, flies and maggots had still appeared, flying and crawling among the bodies.
Within the city, civilians huddled together in pain, and in the distance, flames of war billowed, the banners of the Yan Kingdom flying.
If Su Xi had spent money on the game, she would be seeing real human figures— not these tiny chibi characters— and she might truly have vomited.
On his birthday, Su Xi did not have time to accompany Lu Huan. Lu Huan put on armor, left the northern border with the troops, and headed straight to the front lines. The battle was urgent, and he spent most of his time on horseback, with little time to communicate with Su Xi.
He wanted Su Xi, during this period, not to open her screen— not to see the blood-soaked scenes on his side.
But Su Xi was worried sick every day, afraid that this child she had raised with such difficulty would get injured in the fire of war. Instead, she opened her phone even more frequently than before.
Lu Huan and the Zhenyuan General discussed affairs together in the command tent. Lu Huan proposed many strategies, and because of that, during this past month, the Yan Kingdom had won repeatedly, reclaiming several cities from the neighboring nation.
But at present, a new and urgent problem had appeared. Before retreating, the neighboring nation had tied up several hundred elderly people, women, and children, retreating with them into the Huiyan Mountain Gorge to force the Zhenyuan Army to withdraw.
If they did not pursue while victorious at this moment, the neighboring nation would likely use this time to recuperate and then invade again.
But if they did pursue, those hundred-plus elderly people, women, and children would definitely be directly beheaded and displayed. They were all ordinary citizens of the Yan Kingdom, and their families were currently being escorted back into the city by the army. If these hundred-plus people were abandoned, then even if the Zhenyuan Army won this war, they would completely lose the hearts of the Yan people in the future.
For now, there was only one path: send a troop to secretly infiltrate the Huiyan Mountain Gorge, rescue those hundred-plus people, and then wipe out the enemy troops in one sweep.
In the tent, Lu Huan stared at the topographical map on the desk, weighed down with heavy thoughts. The candlelight cast a shadow across his profile, flickering light and dark.
Before ever coming to the northern border, Su Xi already knew that marching and war would be extremely difficult, so she accompanied Zai Zai to hit wooden stakes and practice martial arts for a long time. But she had never imagined it would be this dangerous.
Blades and spears had no eyes. Although Zai Zai’s martial skills were already very good and he had not suffered any major injuries, the skin on his body inevitably had a few cuts.
His fair face had some dirt and bloodstains. Since no one knew when the battle horns might suddenly sound, he had no time to treat them. A wound from a glancing arrow on his arm from a few days earlier had only been hastily bandaged.
Every day when Su Xi saw him leave the tent, her heart thumped wildly. Only when he stayed inside the tent did she feel even slightly more at ease. If she had known things would become like this, she should have tried everything to twist the main mission in another direction, no matter what, to avoid the northern border mission entirely.
Su Xi could not help sighing. Sitting at her desk holding her pen, she could not focus on a single question on her test paper.
After memorizing the topographical map, Lu Huan looked toward the screen, seeing her full of worry, and instead became even more worried for her. For several days now, after coming home from school, Xiao Xi had barely done any of her worksheets, staring nervously at him nonstop. If this continued, wouldn’t her studies fall behind?
But Lu Huan could not say this directly. He spoke gently to Su Xi: “Rest early. I will be fine. As for sending people to rescue them this time, I have already thought of a plan. It may not necessarily be me leading the rescue.”
Su Xi absolutely did not believe that. She thought that old fox, the Zhenyuan General, would definitely make Zai Zai lead the rescue.
She sighed heavily: “If I had known, I wouldn’t have come to this lousy place.”
To Su Xi, although she had already seen that blood-soaked scene, perhaps because all those civilian corpses had been rendered into chibi little figures by the system, she felt pity but did not feel the kind of raging indignation she might have otherwise felt. What she cared about more, of course, was the Zai Zai she had accompanied for nearly a year and a half, whose sixteenth birthday she had not even been able to celebrate because of the war.
But Lu Huan had seen with his own eyes those scenes of torn flesh and shattered bodies. His desire to end the war early and return peace to the people of the northern border was naturally far more urgent than hers.
Lu Huan smiled slightly. He did not blame her for being unable to fully understand the dynasty he lived in.
After all, they were separated by thousands of years. Everything— whether culture, language, or thought— was entirely different. After experiencing some of the knowledge and culture from her side, he realized that in the era he lived in, many feudal customs were truly rotten. In contrast, her side was far more peaceful; war hardly ever happened there. So she did not need to understand the backward seclusion of his dynasty. It would be enough for him to integrate into her time.
He very much wanted to reach through the screen and touch her, but he also felt this act would be strange. So he instead promised: “Within three months, this war should be over. When the time comes, we’ll return to the capital. The new residence we bought— I still haven’t shown it to you.”
Only then did Su Xi brighten a little: “Mn.”
Lu Huan urged her once more: “Go to sleep earlier.”
Su Xi looked at Zai Zai on the phone screen, and for some reason, ever since he reverted to his original art after reaching one hundred points— although he was indeed handsome— the way he talked to her always felt like an old father. The kind of old father who would panic and rush out to buy medicine when his daughter had period cramps.
She shook her head, wondering if it was just her imagination.
But it was indeed getting late, and she had to log off. So she told Zai Zai goodnight once more, then slowly logged off.
Although Lu Huan urged Su Xi to go to sleep, in his heart he was actually very reluctant. He did not spend much time in the tent; these past days he was either marching and fighting or lying in ambush, and rarely had time to talk with her. And because there were too many soldiers in the army and no privacy at all, when he was injured he could only treat it himself, unable to let her help him like before.
He also wondered inwardly when he would finally be able to return from the northern border to the capital.
Thinking of this, he lifted his eyes again toward the screen.
Then he saw that, on the gradually fading screen where Xiao Xi had logged off, a pile of thought bubbles suddenly popped out above his own head.
“Sigh, she left just like that. I’m injured and she didn’t stay with me even two more seconds.”
“Sigh, yesterday I had scratches on my face, and when Xiao Xi came she didn’t even notice. She only cared for me with two sentences and that was it. Sigh, if I had known, I should’ve gotten injured a bit more.”
“Sigh, I want to go back to the capital.”
“Sigh……”
Lu Huan’s expression instantly went blank. This pile of bubbles— he actually had so many thoughts in his head? Why didn’t he know?!
He hurriedly covered his head, but those bubbles still kept popping out nonstop. Fortunately, after a short moment, Su Xi’s screen on her side went dark.
And on the screen, Su Xi was staring at that pile of bubbles, slapping the table and laughing wildly.
