Chapter 261

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Protagonist:

Shaowei

Liu Qi

Shaowei and Liu Qi rode their horses northward; guards who had already gone ahead to send word and scout the route led the way.

The mountains and wilds were quiet at night, and the journey should have been unimpeded, yet unexpectedly they encountered an incident that blocked their path.

Passing before a stone mountain, the horses followed the mountain path; just as they were about to exit the mountain, the forward guards reined in their horses to slow down, then turned their mounts back and returned, reporting in a low voice that a situation had arisen not far ahead.

The guard's words had barely fallen when Shaowei spurred her horse forward to investigate; Liu Qi followed immediately.

Tonight the moonlight was bright; Shaowei's party had not made extensive use of torches, and at this moment, half-hidden behind the mountain path as they observed the situation, they did not attract the attention of those ahead for a time.

Shaowei's wariness flared; Liu Qi likewise suspected at the first moment that their whereabouts had been leaked and they were being ambushed by unknown persons. However, the two watched vigilantly in silence for a moment, exchanged glances on horseback, and then successively dismissed their suspicions.

As far as the eye could see, about twenty or thirty men and horses were gathered ahead; their mounts were mostly inferior steeds, their clothing and weapons a motley, disordered assortment, their conduct and speech wild and overbearing. At the sight, Shaowei felt a surge of murderous intent, for this scene stirred memories she had hated all her life.

Liu Qi likewise declared in a low voice: "They must be mountain bandits who have fled and scattered under the suppression campaign."

On this eastern tour, the Son of Heaven did not wish to burden the people or waste resources, so everything along the way was kept simple; but matters of safety could not be simplified. Soldiers had long been sent ahead to patrol and clear the road, and the local yamen dared not be negligent. Many hidden bandits and outlaws had been rooted out; this group before them was clearly a band of vicious bandits moving under cover of night.

At this moment, these several dozen men had completely surrounded a carriage traveling at night. The carriage was of simple make, but the horses pulling it could be called sturdy and fine. The bandit chief's eyes shone at the sight, and he shouted at the driver: "Leave the carriage, horses, and valuables behind, and I'll spare your lives!"

"What are you sitting there for? Scared stupid? Get down quickly!"

"Hurry up! Don't delay our journey!"

The bandits' faces were ferocious; under the direct threat of their broad blades, the driver honestly retorted: "But you're delaying our journey too, aren't you?"

The bandit chief cursed angrily and ordered: "Drag him down, chop him up!"

His words had barely finished when a miserable scream suddenly rang out from within their own ranks; a bandit took an arrow in the back and fell from his horse, followed immediately by two more who screamed as arrows struck their heads and shoulders and they crashed down.

The bandit chief turned in great alarm, but saw crossbow bolts swarming toward them in the moonlight like a deadly gale; in almost the blink of an eye, the ten-odd comrades forming their outer perimeter were swept away and harvested.

Crossbow bolts are not like hunting bows; they are absolutely not something ordinary people can possess. The bandit chief was horrified and shouted for his men to flee, but when the crossbow fire paused briefly, the sound of galloping hooves had already surged forth.

The one man and one horse who charged out first were swift to the extreme, like a dark arrow shadow leaving the bowstring. The rider held a crossbow steady on the wildly charging horseback; as they closed in, crossbow bolts shot down several bandits trying to escape, and the valiant steed bodily knocked down two more. The bandit chief fell from his horse amid the chaotic collision; in a fluster he grabbed a long saber and blurted out: "We met on a narrow road! We have no grudge! Why must a noble hero kill us all? Please show mercy..."

That steed neighed and reared its front hooves high; as its hooves came down, a slightly round face wearing a wind-hood appeared on the horse's back. She was expressionless, her eyes cold and full of loathing. She uttered a sentence even more arrogant and overbearing than the bandits': "You're blocking the road." Then she pulled the bronze crossbow mechanism again; the bolt swiftly pierced through the bandit chief's brow.

The bandit chief fell on his back, blood flowing over his wide-open eyes. His gaze fixed on that quiet carriage. He had thought he'd stumbled upon a windfall; who knew it would turn into a calamity. In the fading eyes of the dying man, this mountain carriage became a blood-red, eerie netherworld thing.

Liu Qi had already ordered the scattered bandits to be slaughtered to the last man, while Shaowei, sensing something, had already ridden her horse close to the carriage. The curtain was lifted by a hand, accompanied by a sigh mixed with a yawn: "Looks like we've run into fiercer bandits who've taken us off your hands. It really isn't suitable to go out, is it."

Shaowei swiftly leaped down from her horse; her movement was extremely large, and as she landed and straightened up she couldn't help but bounce in place twice. The wind-hood fell loose and draped down: "Jiang Fu, how did you come to be here!"

Inside the carriage, the household servant quietly held the curtain. A figure in a blue robe with a snow-white coiffure sat cross-legged; beneath snowy lashes, smiling eyes curved: "I missed you, little imp."

Shaowei rushed in; the servant leaned back to avoid danger. The carriage interior suddenly became extraordinarily lively. Shaowei's face still bore no obvious smile, but her eyes were exceptionally bright, her cheeks flushed red with surprise and joy; even her cross-legged posture exuded vivid delight. She asked: "Didn't you say you weren't coming? So you deliberately lied to me before?"

Slaughter continued outside the carriage, but Shaowei now turned a deaf ear to it all. The cold severity that had covered her body moments ago had completely dissipated; looking at Jiang Fu who had suddenly appeared, she only felt this night and this place were exceptionally dear.

Jiang Fu did not rush to answer; she looked at Liu Qi, who stood outside the carriage with hands clasped in salute, smiled and nodded at him, and invited him into the carriage for tea: "The tea has just finished boiling."

The household servant and Mo Li had taken turns driving the carriage all the way. Just now, when they were surrounded, the servant woke from sleep, drew his saber, lifted the curtain for a glance, saw the situation had changed, then lowered the curtain, sheathed his saber, wiped his face and hands with a damp cloth, and boiled tea.

Mo Li, for her part, had leaped out the moment she saw blood, expertly going to loot the enemy's possessions — Shaowei knew that the two strips of cured meat hanging outside the carriage door must have some hidden story behind them.

Jiang Fu was complaining: "Traveling is inauspicious; we've run into robbery one after another."

Now that they had left the capital, the servant wanted to catch up with Shaowei as soon as possible; all the way they spent heavily to change horses, often traveling day and night. The only downside was that night travel was not peaceful, but that was no matter; he and Mo Li could mostly handle it, and moreover there were people secretly scouting and protecting them along the way.

Mo Li counter-looted quite a few dry cakes and dried meat, returning with her arms full.

Liu Qi's guards came to report that they had found women and children inside the mule cart.

Shaowei ran over to look; inside the cart were three women. One was an emaciated woman with disheveled hair and a dirty face, her arms tightly clutching a two- or three-year-old child before her. The woman's expression showed fear but no grief; her eyes were faintly numb, and she murmured: "Don't kill my child, don't kill my child..."

Shaowei silently watched the woman's wrist, one hand missing, bare and smooth; then looked at the child. She suddenly felt an illusion as if stepping into this place meant stepping once more into the cycle of cause and effect. This feeling ignited a flame in the depths of Shaowei's heart; the flame burned out a realization: similar ugly things are still happening; killing a single Qin Fu is far from enough.

Liu Qi walked over, raised his hand to lower the coarse cloth curtain, and instructed his subordinates: "Take them along."

"In the future, become the most powerful knight-errant in all history, command ten thousand horses and a thousand armies, with iron cavalry and strong crossbows, shatter the Black Mountain Evil Land, slaughter all bandits under heaven." As the two turned, Liu Qi said softly to Shaowei.

Shaowei turned her face to look at him, pressed her lips into a straight line, and nodded with determination dark in her eyes.

When the party set off again, Shaowei handed her horse to the servant to drive, while she herself squeezed into the carriage to talk with Jiang Fu.

"It wasn't to tease you; I truly hadn't planned to come before." Jiang Fu said: "Earlier I ruined several furnaces of pills in a row; I thought perhaps the Patriarch also feels this frail body of mine is unsuited for going out and tossing about..."

Shaowei was stunned, and hurriedly said: "Why didn't you say so before? Since you haven't successfully refined the pills, then you..."

Jiang Fu sighed, cutting off her disciple's words: "Going out involves dragging things east and west; I couldn't even prepare the medicines properly. Saying it out loud carries a helpless, useless old-person air, which really damages my carefree and elegant image."

Shaowei was quite anxious: "But if there are no medicines..."

"Who said there aren't any." Jiang Fu lightly patted the box beside her hand: "After you left, I smashed that pill furnace and switched to a new one to use."

As Shaowei relaxed, she heard Jiang Fu say with a smile: "This master thought it over; one cannot only plan for the future. The joy of the present moment is the true joy... It's also Zhao Shu's fault for repeatedly nagging, always saying you were hoping I'd go along. Since it's where my family's little imp's heart is set, I thought it couldn't be wrong."

Saying this, Jiang Fu leaned forward slightly, raised her hand to pinch and pull Shaowei's cheek: "No matter how tired, seeing such a happy little imp face tonight, this master would have no regrets even if I died of exhaustion."

"Stop saying inauspicious things; I see you're in good spirits, you absolutely won't become a ghost who died of exhaustion." Shaowei took Jiang Fu's hand away, but did not deny that she was very happy.

"This master is merely forcing herself to hold on; the road ahead will still require you to take good care of me." Jiang Fu slowly twisted her shoulders, making an appearance of extreme soreness and fatigue. Shaowei "tsk"ed, but still shifted behind her and earnestly helped her knead her shoulders and press her back.

Jiang Fu closed her eyes, enjoying it, and remarked: "In the past I raised two sturdy black civets; they also liked to help me tread on my shoulders and press my legs..."

Shaowei had no time to get annoyed before hearing Jiang Fu add: "But neither of them can compare to your technique."

Shaowei didn't know whether she should be annoyed, then heard Jiang Fu say quite happily: "Coming this trip was right; as expected, it's still best when a family is together."

That sentence required no annoyance at all. Shaowei worked diligently until Jiang Fu's ever-restless mouth asked with some curiosity: "However, you and your beautiful partner left the group in the middle of the night; where are you going?"

Shaowei deliberately went on a passive strike, but still answered the destination truthfully.

Jiang Fu realized: "So it's to go see a beauty."

When they met later, the beauty in Jiang Fu's words was wearing a face veil, and appeared slightly at a loss.

Knowing that a distinguished guest would visit tonight, the wine and dishes had already been prepared, but she hadn't expected the guest to add quite a few more people along the way; fortunately there were several sturdy and quick-footed servant women bustling about adding wine and dishes, and Mo Li had also brought her own food.

Watching Shaowei eat two bowls of soup noodles in succession, Rui Ji earnestly noted the Witch God's appetite, thinking that if there were another chance to host her in the future, she would certainly make even more ample preparations.

During the idle chat after the meal, Rui Ji said softly that she had been wanting to take a cultivation epithet recently, and wished to ask the Witch God to bestow a name.

Shaowei, who already had no little experience naming others, nevertheless felt that Rui Ji counted as an elder, so for her to do the naming would seem very mismatched; therefore she pushed the task onto Jiang Fu.

Jiang Fu did not decline, smiling as she looked at Rui Ji, and said: "Your temperament is clear and unworldly, your appearance like the moon brushed by gauze clouds; why not take the epithet Qing E?"

Knowing she was the Heavenly Machine Witch God, Rui Ji naturally held her in incomparable reverence, and hurriedly saluted in thanks: "Many thanks, Female Monarch, for bestowing the name."

As she looked up, she met Jiang Fu's smiling eyes, and suddenly seemed to realize something; she couldn't help asking softly: "I feel the Female Monarch looks familiar; may I ask if we have met before……"

Jiang Fu smiled and nodded; Rui Ji instantly understood, then turned to look at the Heavenly Machine Witch God, murmuring in sudden realization: "So that's how it is……"

It turned out that the person who left the Heavenly Machine prophecy back then was precisely the later Heavenly Machine Witch God.

Liu Qi and Ling Congnan went to the study to speak alone; Jiang Fu rested for the time being in the hall, while Rui Ji took Shaowei for a walk around the grounds. Shaowei saw that this courtyard was built against the mountain, very secluded; the plants and trees were tended with care, and there was also a vegetable garden and chicken coop, two yellow dogs guarding the place, and a few free-range wild raccoon dogs roaming about.

Besides this, Rui Ji also said that she was now cultivating the medical path, had already learned over a hundred kinds of medicinal herbs, and could compound some simple prescriptions.

Seeing all this, Shaowei felt that Rui Ji was already living very steadily; before she had just been trying to survive for a while, but now it seemed Rui Ji was originally someone very suited to living out her days properly.

Seeing Shaowei nod in no-lacking approval, tears welled up again in Rui Ji's eyes: "The Witch God's great kindness, I have not forgotten for a single day; if……"

Shaowei's ears ached from listening; she simply had her repay the favor on the spot, proposing the idea of temporarily settling the women and children rescued from the bandits here.

Rui Ji agreed repeatedly, and immediately led people off to arrange lodgings.

Shaowei returned to the front courtyard, just in time to see Liu Qi and Ling Congnan come out of the study.

Ling Congnan raised his hand in salute; Shaowei stopped and asked: "Walk together?"

Ling Congnan smiled and nodded.

After everything was laid bare back then, Si Tui once told him: only after a person possesses the right to choose does the choice they make become their true heart's choice.

Si Tui regarded all his previous thoughts as results forged by circumstances where there was no other choice.

Si Tui did not force the bewildered him to choose immediately, but truly gave him the conditions and the right to consider and choose.

He has lived in seclusion here until now, and finally decided to walk out, with the identity of a Ling family son.

His father once harbored the ambition to reach the Divine Mount Daiyue; now that the truth is fully revealed, as a son he ought to walk the road his father once walked, to gather and put to rest his father's scattered heroic spirit.

When the sky was about to brighten, three youthful figures rode fine horses across a shallow stream, splashing up countless droplets.

Village children played in the water in the shallow stream on a clear day; as the water splashed, a new nursery rhyme spread.

"Taishan stone, Jishui clear, blood clothes melted away to see the moon bright!"

Accompanied by this nursery rhyme that spread ever wider, the Heavenly Machine Witch God appeared in Taishan Commandery with Ling Ke's son.

Soon rumors surged up — the solitarily wandering Heavenly Machine Witch God, sensing that the Ling family's surviving lineage had drifted to Mount Daiyue, followed Heaven's will and guided them out.

Beneath the green mountains, before the halted Son of Heaven's carriage, the Crown Prince Liu Qi, leading officials waiting outside the carriage, was moved and said: "Loyal souls returning to the heart is an omen of peace and clarity under heaven; Imperial Father's Fengshan journey this time has produced auspicious signs one after another."

Through the gauze hanging curtain, the Emperor heard at his ear the words this son had spoken when he first returned to the capital, words the Emperor himself had said to lure him into revealing the Ling family son's true life-or-death whereabouts: "We will not kill him."

And now that child is about to appear openly before his eyes, yet it has become "We cannot kill him."

Before the hundred officials, the carriage curtain was lifted by the filial son; the Emperor clearly saw that old friend's son walking toward him.

The youth's bearing was upright like a mountain, clad in a white Daoist robe, just as the nursery rhyme sang — shaped like a mountain peak, as if washed clean from the clear Jishui River, all blood and grievance melted away, seeing the light of heaven and moon once more.

The old friend's son was not like the old friend in majestic valor, but he carried the clear and bright qi the old friend held in his heart; the Emperor's withered hand trembled as it braced against the carriage wall, and through this clear face he saw the old friend in his youth.

The Emperor's eyes shimmered with tears; he slowly turned his gaze to the Mount Daiyue range behind the youth, and the past scenes recorded and kept by the green mountains surged forth.

Inside the Ling Shu Marquis's carriage, Jiang Fu, unconcerned with the Son of Heaven's reaction, was already lying peacefully enjoying herself, legs in the Still Yang Reclining Pose, eyes closed nurturing her spirit.

Shaowei propped open the window, using her body to block the sunlight from outside, and looked toward the mountain range ahead.

She was born in this Taishan Commandery, and on Tianlang Mountain she had once gazed from afar at the towering Taishan; the great mountain and the small child had gazed at each other across vast mist for many years, and today she finally got to observe it close up.

Shaowei only saw sheer cliffs piercing the sky rising as if from the ground, undulating peaks soaring into the clouds, quietly looking down on her.

In the afternoon, the Son of Heaven's entourage settled into the Xing Palace at the foot of the mountain, beginning preparations for this Tianhe Year 18 early summer Fengshan grand ceremony.

?? (The author also needs to make more preparations for the upcoming plot; there will be no update on the 21st, everyone don't wait, wishing everyone a happy Winter Solstice eating dumplings.)