Chapter 3

The desert sky was a godsent treasure. In the darkness, countless stars hung scattered above, gathering into silver ribbons that lit the heavens. The great moon floated on the horizon, so full and round it looked almost touchable.

Zhu Yu lay on her back, the starlight breaking into fragments in her eyes. She could not help sighing, "It's so beautiful..."

Li Wu stirred the fire and, in a rare moment, said, "What? You grew up in the Western Regions, and your parents never brought you out to see it?"

"Of course not," Zhu Yu admitted without the slightest hint of guilt, already having her excuse ready. "My father kept me tucked away in the inner quarters since I was little. Let alone the desert, I couldn't even get into town very often."

"Ah, right. Actually, I've always wanted to go see Yangzhou."

Li Wu looked over. "Why?"

"To see Slender West Lake, and eat all the local snacks! Yangzhou fried rice is famous, and there's boiled dried bean curd shreds, orchid-dried tofu, Fuchun buns..." Zhu Yu went on with bright eyes and a lively voice.

Li Wu shook his head with a faint smile. Zhu Yu thought of something else and grinned. "I also heard Yangzhou has beauties as lovely as jade, and flowers like snow. The women in the riverside galleries can sing so sweetly they make men go weak in the knees. I want to hear whether it's really that magical."

Li Wu's face went dark. "Who told you that nonsense? Since when do respectable young women go around talking about brothels?"

Zhu Yu didn't even turn her head. "What's it to you? Which law says women can't go to brothels? You look down on women, don't you? I want to go see them! Not only women, I want to see men too. I want to see whether the pretty male entertainers are really handsome and can sing little tunes!"

That kind of deliberate nonsense gave Li Wu a headache, so he simply shut his mouth.

Zhu Yu talked up a storm, but when she saw that Li Wu still refused to answer, she gradually lost interest and fell silent.

"Hey, you still haven't told me where you're taking me on this whole trip."

"To Youzhou," Li Wu finally replied.

"What are we going to Youzhou for? Do I have relatives there?"

"Didn't Lord Zhu tell you?" Li Wu finally sounded a little puzzled. "Before he died, he wrote a letter to Prince of Qin. If anything happened to him, he asked that his orphaned daughter be entrusted to him."

"So you're sent by Prince of Qin? One of his men?"

Li Wu shook his head. "No. Lord Zhu and I had an old agreement. This was his final wish: for me to send you safely to Youzhou."

A trace of nostalgia entered his calm eyes. "Lord Zhu was righteous and upright, but he was unfortunately lost here. It was truly a loss for Great Qi."

Hearing that, Zhu Yu suddenly grew interested. "You talk about my father like you knew him very well. What kind of man was he before?"

"Lord Zhu was originally the chief of the Hanlin academicians of Great Qi. Because his remonstrances angered Emperor Mingwu, he was exiled to serve as a historian. In the fourteenth year of Anhe, the Prince of Wu, Zhao Chengli, joined forces with the Marquis Jingwu from his own clan and raised an army in rebellion. They killed Emperor Mingwu and the remaining princes, then declared themselves emperor. At that time, Prince of Qin, Zhao Chengguang, had been ordered to the coast to suppress the Japanese pirates. Forced north by the Prince of Wu, he could only take his one hundred thousand personal troops and seek another way out. Your father, in order to avoid persecution, had no choice but to settle in the Western Regions."

"When Lord Zhu wrote to me, he already had a bad feeling that the Prince of Wu had found his whereabouts. By the time he contacted Prince of Qin, he had already..."

"Why did that Prince of Wu want to kill my father?"

"I only heard that Emperor Mingwu had left something in your father's care, and the Prince of Wu wanted to get it."

Zhu Yu let out a sigh. By the time the reinforcements arrived, the man was already gone. Life really was unpredictable.

"What happened after that?"

"After Prince of Qin reached the northern frontier, he joined the old officers who had followed him, and together over the course of ten years they took back the Eighteen Prefectures of Youyun, waiting for the day they could reclaim the capital."

Zhu Yu clicked her tongue after hearing that, impressed to the point of admiration by the Prince of Qin she had never met.

"What about you? After you send me to Youzhou, where will you go?"

The young woman beside him suddenly asked, and Li Wu paused. Then he said calmly, "I don't know."

"You aren't going home?"

"I don't have a home."

Zhu Yu suddenly felt that Li Wu was rather pitiful. Wasn't that just like a floating weed, drifting through the world with no idea where it would finally come to rest?

"What a coincidence. I don't have a home now either," the young woman said, sounding dejected.

Her bargain parents were both dead, and she wasn't used to staying in the Western Regions.

Once she reached Youzhou, she had no idea what kind of life would be waiting for her.

A flicker appeared in Li Wu's usually still eyes. "Prince of Qin is a rare and wise lord. He'll arrange things properly for you. You don't need to worry."

The young woman smiled but didn't answer.

It was just like when, as a child, she had stayed at her aunt's house with her brother. No matter how kind her aunt was, how could that strange feeling of living under someone else's roof ever truly disappear? For some reason, Zhu Yu no longer wanted to keep talking about it.

She closed her eyes and gradually drifted off to sleep.

The desert sun beat down from every direction, merciless and without a blind spot. Even though Zhu Yu was hiding in the shade of the green trees, the morning light still made her skin burn. She didn't even need Li Wu to wake her; she got up on her own.

"My leg still hurts. How am I supposed to ride a camel?" Let alone ride one, even climbing onto it was a problem. Her right leg still had a faint numbness to it, and she was unsteady even when walking.

Li Wu thought for a moment, then took a few pieces of clothing and padded the camel with them so Zhu Yu's wound wouldn't be rubbed by the saddle.

"Bear with it for now. Once we get out of the desert, we'll be able to find a clinic to treat your leg."

"Mm..." Zhu Yu's cheeks turned pink, and the little bit of frustration from yesterday vanished completely in the face of such considerate treatment.

The camel bells rang and clattered through the vast desert as the two of them set off again.

"Hey, I think I see houses!" Zhu Yu raised a hand to shade her eyes and looked into the distance, squinting as if she could just make out the outline of buildings. She immediately called out excitedly to Li Wu.

Li Wu gave a quiet "Mm."

"Honestly!" They had been walking through the desert for so long, and Zhu Yu had finally gotten excited for once, yet this man was still wearing that deadpan expression, as if nothing in the world could move him.

"Can't you at least give me some face and look a little excited? You're making me feel like some country bumpkin coming into the city..." Zhu Yu complained on and on.

"Hey, why aren't you saying anything?!"

Li Wu stared toward the distance and suddenly raised a hand to stop her. "Don't speak."

His serious tone startled Zhu Yu. She looked at him blankly. "What's wrong?"

The words had barely left her mouth when the sound of hoofbeats suddenly thundered in her ears.

A group of riders was coming from the side, around eleven or twelve men in all. They wore fine cloth clothing and waved curved sabers as they rode up toward them with leering, carefree smiles.

"Well now, I didn't expect there to be a young lady too." The leader, A Buji, grew even more excited when he saw the lovely figure on the camel. He cracked his whip and urged his horse faster as he charged toward them.

Li Wu's eyes darkened. In a low voice he said, "In a moment, grab the saddle strap and don't fall off."

With that, he drew a wooden staff from the cloth bag at his side. Zhu Yu recognized it; it was the same stick she had used earlier to lean on when her legs were tired.

"They're all carrying blades. Will that even be enough?" Zhu Yu asked worriedly.

"It doesn't matter."

Li Wu's expression remained calm. The way he looked at the bandits was as though they were nothing more than moving objects.

Yet the aura around him was quietly changing. Veins stood out on the back of the hand gripping the staff, coiling with power.

A Buji led his men up to them. Seeing that it was only one middle-aged man and a young, beautiful woman, he let his gaze linger on Zhu Yu with open lechery before saying to Li Wu, "Is that your little wife? She's certainly beautiful."

Li Wu's eyes turned icy black in an instant. He lifted his head and looked at A Buji as if he were staring at a piece of trash. "Since you can't even speak properly, let me teach you."

"..."

Zhu Yu, standing nearby, felt nothing at all. Such words were barely a scratch to her; Western men could be much dirtier than this. Still, Li Wu did sound pretty damn cool.

A Buji was frightened by the man's stare and couldn't help shivering.

Seeing the confused looks from his underlings, he came back to himself and said furiously, "That line would be more fitting for you. You think you alone can beat all of us? You're asking for death!"

With that, he raised his blade and swung it at Li Wu. The others followed right behind him, surrounding Li Wu and hemming him into the range of their attacks.

Under Li Wu's instructions, Zhu Yu retreated a little farther back to avoid getting caught in the fighting.

The man with the wooden staff kept one hand behind his back, his calm, unruffled eyes assessing the mounted bandits. They knew how to encircle a target, but they clearly didn't understand that this was no advantage for men with blades.

Besides, riders had to cling tightly to their horses to avoid being thrown or falling off, so their legs had to be strong. Yet these men were only standing on their saddles, swaying along with the horses' movement.

That much was enough for Li Wu to see through.

He leaned back to dodge a slash, then brought the staff down hard on a bandit's waist. With a miserable scream, the force of the blow sent the man tumbling straight off his horse.

A Buji flew into a rage at the sight and shouted to his men, "Take him down!"

Blade after blade came at Li Wu like falling snow. Relying on his advantage on the ground, Li Wu moved effortlessly among the horses, dodging one attack after another.

The bandits were lured so close to one another that they started to hesitate, afraid of accidentally striking their own men.

Seeing them toyed with like rats by Li Wu, A Buji barked at one man in a low voice, "You, go seize that young woman!"

"Yes!"

Zhu Yu had originally been outside the main fight, but when she saw one of the bandits charging at her with a rope, she could not help yelling, "Li Wu!"

Li Wu whipped his head around at once. Seeing that Zhu Yu was in danger, he immediately changed direction and moved to rush toward her.

"Wait!" A Buji somehow had a crossbow in hand. He gave a vicious smile. "If you go, don't blame me when this disobedient crossbow sends a bolt into that young woman's body."

Li Wu froze. Crossbow bolts had force and range; he couldn't gamble with Zhu Yu's life. So he shouted, "Hold on tight to the camel!"

"Huh?!" Zhu Yu was stunned, but she still listened and clutched on tightly.

Then Li Wu picked up the blade of the bandit he had just knocked down and hurled it hard. The knife plunged straight into the camel's rump, and the startled animal immediately bolted.

Good heavens! Zhu Yu was jolted around like she was on a roller coaster, so dizzy she felt ready to peel her whole body off the camel.