A Single Tie Of Long Hair Seals A Lifelong Commitment - Chapter 2

Xie Wenjun picked up the hairpin dropped in the hay and plunged it straight into…

It was nearly midnight, and the city gates were tightly shut.

“By order of the Crown Prince, urgent business demands the gate be opened!”

Chen Liangyu, holding the Crown Prince’s token, shouted up to the soldiers guarding the gate for the night.

The Imperial Guards and the Yong’an Prefecture had been deployed on the main street, and the Sixteen Guards, neglected for many years, had also been mobilized, searching through the streets and alleys.

Footsteps, torches, weapons—the sounds were a clamorous mess.

Chen Liangyu was deeply worried, “If Princess Jiangning truly was abducted by Northern Yong rebels, searching like this will only ensure she doesn’t survive.”

Jing Ming tacitly agreed, “They might as well be beating gongs and drums to tip off the bandits.” He asked a soldier beside him, “Where’s your head officer? Call him over. I want to see which talented person is in charge!”

The soldier bowed and replied, “Reporting, Deputy General Jing, this area is the patrolling zone of the Southern Yamen. The commander of the Southern Yamen is currently on leave back home, and Deputy Commander Gao Guan is in charge. I’ll go call Deputy Commander Gao right away.”

The Southern Yamen Sixteen Guards?

Jing Ming crossed his arms and looked at Chen Liangyu with a questioning expression, “Don’t you have anything to say?”

“I haven’t taken office yet, don’t hold me responsible. We still have some distance to cover to reach those abandoned civilian houses. I’ll go ahead first. Tell the Southern Yamen people to extinguish their torches, have everyone stand by, and await my signal.”

Jing Ming offered, “I’ll go. You’re not familiar with Yongdu.”

“It’s alright,” she had a natural talent for finding her way, almost never forgetting a route. “Your light footwork isn’t as good as mine. This job of scaling walls and jumping over roofs still falls to me.”

“Be careful.”

Chen Liangyu returned to the alley entrance, dismounted, tied her horse’s reins to a post under a banyan tree, and entered the dimly lit alley alone to investigate.

The walls and houses were dilapidated, and the dark, deep alley was overgrown with weeds, clearly showing signs of having been abandoned for many years.

In the corner of the wall, one could occasionally see a section of dried white bone stuck in the earth.

The alleys were numerous and intricate. Chen Liangyu searched within them but found nothing. So, she lightly tapped her toe, leaping to a high vantage point.

Her dark blue robes were perfectly hidden in the night.

Chen Liangyu moved across the rooftops, finally spotting the few suspicious individuals in a courtyard where no lights were lit.

She held her breath and used the slope of the roof to conceal herself, observing every movement in the courtyard.

The men were crouched in the weeds near the wall, nervously looking around, seemingly baffled by the sudden cessation of the military search.

Although the men wore the clothes of the Great Lin Dynasty, Chen Liangyu immediately concluded they were from Northern Yong. After over a decade of conflict, they were foolish to think a change of clothes could fool anyone!

After a moment of silence, one man began laboriously chiseling at the wall while his accomplice pushed hard from the side.

The houses here were mostly made of earth and wood beams. Having been weathered for years, they could no longer bear much weight, and a strong gust of wind might easily topple them.

The abandoned house before them was already precarious.

The night was quiet and empty, and even the slightest sound was amplified. Someone inside the house struggled weakly, a “shh-shh” sound of shoe soles rubbing against dry grass stalks.

Someone was inside the house.

They intended to collapse the house. The person inside, even if not crushed to death, would be buried alive under the broken tiles and rotten wood.

“The little girl has guts, not a word of begging for mercy. It’s a shame, but courage can’t save you at a critical moment,” said the man chiseling the wall. “We didn’t want to kill you; bringing you back to Great Yong was for an important purpose. But the officers have been alerted. If you live, we won’t be able to leave. Blame those outside searching—they forced our hand.”

Chen Liangyu jumped off the roof with extreme speed, landing in the courtyard. She kicked open the decaying wooden door and flashed into the room. A glance, by the faint moonlight filtering in, showed a girl tied to a four-legged chair with a broken leg.

Half of the roof of the dilapidated shack had collapsed, exposing half the night sky.

The girl was young but surprisingly calm and composed. The moonlight sprinkled into her tranquil eyes, which were as clear as a lake’s surface, yet holding a touch of the night’s sharpness.

The abductors were startled.

In the split-second Chen Liangyu met the gaze of the person inside, the abductors had already rushed toward her, weapons in hand. Chen Liangyu immediately drew her sword to meet the attack, not allowing anyone a chance to approach the broken room behind her.

The clash of weapons did not last long. She was measured in her attack, leaving them alive. The few bandits lay scattered, with only enough strength left to breathe.

A fire starter lit a cylinder the size of a candle. A beam of light shot toward the sky, bursting into a dazzling white light beneath the bright moon, filling the air with yellow and blue smoke.

She walked closer, removed the tight cloth gagging the girl’s mouth, and quickly severed the ropes binding the girl’s hands and feet.

Touching her clothing, she confirmed it was fine silk.

She was about to speak, but the other party spoke first, “I recognize you.”

Chen Liangyu observed her closely. She was young, not yet a teenager, and though her hair was slightly messy, her cheeks dirty, and the hairpin and jade ornaments on her head had been confiscated, her demeanor and appearance were undeniably noble. The tone and manner of her speech were strikingly similar to the Crown Prince, Xie Yu.

Chen Liangyu helped the girl stand up. Before she could speak, the other party stated her name: “Chen Li, Chen Liangyu.”

Her name and her elder brothers were inspired by mountains and rivers. Her brother was named Huai, courtesy name Linjun; she was named Li, courtesy name Liangyu. When her mother, He Yunzhou, was due with her, Chen Yuanqing was leading his army against Northern Yong, surrounded and outnumbered. On the night of her birth, the tide of the battle suddenly turned, and the Lin army achieved a great victory. Emperor Xuanyuan regarded her as a lucky star and bestowed the courtesy name “Liangyu” upon her.

Men of the Great Lin Dynasty would receive a courtesy name from a respected elder when they came of age, representing hope and blessings for the child. For daughters, a thoughtfully chosen given name was rare enough, and few were given a courtesy name. The Emperor personally bestowing a courtesy name was an unprecedented honor.

Because the Emperor’s bestowed name took precedence over her birth name, everyone subsequently called her Chen Liangyu.

Chen Liangyu bowed and said, “I regret my late arrival to the rescue, Princess Jiangning, please forgive me.”

“Watch out behind you.”

One man outside the door leapt up with a broad axe, screaming as he brought it down toward Chen Liangyu’s head.

“Close your eyes, don’t look.”

In that instant, Chen Liangyu covered Xie Wenjun’s eyes with one hand and drew her sword with the other.

A cold light flashed in the darkness. The man crashed heavily to the ground, followed by the smell of blood filling her nostrils.

The sword returned to its sheath. Xie Wenjun obediently closed her eyes.

Chen Liangyu scooped her up by the knees and carried her horizontally, stepping over the corpses on the ground and out of the room, setting her down on the flat ground in the courtyard.

The moment Xie Wenjun’s feet touched the ground, she stared intently at the abductor who seemed to be the leader. Chen Liangyu was afraid she would be traumatized and raised her hand to shield her eyes. The next moment, however, she saw Xie Wenjun pick up a hairpin dropped in the hay and plunge it straight into the man’s heart.

Chen Liangyu’s pupils widened instantly. Her mind went blank with a ‘buzz.’

The young, frail, and delicate princess was actually so ruthless.

Seeing the man twitch a few times and then go lifeless, Xie Wenjun lifted a corner of her silk dress to wipe her hand and said, “If you please, escort me back to the palace.”

Chen Liangyu recovered her senses. Thinking of the hairpin still stuck in the man’s inner garments, she felt a pang in her heart.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t witnessed killing.

She had climbed out from under a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood at Horse Hoof Valley. She was accustomed to and normalized to slaughter.

But at this moment, a cluster of beautiful White Angelica flowers, which you were just praising for their pure beauty and delicate grace, suddenly opened its bloody mouth to devour a person right before your eyes. Then, while you were still reeling, it licked its lips and transformed back into that harmless white flower.

The night was cold. Torches lit up the dark alley but couldn’t ward off the chill.

Xie Wenjun’s clothing was thin, and her young shoulders shivered slightly—a sign of the terror of surviving the ordeal.

She desperately tried to remain composed, but she couldn’t hide the obvious fear that could be spotted at a glance.

Chen Liangyu took off the fur coat her elder brother had given her and draped it over Xie Wenjun’s shoulders, half-crouching to tie the clasp. The coat was large; it was bulky even on her, and it completely enveloped Xie Wenjun’s delicate frame.

Chen Liangyu knew very little about Yongdu. She had only heard that there seemed to be a noble consort in the palace who was often confined due to a mental illness and had given birth to a relatively inconspicuous princess. Later, for unknown reasons, the young princess was raised in the Crown Prince’s Eastern Palace.

Beyond that, she knew nothing.

Chen Liangyu suddenly felt a tingling on her brow, as if she sensed being watched. Looking down, she was startled again.

What kind of eyes were those?

They were pitch-black, a dark, unfathomable black, calm and bottomless. The light of the torch was too faint to even illuminate the depths of her eyes.

Chen Liangyu had come from the thick of battle and grown up on blood-soaked fields, seeing too many calculating eyes. Such shrewd eyes should not appear on Princess Jiangning’s face at this age.

Yet, at her tender age, she already possessed the appearance of a hibiscus after the frost, her delicate face and compliant posture concealing some of the things hidden in her eyes.

Chen Liangyu merely felt the person was strange, and she would have to be wary if she ever had dealings with her in the future.

There was no time for further thought. Jing Ming had already arrived with people to meet them. Chen Liangyu tossed the Northern Yong military tokens they had found on the men, saying, “Northern Yong stragglers.”

Jing Ming walked up to one man and looked down at him, “Who instructed you?”

“No one instructed us! Kill us if you must!”

Chen Liangyu cast a light glance over, saying, “It doesn’t look like they were instructed by anyone.”

Jing Ming asked, “How can you tell?”

“If someone had instructed them, they would have sent capable people, not these few wastes.”

Jing Ming was momentarily speechless: “…That makes sense.”

The shouting man struggled, looking as if he were ready to fight to the death: “A scholar can be killed, but not disgraced!”

Before he could finish, Jing Ming kicked him back, causing him to cry out in pain. Chen Liangyu sneered, with disgust and disdain written all over her face, and said, “It’s not the first time we’ve disgraced you.”

Leaving the long alley, a large group of people had already gathered. Standing at the front was a man who looked somewhat simple and rough, wearing the waist token of the Southern Yamen.

Jing Ming’s mouth twitched. He was a Deputy General on the frontier. In terms of authority and status, he was inferior to a capital official. Even the Deputy Commander of the Southern Yamen, whose authority had been hollowed out, was not someone he had the right to criticize and lecture.

He endured and endured until he finally couldn’t take it anymore. Jing Ming roared in anger, “Such a high-profile way of doing things, showing absolutely no regard for the Princess’s safety, what is your intention?”

His words were vague, not naming names, pretending he was merely airing his grievances under the pretext of an incident.

Gao Guan, the Deputy Commander of the Southern Yamen, rushed forward. In his haste, he tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground, his hat askew. He scrambled back up quickly, not even pausing to tidy his clothing, and rushed to answer Jing Ming’s accusation, “Deputy General Jing, our Southern Yamen received the news late, and we hurried over in a panic. The messenger only said the Princess was missing and ordered us to gather men to search. They didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t even get a clear look at the messenger before he left.”

Chen Liangyu lowered her eyelids and frowned, her expression more serious than when she dealt with the Northern Yong men.

The Imperial Guards of the Imperial City were divided into the Northern Yamen Imperial Army and the Southern Yamen Sixteen Guards.

The Southern Yamen Sixteen Guards were also originally established as Imperial City Guards at the founding of the state. Later, due to tight military funds at the frontier, Yongdu cut redundant officials and expenses, streamlined the Sixteen Guards, consolidating them into a single Southern Yamen Guard, with the Imperial Army taking over some of the Sixteen Guards’ duties. Later, as attention turned to the public safety issues in Yongdu’s streets, responsibilities were differentiated, and the Sixteen Guards focused on maintaining order in the city’s markets and streets.

To put it politely, that was the case, but in reality, the Yong’an Prefecture largely presided over and deployed forces for public safety in the streets and civilian alleys. Simply put, the Southern Yamen had been marginalized and acted more like a service office subordinate to both the Northern Yamen Imperial Army and the Yong’an Prefecture, stuck between them.

They bore the name of Imperial City Guards but performed the miscellaneous and arduous tasks that other government offices were unwilling to handle.

At the onset of the situation, the Imperial Army, ordered to search for the Princess’s whereabouts, surmised the Princess might have been momentarily tempted by the novelty of common life. Though Yongdu was vast, it would be easy for the Imperial Army and the Yong’an Prefecture to find one person. When no trace was found as night approached, they realized the seriousness of the situation and suspected foul play.

If anything were to happen to Princess Jiangning, someone would have to take the blame, and the neglected Southern Yamen was the perfect scapegoat. If an accident occurred, they could easily claim that the Southern Yamen’s high-profile search had alerted the bandits, forcing the kidnappers to kill the Princess to silence her.

Now, looking at the assembled men of the Southern Yamen, who were once Imperial City Guards, they showed absolutely no military discipline or rules. The Deputy Commander couldn’t even manage to straighten his clothes, and his subordinates were lazy and slack.

Incompetent, incapable.

To have fallen so far, the task of reforming them was long and difficult.

She seemed to realize what a mess Emperor Xuanyuan had dumped on her.

It was likely a desperate measure.