Translator: Dj2203
Editor: Dj2203
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Lu Huan, along with General Zhenyuan and others, returned from the temporary palace to their encampment outside the city. However, before heading back, he first went to a place outside the city. After leaving Changchun Temple that day, he had sent someone to inquire, and it turned out that Consort Qing was born in Yunzhou. The Emperor had buried her in the imperial mausoleum, but because he was heartbroken from missing her, he erected a cenotaph for her in Yunzhou as well.
The cenotaph was heavily guarded, but Lu Huan, relying on his excellent martial arts skills, slipped in unnoticed.
The night was chilly. Yunzhou was near the northern border, and the weather was bitterly cold; a layer of frost had thus already formed on the ground. The cenotaph looked like it had been visited just a few days ago, with a box of jewelry that a woman liked placed there— presumably belonging to that self-proclaimed devoted emperor. Even so, the surroundings were desolate, filled with an endless loneliness.
Lu Huan lowered his eyes and looked quietly at the cenotaph, his expression somewhat complicated.
Su Xi tugged at his sleeve, and he snapped out of his daze, his expression softening: “You’ve come.”
Su Xi felt that although the cub didn’t believe the Taoist nun’s words at all, the matter of his biological mother, Consort Qing, must have still touched him to some extent. After all, he had no memory of his birth mother since birth, let alone Consort Qing, he didn’t even know what that lowly concubine in the Ning Wang’s mansion looked like. He grew up in the Ning Wang’s mansion, and although he had a status, he was actually worse off than an orphan.
Feeling pity for him, Su Xi lowered her voice and asked, “What are you thinking about?”
The cub gazed at the cenotaph and said, “I think she must have been a very good person, but unfortunately the emperor is heartless. I can never even see her face. I heard that all the portraits in the palace were burned, and today Qinglan Garden caught fire again.”
After Consort Qing died, the emperor went mad for a period of time and ordered that the entire place where Consort Qing lived be burned down.
However, after the fire was burned, he became distraught and in immense pain and even built a temporary palace for the deceased in Yunzhou. The complex emotions of the emperor were truly incomprehensible.
Su Xi couldn’t help but sigh, and after thinking for a moment, she said, “Don’t be sad, at least I’m here with you.”
Lu Huan looked up at the line of words floating in the night, then his furrowed brows relaxed, and he smiled: “Mm.”
The Zhenyuan army continued its journey the next day, while at the Yunzhou Palace, the emperor did not sleep all night, but his mind was filled with suspicion. He secretly summoned people and ordered: “Secretly investigate the matter of Consort Qing back then. Find the imperial physician who diagnosed her miscarriage and interrogate him again.”
….
The northern border was covered in snow, and the situation was critical. When General Zhenyuan arrived with his army, they found that spies from a neighboring country had been captured on the frontier.
Meanwhile, the neighboring country had quietly brought its army to the city, and war was imminent.
Before even arriving in the Northern Territory, Lu Huan was already incredibly busy, and after arriving, he was even more overwhelmed.
For the first two days, Su Xi only saw the starving corpses piled up like mountains along the roadside in the North on the screen. What used to be inns and taverns had now become mass graves. The increasingly severe disasters and riots over the years had made this place resemble a living hell.
Shocking.
On the fifth day, spies from a neighboring country murdered two civilians and were captured by the Yan army. General Zhenyuan, enraged, personally hanged a prince from the neighboring country, whom they had captured a few days earlier, from the city walls, where he froze to death. This was an act of revenge, demonstrating that Yan would never back down!
This became the spark that ignited the full-blown war.
Su Xi and Lu Huan both received Mission Twelve at the same time: [Suppress the riot, achieve military merit, and force the enemy to retreat; reward: 2000 gold coins and 18 points.]
But at this moment, facing such a hellish city on the border, neither of them could focus on the mission.
This was the first time Su Xi had ever seen such a scene of blood flowing like a river, and her eyelids twitched.
It wasn’t like those poorly made period dramas where a few corpses were thrown on the ground. Instead, there were rotting corpses of soldiers, officers, and civilians everywhere. Although the northern border was bitterly cold, flies and maggots still swarmed and crawled among the corpses.
The people inside the city huddled together, weeping bitterly, while in the distance, war raged and the flags of the Yan Kingdom flew high.
If Su Xi hadn’t not spent any money on in-game purchases, so all she saw were the tiny, dead figures, she probably would have vomited.
On the cub’s birthday, Su Xi didn’t have time to celebrate with him. Because he put on his armor, led his troops away from the northern border, and went directly to the front line. With the war raging, he spent most of his time on horseback and didn’t have much time to communicate with Su Xi.
He wanted Su Xi to stop opening the brick curtain on her side for a while, so she wouldn’t see the bloodshed on his side.
However, Su Xi was constantly worried, fearing that the cub she had raised with such difficulty might get hurt in the war, so she turned on her phone even more often than before.
Lu Huan and General Zhenyuan discussed matters together in the tent. Lu Huan came up with many strategies, which led to Yan’s repeated victories over the past month, and neighboring countries retreated from several cities.
However, a new crisis had arisen. Before retreating, the neighboring country bound hundreds of elderly people, women, and children and retreated with them into the valley of Huiyan Mountain, using this to coerce the Zhenyuan Army into withdrawing.
If they did not press their advantage now, the neighboring countries may take advantage of this time to recuperate and launch another attack.
However, if they pressed their advantage, those hundred-plus elderly, women, and children would surely be beheaded with their heads displayed to the public. They were all ordinary citizens of Yan, and their families were being escorted back to the city by the army. If they disregarded the lives of these hundred-plus people, even if the Zhenyuan Army won this battle, they would likely lose all popular support in Yan.
The only solution now was to send a team to secretly infiltrate the Huiyan Mountain Valley, rescue the more than one hundred people, and then wipe out the enemy forces.
However, venturing deep into enemy territory was extremely dangerous.
….
Inside the tent, Lu Huan stared intently at the topographical map on the table, lost in thought. The candlelight cast a shadow on his profile, flickering with light and shadow.
Before even arriving in the Northern Territory, Su Xi knew that marching and fighting would be arduous, so she spent a long time practicing martial arts with her son, striking wooden stakes. But she never expected it to be so dangerous.
Swords and spears had no eyes; although the boy’s martial arts skills were already quite good and he didn’t suffer any major injuries, his skin inevitably got cut in a few places.
His fair face was smeared with dirt and bloodstains. Because he didn’t know when the bugle would sound, he didn’t have time to deal with it. A few days ago, an arrow had grazed his arm, which he had only hastily bandaged.
Every day, Su Xi’s heart would pound whenever she saw him leave the tent; only when he remained inside did she feel a little more at ease. If she had known it would turn out this way, she should have tried her best to steer the main quest in a different direction, avoiding the northern border missions no matter what.
Su Xi couldn’t help but sigh, sitting at the table holding a pen, unable to concentrate on any of the questions on the test paper.
Lu Huan memorized the topographical map and looked at the curtain, only to see her face filled with worry. Lu Huan became even more worried. Xiao Xi hadn’t done many practice tests since returning from school several days ago and had been constantly watching him nervously. Wouldn’t her studies fall behind if this continued?
But Lu Huan couldn’t say it outright. So he said gently to Su Xi, “You should rest early. I’ll be fine. I’ve already thought of a plan for this rescue mission. It might not be me leading the troops.”
Su Xi didn’t believe it at all; she thought that old bast**d General Zhenyuan would definitely send his son with people.
She sighed deeply, “I should never have let you come to this awful place.”
For Su Xi, although she had witnessed the scene of rivers of blood, perhaps because the corpses of those civilians had all been systematized into cartoon figures, she felt pity but not righteous indignation. What she cared about more was, of course, her son, whom she had spent almost a year and a half with, and who she couldn’t even celebrate his sixteenth birthday with because of the war.
However, Lu Huan had witnessed the bloody scene firsthand, and his desire to end the war as soon as possible and restore peace to the people of the Northern Border was naturally even more urgent than hers.
Lu Huan smiled and didn’t blame her for not understanding the dynasty she lived in.
They were already separated by a thousand years, and everything— culture, language, and thought— was very different. After he came into contact with some of her knowledge and culture, he discovered that his own dynasty was riddled with decadent feudal culture, while her side was much more peaceful, and wars were almost nonexistent there.
Therefore, she didn’t need to understand the backwardness and isolation of his dynasty; she could simply let him integrate into her dynasty.
He longed to touch her through the curtain but then thought that if he suddenly raised his hand, she would find it strange. So he promised, “This war should be over in less than three months. Then we’ll go back to the capital. I haven’t shown you the new house we bought yet.”
Su Xi was a little happier then: “Mm.”
Lu Huan urged again, “Go to sleep quickly.”
Su Xi looked at the image of the cub on her phone screen. She didn’t know why, but ever since the cub reverted to his original form after reaching 100 points, he was still handsome, but the tone of his voice when speaking to her always sounded like that of an old father. Like the kind of old father who frantically rushed to buy medicine when his period cramps were acting up.
She shook her head, wondering if it was just her imagination.
However, it was indeed late, and she had to log off. So she said goodnight to the cub one last time and then slowly logged off.
Although Lu Huan urged Su Xi to go to sleep, he was actually very reluctant to part with her. He hadn’t spent much time in the tent lately, either on marches or in ambushes, and rarely had time to talk to her. Moreover, because there were so many soldiers and officers in the army, there was no privacy, and he had to treat his injuries himself, unlike before when she could help him.
He was also wondering when he would be able to return to the capital from the north.
As he pondered these thoughts, he looked up and gazed at the curtain again.
Then, on the backdrop of the fading stream, a bunch of bubbles appeared on his head.
“Sigh, they left just like that, and they didn’t even stay with me for two more seconds while I was injured.”
“Sigh, I got a bruise on my face yesterday, and Xiao Xi didn’t even notice when she came. She only asked a couple of questions and that was it. Sigh, I should have gotten a worse injury.”
“Sigh, I want to go back to the capital.”
“Well……”
Lu Huan’s expression went blank. This bunch of bubbles— he actually had so many thoughts in his head? How could he not have known?! He clearly hadn’t been thinking about any of this—! How could he be so indecisive about these things?!
Lu Huan’s face turned bright red, and he hurriedly covered his head, but the bubbles kept rising. Fortunately, the curtain on Su Xi’s side went dark after a while.
On the screen, Su Xi was staring at the pile of bubbles, slamming her hand on the table and laughing wildly.
She slammed her hand on the table and accidentally knocked the water glass off the table.
Lu Huan’s face darkened: “…………”
The author has something to say:
The following day:
Su Xi came online and decided to fulfill the child’s wish: My God! My little one, how did you get so badly injured! Does it hurt?! My heart is breaking! Hahahaha!
Lu Huan, who was sixteen and old enough to marry and have children in the State of Yan (his face darkened once again): …
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