When word reached me that my childhood friend Xue Yan and his father, General Xue, had been flayed by the enemy and turned into scarecrows, I was being made to kneel in the ancestral hall by my father for setting fire to the Grand Tutor’s residence. I had been raised as a boy, though I was a girl.
The entire court was waiting to see how the Prime Minister’s household would deal with its notorious wastrel.
My father tossed me a dagger and a white silk cord. “Choose one. Don’t disgrace the family.”
In front of every official, I cut off my long hair. “The border is far away. I’ll offer a hundred thousand enemy heads to avenge his sixteen years of wrongs.”
Four years later, I was named Marquis of Zhenbei, having crossed a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
On the day I flayed an enemy general, I received a letter in my childhood friend’s own hand:
“The scarecrow has watched the sunrise for four years. Will you take me home?”
