In the winter of the seventeenth year of Zhaoyuan, Yingzhou fell and the North and South made peace.
Everyone said that Xiao Ji, commander of Zhenbei Pass, had traded the lives of thirty thousand comrades for a brilliant future on the northern frontier.
Shen Awu believed it, too.
So when hunger drove her to sneak into the envoys' lodging and steal the purse carried by the so-called traitor general, she felt not the slightest guilt.
That is, until Xiao Ji pinned her against the cold city wall. She watched as he calmly opened the purse with bloodstained fingers, revealing the border-defense Qilin Tally, an object that held the lives of tens of thousands in its balance.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, his voice as calm as if he were discussing the night's snowstorm.
Awu trembled too hard to speak.
He smiled, but the warmth never reached his eyes. “Little thief, you just stole the escape route I've spent three years preparing.”
“Now, either I take your head and explain to the Ordu why the Qilin Tally has vanished...”
“Or you become another way out for me.”
From then on, the chaotic world gained another pawn with no choice of her own.
To the world, he was the “lone minister” it cursed, an honored guest of the Ordu aristocracy, and a renegade general the southern court longed to devour alive.
Only Awu knew the truth: he was a disillusioned man drinking alone by an unmarked grave late at night, a double-sided candle walking the edge of a blade, a madman who had wagered his life and fortune on a game he was destined to lose.
And she went from a wretched creature scraping by to a “conspirator” moving pieces alongside him.
The road was soaked in blood at every turn, with no way back.
“Xiao Ji, what are you after?”
“Justice. A world where everyone may call me a traitor to my face, but you alone know why I knelt.”
