Mengta killed the Liang envoy. Blood splashed across the imperial edict and dried black.
A war unlike any seen in the southwestern frontier in a century had begun to blaze. Manfang Pass fell, Wuyin Pass was under threat, and a breach had been torn in the defenses of the Canglan Mountains.
Mu Chongyuan had only just taken command of the army his father left behind. His position was still precarious, his grain and pay withheld, and impeachment memorials arrived at court faster than reinforcements. He held a losing hand, and every move cost lives.
Ye Luoying came down from Qingcheng Mountain with a saber. The sect leader's only daughter, she was unmatched among her generation in saber arts, with forty Qingcheng disciples at her back. She had not come to save anyone. She had come to defend the hundred-year foundation of the Qingcheng Sect in the southwest.
They met on the battlefield.
When three hundred men crossed the miasma-filled forest, she led the way and he covered their rear. When eight thousand were trapped in a valley, she slipped out of the encirclement night after night to keep the whole army alive. During six days and nights of marching along an underground river, she scouted at the front while he steadied the spirits of six thousand men in the middle.
They went from refusing to yield to one another to entrusting each other with their backs, from fighting side by side to facing death together in desperation. She gave him eyes, and he gave her an iron wall.
On the day the war ended, the two who had borne it all finally acknowledged what they meant to each other in the quiet.
