Spring Comes to the Nine Borders

Recently, Yanmenguan, the foremost pass along the Nine Frontiers, issued a decree of clemency: Women convicted of crimes and exiled would be counted as military rewards and given as wives to the soldiers stationed at Yan Pass. For Helan Cui, who was disguised as a man, how could this be a reward? It was a death sentence! To save someone, she forced herself to keep Chi Yingxue. Everyone was waiting to see the joke: Could a poor, starving hundred-household commander keep a young woman who looked half-dead? But then On Chi Yingxue’s first day in the house, smoke rose from the broken-down kitchen, and the Helan family ate meat broth for the first time in ages. On her third day, a newly made Eight Immortals table appeared in the Helan family’s courtyard. Half a month later, Chi Yingxue came up with “soothing charcoal” and traded it for a whole cart of grain and cooking oil. Then the Northern Barbarians launched a night raid, and Helan Cui returned gravely wounded. The candle flickered in the side room. The moment Chi Yingxue cut open her blood-soaked clothes, she froze. Beneath the layers of binding cloth lay the secret of her “fatal hidden ailment.” To keep the family’s rice jar full forever, the two girls, each with a mind full of schemes, struck a deal. Winter snow may blanket the land for many days and nights, but even this deadly frontier will at last welcome the springtime of all things. Theme: People at the bottom helping one another, finding spring in desperate times