"Please spare my life, Your Excellency! I am but a lowly herdsman slave. Please do not toy with me!"
He covered his head with both arms, bowing as low as possible, and slammed his forehead hard against the blue bricks of the floor. In just a few strikes, a dark red stain spread through the gaps between the bricks.
"I am nothing but a shoveler of horse manure."
His tongue stumbled, his Great Dry official speech laced with the rolled accents of the grasslands. His thin shoulders trembled so violently even his tattered military coat quivered with him.
Xu Qinghuan sat upright in the high-backed rosewood chair, allowing him to kowtow. The steam from the boiling tea blurred her features, rising between them.
Li Sheng stepped forward and stood by the chair, pressing his thumb against the sword guard, steadying the blade's balance. His cold gaze fixed on the bloodstained, ragged wad of felt on the floor.
Amur, not hearing an order to stop, could only continue smashing his head against the ground.
The musk incense in the room could no longer mask the rusty odor of blood.
Xu Qinghuan pressed down with her wrist lightly, letting the teacup lid knock against the rim.
Amur froze mid-motion. He crouched low, back hunched, and held his breath, not daring to make a sound. Only the blood from his forehead continued creeping silently along the brick crevices.
"I sent someone to verify the supply route map you drew," Xu Qinghuan said, setting the teacup down on the purple sandalwood table. With two fingers, she picked up a scroll of sheepskin on the desk and flicked it open.
"From White Wolf Valley all the way to the Right Luli Prince’s main tent, seven hidden outposts, three wells, and two concealed garrison forts. Every detail matches perfectly."
The sheepskin rustled beneath her fingers.
"A dung-shoveling shepherd boy who can't even afford a moldy flatbread, who can't even get near the fences of the Right Battalion's encampment on a normal day."
Xu Qinghuan’s tone was unhurried.
"Where did you learn it all—the inner defenses of the royal court, even the changing of the guards at the hidden forts? All marked out so clearly."
Amur shrank his shoulders back. Summoning his courage, he lifted his face, smeared with blood and grime.
"When I pushed the cart, I overheard the escort soldiers chatting and secretly memorized it," he said.
He swallowed hard.
"Your Excellency, please believe me. I have a naturally good memory. Those soldiers had drunk too much and their mouths ran loose. I just kept it all in my head."
Xu Qinghuan pulled out a writing brush made of wolf hair and casually tossed it onto the blue bricks. The brush rolled twice, stopping just by the pool of blood—its tip instantly soaking up the red.
"Your calligraphy of Great Dry characters is more proper than that of my town’s military secretary. Even the lü in zīzhòng, the strokes of the chariot radical—you didn't make a single mistake."
Xu Qinghuan leaned forward slightly, bending her index finger to tap the tabletop.
"The common cavalrymen on the grasslands can't even draw a complete circle for their own names. When would they have found time, drunk or not, to teach you such a handsome Great Dry official script?"
Her gaze dropped lower.
"And look at the calluses on your hands. The thick pads on your tiger’s mouth and the inside of your index finger are the marks of years of drawing a heavy bow. A slave who truly labors with a cart develops calluses all over the palms and the roots of the fingers."
The hairs on the back of Amur’s neck stood on end. He opened his mouth, but his throat was too dry for a single word.
He thought he had concealed himself deeply. Even those heartless overseers of the Right Battalion hadn’t sniffed him out.
But this Great Dry woman—in just a single map and a few glances—had peeled away every layer of his disguise.
"Three years ago, Helian Right Luli Prince launched a campaign, sweeping through a few small western tribes," Xu Qinghuan said, leaning back into her chair. Her fingers tapped lightly on the rosewood armrest.
"From one of those tribes, the weak and the elderly-women and children alike-were all slaughtered. The able-bodied young men were reduced to slaves. Their chieftain was tied alive behind a horse and dragged thirty li—not even a complete corpse was left."
The tapping stopped.
"That tribe was called the Kiyan Tribe."
Amur’s breath caught. His hands, pressed against the ground, tightened so hard the tendons stood out.
"The Kiyan Tribe’s young chieftain happened to be twelve years old at the time. He smeared his face with the blood of the dead, escaped the slaughter, and was captured into the Right Battalion’s camp as the lowliest herdsman slave."
Xu Qinghuan looked down at the crown of his head.
"Did I speak correctly, young chieftain Amur?"
Those words shattered the last bits of pretense in the study.
Amur stopped trembling. He raised his head, replacing the cowering gaze with a flash of wolfish menace.
With a powerful shove from his legs, launching himself like an arrow from a bowstring, he vaulted over the desk, fingers hooked like claws aimed straight at Xu Qinghuan’s throat.
The lunge was swift, completely ignoring Li Sheng off to the side. It was a suicidal charge, aimed to kill or be killed.
But Li Sheng wouldn’t give him the chance. A boot swung with explosive force through the air, hitting exactly where Amur’s knee bent.
Amur grunted, his knees smashing helplessly back onto the ground. The longsword slid from its sheath in a flash of steel, pressing down on the back of his neck.
The blade pressed into his skin, blood beading from the wound. Amur breathed like a heavy bellows, forced to look up defiantly at Xu Qinghuan, his pupils bloodshot.
"You Great Dry dogs, every one of you is corrupt! You’re no better than the Helians—all the same nest of snakes!"
He clenched his teeth so hard every word came speckled with blood.
"Kill me, then! Kiyan men do not fear death!"
Xu Qinghuan looked down at him from her high seat. After a long silence, she raised her hand and waved casually to Li Sheng.
Li Sheng frowned slightly, but he still flicked his wrist, slid the blade back into its sheathe, and returned to his post.
The chill against his neck vanished, leaving Amur stunned. He touched his throat—his hand came away slick with fresh blood—and stared in utter bewilderment at the woman in the rosewood chair.
"Kill you?" Xu Qinghuan leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees.
"Your cheap little life doesn't even measure up to a colored glass goblet in the Right Luli Prince’s tent. Killing you would only dirty my floor tiles, with no gain at all."
Amur retreated defensevely half a foot, warily.
"What do you want, then?"
"I asked you just now," Xu Qinghuan said, fixing her eyes on him.
"Do you want to be a king?"
Amur gritted his molars.
"Don't mock me. I don't even have a tent—how could I be a king?"
"I'll give it to you."
Xu Qinghuan answered flatly, raising one finger.
"The Town-Pacifying Army just intercepted eight hundred cavalry horses and eight hundred sets of heavy iron armor at White Wolf Valley. I'll split half of them with you."
She pulled her hand back.
"The Great Dry will provide money, armor, and fire-thunder bottles. I'll help you raise a great army and return to the grasslands."
Amur’s breath hitched.
Eight hundred sets of heavy iron armor and fire-thunder bottles—enough to sweep unimpeded across the grasslands.
He would never forget that dark-water-ditch night of pale, hellish flames that burnt even to the bone.
"What do you want from me?" Amur’s mind raced.
"The Great Dry never does a losing trade. Giving me so much—you’re buying how many of my lives?"
"Talking like a smart man saves time."
Xu Qinghuan sat upright and raised her finger northward.
"On the grasslands, there’s no end of starving herdsmen, displaced slaves, swallowed remnants of broken tribes. I want you to gather them all."
Her voice turned icy cold.
"The Helian royal court’s main forces are all massing on the southern front. The rear is empty. I want you to take this army and seize their cattle, burn their pastures, cut off their supply routes!"
"I want you to throw the Helian grasslands into chaos!"
Amur slumped to sit on the floor. This woman's appetite was staggering.
She didn’t want to win just one or two skirmishes—she wanted to bleed the entire Helian royal court dry from the inside.
But how was it even possible?
"How do you trust me?" The Amur smiled coldly.
"Your Great Dry officials have blacker hearts than the Helians. That batch of goods at White Wolf Valley was sold by Great Dry nobles to the Right Luli Prince in the first place. You ambushed theft , took it, and then hired me with the same goods. Clever scheme."
Xu Qinghuan didn’t scold—she laughed instead.
"The world has always been dark, and the one with the sharpest blade survives."
"Since you know all crows are black under heaven, you should understand it's better to do business with me than to follow Helian's rules."
Amur stared at her.
"If I hand over my weapons and horse to you, aren't you afraid I'll take them and run, or even defect to the Helian Right Luli Prince? I'm a man of the steppe—I follow the law of wolves, not masters."
Xu Qinghuan drew from her sleeve a small porcelain bottle, white with blue floral patterns, no larger than her thumb. She placed the bottle on the low table and pushed it forward with her fingertip.
"This is an intestine-piercing powder, concocted in secret by Fallen Gorge."
Xu Qinghuan did not even lift her eyelids.
"Once taken, the poison lies dormant in your organs and requires an antidote every month."
"If the antidote is cut off, your bowels and stomach will rot away, and blood will ooze from your seven orifices. The most exquisite part is that when you die, your mind will remain clear, allowing you to see and feel your own insides slowly turning to bloody slush."
Amur stared at the porcelain bottle, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.
"I don't want a dog that crawls and begs for mercy,"
Xu Qinghuan said, looking down at him.
"I want a mad blade—a blade fierce enough to thrust deep into the heart of the Helian Court. But the handle of that blade must be in my hand."
The study fell into dead silence, with only the scent of borneol incense burning silently in the bronze censer.
In Amur's mind, scenes raced like shadows on a lantern.
The ghastly sight of his father being dragged into a bloody pulp by cavalry, the wails of the tribe's women being ravaged by Helian riders.
A clansman buried alive under cartwheels to preserve a single Dagan glass cup, and another beaten to death for half a moldy flatbread.
He had survived like a maggot in mud and filth, trampling his own dignity into the mire, all for that one day when he could hack off the Right Luli Prince's head and use it as a chamber pot.
Now the blade was laid before him, but the price was handing his life over to the Dagan people forever.
Amur's trembling fingers hung in midair. If he swallowed this poison, the rest of his life would be spent begging for antidotes like a cowering dog.
But if he didn't, he would never avenge his clan, doomed to shovel horse dung in the stables until some hot-tempered soldier slit his throat one day and threw his corpse to the wild dogs.
He bit through the tip of his tongue, crawled two steps forward, and seized the porcelain bottle from the table with blood-caked fingers.
Without a moment's hesitation, he tipped his head back and poured every grain of the powder into his mouth.
The bitter dust slid down his throat into his stomach, and at once he felt a scorching, searing pain erupt in his abdomen.
His body arched forward, nearly gagging, but he clamped his mouth shut and forced the powder down.
Amur pressed both hands to the floor, knocking his bloody forehead against the ground, and his voice grated with the ferocity of a beast freed from its cage.
"Master!"
