A flicker of alarm passed through Mu Ning’s heart, but her face only showed bewilderment as she asked, “What?”
Hua Ruo stared into her eyes, a faint smile on her lips. “I’ve noticed something interesting these past few days. You keep repeating the name of a place.”
Mu Ning blinked twice. “Huh?”
Inside, she cursed silently, her mind racing to figure out where they had slipped up.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced toward the city wall, calculating the feasibility of silencing someone permanently.
But Hua Ruo shook her head. “You can’t kill me.”
Mu Ning feigned shock. “Lady Hua, you must be mistaken. Why would I want to kill you?”
Yet inside, her vigilance sharpened. How keen her senses are!
Hua Ruo seemed to ignore Mu Ning’s reaction and continued as if talking to herself, “You don’t have to be nervous. I mean you no harm. I’m just... curious.”
Mu Ning sighed. “Lady Hua, you really should go back. The plague is raging outside the city. Even though the remedy works, catching it is no joke.”
Hua Ruo fixed her gaze on Mu Ning, disregarding her words and following her own thread. “Feng Ge Xuan?”
Then, in a calm, emotionless voice, she said, “So, it’s Ge Feng!”
Mu Ning’s heart suddenly grew tranquil. So she had indeed been found out.
Seeing that Mu Ning only looked back at her calmly without any reaction, Hua Ruo gave a faint smirk. “Am I right?”
“You know lip reading?” Mu Ning asked, but her tone was one of certainty.
No ordinary person would connect Feng Ge Xuan to Ge Feng unless they had heard them mention Ge Feng before.
But they had been cautious, never mentioning Ge Feng outside—except a few days ago.
Back then, the outer shelters hadn’t been built yet, and the place where they distributed gruel and relief supplies was far from the city wall.
So when she and Chen Xi talked, they hadn’t been too careful about being overheard by those on the wall, mentioning Ge Feng twice in low voices.
That was actually one of the reasons they were building houses outside the city—to have a private space for discussions away from prying eyes.
She hadn’t expected to be so careless. She never imagined Hua Ruo would be on the wall, not only knowing lip reading but also having sharp eyesight.
This was her failure. If she ever made it back, she would have to confess her fault to her lord and improve.
Before Hua Ruo could speak, Mu Ning said lightly, with a tone of admiration, “I didn’t expect you to know lip reading, Lady Hua. That’s really impressive.”
She let out another sigh. “We really are from Ge Feng. Since that place was taken over by the Qu Zhao people, business got tough, so we came to Si Zhou.”
Hua Ruo made no comment. She did know a bit of lip reading. That day, on the tower, she had inadvertently caught Mu Ning and Chen Xi mentioning Ge Feng.
At first, she hadn’t paid it much attention. But the more she thought about it later, the more something felt off. Especially when she connected it to Feng Ge Xuan, the pieces slowly started to fit.
In the following days, she often went up to the wall. Perhaps because suspicion had taken root, things that once seemed ordinary now appeared deeply questionable upon closer observation.
She noticed that many of the servants from Feng Ge Xuan were trained fighters—and highly disciplined ones at that.
How should she put it? They gave off the same feeling as the most strictly disciplined soldiers under her father’s command, even though they deliberately downplayed it.
And these people all seemed to take orders from Mu Ning!
Mu Ning was a woman. In the Yan Kingdom, there was no precedent for a woman serving as a general.
Just like herself—though she was far more skilled in combat than many of her father’s generals, she could never become a female general.
The previous emperor wouldn’t have allowed it, and neither would the current Grand Prince.
If she wanted to fight on the battlefield, she had to disguise herself as a male soldier.
She was resentful, she was defiant, but she was helpless. That was just the way the world worked.
So when she suspected that Mu Ning might be a female military commander, she couldn’t suppress the restlessness stirring inside her. She had to know the truth.
Hua Ruo turned her head to look at the distant refugees. “I know it’s abrupt to bring this up to you out of nowhere, and that you don’t trust me.”
Her voice was calm but laced with melancholy. “Do you think women are inferior to men?”
Mu Ning shook her head. “Of course not.”
Hua Ruo smiled, then turned to face her, her expression earnest and persistent.
“My mother passed away when I was two. My father had only me as his child and never remarried. He raised me both as a son and as a daughter.”
A trace of sorrow flickered in her eyes. “But as I grew older, the more I resented it. I was so outstanding, yet because I was a woman, I couldn’t openly go to the battlefield and make a name for myself.”
The corner of Mu Ning’s mouth twitched involuntarily. She didn’t understand how Hua Ruo could say something as arrogant as “I am so outstanding” with such a sorrowful yet composed tone.
Still, she more or less grasped what Hua Ruo meant. This was a woman who yearned to achieve great things and build a legacy.
But the constraints the world placed on women had made it impossible for her to fulfill her ambitions.
Mu Ning looked toward Jiu’an City, touched by inner emotion. If she hadn’t met her lord back then, she would have probably died already.
Even if she hadn’t died, she would only have been the daughter of Mu Qing’s guard, not a woman helping her lord build a great empire.
“So, what do you want to say?” Mu Ning’s voice was calm—neither admitting anything nor showing panic at being discovered.
Hua Ruo grew even more curious. “So, which faction do you belong to? Are you in Ge Feng? Where can women serve as generals?”
A flicker of barely noticeable pride flashed in Mu Ning’s eyes, but she said nothing.
Hua Ruo didn’t mind. “Don’t worry. I’m the only one who has noticed that you’re different. I don’t know your exact identities or which faction you serve.”
“But... the fact that you’re willing to risk yourselves to save these suffering people—I truly admire you from the bottom of my heart. I won’t tell anyone about this, not even my father.”
“But if possible, I hope you could tell me: how did you manage to become a general as a woman? Which faction allows women to serve as generals?”
Mu Ning sighed. “I’m not a general.”
Hua Ruo thought Mu Ning was just refusing to tell her, and a hint of disappointment crossed her face.
“But, what if I told you that women can not only be generals but also officials? Would you believe me?” Mu Ning’s voice rang out.
Hua Ruo was stunned. She lifted her eyes. “What?”
Mu Ning shook her head with a smile. “Just kidding. It’s getting late. You should head back now.”
With that, she strode off toward the refugees. In no time, she reached the crowd, where the refugees greeted her—clearly, after several days together, everyone had grown familiar with her.
Hua Ruo watched her retreating figure. It was a long while before she finally turned and went back into the city.
The night was dark. The commoners outside Jiu’an City had gone to bed early. To conserve energy against hunger, they either lay down or sat still, even if they couldn’t sleep.
Mu Ning stood by a pitch-black window, gazing at the city gate of Jiu’an, which loomed in the darkness like a monstrous beast.
Chen Xi entered and, after a moment to adjust his eyes to the dark, sensed Mu Ning’s unusual presence.
“What’s wrong?” He walked over to the window and asked in a low voice.
Their people were all around, so they weren’t worried about being overheard.
Mu Ning was silent for a moment before speaking. “Our identities have been discovered by Hua Ruo.”
Chen Xi furrowed his brow slightly. “Did she threaten you?”
Mu Ning shook her head. “No. From what she said, it sounds like she... might want to go to Ge Feng to accomplish something great.”
