PC Chapter 32

“Back at the gates of the examination hall… the one who wanted to kill me… was you, right?”

In that near-death moment, the figure pressing against his throat and cutting off his breath overlapped with the person in front of him. Suddenly, Su Cen remembered: when his consciousness was fading, that person had turned to look at him. Those eyes were deep, bottomless.

“You must regret it now…” Su Cen gave a pale smile, the blood between his legs a stark contrast. “Regret not killing me that day…”

“When you brought me into the Ministry of Justice, did you ever think I’d one day be investigating you?”

“Since you’ve already shifted the blame to Liu Cheng, you should have let me continue my investigation. Maybe you could have used the opportunity to eliminate dissent, wiping out the Empress Dowager’s most trusted ally. If you hadn’t done all this to me today, I would never have remembered that the person back then was you. I would have never guessed it was you!”

Li Shi’s eyes narrowed, coldness spilling over. His hand reached out, gently stroking Su Cen’s fragile throat, like toying with a delicate piece of porcelain—whether to destroy it or not was just a matter of a thought.

Su Cen stared at those slender fingers for a moment, then looked up to meet the icy gaze of the man. “You’d better kill me now, or I’ll keep investigating. I promised Old Man Tian that I’d seek justice for Tian Ping. Whether it’s you or Liu Cheng, even if I can’t touch either of you, I’ll make sure the truth comes out!”

Li Shi’s pupils contracted with chilling coldness, and in the flash of lightning, Su Cen saw it—a flicker of murderous intent.

Tears rolled down his sharp chin, falling onto those well-defined fingers.

“You were born with power and status, revered by all, never knowing the hardships of the human world. We are but ants, but even ants have their ways of surviving. You don’t know how many nights a scholar has to burn the midnight oil just to pass an exam, or why a father would wield a blade and trap himself in an inescapable situation. You don’t understand the weight of carrying another’s life. I came to you only because I had no other choice. Do you think I enjoy groveling before you? That when you beckon, I must rush to you through the rain? That when you stomp your foot, I must tremble in fear? I only want to survive. What right do you have to look down on me?”

The judgment seemed agonizingly long. Su Cen felt his throat bones trembling beneath Li Shi’s fingers, sensed the oppressive aura around him, and even a hint of indescribable disappointment.

In the end, Li Shi almost forcefully withdrew his hand, spitting out a cold word: “Leave.”

Su Cen froze for a moment, then quietly exhaled. Without hesitation, he rolled off the bed, gathering the torn pieces of his clothing and fleeing.

Qi Lin, waiting outside, had already heard most of what happened. Still, when he saw Su Cen in such a state, he was momentarily stunned. Before he could react, Su Cen was already limping into the rain.

Qi Lin glanced back at the room, receiving a slight nod from Li Shi, and then hurried after Su Cen.

In the end, it was Qi Lin who forced Su Cen onto the carriage. Though summer had arrived, Su Cen couldn’t stop trembling inside, his face as pale as paper. Qi Lin took off his coat and draped it over him, but Su Cen didn’t seem to notice at all.

Originally, it was only a block away, close by, but the journey felt excruciatingly long. With every bump of the carriage, Su Cen felt a dull ache from his lower body. He hadn’t realized how literal the expression “sitting on pins and needles” could be. When the carriage finally stopped, Su Cen was about to get up when Qi Lin suddenly said, “The lord isn’t that kind of person.”

Su Cen froze slightly and stayed seated.

“The day you got hurt, the lord was inspecting the Northern Camp of Mount Xishan. When he heard about your incident, he rushed back overnight.”

Su Cen fiddled with the corner of the coat draped over him, his voice cold. “You’re his man, of course you would defend him.”

“If the lord had been there, I would’ve known. If you don’t trust me, you can ask the entire Northern Camp—there’s no way he was in Chang’an that night.”

“But…” But that silhouette, those eyes—how could they be false?

“I was the one who interrogated that black-clad man myself. The lord ordered me to do whatever it took to find out who attacked you.”

Su Cen looked up. “Did you get anything?”

Qi Lin shook his head. “That man was a death warrior, determined to die. No amount of torture worked on him.”

Su Cen frowned. “But he told Qu Ling’er that the culprit from all those years ago was Liu Cheng.”

Qi Lin stared at Su Cen for a moment before asking, “Do you know where Qu Ling’er really comes from?”

“What?” Su Cen was taken aback.

“We suspect that Qu Ling’er and that black-clad man… are the same type of person.”

“Impossible!” Su Cen bolted upright, accidentally pulling at his wound, wincing in pain. He knew Qi Lin meant they might be “accomplices,” but he had softened his wording out of respect for Su Cen.

Taking a moment to compose himself, Su Cen shook his head. “Ling’er saved me from that black-clad man back then. He lives in my house. If he wanted to kill me, I would’ve been dead a hundred times over.”

Qi Lin replied, “Or perhaps, Qu Ling’er was once the same kind of person as him.”

“The same kind?” Su Cen repeated, recalling the wounds all over Qu Ling’er’s body when he first arrived and his stories of being hunted and forced to jump off a cliff.

“Ling’er escaped from them,” Su Cen suddenly realized something and said anxiously, “Then if I sent Ling’er to question that black-clad man, wouldn’t I have exposed him?”

“That man won’t walk out of Xingqing Palace alive.”

Su Cen finally breathed a sigh of relief. He lifted the curtain to check outside; the rain had eased, and two hibiscus buds at the gate were battered and on the verge of falling. He should be stepping out of the carriage now, changing his clothes, taking a hot bath, and burying himself under the covers for a good night’s sleep. After hesitating for a while, he sat back down and looked at Qi Lin again.

“Why do you… protect him so much?” Su Cen asked softly. “If it’s just about repaying him for saving your life, haven’t you already done enough by helping him defeat the Turks and guarding him all these years?”

The carriage fell silent for a while, and just when Su Cen thought Qi Lin wouldn’t respond, he softly said, “It’s not me protecting him. It’s the lord who has been protecting us all along.”

Fifteen years ago, on the desert plains of the Mobei grasslands.

The yellow sand whipped through the air, occasionally mixed with dry tumbleweed, resembling an ugly toad covered in scabs.

So, this is what it looks like from up high.

He licked his cracked lips and forced down a gulp of saliva, causing his parched throat to sting painfully.

This should be the last day, right?

He had been hanging here for three days, suspended from a thin cowhide rope on a watchtower. At first, the rope was wet, but after days of sun exposure, it tightened and shrank, digging into his flesh. His wrists were bloody, and the pain seeped into his bones. Over the past three days, he hadn’t had a drop of water, and he knew this would be the last sunset he would ever see. The vultures that had been circling for days grew impatient, coming closer, just waiting for him to die so they could swoop in.

What was he waiting for? He kept himself alive for what? He knew no one would come to save him. No one would even try.

Staring out into the vast desert, he recalled why he was hanging there. Oh, right—it was because he had killed someone.

One of his masters.

He was Atonkule, which in Turkic meant someone abandoned by the heavens. In the Han language, that meant slave. A slave that could be traded for a sheep, a sack of salt, or a few animal skins.

From as far back as he could remember, he had lived here, with dozens of other Atonkule, being driven and enslaved, waiting to be picked. He had learned how to keep his head down and survive. In a place like this, staying out of trouble and being able to endure were the only ways to stay alive. The people there had whips, crossbows, and dogs. There was no escape, no resistance. They weren’t even treated as well as the dogs.

At least when the wolves of the plains attacked, the masters would put them at the front, while the dogs stayed behind to catch and kill anyone who tried to flee.

He thought that this was how his life would go—waiting until he was fully grown to be sold off, or maybe dying one cold night, unable to endure the harsh conditions. That was until a child was brought in, smaller than anyone else, with a pale face that looked nothing like anyone from this place.

From the first moment he saw the child, he knew that there was no way the boy would survive here.

Sure enough, on his first day, the child didn’t manage to grab any food. In the end, he timidly approached him, tugging at his sleeve, and called him “big brother.”

Against his better judgment, he broke off half of his bread and gave it to the child.

From then on, it became half a piece every day.

He knew the boy was a burden, but he couldn’t resist the child’s eyes, as pure as the vast northern sky, calling him “big brother.”

Later, he learned that the child was the son of a tribal leader. The tribe’s camp had been raided, its people massacred, and the child, the sole survivor, was sold to slavers.

He could imagine how hard it must have been for someone like that to survive in a place like this, but the child always smiled. His eyes would narrow into slits, with the corners turning downward, holding a kind of charm that he had never seen before.

When the grass on the plains first started to turn yellow, the child fell ill. After that, he couldn’t even manage to eat the dry bread they received daily. He leaned against his chest, murmuring about the dried meat, cheese, and milk tea his mother used to give him.

That day, for the first time, he approached the men with whips. They locked him in with a starving wolf, wanting to watch a fight between man and beast. They were so afraid of him damaging the wolf’s hide that they didn’t even give him a shard of broken pottery as a weapon. He wrestled with the wolf for an entire day and, in the end, strangled it to death with his bare hands, earning half a piece of bread in return.

When he brought it back… the child had already died.

 

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