Chapter Ninety-Three: Taihang Mountains

This was the first time Zhao Hengyi had learned where Lu Jiuniang came from.

For this fierce and valiant girl, whom even the guards respected to the utmost, everyone had quietly harbored their own guesses before this. Yet because of Zhao Hengyi’s warning, no one had taken the initiative to ask or probe.

To come to Jiangling City with companions and attempt an assassination of the prefect, Su Shenchang, during the celebration could only mean there was a profoundly complicated story behind her.

From the intelligence they had gathered, Lu Jiuniang had come to Jiangling with two others. Besides the man who had used his own life to buy her breathing room in the bloody struggle on Changrong Street, there had been a woman as well, who died on the spot during the attempt on Su Shenchang’s life.

Under such circumstances, Zhao Hengyi judged that Lu Jiuniang must be extremely sensitive and guarded. Anyone or any group showing interest in her origins was all too likely to provoke unnecessary misunderstanding.

Zhao Hengyi only wanted to learn from Lu Jiuniang about Su Shenchang’s trafficking of people. That, in fact, had been the reason he had been willing from the start to take such a great risk and rescue her back to the inn.

Beyond that, he was content to show this brave girl the greatest respect he could.

He had not expected, however, that Lu Jiuniang, so cautious these past days, would now take the initiative to speak.

“I was not trying to pry. You do not have to tell me.”

“It is nothing. You people are too careful. From the moment I made my move against Su Shenchang, they already knew where I came from.”

The fire flickered in the night wind, and its wavering shadows seemed to cast a strange wash of color over Lu Jiuniang’s clean, pale face.

As the leader of a band of thieves with considerable strength in Taihang Mountain, Lu Jiuniang was no fool. She was not speaking carelessly about her background; rather, she meant for Zhao Hengyi alone to hear it.

After all, she still owed him thirty taels of silver.

“You were lucky to be born near Jiangling City. Don’t look at me like that. I know there are plenty of poor people here too who cannot get enough to eat and have to sell their sons and daughters… but even so, it is still far better than where we came from.”

Lu Jiuniang lowered her face slightly, as though arranging her thoughts, or perhaps because she had never before laid bare her inner feelings to anyone and was still unaccustomed to it.

“My family lived west of Yanmen Pass in earlier years. After the soldiers of Great Yan were defeated, we could no longer stay there.”

“The barbarians swept through every year to loot the countryside, killing, robbing, never ending.”

“When a house can no longer be lived in, the only thing left is to run. We fled all the way, only to be hunted and killed by the barbarians along the road, until at last we fled into the mountains.”

“Even in the mountains there was no peace. We were always moving, like wandering ghosts… you could never imagine what that feels like.”

“At first we thought the armies of Great Yan had only suffered a temporary defeat and would sooner or later fight their way back. It had always been that way in the past, and everyone was used to it.”

“But who could have known that this time, after the armies of Great Yan left, they never came back… We stayed in the mountains too long, and in the end we became the bandits of Taihang.”

“The barbarians did not treat us as human beings, and we did not treat them as human beings either. When we met a small number of them, we would kill them all at once. When there were too many, we would simply move deeper into the mountains.”

“There were merchant caravans too. If we ran into a barbarian caravan, we robbed everything and killed everyone. If we ran into a Han caravan, we still robbed them, but left them alive.”

“We were all Han people, but Great Yan never treated us as human beings either. Sometimes Great Yan officials came to offer us amnesty, but even after we believed them, they gave us nothing, and we still had to fight the barbarians. Many people died. Later, no one believed them anymore.”

“My father died young. He was killed by the barbarians. I followed my master in martial training from childhood, and by thirteen I had already begun roaming the jianghu.”

“Later I returned to Taihang Mountain, but there was no one left at home… Once, when the barbarians entered the mountains, my mother did not make it away.”

“After that I followed my master into battle, killing barbarians, leading people to move from one place to another in the mountains… Sometimes I could not even tell whether I was a person or a ghost.”

“There were also many times when I woke among piles of corpses and could not even tell whether I was dead myself…”

“Last year, my master heard that there was a caravan in Great Yan trading slaves to the barbarians, and went to kill the people in the caravan. In the end he ran into hidden experts.”

“That caravan had existed for a long time. We had destroyed it several times before and saved quite a few Han people, but that time it had been a trap set together by the caravan and the barbarians.”

“Everyone who went with him died. My master was badly wounded too, and after fleeing back to the mountains, he died not long after… We investigated the origin of the caravan, and Su Shenchang was the one responsible for the Jiangling route.”

“People in the mountains wanted revenge, and many more died. Their lives were wasted in vain, and they never even saw Su Shenchang’s face.”

“This time, the people in the village wanted to come out again for revenge. I could not stop them, so I could only come myself.”

“My master would not allow revenge, but if Su Shenchang does not die, the people in the village can never truly let it go… Now that even I cannot kill him, from here on out they ought to abandon their hope.”

In the wavering firelight, Lu Jiuniang spoke slowly, word by word. At some point, she had drawn her legs up, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her pointed chin on her knees… all at once, she revealed a softness that should never have belonged to her.

“Su Shenchang was only a rather insignificant figure in that caravan. At the very least, he was not the one in charge.”

Zhao Hengyi let out a faint sigh.

“He likely only handled gathering slaves within the Jiangling prefecture and quietly shipping them out… just one link in the chain. And behind that caravan lies a net.”

As if exchanging intelligence, Zhao Hengyi also told her about the defeated soldiers.

“In that case, it is even less likely that I can avenge my master, or the people in the village who died.”

A trace of relief seemed to enter Lu Jiuniang’s voice.

“In this world, there are many things one person simply cannot do alone.”

“Then gather more people and do it slowly.”

Zhao Hengyi did not fear that web selling common folk into barbarian lands.

“So long as there are enough people, it can always be done.”

“There are not that many people in the mountains…”

“There are here. Perhaps by the next time you come to Jiangling Prefecture, I will already have done it.”

Zhao Hengyi placed a piece of roasted dry ration into Lu Jiuniang’s hand. This girl would never waste any food. So, by the firelight, he once again saw her cheeks bulging on both sides, looking rather like a squirrel gnawing at a pinecone.

Once they had left Jiangling City, Lu Jiuniang no longer needed to be quite so cautious. She slept together with the women’s detachment beside the women and children they had purchased. Everyone in the party could see she was a woman, but they merely assumed Zhao Hengyi had arranged ahead of time for a female steward to watch over the women and children.

Before going to sleep, the little Miss Xiao Tao, her small face taut with seriousness, deliberately came to find Zhao Hengyi and insisted on speaking to him alone.

Zhao Hengyi thought it must be that brat Wang Erhu had been too eager and made Miss Xiao Tao angry, and he had already prepared to apologize. But then…

“Madam Zhao is my county princess’s sworn younger sister. You are not to go sneaking around with other women behind her back and make things unclear…”