Chapter 48 Part 1

In June of the second year of Hongxi, Ge Dongchen confirmed the date he would lead the troops out of Changluo—departure was set for the twelfth. On the sixth day of the month, as was his custom, he changed into night clothes under cover of darkness and crept furtively toward Zhenbei Prince Mansion.

Thievery was perhaps his innate talent. He might well have been a master thief in a past life.

Ever since Gu Jinyu left the capital and Ge Dongchen’s own wounds healed, he had been seizing opportunities to sneak into the Gu family estate. He knew the Gu residence better than his own, always slipping into the Student Courtyard to spy. The place where Gu Xiaodeng had lived was under strict guard, so he would only gaze from afar.

He had originally thought Gu Jinyu only burned the Bamboo Courtyard. He never imagined the study hall where he and Guan Yunji had roomed would also be demolished.

He stole into the Student Courtyard. There was not a single foothold left for him here—not even rubble. Every brick and tile of the study hall had been carted away, leaving the ground so empty it seemed to bear no trace, as if he had never stepped into Vast Marsh Academy, never lived here for nearly five years.

Only the small brocade bag hanging around his neck remained, a lock of severed hair hidden inside serving as his keepsake.

Ge Dongchen crouched like a bat atop a dark rockery, silently gazing into the distance.

In his youth, he had lived off the charity of many households, taking the most windfalls at the Gu family. After the mutiny, trapped within the Ge family, his midnight dreams were filled with scenes from his younger days at Vast Marsh Academy. Everyone else in the world was rendered in thick, heavy ink strokes; only Gu Xiaodeng was a painted scroll in vivid color.

Those years studying at the private academy were the most carefree and easy of his youth—days of poetic grace and romantic spirit, like drifting blossoms and expressive brushstrokes.

He cherished those times, unburdened by baggage, and he loved the Gu Xiaodeng frozen within those years.

Yet now, the one he loved seemed dead, his friends had either broken with him or bid eternal farewell, and the carefree, joyful youths of the past had left behind nothing but nightmares and tragic news.

Ge Dongchen stared into the night, lost in thought. His fingertips moved absently across the ground, tracing a number unconsciously.

Five hundred and forty-three.

That was how many days had passed since Gu Xiaodeng drowned.

It stretched so long it felt as if the survivors from the academy had all grown old and frail.

But Ge Dongchen had just barely reached his coming of age. An unspeakably long future still awaited him.

After half the night of furtive spying, Ge Dongchen returned to the Ge household with a pair of green-tinged eyes. Infiltrating the Gu family was thievery, but returning to his own home was no different from burglary. He noiselessly flipped down from the roof, pushed open a window, and vaulted into his empty room. When he looked up and saw a figure sitting at the table in the dark, his heart nearly burst from his ears.

In the entire Ge household, only one person would disregard all rules and wander wherever she pleased, regardless of the circumstance.

It was his birth mother, A Qianlan.

“Xiao Chen!”

She spoke in a peculiar, guttural tongue of a foreign tribe. No more than ten people in all of Changluo could communicate with her properly. She had learned the language of the Central Plains; she simply refused to speak it.

Ge Dongchen immediately rose and flashed before her. A Qianlan gripped his shoulders with excessive tension, her gem-like emerald eyes scanning him from head to toe. “Why weren’t you in your room?”

“I’m sorry for worrying you. I was only visiting a friend. I missed him too much and accidentally forgot the time to come home.”

He used fluent tribal speech to ease her nervousness. After the mutiny two years ago, the entire Ge Mansion had been sealed by the Empress for a full four months. The four masters of the Ge family had been forced together—creating the most “family reunion” atmosphere they’d had in twenty years.

On New Year’s Eve of the 17th year of Tianming, Gu Jinyu had stabbed Ge Dongchen through the chest. Gu Jinyu’s blade was insidiously precise. When Ge Dongchen weakly regained consciousness, he found his parents and younger sister gathered around his bed.

A Qianlan’s eyes were red-rimmed. She said to him in that strange tribal tongue: “When others try to kill you, will you not dodge, not fight back? I gave you life. How can you die by another’s hand?”

Following this strange logic, A Qianlan seemed terrified he might once again hover between life and death. So she reversed eighteen years of resentment and loathing, and began constantly caring for him.

Ge Dongchen had long passed the age of yearning for maternal affection. But if his parents were hell-bent on making up for belated care, he would accept it without complaint and repay it with deference and obedience.

A Qianlan pressed on: “What kind of friend? You were never home before. You must know many friends out there. Male or female? Older than you or younger?”

Ge Dongchen pressed his lips together, then lifted a smile, but his eyes deepened to a jade hue. “A very beautiful young man. He used to be one year younger than me. Now he’s three years younger than me.”

A Qianlan’s cold hand touched the corner of his eye. “You’re crying. Did this friend die?”

Ge Dongchen shook his head, inhaling deeply to suppress the strange color in his eyes. “I don’t know… Mother, do you believe a person can vanish into thin air? No trace in life, no corpse in death. I don’t know if he lives, nor if he is dead. I only know I miss him terribly.”

A Qianlan was somewhat slow, only fixating on the vanishing part. “If you can’t find him, he’s dead. In our homeland, there are many poisons. One kind melts the body into rotting mud. Plant a tree on that mud, the person disappears, and the tree takes life.”

Ge Dongchen: “…”

A Qianlan thought she had frightened him. “You shouldn’t be timid. Are you afraid of Gu?”

“No.” The tip of Ge Dongchen’s nose reddened. “Just… please don’t curse him.”

A Qianlan secretly sighed in relief. “Why? I’m speaking truth. Compared to the poisons of our homeland, the Central Plains has far more numerous and fouler methods of terror.”

Ge Dongchen quietly confessed: “Mother, that young man is my heart’s desire. I hope he lives.”

A Qianlan clearly struggled to accept that her son was a deviant cut-sleeve. She nearly bolted from the chair in shock, but her brain suddenly latched onto something, and she sat back down steadily. Her expression remained somewhat resistant as she muttered: “Good thing it’s a boy. Good thing he’s dead.”

Ge Dongchen was utterly exhausted. He could only smile and gently coax her back to her main house. She frowned in anger like a child: “Shameless Ge is there. I’m not going back.”

“I will drive him away for you.” Ge Dongchen beamed and put on a reliable expression. He led her through the long pavilion under the breaking dawn. When they reached the main courtyard, he saw Shameless Ge—originally named Ge Wanchi, the Cloud Banner General—walking softly in the yard with their sleeping eight-year-old daughter on his back.

A Qianlan’s entire aura shifted. Suppressing her fury, she charged forward, forcibly yanked the little girl into her arms, and ran swiftly toward the inner rooms. The little girl, jolted awake, wrapped her two small arms tightly around her mother’s neck as if this were routine.

Ge Wanchi stood rooted, watching their backs. When they vanished from sight, he turned his head to Ge Dongchen. With the clumsy awkwardness of a man of few words, he said stiffly: “Your mother rested in your room last night?”

“General.” Ge Dongchen had always addressed him with such a smile. “We will depart for the Northern Border soon. If you have this much leisure, you would be better served meticulously reviewing the troops and supply lines. If any misstep occurs, you and I dying would not be enough. Implicating the women of this household would be inexcusable.”

He turned to leave, but Ge Wanchi called him back: “As your father, I have reorganized the ranks several times. I cannot speak on the past, but now I must warn you. Pull back the Ge Family Hidden Guards you have stationed around the Su Residence.”

Ge Dongchen paused. He turned his head, a half-smile on his face. “Just watching. You object to this too? I have neither set fire to the Su Residence nor killed anyone in the Su family. Offends your eye?”

“Did you not do it because you didn’t want to, or because you didn’t find the opportunity?”

Ge Dongchen ground his molars and turned away.

But Ge Wanchi followed, every word grating unbearably on Ge Dongchen.

“My son, whatever grievance exists between you and the Su family’s fourth son, settle fewer private grudges. On this Northern Expedition, the commanding generals besides me will include Su the Third, Su Mingshao. Though she is a woman, she is not one to be trifled with easily. The twists and turns of the Imperial Court—you understand them better than your father. The Su family wants military power. If they cannot wrest it from the Gu family, they will come to carve up the Ge family. I know nothing of the Northern Border, only familiar with the military affairs of Changluo and the Southern Border…”

“Ah, indeed.” Ge Dongchen’s tongue had always been venomous. He smiled as he interrupted: “You’re so familiar with the Southern Border that you seized a woman and brought her back. You are a hero of great prowess.”

Ge Wanchi halted.

Loathing him, Ge Dongchen did not look back.

He had only been on peaceful terms with his parents for a little over a year. It wasn’t that Ge Dongchen didn’t understand emotion. On the contrary, steeped in a household drenched with overly intense love and hate—his foreign mother’s supreme hatred, his Central Plains father’s supreme love—he understood the extremes of enmity and attachment all too well. It would have been better if he didn’t.