Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 1124: So She Is Yue Yinping

When Song Qingshu stepped out of the cave, a full red sun was climbing above the horizon. He drew in a breath of clean mountain air and felt his spirit lift.

“What a fine new day!”

He stretched, rolling the stiffness from his shoulders. Last night’s situation had been nothing short of certain death — yet by some unlikely chain of events he had survived it. The Heavenly Devil Flower’s venom had gone quiet within him for now, and though he still could not draw on his inner energy, he found he did not particularly mind. He was, by nature, an optimist. As long as he breathed, possibilities remained infinite.

He moved without concealing himself — not from carelessness, but because concealment was no longer necessary.

He was not wearing his own face. He had changed into Xiong Da’s clothes and taken on Xiong Da’s appearance. He knew that Xiao Longnu’s Qinggong would see her through without trouble — it was himself he was worried about. Remaining in the cave any longer, waiting for another group to find him, was a risk he could not afford. Wearing Xiong Da’s face was the simpler answer. The whole mountain was crawling with soldiers on the search; slipping among them was like a fish returning to the sea.

He had buried Xiong Er and Xiong San in a shallow pit, even going through the motions of propping up a makeshift grave marker. Xiong Da’s body he had dissolved entirely with corpse-dissolving powder, leaving nothing but a dark stain. Whatever anyone might find later, nothing would point back to Song Qingshu.

He did not linger near the cave. He went straight down the mountain, reasoning that staying close to the scene would invite suspicion — and in his current state, he could not afford even a thread of additional risk. He would wait until the search died down, then return to the area and wait for Xiao Longnu to come back.

Along the way he passed several search parties. Each one glanced at his clothing and moved on without a second look — the uniform of Wan Qili’s personal attendants was well-known enough.

Seeing that nearly every soldier carried a sketch of his face, Song Qingshu felt a cold sweat prickle across his back. Without the disguise, even a change of clothes would not have saved him.

He reached the foot of the mountain without serious incident and spent some time watching the movement of the various search parties on the slopes, coming despite himself to admire the competence of Li Kexiu’s people. The deployment was thorough. Though the main body of men had been drawn away by Xiao Longnu, the surrounding areas had not been neglected — several units had been left to conduct an interlocking search pattern.

Then came the sound of hooves. A dozen or so riders came down from the mountain. Song Qingshu hesitated briefly, then decided against doing anything unusual and stayed where he was.

The riders swept past him — and then the man at the front reined around and came back toward him. Within moments all twelve had him encircled, hooves churning up a curtain of dust. The attitude was anything but friendly.

Song Qingshu steadied himself inwardly. Have I slipped somewhere?

“Well, well. Who do we have here — isn’t this Xiong Da?”

Song Qingshu kept still. He now noticed that these men wore the same uniform as he did, and that the ones at the front had been seen at Wan Qili’s side the night before.

“Mm.” He gave a thick, noncommittal sound.

“Weren’t you full of swagger ordinarily? You look like a wilted eggplant today.” The rider’s tone was mocking. “And where are Xiong Er and Xiong San?”

Song Qingshu caught the edge in the man’s voice — no love lost between him and Xiong Da. A thought came to him. Could this be the Wind-Chanting Swift Sword, Zhang Quan — the man the three brothers had complained about the night before?

“Zhang Quan asking you a question. Turned mute?” Another rider grew impatient.

Confirmation received. Song Qingshu let red flood into his eyes and snapped back with deliberate anger: “That’s because of you — sending us off in the wrong direction on purpose. When we went to check that cave, they — they stepped into the needle trap. Died from the poison. Both of them.”

“Xiong Er and Xiong San are dead?” A gleam of undisguised satisfaction crossed Zhang Quan’s face. “Not my problem. You should have been more careful around a trap.”

“I’ll kill you for this—!” Song Qingshu made a show of lunging forward. Several men instantly moved to block him.

“All right, all right. I’ll overlook it, given that you’re grieving.” Zhang Quan made a dismissive gesture. Xiong Da’s martial arts were nothing to sneer at, and genuinely provoking him would be bothersome. “You’re in no condition to keep working anyway. It happens that the young mistress needs an escort back to Lin’an. You can take her.”

“I beg your — what?” Song Qingshu blinked. He had only been playing out the scene. Now there was a ‘young mistress’ who needed escorting to Lin’an?

“I’m not going. I’m staying here with my brothers.” He refused on instinct. He still had to wait for Xiao Longnu. Lin’an was out of the question.

“Those are the Left Minister’s personal orders. You’d defy them?” Zhang Quan’s hand moved to rest on the hilt of his sword.

Song Qingshu’s eyes narrowed. He knew Xiong Da and Zhang Quan had history — if Zhang Quan decided to use this as a pretext to cut him down, it would be a particularly absurd way to die. He let out a grudging sound. “Fine. I’ll go.”

“Come back to the city with us first and pay your respects to the Minister.” Zhang Quan waved a hand, and one of his men produced a horse.

Song Qingshu had no choice but to fall in with the group as they rode back toward Yangzhou. He considered escape more than once along the way, but in his present condition, the moment his identity was exposed, he would not get far.

Before long they were back inside Yangzhou. Wan Qili had not remained at the Provincial Commander’s residence — he had commandeered the mansion of a wealthy merchant, and was directing the hunt for Song Qingshu from there with the composure of a general behind his campaign tent.

Zhang Quan led the group in a formal salute. Wan Qili nodded and said, without particular interest: “You’ll escort the young mistress back to Lin’an.”

Young mistress. Song Qingshu’s confusion deepened — and then a memory surfaced. Last night. Wan Gui. Surely it isn’t Qi Fang?

But Zhang Quan, rather than accepting the order, said: “My lord Minister — I’m afraid I won’t be able to escort the young mistress this time.”

Wan Qili looked up. Something sharp and dangerous ignited in his eyes.

Zhang Quan felt a chill and abandoned any thought of making this mysterious. “To report to the Minister — last night, during the effort to capture Song Qingshu, a woman in white appeared and helped him escape.”

Wan Qili’s brow furrowed. “I’m aware of that. Li Kexiu deployed several thousand men. Even with help, Song Qingshu cannot have gone far.”

“It’s not about Song Qingshu, my lord — it concerns that woman.”

Song Qingshu kept his head down beside them, but his ears sharpened. Something to do with Xiao Longnu?

Wan Qili’s curiosity was evident. “What about her?”

“A little over an hour ago I saw that woman clearly, at a distance. Her face—” Zhang Quan seemed to touch something that frightened him, because his voice developed a faint tremor. “She looked like — like the woman they used to call Li Wa.”

“Li Wa?” At that name, Wan Qili rose to his feet. Shock had broken through his composure completely.

Who is Li Wa? The name meant nothing to Song Qingshu at first — but the fact that it could shake Wan Qili like this told him clearly that this was no ordinary person.

“Impossible.” Wan Qili regathered himself. “Li Wa died years ago. And even if she hadn’t, she would be past fifty by now. Every report from last night described a young woman. It cannot be her.”

“I was part of the operation that hunted Li Wa, my lord. I know her face. That young woman in white was her image exactly — as if cast from the same mould.” Zhang Quan’s own expression was genuinely puzzled. “But Li Wa could not have kept herself looking that young through any art of preservation — and their fighting styles are not quite the same either…”

He glanced carefully at Wan Qili before continuing: “Based on my analysis, my lord, that young woman in white is most likely the infant from that time…”

“Yue Yinping?” Wan Qili’s face settled into a dark, brooding stillness. “No wonder there were reports of her appearing near Yangzhou. I had assumed it was the daughter of Yue Buqun of Mount Hua…”

And now Song Qingshu remembered who Li Wa was. She was Yue Fei’s wife — the very aunt that Li Qinglu had mentioned in passing. Because her true identity had been so carefully concealed, people in the Southern Song simply knew her by the informal name Li Wa.

If Song Qingshu had not been wearing a mask at that moment, his expression would have been remarkable. The orphan that Yue Fei left behind — that child is Xiao Longnu.

And yet, thinking it through, every detail aligned. Xiao Longnu had been left as an infant at the gate of the Quanzhen Sect. It all made sense: when Yue Fei was falsely condemned and executed, Li Wa — weakened from childbirth — had been driven by the hunting dogs of Wan Qili and Zhang Jun into desperate flight. Unable to protect her daughter and unwilling to trust anyone, she had left the infant at the doorstep of the Quanzhen Sect — then the most reputable orthodox institution in the land, with Wang Chongyang at its head, a man whose martial virtue was beyond question. What she could not have foreseen was that Lin Chaoying’s handmaiden would carry the child away to the Ancient Tomb instead.

No wonder I always thought Wang Yuyan and Xiao Longnu shared something in their appearance. He had put it down to the influence of adaptations from his previous life. But they truly are blood. Xiao Longnu and Wang Yuyan were close in age, yet by family reckoning, Xiao Longnu would be Wang Yuyan’s maternal aunt. [G: Wang Yuyan is the daughter of the Purple-Robed Dragon King, Daiqisi, who is connected to the Murong family of “Southern Murong” fame. The genealogy here draws a connection between Yue Fei’s line and Wang Yuyan’s maternal ancestry, which Song Qingshu — with his knowledge of the original novels — is piecing together.]

“Zhang Quan — assign one man to escort the young mistress to Lin’an. Everyone else is to be deployed at once. Find that woman and bring her in. Inform all units: Song Qingshu is no longer the priority. He took the Heavenly Devil Flower’s venom — he won’t last. Every available man is now hunting the woman.”

A cold, killing light passed through Wan Qili’s eyes. Because of what had happened all those years ago, he and the house of Yue carried a debt of blood between them.

In recent years, public sentiment had been gradually shifting, more and more voices calling for Yue Fei’s name to be cleared. If it became known that Yue Fei’s daughter was alive in the world, someone would inevitably seize on it to demand rehabilitation of his case — and when that day came, Wan Qili and all those associated with the original conviction would have no grave to be buried in. Yue Fei’s descendants could not be allowed to live.

“As you command!” A gleam of undisguised eagerness lit Zhang Quan’s face. It had been his role in the original pursuit of Yue Fei’s family that had first caught Wan Qili’s eye, leading to his gradual rise to the position of head guard. If he could capture this woman now, the achievement would be extraordinary, and the Minister was not a man who left merit unrewarded.

Zhang Quan turned and looked back at Song Qingshu, pointing. “Xiong Da — you escort the young mistress to Lin’an alone. The rest of us are going after the woman.”