Chapter 266: Girl, Please Behave Yourself

With the new martial arts rankings released in Beiman, which were widely acclaimed by both dynasties, many imitations quickly emerged. Countless lists appeared: the Ten Greatest Literary Figures and Generals, the Ten Greatest Swordsmen and Heroines. Even more absurdly, many restaurants displayed signs boasting "One of the World's Ten Best Dishes," and many cloth shops hung signs claiming "One of the Ten Best Silks," which was utterly laughable. Beiman also featured rankings for its own "Ten Greatest Provocations," which were much more explicit than the refined and subtle lists in the South. For example, the courtesan from Fenbo Tower in Feihu City, honored to be on the list, was renowned for her small mouth, rumored to be able to tie knots in cherries with her nimble tongue, and her signature skill was "the beauty playing the jade flute." Furthermore, there were rankings like the "Yin-Yang Pot," which scholars from the Central Plains found disgraceful. Whether they secretly coveted the various wondrous uses described in the text, however, was unknown.

As the beautiful woman held the Qiang flute to her thin lips, Xu Fengnian inevitably found his mind wandering. His previous anger, which had included a slight resentment towards the shepherdess, now dissipated. With a peaceful mind, she appeared much more pleasing. Beautiful women truly were a gift from heaven, pleasing to both the eye and the spirit. However, Xu Fengnian's standards were meticulous and harsh. He knew that a poor girl like this, despite having the equivalent of "ninety-five coins" for her face and figure, couldn't withstand many deductions. For instance, her hands, coarse from years of labor, would subtract one coin. Her buttocks, firmed by herding sheep and riding horses, would certainly not be soft, deducting one or two coins. If she lacked knowledge of poetry and literature and had limited insight, another two or three coins would be subtracted. Gradually, deductions would accumulate, leaving her with around "eighty-five coins"—which was still considered quite good.

Xu Fengnian's previous disdain for female martial artists was not unfounded. Though they might appear like celestial beings with flowing sleeves, unless they reached a transcendent state where new bones and flesh could be generated, their hands would be calloused. If they wielded weapons, who could guarantee they wouldn't have scars from their training? He recalled the old man in the sheepskin coat mentioning a beautiful young female martial artist from the South Sea years ago. She was unconventional, preferring to travel the jianghu in white robes and barefoot, earning much admiration. Later, Li Chungang, who was then at the peak of his martial prowess, remarked, "That woman has really big feet." This supposedly made the girl cry. After losing a sword fight to Li Chungang, she never wished to set foot in the Central Plains again. It was evident that being a famous female martial artist was not easy, especially for those "exceptionally gifted" with ample bosoms. If they were to tremble during a fight, onlookers might find it a feast for the eyes and certainly beautiful, but the martial artist herself would probably be secretly distressed.

When the young shepherdess first saw the man she had passed in the canyon, she felt surprise, then fear, and finally her guilt turned to joy. She clutched the beautiful Qiang flute tightly in her fingers, not daring to speak. At first, she feared that this young hero, who had bestowed great kindness upon her entire tribe, would leave without a word. Seeing him standing not far away, a smile on his lips, she felt a slight sense of relief. Yet, sweat secretly seeped into her palms, dampening her beloved Qiang flute. She bit her lip, not daring to make a sound and disturb her benefactor's contemplation.

She was not originally from the tribe. As an infant, she had been left outside a yurt, with only the Qiang flute as a token, inscribed with the four characters "Yelu Murong." As she grew into a young woman, she became even more stunning. However, on the grasslands, a woman's beauty was inevitably a commodity for the Xiti, to be sold or presented as tribute according to its weight and quality. The Xiti who sponsored her tribe was a minor power on the grasslands, better at maintaining the status quo than expanding. When he learned that a seemingly peerless beauty had appeared in a tribe under his command, he hastily prepared to offer her to a Great Xiti in exchange for new grazing lands. The small, weak tribe, unable to bear such humiliation, migrated en masse. The minor Xiti, who controlled the tribe's fate, was enraged. He dispatched cavalry in pursuit. These herders had no choice but to cross into a neighboring territory. The minor Xiti, left with no alternative, paid gold and silver to the neighboring tribe as a transit fee and dared not reveal the truth. Unexpectedly, a high-ranking elderly Xiti learned the inside story. This half-century-old Xiti, though old, was still ambitious and coveted the young woman. He simply slaughtered over a dozen trailing cavalrymen and pursued this "piece of meat" himself.

Afterward, rivalries and grudges among the Xiti continued. Few herders were killed or injured, but five or six groups of cavalry were successively devoured by "bigger fish," utterly wiped out. The last Xiti was a descendant of a collateral branch of the Yelu clan, renowned throughout the southern grasslands for his cruelty in commanding troops and governing people. He had no interest in beauty at all and directly ordered the slaughter of this entire group of transgressive herders. This was the origin of the "driving sheep into a tiger's mouth" cold-blooded tactic. By an unexpected twist of fate, the Buddhist sage who was meeting in the North and the Prince of Beiliang inadvertently complicated the situation, making the waters even muddier. This allowed the herders to barely survive and establish a camp in this fertile grassland. A few days prior, in the canyon, the young woman had voluntarily approached the tribal elder, stating that if they were troubled again by local grassland warlords, she was willing to go to the Xiti camp. The elder, old and worn out from their flight, though he felt pity for the girl who was like his own granddaughter, no longer refused. After all, the old man carried the burden of a hundred lives on his shoulders. If he continued to resist, not only would they be hunted down as playthings by the Xiti, but the young herders, whose grievances had already reached a boiling point within the tribe, were on the verge of rebellion.

The herders were poor and couldn't afford the pretentious kindness of leaving food for mice. Yet, she possessed a gentle nature, like someone who would sweep the ground fearing to harm ants. Although she was orphaned and helpless, the tribe was willing to protect her fiercely, partly due to her beauty, but even more so out of pity for her tragic fate. A woman's beauty was rarely a blessing on the grasslands.

Xu Fengnian never hesitated to assume the worst of others. Even if someone was the renowned abbot of Liangchan Temple, Xu Fengnian had been repeatedly pondering and guessing these past few days where the true good of this "karma" lay. Especially in the canyon, the Buddhist Lion's Roar had arrived late, and hundreds of wild oxen had died by his hand. Wasn't that indirectly at the hand of the old monk Longshu, who claimed to have made a grave mistake? Didn't this prove true the words of the apricot-eyed Beiman Daoist, that monks find it difficult to treat all beings equally? How was this account to be settled? The concept of "karma and virtue," stripped bare, was merely a meticulous accounting with the heavens, where everything had gains and losses. The old monk had already reached the Buddha realm, so Xu Fengnian, using his blunt approach, could only think big: He would one day inherit the title of Prince of Beiliang. Was there a connection between this and Beiman's suppression of Buddhism fulfilling the prophecy of the Dharma-ending age? Secretly, Liangchan Temple had originally intended to send young monks from both North and South to Jindin to debate with the Daoist sect, but this plan was abandoned due to a dream of a young girl from the East and West. According to fragmented intelligence gathered by Beiliang scouts, in that dream, countless iron cavalry descended upon Beiliang. Besides being curious about the young monk who erected a stele and went west to become a Buddha, Xu Fengnian was more concerned about the origin of these iron cavalry! This dream left too long an aftertaste. Even Li Yishan, who never believed in ghosts or deities, had exhausted himself poring over Buddhist and Daoist texts, attempting to interpret the dream using the *I Ching*, but with little success.

A single hair moves the whole body. After the white-robed monk won the debate at Longhu Mountain, he and Grand Heavenly Master Zhao Danping were summoned by imperial decree to Tai'an City. Then, the old abbot personally descended the mountain and rushed to Beiman to discuss Buddhist scriptures with the Qilin Daoist Master of the Daode Sect.

After an initial surge of heat, Xu Fengnian's mind wandered far, then returned, now as still as water. This made the Prince himself worry if there was a serious issue "down there." Sighing inwardly, he approached the young woman who, at the very least, was worth "eighty-five coins." He took the Qiang flute from her hand, saw four Beiman characters, and frowned, asking, "Do you understand the Southern Dynasty language?"

The girl's voice was as soft as a mosquito's hum: "I understand it, but I can't speak it well."

Beiman's written and spoken language was originally complex and inconsistent. After the empress took control of the dynasty, it gradually improved. However, the Northern and Southern Dynasties remained distinctly separate. Whenever the empress went on imperial tours or hunts, according to ancient custom, she would consult with her close attendants and officials by drawing on the ground with ash. Occasionally, when discussing matters, the powerful officials of the Northern Royal Court would naturally mock the accents of the Southern Dynasty officials. Northerners from imperial tents inevitably harbored a sense of superiority due to their "pure bloodline." After the Spring-Autumn War concluded, the Central Plains were largely pacified. Beiman, on the one hand, saw its empress first govern in the name of a young ruler, then seize power, and on the other, was overwhelmed with settling the displaced people from the Spring-Autumn War, leading to instability. It engaged in six full-scale wars with the Liyang Dynasty. The latter nominally won twice, but achieved a truly decisive victory only once: leveraging the momentum of unifying the Spring-Autumn lands and taking advantage of Beiman's unstable foundations, the emperor personally led an expedition, launching an offensive that triumphed on all three fronts, pushing as far as the current Southern Dynasty capital prefecture. Unfortunately, they could not achieve complete success in a single campaign and continue the northern expedition, leaving Beiman a chance to recuperate. The world claimed that Xu Xiao, the Prince of Beiliang, coveted power and did not wish for Beiman's destruction, as it would leave him without troops to command, and thus retreated privately. The truth, however, was that both sides were then preparing to establish an alliance. Only Xu Xiao, at the risk of his own head, secretly sought an audience with the emperor, stating that if His Majesty would grant him a secret decree, he could lead the Beiliang army alone into the North and, even if it cost twenty thousand armored soldiers, would ensure Beiman ceased to exist as a nation.

At that time, the old Grand Tutor stood beside the monarch, merely sneering.

The next day, an imperial decree ordered Xu Xiao to retreat his troops back to Beiliang first, to demonstrate the Liyang Dynasty's sincerity.

This could likely be considered another instance of Xu Xiao being made a scapegoat, following the Spring-Autumn War and his campaigns across the martial world. Many battle-hardened veterans silently left the Beiliang army at this time.

In the five subsequent wars between the two nations, the Liyang Dynasty suffered more losses than victories. The fourth war was the most devastating defeat, almost completely depleting the elite border armies accumulated by the previous emperor. On the eastern front north of Tai'an City, a scorched-earth policy was implemented, and unauthorized offensive military action was forbidden. The decline only slightly improved when General Gu Jiantang resigned as Minister of War and personally oversaw the two Liaos, bolstered by the substantial internal support from Grand Tutor Zhang Julu, which scholars sarcastically claimed cost half the dynasty's wealth.

Xu Fengnian asked directly, "Who are your parents?"

She shook her head and replied, "I am an orphan. I was adopted by the tribe when I was little."

Xu Fengnian was intimately familiar with the murky ways of the imperial family. He smiled and asked, "Have you never considered that you might be a 'golden branch and jade leaf,' perhaps surnamed Yelu or Murong?"

The girl's eyes widened and her mouth fell open; clearly, she had never considered such a possibility. Xu Fengnian inadvertently caught sight of her delicate pink tongue behind her white teeth, and a wave of heat surged again. Yet, there was no shame in his heart, no evil intentions before the beauty. He simply lowered his gaze slightly, glanced downwards, and secretly praised in his mind, "Good brother, you're holding up well!" His arduous cultivation of the Great Yellow Court must have prevented any irreversible side effects. Otherwise, His Royal Highness would truly have to bash his head against a block of tofu and die. With no worries, Xu Fengnian was in high spirits, pushing aside some vexing and thorny problems. He recalled once buying countless poems with a large sum of money, and when they reached his second sister, only the line "Tomorrow's worries come tomorrow" caught her eye. This pleased His Royal Highness so much that he had a servant send another seven hundred taels of silver to the impoverished scholar—a hundred taels per character. Later, he heard that this scholar had succeeded in the imperial examinations and gained some minor fame in the capital. He was one of the few honest people who refused to stoop to the level of other scholars and insult His Royal Highness. Presumably, this was why he remained on the sidelines, waiting for several years, before finally filling a minor county official position in a remote, desolate region.

Xu Fengnian sat by the lake and gestured for her to sit down. Catching the woman's unique scent, the Prince, who hadn't seen even a female mosquito since leaving Feihu City, felt as if ages had passed. With the wild oxen rampaging, Xu Fengnian had been solely focused on studying the "Swimming Fish" stance in his saber manual. How could he have time to distinguish between male and female? And even if he could distinguish them, what good would it do? Xu Fengnian hadn't feared the demon Xie Ling in the slightest, yet this thought sent a shiver down his spine. He then burst into roaring laughter, finding amusement in his solitary struggles in Beiman. After laughing, he saw the girl, sitting primly and very awkwardly, looking utterly bewildered. Even with Xu Fengnian's thick skin, he wouldn't be so shameless as to mention *that*. He lowered his head and stroked the Qiang flute. Its two dark purple bamboo tubes were aligned, intertwined with gold and silver threads, and its finger holes were perfectly round. Despite years of playing and handling, it showed no signs of wear, indicating it was a precious, high-quality Qiang flute. Xu Fengnian was quite accomplished in calligraphy, and he carefully observed the four Beiman characters, "Murong" before "Yelu," carved into the flute. He found the knife-carved characters quite impressive. Without exchanging the flute, he smiled and said, "Keep this token safe. Perhaps one day you'll be a shepherdess in the morning and a Xianbei chieftainess by night. If that day comes, remember my kindness."

The girl, seeing him caress it gently and meticulously, felt her pretty face flush crimson, making her even more charming and beautiful.

However, when she saw this young gentleman from the Southern Dynasty casually tapping her beloved Qiang flute against his back, her gaze became somewhat resentful.

Whether Xu Fengnian was slow to realize or deliberately teasing, seeing her expression, he couldn't help but chuckle. He extended a finger and twisted it around the flute's mouthpiece, smiling mischievously.

The girl was thin-skinned and on the verge of tears.

Xu Fengnian returned the Qiang flute to her and lay down on the grass. Such carefree days would likely be few and far between from now on.

The girl, sitting cross-legged beside Xu Fengnian, clutched the Qiang flute and lowered her head, saying, "I'm sorry." This time, she was truly crying.

Xu Fengnian knew she was apologizing for her timidity after being rescued in the canyon. His lips curved slightly, and he said in a flat tone, "There's nothing wrong with a woman being timid. If you feel it's inappropriate, you can be bolder. Come sit on me. Even if I suffer such a violation of my chastity, I will not resist." Xu Fengnian had only intended to tease the girl, making a few playful remarks. He never expected the girl to actually exhaust all her courage and audacity and plop down on his waist.

The Prince, whose vital area was now pressed down, gasped. Putting on a dignified air, he said, "My lady, please show some self-respect!"