Chapter Ninety-Three: My Heart Lingers

“That really won’t be necessary, truly. I have no use for your person; your horse is enough!”

The matter had come so suddenly that Zhang Qian blinked several times before he could finally believe that Xi Duorou truly meant to keep his promise. He hurriedly waved his hands with a smile.

Setting aside his own instincts, he had come from the twenty-first century and was born with a deep aversion to slavery. And beyond that, the methods used to produce his family’s cologne, balm, and alcohol were all new crafts; he could never allow an unknown outsider to enter the estate.

If Xi Duorou had been sent by some great man of Tubo and had deliberately tried to slip into the manor as a spy to pry into a few of these new inventions, the trouble would have been enormous.

The cologne and balm would have been one thing, since their making involved the extraction of plant oils, and only he, Guo Nu, and Ren Cong knew how to carry out the process. But the purification of alcohol was a secret a practiced eye could see through at once, and with nothing more than an iron pot, a clay jar, and a bamboo tube, it could be imitated to a fair degree. What was lacking was only efficiency.

“Master, you, you won’t take me?!” Xi Duorou had not expected Zhang Qian to reject his pledge of loyalty. He froze, and tears immediately streamed over his swollen face. “If Master will not take Xi Duorou in, then I have only one road left to me: suicide! Master, Xi Duorou can tend your horses, herd your cattle, and even help you kill men and set fires. Master, I beg you, I beg you, take Xi Duorou in, and do not let me go and die in my heart, sob, sob...”

As he spoke, he actually split his mouth open and wailed at the top of his lungs, as if he had suffered a grievance beyond all measure.

“Brother Yongzhao, take him in. For him to serve as your slave is, in truth, the best outcome he could hope for!” The girl, Zhu Meng, was finally softened by pity and took the initiative to plead on Xi Duorou’s behalf.

“The best outcome? He merely lost a horse...” Zhang Qian was baffled and instinctively blurted out the question. But when he saw the girl gently shake her head at him, he instantly understood what she was trying to tell him.

The reason Xi Duorou had done everything in his power to muddy the waters today was to preserve the dignity of the entire Tubo embassy. Once Zhang Qian had kicked him out of the contest, he had become the very culprit who had brought shame upon the embassy. If he dared return alive to the lodging today, he would likely be secretly executed on the envoy’s orders at the very least, and if not, then his hands and feet would be severed and he would be reduced to slavery or beggary.

So after waking from his stupor, the man had immediately made an important decision: to sell himself out, and never return to his homeland for the rest of his life.

Indeed, even before the contest had begun, he had already been arranging his escape route. If he won, he would naturally hold his head high; if he lost, he would lose himself to the Tang as a slave in order to escape a fate even more miserable than slavery itself.

Once he understood this, Zhang Qian no longer suspected Xi Duorou of being a spy. He sighed and nodded lightly.

“Very well. Xi Duorou, if you wish to stay, then stay. It just so happens that my estate is still short of a horse keeper.”

“Thank you, Master! Thank you, Master!” The sobbing stopped abruptly. Xi Duorou crawled forward a few steps, wrapped both hands around Zhang Qian’s boots, and bowed his head to kiss them.

Zhang Qian was kissed so thoroughly that gooseflesh rose all over him. He quickly sprang aside and loudly ordered, “Stop making a scene. Stand up at once and hold my mount’s reins. In our Great Tang, we do not have the custom of biting people’s boots at every turn!”

“Yes, Master!” Xi Duorou rolled himself upright and went limping to lead away the mount that had originally been his own. On his green and swollen face, there was not the slightest trace of hatred. On the contrary, there seemed to be a faint sense of relief in every movement.

Because of his interruption, the girl finally had enough time to quietly wipe away the tears hidden in her eyes and the wildly growing thorns in her heart.

As for Zhang Qian, he now had even less chance to sense the girl’s complicated mood. The two of them nodded to each other. They wanted to exchange a few polite words, but neither knew where to begin. In the end, they could only smile awkwardly and bow lightly to one another.

“It is getting late...”

The moment they noticed that even their words and gestures had matched one another, both of them felt their faces grow hot. They hurriedly shut their mouths. Then, finding that silence only made matters more awkward, they hastily bowed again.

“Miss Zhu, let us leave today’s matter at that. I still have business to attend to, so I shall take my leave first!”

In the end, it was still the man’s burden to bear. Zhang Qian’s mind steadied ahead of the rest of him, and he promptly took his leave.

“Then I shall not detain Brother Yongzhao any longer.” The girl smiled and nodded gently. Then she could not help shaking her head, and with a trace of stubbornness in her voice, she quietly corrected him, “Please let Brother Yongzhao know that my surname is Yang, not Zhu. Zhu Meng is a Tibetan word, and it means something much the same as a concubine!”

“You, you are Jincheng, Princess Jincheng?” Even though he had already guessed that the girl’s identity was no ordinary thing, Zhang Qian was still struck dumb by the word “concubine.” The exclamation burst from him before he could stop it.

Yes. If she were not Princess Jincheng, who was about to be married far away to Tubo, then the day she saw a little rabbit abandoned by its parents, she would never have been so heartbroken.

And that day, when he had relied on drink and spoken recklessly about the court’s policy of sending a princess to Tubo in marriage, he would never, in his drunken stupor, have faintly heard her voice.

“Brother Yongzhao, thank you.” At the time, Zhang Qian had thought those words were only an illusion. But at this very moment, after discovering that the illusion had in fact once been real, he found that he could not feel the slightest bit of joy.

He only felt a heavy, aching pressure in his chest, so intense that even his breastbone and spine seemed unable to bear it. Every breath he took became dreadfully hard.

“Zhang Qian, what nonsense are you thinking?” He secretly jabbed his own palm with a fingertip and forced himself to steady. “You have only met her twice. She is a princess, the emperor’s daughter, the future queen of Tubo!”

A prince charming marrying Cinderella is only a fairy tale.

But a princess marrying an ordinary man is not even granted the right to become one.

Poison can be countered with poison.

Pain can also be eased by pain.

The very thought that even fairy tales had never once told of a princess marrying a commoner made Zhang Qian’s heart feel a little less heavy. He forced himself to stand straight and smile more naturally, preparing to apologize to Princess Jincheng. Yet when he lifted his head, he found the girl suddenly smiling brightly at him.

“Brother Yongzhao is so clever with his jokes!” Her smile was radiant, like a blossom glistening with dew beneath the morning clouds. “A princess is a body worth a thousand gold. How could she gallop about outside as I do?”

“You, you are not Princess Jincheng?” Zhang Qian’s eyes widened round again. Although his chest still felt tight and painful, his breathing was no longer as labored as before.

Why was that?

He did not know.

At that moment, he did not have the heart to think about it. He stared straight at the girl, at a loss for what he should say, yet hoping that she would tell him more.

“Brother Yongzhao is joking again. A princess is the daughter of an emperor, so of course she should bear the imperial surname Li. As for me, I am Yang. I am the lady-in-waiting who comes with the bride, the one who accompanies her in marriage.”

Clearly sensing the expectation in his eyes, the girl smiled at him again and explained in a low voice.

And yet, immediately afterward, she realized that this explanation had been entirely unnecessary.

It was unnecessary to the point of becoming a wall, rising abruptly between them and blocking their gazes and breaths alike, sealing them off so firmly that not a crack remained.

So what if she was not Princess Jincheng?

She was still going to be married far away to Tubo.

For everyone else, what difference was there between a royal consort and a Zhumeng?

Forcing a smile, she began to step back slowly. Then, turning swiftly, she leaped onto her mount, shook the reins, and raced away. “My surname is Yang. I am General Zhang’s niece. Brother Yongzhao, thank you for today’s kindness. Qingxing takes her leave first. Until we meet again!”

“Until we meet again...” Zhang Qian seemed unable to get another word out in time. He was not even sure whether he had the right to say anything at all. He could only suppress the sourness and pain in his heart and bow forcefully toward her retreating figure.

So she was not Princess Jincheng, but Yang Qingxing.

No, Qingxing ought to have been a girl’s name that only existed in the twenty-first century. In the Tang, she should have been Yang Qingxing!

Which was it, Qingxing or Qingqing? All at once, Zhang Qian was so vexed that he nearly went mad. He realized that he had not even heard her name clearly.

The hoofbeats had been too urgent, and the girl had left too hastily.