The prince stepped on me to get to the top, I angrily flirted with the enemy's hostage

Grains of sand swirled past the camel bells, and the royal city looked like it was coated with a layer of gold foil in the sunset. The shadows of the battlements of the city wall were cast on the sand dunes, creating a winding darkness.

Su Rou pulled the reins, her eyes half-closed as she squinted in the wind.

She did not rush to step into the gate of the royal city, but just stood quietly in the wind, slowly stroking the horse's mane with her fingertips.

The fine dust slid from the temples into the collar, causing a slight itch.

She is in sight.

The undergrowth, taverns and half-collapsed beacon towers between the city gate and the moat seemed scattered, but they were actually arranged into a killing formation.

The crossbowmen from the east were hiding in the shadows behind the broken wall, with a glint of their short sword visible from the side of their armored waist.

Further away, by the well, a woman drawing water had a thin blade hidden at the bottom of her bucket.

Even the camel dung in the wind smells of rust.

She curled her lips.

So this was their excuse for choosing the royal city as the place for peace talks.

As long as she goes in, she will be trapped in a jar with enemies on all sides.

The sarcasm that had been brewing in my heart for a long time slowly melted away.

She never believed that there was any peace in this world. Only when the hunter gave up his position could the prey survive.

Then the reins were shaken lightly, and the horse turned silently and made a semicircle in the wind and sand.

The inn stood at the end of the deserted road with lights on. The four characters "Zui Li Qian Kun" had been worn away by the wind and sand until only remnants of gold remained, but the flags were still fluttering, as if welcoming her.

She dismounted, her skirt bringing up fine sand as it brushed past the threshold, and her boots landed silently on the ground.

There were only three tables of people in the inn: a couple of merchants, an old woman in a veil, and Andre.

The candlelight flickered, he raised his eyes, his amber pupils burning with small flames in the dim light.

"Not going in?" he asked.

She shook her head: [The people inside are waiting for me to enter the cage.]

She brushed the dust off her sleeves, sat down, and crossed one leg, her ankle swaying in a lazy arc in the candlelight. [Waiting for the Poison Woman.]

Andre looked at her and said, "Only the witch doctor tribe can cure your poison. Are you so sure about your friend?"

She smiled, tapping the table with her fingertips, like playing a very light hu xuan tune:

Why be afraid? At most, you'll spend your life in the wind, which might not be a bad destination.

When she finished speaking, even she herself was slightly dazed.

It seemed as if these words were not spoken to Andre, but were written for the future without her.

If the old woman couldn't save her, she would be doomed.

She had been with him through thick and thin all the way to this point, but she had never thought of entrusting the rest of her life to him, not even a single call for help.

The night was as dark as a huge curtain that had been lowered, and the sound of camel bells outside the window was gradually fading away.

The wick burst into a spark and the candle wax rolled down.

At the same time, the Poison Lady arrived at the post station outside the royal city.

She carried a black lacquered wooden box, which contained seventy-seven kinds of snow ginseng poison inducers that she had collected across the desert. The corner of the box was tied with silver thread to the half of Su Rou's bracelet that had been blackened by the poisonous thread.

However, the royal city was not like the Chigu Pass she was familiar with. The wind and sand were blinding, she did not know the way, and she had no idea which inn could hide the phoenix of the royal family.

She picked up the tortoise shell with her skinny fingers and simply set up a small fortune-telling stall on the roadside. She pressed the wooden box under the Bagua cloth and sang in a hoarse voice - "Predict good and bad luck, break up marriages, and explain cause and effect", as if this could bring Su Rou's fate.

The wind and sand swept across the paper talisman in front of the stall, and the strokes of the word "夙" were blown into pieces and then stuck back to the paper.

The poisonous woman raised her eyes, and her face, which looked like old tree bark, trembled.

She saw the "Drunk Universe" flag hanging high in the distance. The flying phoenix embroidered on the end of the flag was exactly the same color as the fire pattern on the toe of Su Rou's boots.

Two miles away, the beacon fire was even more intense.

Gong Yu's red military flag was inserted into the throat of the Broken Valley, and three thousand black armored soldiers blocked the only shortcut for the coalition forces of the three countries to support Wumuhan.

The wind lifted the dusty tassel of his helmet, and the cracks in the armor were covered with sand, which made people feel cold.

The cavalry on the opposite side were lined up, with white mist coming out of the black horse heads, and the flags were embroidered with griffins and trefoil flowers of different colors.

Gong Yu raised his sword, his voice piercing the wind. "You are living in your own land, why would you want to collude with the Eastern Desert?"

There was a burst of sneers from the enemy camp. The leading Hu prince raised his voice, "The old wolf with a broken leg can't even pull the reins. Who would be afraid of you?"

"The royal family of the Great Desert has surrendered to the Southern Kingdom. Why would you, Young General Gong, be here working for that little emperor?"

They didn't take Gong Yu seriously.

Even if so many of them join forces, can't they take over a small desert and the southern country?

The laughter pierced the eardrums like cold iron, and the wind and sand suddenly became bloody.

Gong Yu said no more and pointed his sword towards the sky.

The sound of drums rose, and the whistling of horse hooves and swords simultaneously tore through the silence.

The three-flag coalition army crashed into his thin dike like three iron waves.

After one stick of incense, the sand dunes turned red.

Gong Yu's black armor was stained with blood so that the underlying color could not be discerned. The rain of arrows grazed his left arm, leaving a burning pain, but he did not move even a step.

The enemy arrow whistled towards him again, but he cut it into two pieces with his backhand, and slashed the tip of his sword diagonally with determination.

Finally, the enemy camp sounded the horn.

crazy!

His father defeated ten thousand with a thousand, and he, as his son, can resist ten thousand with a hundred!

The generals of the Three Kingdoms did not expect that a young commander would become more courageous as the battle went on!

It was almost dark, and the only sound in the sea of ​​sand strewn with corpses was the howling wind.

Gong Yu half-knelt with his knife in hand, blood dripped from his fingers onto the sand and was sucked dry in the blink of an eye.

He did not look back at the mountain of corpses.

Su Rou was still far away from the wind, and a more dangerous arrow was aimed at her chest.

He must stay alive to keep this defense for her.

The lights in the inn flickered red. When the poisonous woman pushed the door open and walked in, she brought with her a frost of the late night, and even the lights flickered three times.

"Miss, I'm late."

Su Rou was holding her chin and listening to Andre talking about which street in the royal city had the crispiest Hu Bing. The corners of her eyes were curved like a crescent moon.

The appearance of the poisonous woman made her eyes suddenly brighten. She stood up, and her black fur coat slipped off, revealing a circle of dark blue poison marks on her wrist.

She was very happy to see the old woman, but she opened her mouth but couldn't say anything, so she silently took out a pen and paper.

Over the past few months, she has gotten used to communicating with people by writing, but when she sees familiar friends, she can't help but be so happy that she forgets that she is now mute.

[You're so slow! I've been poisoned and rendered mute. Do you have any solution? Quick, help me check. There are surveillance cameras everywhere. Did you notice anything unusual when you arrived?]

The old woman took a look and said, "Don't worry, young lady. No one is following me. I came here the day before yesterday, but I didn't know where you were. So I set up a fortune-telling stall in the city, hoping that I would be lucky enough to meet you. My luck was a little off, but I did meet someone from His Royal Highness Prince Yu, and they brought me here."

The old woman slammed the wooden box on the table and quickly opened the lock with her fingertips. The bitter fragrance of snow ginseng and seven-petal red orchid instantly filled the room.

Su Rou rolled up her sleeves, revealing the veins on her snow-white forearms that had already turned dark blue.

That is a sign of poisonous fire attacking the heart.

"If you were half a day later, your heart meridians would be in chaos." The Poison Woman said in a deep voice, cutting Su Rou's fingertips with a silver knife.

The blood droplets rolled down and landed in the ice bowl prepared in advance, condensing into a red agate, which was instantly dissolved by the ginseng liquid.

She pushed the medicine to Su Rou's lips, and Su Rou drank it all in one gulp. The bitterness made her wrinkle her nose, but she smiled freely.

See Su Rou drink the antidote.

The old woman looked at Andre who was leaning on the bed, bowed respectfully and said, "Your Highness, it's been a long time since we last met. I hope you are well."

Andre had seen the old woman before.

When he was wanted and on the run, he stayed with the old woman for a while.

The old woman was half Andre's benefactor.

He nodded and returned the greeting with the same desert etiquette, "You're welcome."

The old woman said, "As you should, you are now the king of the desert."

As soon as the medicine entered the lungs, the chest tightness was instantly relieved.

She let out a long breath and looked up to meet Andre's gaze.

The look in his eyes seemed to be tightened by the night, mixed with a bit of unspeakable pain.

Andre suddenly understood...

Su Rou's strategies never required him. She even prepared a chess piece to save herself at the last moment.

And he was just a runner-up.

The self-reliant protection and the ambiguity that grew little by little in the windy desert north were easily shattered by her words.

The poisonous woman looked at Su Rou and said, "You have been poisoned for some time. You will not be able to speak for a while, but you will recover slowly. Girl, what are your plans next?"

Su Rou wrote: [Kill the Eastern Chieftain Wumuhan.]

After drinking the antidote, the poison lady told Su Rou to rest early and she went outside to find a place to stay.

It was late at night and Su Rou was lying on the couch, closing her eyes and trying to fall asleep.

The candle wick popped softly.

"Creaky——" someone came in.

This flavor is Andre...

She felt him approach her window.

He wanted to reach out and touch the loose hair on her temples, but his fingertips froze in the air and became half-clenched, and finally he slowly withdrew his fingers.

After three days in the inn, Su Rou was able to speak.

Late at night, the wind outside the inn stopped and the moonlight was as cold as broken silver.

Su Rou pushed the door open and walked out, her bare feet making a light sound on the wooden corridor floor.

She leaned on the railing and looked up at the moon that was almost full.

Gong Yu should have intercepted the reinforcements of the three kingdoms by now. The wind was blowing wildly on the desert. I wonder if he was also looking up at the same moon.

She once told him that the nights in the desert were too long and people tended to mistake the moonlight for the way home.

And he replied that the moonlight could not illuminate the way home, but it could illuminate her back.

At that time, she laughed at him for being sour, but her heart felt a little sweet.

Now she is standing in the wind, and he is still bleeding in the sand.

Thousands of miles apart, it seemed as if there was a very thin silk thread pulling them together, she was at one end and he was at the other, and neither of them dared to reel in the thread first, for fear that the other would fall into the abyss.

Suddenly, a dark shadow passed through the courtyard.

Su Rou tightened her fingertips, and the dagger slid quietly into her palm.

The black shadow stopped three steps away, and the moonlight illuminated the hunched silhouette of the Poison Woman and the wooden box wrapped tightly in her cloak in her arms.

"Young lady," the poisonous woman said in a low voice, "the Eastern assassins have already infiltrated the caravan. They will attack when the city gates open at dawn tomorrow."

Su Rou narrowed her eyes: "The hour of the rabbit? Then we'll attack the city at the hour of the tiger."

The Poisonous Woman was stunned: "There are still people in the city——"

"That's why they'll be caught off guard." Su Rou curled her knuckles slightly, as if planning a cold killing game. "Gong Yu is holding Wu Muhan back from the outside. If there's chaos in the city, they won't be able to attack from both inside and outside. I'm just taking advantage of the east wind."

A very soft sigh came from the shadows of the corridor.

That's Andre.

He walked into the moonlight, the lines of his shoulders and back as if they were cut by a knife. "If you want to attack the city, I will accompany you."

Su Rou turned around, the light of the lamp and the moonlight intertwined and fell into her eyes, shattering into thousands of cold stars.

At that moment, Andre almost thought she would refuse, but she suddenly smiled and said, "Don't hold me back."

Under the moonlight, the shadows of the two people were cut by the columns, one part overlapping and the other separated.

The wind blew, the lamplight swayed, and the shadow trembled, like two souls that were unwilling to come together completely and were testing each other in the dark.

Andre's throat tightened.

If this battle can keep him in her eyes, what does it matter if there are broken arms and bones?

Farther away, the dark walls of the royal city lay dormant, unaware that they would soon face an unexpected backfire at dawn.

The wind blew up sand, and the sand hit the iron walls, making a crackling sound, like a death knell ringing in advance.

Su Rou looked up and saw a faint light in the sky, and her heart suddenly felt softer than ever before:

She thought, if someone had to win this game, then let Gong Yu stand shoulder to shoulder with her and win the world.

If she loses, she is willing to be buried in this sandstorm and accompany his bones.

It’s just a pity for my father and mother. They are already old and have to raise another child.

When she thought of her daughter, Su Wan, and her mother playing in the yard with her daughter, she couldn't help giggling.

The knife has not yet been unsheathed, and fate owes her a real heartbeat.

As the night deepened, the lights in the inn went out one by one.

In the last glimmer of light, Su Rou draped her cloak over the back of the chair.

Andre tucked the quilt for her, then suddenly leaned over, his breath falling on her ear. "Go to sleep. Tomorrow morning... I'll pave the way for you."

His voice was almost a whisper, but it was like a hot brand.