ITVCFITB CHAPTER 66

 Chapter 66 — Safe Return

By the tenth month, the first snow had already blanketed the north.

Nights bit far harder than days. Ghost-Swallow warriors shivered at the perimeter, stealing swigs from their hip flasks to keep the cold out.

“This damned weather again.”

“Could be worse. If we’d come a month or two later, we’d be icicles.”

“You got more wine? Lend me two sips.”

“Two sips is all I’ve got. Your watch is done soon, go draw your own.”

“In this kind of cold, those Great Xia lot won’t dare come at night anyway.”

Shift change came and went. Darkness thickened. Even the main command tent snuffed its candle.

The camp sank into a deeper hush. Most were asleep. The sentries yawned so hard their jaws creaked; a few were dozing on their feet.

That’s when night does its best work.

While the Ghost-Swallow soldiers settled in for a warm, dreamless sleep, shadow after shadow slipped in from the rear. Outriders on the fringe had their necks snapped where they stood, no sound, only bodies thumping softly into snow. The shadows drifted nearer the big tents, a mute tide, cutting down one man after another.

Until the fires climbed.

“Don’t get greedy,” Li Mingjin told Wei Linmu, who was carving through targets with unholy delight. “Once the torches are lit, we leave.”

Tonight’s job was simple: burn the enemy’s grain. If they’d come to Xia to steal food, then let them try marching without any.

And it wasn’t just this camp, two more depots would be ash before dawn. No rations, no fight.

They’d found the granaries and set the fires. As soon as the flames caught, Li Mingjin ordered the retreat, again, and still no one was allowed to linger.

Inside the Ghost-Swallow camp, everything went to chaos.

“What’s happening?” the Great Prince barked, yanking on an outer robe.

“Fire, my lord! The camp’s on fire!”

“Enemy raid! Enemy raid!”

“Water! The grain’s burning, move!”

The blaze ran everywhere, grain and tents alike going up like tinder.

The Great Prince sent riders after the raiders, but Mingjin’s men had already scattered to preset exits, vanishing into the dark.

Half a quarter-hour later, everyone reached the rendezvous. Headcount: not a man missing.

For the first time, Wei Linmu discovered that following Li Mingjin was more intoxicating than any full-frontal charge. He’d walked in disliking the “parachuted” Third Prince, pampered, probably soft, and with a mediocre blade. A few operations later, he found himself addicted to Mingjin’s angles: exploit, feint, vanish. It was fun to run the Ghost-Swallowers ragged.

And watching them eat crow felt great.

“Rest up,” Li Mingjin ordered. “We regroup with the main force at first light. Then we break them piece by piece, like we planned.”

A single roar from the unit: “Yes, sir!”

---

While Mingjin carried out the quiet half of the plan, Luo Shuyu continued to dance with Prefect Zhu.

Two days after the manufactured gate-rabble, Wei Linyuan had posted troops around the Third Prince’s residence. The place was now sealed tighter than a drum. Zhu, assuming his own plot still unseen, kept showing up to offer tender condolences, moral ointment on the very wound he’d salted. Mantises and cicadas, indeed; he never noticed the yellow sparrow behind.

Time, meanwhile, was exactly what Wei Linmu needed to finish digging into Zhu. With enough proof banked, Mingjin could walk home and clap irons on him at once.

They still had to confirm which banner Zhu truly flew.

Today, Luo Shuyu hid in the study, reading and sketching to steady his pulse. He kept counting the same worries: Was Mingjin frozen? hurt? Did he have a doctor with him?

Shadow Nine arrived with a small packet. “Master, from General Wei.”

Shuyu broke the seal. His brows lifted.

Good.

Mingjin was unharmed. Two days earlier, they’d burned the enemy’s stores; now, allied with troops from Lang City, they’d smashed the Ghost-Swallow vanguard.

Mingjin was alive, and the merit was real, no one else could steal it.

That was enough. All that was left was to wait for him to walk back through the door.

They kept the message from Zhu. Together with Wei Linyuan, they spun one final thread.

Turnabout is fair play: Wei’s men quietly spread the “news” of Li Mingjin’s death on the field.

A day later, they deliberately hauled a “corpse” into the city.

Luo Shuyu played his part on hearing it, he “fainted” and stayed behind closed doors.

Upon hearing Mingjin was “dead”, Prefect Zhu could barely keep the grin off his face.

He sent word upstream immediately.

But before that message could travel, Wei Linyuan nabbed him red-handed and had him trussed like a hog.

Shadow Nine returned to report the arrest and the evidence. Luo Shuyu wiped the deliberately pallid powder from his face with a steaming cloth. Finally, he could stop acting.

Suddenly, warmth hugged his skin.

And a pair of arms cinched around his waist. He started, whipping around into a bristly, stubbled face.

“Yuer,” Li Mingjin murmured, “did you miss me?”

Shuyu blinked. Mingjin was home.

Then his expression flipped; he flung the damp cloth into Mingjin’s face. “Where’d this tramp come from? Someone, throw him out!”

Mingjin grabbed tighter at once. “Don’t be angry. I won’t keep you in the dark again.”

Shuyu didn’t struggle. Tears he’d held back for days pricked and slid the instant he saw Mingjin alive.

“Don’t cry,” Mingjin said, ditching the cloth to draw him in.

The more he said don’t, the faster Shuyu’s tears fell. The image of Mingjin riddled with arrows from the last life flashed fresh. For all the spine he put on, the moment “missing, life or death unknown” reached him, he cracked right down the middle.

Mingjin guided him to a chair. “They told me. You caught the ‘single script’ with those five men and Zhu as well.”

Leaning against his shoulder, Shuyu snorted. “And you didn’t warn me first. If I hadn’t caught it early, how much filth would’ve stuck? You took Wei Linmu with you. What if Wei Linyuan had turned on you and left me to fend for myself?”

“That was my fault,” Mingjin said at once. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’re planning a next time?” Shuyu arched a brow.

“No, no, never again.”

He only glared.

Mingjin bumped their foreheads. “Feel that? I’m back in one piece. Tomorrow I’ll go rough up the little bullies who upset you.”

That dragged a laugh out of Shuyu despite himself. He palmed Mingjin’s cheeks, so much beard, then wrinkled his nose at his clothes. “Go bathe. You reek.”

“Not until you stop crying.”

“I’m crying because you stink,” Shuyu muttered, giving him a shove. “Go.”

Hot water had been readied. Mingjin shaved, scrubbed, and came back human.

Coals glowed in the brazier. Shuyu towel-dried his hair while Mingjin recounted the last few days.

“We set twin plans before marching,” Mingjin said. “Zhu’s channels heard Plan A. We executed Plan B.”

“And the enemy ‘cooperated’… how?” Shuyu asked, eyes bright. Nothing was more attractive than Mingjin in “serious” mode.

“If they’d been real Ghost-Swallowers, they wouldn’t have,” Mingjin replied. “So we borrowed men from Lang City and dressed them as Ghost-Swallow troops. We staged a ‘collapse.’ All the faint hearts bolted. Those five? I let them run. The others we bound and kept under watch in our camp.”

“Send back the messengers, seed the rumor of defeat, and all the claws in the city come scratching for the command seal,” Shuyu summed up.

“Exactly. Zhu finally stuck his head out. We’ve never had a cleaner angle to seize him.” Mingjin’s mouth quirked. “We took the risk and bought ourselves a night to burn their grain. Once hunger hit, we hammered them back so fast their own parents wouldn’t know them.”

“You must have looked very heroic,” Shuyu said dryly.

Mingjin flopped, aggrieved. “We lay in the snow, waiting for them to drop off and nearly froze to death. Only the liquor kept us from turning into sticks. War is misery. Imagine the hardships the Founders went through.”

Shuyu mussed his hair. “You’re the one I’m most impressed with.”

“Oh?” His eyes warmed. “How so?”

“Taking a realm is easy. Keeping it is hard.”

“You’re always right.” Mingjin tipped his chin toward the bed. “We’ve washed. I’ve shaved. I’m home. Shouldn’t we… rest?”

Given the last few days, Shuyu relented, combed his hair smooth, and followed him under the quilts.

Mingjin, however, was anything but restful.

“Weren’t you tired?” Shuyu managed between breaths. “You said, rest.”

“This is resting,” Mingjin replied solemnly. “How could I be tired of this?”

“Liar…”

“Focus, Yuer. I’ve been holding back for days.”

“…”

It was, undeniably, a sleepless night of a different kind.

---

News of Mingjin’s return hadn’t yet reached the capital. What the court had were reports that he’d been lost in enemy territory. Memorials snowed down: the Third Prince was reckless, unfit to command, indifferent to soldiers’ lives.

At the same time, on the strength of the Fourth Prince’s ledgers and lists, the Lin clan’s star began to fall.

Day after day, the Emperor left court fuming.

No one worried more over Mingjin’s fate than he did, but he had to wait for the front’s messengers like everyone else. Powerless, he took to visiting old General Wei after court to talk flowers and birds.

As for the Lin case: it grew. Too smoothly, perhaps. Even Lin Guifei, usually quick to weep in the Emperor’s study, had fallen strangely, ominously quiet.

Something was wrong. He couldn’t name it.

Word that Li Mingjin had driven the Ghost-Swallowers back to their own grassland arrived while the Emperor was hearing the Fourth Prince’s latest progress. Relief loosened his chest.

That relief had no time to settle.

The doors of the Imperial Study banged open. The Eldest Prince strode in wearing armor.

“Father. Fourth Brother,” he said evenly. “Please remain where you are.”

A palace coup.

---

Author’s Note:
Third Prince: “Wife, today you’re a newly crowned monarch and I’m the overbearing regent. I storm the palace; you threaten suicide. But I’m too ambitious to let you die so naturally, we must… share the dragon bed.”
Luo Shuyu: “…”

(…and no, Mingjin, that is not a constitutional provision.)

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Little note(s):
Single script: A metaphor for collusion or shared falsehood, likely derived from the idea of everyone 'reading from the same script'