Chapter 67: Holding Your Hand to Walk Through Mountains and Cross Rivers

After receiving some comforting words from Grand General Qin, Minister of War Lord Luo gradually calmed her agitated emotions.

She leaned quietly against the grand general’s embrace.

Autumn insects carried the fragrance of wild chrysanthemums, spreading a yellowish hue across the entire realm. In the distance, the slanting rays of the setting sun were gentle and warm. Autumn life, autumn sounds, autumn scenery, autumn sentiment.

It was as if the warmth of the sunlight plucked at the strings of the heart, luring all desolation and discouragement back to its initial tranquility.

Luo Yunyao nestled in Qin Jinghao’s arms, whispering a barely audible romantic endearment: "So you are my sunshine, my sun."

When Luo Yunyao had brought back the maid Jintai, it was to piece together the sunlight in Jintai’s eyes. For at that time, the Minister of War thought: If this were her beloved, the grand general, she would bring him sunshine as well.

Irrational, paranoid, and consumed only by power—an emperor who only knew how to fear Qin Jinghao’s military genius and formidable authority—it did not matter if he shattered Qin Jinghao’s sunshine.

She, Luo Yunyao, was here. She, Luo Yunyao, would be Qin Jinghao’s sunshine, in this life and for all eternity, world without end.

Yet, as it turned out, she had not yet possessed the capacity to be his sunshine, while he had already taken his place as her sun.

Perhaps time passed slowly, or perhaps it was fleeting. Perhaps they had leaned against each other for a long time, or perhaps they had merely lingered for a brief moment.

Small green square-grid stamens surrounded by a circle of yellow, slender petals, with elongated vines intertwining in all directions, lacked any rigid pattern yet radiated an indescribable beauty. The time it took for a single wild chrysanthemum to bloom; the time it took for a string of wild chrysanthemums to blossom, their downy, tender flower heads witnessing how the grand general and the minister of war saw only each other in their clear eyes. The time it took for wild chrysanthemums to blossom all over the mountains and plains dyed the passage of years with a fragrance that fell somewhere between fresh grass and osmanthus. Within this fragrance, a man's jade-like, immortal countenance and a woman's osmanthus-like, spiritual grace were outlined. Flowers bloomed along the path, and a pair of jade-like figures stood together.

Naturally, Luo Yunyao could never be someone perpetually quiet and poetic like a painting. If she truly embodied poetry and painting, the Minister of War must also be dynamic.

To transform poetry and painting into dynamic action meant lowering her head in deep thought, her eyelashes trembling slightly, her lips gently biting down on her teeth, placing the tip of her brush against her lips—an action so restrained, yet carrying ascetic, wild, and myriad emotions. To embody painting meant to wield the brush and splash ink, letting the flow of clouds and water guide the brushstroke, painting from the heart. That unrestrained elegance imbued every single movement with its own unique charm, every smile and brushstroke freighted with affection.

Therefore, the Minister of War later took the grand general by the hand. At first, she managed to moderate her pace to suit his wishes, walking step by hesitant step, even the edges of her robes falling in straight, unadorned lines.

Later, perhaps startled by a stray butterfly fluttering past, the Minister of War—or rather, Her Royal Highness the Princess Biluo—could no longer restrain her temperament and lunged straight at it. From then on, she bounced and skipped uncontrollably, laughing and chasing after it. Grown even bolder, she grabbed the grand general’s hand, shouting amidst the fragrance of wild chrysanthemums in this desolate place known only to the blossoms across the hills, letting the lines of their robes fly. With the unbridled abandon of wild creatures born of these very mountains, she began to sprint wildly.

Her Royal Highness Princess Biluo held the grand general’s hand, their fingers tightly intertwined.

They ran across the mountain ridge and down the slope, gathering the hems of their robes and clutching them within their palms, holding each other's hands, entrusting themselves entirely to one another as they waded together across a river.

They walked gently past the side of a cricket, cupping a handful of dead cicadas to give them a burial.

Luo Yunyao asked Qin Jinghao in a low voice, as if afraid of disturbing the slumbering cicadas: "Seventeen years from now, in the summer, will they come out again and make the whole summer vibrant once more, right?"

The grand general diligently dug a pit, using fallen yellow autumn leaves to serve as a coffin, and replied in a similarly gentle, low voice: "Yes, the heart is here."

Yes, because the heart is here, the dream is here, the writing is here, and eventually, it will all return here.

On the way back, Her Royal Highness the Princess exhibited a bit of a temper, for Luo Yunyao had originally wanted to have the grand general try outdoor cooking and barbecue.

Being a modern person, she had longed to witness the dazzling, advanced skill of making fire with a drill and wood.

Yet an untimely pigeon had to come and ruin things—or rather, some unromantic person had to come and interrupt this peach-blossom seclusion where the two of them wandered the ends of the earth together, solely possessed by one another.

Looking at the pigeon perched on Qin Jinghao’s finger, Luo Yunyao gritted her teeth. She brandished the firewood she had painstakingly gathered and prepared at the bird, and said with utmost indignation: "This lady is going to roast you right now."

Whether the pigeon truly possessed human intelligence or simply harbored an innate animalistic instinct for survival, the snow-white dove trembled violently, shaking off a few gorgeous white feathers. Breaking free from Qin Jinghao’s loosely cupped hand, it eagerly took flight into the sky.

Qin Jinghao glanced briefly at the slip of paper in his hand. He turned his head to look at Luo Yunyao, who was listless and dispirited due to the pigeon's arrival, and refrained from commenting on her unrefined, rough self-proclamation. Instead, he sighed resignedly at her and said, "Since you wanted to eat this pigeon, why did you go and frighten it? Now look, you've scared it away, what are we going to eat?"

Her Royal Highness Princess Biluo had been anxiously awaiting a lecture from the scrupulously polite grand general, her head lowered in apprehension because she had suddenly burst out with vulgar language in a fit of anger, not even daring to look at his expression. Yet after waiting anxiously for quite a while, Luo Yunyao was met with precisely those words from the grand general.

Princess Biluo gained a clear understanding of just how entirely devoid of principles the grand general’s pampering of her truly was.

That pigeon was clearly well-trained, wasn't it? It was obviously a tool the pigeon's master frequently used to communicate with Grand General Qin, right? How difficult must it be to train such an obedient, person-recognizing pigeon as a messenger? How could they possibly eat it just because of Luo Yunyao's fit of pique? Even if the Minister of War hadn't been acting out of spite and genuinely wanted to eat the bird, they still couldn't!

Grand General Qin, what am I supposed to make of you? Although Luo Yunyao inwardly uttered such critical, exasperated monologues, deep down she was overjoyed by Qin Jinghao’s dismissive, casual remark.

It was his unconditional indulgence toward her—because the grand general knew that the Minister of War was not an extreme or excessive person. Moreover, the grand general also deeply enjoyed being with Luo Yunyao like this, with no one to disturb them except Mother Nature.

Or perhaps they were, in truth, the most innocent and beautiful inseparable part of nature itself.

Luo Yunyao's natural retort had already proudly risen to her lips: "Who says there's nothing to eat? Is our grand general's remarkable martial prowess just for show? This princess does not believe Grand General Qin is all flash and no substance, and you certainly won't let this princess down, right? Come, there's a sparrow over there. This princess has never tasted sparrow meat, so today I'll have the good fortune to try it thanks to Grand General Qin." Yet with the words practically on the tip of her tongue, Luo Yunyao fell unusually silent, watching quietly as the sparrow fluttered its tiny wings and flew away.

The fragrance of wild chrysanthemums seemed to grant Luo Yunyao a sense of clarity and rationality. She dropped the firewood in her hand onto the ground and said: "Isn't someone looking for us? What's there to eat? Saving a pigeon's life accumulates more merit than building a seven-tiered pagoda, did you know that?"

Qin Jinghao looked at her with a half-smile, unsure whether he had ever heard that saying or not.

Her Royal Highness the Princess had no mind to guess at such things. She leaned her head toward the slip of paper in the grand general’s hand. Halfway there, feeling she might be acting somewhat impolitely, she pulled back and spoke in a tone that appeared nonchalant, though Qin Jinghao knew she cared deeply: "What did it notify Grand General Qin about? Is it a matter of importance?" Fearing she had asked too urgently, she corrected herself and asked the question that should have been asked first: "Whose pigeon, and whose letter?"

Qin Jinghao seemed amused by Luo Yunyao's silly question of "Whose pigeon and whose letter?", a smile of helplessness breaking across his jade-like face. He replied: "Whose pigeon it is, that's whose letter it is."

Although he spoke in a teasing tone, the grand general knew Princess Biluo lacked the leisure and mood for flirtation. Therefore, he proactively held out the letter in his hand toward Luo Yunyao to make it easier for her to read, and replied in his pleasant, low voice with slow nonchalance: "It's nothing urgent. If you still wish to, we can continue."

Naturally, he meant if Luo Yunyao still wanted to have an outdoor barbecue. The grand general seemed to have already developed the conscience not to eat a pigeon painstakingly raised by a longtime friend, but to hunt forest birds in the mountains instead.

However, after hastily scanning the contents of the letter, Luo Yunyao showed no inclination to praise the grand general for his newfound revolutionary awareness. On the contrary, she felt a strong impulse to thoroughly scold him, or even knock some sense into him.

"If I'm not mistaken, Ouyang Jingxu is saying that my framed case is about to go to trial in court, right?" Luo Yunyao asked, letting the gentlest possible tone slip past her lips right beside the grand general's ear.

The grand general nodded nonchalantly and matter-of-factly.

"So! Eat your grandfather's barbecue! This lady of yours as a suspect is still outside the prison! Won't people think this lady fled to avoid justice? If that happens, won't my charges be set in stone?! Won't they stop looking for the real culprit?!"

The former Princess Biluo of the previous dynasty took several deep breaths to calm her anger. As for the words above, the Minister of War simply lacked the courage—or perhaps the heart—to actually say them to the grand general.