Chapter 40

If a man is better looking than you, has a more impressive physique, and possesses a more distinguished temperament, then your task is to ensure he looks as beautiful as possible when he is forced to dress as a woman.

Expecting a prince to attend to himself is impossible. Inanna stood on her tiptoes, smoothing the silver hair that fell against his cheeks to cover his slightly too-rugged face. She adjusted his veil to hide his broad, mountain-like shoulders and tightened the drawstring of his bodice. Because Izmir was well-proportioned—broad at the top and narrow at the waist—it gave him a slender appearance, allowing one to overlook his lack of a bust; a simple adjustment of the veil was all that was needed.

Fortunately, it was still early. The horizon was only just beginning to lighten, the city lights had not yet been extinguished, and the air held a faint dampness that made everything look somewhat blurred. Inanna checked him over repeatedly, satisfied that the guards would not be distracted by the masculine leg hair beneath the prince’s sheer skirt. Only then did she follow Saru toward the palace exit with peace of mind.

Izmir remained silent throughout the journey. He did not possess the natural hip-swaying gait of a woman, yet he did not walk with the boisterous carelessness of an ordinary man; instead, he moved with a steady, composed grace. Seeing this, Inanna breathed a massive sigh of relief. If Izmir had lost his temper, shown dissatisfaction on his face, or caused any unnecessary trouble, it would have been a true catastrophe. At the thought of this, she gained a shred of respect for the prince’s ability to bend and stretch—it was certainly good that he wasn't overly rigid, though she wondered if he would kill her to silence her afterward.

Saru had long since discarded his soldier’s uniform, rolling it into a bundle and tossing it into a corner. He had transformed back into that arrogant, lavishly spending merchant, smugly leading two "dancing girls" through the Assyrian palace with practiced ease.

From the inner palace to the outer court, and through the two gates leading to the front courtyard, they encountered no obstacles. In fact, the soldiers joked with him with a familiarity that suggested they knew him well, asking what fine goods he had brought for King Ar-An this time and if he had left any common wares for them to enjoy. Saru handled them with ease; even if he hadn't prepared women as a toll, he could at least afford to pay for their carnal favors.

When the final palace gate came into view, it seemed even the heavens could not bear to see them escape so easily, and some trouble inevitably arose.

The captain guarding the gate had likely been drinking, and even though he knew Saru, he could not help but paw at the two "women" behind him. If the target had been Inanna, she might have endured a touch to the cheek or hand, but if he had pushed his luck further, even she would have snapped.

But he had the misfortune of setting his sights on the tall, imposing Izmir. One could hardly blame him; in this attire, although Izmir was a bit large and sturdy, some people had a taste for that. His frame was balanced, tall, and lean, and the sliver of firm, slender waist exposed between the bodice and the skirt made him look quite capable in bed. The silver hair peeking from his veil, paired with the amber eyes in his beautiful face, made it quite understandable why someone would take a liking to him.

Inanna knew things were about to go wrong. She hadn't expected the prince to endure it, but she didn't anticipate that before the captain’s hairy hand could even touch the prince’s face, it would be gone in the blink of an eye, leaving only a blood-soaked, fractured bone.

This raw, close-quarters violence felt like a horror movie to Inanna. She stood frozen, unable to see the guards rushing forward or hear their angry curses. Only when a blade was nearly brought down on her face did she snap out of it, picking up a sword from the ground to defend herself. Yet, she could not bring herself to kill, unable to match Izmir, who stood beside her, expressionlessly hacking through enemies as if they were vegetables.

To the Assyrian soldiers, Izmir’s lightning-fast disarming and brutal strikes made it clear that he was no easy mark. Saru, having traveled for years, was also no weakling; he had previously been playing along with Inanna. Thus, the woman who clearly held back and hesitated to strike became the weak link among the three. The soldiers were not fools; they began shifting their focus toward Inanna, realizing that if they caught one, the other two would be easier to manage.

Izmir sensed their intent. His blade was buried deep in the side of an unfortunate soldier when Inanna’s arm was slashed. She could have held them off if she had fought with her full strength, but her soft-heartedness allowed the soldiers to slowly tighten their circle, as if they were toying with a rabbit. She was on the verge of losing her ability to resist.

Ignoring the blade still stuck in his victim, Izmir pulled off his veil and ran two steps to Inanna’s side, dispatching a soldier who had attempted to sneak up behind her.

A spray of warm blood showered over her like a long-forgotten rain, and her sword clattered to the ground.

She had grown up watching countless films and television shows. During her time at the police academy, she had studied numerous case files: charred bodies, dismembered limbs, slit throats, crushed remains. But she had never killed a person; she hadn't even wounded anyone with a gun. Gu Beikun had never shown his cruel side in front of her. Now, Izmir had used a steel wire pulled from Inanna’s undergarment to pierce an Assyrian soldier’s throat, from one side to the other. When he pulled it out, blood sprayed higher than the bronze gates.

Suddenly, the other soldiers, seeing their comrade with a hole through his neck and blood painting the wall, were deterred and dared not approach.

The three formed a defensive circle. Izmir grabbed Inanna, and when she tried to struggle, seeing his sheer robes soaked in another man’s blood, he slapped her—hard. "Do you want to die here?"

Inanna clutched her face, silent. The anxiety triggered by the sheer volume of blood was effectively suppressed. She watched Izmir stand in front of her, silently wiping the gore from his face with his hand before squatting down to pick up the sword that had fallen earlier.

Izmir did not look back, yet he knew what she was doing. Once Inanna had regained her composure, he pressed his side against hers, his hand climbing onto her arm. He whispered in a voice only they could hear, "Don't look back later. Just run toward the main gate."

As soon as he finished speaking, he shoved Inanna behind him. Seeing her attempt to flee, the soldiers rushed to block her path, but Izmir and Saru were too fierce. Izmir, in particular, would have been a warrior capable of facing a hundred men on the battlefield had he not been burdened by them.

Furthermore, they had reached the outermost perimeter of the Assyrian palace; capturing him was nearly impossible for these soldiers.

But Izmir did not get the chance to display his astounding martial arts, for at that moment, a thunderous roar erupted from the horizon, as if the gods themselves were enraged, surging toward the city of Assyria.

The earth-shattering sound appeared at the first light of dawn, leaving even the sleepless Izmir stunned, not to mention the ordinary people who had yet to wake. By the time they reacted, the filthy, mud-laden water—which had already destroyed the palace’s riverside walls and the front courtyard—had surged over the highest guard posts of the palace, rushing toward these innocent people, who had been fighting each other just moments ago and now appeared remarkably insignificant.

Inanna remembered Izmir’s instruction not to look back. She thought Saru had played some dirty trick or that the city was experiencing a sudden earthquake.

Then she realized Izmir’s voice was right behind her. She swore she had never heard the prince sound so rare and flustered; he was bellowing at her to climb a tree. Inanna felt the ground beneath her feet trembling; beneath the deafening roar, there was clearly the sound of rushing water, just like the howling torrent she had heard the day she fell into the Nujiang River.

Her legs nearly gave out, but a surge of desperate survival instinct lent her extraordinary strength. She scrambled onto the lowest branches of an oak tree, kicked against the trunk, and climbed upward with all her might.

Inanna did not look back once; she feared that if she did, she would lose her grip and fall. She remembered the scenes of the tsunami submerging New York in *The Day After Tomorrow* vividly. As an ordinary person, never mind a tsunami—she stood no chance against even a common flood.

Moreover, the Mesopotamian plains offered no high ground to act as a barrier or buffer. The floodwaters were unstoppable, turning everything in their path into a new riverbed. Houses and city walls were like pebbles, pushed, crushed, and leveled in an instant.

Below her, Izmir kept urging her to move faster. This oak tree, planted in front of the palace, had a trunk as thick and ancient as the ancestors of the Assyrians; its canopy was almost taller than the palace walls. Even so, the old tree shuddered under the impact of the water, emitting a groaning "creak" as it began to tilt in the direction of the flood.

Inanna’s waist ached and her legs were weak. At the critical moment, Izmir reached out and shoved her buttocks with all his might, finally ensuring she didn't fail halfway, allowing her to scramble to the highest point.

She was not ungrateful. Once she had steadied herself on a branch the thickness of a man, she straddled the trunk, reached down, and grabbed Izmir’s arm, hauling him up. Together, they pulled Saru up as well. The moment Saru climbed aboard, a peak of the flood surged past them, carrying an Assyrian soldier’s helmet; it swirled near their branch, leaving a trail of white foam before washing away into the distance.

Only then did Inanna dare to look back. Behind her, the city of Assyria—which she had tried so hard to infiltrate and then struggled so desperately to escape—was gone, leaving only an endless expanse of water. It felt as if her experiences over the last dozen days had been nothing but a dream.

But it was no dream. The bronze statue of the winged king hunting lions atop the highest temple of the Assyrian palace drifted past them, bobbing in the flood. The only alabaster pillar from the banquet hall where they had just been floated by, and the immeasurable wealth accumulated over years within the palace was swept away by the deluge.

But that was not what terrified Inanna. She feared seeing the armor, the spears, or even a commoner’s straw sandal, a girl’s reed basket, a palace concubine’s fine silk, or a little wooden calf carved by a father for his child.

The owners of these items were likely beneath the tree where Inanna sat—struggling in agony, grasping helplessly, bubbles rising from their noses, their throats burning with the suffocation of death, their lungs filled with the muddy water that had crushed their homes, finally turning into the riverbed silt and nourishment for the roots of water weeds.

Inanna’s face turned deathly pale. Izmir, as a prince of a nation, even though he hated Ar-An enough to drink his blood and eat his flesh, could not help but sigh at the sight. Yet, unlike Inanna, this had nothing to do with his Hittite people. He was already calculating how Ar-An would have to grovel to beg other nations for aid.

Just as he was thinking of how to exact his revenge, Inanna suddenly disappeared from his sight. He was startled, only to find that she hadn't fallen into the river; instead, she had precariously hooked her thighs around a branch and was hanging upside down, reaching out to a mother and child. The mother, looking like little more than a girl, was clinging to a piece of rotted wooden door, and upon the door was a wailing toddler. The two were so weak they seemed like leaves about to be blown away by the gale.

Izmir was furious. He did not understand why Inanna would risk such danger to save them. Even hanging upside down, swayed violently by the wind, she was still two arm-lengths away from the pair. Not only was she unlikely to save them, but she might also lose her own life in the process.

He lay flat on the trunk, clutching Inanna’s lower body, feeling blood on his hands—the soft inner thighs of Inanna had already been deeply scratched by the rough branches. But his words telling her to return were blown away by the winds of the surging tide. Inanna’s black hair was whipped across her face, and the inverted position caused blood to rush to her head, making her dizzy. Yet, in her eyes, there was only that arm reaching out to her in desperation.