After the wedding banquet dispersed, red candles burned high within the bridal tent, filling it with warm, gentle light.
Tu Xingsun looked at Deng Chanyu, dressed in red wedding attire, tender and moving, and his heart brimmed with joy. All his usual restlessness was gone; instead, he seemed somewhat awkward.
Deng Chanyu lifted her eyes to him and spoke softly, the fierce strength of the battlefield fading from her, replaced by a few traces of a young woman's tenderness.
The two of them thus pledged their lives to each other. From then on, husband and wife would be of one heart, serving Xiqi together. A love born through war finally came to a perfect end in the Xiqi camp, and it also set Deng Jiugong completely at ease, allowing him to submit wholeheartedly to the Zhou house.
Night was black as ink, shrouding the Xiqi camp completely. The clamor of the daytime wedding banquet had scattered, leaving only the footsteps of the patrolling soldiers growing ever more distant in the silence.
Inside the tent, candlelight flickered, its dim yellow glow casting the whole room in loneliness. Huang Feihu sat alone before the table, his fingers gripping a half-cup of cold wine.
The intoxication had long since been blown away by the cold wind of deep night. All that remained was a heart full of surging, complicated emotions, heavy as lead against his chest.
He slowly raised his eyes and, through the gap in the tent, looked in the direction of the Yin Shang capital, Zhaoge. Beneath that pitch-black sky lay the homeland his family had served for generations, the state and mountains and rivers he had once protected with his life.
But now, this clone of his that had remained in Xiqi had already advanced step by step with meticulous