While Shen Biqun ate, her lips never parted to show her teeth, and she only sampled each dish lightly. Song Qingshu could not help but laugh. "The ancients said that beauty could satisfy hunger. I never understood what that meant until I saw Biqun eating. Only now do I finally grasp the True Intention of those words."
Shen Biqun set down her chopsticks and shot him a reproachful look. "Brother Song is making fun of me again."
Song Qingshu picked up his chopsticks and piled plenty of food into her bowl before saying, "I was only worried for you, watching you eat like that. How could you possibly get full?"
Looking at the bowl before her, heaped like a small mountain, Shen Biqun looked troubled. "I really can't eat that much."
"Eat a little more. You need to keep up your strength before we set out," Song Qingshu said. He was not urging a young woman to eat for no reason. Seeing how delicate Shen Biqun looked, he truly worried that she would not be able to endure the journey. Time was pressing for him now, and he could not afford delays.
"I'm not as fragile as you think." Shen Biqun recalled how she had been seized in Jiangnan and taken beyond the frontier, enduring the journey as a prisoner all the way.
Noticing the stubbornness in her eyes, Song Qingshu roughly guessed what she was thinking. "This journey is far longer than the one from Jiangnan to Liao Country. We must first go to Sichuan, then travel downstream to Jiangnan—a winding journey of several thousand li. The road is longer, and we will have little time to rest. How can you manage if you do not take better care of yourself?"
"We're going to Sichuan too?" A trace of