"Wu-bing, if we just leave the Golden Longevity Star and Jade Guanyin in the Marquis of Changxin Estate, could something go wrong?"
Shen Xinzhu held her qin and, dressed as a maid, quietly followed behind Lu Wu-bing as they waited for the princess estate's guards to report back.
Worry clouded her face. She had not even been very interested in her usual cat-teasing lately.
It was not that she was making conversation for the sake of it. The princess estate was guarded with three layers outside and three layers within, thousands of men protecting it.
Like when they had left the Marquis of Changxin Estate yesterday—the princess's ceremonial procession had stretched for two or three li.
Anyone who did not know better might have thought she simply loved extravagance. But those in the know understood that this was not protection at all. It was surveillance.
With checkpoints set up layer upon layer, even meeting her once was no easy matter.
"Senior Sister Xinzhu, you underestimate my uncle. Noble lineages pass down martial arts through the generations. Other descendants may produce a few rotten fish and spoiled shrimp, but every heir to a title has been a martial arts prodigy tempered through grueling training since childhood.
"And from childhood to adulthood, they have a group of personal soldiers around them, men who devote themselves to martial arts. There may not be many of them, but they can still cultivate ten or twenty experts.
"This is the guarantee that allows a noble family to regain favor. To spend the accumulated strength of ten generations in bitter martial training, hoping to be valued once more—perhaps that sounds a little grandiose. But an inheritor of a title can never be a useless good-for-nothing.
"What matters is that they can be summoned to fight, and