On the third day after the wedding.
Gu Moran sat in his study, flipping through the system panel.
Halfway through, a golden notification popped up in the upper right corner.
This time, the text wasn't white.
It had a border.
And it was flashing.
[Congratulations, host! The favorability of all six beauties has risen, with a cumulative increase of +27.] [First milestone reward triggered!] [Reward one: Skill card ×1: Horsemanship, Northern Territory style, including core techniques such as taming horses, controlling the reins, and shifting your center of gravity through turns.] [Reward two: Marrow-Cleansing Pill ×1: Reshapes the meridians, cleanses the marrow, and repairs longstanding hidden injuries to the body.]
Gu Moran stared at the words "Marrow-Cleansing Pill" three times over.
He looked down at his hands.
Pale, thin, and slender.
He knew full well what he had done to this body.
He visited brothels every few days and drank from morning to night. Even the imperial physician had put it politely.
Your Highness's constitution is depleted, your qi and blood are deficient, your kidney essence is unstable, and your spleen and stomach are weak and cold.
To put it simply.
Weak.
Otherwise, how could he have six beauties at his side and still have a heart as calm as still water?
He took out the Marrow-Cleansing Pill and swallowed it straight down.
It dissolved the moment it entered his mouth.
A surge of heat spread from his stomach, climbed up his back, then branched out into his limbs.
First came the itching.
It crawled out from between his bones, making his soles go weak and his calves tremble.
Then came the aching.
Wherever the heat went, that part of him swelled with pressure.
Gu Moran braced himself against the edge of the desk and sat back down, clenching his teeth without crying out.
Only the soft crackle of candle flames sounded in the study.
The scent of ink on the desk pressed down the medicinal fumes, and his nose was filled with bitterness.
Once the aching passed, numbness rose in its place.
From his shoulders and back to his waist and abdomen, then to his hands and feet, his whole body was taken apart and rearranged.
The final moment was the hardest to endure.
His bones settled down, and his muscles began to tighten.
It wasn't pain.
It was as though someone had tightened every part that had been loose for twenty years in one go.
Gu Moran pushed himself up against the edge of the desk.
As his palm pressed down, the rosewood desk creaked softly.
He clenched his fist a few times.
He had strength now.
Not the hollow strength of a man putting on a brave front after drinking.
Real strength, coming straight from his bones.
He rolled his shoulders.
His shoulders and neck felt lighter, and his lower back no longer felt hollow.
And he hadn't even shat through his pores like in the legends. Not bad.
Gu Moran looked down at the other reward card.
[Horsemanship, Northern Territory style]
A name sprang to mind.
Murong Xue.
The one who had thrown a knife beside his ear on their wedding night.
She had also given him three words.
You're not worthy.
Azure Wolf Courtyard, the rear gate, the training ground.
It wasn't a long route, but there was enough room to ride.
Gu Moran sat at his desk for a quarter of an hour, going over every way he could make a fool of himself.
Making a fool of himself was fine.
Falling to his death was not.
Once he had it all worked out, he called for Uncle Fu.
"Go to the horse market and buy a short-legged horse with a black mane."
Uncle Fu listened with a bow.
Gu Moran added, "It doesn't need to be big, but it should be sturdy and not too wild-tempered. Bring it to the residence within half an hour."
Uncle Fu accepted the order and withdrew.
Gu Moran got up to change.
Off came his brocade robes and jade crown.
He dug out a set of short riding clothes, tied the cuffs tight, tucked his trouser legs into his boots, and bound his hair in a ponytail.
The man in the bronze mirror no longer looked like a prince.
He looked more like someone who had just crawled out of a stable.
Gu Moran took a couple of looks and was quite satisfied.
"All right, keeping it simple today."
He spoke silently in his mind.
Activate.
The golden skill card shattered into motes of light that sank into his body.
An unfamiliar sensation shot up from his calves.
His inner thighs tightened, his waist and abdomen gained a sense of control, and his weight naturally settled on the front third of his feet.
He raised a hand and grasped at the air twice.
His fingers knew how to grip a mane.
How hard, at what angle, when to loosen, and when to press down.
His mind had never learned it.
His body already knew how.
Half an hour later.
In the front courtyard, Gu Moran took the short-legged, black-maned horse Uncle Fu had brought him.
He stepped into the stirrup, mounted, and rode two test circuits around the courtyard.
It felt completely different from before.
Before, when he mounted, he was himself and the horse was the horse.
Now, when the horse moved, his waist moved with it.
Their steps matched.
Their rhythm matched too.
Northern Territory horsemanship wasn't flashy.
It was practical.
He squeezed the horse's sides and headed for Azure Wolf Courtyard.
The gate to Azure Wolf Courtyard was open.
Murong Xue squatted in the open space, sharpening a blade.
A whetstone rested on two bricks, with a curved saber laid across it.
She held the blade down with one hand and pushed the stone with the other.
Stone dust fell to the ground, and the edge gleamed coldly.
Batuer squatted beside her, passing her water.
Every time Murong Xue checked the edge, Batuer passed her water.
"Princess, you only sharpened that saber yesterday."
"It's not sharp enough."
"If you keep sharpening it, it'll get thin."
"Thin means light."
Batuer shut up and rose to gather dry firewood.
Hoofbeats sounded outside the courtyard gate.
Murong Xue didn't look up.
"Who is it?"
"This prince."
The whetstone stopped.
Murong Xue raised her head.
Gu Moran stood at the courtyard gate, holding the short-legged, black-maned horse by the reins in his right hand.
He wore short riding clothes, his cuffs tied tight and his hair bound high.
He had a different air from the brocade-clad wastrel he usually was.
Murong Xue looked at the horse first, then at him.
"Why did you bring it here?"
"To ride."
"You're riding?"
"You too. Together."
"Ride together? You and me?"
Gu Moran nodded.
Then he said a sentence in halting Northern Territory speech.
Murong Xue's hand loosened on the blade.
The wood knife in Batuer's hand fell to the ground.
Translated into the language of the Central Plains, he had said-
I've come to invite you to ride alongside me.
By Northern Territory custom, an invitation to ride side by side wasn't flirtation.
It meant treating the other person as a comrade-in-arms.
Not a wife or concubine.
Not an appendage.
Someone who could travel the same road and fight at one's side.
A prince of the Central Plains had come to a Northern Territory princess's courtyard and said those words.
No matter how terrible his pronunciation, it was enough to make a Northerner look up at him.
Murong Xue stood.
She stared at Gu Moran for a moment.
"Who taught you that?"
"I found it in a book myself."
Gu Moran was perfectly frank.
"My pronunciation is awful. Please make do, Princess."
Murong Xue sheathed her saber.
"This horse won't do."
She turned, walked to a corner by the courtyard wall, and untied another horse.
It stood a head taller than the short-legged horse.
Gray-white all over, with a thick mane, it pawed at the ground with its front hoof, scraping chips from the bricks.
Gu Moran looked at the horse and quickly weighed things up in his head.
The short-legged horse was the newbie village.
This one was sending a newbie out of the village to fight an elite monster.
But if he refused now, his invitation to ride together would have been for nothing.
Murong Xue wouldn't remember that he knew the proper courtesy.
She would only remember that he hadn't dared get on the horse.
Gu Moran handed the short horse's reins to Batuer.
"All right."
He walked up to the gray-white horse.
The horse snorted and tossed its neck, nearly knocking him backward.
Murong Xue stood to the side without a word.
Gu Moran raised a hand and placed it on the horse's neck.
The moment his palm touched the horse's hide, the skill card began to take over his body.
His fingers found a tendon along the side of its neck.
He pressed down, neither too hard nor too lightly.
The gray-white horse snorted again.
This time, it didn't toss its head.
Gu Moran grabbed its mane, stepped into the stirrup, and swung himself up.
The movement was far from graceful.
But it was steady.
The horse turned halfway around on the spot.
He gripped it with his legs and used his waist and abdomen to rein in the turn.
The horse stopped.
Batuer watched him, her mouth moving, but she said nothing.
Murong Xue swung herself onto her bay horse.
Her movements were much more deft.
The horse's tail flicked, and she was already settled in the saddle.
"There's a training ground behind the prince's residence."
She gathered the reins.
"Three laps."
With that, she urged her horse forward.
Gu Moran clenched his back teeth and followed.
To reach the training ground from the Azure Wolf Courtyard, they had to pass through a back gate.
Batuer ran ahead to open it.
The two horses charged into the training ground, one after the other.
Hooves kicked up the packed earth, and the smell of dust mixed with sweat rushed into his nose.
The first lap.
Wind rushed past his ears.
Hooves hammered the ground, the vibrations making his chest feel tight.
Gu Moran held his back too straight, his weight too far back.
As they rounded a bend, his body lagged half a beat behind the horse, and he swayed in the saddle.
The saddle rubbed the insides of his thighs raw and hot.
The skill card had given him the ability.
But his body hadn't yet adapted.
Knowing how to drive didn't mean you could drift right off the bat.
Up ahead, Murong Xue glanced back at him.
"Heh."
The sound was short.
The insult packed plenty of punch.
Gu Moran heard it clearly.
His jaw clenched.
If I fall off, I can forget about conquering her today.
I might as well change my name to Gu Disgrace.
The second lap.
He lowered his waist.
His weight shifted forward.
As they rounded a bend, he leaned inward with the horse.
The horse's jolting no longer threw him outward.
Once.
Twice.
He began to find the rhythm.
The gray-white horse's ears twitched, and its pace steadied too.
Murong Xue didn't look back.
But she sped up.
Not to shake him off.
To see if he could keep up.
Gu Moran squeezed the horse's flanks and lowered the reins.
The gray-white horse surged forward by half a body length.
The wind stung his face.