Luo Xuanqing held Ye Xingge close as she flew just above the ground, returning to the vicinity of the county town in only a few moments.
The county town was full of Inspection Bureau men. To keep that damned eunuch Ruan Jinyu from seizing any opening to claim credit, Luo Xuanqing did not even look back. She went straight around the town and came to the riverbank.
Ye Xingge did not want to run into that damned eunuch Ruan Jinyu either. When they reached the place where the horses were hidden, he whistled. The big white horse took the reins in its mouth and walked sideways like a crab, leading the other official horse over.
Clop, clop...
Luo Xuanqing was rather surprised by the sight, but Ye Xingge was nearly exhausted, so she paid it little attention. Worried he might fall and hurt himself, she hung the heads on the official horse, then leaped onto the white horse and sat in front of him.
"If you're tired, lean on me and sleep for a while. Hyah!"
With that, she gave the horse a gentle squeeze with her legs. The big white horse immediately lifted its legs high as it started off, nearly throwing them both.
Ye Xingge had known this would happen. He promptly reached around Great Beauty Luo and took the reins to control the horse.
"This horse only listens to people it knows. I'd better do it. Hyah!"
Clop-clop-clop, clop-clop-clop...
Luo Xuanqing had originally been worried about Ye Xingge falling off, but somehow she had ended up enclosed in his arms to keep her from falling. She felt this was probably inappropriate.
But he had not taken the opportunity to feel her up, so she said nothing. Instead, she grabbed Ye Xingge's arm to keep him from being bounced off.
Ye Xingge rode onward, looking back at the county town along the way.
"Did you catch that female thief?"
"No. We don't know where she's hiding. You've already earned more than enough credit. Ruan Jinyu hasn't achieved a thing, so let him worry about her himself..."
"Oh..."
Ye Xingge was rather disappointed. That woman had nearly scared him to death, and he had spent quite a while feeling and picking at her. Though he had been forced to do it, she certainly would not forgive him. Since she had not been caught, there was no telling whether she would come looking for trouble later.
Hongyu, who had returned backstage to supervise, could not see what was happening here, but she could tell how the two of them were situated. After a moment's thought, she even said:
"With such a good opportunity, aren't you going to give her a couple of squeezes? This is the capital's number one flower vase..."
Ye Xingge could tell from her voice alone that Great Beauty was a little displeased.
After all, hearing over the phone that your blind date was holding another woman would hardly make anyone happy, even if nothing had come of the match yet.
As for why the two women disliked each other, he did know.
Mantanghong and the Flower Judge had similar masters and comparable strength. There could be no second place in martial prowess, so the two were certainly competing in secret.
Originally, their rivalry had been confined to the shadows, and in public they were still strangers. But there were too many idle people in the martial world.
Perhaps someone had deliberately fanned the flames, pestering Great Beauty until she lost patience. One time, she said:
"The Flower Judge was born into a distinguished family, yet she has no sense of greater righteousness. She lowers herself to serve as the court's hound. How could someone so greedy for glory and riches be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as me, Hong?"
The eyes and ears of the martial world's tabloids soon learned of it, and the story spread until everyone knew.
Great Beauty Luo must have been furious when she heard it, and she complained to someone:
"Under Mantanghong, the Mountains and Rivers Association has fallen to a second-rate little faction, unable even to help its allies in trouble. If she can hardly fulfill the lesser obligations of the martial world, what right does she have to speak of righteousness for all under heaven?"
The idle folk passed those words along as well, and just like that, the two began hurling insults at each other from afar.
Ye Xingge had followed all the gossip before, right up until this time, when the two met in person at Shangjin Ferry and really did pull each other's hair. Both had been badly hurt, and both had ended up in his hands.
Now that Great Beauty was urging him on, Ye Xingge certainly could not court death by doing as she said. After they had ridden together for a long while, the endless stretches of rice paddies, villages, towns, and rivers vanished behind them, and the familiar county town came into view...
At the town gate, the embroidered-robed officers remained on high alert, searching for traces of Mantanghong.
Chen Xuance and the constable chief Wang Shouyin had yet to notice the disturbance over in Linyang. They were gathered around a table beside a brazier, discussing how to search for Mantanghong.
Hearing hoofbeats, Chen Xuance immediately rose. When he saw the grand commander riding through the gate with Ye Xingge, who was covered in blood, he was visibly taken aback.
"Lord Luo, what happened?"
"What happened to Xingge?"
Wang Shouyin looked anxious as well.
Luo Xuanqing rode past the gate without stopping, merely tossing the heads to her subordinates.
"Yang Tuyan has been executed. Report it to the capital at once. Have the accompanying physician come to the inn."
Chen Xuance stared at the two bloody heads, momentarily stunned. Then wild delight surged in his eyes. He could already imagine Ruan Jinyu returning without a scrap of credit and Duke Zhang whipping him like a spinning top.
But Ye Xingge did not look to be in good shape, and Chen Xuance was in no mood to celebrate. He hurriedly passed orders to his men, then followed Constable Chief Wang toward the inn.
Clop-clop-clop...
When the white horse reached the Wujian Inn, Luo Xuanqing took Ye Xingge in her arms and leaped into the air, landing in the inn's main hall. She ordered:
"Go heat some water."
"Yes, innkeeper..."
An attendant had already come in to work that day. Startled by the sight, he hurried off to make preparations.
Luo Xuanqing had intended to take Ye Xingge to a guest room on the second floor, but he waved her off.
"I'm not badly hurt. It'll be hard to clean up if I get a guest room dirty. There's a room in the back courtyard."
Luo Xuanqing followed his directions to a side room opposite the kitchen.
The room was normally kept in reserve. It held little besides a table, chairs, and a clean, tidy plank bed.
Luo Xuanqing helped Ye Xingge sit on the bed, then went out to fetch water.
Seeing her leave, Ye Xingge hid Yellow Strip under the bed, then undid his bandages and took off his outer robe.
His robe was covered in blood, but most of it belonged to other people. He had been slashed across the chest, a superficial wound, and Great Beauty Luo's medicinal pill was clearly not cheap. The bleeding had already begun to stop, and the wound was healing.
Ye Xingge gave himself a quick examination. He had barely waited a moment when Chen Xuance arrived in the back courtyard with an elderly physician carrying a medicine chest over his shoulder.
The room was small, so Chen Xuance and Wang Shouyin watched from the doorway. Seeing that Ye Xingge's complexion was still good, they breathed a little easier, but Chen Xuance remained puzzled.
"Lord Luo, you were with him. How did Xingge get hurt?"
Luo Xuanqing handed the hot water to a subordinate to carry inside and stood outside the door as well, looking a little ashamed.
"An unidentified scoundrel showed himself just now, and I went after him. This brat was bold enough to chase after Yang Tuyan and a spy from Eight Pillars Hall all by himself and cut them down."
"What?"
Chen Xuance's mighty frame shook at her words.
"He chased them alone? And brought back two heads?!"
Lying on the plank bed, Ye Xingge raised the dagger in his hand.
"Three. I didn't bring back the small-fry lackey. His corpse is lying in a field outside the town. I took this from Yang Tuyan, and there's this too..."
"Whoa..."
The military officers gathered at the door stared in astonishment.
But Constable Chief Wang Shouyin had watched Ye Xingge grow up and had personally taken him along to catch all sorts of criminals. By now, he was used to it, and he cut in:
"Three is nothing. When I used to teach Xingge hand-to-hand combat, if I saw he couldn't win, I'd have him fight several opponents at once and find whatever he could use as a weapon on the spot. He was as slippery as a loach. Him getting hurt this time is what surprised me..."
"Is that so..."
Seeing Ye Xingge try to remove his wrist guard to hand over his spoils, Luo Xuanqing frowned.
"Lie still! You're not even a member of the yamen. What you took while eliminating criminals for the country is yours to begin with... Huh?"
As she spoke, Luo Xuanqing's gaze sharpened slightly. She entered the room and took the bloody dagger from Ye Xingge's hand to examine it.
Chen Xuance and the others turned to look as well. The dagger had a four-inch blade, silver-white throughout and sharpened on both edges.
Its pearl-white hilt was three inches long, and the guard was shaped like a tiger's head. The whole thing looked like a saber tooth jutting from the mouth of a white tiger...
"This..."
Chen Xuance knitted his brows and thought back for a moment.
"Is that Ravine-Leaping Tiger?!"
After taking a closer look, the military officers at the door were surprised too.
"It really is Ravine-Leaping Tiger, one of the River-Spanning Pavilion's most prized famous weapons..."
"Wasn't it stolen by the 'Gold-Chasing Gentleman'?"
"How did Yang Tuyan get his hands on it..."
Everyone talked at once, full of questions.
Luo Xuanqing turned her gaze to Ye Xingge, who was lying on the plank bed, and looked slightly suspicious.
"You ran into this thing and still made it back?"
"..."
At those words, the doorway fell silent.
The embroidered-robed officers all turned to look at Ye Xingge in unison, some suspicion showing in their eyes.
Ravine-Leaping Tiger was quite famous in the martial world. Its ability, Instant Movement Strike, let its wielder launch a sudden attack across three paces in an instant. An opponent of equal strength would have no chance to react, and even when used by someone weaker against a stronger opponent, it was an extremely dangerous weapon. That was why it had been given the name Ravine-Leaping Tiger.
Ye Xingge had not even entered the Third Rank. No matter how strong he was, he could not be much more formidable than Yang Tuyan. Fighting three opponents at once could be chalked up to solid foundations, but surviving when the other side had such an unreasonable killing weapon really was bizarre...
Ye Xingge felt somewhat aggrieved under their suspicious gazes. Whatever his original intentions, he had fought using his genuine abilities, without the slightest bit of fakery.
Before he could explain, however, the elderly physician tending his wound pointed to the injury on the left side of his chest.
"There's nothing wrong with his account, though surviving it really was a close call."
The Heaven-Observing Pavilion's accompanying physicians usually doubled as coroners, so examining wounds came as naturally to them as picking something up.
The injury to Ye Xingge's chest was not complicated. The military officers looked it over and quickly saw that it had been caused when an opponent with a short weapon attacked through his center line and Ye Xingge turned sideways to evade.
The dagger had struck the left side of his chest in a frontal attack, and Ye Xingge's defense had been so hurried. Unless they had staged the fight together, the only explanation was that the opponent's sudden attack had been too fast for him to keep up with.
And Yang Tuyan's head had been brought back. Surely this could not be a "sacrifice-your-head stratagem."
At that, their suspicious gazes turned to astonishment.
"You can dodge Ravine-Leaping Tiger on reaction?"
"Brother Ye, could it be you knew beforehand that Yang Tuyan had it?"
Ye Xingge himself felt a little shaken in hindsight.
"If I'd known, I couldn't have been hurt. At the time, I saw that Yang Tuyan was certain to die, yet he wasn't trying to flee, so I sensed something was wrong beforehand. Even then, I still didn't dodge it completely..."
"Whoa, then you really did escape death by a hair..."
"If you run into Ravine-Leaping Tiger without being prepared beforehand, there's no way to dodge it. Those reactions are truly overbearing..."
Luo Xuanqing had been listening too. After a moment's thought, she ordered:
"Once Ravine-Leaping Tiger is exposed, its power is greatly diminished. Keep your mouths shut and don't let the news get out."
Ravine-Leaping Tiger was a weapon made specifically for assassins. An opponent knowing you had it and not knowing you had it were two entirely different things.
The military officers at the door were all trusted subordinates, and they nodded at once.
Having finished treating the wound on his chest, the elderly physician now looked at the bite marks on his right forearm.
"These bite marks..."
The officers who had been talking looked over and discovered that the marks on his right arm seemed even more bizarre than the knife wound!
Judging by their size, the bite marks should have been left by a woman...
And the angle suggested she had been leaning back in his arms...
"..."
Everyone looked at Ye Xingge. They had wanted to ask whether he had gone out and been bitten by a girl, but Lord Luo had accompanied him today!
Some of them secretly glanced at Lord Luo, pondering such unspeakable scenarios as While riding back at a gallop, the young man behind her behaved improperly. Lord Luo flew into a rage out of embarrassment, yet could not bear to kill him...