Chapter 2 First Encounter Xie Wenjun picked up the hairpin that had fallen from the haystack and stabbed it straight in...

It was nearly midnight, and the city gates were tightly shut.

"By order of the Crown Prince, expedite this task and open the city gates!"

Holding the Crown Prince's decree, Chen Liangyu addressed the soldiers on night watch at the city gate.

The Imperial Guards stationed along the main street and the Yong'an Prefecture troops have been mobilized, and the Sixteen Guards, which have been neglected for many years, have also been mobilized to search the streets and alleys.

Footsteps, torches, weapons, and sounds mingled together in a chaotic cacophony.

Chen Liangyu was deeply depressed. "If Princess Jiangning was really kidnapped by the Northern Yong bandits, at this rate, even several Princess Jiangnings wouldn't be enough to kill."

Jingming chimed in tacitly, "They're practically beating drums and gongs to warn the thieves." He then asked a nearby soldier, "Where's your boss? Call him over, let me see what kind of talent he is!"

The soldier bowed and replied, "Reporting to Deputy General Jing, this area is the inspection area of ​​the Southern Army. The commander of the Southern Army has retired to his hometown, and now Deputy Commander Gao Guan is in charge. I will go and call Deputy Commander Gao here immediately."

The Sixteen Guards of the Southern Court?

Jingming crossed his arms and looked at Chen Liangyu with a questioning expression. "Don't you want to say something?"

“I haven’t taken office yet, so don’t hold me accountable. There’s still a distance to that abandoned house, I’ll go there first. When the people from the Southern Office arrive, tell them to put out their torches, and everyone stay put and wait for my signal.”

Jingming said, "I'll go. You're not familiar with Yongdu."

“It’s alright,” she said, “she has a natural talent for finding her way around, almost never forgetting where she is. Your lightness skill is not as good as mine, so I’ll have to do the climbing over walls and breaking into courtyards.”

Be careful.

Chen Liangyu returned to the alley entrance, dismounted, tied the reins to a horse post under a banyan tree, and ventured alone into the dark alley to investigate.

The walls and houses are dilapidated, and the dark alleyways are overgrown with weeds, clearly showing signs of long-term neglect.

From time to time, you can see a piece of dried-out white bone stuck in the corner of the wall.

The alleyways were numerous and complex. Chen Liangyu searched among them but found nothing. So she lightly touched the ground with her toes and leaped to a higher place.

The deep blue robes blended perfectly into the night.

Chen Liangyu scaled the walls and rooftops high above, finally spotting the suspicious individuals in an unlit courtyard.

She held her breath, using the slope of the roof to conceal herself, and observed every move in the yard.

The men crouched low in the weeds by the wall, looking around nervously, seemingly puzzled by the sudden cessation of the search noises from the soldiers.

Despite their Da Lin attire, Chen Liangyu immediately deduced they were from Bei Yong. After dealing with them for over a decade, trying to fool them with a change of clothes was utterly foolish!

After a moment of silence, one of them began to painstakingly chisel at the wall, while his companion pushed hard from the side.

The houses here are mostly made of adobe and wood beams. They have been weathered for many years and are no longer able to bear the weight. A strong wind could blow them down.

The abandoned house in front of us is already in dire need of repair.

The night was quiet and empty, and even the slightest sound could be amplified. Inside the house, someone was struggling weakly; it was the rustling sound of shoes rubbing against dry straw.

There are people inside.

They wanted to collapse the house. Even if the people inside weren't crushed to death, they would be buried alive under the rubble and decaying wood.

“You little girl have quite the guts, not even a peep. It’s a pity, courage won’t save you in this life-or-death situation,” the man who had chiseled through the wall said. “I didn’t want to kill you, you’d be very useful to bring back to Dayong, but we’ve already alerted the government troops. If you live, we can’t leave. Blame those people searching outside, they’re the ones who forced us into this.”

Chen Liangyu jumped off the roof and landed in the courtyard with great speed. He kicked open the rotten wooden door and slipped into the house. In the dim moonlight, he caught a glimpse of the girl tied to a square chair with a broken leg.

The dilapidated house had half of its beams collapsed, and the roof was letting in half of the night sky.

The girl was young, yet remarkably calm and composed. The moonlight shone into her tranquil eyes, as pale as a lake, yet also carrying a hint of the night's chill.

The kidnappers were alerted.

In the brief moment that Chen Liangyu exchanged a glance with the people inside the house, the kidnappers, weapons in hand, charged towards her. Chen Liangyu immediately drew her sword to meet them, not allowing anyone a chance to approach the dilapidated house behind her.

The clash of weapons didn't last long. She knew her own strength and spared several men. The thieves lay sprawled out, barely able to catch their breath.

A tinderbox ignited a cylinder the size of a candle, and a beam of light shot straight into the sky, exploding into a blinding white light under the bright moonlight, while the air was filled with yellow and blue smoke.

She approached, removed the gag tightly from the girl's mouth, and swiftly cut the ropes binding the girl's hands and feet.

Touching her fabric, one felt it was the finest silk.

Before she could ask, the other person spoke first, "I recognize you."

Chen Liangyu observed her closely; she was not yet a teenager. Although her hair was slightly disheveled, her cheeks were dirty, and the pearl hairpins and jade ornaments on her body had been removed, her demeanor and appearance were still extremely noble, and her tone of voice was very similar to that of Crown Prince Xie Yu.

Chen Liangyu helped the person up, but before she could speak, the other person said her name again: "Chen Li, Chen Liangyu."

Her name and her elder brother's name were taken from mountains and rivers. Her elder brother's name was Huai, and his courtesy name was Linjun; her name was Li, and her courtesy name was Liangyu. When her mother, He Yunzhou, was full-term pregnant with her, Chen Yuanqing was leading his army to fight against Beiyong. His forces were weak and he was imprisoned. On the night she was born, the battle situation suddenly turned around, and the Lin army won a great victory. Emperor Xuanyuan regarded her as a lucky star and bestowed the name "Liangyu" upon her.

In Daqing, when a boy reaches the age of twenty, a respected elder will bestow upon him a courtesy name, representing the hopes and blessings for the child. For a girl, it is already rare enough to carefully choose a given name, let alone bestow a courtesy name. To receive a courtesy name personally bestowed by the Emperor is an unprecedented honor.

Because the emperor bestowed upon her a name that was superior to her family name, people began to call her Chen Liangyu.

Chen Liangyu bowed and said, "Princess Jiangning, please forgive my late arrival to rescue Your Majesty."

Watch out behind you.

A man outside the door leaped up with a battle axe, yelling as he chopped down at Chen Liangyu's head.

"Close your eyes, don't look."

In that instant, Chen Liangyu covered Xie Wenjun's eyes with one hand and held her sword in the other.

A cold glint flashed in the darkness, and the man crashed heavily to the ground, followed by a stench of blood filling the air.

The sword was sheathed, and Xie Wenjun obediently closed his eyes.

Chen Liangyu scooped the person up from under his knees, carried him across the corpse on the ground, walked out of the house, and placed him on the flat ground in the courtyard.

As soon as Xie Wenjun's feet touched the ground, she stared intently at the kidnapper who seemed to be the leader. Chen Liangyu, fearing that she would be traumatized, raised her hand to shield her eyes. The next moment, however, Xie Wenjun picked up a hairpin that had fallen from the haystack and plunged it straight into the man's heart.

Chen Liangyu's pupils suddenly dilated, and his head buzzed as he stood there stunned.

The young and delicate princess was surprisingly ruthless.

Seeing that the person had moved a few times and then stopped breathing, Xie Wenjun lifted a corner of her silk robe to wipe her hands and said, "Please take me back to the palace."

Chen Liangyu snapped out of her daze and remembered the hairpin still stuck in her robe, feeling a pang of pain in her heart.

She wasn't unfamiliar with witnessing T commit murder.

She crawled out of the valley of horseshoes, stepping over mountains of corpses and seas of blood. She was used to the fighting and had become accustomed to it.

But at this moment, a cluster of angelica flowers in full bloom, just as you are admiring their pure beauty and graceful charm, suddenly opens its blood-red maw before your eyes and devours you. Then, while you are still in shock, it licks its lips and transforms back into that harmless cluster of white flowers.

The night was cold, and the torches that lit up the dim alley could not ward off the chill.

Xie Wenjun was dressed in thin clothing, and her delicate shoulders trembled slightly, a sign of the terror of surviving a disaster.

She tried her best to remain calm, but she couldn't hide the lingering fear that was obvious at a glance.

Chen Liangyu tore off the fur coat her elder brother had given her, draped it over Xie Wenjun's shoulders, and half-squatted down to tie the belt. The fur coat was large and heavy even for her, and it completely covered Xie Wenjun's slender body.

Chen Liangyu knew very little about Yongdu, only that there was a concubine in the palace who had been living in seclusion for many years due to madness, and that she had given birth to a princess who was not very noticeable. Later, for some reason, that little princess was raised in the Crown Prince's Eastern Palace.

That's all I know.

Chen Liangyu suddenly felt a tingling sensation between her eyebrows, as if she sensed that someone was watching her. She looked down and was startled again.

What kind of eyes were those?

The darkness was unfathomable, calm yet unfathomable. The torchlight was too weak to even illuminate the depths of one's eyes.

Chen Liangyu came from the shadows of swords and grew up on the blood-stained battlefield. She had seen too many cunning and calculating eyes. Such scheming eyes should not appear on the face of Princess Jiangning at this age.

Despite her young age, she already possessed the beauty of a lotus after frost, her delicate face and gentle demeanor concealing something in the depths of her eyes.

Chen Liangyu felt that this person was strange and that he had to be careful if he had to deal with him in the future.

Before he could think further, Jingming had already arrived with his men to meet him. Chen Liangyu searched the men and found the Beiyong military identification tags on them, saying, "Beiyong outlaws."

Jingming walked up to one of them, looking down at him, and asked, "Who is directing you?"

"Kill them if no one is ordering you to!"

Chen Liangyu glanced at him casually and said, "It doesn't seem like he's being instructed by someone."

Jingming asked, "How did you find out?"

"If someone is giving orders, they should send some useful people, not these useless ones."

Jingming was speechless for a moment: "...That makes sense."

The man who had been shouting struggled, looking ready to fight to the death: "A scholar can be killed but not humiliated!"

Before he could finish speaking, Jingming kicked him back, causing him to cry out in pain. Chen Liangyu sneered, his face filled with disgust and disdain, and said, "This isn't the first or second time I've humiliated you."

Upon exiting the long alley, a large group of people had already gathered. Standing at the very front was a man with a somewhat simple and rugged appearance, wearing a badge from the Southern Government.

Jingming's lips twitched. He was a deputy general on the border, whose authority and status were no match for those in the capital. Even as a deputy commander of the Southern Army whose authority was effectively stripped away, it was not his place to find fault and reprimand him.

After enduring it for so long, Jingming finally lost his temper and shouted, "What are your intentions in doing things so blatantly, completely disregarding the princess's safety?"

He spoke vaguely, without naming names, and it was assumed that he was just venting his frustrations.

Deputy Commander Gao Guan of the Southern Army rushed forward, but tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground, his hat askew. He scrambled to his feet, not even bothering to straighten his clothes, and hurriedly answered Jing Ming's question: "Deputy Commander Jing, our Southern Army only received the news later and rushed here in a panic. The messenger said the princess was missing and ordered us to gather men to search, but said nothing else. We didn't even get a good look at the person before he left."

Chen Liangyu slightly closed his eyelids, frowned, and his expression was even more solemn than when he dealt with those Northern Yong people.

The Imperial Guards were divided into the Northern Guards and the Sixteen Guards of the Southern Guards.

The Sixteen Guards of the Southern Palace were originally imperial guards established at the founding of the dynasty. Later, due to tight military funds at the front, Yongdu abolished redundant officials and reduced redundant expenses, streamlining the Sixteen Guards and merging them into the Southern Palace Guard. The Imperial Guards took over some of the duties of the Sixteen Guards. Later, as the security issues in the streets of Yongdu became a focus, responsibilities were divided, and the Sixteen Guards became primarily responsible for the security of the streets and wards of Shangyong City.

To put it more politely, that's true, but in reality, the security of the streets and alleys was mainly managed and coordinated by the Yong'an Prefecture. To put it simply, the Southern Office had been marginalized and was more like a miscellaneous office sandwiched between the Northern Office's Imperial Guards and the Yong'an Prefecture.

Despite bearing the title of Imperial Guards, they did the odd jobs and tiring work that other government offices were unwilling to do.

At first, the imperial guards, ordered to search for the princess, guessed that she might have been momentarily captivated by the novelty of the common people. Although Yongdu was large, finding someone would be a piece of cake for the imperial guards and Yong'an Prefecture. However, after searching until dusk without finding any trace, they realized the seriousness of the situation and suspected that someone might have done it on purpose.

If something were to happen to Princess Jiangning, someone would have to take the blame, and the neglected Southern Court would be the perfect scapegoat. If something went wrong, it could be said that the Southern Court's extensive search alerted the thieves, leaving them with no way out and forcing them to kill her to cover their tracks.

Looking at the current officials of the Southern Army, they were once the Imperial Guards of the capital, yet now they have absolutely no military discipline or rules. The dignified deputy commander can't even straighten his clothes, and his subordinates are even more lazy and undisciplined.

Incompetent and useless.

Having fallen to such a state, the task of reforming it is arduous and the road ahead is long.

She seemed to understand what a mess Emperor Xuanyuan had left her.

It's like trying to revive a dead horse by any means necessary.

A note from the author:

[Please add "Youthful Resignation Literature" to your pre-order list if you're interested in the synopsis.]