"Military tally?"
"Yes, the Gale Divine Army Camp was built by my father and mother together. They once defended the city with 10,000 men and defeated the 100,000-strong Northern Barbarian army. This pair of mandarin duck pendants is a military token and also their love token. The generals of the Divine Army Camp are 'they', not just 'he' or 'she'."
"If one wields only the male or female pendant, one can only draw upon a maximum of ten men from the army to perform minor tasks such as escorting goods, guarding, gathering intelligence, or assassinating. Only when the two pendants are combined can one truly command the entire Gale God Army camp."
"You mean...it was your father who saved you back then—"
Chu Hongluan slapped her forehead and changed her words: "So twelve years ago, the person who saved me was actually you."
She carefully recalled that night when Mo Yu came to her door with the jade pendant. She had preconceived notions and thought he was there to take advantage of her kindness, and her first words revealed his true intentions.
Damn it, it must be because I've been spending too much time with those brainless bastards these past few days.
After a long while, no reply was heard from Liu Jinghong.
When I looked up, I saw that his face was flushed.
"Um?"
"Let me make this clear first, I didn't do these things! They're just parts of a fabricated memory in my head! Please don't be angry when you hear that!"
Chu Hongluan was puzzled: "Don't be angry, just tell me."
“It was indeed I who saved you back then.” Liu Jinghong closed her eyes tightly for a moment, looking like she had nothing to lose. “At that time, our country’s internal and external troubles were suppressed, and we gradually became prosperous and strong, without any war for many years. So when I was six years old, they gave me this pair of mandarin duck pendants as a birthday gift.”
"Why is it so hard to talk about this?" Chu Hongluan didn't understand.
"Ever since the emperor found out that the mandarin duck pendant was with me, he has been summoning me to the palace eight hundred times a day, and he is thinking all day about how to fool me out of this mandarin duck pendant."
Liu Jinghong cautiously glanced at her expression, then hesitated before continuing, "That day at the palace banquet, being called aside for a private talk was already annoying enough. I'd just come out when I saw you fall into the water. I couldn't just stand by and watch you drown, but after saving you, I was freezing too, adding insult to injury. And then, after you recovered, you kept asking me my name. In a fit of anger, I threw half of the jade pendant at you..."
At this point, he swallowed hard again.
"At the time, I was thinking that when I got back, I'd say that I fell into the lake in the Imperial Garden, and a young girl happened to pass by and saved me, so I gave half of the jade pendant to my savior. If the emperor asked what the girl looked like, I'd say I was too frightened to remember and let him search for her like a needle in a haystack. That way, he wouldn't have time to keep bothering me. And if he's really capable and actually finds you... well, that would give me a lot of peace and quiet..."
The more he spoke, the softer his voice became, and the last few words were so low they were almost inaudible.
Although he didn't actually do it, he still felt flustered saying it in front of his sweetheart.
"......."
Chu Hongluan was both amused and exasperated. Yet she had to admit that this was indeed something he would do.
After all, he was single-mindedly pursuing freedom. Accepting the military tally was tantamount to accepting responsibility. It's likely that his parents forced it on him, and he had long wanted to throw it away, but he didn't want to benefit the emperor, so he casually passed half of it to her, which is called shifting the blame eastward.
It's really not a big deal.
From Liu Jinghong's brief description of the old emperor, it's not hard to see that he wasn't a tyrant, and his methods were relatively swift. Otherwise, over the years, he could have easily found various opportunities to frame and eliminate the Marquis of Zhenbei, then seized the military seal, instead of elevating a General of the State to oppose him.
Or they might send assassins or robbers. It's definitely not about summoning a child to the palace eight hundred times a day.
Therefore, even if the emperor finds her, he can at most use threats and inducements to get the jade pendant back; he will not actually harm her.
To get his half of the jade pendant back, the emperor still had to trick Liu Jinghong into giving him the other half. If Liu Jinghong didn't give it to him, he would have wasted both of them. After all, what could an emperor do with half a jade pendant if he needed to mobilize ten people?
Even if, hypothetically, there really were someone who knew the truth about the jade pendant and was skilled enough to find out who the culprit was, and who stole her jade pendant and then stole Liu Jinghong's jade pendant, combining them into one, it wouldn't matter.
In peacetime, military tallies are no different from souvenirs.
Even with a complete military tally, mobilizing troops still requires the emperor's decree; otherwise, it's considered treason. The emperor would immediately order a full-scale attack, relying on numbers—500,000, even a million troops! They could wipe you out in no time!
"Didn't your dad beat you when you got back? Didn't he ask you who you gave the jade pendant to?"
"I did get beaten up." Seeing that she wasn't angry, Liu Jinghong blinked innocently. "But since I've already been beaten up, wouldn't it be the same as suffering for nothing if I confessed? So, in the end, I insisted that I didn't remember."
"......"
You've got a really good plan.
"However, the emperor has always been timid and hesitant in his work. He wanted to find the jade pendant, but he didn't dare to go to great lengths. He just secretly sent people to investigate, and they searched for many years. Before he could find it, the half of the jade pendant in my hand was snatched away."
Chu Hongluan tilted her head and thought carefully. It seemed that three years ago, there was news that Prince Liu had been assassinated.
"Mo Yu sent people to cause an earthquake?"
"I wasn't sure before. But now it seems so."
"Hmm. This Gale God Army camp sounds like a great help if we can get the Emperor's decree... I need to think of a way to get the other half of the jade pendant from Mo Yu, and teach him a lesson while we're at it."
Chu Hongluan had a general idea in mind.
The rain outside had lessened by then, so Liu Jinghong got up to say goodbye.
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