The Road to Glory

chapter 1

In the depths of the ninth winter month, frost lay thick on the ground of the market district. As ox carts rolled over it, ice shards scattered everywhere.

The north wind cut like knives. Wen Yu’s hands and feet had long since gone numb from the cold. She leaned against the wooden bars of the prisoner cage, letting her tangled hair fall down to conceal most of her face. Her chin was buried in a worn felt scarf covered with a thin layer of snow. The clothing couldn’t cover half of her ankles, which were exposed to the elements, wrapped in mud and frozen to a bruised purple.

The shoes dragging on her feet had worn through on the sides, ragged and frayed, the original embroidery on the shoe surface no longer discernible.

That slender spine curved beneath the thin hemp garment, like a lotus stem on the verge of withering yet still refusing to break.

“Watch the road, watch the road—don’t block the way!”

The market was noisy. When Ren Yazi cracked his whip with this shout, quite a few people stopped to point and whisper about the several women in the wooden cage on the ox cart.

“Is Chen Laizi sending people to the Drunken Red Tower again?”

“All the girls in this cart look quite fresh and pretty. Most likely they’re refugees who fled here from Luodu…”

“When dynasties change, it’s all fate. That Hanyang Wengzhu with the title of Great Liang’s First Beauty—if her father the prince had ascended the throne, she would have been a Great Liang princess. Now isn’t she just choice prey fought over by various princes and marquises?”

Some shook their heads and sighed; others’ eyes revealed covetous desire.

The girls in the cart couldn’t help but sob quietly upon hearing these discussions.

Only Wen Yu leaned motionless against the wooden bars. Her entire face was hidden beneath tangled hair and the worn felt scarf, cutting off all examining gazes from outside the cart.

Beneath the disheveled hair, her half-lowered eyes revealed a calm that bordered on numbness, cold as the clear moon.

During the flight as a refugee, she had already heard too many such discussions about herself.

The late emperor had died, and warlords from all directions had rebelled.

The Wen imperial clan had become the deer hunted by lords from across the realm.

Her father and brothers had been defeated in battle and trapped in their ancestral commandery of Fengyang—already at the end of their strength.

Her father the prince had ordered trusted confidants to disguise themselves as a merchant caravan, evading the eyes and ears of various warlords to secretly escort her to Southern Chen. It was both a marriage alliance and a plea for military aid.

Who could have anticipated an ambush en route? She had been separated from her trusted guards and captured by Ren Yazi, brought to this place.

The cold wind intensified. Wen Yu endured the gradually worsening itching and pain on her face, silently continuing to bury her mouth and nose in that worn felt scarf.

She had attempted escape several times without success. Today was her last opportunity.

The ox cart would pass through the market and turn two more corners before reaching Flower Street.

Ren Yazi stopped the ox cart in front of the Drunken Red Tower and shouted toward the old woman sweeping at the entrance: “Quickly call out your Nanny Wu!”