Although his life was saved, Baixun still didn't wake.
"What's wrong? Why is the prince still unconscious?" Maroo cried, pacing up and down nervously. It had been a full day and night since Shoya purged the poison from Baixun's body, but somehow the latter remained in a deep slumber.
They were back in the cavern, which seemed a better place for recuperation than out in the icy cold, and Baixun lay on a tattered straw mat on the ground of one of the little cave rooms. Yuehwa squatted by the side, head tilted as she puzzled over Baixun's condition.
According to Shoya, the prince should have awakened by now given that his fever and inflammation had subsided.
"There is nothing about Prince Baixun's physical condition that is preventing him from waking," Shoya answered.
"Why then?" Yuehwa asked out loud.
With his wounds cleaned up and changed into a fresh set of clothes that they had found amidst the Horanjit stores, Baixun looked like he was merely asleep. It reminded her of her brother, lying still upon the bed of ice beneath the floorboards of the Hwa palace, waiting for her to deliver justice for his death.
"Wait," she suddenly called out. She stood up and walked over to Shoya, holding out her hand. "Give me your sword."
Shoya unhooked the scabbard from his waistband and handed the sword to her, its crystal hilt gleaming under the light from the fire torches. He watched as Yuehwa brought the white stone to one of the visible wounds on the back of Baixun's right hand. A long scratch mark that looked like the product of a sharp fingernail.
Nothing happened, and then the faintest of red swirls appeared within the stone, like a wisp of smoke. It was barely there, unlike the blood-red stain that had formed when Shoya did the same test on her brother.
Yuehwa looked up and exchanged a glance with Shoya.
Dark magic again.
She had thought it sounded suspicious when Maroo described the sudden appearance—and disappearance—of those so-called beasts in the tunnels. Silver eyes. Pointed ears. Curved, talon-like claws. All parts that didn't make up a coherent whole. According to Ru Fei, there had never been any wild animals that traversed the tunnel networks, except for the occasional wild rabbit or fox seeking shelter from the winter storms. Nothing as vicious as the creatures that Maroo claimed to have encountered.
She removed the sword's hilt, waited for the crystal to regain its original clarity, then pressed it against the scratches on Maroo's neck instead.
There was no red discolouration this time.
"Strange," Yuehwa murmured, staring at the silent dragon that curved around the length of the hilt.
If dark magic lingered in the wounds on Baixun's body and was the reason why he could not wake, then why were there no traces of it on Maroo? Had they not suffered injuries from the same cause?
Shoya bent over and inspected the wounds on Baixun's arms and torso again, then he shook his head. "I don't have an answer for this," he said. "Sheng Yun might know something. We'll have to take Baixun back to Muya."
"You will do no such thing!" Maroo exclaimed, looking scandalised by the suggestion. "I won't let you take the crown prince into Feng territory. Over my dead body." He stepped between Shoya and Baixun, spreading his arms out protectively.
Yuehwa's lips twitched. Who would have thought that the coward could one day have the guts to stand up against the White Scorpion?
"That wouldn't be difficult at all," Shoya replied drily.
"Stay back," the Gi adviser warned, even as he was visibly quaking in his boots. When Shoya moved a hand, Maroo let out a shriek and flung himself across Baixun to shield his prince from harm.
Yuehwa clucked her tongue. "Stop scaring him, his heart can't take it," she scolded. She gestured to Shoya to move aside, and the latter obediently retreated to the opposite end of the room. "Adviser Park, you only have two choices right now. One, leave with us and go to Muya, where the chief astrologer of Feng may be able to help Baixun, or two, stay here and find a way to bring Baixun back to Gi yourself. Of course, that necessarily means you'll need to either go back through the tunnels you came from or scale down the mountainside amidst snowstorms. Take your pick."
Maroo blanched. He looked at Yuehwa warily, then at his unconscious prince. Finally, he nodded.
"Fine," he conceded. "We'll go to Muya."
"Good, but I want to make a short detour first,"
"Detour? But we can't waste time like that! What if the prince dies because of the delay?"
"Then you'd best not dally, hmm?" Yuehwa said, her eyes twinkling mischievously. If they were going to help Baixun, then it seemed fair that they got something out of it in return.
#
They stood in front of a yawning passageway, staring into the dark abyss that lay ahead. According to Maroo, their party had not been behind the sudden explosions that had caused the tunnel walls to cave in, and in their haste to escape, they had chanced upon this hidden cave the same way Yuehwa and Shoya had discovered the other.
Maroo had been leading the way, very unwillingly, but when Yuehwa nudged him from behind to get him to go inside, the man let out a piercing scream instead.
Yuehwa scowled and kicked the coward unceremoniously on the behind, stepping over his sprawled body to get through the cleared passageway.
"No! Don't go inside!" Maroo screeched. "What if they're still there?"
"The monsters?" She looked around the darkness, pretending to look terrified for a moment. Then she kicked him again. If there truly were beasts hiding in the shadows then it was them who needed to be afraid.
Shoya crossed over Maroo and came into the cave with her, carrying a torch. The flames lit up a space that was about half the size as the one that had housed Hwang Nanzhe's men, but unlike the sparse remnants of tattered straw mats and broken weapons left behind in that cavern, this one was filled with wooden trunks stacked one above the other, almost forming a barricade.
Thankfully, no signs of any monsters with razor-sharp claws and gnashing teeth.
Ru Fei, who had accompanied them, walked over to one of the trunks and broke the iron padlock with the butt of his sword's hilt. He was about to push open the lid when Maroo suddenly leapt up and shoved him aside in yet another show of rare bravado.
"Don't touch that! All of this belongs to my prince! We found it first," the Gi adviser said.
Yuehwa clucked her tongue and smacked him across the head. "If your prince is dead then he'll have no use for any of this treasure, aye?" she reminded. Ignoring his mumbles of protest, she reached out and lifted the heavy lid. Its hinges groaned, tired with age.
There was nothing inside.
The chest was empty, save for some stray sand particles swirling at the base.
"These are all empty too, Your Highness," Ru Fei remarked, having opened a few other chests in the meantime.
"That's impossible!" Maroo rushed to peer into each trunk in turn, dismay written all over his face when he realised that the commander was right.
"Well, well, it seems like Hwang Nanzhe played one massive prank on all of us," Yuehwa murmured, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
Now that she was looking at all these empty chests, she had an inkling of what the bandit king had been trying to do. The treasure was likely a ruse that he used to draw the Wudi army to the Jilin mountains, where he had hoped to use the treacherous terrain to his advantage and win the war. Something must have gone wrong with his plan for them to have been trapped within these tunnels instead—perhaps a turncoat within the ranks or a natural disaster, or maybe even this dark magic that kept recurring.
Shoya, however, seemed to have discovered something else of interest.
He had walked over to the far end of the cave from their point of entry, staring at what looked to be a small white porcelain statue that sat atop one of the trunks.
"What is that?" Yuehwa asked, moving over to join him.
It was a tiger.
Yuehwa's mind flashed back to the astrologers' vault back in the capital of Feng, where a similar white marble statue guarded the entrance to Wan Jue's tomb.
"Funny thing to have brought along," she murmured, running her fingers across the smooth, cold surface of the figurine. Empty chests and a porcelain tiger.
Shoya took the tiger from beneath her hand and threw it onto the ground. The porcelain shattered.
"What was that for!" Yuehwa yelped.
But her surprise was quickly replaced by curiosity when she spied the specks of silver peering up from beneath the broken shards. She kicked away the fragments and bent over, picking up what looked to be a key. Tarnished silver with the image of a single chrysanthemum stalk carved along its stem.
She looked up at Shoya questioningly, expecting that he would have an answer. Or the voices from his previous life would.
"I don't know what it's for," he said. "But if it belonged to the first king and bears the chrysanthemum insignia, then it has to be related to the Feng royal family. We'll have to ask Sheng Yun if she knows what this might possibly open."
"Right," Yuehwa muttered. She dusted the dirt off her hem and straightened herself up, pushing the key into his hand as carelessly as she would an ordinary coin. First Baixun, now this mysterious key—it seemed like they couldn't escape the almighty chief astrologer no matter what.
She signalled to Ru Fei and her men, heading back for the exit.
"Let's not waste time then. We'll return to Muya immediately."
#
With Ru Fei navigating them down the mountain via an overground route instead of the collapsed tunnel system, they left the icy peaks behind and arrived back at the Muya city gates within two days. When they reached the governor's abode, Wen Shu rushed out to receive them, relief spreading across his face once he saw that they were all safe.
"Your Highnesses, thank the gods you're alright!" he exclaimed, pressing his palms together towards the heavens. "What happened? Some soldiers came back to report that there were explosions and earthquakes happening around the Tangshan Pass, and that the tunnel entrances were sealed because of fallen debris. We almost thought you were, you were—"
"Dead?" Yuehwa piped up with an overly chirpy smile.
Wen Shu cleared his throat, but did not deny what she said. Instead, he looked past their shoulders at the wagon they had brought with them—and the man that lay on it. He frowned.
"Who is that?" he asked.
"Crown Prince Baixun of Gi," Shoya replied. He gestured towards Maroo, who was now cautiously observing the façade of the governor's manor. "And this is his adviser, Park Maroo."
"Prince Baixun!" Shock registered on Wen Shu's haggard face. "He's not dead?"
"You really thought that everyone was going to die up in those mountains, didn't you?" Yuehwa scoffed.
"It's not that," Wen Shu denied, shaking his head. He let out a heavy sigh. "Looks like things are more complicated than I anticipated. Come, let us go inside and I'll explain."
Wen Shu gave instructions for his stewards to take the unconscious Gi prince and his advisor to a guest room, then he led Yuehwa and Shoya to his private study. Yuehwa helped herself to a cup of water from the teapot sitting on the side table and sank down onto an empty chair.
"So, what's happened while we were gone?" she asked.
"The Gi army did launch an attack at the Hudeng Pass, but it was only a smokescreen. They sent about five thousand men there but all their attacks were half-hearted, as if they only wanted to distract or delay us. When I realised that they had no intentions of attacking Muya through Hudeng, I re-deployed half of our troops to the Tangshan Pass to support you, but when they arrived it was already too late. They met up with the Firebrands that had been left to guard the entrance of the pass, and that was when we were told about the explosions and landslides."
"What about Baixun? You must have heard something about him," Shoya asked.
The governor walked over to a watercolour painting of the Jilin mountains that hung on the wall and lifted it up, revealing a hidden panel behind. He rotated the combination lock on the panel in a particular order and a soft click released it from its hold. Wen Shu took out a folded parchment from the safe and handed it to Shoya.
"This arrived from one of our spies in the Gi," he said.
Shoya quickly skimmed through the letter, then passed it over to Yuehwa. "They think that Baixun is dead? And that we killed him?"
Wen Shu nodded. "Yes. The royal court of Dahai was the first to issue the confirmation, followed by the court of Gi, and it has since circulated among the five kingdoms," he said. "The king of Gi has collapsed with grief after hearing the news and the king of Dahai has vowed revenge for his son-in-law."
"Revenge?" Yuehwa arched an eyebrow. Things had certainly taken a bizarre twist.
"As we speak, more soldiers from Gi and Dahai are amassing at our border. The king of Dahai has demanded a response from Feng and Hwa within a week, or else he will launch a retaliatory attack."
"Retaliation," Yuehwa scoffed. "What a joke. Does he think he can stage such an elaborate act without anyone seeing through him?"
Everything made sense to her now.
She had wondered how Baixun had come to learn of the hidden treasure of the bandit king, and Wen Shu had given her the answer. The queen of Dahai, Naying's mother, had been from one of Feng's most illustrious families. It would not have been surprising for her to have known of this history and to have shared it with her husband. The king of Dahai had then used this piece of information to bait Baixun to the Tangshan Pass, where he then backstabbed the latter in an attempted assassination. Had the plan succeeded, Baixun would have died along with all his men in the tunnels, and it would have been a bonus if she and Shoya had also been caught in the trap. By pinning Baixun's death on Feng and Hwa, the king would have a legitimate reason to launch an invasion of the two kingdoms.
They had all been fooled into seeing only Baixun's ambitions, but neglecting the wiley fox hiding in the shadows.
She looked over to Shoya, and the slight nod he gave in return told her that he had come to the same conclusion.
"Where's Sheng Yun?" Shoya asked.
"The chief astrologer took her disciple out to the marketplace early this morning and has not returned," the governor replied.
"Summon her to Prince Baixun's room the moment she gets back."
A war of unprecendented scale was on the horizon—and whether or not the spark ignited an uncontrollable flame that would rage across the kingdoms hinged on the Baixun's survival.
Baixun had to survive.