Chapter 38

Chapter 38: The Male Courtesan Has a Problem (Part 3)

“Word-spirit…” Qi Shan murmured, pacing with the paper in his hand. “That might be our breakthrough.”

He spoke as if remembering something old and unpleasant. “I’ve heard of a method like this—hiding messages for transmission. It’s rare. Very few people can do it.”

“That advanced?” Shen Tang blinked, honestly surprised. She’d tossed out the idea casually. She hadn’t expected it to be real.

Qi Shan gathered literary qi into his palm, green light pooling faintly over his skin, and held it above the page. His expression tightened, and even Shen Tang felt the shift in the air.

She couldn’t help questioning him. “Yuan Liang, aren’t you overthinking it? He’s a male courtesan. Even if he’s a top courtesan candidate, how could he touch something this obscure? And if he could… what kind of message would be important enough to justify this?”

Qi Shan didn’t look up. “What do you think Xiao City is?”

“I don’t know,” Shen Tang admitted. She truly didn’t.

Her understanding of this world came from Qi Shan, his word-spirit scrolls, and whatever they’d seen along the road. It was a tiny corner of a massive, brutal map.

Most of the people she’d met were commoners scraping by. They didn’t know the commanding officer’s name, let alone the state of the realm. They were too busy trying not to starve.

Qi Shan seemed unsurprised by her answer. If Young Master Shen suddenly knew too much, he’d start suspecting she was pretending.

So, for the first time, he let her see a sliver of the bigger picture.

“When I said Zheng Qiao, the commander of Geng State, would court his own destruction within five years,” Qi Shan said, “it wasn’t just because he’s violent and vicious, and loves dirty tricks. There’s another reason. He wants to swallow the wolf and drive the tiger… but he’s bargaining with a tiger for its skin.”

Shen Tang straightened without thinking, listening hard.

After a moment, she guessed. “You mean Xin State was the ‘wolf.’ Now the wolf is dead, and the ‘tiger’ becomes Zheng Qiao’s biggest hidden threat?”

She frowned. “Who’s the tiger?”

Qi Shan’s answer landed like a stone. “Ten Wu.”

“Ten Wu?” Shen Tang echoed.

Ten Wu was a barbarian power beyond Xin State’s mountain range.

They claimed the golden crows fell here and multiplied here, their descendants growing stronger and stronger, so they named themselves Ten Wu—descendants of ten golden crows.

Shen Tang had always thought it was shameless. Before the Thief Star fell, they hadn’t even used that name. They’d only heard that the word-spirit inside the Thief Star held a myth about ten golden crows, and they’d latched onto it to inflate themselves.

But after a century or two of repeating it, the story had taken root.

Whether outsiders believed it didn’t matter. Ten Wu believed it.

They called themselves noble. Chosen. Solar blood.

Shen Tang thought it through quickly. “If Ten Wu is the tiger… then Zheng Qiao didn’t take Xin State because Geng State was overwhelmingly strong. He used timing and opportunity.”

Her eyes narrowed. “He secretly allied with Ten Wu. Had Ten Wu harass the border to pull Xin State’s troops away. Then Geng State struck with a surprise attack.”

Xin State had been rotting inside already. With Ten Wu stirring constant trouble outside, it was easy to neglect the threat at the other edge.

Qi Shan nodded once. “Exactly.”

“But what does any of that have to do with Xiao City?” Shen Tang asked.

Xiao City was the seat of the commandery yamen for Sibao Commandery. It didn’t even touch the mountain border. It shouldn’t have anything to do with Ten Wu.

Qi Shan said, “Because the parents of the Four Treasures Commandery Governor were from Ten Wu.”

Shen Tang’s eyes widened.

“They were tired of the tribe’s internal power struggles,” Qi Shan continued. “So they fled with their child, changed their names, hid their identities, and settled in Xin State. But the child grew up still longing for Ten Wu. By chance, he reconnected with his parents’ old tribe and became one of Ten Wu’s lookouts.”

Shen Tang stared at him, equal parts alarmed and fascinated. “That’s the kind of secret that gets you killed. How do you know?”

Qi Shan didn’t flinch. “It’s a long story. Not something I can explain in a breath.”

He paused, then added coldly, “Just know this: the Four Treasures Commandery Governor is two-faced. On the surface, he’s Zheng Qiao’s loyal sycophant, a master at flattery who’ll do anything to please him. In secret, he still works for Ten Wu.”

Then he dragged the thread back where it belonged.

“Sibao Commandery’s location is special. It can attack or defend. It sits at the border between Xin State and Geng State, and it’s also the route nearby states must pass to move south. It has both land and water routes.”

His voice lowered. “If someone wants to scheme for the mainland’s Central Plains heartland… they have to take Sibao Commandery.”

Shen Tang felt a chill crawl up her spine. “Ten Wu is aiming that big?”

“They are,” Qi Shan said. “Before, it was daydreaming. Now…” His gaze flicked to Shen Tang, and his words turned heavy. “Now it might not be impossible.”

Xin State’s state seal was lost. Zheng Qiao was a brutal ruler who couldn’t calm the people. The national fortune gathered by the state seal in his hands might not be enough to hold up the border barrier beyond the mountains.

Ten Wu was watching. Waiting.

They might truly seize this once-in-a-thousand-years chance and cross the range.

“And Xiao City,” Qi Shan finished, “is one of their buried moves.”

As he spoke, faint text began to surface on the once-blank page, pale as breath.

The paper really was hiding something.

Shen Tang read it aloud. “From the front, a range; from the side, a peak…”