Chapter Thirty-Three: Little Sister Azhuo

“Tonghua? Tonghua?”

Jiang Zhuo called out to Tonghua several times, but received no response. She hurriedly turned to survey the room and discovered that the other four attendants she had brought were also sprawled across the table.

“Big brother, there are still three who haven’t been drugged!”

Realizing that the drugging of the food had been discovered, the waiter stumbled toward the kitchen to report what had happened.

“What are you shouting about? They’re only a few greenhorns.”

A burly, bearded man carrying a broad saber pushed through the curtain, followed by five or six slightly smaller underlings.

“Hey, you look like sons of wealthy families. We only want money, not your lives. Leave your money behind, and we’ll let you go.”

“Not our lives?” Bai Feijun drew his sword with a cold laugh and stepped forward to meet them. “Then I can help you leave yours here.”

“Like a lame duck fearing no weasel—what a waste of my good intentions.” The burly leader snorted several times. “Brothers, get—”

Before he could finish saying “him,” a three-edged feathered arrow tore through the air and pierced his chest.

As though unable to believe it, the man trembled and stared down at the sudden wound through his heart.

Then he collapsed.

Jiang Zhuo stared wide-eyed at Su Yanqing, who had fired the shot beside her.

“I never thought a frail scholar like you would have such a trick hidden up your sleeve.”

Bai Feijun was likewise caught off guard. He turned back and sneered, “The six arts of a gentleman are rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics. Surely you haven’t failed to learn them, Brother Bai?”

Su Yanqing tucked away the mechanical crossbow hidden in his sleeve and replied mildly.

With the bandit chief dead, the remaining thugs posed no threat. Bai Feijun sheathed his sword, then dispatched the rabble in a few swift moves, knocking them unconscious before tying them up securely with rope.

“Well?” Bai Feijun raised an eyebrow. “It was merely a little skill for self-defense. I thought only women used concealed weapons.”

“Since one arrow can settle the matter, it is better to spare oneself the effort.” Su Yanqing’s gentle smile did not change. “Why do you think only women use concealed weapons, Brother Bai? Do you look down on women?”

“Of course not!” Bai Feijun frowned as he explained, “I mean that women are generally weaker than men and rarely practice martial arts. Bandits are usually less wary of women, so concealed weapons are more likely to achieve an unexpected effect.”

“So the two of you could both tell that the food had been drugged.” Jiang Zhuo came up behind them and patted each of their shoulders, wearing a幽幽 smile. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Cough!” Bai Feijun cleared his throat. “I’ll go report this to the authorities and have them deal with the bodies and the inn.”

Without waiting for Jiang Zhuo to react, he turned and went outside to fetch the horses.

“I occasionally read miscellaneous books on medicine at home, but I have never encountered the drug in practice. If Brother Bai had not been so insistent, I would not have dared conclude at once that the food had been laced with a knockout drug. For that reason, I did not dare inform Your Ladyship rashly.”

“There’s no need to be so formal, Brother Yanqing.”

It had only been a joke. Jiang Zhuo nodded without pressing him further, offering merely a polite reply.

“Very well.” Su Yanqing paused, then once again revealed a gentle smile. “Little Sister Zhuo.”

The unexpected form of address made the corner of Jiang Zhuo’s mouth twitch. She was just about to object when her stomach gave a loud, rumbling growl.

Jiang Zhuo blushed.

They had stopped at the inn precisely at mealtime. After this delay, they likely would not eat again until the hour of the Monkey.

“People eat grains and cereals; it is simply the natural order of things. Come to think of it, I am rather hungry as well.”

Su Yanqing’s smile remained calm and untroubled, though this time it held a trace of genuine feeling.

The two of them searched the kitchen and found some ingredients that had not yet been prepared, presumably provisions the bandits had kept for themselves.

Watching Su Yanqing awkwardly roll up his sleeves and wash the vegetables, Jiang Zhuo could not help finding it faintly amusing.

In her previous life, Jiang Zhuo had reunited with Su Yanqing much later. By the time they met again, he had already become a powerful scholar-official, speaking constantly of political treatises and displaying propriety and filial virtue in every gesture. How could he have resembled the awkward, constrained young man he was now, before entering official service?

Su Yanqing cut the whole radish into large chunks, one slice after another. He looked less like someone preparing a meal than someone dismembering a corpse.

Unable to bear watching any longer, Jiang Zhuo sighed.

“Let me.”

“I never knew Little Sister Zhuo could cook.”

Jiang Zhuo’s knife work was practiced. The radish slices she cut were thin as cicada wings, drawing an unthinking exclamation from Su Yanqing.

Playing the qin, arranging clothes, preparing meals—these had all been among the duties expected of a concubine.

In her previous life, Jiang Zhuo had never received the slightest praise for any of them.

Perhaps it was a matter of status.

When a county lady of noble birth took the initiative to do such things, everyone considered her gentle, virtuous, humble, and approachable.

But when a concubine did them, people saw only servility, obsequiousness, and an attempt to curry favor.

Sunlight streamed through the western window. Between the shifting gleams and shadows of the knife, light flickered in Jiang Zhuo’s eyes, leaving one almost dazed.

Jiang Zhuo did not explain why the eldest daughter of the prime minister’s household knew how to do such things. She had no need to explain.

Su Yanqing turned to help kindle the fire and heat the oil, taking care of the small tasks that lay within his abilities.

With the two of them working together, steaming dishes were soon served.

“With my wife and children, I carry food to the southern fields. My father always yearned for a life of retirement among the farms. He even planned to move the whole family to the countryside after resigning from office. I never understood him then. I always thought a great man’s ambitions should reach in every direction.”

Su Yanqing spoke with a smile, yet there was a melancholy in his tone that Jiang Zhuo could not quite understand.

“Now, doing this together with Little Sister Zhuo, I seem to grasp the deeper meaning.”

“You don’t have to keep smiling.” Jiang Zhuo filled a bowl with rice and handed it to him. “It must be tiring to smile all the time. A smile should be for your own happiness, not something put on for other people.”

Su Yanqing stared blankly. The smile at the corners of his lips paused.

He was about to say something when the dull clatter of hooves sounded outside.

Bai Feijun had returned.

“Wasn’t all the food drugged? How dare you eat anything from the inn?”

Bai Feijun swung down from his horse and asked the moment he entered.

“This was prepared anew by Little Sister Zhuo and me. You may eat it without worry, Brother Bai.”

Su Yanqing instinctively tried to smile, but perhaps remembering Jiang Zhuo’s words, he attempted to withdraw it again. Caught between smiling and not smiling, his expression appeared extremely strained.

“Little Sister Zhuo?” Bai Feijun’s face darkened. “I was gone for only a little while, and the two of you have already become this close?”

As he spoke, Bai Feijun picked up another morsel of food. He studied the ever-changing expression on Su Yanqing’s face and sniffed at it suspiciously.

Once bitten by a snake, one fears a coiled rope for ten years.

To demonstrate that her cooking was at least passable, Jiang Zhuo picked up her chopsticks and chewed and swallowed a mouthful in front of them both.

“I made it myself. Care to try some?” she suggested.

“Then that truly is…” Bai Feijun’s expression grew both complicated and resolute. “Worth risking my life to taste.”