DIDKNWGEWAFEM

Chapter 17: Discovered

In the capital during the sunny spring of the third month, the leaves of willows sway gently, the peach blossoms burn bright, the breeze billows, and white butterflies dance in the air; it’s what poems and paintings are made of, its beauty unsurpassed.

Yet the overgrown and freezing Northwest had just been the scene of a great battle. The nomadic peoples are natural-born cavalry; with livestock as these barbarians’ main staple, each and every one of the Xirong therefore has the back of a tiger, the waist of a bear, the height of an ox and the width of a horse, causing one to be intimated just looking at them. The soldiers on this side are mostly from impoverished backgrounds, and weren’t previously able to get a meal of meat all year round, so their thighs probably aren’t even as thick as the other side’s arms. Them fighting… really isn’t an effortless endeavor.

Thankfully, not many men came this time, and they ended up eliminated.

Zhongli Luo was covered all over in bloodstains as she limped to the barracks, almost too exhausted to lift her eyelids. An arrow had gotten to her left shoulder; those Xirong were seriously good at shooting from horseback. She tore a piece of cloth from her clothes and bound it simply, but it’s just that once the shoulder gets injured, the whole arm is affected, leaving her unable to move her left hand.

There weren’t many casualties this time, but a few people under her command were still lost. She might not remember clearly how they even looked, yet she’s still aggrieved right now. She’s already experienced a good number of these so-called military campaigns, and she knows that they’re completely incomparable to what her dad had experienced long ago, but it’s tragic enough as it is. She also doesn’t know how many skeletons of Xirongs she’s stepped on just to get everyone calling her one thing: Officer Zhongli.

Several lower soldiers saw that she was injured and rushed to come and try to help her, but she avoided them on conditioned reflex.

Looking at the awkward expression of the soldier before her that had just grabbed air, she can’t help but think of how this seems to be a habit she formed in the Rong family. She’s honestly extremely afraid of her own discrepancy being discovered, so she’s been careful with everything. Even if Marquis and Madam Zhenguo have been extremely good to her, she’s always set a bit of distance between them, and as she thinks about it, only Rong Jiahui isn’t the same. She liked how Rong Jiahui’s round face looked when her eyes curved up in a smiled, liked listening to her sweetly call her big brother, admired her aristocratic background that made her thoroughly refined in all aspects; when she wasn’t talking and only sat quietly, she looked just like a painting of a noblewoman, but once she opened her mouth, she was just the amicable little sister of the family next door.

“Officer Zhongli!”

She immediately returned to reality, find that she’d already entered the place she was staying at. The soldier next to her smiled at her fawningly, saying, “Officer Zhongli, you’re injured. Do you want this small one to ask a field doctor to wrap it up for you?”

Zhongli Luo still shook her head. “No need. I’ll do it myself.”

To be wounded in a place like the shoulder, how could it be alright to have someone else tend to it?

After she instructed him to fetch two buckets of water and washed away the blood coating her, she felt refreshed all over. She dons her clothes, gathers her damp hair, and uses the water as a mirror. Seeing the beautiful, pale, yet brave-looking person reflected in the water is somewhat strange. She really isn’t used to her own frail, exceedingly pitiful appearance, making her dislike seeing it.