Once the maid had laid out the tea and pastries and retreated, Blue Five turned and bolted the door with practiced efficiency. "Let's talk while we eat."
She picked up a pastry and held it out to Chu Yuning, her tone softening. "Try it. This cook has a decent hand."
Yuning reached out to take it. As his fingertips brushed the warm edge of the pastry, he hesitated. Before the sweetness of the cake could reach his tongue, a secret warmth had already spread through his heart. He looked down at the delicate snack, his thoughts in disarray—in such a private moment, her first instinct was to look after him.
Did this mean... he actually carried some weight in her heart?
"Blue Five," Crimson Nine cut through the silence, her eyes sharp. "Do you remember exactly how you crossed over to this place?"
"How could I forget?" Blue Five pulled up a chair and shrugged. "We'd just finished that mission and returned to the apartment. We were so exhausted we all just crashed. Next thing I know, I wake up as 'Miss Situ' in the middle of a breakup with that scumbag Gu Xiao. He'd bashed her head against a table, and I was covered in blood." She pointed to the back of her head, her tone as casual as if she were telling someone else's story.
Crimson Nine's fingers tapped rhythmically on the table, her expression darkening. "You say you've been here for six months. Yet, I landed less than a month ago. We fell asleep at the exact same moment, but our arrival times are completely out of sync."
Blue Five froze, a pastry suspended halfway to her mouth. Her expression turned solemn as she muttered, "Could it be... magnetic interference during the jump? Did it scramble our timelines? What about Yellow Seven? Where—and when—is she?"
Beside them, hearing that Situ Jing had been injured by Gu Xiao, Yuning's heart tightened. A surge of fury rose within him, and he felt a bitter pang of regret: I was too lenient back at the mine. I should have crippled both of Gu Xiao's hands!
The atmosphere in the study grew heavy with uncertainty. Xiao Zhan remained silent; though he didn't understand their strange vocabulary, he could feel the knot of doubt tightening between Crimson Nine's brows. He lowered his gaze, his voice deep as he addressed her: "Ning'er, is there something wrong?"
Crimson Nine shook her head slightly, signaling that the complex time-dilation issue would have to wait. They needed to regroup with Yellow Seven first. She looked up, her gaze shifting to Chu Yuning, her voice turning cold and professional.
"More importantly, I want to know what went wrong at the border. The reports sent to Great Qi claimed General Chu and his sons died in battle beyond the pass, and the Chu Army was annihilated. If that's the case, why are you alive, and why are you here in a Western Yan mine?"
The temperature in the room seemed to drop to freezing. Yuning looked at the familiar face of his sister. Even though the body was the same, the "soul" inside was different, leaving him with a swirl of complex emotions.
He lowered his eyes, his voice raspy as he revealed the truth. "The war against the East was a trap orchestrated by the State Preceptor. He wanted to coerce my father into becoming his pawn and aimed to seize the 'Thirty-Seven Stockades' that Father had personally established."
He took a steadying breath. "Father saw through the scheme and ordered me to break through the lines to warn the stockade masters. I was hunted all the way to the border of Qi and Yan. Cornered, I jumped into the river to survive. Gu Xiao's men fished me out—I don't know why they didn't kill me, but they imprisoned and tortured me here. If not for Miss Situ, I would be bones by now. As for my father and brothers... their whereabouts remain unknown."
"The Preceptor has coveted those stockades for a long time," Xiao Zhan added, his voice laced with suppressed rage. "To stoop this low after failing to recruit the General..."
"What is so special about these thirty-seven stockades that the Preceptor would go to such lengths?" Crimson Nine asked.
"In that old fox's eyes, the stockades are the soul of the Chu Army," Xiao Zhan explained. "They were originally refugees saved by General Chu. He gave them a place to live, taught them martial arts, and organized their formations. To them, a Chu military command carries more weight than an Imperial Decree."
"Hmph, that explains it." Blue Five took a sip of tea, her expression icy. "I bet the Fourth Prince of Western Yan was playing the same game as the Preceptor—keeping Yuning alive as bait to lure that force out."
Xiao Zhan nodded in approval. "Exactly. The stockades are rooted in the Northwest, near Zhanchuan. Their combat power is immense—a perfect asset for someone seeking the throne. And Yuning is the only 'key' that can summon them."
"Since their loyalty is so high, how do they verify identity? It can't be just by face," Crimson Nine noted, tapping the table.
"By this." Chu Yuning produced a small, dark wooden tablet with an ancient grain from his vest and placed it on the table. "My father handed this to me before I left."
Xiao Zhan picked it up. On the front was carved the character for "Chu"; the back featured an uneven, tactile pattern representing mountain ridges.
"Besides the tablet, there is a verbal code," Yuning said firmly. "If you encounter a brother from the stockades, the prompt is: 'The wooden tablet has no words; how does one find peace?'"
Blue Five murmured instinctively, finishing the couplet: "'The General has given the order; the four seas are our home.'"
Yuning looked at Blue Five with a mixture of surprise and profound admiration. He hadn't expected this woman from another world to instantly grasp the tragic heroism behind the code. "Correct. That is the response."
A brief silence fell over the room. To the others, the code sounded like a death-defying promise—because of a single order from the General, these refugees finally had a home where they could "find peace."
"The code is clever," Blue Five commented, taking another sip of tea. "It's understated but carries the weight of a life-and-death bond. Even if the Preceptor's men heard it, they'd take it for the ramblings of a vagrant."
"It is subtle," Crimson Nine agreed, her expression turning grim as she looked at her brother. "But if this code can provide peace, it can also kill enemies. Third Brother, since the tablet is in your hands, we have the leverage we need to flip the board."