At the highest point of the trade route stood an abandoned beacon tower.
Xi Yu spotted it as he rounded a mountain bend.
The tower was built on the pass between two ridges, its walls constructed from local mountain stone held together with yellow mud mixed with chopped straw. It had stood there for who knows how many years—the mud mortar had long been hollowed out by the wind, yet the stones still clung stubbornly together.
From a distance, it looked like a broken sword hilt, wedged diagonally into a fissure in the mountain, letting out a low, mournful hum as the wind howled through its gaps.
“How old is this?” Xi Yu reined in his camel, gazing up at the tower.
“Daliang’s. At least a hundred years,” Que Zhi stopped as well. “A hundred years ago, Daliang and Northern Shuo fought a war in this area. It lasted three years. In the end, neither side could keep fighting, so they drew the border along the ridge. The beacon tower was built then, to relay military messages. Later the border shifted north, and the tower was abandoned.”
“A hundred years.”
Xi Yu murmured the words to himself, then swung down from his camel.
He wasn’t sure why he’d gotten off.
The arched entrance of the tower had collapsed on one side; the other half still stood, polished smooth by wind and sand. The ground inside was bare rock, with patches of dried moss growing from the cracks that crunched crisply underfoot.
Xi Yu was no general, no soldier—he had no connection to this tower at all. An abandoned beacon, a century-old battlefield, belonging to a Daliang he’d never felt he belonged to.
Yet his feet carried him forward anyway. His fingers traced the smoke-blackened marks on the stone walls, his fingertips coming away with a fine layer of charcoal dust. Amid the gray-black stains, he felt several crooked scratches.
Not characters—lines. Weathered for so long that only the outline of a horse and a spear-bearing figure could barely be made out.
The same instinct as those rock paintings deep in the Gobi—to carve what mattered into stone, hoping it would outlast the one who made it.
—
By the time they emerged from the beacon tower, the sky had changed.
Above the snow line, gray clouds were pressing downward. He looked up, and a snowflake landed on his eyelashes.
It was snowing.
On the Gobi, snow came mixed with sand, stinging the face. But here, the snow was light, drifting down in a lazy, unhurried dance, as quiet as if someone overhead were tearing apart an old cotton quilt and scattering the fluff by the handful.
Xi Yu held out his palm and caught a snowflake. It rested there for only a moment before melting into a droplet that traced the lifeline of his palm down to his wrist.
He looked down at that droplet and called out to Que Zhi, who was walking ahead:
“Que Zhi, turn around.”
Que Zhi turned. Xi Yu smiled and blew gently toward him, sending the snowflake he’d just caught in his palm flying in his direction.
The snowflake was so light—it scattered in the mountain wind before it even crossed the camel’s reins.
There was no way it could have reached Que Zhi’s face. But Que Zhi stood there, several zhang away, through a flurry of snowflakes being blown every which way by the wind, and very obligingly closed his eyes.
As if that snowflake—which never could have reached him—had truly struck him right between the brows.
“Such mischief,” he said with a low laugh.
“Little child.”
“You’re the child.” Xi Yu brushed the melted snow off his hands and quickened his pace to catch up. “You closed your eyes just now.”
“The wind was strong.”
“If the wind was strong, why didn’t you dodge?”
“Because I wanted to catch it.”
Que Zhi switched the camel’s reins to his other hand. He turned and continued walking, glancing down at the old scar on his tiger’s mouth. In the midst of the swirling snow, the corner of his mouth curved upward in silence.
By dusk, the snow had grown heavy.
Not the gentle, drifting flakes from before, but a blinding blizzard, thick with icy granules, hurled against their faces by the mountain wind.
Que Zhi stopped, looked up at the thickness of the cloud cover, then surveyed the terrain ahead. He led Xi Yu into a narrow side valley.
At the bottom of the valley lay a dry streambed, and at its end, a stone hut was embedded into the hillside. It was hardly more than a low shelter pieced together with rubble and mud—the wooden doorframe long gone, leaving only an empty opening. Moss, long since withered, was stuffed between the cracks of the stone roof, but all four walls were still standing. On this wind-whipped, snow-laden pass, it was the best shelter they could ask for.
“How did you know this was here?”
“I took shelter here once before, in a snowstorm.”
Que Zhi tethered the camel under a protruding rock face just outside the hut, which happened to block the wind from the side.
He pushed aside the half-broken plank leaning diagonally across the entrance, ducked inside, and made a quick circuit to check for cracks in the stone from freezing. He used his curved saber to poke through the dried straw on the ground, making sure the earth beneath was dry. Then he straightened up and called out to the figure bundled in a heavy cloak outside the entrance, still shivering despite it all:
“Come in.”
The stone hut was cramped but dry. The floor was covered with straw left by who-knows-who—brittle now, but still serviceable.
Que Zhi cleared a shallow fire pit in the corner with loose stones, pulled a small bundle of kindling from the camel’s saddlebag, and used his flint to spark the dry grass shavings.
The flames flickered a few times, licked at the edges of the kindling, and gradually steadied. Firelight danced across the walls, casting shifting shadows over the old smoke stains blackening the stone.
He straightened up, took off his own heavy cloak, and draped it over Xi Yu’s shoulders.
The weight of two cloaks pressed down on Xi Yu’s shoulders, bundling him up like a fledgling bird ruffled out of its down.
“You give me your cloak—what will you wear?”
“I’m not cold.”
Que Zhi found a flat stone by the fire and sat down, bending over to tend to his boots. The soles were caked with snow-mud and crushed straw. He placed them by the fire to dry, letting the frozen leather gradually soften, not looking up. “Your lips are purple, and you’re still being stubborn.”
It wasn’t that he wasn’t cold—he was used to it.
On marches, he’d give his cloak to the wounded. On night watches, he’d give his blanket to the new recruits. He’d done it so many times it didn’t feel worth mentioning.
But when he’d handed the heavy cloak to Xi Yu by the fire, his fingers had lingered on his shoulder for just a moment—a gesture that didn’t belong to the battlefield.
He looked down and continued turning the boot soles over the fire, pressing that moment down.
Que Zhi’s hands paused as he turned the boot.
Because he remembered this stone hut—the last time he’d stayed here, years ago.
On his way back to the royal court from the battlefield. Same heavy snow, same pass.
That time, he’d been alone, with only half a flatbread left in his pack. His fire starter had been soaked by melted snow and wouldn’t catch. He’d spent the night huddled in the straw, enduring.
At dawn, looking out through the doorway, all he could see was endless white snow—the road buried, still falling, its direction unknown.
He swallowed that memory and placed the dried boots by Xi Yu’s feet.
“Dry now. Put them on.”
Xi Yu slid his feet into the boots.
The shafts were still faintly warm from the fire, the heat spreading from his soles to his ankles, then creeping up his calves.
He had never felt this warmth in any winter in the cold palace. There were no stoves, no hand warmers—the only source of heat was the metal hot-water bottle Old Zhou had secretly tucked under his quilt.
Iron, wrapped in a scrap of cloth, so hot he was afraid to touch it—yet terrified that if he waited, it would cool.
Xi Yu looked down at the man crouched by the fire, turning the other boot sole over the flames, and suddenly said, “Don’t you think we’ve had too smooth a journey so far?”
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