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The heavy incense of medicinal herbs hung thick and suffocating in the commander’s tent, doing little to mask the sharp, metallic tang of blood that clung to the air.
On the makeshift cot, Fan Changyu lay propped up against a heap of rough coarse blankets. Her lips were cracked, her skin pale beneath the smudges of battlefield soot, but her knuckles were white where they gripped the edge of her standard-issue uniform. Her superhuman strength, the very power that had allowed her to fell the enemy commander Shi Hu just hours prior, was currently failing to keep her body from trembling.
She wasn't trembling from her injuries. She was trembling from sheer, unadulterated fury.
At the foot of her bed stood the Marquis of Wu'an wearing the face of her husband.
He no longer wore the faded, ink-stained scholar’s robes of Lin’an town. He stood clad in heavy, gleaming armor, a stable cape draped over his shoulders, radiating an aura of absolute, terrifying authority. To his left stood Headmaster Gongsun Yi, his expression grave. Flanking him were his fiercely loyal generals, Xie Wu and Xie Qi.
Packed tightly into the entrance of the tent was the Northwest Pig Butcher Squad, staring in a mixture of horror and awe at the man they had once mocked as a "frail, sickly scholar." Even Qi Shu, there in her capacity as an imperial physician, stood tensely near the back, her eyes darting between the legendary general and the furious woman on the cot.
The secret was out. The battlefield had forced his hand, but now, the defense of his identity was laid bare before an audience.
"Changyu, you must lie down," Xie Zheng said, his voice a low, urgent murmur that completely ignored the high-ranking soldiers around him. He stepped closer, his hand reaching out instinctively to check her brow. "The physician said the internal injuries from Shi Hu's final blow are severe. How could you be so reckless? You forced your way into the vanguard!"
"Don't touch me," Changyu hissed, slapping his hand away with enough force to make his bracers ring.
Xie Zheng didn't flinch. Instead, a flash of helpless, desperate admiration crossed his eyes. "You defeated Shi Hu. The enemy is in retreat because of you. It is a feat that will be sung of for generations... but you did it by putting yourself in mortal peril. And you did it by poisoning me."
A collective, sharp intake of breath echoed from the pig-butchering squad. Xie Wu and Xie Qi shifted their weight, their armor clinking, while Qi Shu subtly narrowed her eyes in fascination.
"I did what I had to do," Changyu snapped, her voice cracking as she looked not at his face but at the grand, oppressive armor. Every piece of it felt like a wall building between them. The sheer social divide was not an abstract fear. It was standing in her tent, witnessed by her peers and his fearsome Blood-Robed guard. "And the Marquis of Wu'an could be thanking this squad leader, not lecturing her."
"I am lecturing my wife," Xie Zheng corrected sharply, his tone hardening with a mix of terror for her safety and stubborn devotion. He turned slightly to the room, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "Hear My Command, the woman lying on this bed is not just a warrior of the realm. She is the Marchioness of Wu'an. She is my wife..."
"Wife?" Changyu laughed, a bitter, jagged sound that cut through the tense silence of the tent. She dragged herself upright, ignoring the agonizing flare in her ribs, her eyes blazing as she looked at him, then at the stone-faced Blood-Robed Cavalry, then at the trembling pig-butchering squad.
The heat in the tent reached a suffocating boiling point.
"Xie Zheng," she whispered, the name tasting foreign and heavy on her tongue. "Look around you. Look at your generals. Look at my brothers who carry the smell of the slaughterhouse on their sleeves. You stand there in your ancestral steel, calling me your wife. You talk about me poisoning you as if it were a marital dispute."
She leaned forward, her chest heaving, the raw fury of a woman who felt utterly deceived completely shattering the stifling decorum of the military hierarchy.
"Let me remind you of the vows we took in that small courtyard in Lin'an," Changyu said, her voice rising, shaking the very poles of the tent. "When we bowed to my parents' tablets, we agreed to a matrilocal marriage. You didn't change your surname, but you bowed to the law of my house. The last rule, Yan Zheng—the one you looked me in the eye and agreed to before the whole town—was that I am the head of the household, and I am to be obeyed!"
Xie Zheng froze, his eyes locked onto hers, seeing the profound hurt buried beneath her rage.
Changyu swept her arm out, pointing a trembling, dirt-stained finger directly at his chest.
"Yan Zheng is my husband! A down-on-his-luck scholar who sold his essays for silver taels, who wore the clothes I bought him, who minded my shop and helped me cure meat! He is a man married into my family! Do you see such a man here?!"
The silence that followed was deafening. Xie Wu and Xie Qi looked closely at the tent ceiling; Jin Yuanbao looked like he wanted to swallow his own tongue.
Xie Zheng looked at her cracked lips, the blood soaking through her bandages, and the fierce, unyielding pride in her eyes. He didn't see a subordinate defying a commander. He saw his wife, breaking under the weight of his lies.
Without a single word of defense, without looking at his guards or caring for the legendary reputation of the Marquis of Wu'an, Xie Zheng sank.
The heavy, silver-plated knees of the empire's greatest military commander hit the rough dirt floor of the tent with a dull, echoing thud.
Gongsun Yi gasped softly. Xie Wu's hand twitched against his blade, and the imperial princess disguised in the back caught her breath in sheer disbelief. The Marquis of Wu'an was kneeling at the bedside of a butcher's daughter, in full view of his army. Xie Qi and Gongsun Yi hurried to his side to pull him up but a single fierce look waved them off.
Xie Zheng kept his back straight, but his head was bowed, his hands resting humbly on his thighs.
"The head of the household is speaking," Xie Zheng said, his voice raw, completely stripping away the armor of his title. "I am listening. If the identity I gave you was a lie, let me give you the truth. Let us start over."
He looked up, his gaze fiercely earnest, entirely discarding his pride before the audience. "I am Xie Zheng, Marquis of Wu'an, courtesy name Jiuheng, commander of the northern armies. My hands are stained with the blood of thousands, and my life belongs to the state. But I am asking you, Fan Changyu, to accept this man. Marry me. May we live in peace, may we grow old together."
Changyu’s breath hitched. She forced a bitter smile she stared down at the kneeling man.
"You want to propose to me here, Xie Zheng? Before your Blood-Robed guard? Before the princess?" She shook her head, the absurdity of it, and the realization of how many people had help conceal his identity, sharpening her anger. "You can't have it both ways."
She leaned closer, her voice cutting through the tent like a blade. "Just a moment ago, you stood there shouting to your generals that I am already your wife, using your title to claim authority over my life and my actions on the battlefield. But now, you kneel and ask me to marry you. Tell me, Marquis: which is it? If I am already your wife, then Yan Zheng is my husband, and you are bound to obey the head of this household. But if you are Xie Zheng, and I still need to marry you to become your Marchioness... then right now, I am nothing but a soldier in your army, and you have absolutely no right to speak to me of vows."
Xie Zheng’s jaw tightened, caught completely in the trap of his own double identity.
"Get out," she whispered, turning her face away as tears finally threatened to spill past her lashes.
Xie Zheng didn't move immediately. He raised his head, his eyes pleading. "Changyu, your medicine—"
"I said, get out!" Changyu demanded, her voice cracking with absolute authority. She glared down at him from the cot. "If a single shred of the man who married into my family remains in you, then the head of your household is giving you an order. Leave my sight."
Xie Zheng closed his eyes for a brief second, swallowing the immense weight of his own grief and regret.
Slowly, deliberately, the Marquis of Wu'an rose from the dirt floor. He cast one final, lingering look of profound worry over her pale face, then turned to his guards.
"Everyone out," Xie Zheng commanded quietly, his noble authority instantly returning as he masked his heartbreak. "Leave the commander to rest. Xie Wu, Xie Qi, station the Blood-Robed Cavalry outside this tent. If she needs anything—anything at all—you answer to me."
With a soft rustle of his crimson cape, Xie Zheng walked out into the cold night, leaving a stunned silence in the tent, and a heartbroken woman alone with her wounds.