The Mobei wind rolled the gravel, sweeping across the congealed blood scabs on Su Heng's armor. He reined in his black steed, its iron hooves crushing a puddle of frozen blood, and raised his eyes toward the dense wall of encampments thirty miles away. Beneath the central army's great banner, a crimson cloak whipped fiercely in the wind, like a flame burning through the Gobi Desert—that was A Duo. She was the woman for whom he had once traded half the realm just for a single smile, and now she stood across from him, separated by heavy ranks of troops, raising the longsword that had tasted the blood of his people in a distant standoff.
Three years ago, he was the youngest general in the Great Jing dynasty, ordered on a western campaign to quell the rebellion on the Mobei grasslands. On the day the city fell, he found her amidst the ruins. She wore a beast-skin skirt stained with blood and grime, clutching a broken-stringed hulusheng tightly to her chest. Her eyes were like those of an injured wolf cub, yet upon seeing him, she suddenly spoke in a hoarse voice: "Han general, can you play the 'Song of Chile'?"
The moonlight was very cold back then, casting its light upon her dark face, leaving only a pair of amazingly bright eyes. Guided by some inexplicable impulse, Su Heng took the hulusheng and blew out a discordant melody with clumsy fingering. She suddenly laughed, revealing a missing incisor, and said, "My name is A Duo. I am the Wolf King's daughter."
Chapter 135