Chapter Four: The Thunderbolt Elite Advances

"Many thanks to you!"

The woman in white suddenly addressed Gu Liubai with great solemnity.

Gu Liubai was stunned. What was this about?

A breath later, he realized this must be a gesture of gratitude for the military intelligence he had relayed, and perhaps an apology for having doubted him.

"Let's move on."

The woman in white stepped forward, heading toward the hillside Gu Liubai had mentioned earlier.

A black speck appeared on the ridge, followed by large swathes of snow sliding down.

"My people are here."

Gu Liubai realized after saying this that it was a redundant remark; the woman in white must have spotted them long ago, which was why she had called him over.

The woman in white brushed the snow from her veil. Through the wind and snow, one could faintly see someone sliding down at high speed.

"Wow... wow wow!"

The person was sliding at an incredible speed, yet seemed unfazed, letting out excited, strange cries.

Gu Liubai initially felt a sense of pride, but a moment later, seeing the trajectory of the figure, he flew into a rage and cursed, "Damn you, Zhou Lu’er! Don't you dare crash into the graves of my mother and Liang Fengning!"

"It's fine, Brother Fifteen! I'm just showing them how it's done! Oh..."

The lad reached the mountain path and came to a stop, still seemingly eager for more, bouncing on his heels with excitement.

The woman in white saw that he was about the same age as Gu Liubai, but terrifyingly thin, as if he had no flesh on his bones at all.

He had been riding a bowl-shaped leather raft as he slid down.

Despite his scrawny, monkey-like frame, he seemed to possess considerable strength. After waving at the grim-faced Gu Liubai, he dragged his leather raft over at a trot.

He was clearly much more sensitive to the cold than Gu Liubai, wrapped in layer upon layer of thick clothing, yet his monkey-like face was still frozen a deep, bruised blue, with snot mixed with snow caked over his lips.

The woman frowned.

There was a peculiar, foul odor about the boy. Others might not recognize it, but she knew it all too well: it was the smell of a corpse.

Even Gu Liubai, who occasionally dug holes to bury people, did not carry this scent. What, then, did this boy do?

"Brother Fifteen, this snow is really coming down hard." The scrawny boy seemed to hold Gu Liubai in high regard but was not the least bit shy, grinning at the woman in white and the old dragon-woman.

The woman in white looked at the boy and asked, "What did you call him? Brother Fifteen?"

"That's right, Brother Fifteen. His name is Gu Liubai, but everyone around here calls him Gu Fifteen, or Brother Fifteen." The boy began wiping his frozen snot with his sleeve, introducing himself with easy familiarity. "My name is Zhou Lu’er. His mother always says I'm as thick-headed as a stubborn donkey."

The woman in white asked, "What relation is Liang Fengning to him?"

"I wouldn't dare gossip about that," Zhou Lu’er chuckled. "Those on the outside who dared to gossip about Liang Fengning's relationship to his mother all ended up dead for no reason."

The woman in white pondered this and asked, "And what was the gossip?"

"They said Liang Fengning was his mother's man," Zhou Lu’er replied.

Gu Liubai laughed in spite of his anger. One was a literal donkey, and the other—a Grand Swordmaster—was actually honest-looking enough to fool even a child.

The woman in white was taken aback. "So he is Liang Fengning's son?"

Seeing Gu Liubai laughing, Zhou Lu’er looked quite pleased. He hunched his shoulders just like Gu Liubai and shook his head. "His mother denies he's Liang Fengning's son. Some people said his mother might have already been pregnant when she was with Liang Fengning, but those people are all dead now. Liang Fengning was quite good to Brother Fifteen, teaching him all sorts of tricks. Even if I called him 'Godfather,' he’d keep everything hidden and wouldn't teach me a thing."

Gu Liubai finally lost his patience. "Enough talk! To business!"

The grinning boy instantly turned serious, immediately pulling an object from his bosom and handing it to Gu Liubai.

The woman in white saw it was a dark iron ring with a small brass tube attached.

Gu Liubai, with practiced ease, scraped the end of the brass tube with a small bamboo sliver and withdrew a tiny scroll.

He unfolded it, took one look, and his expression turned grim. "This is truly serious. There is an Ashina tribesman among that group."

The woman in white looked up, but before she could speak, the scrawny boy shivered. "The Turkic imperial clan! Brother Fifteen, we absolutely cannot provoke them. They're acting like mad dogs right now."

"If we rush over now to bury that Ashina fellow properly, do you think those Turks will be less angry?" Gu Liubai sighed, looking at the boy.

"Brother Fifteen, don't joke around," the boy said, his face turning pale. "People will die."

"Yes," Gu Liubai said seriously, "they are likely already dead."

Seeing that he wasn't joking, the boy's voice took on a weeping tone. "How can you kill someone and then check to see if they were killable?"

Gu Liubai glanced at the woman in white. "We were supposed to wait until we reached the Bone-Piercing Ravine to act, but they moved first, so the timing is off."

The boy, still clinging to a sliver of hope, asked with a mournful face, "Brother Fifteen, does it say if the Ashina was a man or a woman?"

Gu Liubai looked at him and said softly, "When have you ever seen the Turks bring women along on a mission?"

"Brother Fifteen, what do we do?" The boy spun around in a panic. "Weren't those people supposed to be Arabs? How are they Turks?"

"Is it possible they killed the son of Ashina Yehe?" the woman in white suddenly interjected.

"It seems that although you aren't active in this region, you aren't entirely ignorant of the situation," Gu Liubai said with a touch of irony. "He was a young man in his twenties. By age, it’s either Ashina Gulu or Ashina Wenfu. Given the way those Turks operate, regardless of which one died, they will hunt us down and kill us."

"Will they know it was us?" the woman in white asked.

"Believe me," Gu Liubai answered earnestly, "not only you and me, but even the person who helped me deliver the message will be tracked down soon enough."

"Still, you are formidable," he added after a pause, looking at the woman in white. "I suspect these two hundred Black Cavalry of the Turks are nothing to you."

"Brother Fifteen, stop joking now," Zhou Lu’er cried, tears welling up. "Your mother said every Turkic Black Cavalryman is a powerful cultivator. Even a Grand Swordmaster would be hacked to death if surrounded by a hundred of them."

Gu Liubai looked at the woman in white out of the corner of his eye. "Heh, perhaps my mother was lying."

"Your mother did not lie," the woman in white said calmly. "The Turkic Black Cavalry are the final glory of the Turkic Imperial Court; over a hundred of them are invincible. Ordinary cultivators cannot even break through the black armor infused with their protective true qi."

Gu Liubai was momentarily stunned.

The way this woman in white spoke was unique; he had never encountered anyone like her.

"Are you good at running for your lives?" he asked after a pause.

Running for their lives?

The woman in white thought about it seriously.

Running for one's life was nothing more than outrunning others, concealing one's tracks, and escaping quickly. If the Yin Mountain swarm were not adept at this, no one was. But to face three thousand elite Turkic cavalrymen who had fought across thousands of miles and were masters of tracking and counter-tracking—including two hundred Black Cavalrymen who were supposedly invincible in groups of a hundred—was a claim she could not make, no matter how thick-skinned she was.

"Can you help?" She was straightforward, looking directly at Gu Liubai.

"I can help," Gu Liubai said, "but it must be mutual."

The woman in white thought for a moment. "Tianbao, ten thousand years."

Gu Liubai replied seriously, "The first and the fifteenth."

"Brother Fifteen, what does that mean?" Zhou Lu’er, the monkey-like boy, tugged at Gu Liubai’s sleeve with the hand he had just wiped his nose with and asked quietly.

He was terrified of death. And even more terrified of dying for no reason.

"The final verification," Gu Liubai explained quickly without wasting words. "This was a code we agreed upon years ago. If something went wrong while relaying messages to them, and someone else had to be sent, they would use this code to verify their identity. This kind of thing wouldn't appear in military files, so if I wasn't the 'Liang Fengning' they expected, I wouldn't have been able to respond."

Zhou Lu’er scratched his tangled hair, seemingly understanding, yet not quite.

"Even if someone knew the military's codes and had access to all the correspondence, they wouldn't know this code unless they were the person who had contacted them back then," Gu Liubai said. "So now she can be certain I am the 'Liang Fengning' they believe me to be. Since they trust the Liang Fengning of the past, they can naturally trust me completely now."

Zhou Lu’er finally understood completely and muttered, "She’s always so backward in her ways. Shouldn't she have verified it right when we met? Why wait until we've talked for so long?"

Gu Liubai glanced at him and explained patiently, "Haste makes waste, and she isn't in a hurry... Even if she met a liar, she would want to see what tricks they had first. Besides, she might have needed time to think of this method of verification."

Zhou Lu’er was taken aback. "That's true, too."

"Don't worry, I will definitely get you to Youzhou," Gu Liubai said. He and Zhou Lu’er had been walking ahead of the woman in white, but as he spoke, he slowed his pace, and the woman in white moved ahead of them.

"Brother Fifteen, why would you say that? As if I wouldn't trust you," the boy said casually. "Those Turks are mad dogs who don't fear death, but if you say you have a way, you definitely have a way."

"No," Gu Liubai shook his head and said softly, "I mean, the time has come."

"What time has come?" Zhou Lu’er didn't react at first, but when he turned and saw the strange look in Gu Liubai's eyes as he watched the figure ahead, he suddenly realized. "You... the person you’ve been choosing for all these years... is it..."

Gu Liubai watched the woman in white ahead, saying nothing, only nodding slowly.

Zhou Lu’er peeked at the woman in white as well, feeling inexplicably worried. He thought to himself, the person he had been waiting for all these years seemed a bit dim.

Just then, the woman in white turned around.

In the swirling snow, she looked toward the small mound on the slope.

"Is that where Liang Fengning is buried?"

"Yes." Gu Liubai nodded.

The woman in white bowed, offering a solemn, sincere salute to the small mound.