Unarmored | Chapter 48 | The Dust of Suyan | Novela.app

In the ebb and flow of her dreams, Xiao Nanhui felt a searing, fire-like pain erupt in one of her legs. She tried to roll over and pull her leg back, but her body felt as though a massive boulder were pinning her down, rendering her immobile. In her dream, she let out a furious roar, and the sheer force of the shout jolted her awake. Above her hung a brilliant, scorching sun, appearing as large as a washbasin. She blinked, wiggled her fingers, and reached out to touch the weight pressing down on her. It was several large hemp sacks, deathly heavy. Occasionally, sand-like grains leaked out, falling onto her face. She stuck out her tongue and gave them a lick. Salty. It was salt. She had only ever seen salt packed in these kinds of coarse hemp sacks once before—in the hands of captured salt smugglers. Taking a deep breath, she gathered her strength and shoved. The sacks tumbled to the ground with a heavy thud. Xiao Nanhui sat up on a dilapidated wooden cart, finally pulling back the leg that had been nearly roasted by the sun. At the same time, several burly men sitting in the shade of a nearby saxaul tree turned their heads at the commotion. Their dark, weathered faces were etched with surprise. Xiao Nanhui swallowed with difficulty, trying to moisten her parched, cracked throat. "Excuse me... where is this?" Seeing her speak, the men’s expressions turned peculiar. She heard one of them mutter something in a low voice, using a very jarring, difficult dialect. She spoke again, but this time she didn't use the official Chizhou Mandarin. Instead, she used the dialect of the Suyan region in Lingxi. "Is this Suyan?" The leader of the group paused, seemingly surprised that she could speak the dialect. After a long moment, he looked at her and nodded. "Almost there." Having said that, he seemed to remember something and asked, "You aren't from the Lingdong side?" Xiao Nanhui knew well the xenophobic customs of Lingxi. She gave a couple of forced laughs. "A few days ago, I took a few jobs for a courier guild in Tongcheng, but I ended up getting swindled." Hearing she was a local, the leader stopped being guarded and spoke plainly. "No wonder, then. That man gave us silver and told us to deliver you to Suyan by fast horse. We were wondering what kind of human trafficker would be so interesting—paying out of his own pocket to sell someone. Turns out he was afraid you'd run back and settle the score with him." With that, he burst into a loud "hahaha" laugh, and the men around him followed suit with foolish grins. Xiao Nanhui, however, couldn't find the strength to smile. "Selling someone? Selling who?" The laughter stopped abruptly. "Selling you." A gust of wind swept past, and a ball of dried Russian thistle rolled merrily by. The atmosphere turned eerie for a moment. "Listen, can we discuss this..." "No." The leader stood up, and the five or six men behind him rose as well. Xiao Nanhui felt a splitting headache. Instinctively, she reached for her back. *Good, good. Pingxian is still there.* She flashed a smile at the men and whispered a soft "Sorry." Several screams of agony echoed across the Gobi. After a bout of clattering and banging, silence quickly returned. Half an incense stick later, a figure riding a camel sped onto the road, heading straight toward the west. Xiao Nanhui had wrapped herself up like a *zongzi*. The clothes she wore had been stripped from those men. They reeked of stale sweat, but she had no choice and had to endure it. She was all too familiar with the weather in the Gobi. Exposed to such a fierce sun, one would become weak and dehydrated within an hour. Sometimes, wearing thick layers was the only way to stay alive. The camel was an old one. Not only did it know how to avoid quicksand, but it also knew the way to Suyan. Those men had actually been a help. She couldn't go back to Tongcheng, and her next step was indeed to find a way to Suyan, which sat at the edge of the Bai family's territory. As she traveled, she couldn't stop worrying. she began to check the supplies she had to see if she could make it to her destination. There were two water skins on the camel's back, both about seventy or eighty percent full. She breathed a small sigh of relief. In this desert, the only thing one couldn't conjure out of thin air was water. As long as there was water, other problems weren't insurmountable. After securing the water skins, she untied the bundle she had taken from the leader. Inside was a dagger, several strings of copper coins, some dry flatbread, and a small bag of coarse salt. Though meager, it was enough. Xiao Nanhui raised an eyebrow and touched Pingxian, which was burning hot from the sun on her back. It was strange. The copper coins and silver bits on her person had been taken, yet those men had left Pingxian with her. Perhaps they couldn't tell what it actually was? Only then did she remember that before she lost consciousness, she should have been clutching that jade pendant. The archer-ring pendant. It was gone now that she was awake. She didn't know if those salt smugglers had found it and kept it for themselves, or if... A moon-white shadow flashed through her mind. The scenes from that night in the Snow Mystery Hall surged up without warning, impossible to suppress. Because of those orchids, her memories had become as ethereal as a dream. Yet, for some reason, she felt certain it had been a man, and someone she was somewhat familiar with. Who exactly was he? Was it he who saved her? But why would he then sell her to Suyan? She remembered that she seemed to have ended up buried in that person's embrace. Her face suddenly flushed, though she didn't know if it was from the heat or something else. In all her years, aside from being beaten, she had never had such intimate contact with another man. Even Xiao Zhun had never made a single move that crossed the line. At the thought of Xiao Zhun, Xiao Nanhui’s entire being cooled down again. She looked up. The wind and sand stretched endlessly. When would she be able to see him again? ****** ****** ****** Suyan, Suyan—the Rock of the Constellations. Vast, desolate, and cloudless, it had been a sacred site for stargazing and celestial observation since ancient times. But with the shifting of climates and the passage of aeons, the Suyan of today was merely a barren wasteland, impoverished by a lack of water. If one were to look down from the sky, one could clearly see a rift valley splitting the ancient city in two: one side lush and green, the other a sea of rolling yellow sand. This was all thanks to the Sun family. The Suns were not originally nobility; they were simply wealthy. That amount of money might not have meant much elsewhere, but in Suyan, it was enough to move heaven and earth—and enough to breed insatiable greed. Suyan’s geography was peculiar: high in the west and low in the east. The western side was elevated and flat, occupying the edge of the largest oasis in the Lingxi Gobi. Within the oasis were countless natural springs, and the Tianmu River, formed by the melting snows of Mount Gongdu, flowed through it. It was a precious land of lush grass and abundant water. In stark contrast, the eastern part was a land of saline-alkali rock. Situated on the southern side of the mountain range, it was dry, the soil was poor, and water was scarce, receiving only a small tributary from the lower reaches of the Tianmu River. Using the repair of water conservancy as a pretext, the Sun family deceived the city's Garrison Commander and built a high dam on the upper reaches of the Tianmu River. Since then, not a single drop of water reached Suyan East, and the riverbed gradually dried up. But that was only the beginning. While the Sun family busily enclosed the oasis and built high walls, they also won over the wealthy merchants and elites of the western city. They colluded year-round with the Nanqiang people of the Central Plains of Bijiang to rob and kill merchant caravans passing through Suyan. This thousand-year-old city was eventually split into two by the Sun family. Within the West City and for a hundred miles outside it, the Sun family and the Nanqiang cavalry patrolled with their scimitars; anyone not from the city was killed on sight. As for the East City... even if someone were invited in with a grand palanquin, no one would be willing to enter. As Xiao Nanhui passed through the crumbling city gates, she almost wondered if she was the only person to pass through them all day. The water in her skin was already gone, and she needed to replenish it quickly. However, a bit of inquiry revealed that the situation in Suyan East was even worse than she had anticipated. The city had originally relied on deep wells for water, but in recent years, even the deepest wells couldn't produce a single drop. Many citizens of the East City had spent their entire family fortunes on "entry fees" to the Sun family, just so their families could move to the West City. As for the poor? They were left to wait for death beside the sand. Of the original five communal wells, four were now dry. Only one remained, and people fought tooth and nail just for a single gulp. There was certainly no water for washing clothes or cooking. Everyone in the city looked grimy and gray, as if the entire city were smothered in dust. Xiao Nanhui was no better. Since escaping the salt merchants, she had been traveling non-stop. She truly didn't have a single piece of silver on her, only a few strings of copper coins. She had slept in the wild and eaten in the wind, and by the end, she didn't even have water. She had finally made it to the city, only to find it was no different from the wilderness. She had worn the same clothes for several days and was now disheveled and filthy. The grime on her face could be rubbed into a ball. All of this made her feel, in a daze, as if she had returned to the days before Xiao Zhun adopted her. When she was little, she hardly knew what she looked like. Her family’s earthen house didn't even have a shard of a tarnished bronze mirror. Even when she occasionally went to the well and saw her reflection in the water, she could never see clearly through the thick layer of filth. Thinking back now, when Xiao Zhun took her away, he probably thought she was a boy. This wasn't just idle speculation. A long time ago, Uncle Chen had once mentioned offhandedly that her arrival at the Marquis’s manor was an accident among accidents. During the Battle of Sanmu Pass that year, Xiao Zhun had been defeated. On his way back to Chizhou, he was forced to take a detour because the Tianmu River had flooded. While passing through the ancient city of Suyan, General Feilian died from wounds that failed to heal, causing a delay of several days. It was just that coincidental. On that day, by the side of the road outside Suyan, she and Xiao Zhun met. Before that, she had been drifting alone in the city for several years. That day was the first day she had decided to walk out of Suyan. From that day on, Xiao Nanhui firmly believed that there is a destiny between people. And her destiny always had to be traded for with karmic merit. She had spent six years in a living hell to earn her encounter with Xiao Zhun. Now, what would she have to use to trade for their future destiny? Thus, she always lived her life with the determination to endure suffering. Every time she experienced a hardship, she told herself: this was accumulating merit for her future with the Marquis’s manor. Only in this way could she pick herself up after every fall and continue forward without looking back. Even a situation like the one she was in now—she had encountered it countless times, and she had made it through every single one. *** **Glossary** Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation :--- | :--- | :--- 宿岩 | Suyan | "Constellation Rock"; an ancient city in Lingxi. 梭梭树 | Saxaul tree | Haloxylon ammodendron; a desert tree. 岭西 | Lingxi | "West of the Ridge"; a geographic region. 岭东 | Lingdong | "East of the Ridge"; a geographic region. 彤城 | Tong城 | Tongcheng; a city mentioned as a previous location. 赤州 | Chizhou | A province or administrative region. 猪毛菜 | Russian thistle | Tumbleweed. 韘形佩 | Archer-ring pendant | A jade pendant shaped like an archer's thumb ring (she). 天沐河 | Tianmu River | "Heavenly Bath River"; the main water source for Suyan. 贡多山 | Mount Gongdu | The mountain source of the Tianmu River. 碧疆 | Bijiang | A border region or territory. 南羌 | Nanqiang | Southern Qiang; an ethnic group or tribe. 三目关 | Sanmu Pass | "Three-Eye Pass"; site of a significant past battle. 飞廉 | Feilian | A general who served under Xiao Zhun. 陈叔 | Uncle Chen | A subordinate or servant in the Marquis's manor.