Xuanqing Guard

After seeing Pang Ban and Jiang Cheng off, by the time Shen Hao sat down to eat his sour soup noodles, it was already past mid-9 p.m. Xia Nu, that silly slave, was waiting on him by the side, looking drowsy and half-asleep, while Hong Chou and Brocade and Silk had long since curled up under the blankets, fast asleep.

"Go get some more chili." Shen Hao blew on his bowl twice—the noodles tasted the same as usual, but tonight he wanted something heavier.

"Ah? Oh!"

When she came back, Xia Nu held a ceramic jar in her arms, at least two catties of chili inside—use as much as you want.

Shen Hao scooped out a spoonful, blew on his noodles, and found the taste just right. While eating, he suddenly asked, "Have you ever hated me?"

Xia Nu looked a bit confused, blinking at Shen Hao and shaking her head. She felt her master was quite good to her—gave her food and drink, bought her pretty clothes, there was a comfortable house, and when others bullied her, he stood up for her. She could barely find time to be happy, so how could she hate?

Seeing the clarity in Xia Nu’s eyes, just like always, Shen Hao felt an unexplainable relief in his heart.

Today, the way Pang Ban and Jiang Cheng looked at Xia Nu and the other two slaves had not escaped Shen Hao’s notice. Compared to Hu Tian and other ordinary people, these two viewed the Barbarians with a gaze that simply didn’t recognize them as human at all—it was the same as looking at three dogs or three flower vases. The gulf between them chilled Shen Hao and made him worried that it might cast a shadow in Xia Nu’s heart.

Shen Hao was fond of the three Fox Women at home—pretty, lively, full of spirit, and sensible. He genuinely treated them as people in his heart, even as family.

This, perhaps, was the difference in perception—the fundamental divergence of two worlds.

"Then have you ever hated those people at the brokerage? Or the ones who took you from your tribe, do you hate them?"

"I used to hate them—they weren’t good people. But now I don’t hate them anymore."

Shen Hao was curious. "Why not anymore?" In Shen Hao’s mind, if he were Xia Nu, he’d see those slave traders as the worst of enemies. How could you not hate them?

"I’m still alive, aren’t I? And if they hadn’t taken me, I’d never have met you, Master." Xia Nu’s thinking was simple, shaped by the environment she’d grown up in. Life and death were ordinary things on the northwestern side of the Barbarians: famine, illness, robbery... Even if she hadn’t been taken by slave traders, being raided by the eastern Barbarians was common enough—surviving always depended on luck.

So Xia Nu was content. Compared to her not-so-distant past, she now felt very satisfied, very happy.

Shen Hao reached out and gently pinched Xia Nu’s pointed ear. Xia Nu meekly let her head drop onto Shen Hao’s knee. As long as he didn’t twist too hard, Xia Nu actually enjoyed her ear being squeezed like this, sniffing contentedly.

"Have you ever heard of the Royal Court?" Shen Hao kept kneading; the pointed ear was soft and strangely warm, nice to hold.

"Of course. Mmm... it’s where our Barbarian king used to be. But now, there’s no king, and no Royal Court. I heard from the old Foxmen in our tribe that Barbarians who had a Royal Court were really strong—not any worse than the Human Race."

Shen Hao narrowed his eyes slightly at that, patted Xia Nu’s bottom and told her to move, picked up his bowl again to slurp noodles, and asked, "Go on—tell me, what was the Royal Court like, as you’ve heard?"

Xia Nu, who’d been lying comfortably on Shen Hao’s lap and nearly dozing off, pouted when made to get up; only when given a stern look by Shen Hao did she settle down. She said, "Mostly it’s just ballads, you know? If you want to hear, I can sing for you?"

Ballads?

Shen Hao recalled that the Barbarians had a custom of passing their history down in ballads. And he’d never realized Xia Nu could sing. So he nodded, gesturing for her to sing for him quickly.

"I only know a few. I can’t do the others, not in other languages."

"Go ahead. Sing."

The Fox Race’s language was quite close to the Human tongue, and the ballads Xia Nu knew were all in that tongue. Their melodies, though, were quite distant from those familiar to humans—but if one listened closely, they had a certain charm of their own.

"Endless grasslands as far as the eye can see, warriors dancing with sabers and spears, all running toward those golden tents..."

The ballads, in fact, told stories—stories of the Royal Court of the Barbarians, from its founding to its glory and, finally, to decline and ruin. There were Human Race blades and spears, killings and suffering—rises and falls, all there. After listening, Shen Hao found them rather objective.

Of course, in the ballads, the Human Race were always the ’evil’ side—the destroyers of the Barbarians’ happiness. As for wars started by the Barbarians, those were justified as: "Those beautiful northern lands need Barbarian tilling, need Barbarian cattle and sheep to roam."

Shen Hao’s noodles were finished. He sat quietly, watching Xia Nu sing one ballad after another softly, noticing how her expressions shifted with the song.

These narrative ballads were long—thousands of words, with repeated passages of emotion. Singing several took the time of a stick of incense.

"Do you hope for your Royal Court to return someday?"

"Of course! Once the Royal Court is back, Barbarians can have good days again. And nobody will bully us anymore. But, we don’t have a Royal Court now."

Shen Hao patted Xia Nu’s head, told her to tidy the dishes and go rest.

After Xia Nu left, Shen Hao stood up from his chair, opened the window, and gazed out at the gloomy, moonless darkness, feeling for the first time a weight pressing on him—a weight he wasn’t used to.

Before this—whether it was Evil Cultivators, Evils, or various foes, Shen Hao had always been iron-hearted. If you blocked his road, he would destroy you, unless you yielded on your own. His methods were ruthless—earning him the name ’Evil Star,’ which he’d never found unjustified. Looking back, his whole journey was paved with bones.

But today, he felt pressure.

A pressure born from an unbridgeable divide between races. As if you thought it would just be a fight, but the other side came with knives—and it wouldn’t end until one side was wiped out. As long as extermination wasn’t complete, the slaughter would keep repeating without end.

This wasn’t something Shen Hao had encountered before, and he’d never thought about it deeply.

War—especially the kind spiked with ancient hatreds between races—was utterly different from anything Shen Hao had faced.

The silly slave Xia Nu’s behavior tonight was what shook Shen Hao.

An obviously obedient slave—one with a bitter past and indifferent to life and death—who had somehow lost her grip on hatred itself.

And yet, when the word "Royal Court" came up, that silly girl’s eyes lit up, as though something in her blood was stirred. That glow told Shen Hao that this slave didn’t accept her Barbarian identity, had no real sense of national hatred or family feuds, but she believed in the Royal Court—subconsciously certain that its return would bring a better life to her and her people.

The yearning for a better life is the purest desire of all people—and also the mightiest force.

Shen Hao couldn’t help but think: Maybe, my understanding of the "Royal Court" is still too shallow.