Chapter 118: News from Jinyang!

Seeing that figure, not only Hu Jingyuan, Yin Tianzong, and Cao Yong, but even Li Shimin was instantly stirred with excitement.

As he watched the Sui army officers and soldiers all make their way toward the young man on the battlefield, Li Shimin finally collected his thoughts. Glancing at the severed heads held by the soldiers nearby to calm his inner agitation, he walked toward the youth.

"Captain!"
"Captain!"

Yin Tianzong, Hu Jingyuan, Xiong Ruixiang, Xue Hong, and the others all gazed at Fu Zihou.

Fu Zihou raised a hand, trembling from near-exhaustion, wiped the blood from his face, sheathed his sword, and looked at them with a faint smile.

At this moment, not only was Fu Zihou smiling, but Cao Yong, Xing Ming, Qi Lingyang, and everyone else could not help but laugh as well.

Amidst the crowd, Fu Zihou spotted the approaching figure. Ignoring the presence of Hu Jingyuan and the others, he dragged his injured leg step by step toward the man.

"My deepest thanks! Had you not slain the enemy commander, my men and I would have surely fallen in this battle," Fu Zihou said, cupping his hands in salute to the young man before him.

The man was slightly older than him. His beard and his entire face were covered in dust, sweat, and blood, giving him a disheveled appearance, yet to those who saw him, there was nothing laughable about it. After all, compared to the man, Fu Zihou was in no better shape, covered in wounds with his armor and trousers riddled with holes.

"How can you speak of thanks? If you had not led your troops here, it would be my men and I who would have perished under the blades of the rebels!" Li Shimin looked at Fu Zihou’s condition, returned the salute, and gestured to his own soldiers before bowing to Fu Zihou once more.

"Li Shimin!" he declared, stating his name first.

As he spoke, Li Shimin felt a surge of excitement and trepidation while looking at the blood-stained youth before him. Even though he knew it could not be wrong, the sheer anticipation still made him feel a flicker of tension at the moment of their meeting.

"Fu Zihou, Captain of the Valiant Force!"

Hearing that the young man was indeed Li Shimin, the weight that had been pressing on Fu Zihou’s heart for days—ever since he set out to rescue Cao Yong and the others—finally lifted. Based on his knowledge of Li Shimin from history, as long as Cao Yong and the other soldiers survived, Li Shimin would never mistreat them, nor would he neglect their descendants, even if they were to lose an arm or a leg in the future.

"General, what brings you here?"

Li Shimin suppressed his inner excitement, deciding to keep the matter of his wife a secret for now and conceal it from the youth.

Having routed the rebel cavalry, Li Shimin was curious about where this unit of Sui cavalry was headed. With the entire Taiyuan Commandery now overrun by the rebel host, he wondered if Fu Zihou had some hidden plan.

On the plains, under the gaze of everyone, Fu Zihou looked at Li Shimin and his soldiers in response to the question.

"We have come to escort you all to Jinyang!" Fu Zihou replied.

The simple sentence left Li Shimin and his men standing there in utter astonishment. *Escort us to Jinyang?* This meant that Fu Zihou had led his troops here specifically to rescue their group! Even Li Shimin, let alone his soldiers, found his opinion of Fu Zihou shifting once again as this realization dawned on him.

However, Li Shimin remained puzzled. *Jinyang!* How could Jinyang, which had just been surrounded by the rebel army, spare over a thousand cavalrymen just to rescue a group of only a few hundred? Who had given the order? Pan Changwen was already dead. If he recalled correctly, the cavalry commanders in Jinyang were Wen Dayou and Zhang Pinggao. Had they both agreed to deploy the cavalry from the West City? And why were they not present?

Countless questions swirled in Li Shimin's mind.

"You are injured!" Li Shimin noticed Fu Zihou’s pained expression and stepped forward with concern. But upon reflection, it was only natural; under those circumstances, with Fu Zihou fighting alone, anyone else would have been hacked to pieces long ago.

***

On the road, a lone figure riding a courier horse galloped frantically, only slowing down when reaching a smaller path.

"Tell me, how did that Fu boy from the village suddenly change? Back in the village, he was just a simple-minded fool..."
"Isn't that the truth! Remember the year he foolishly went to the fields looking for a mountain of gold? Hey, do you think there really was a mountain of gold there?"
"I think you’ve gone daft! You’ve been tilling those fields your whole life; don't you know if there's gold in them or not?"

By the village path, under the shade of the trees, thirty or fifty villagers gathered to gossip. For the past few months, the villagers had been most concerned not with the various uprisings or the famine, but with the Fu family that had come out of their village—or, to be precise, the youngest grandson of the Fu family, whom everyone had always considered a fool.

"A fool! Hah!"

Liu Zhiyuan lay behind a large boulder, using a carving knife to slowly etch characters onto a piece of bamboo. Hearing the villagers’ chatter, he paused, let out a cold laugh, and then continued his work.

"Do you think they can survive this time in Taiyuan?"
"I don't think there’s any hope. I heard..."

Liu Zhiyuan listened to the villagers’ voices without the slightest ripple of emotion. He was well aware of the situation in Taiyuan—it was dire, especially since the East City of Jinyang had no defensible terrain.

But Liu Zhiyuan believed in his disciple.

Even though Wei Dao’er had dispatched his great general, Zhen Jie’er, and a rebel army of over a hundred thousand armored men, it was not just because of the skills he had taught his pupil. More importantly, Liu Zhiyuan knew that the boy who once stood at the village entrance, silently picking up his belongings, had yet to fulfill the promise he had made to that old woman.

"Look, the Zhao family’s kin is back. He’s in such a rush; did something big happen?"
"I know that man; he’s a nephew of mine. I’ll go ask!"

Liu Zhiyuan finished etching his bamboo slip, rose slowly, and carefully picked up the bundle of slips he had been working on, tying the new one to the rest.

"Erwa! Why is your face so pale? Did something happen? Tell us, it won't take long!"
"Don't block my way! I need to get to the Zhao family immediately!"
"Erwa, have you forgotten my relationship with your father? What did he tell you? What’s the harm in saying a few words?"
"Oh, heavens! It’s news from Jinyang! Something big has happened in Jinyang! The rebel army has been defeated!"

As Liu Zhiyuan was tying his bamboo slips, he heard the news. His expression changed, and he immediately stopped his work, listening with intense focus to the voices drifting toward him.