MTLNOVEL Chapter 120: Smoke On The Road
The ride back to the Crown Prince's Manor was quieter than it should have been.
The horses moved at a steady pace, hooves muffled against the worn dirt road. The shadow of the market place loomed just ahead, but for the first time since leaving, Zhao Xinying didn't seem to be in a rush to reach it. She rode with one hand on the reins, the other resting in her lap, fingers slowly curling and uncurling. Smoke trailed through them—black on one hand, white on the other—rising like silk threads and coiling in intricate loops.
Shi Yaozu didn't speak at first. He watched her from his horse beside hers, posture alert but unthreatening. His hand rested lightly near the hilt of his blade, more out of habit than necessity.
The last time they had ridden together, she had cut down a scouting party without flinching. The time before that, she had led him into a battlefield she turned into a massacre. She was always like this after—quiet, unreadable, detached. But something about her now felt… different.
She wasn't distant. She was drifting.
The black mist twined upward from her fingers, sharper and heavier than usual. It sank faster, pooling toward the stirrup like it had weight. The white mist followed a slower path, floating higher, dispersing before it ever touched her sleeve. The two never mixed. Not truly.
Just like her.
"What are you preparing for?" he asked finally, voice low and without edge.
She didn't look at him. "Nothing."
A pause.
"Everything. My father aways said that you had to plan, think, surprise, survive. Now I am thinking about what I've learned from Yan Luo. I also have the information that Zhu Mingyu desires."
Yaozu nodded once. That made more sense.
He had been trained in the art of reading people—posture, breath, shadow, silence. And what he had seen in her over the past week was not strategy. It was calculation sharpened by inevitability. There was no plan. There was only adaptation. Now that things were calming down, she was rewriting her narrative.
"It's a good stragety," he said, wtih a nod beofre continuing. "But you have to know that they are afraid of you. All of them. But it's not fear like I've seen before. It's not the fear that a normal person inspires."
"Oh?" she murmured, still watching the mist dance between her knuckles. Her voice wasn't amused—it was distracted, like her mind was somewhere deeper than the forest path. "I wasn't aware that I wanted to inspire fear."
He turned his gaze back to the road. "Most men fear being killed. That's normal. You see it in the twitch of a hand, the way they flinch at a blade, the breath caught in their throat. But with you, it's different. They don't fear death."
She tilted her head, just slightly. The white mist curled over her thumb, brushing her neck.
"They want to survive you," he said.
That finally made her still.
The smoke stilled, too.
Zhao Xinying's hand dropped to her side, mist dispersing like breath on cold glass. Her gaze met his—not cold, not amused. Just level. As if she were measuring him again.
"That's a very dangerous thing to say," she said softly. "I'm not someone who people need to survive. I am someone who should be left alone."
"It's not a threat," Yaozu replied. "It's the truth. And truths, I've found, are more dangerous when left unsaid."
For a moment, she said nothing. The city gates came into view on the horizon—still distant enough to ignore. The sun had begun to dip, casting long shadows across the plain and giving her face a sharper edge, the hollows of her cheekbones catching what little light remained.
"You could have stayed behind," she said after a while. "Returned to the capital. Reported to the Crown Prince. Protected your status."
"I'm not his shadow," he said.
"No. You're mine."
There was no pride in her voice. No expectation. It was a statement, not a bond. She didn't ask for loyalty. She expected it. And not because she demanded it—but because those who chose her did so with the full knowledge of what it meant.
And Shi Yaozu had made his choice.
His horse shifted beneath him, sensing the growing tension in the wind. The air was always thicker around her, more volatile. As if something beneath the skin of the world was waiting to rip through the seams.
"I'm not staying because I believe in justice," he said.
"Good," she replied.
"I'm not staying because I pity you."
"You'd be dead if you did."
"I'm staying," he said, "because I've seen war. I've lived in shadows. But I've never once seen someone like you."
She didn't smile. She didn't soften.
Instead, she lifted her hand again, palm facing upward, and allowed both the black and white mist to rise together. Slowly, deliberately. The two tendrils of energy curved in a spiral between her fingers—twisting around each other like two sides of the same breath.
She exhaled.
"They're not separate, you know," she murmured. "People like to think in dualities. Light and dark. Good and evil. Life and death."
Her eyes flicked to him.
"But all smoke does is rise. It doesn't care what color it is. It doesn't care what it's made of."
He studied her carefully, noting the lines of fatigue beginning to settle beneath her eyes. She hadn't slept—not properly—in days. But she never faltered. Not once.
"You scare them because you're not trying to win," he said. "You're trying to survive. And in doing that, you make survival look like war."
Her lips quirked—just slightly.
"Pretty words, Yaozu."
"Not meant to be pretty."
They rode in silence for a stretch longer. The wind shifted. A bird cried out overhead, wheeling in circles above a withered tree. The brothel, the meeting, the seal in her sleeve—all of it faded behind them like smoke in morning air.
"I'm not your enemy," he said.
"Yet," she said calmly, taking in a deep breath. "And I hope not ever."
He didn't flinch.
"But if you ever turn on me, Yaozu…" she said, voice low, "I won't kill you quickly."
He turned his head toward her, met her eyes, and nodded once.
"Then I'll die slow."
She looked away.
But she didn't correct him.