I heard this boy is actually the younger brother of the young general. Who would have thought the young general is so strict with his brother? Such a young child, even without rushing to the front, could still die on the battlefield at any moment.

The youth was already used to the boy ignoring him. After his routine instructions, he turned to exchange battle plans with his subordinates.

For some reason, he inexplicably hoped the boy would not follow his orders.

The boy lowered his head, his eyes shadowed and lifeless.

He didn’t want to raise his head to look at his brother because he knew that his brother, because of the medicine, no longer cared about him. And he himself had taken so much medicine that maybe, after some time, he’d become just like his brother. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

When the sound of war drums started, the boy couldn’t help but lift his head.

It was his first time seeing a real battlefield. Before, he had only observed from the sidelines when his brother was quelling bandits or fighting against some Baiyue Tribe.

Blood and fire, dust and earth, sword and spear—

In an instant, his world was filled only with the color of blood.

The boy’s golden pupils reflected the raging firelight, his body unmoving, unconsciously falling far behind the youth.

But as soon as the youth reached the battlefield, he instinctively forgot what he had previously said and charged recklessly toward the fiercest fighting.

The boy dismounted, still some distance from the battlefield’s center. No one noticed him, but everything around carried a sharp intent to kill, suffocating him.

The boy could no longer see the youth’s silhouette. He silently walked to a towering corpse, vomiting, then curling into a small ball beside the body.

A dull pain struck his brain, and he finally forgot everything, succumbing to a drowsy sleep.

The boy felt like a larva encased in a drop of giant resin, his very heart solidifying into a piece of warm amber, unchanged from this moment on for decades, centuries.

So quiet.

So good.

He would never hurt that much again.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when a sudden beam of light appeared. The boy opened his eyes to see a handsome middle-aged man standing before him.

The boy looked around blankly, fragments of previous memories fleetingly surfacing in his mind. He lay in a sea of blood, unsure of how many bodies weighed down on him.

Those golden eyes, like a newborn fawn’s, were clean and bright.

The middle-aged man had never seen such beautiful eyes. Ignoring the filthy blood, he lifted the boy from the pile of corpses, raising a hand to wipe the dirt from the boy’s face.

"How strange, a child climbed out of a pile of corpses. Little one, how old are you?"

The middle-aged man displayed a smile he thought was friendly, but it appeared more grave than a cry, scaring his nearby subordinates into silence.

The boy shook his head, unable and unwilling to remember.

Driven by the instinct to survive, he returned the smile to the middle-aged man, who noticed a missing front tooth.

"Marquis, this child might be from Wei Country. They have recently been secretly coming to Dingbei Pass to help Qiangrong’s Royal Court cause trouble..." whispered his deputy.

"I don’t care," the boy smiled, melting the middle-aged man’s heart as he decisively declared, "What this marquis picks up is a Yan person."

The child was truly well-behaved and adorable, with striking looks. The middle-aged man couldn’t help but think of his two inept sons back home. If Gu Chengzhao and Gu Chengye had been half as delightful as this boy when they were young, he wouldn’t be fuming every day.

"Can you...take me home?"

The boy blinked, taking out a small, delicate box from his pocket and opening it before the man, revealing many pills emitting a strange medicinal fragrance.

"I’ll obediently take these." He spoke word by word, smiling ingratiatingly.

The middle-aged man’s expression shifted. He took the boy’s pulse, sensing that peculiar inner strength within him. His expression grew somber, his eyes filled with complex emotions.

Such a young child—what could he have gone through to possess such powerful inner strength? He had heard of peculiar practices in the world, of sects using children to test drugs. He once did not believe it, but seeing the boy’s box, he had to.

The middle-aged man took the box, gently touching the boy’s forehead, instructing, "Fetch the military doctor to carefully examine his body."

The boy clung cautiously to the man’s clothes, not daring to wrap his arms around the man’s neck. Yet, this embrace was so warm, reminding him of a time when he was even younger, before his brother turned into a bad person and would hold him like this.

This man’s embrace was broader than his brother’s and more reassuring.

He wanted to sleep and dream it all away.