The wind and sand of the borderlands, the cruel battlefield, had carved more resolve into his features; that empty sleeve, that haggard face, lent him an added touch of bleak desolation. Yet his gaze was still so earnest, so absolute.

He had changed; he was no longer the Qu Fengting of the past.

Thinking back on all the past grudges and entanglements, a vague emotion rose in Mu Hanyan’s heart.

"Am I, Mu Hanyan, the sort who says one thing and means another? But what I’m saving is Beining Pass, not the Fifth Prince." Mu Hanyan said each word like a hammer striking stone, then spurred the Red Charcoal Cloud Smoke Beast and shot out.

"Let’s go. By now you still don’t know Young Master Mu’s temper? Your Fifth Prince is saved this time." He Qingwei patted the still-stunned Qu Fengting, then followed as well.

Only then did Qu Fengting seem to wake from a dream; a gleam of joy flashed in his eyes, and he too rushed after them.

Perhaps Luo Pengcheng would think Mu Hanyan and the others were merely young and hot-blooded, but he himself would not. After dealing with Mu Hanyan so many times, suffering so many losses, he had witnessed far too many impossibilities on her.

He knew that for Mu Hanyan to refuse Dan Tai Xuan so simply and directly, she had to have her reasons. Her confidence did not come from nowhere. This time, the Fifth Prince was saved. Excellent!

"Choose two hundred soldiers who can still fight and go out of the city with me." After thinking it over again and again, Luo Pengcheng still felt uneasy about Mu Hanyan, so he selected another two hundred lightly injured soldiers, fully armed, to follow along.

Beining and Qingyang Passes were built leaning against the mountains, the terrain extremely perilous. On one side of each pass lay a bottomless abyss, with only a narrow gorge between them as a passage. Even those Exotic Beasts adept at scaling cliffs and leaping over rocks could only pass through that gorge. Perhaps an odd one or two might get lucky and slip in along the sheer cliff, but they posed no real threat at all.

Of course, Exotic Beasts were by no means unintelligent and ordinarily wouldn’t do such foolish things.

If Lu’an City was the throat where An Yunxi’s southwest met the Longyan Mountain range, then Beining and Qingyang Passes were the pair of great hands choking that throat. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

At this moment, the roars of Exotic Beasts and the furious shouts of human warriors echoed endlessly between the cliffs. As outside Lu’an City, corpses lay strewn beneath the two passes, most of them mangled beyond recognition, their deaths too gruesome to look upon.

Both passes held the advantage of terrain and were equipped with many catapults. Giant stones infused with Qi, hurled from high above, gained multiplied power and could inflict fatal damage on Exotic Beasts. This was one of the crucial reasons the two passes had held out until now.

However, after battle upon battle, all the prepared giant stones within the passes had been exhausted, and those few massive catapults were battered beyond repair. Thousands of Exotic Beasts were now simultaneously assaulting both gates.

Qu Fengting had not exaggerated the situation. Whether in numbers or in strength, the Exotic Beasts attacking Beining Pass were far stronger, and far more frenzied. The ones assailing Qingyang Pass were not only fewer, they were also significantly weaker; they seemed intent more on preventing the soldiers of Qingyang from going out to rescue Beining than on truly taking Qingyang Pass itself.

On the wall of Beining Pass, a young officer swung his Longsword in a heavy arc, hacking down an Exotic Beast that had just clawed its way up onto the battlements. Blood splattered across his face as he himself crashed heavily to the ground. Bracing on his sword, he stared blankly into the distance.

The catapults were all destroyed, and arrow supplies were nearly spent. He could no longer remember how many Exotic Beasts had leapt up onto the wall, only to be hacked back down by his hand.

All he knew was that the Personal Soldiers around him had fallen one after another, and his Qi had burned down to its final flickering wick.

In the distance lay Lu’an City, and Luoguan City that shared lips-and-teeth dependence with Beining and Qingyang Passes. He did not know whether Qu Fengting had managed to break through the encirclement. Would he run away halfway? But even if he did flee, where could he run to? Just like himself—even if he escaped from Beining Pass, where could he go? Though the world was vast, where was there a place for him?

He remembered the high-spirited confidence of his first return to the Capital, and then Mu Hanyan’s face—that face he had always found hateful no matter how he looked at it. Suddenly he laughed. Thinking back now, Mu Hanyan was actually not that hateful. Every time, it had always been himself seeking humiliation; Mu Hanyan had never once taken the initiative to provoke them.

On the contrary, he had learned much from Mu Hanyan: better to break than bend, yet never act recklessly; skilled at schemes, yet without the petty malice of a schemer. Sadly, he had only slowly realized these truths in the painful reflection after coming to Beining Pass.

If he had met Mu Hanyan earlier, understood all this earlier, perhaps things would not have come to this end.

The Fifth Prince felt a twinge of regret, but soon cast that regret aside. This was not the time for remorse, nor the time to give up. He recalled how, back then in that mysterious palace on Flying Peak, Mu Hanyan’s situation had been no better than his current plight. Yet she had not given up, had persisted to the very end, repelled Zhao Lingxian, and even obtained the Aolai Divine Beast’s memory Inheritance.

Since she could do it, why couldn’t he?

Another Exotic Beast howled as it leapt onto the battlements, jaws gaping. The Fifth Prince did not know where the strength came from; he suddenly sprang up and, with one stroke, chopped the beast off the wall.

Crack. The Longsword, already notched all over, snapped in two. His body, no longer obeying his will, toppled toward the ground.

"General!" Behind him came his Personal Soldiers’ cries of alarm.

His dazed mind cleared in an instant. Using the half-broken sword as a prop, he forced himself to stand once more. He knew he could not fall. If he collapsed, the soldiers behind him would lose their last shred of fighting spirit, and Beining Pass would no longer be able to hold.

The Fifth Prince struggled to straighten his back, half a broken sword in hand, his gaze once more turning to the distant horizon. Earlier, he had heard Lu’an City’s horn of battle to the death; clearly they too had reached their final moment of life and death. He did not know whether Lord Luo had held the city. Even if he had, the casualties would surely be devastating. How could there be spare men to come to his aid?

The Fifth Prince simply stood there, back ramrod straight, staring for a long, long time in the direction of Lu’an City. That was also the direction of the Capital. Boundless exhaustion surged up in his heart; his mind grew hazy. He didn’t even notice an Exotic Beast scrambling up the wall and lunging at him with gaping maw, nor did he truly hear the shouts of horror from the Personal Soldiers behind him.

Suddenly, a black mass appeared far away, rolling up plumes of dust.

The Fifth Prince’s gaze sharpened. Though the distance was still great, he nonetheless clearly saw that leading figure, her features delicate yet not lacking in heroic spirit.

"Mu Hanyan? How is she here!" Though he had received word that the Eight Great Families’ young elites were coming from the Capital to reinforce them, he had not known that the one leading them would actually be Mu Hanyan.

Yet at the very instant he saw Mu Hanyan, his once-befuddled Mental State suddenly cleared, and his spirit surged.

If it had been someone else, he might not have felt much confidence. But Mu Hanyan was different. Just like Qu Fengting, he had witnessed too many miracles on her. He had once both hated and feared her, and at the same time, he was filled with confidence in her.