Chapter 37: The Snow-Red Pavilion

It is unclear how much time had passed when the infant in the swaddling clothes struggled and suddenly let out a wail.

"Let's get out of the valley first," Ding Jun proposed.

"It must be resolved here, but I can promise you, I will save him, not kill him," Miss Xue finally conceded.

Ding Jun gave a bitter smile. "Very well, then I will take a step back as well. If he is truly guilty of heinous crimes, I will leave him to your judgment."

Miss Xue nodded, withdrew a silver needle from her sleeve, and after observing the top of Shi Miaoshou’s head for two minutes, she struck suddenly, driving the needle in up to its hilt. In an instant, a jet of blood hissed from the end of the needle, spraying more than two meters away.

"It is done," Miss Xue said.

After a while, Shi Miaoshou opened his eyes and gazed up at the sky.

"Where is the partial Heavenly Scripture?" Miss Xue asked.

Shi Miaoshou’s lips moved with difficulty. "It is in... the lining of my shoe. It belongs to the Guge; it should have been... returned to you long ago..."

Miss Xue turned back immediately, staring at Shi Miaoshou’s shoes.

Ding Jun took over for her, removing Shi Miaoshou’s right leather shoe. As he folded it gently, he felt something hard embedded in the lining. He took out a small knife, cut open the sole from the side, and extracted a silver plate an inch long, half an inch wide, and half a fen thick.

As he handed it over to Miss Xue, Ding Jun lightly rubbed his thumb over the flat surface, feeling countless tiny characters engraved upon it, each no larger than a mung bean.

When Miss Xue received the silver plate, she could not help but exhale a long sigh.

"I have wronged Xue Honglou, but it was an accident. Now that things have come to this, I am about to die... It is said that the words of the dying are sincere... I must clarify the truth so that she may rest in peace in the afterlife..."

Shi Miaoshou had once told a version of the past regarding the Guge envoy Xue Honglou, but what he was saying now was a different account. As he claimed, fifteen years had passed, and aside from those involved, no one knew what had truly happened that day, or what the causes and consequences had been.

Ding Jun believed that the words of the dying were sincere; this time, Shi Miaoshou must be telling the truth—

Fifteen years ago, I met Xue Honglou in the Great Snow Mountains west of Zada County. She was my savior. At that time, I had gathered a batch of extremely precious snow-mountain blood lotuses, valued at about five million yuan on the market. Because of this, a group of bandits from the Pamir Plateau targeted me. We clashed seven or eight times, and the men I brought with me were all shot dead. I was also severely wounded, with an enemy’s hunting rifle pressed against my chin.

I thought I was dead, but as soon as Xue Honglou appeared, several of the enemies were gravely wounded and fell onto the snow.

Xue Honglou gave me a special elixir and carried me into a snow cave to recover. We spent seven wonderful days together; she soaked the blood lotuses in the cold mountain spring to wash my wounds, and I told her about the customs of the world outside and the colorful scenery... In truth, it was a very cliché story. After seven days, I realized she had entered my heart, and I could not drive her out.

Thus, we fell in love, and I decided to take her back to Toling Town and make her my wife. In reality, I already had a wife and a lively, adorable son, and I was a well-known miracle doctor in the Ngari region. If I had never met Xue Honglou, my life would have flowed as peacefully as a stream, growing old steadily and securely, remaining the Dr. Shi whom everyone admired and loved, eventually becoming a good husband and father. Once she appeared, my life underwent an earth-shattering change.

After leaving that idyllic snow cave, we finally remembered that we should introduce ourselves to each other, rather than calling out "Hey, hey." I loved her name—Xue Honglou; it must have been taken from the poetic lines in Li Shangyin’s *Rain*: "The red tower stands cold, separated by the rain; wearing beads and floating lanterns, I return alone." I thanked the heavens for bestowing upon me a lover as ethereal as glacial marrow and as tender as a spring apricot blossom. I was willing to cast everything aside for her; even if the world condemned me, I would never regret it. Unfortunately, I was too immersed in my own joy at the time to notice the shock in Xue Honglou’s eyes.

On the night before we arrived in Toling Town, we stayed at the ancient castle of the Bala Tu chieftain in the westernmost part of Diya Township, Zada County. That evening, Xue Honglou finally revealed her true identity. As fate would have it, she was a killer sent by the Guge to exterminate the Shi family. To obtain more information, I used advanced hypnosis to put her into a trance, making her reveal the secrets of the Guge without realizing it. It turned out that the Guge people did not perish overnight; they had moved deep into the snow mountains in a planned and purposeful manner to avoid the ravages of war, so that the Guge subjects could survive for generations to come.

Xue Honglou’s clan were not the original inhabitants of the Guge; they had migrated from Sichuan, carrying a vast treasury of gold, enough to sustain the clan for hundreds of years. Living within the snow mountains, they were not cut off from the world; every year, they sent out a large number of eyes and ears to gather information from the outside world and bring back massive quantities of newspapers and books for the clansmen to study.

In that clan, the one with the greatest power was the Queen, followed by the High Priest. Xue Honglou was the saintess of the current generation, and once she completed the task of exterminating the Shi family, she would be able to return to the clan and ascend to the throne of the Queen. At that time, she did not understand why she had to kill the Shi family; she was simply obeying the orders of the High Priest.

The High Priest wielded immense power. The previous Queen had done something that wronged the clan, and the High Priest had led the clan elders in a collective vote to cast her into the forbidden lands behind the mountain, never to return. It was said that these forbidden lands were where the original Guge inhabitants lived, but none of the clansmen had ever seen them, knowing only that those original inhabitants had a vertical eye on their foreheads, resembling the appearance of the Guge silver-eyed statues.

Rumors within the clan said that the Guge people lived in seclusion in the forbidden lands because they had lost the legendary "Guge Divine Power." With that power, they were the Guge Kingdom that dominated the land of Tibet; without it, they could only remain weak and evasive, slaughtered and bullied by foreign tribes.

Another rumor said that hundreds of years ago, the ancestors of the clan arrived at the Tibetan border snow mountains with their gold and discovered the camp of the Guge people, launching a fierce assault immediately. Those ancestors belonged to a regular army with sophisticated weapons and immense combat strength; they had conquered the world and rarely met their match. Consequently, the Guge people retreated to the forbidden lands, setting up various traps along the way to hinder the pursuit. Even to this day, they were filled with fear and dared not attempt a comeback.

In the end, I enticed Xue Honglou to speak her heart. She did not want to kill me, but she dared not defy the High Priest’s orders, and she was caught in a dilemma. All I could do was take Xue Honglou away from the Tibetan border, travel to the interior, change our names, and be together forever. This was also her wish; as long as she could escape the High Priest and her clansmen, she would follow me to the ends of the earth.

Back in Toling Town, I told my family that she was a friend I had been separated from for many years and that she would be staying for a few days before leaving. In reality, I was looking for an opportunity to have a showdown with my wife so we could part ways peacefully without hurting each other. My wife’s surname was Tang, her given name Rong, and she was a peripheral disciple of the Tang Sect in Shu. The relationship between us was neither good nor bad; we were just like any ordinary couple.

I finally found the chance to have that showdown, leaving the Shi family’s property to her, walking away with nothing, and planning to wander the world with Xue Honglou from that day on. Tang Rong agreed quite readily and even said she wanted to host a banquet to see us off.