Chapter 1140: Victorious Return

Huyan Wei returned to the capital.

There was no helping it. His injuries were serious enough that he was no longer suited to traveling back and forth with the army. He needed to return and recuperate.

His second elder brother, Huyan Ding, was handling the remaining work of mopping up the rebels. Whether Huyan Wei stayed with the army made little difference.

Inside the imperial palace, Qi emperor Hao Yuntu was delighted to see his victorious son-in-law return. He smiled so broadly he could barely close his mouth.

"Your Majesty has no idea how dangerous the situation was at the time. This subject led five thousand Valiant Cavalry there at full speed and charged in from the rebels' rear..." Huyan Wei described the battle in extravagant detail, talking so excitedly that spittle practically flew from his mouth.

Never mind Hao Yuntu. Even Bu Xun, Chief Steward of the Inner Palace, was struggling not to laugh.

Bu Xun knew perfectly well that the emperor was not smiling so uncontrollably merely because the battle had been won. Of course, victory was part of it; had they lost, His Majesty would hardly be laughing. But what truly made the emperor lose composure was Huyan Wei himself.

Anyone with ears could tell that some parts of the story had been inflated beyond recognition. What kind of man was Hao Yuntu? During the struggle for the throne years ago, he too had personally led troops in battle. He had crawled alive from piles of corpses. He could naturally tell which parts of a battlefield tale were true and which were boasts.

Besides, detailed secret reports describing the battle had reached the emperor long ago. Hao Yuntu knew perfectly well what had happened.

Huyan Wei continued without pause. The longer Bu Xun listened, the more he did not know whether to laugh or cry. Compared with the steady composure of Huyan Wuhen, this son was almost a completely different kind of man. If someone like Huyan Wei truly took control of the Valiant Cavalry one day, would that be reliable?

Clearly, however, the emperor had no intention of exposing him. On the contrary, he listened with considerable interest.

And the emperor truly had been in a good mood lately. The rebellion had been crushed, and all the pressure from the court and from Qi's three great sects had dissolved at once.

Even Huyan Wuhen's defiance of the imperial decree had become, in Hao Yuntu's telling, a strategy the two of them had agreed upon beforehand. Huyan Wuhen needed a way to save face, and Hao Yuntu needed one as well.

They had won. The rebellion was suppressed. It became proof of His Majesty's sagacity.

Even the matter of Huyan Ding killing the original commander of the suppression army could no longer stir up much trouble.

As Huyan Wei's story grew more animated, he followed the emperor's questions and actually began loosening his clothes right there in front of Hao Yuntu, exposing the wounds across his back for the emperor to see.

Hao Yuntu walked over and inspected them. The injuries truly were shocking. It was obvious Huyan Wei had genuinely come close to losing his life. That part could not be fake. This campaign had indeed cost him some suffering.

"Wei'er shed blood on the battlefield, fought with his life on the line, and achieved such results. It was not easy. He deserves a heavy reward!" Hao Yuntu instructed Bu Xun, which was effectively an imperial decree.

"Yes!" Bu Xun accepted the order.

He knew perfectly well that the emperor had already decided how Huyan Wei would be rewarded, and that the reward would not consist merely of wealth and valuables.

A large portion of the battle merit belonging to Huyan Bao and Huyan Ding would be cut away and placed on the shoulders of the Huyan family's youngest son.

Apart from Huyan Wuhen himself, the greatest share of credit would be assigned to Huyan Wei.

Perhaps it was unfair, but the Huyan family would probably not dare object. From the day Huyan Wei married the Grand Princess, they should have understood that the emperor intended his own son-in-law to become the future head of the Huyan family, binding the Huyan family's military power firmly to the Hao imperial house.

Therefore, Huyan Wei needed military merit.

The emperor still had affairs to handle and could not spend the whole day listening to Huyan Wei's stories. After Huyan Wei took his leave, the smile remained on Hao Yuntu's face. He casually asked, "What do you think of this son-in-law of mine? How does he compare with his two elder brothers?"

How was Bu Xun supposed to answer that? He hesitated. Not wanting to deceive the emperor, he finally chose a middle path and smiled. "He's still a little young."

Hao Yuntu understood perfectly well. Bu Xun meant that Huyan Wei's ability could not compare with those two elder brothers.

Hao Yuntu himself wished one of those elder brothers had been his son-in-law. That would have made everything far easier. Unfortunately, matters had not worked out that way. There was nothing to be done.

He sighed. "Men are all young once. He has plenty of opportunities to temper himself. Besides, he still has two elder brothers to support him. The head of the household can manage the household, and those suited to war can fight the wars. There is nothing wrong with everyone handling his own responsibilities."

"Yes!" Bu Xun replied with a smile.

Huyan Wei did not manage to leave the palace immediately. The moment he came out from the emperor's presence, a eunuch stopped him. The Empress had sent the man to invite him over.

Huyan Wei naturally could not refuse and had no choice but to follow.

The moment he entered the Empress's residence, eunuchs and palace maids smiled and bowed one after another, all saying the same thing: "Welcome back in victory, General!"

The praise all along the way left Huyan Wei almost floating. Even his stride took on more of a general's swagger.

When he entered and saw the Empress, his wife Hao Qingqing was sitting beside her. Naturally, greetings were exchanged, and when the Empress heard he had been wounded, she inevitably asked about his injuries.

"Getting wounded on the battlefield is perfectly normal. Just a small injury, not worth mentioning!" Huyan Wei swept a hand grandly, full of masculine bravado. But he could not resist boasting again. Following the subject naturally, he said, "Still, this battle truly was dangerous. The army sent to suppress the rebels kept shirking the fight, forcing our thirty thousand Valiant Cavalry to charge head-on into five hundred thousand rebels. To avoid failing the imperial favor shown to me, I had no choice but to fight with my life..."

He embellished the tale until it sounded almost unimaginably dangerous, as though he had personally wrestled with Death itself amid ten thousand armies.

Thirty thousand men charging five hundred thousand already sounded shocking enough. After Huyan Wei's embellishment, even the Empress kept gasping in alarm, one delicate hand repeatedly covering her mouth. She truly felt the hair-raising danger of it all.

Even Hao Qingqing listened with shining eyes, her ten fingers sometimes clenching together as though she wished she could have been there herself.

Neither mother nor daughter suspected Huyan Wei was boasting. They had already heard the emperor speak of the matter, saying Huyan Wei had performed well on his first campaign, surpassed his two elder brothers, and earned great merit.

They did not yet know the emperor intended to tilt the distribution of credit toward him. They took the story as truth.

Once Huyan Wei finally finished, Hao Qingqing could not resist asking excitedly, "You killed more than ten on the east, dozens on the west, charging back and forth again and again, cutting men down like melons and vegetables the whole way. By that account, didn't you kill more than a thousand enemies in this battle?"

More than a thousand?

Huyan Wei thought about it and felt a faint pang of guilt. He had certainly hacked down a few enemy soldiers, but claiming he had killed over a thousand might be going a little too far.

Still, his skin was thick enough. He sighed. "I lost count. I truly went red-eyed from killing. Whenever I saw an enemy, I cut him down. I hacked until the edge of my saber curled over."

Hao Qingqing immediately said excitedly, "Where's that saber? Let me see it."

Huyan Wei gave a dry cough. "It was ruined. Couldn't be used anymore, so I threw it away."

"Who would've guessed?" Hao Qingqing raised an eyebrow and looked him up and down. This time, she truly saw Huyan Wei in a new light.

The Empress sighed. "Truly a tiger cub from a family of generals, with the bearing of a great commander!"

The way she looked at her son-in-law practically had the word fondness written across it.

He might be a little rough in appearance, but she had always been very satisfied with him, even before this military achievement.

Whenever her daughter and son-in-law quarreled, she firmly stood on her son-in-law's side.

Back when she first learned her daughter was going to marry a son of the Huyan family, she had been overjoyed.

Anyone with eyes understood why the emperor had insisted that a son of the Huyan family become his son-in-law. And once Huyan Wei became the emperor's son-in-law, the implications were obvious: in the future, the Huyan family's military power was likely to be placed in Huyan Wei's hands.

The Huyan family was a pillar of the state and held enormous military authority. Never mind its influence on the emperor; even Qi's three great sects could not ignore it.

The Empress had a son of her own. Her daughter marrying into the Huyan family carried enormous significance for that son's future. If the Huyan family could be persuaded to voice support, both the emperor and the three great sects would have to consider it seriously. If the Huyan family firmly supported her son, then the emperor and the three great sects might have very few choices left.

Under those circumstances, how could the Empress not treasure this son-in-law? No matter how unattractive he might have been, she would still have treated him like a treasure.

Huyan Wei suddenly became modest. "Compared with my father, this general is not worth mentioning."

He did not dare boast in the face of his father's reputation. If word of that ever reached home, he feared the military cane would be more than he could endure.

While they were speaking, Second Prince Hao Hong arrived. The moment he saw Huyan Wei, he greeted him with a broad smile and began talking warmly, plainly trying to cultivate closeness.

When the Empress summoned Huyan Wei, she had also secretly notified her son and told him to come build some rapport. Hao Hong naturally came gladly.

Yet the instant Huyan Wei saw the Second Prince, all his earlier frivolity vanished. He became so proper it was almost unnatural. No matter how warmly Hao Hong treated him, Huyan Wei consistently maintained a careful distance.

He could be reckless about other things. Associating too closely with imperial princes was different.

His father, Huyan Wuhen, had kept that cord pulled tight from the time he was small. It was a red line drilled into him through constant warnings, one he did not even dare brush against. Otherwise, his father truly might beat him to death. Huyan Wei had suffered for crossing that line before, and the taboo had long since become an instinctive reaction.

Once the Second Prince arrived, Huyan Wei became anxious to leave. There was no keeping him.

When he departed, the Empress gave him another lavish reward from her own private stores. She also ordered her daughter to accompany him home and take good care of the wounded general.

This time Hao Qingqing agreed readily.

In truth, she mainly wanted to hear more stories about the battlefield.

The instant husband and wife climbed into the carriage, Hao Qingqing immediately began pulling at Huyan Wei's clothes. Her impatience startled him badly.

Only afterward did he realize he had misunderstood.

Hao Qingqing merely wanted to see whether he had truly been wounded on the battlefield. She wanted to know whether Huyan Wei had been boasting.

Once the wound on his back was exposed, it really was frightening to look at. Hao Qingqing gave a small sound of disgust and wrinkled her face, but the way she looked at Huyan Wei had subtly changed. There was now a faint hint of admiration in her eyes.

Huyan Wei noticed it at once. A surge of masculine pride rose in him. Treating the wound as though it were nothing, he disdainfully pulled his clothes back into place. "Just a mosquito bite!"

Sure enough, the admiration in Hao Qingqing's eyes seemed to increase by another tiny measure.

...

"They're here!"

Inside a valley, someone among the seven sects called out. Taishu Shanhai and the others all looked up.

Four figures dropped from a descending flying bird, with Niu Youdao in the lead.

This time, Qin Guan and Ke Dingjie were not the only ones with him. Kunlin Shu had come as well.

Seeing the gazes cast toward him by Lu Yao and the other Tianhuo Sect members, Kunlin Shu, carrying an eagle cage on his back, said nothing. He turned away and busied himself looking after the Gray-Feather Eagle that had just landed, avoiding their eyes.

"Sorry to keep everyone waiting." Niu Youdao cupped his hands toward the group with a cheerful smile.

It would have been inconvenient for all eight sects to leave together. To avoid drawing attention, Niu Youdao had previously instructed the other seven sects to depart in separate groups and had arranged to meet them here.

They had already waited long enough and had no interest in wasting more words. Taishu Shanhai went straight to the point. "Where exactly are you taking us? Can you tell us now?"

Niu Youdao smiled and lightly uttered two words.

"Wuliang Garden!"

The people of the seven sects were struck speechless.

[End of Chapter 1140]