The sharp noises of drawn swords sent Halun leaping onto a bare but thick branch of a nearby Chinese elm tree for safety. His eyes scoured for a quick escape route through the forest.
He paused for a moment and turned to look at Yinyue and her bodyguards. Some with their swords drawn. She gestured with her hand and they sheathed their swords.
The pale-looking brat of a Dayan Grand Prince grinned at him, making him uncomfortable. This brat knew something he didn't.
When both of them pointed weapons at each other earlier, he noticed Yinyue's throat didn't have a masculine bulge, a mark of reaching male puberty. The mask worn by the brat acted as a constant distraction.
His mind deduced two possibilities. First, the Grand Prince is a eunuch. Second, the Grand Prince is female.
In most ruling houses of the Central Plains, an impotent male or male with serious disease affecting fertility will never ascend the throne.
The Dayan Empire would be no different based on what Halun knew. They didn't allow princes with permanent disabilities or facial disfigurement to ascend the throne.
A female maybe, he thought as his eyes studied her figure flanked by her men in a neat row. Her facial features and her petite frame resembled a young woman's, not like a young man of a similar age.
The corpse-like pallor on her face wouldn't attract any suitors. Let alone her cold dead fish eyes. And with her boyish behaviour, she was trying too hard to act like a man.
He heard of her reputation as a Killing God and assumed that she is a man.
From his experience growing up in the Taotang inner harem, the Queen and his half-sisters were exemplary examples of vicious scheming creatures.
Unlike Yinyue, they didn't venture out to battlefields. If they did, they would probably be the ultimate Killing Gods.
The luxurious interiors of his father's and brothers' harems hid a cesspool of venomous women. They would do anything for attention.
Whoever said females couldn't be more violent or cruel than men needed their heads checked. Two of his father's concubines killed their own children to frame others. The Taotang Queen, his father's primary consort, bore the habit of creating accidents to cause a few too many concubines to miscarry.
The women of the harem vented their frustrations on the children. Children were open targets in the Taotang palace. Like him, his other half-siblings were easy targets because their mothers died.
During his childhood, he laid low by not excelling in his studies, performing martial arts with plenty of mistakes, or acting crazy, like pissing his pants in front of palace guests.
The children who acted smarter than those with the protection of powerful women died. He witnessed the Queen drowning one and poisoning another to remove threats from her biological son.
Those women's conniving smiles and feigned sweet voices made his skin crawl.
A superficial good looking facade, and amount of makeup failed to hide the monsters which laid below the female species. The more beautiful they were, the more suspicious he grew of their motives.
Only stupid men fell for them.
In Taotang, Halun continued acting insane to ward off matchmaking like the plague. He set an official's residence on fire for trying to get a royal decree to force him into marriage.
In retaliation, the official set him up for a crime he didn't commit. Thus, his banishment to the border.
At the border, some women used to pester him often. But they were easier to deal with. Their families had no political connection to the Capital.
Nothing amused him more than seeing a woman's face and her wails of despair at his lack of feeling when he gave them a choice of killing themselves by poison, hanging or stabbing themselves for bothering him. Soon, no women bothered him.
If not for his odd resistance to most poisons and sleeping drugs, he would have ended up like some of his half-brothers. Three of them tricked into marriage by seduction because a scheming female drugged them and climbed onto their beds.
He shuddered at the idea of marriage in his mind.
Maybe he should think of Yinyue as a eunuch. Then he realized he didn't feel that averse to her.
This female Dayan Grand Prince differed from other women. Her presence radiated an overwhelming powerful aura of authority to command others, like a king.
How would Kelian and Lieshan react if they found out about the gender of Yinyue? He imagined the look on their faces. Those two were hopeless when a pretty face of a monster appeared.
No, he didn't want them to know.
Still, her smiling face unsettled him. He hated her smile because it bore the similarity to his half-sisters. They always wore that same smile when they were up to no good.
She spoke to his two men, forced to their knees by her bodyguards. Her back faced to him. He couldn't see much from his view.
Halun took a deep breath. He may need to send someone to collect their bodies later.
With a wave of her hand, her bodyguards released his two men from their hold. His men limped in his direction. Why didn't she kill them? He tilted his head, troubled by the unexpected move made.
He turned away, preparing to leave.
"Not so fast," she replied.
A shadowy figure flashed past his two limping men and leaped up towards him. He jumped onto another tree branch. Their eyes met again.
Halun watched for an opening. He memorised the layout through the forest from a glimpse and figured an escape route to lead his men.
"Why did you ask me to stay back?" Yinyue asked, catching him by surprise. It was all business with her.
Halun realized he forgot what he intended to do earlier. His fingers rummaged through the pocket hidden on his waist belt and pulled out a fish-shaped token.
Her eyes fell on the engraved totem of the Dayan Flame on the token. "Where did you find it?"
"On my way here. Through the usual southwestern path from Taotang's borders to here. My men picked it up from a dead corpse," he replied and threw the token to her.
Yinyue examined the token. Her furrowed eyebrows and the way she checked the inscriptions on the token in a serious manner gave away the importance of the token was.
"Thanks…I won't pursue today's matter then," she said with no emotion. Not even anger reared its ugly head in her tone.
"It must be worth more than not pursuing a misunderstanding," he said as she turned to leave.
Yinyue stopped and turned around as though she changed her mind. Her eyes swept from his head to his feet and back, sizing him up in front of others. He felt like a piece of meat being inspected by a prospective buyer.
She pursed her lips and rubbed her chin as though in deep thought.
Her reaction made Halun uneasy. Was she thinking of attacking him? He went into a defensive stance, ready to flee.
"Worth your life and your men's then."
"What do you mean?" He asked while struggling to keep calm. If she wanted a fight, she better not regret it later.
"Your attackers may have laced their blades with poison," she replied and leaned forward to sniff at the surrounding air.
Before he could say anything, his head dived into a quick, nauseating spin. The sight of the gnarled branches and her face swam around his vision into a blurry mix of colours. Light faded into the night in an instant. He felt his legs weaken.
"CATCH HIM!" He heard her shout.
He felt a falling sensation before blacking out.