Wan Qing never thought she would live to see this day, let alone to endure a lonely death in a foreign land. The people who loved her most were her grandmother and her mother, yet they were both gone now. As death approached, she realized she was terrified - not of dying, but of not being buried beside her mother in Lijiang.
She knew her only hope lay with Xiaohui. If he agreed, she was sure he would take her body back to Lijiang. Wan Qing clung to life, waiting for the chance to speak with him.
Murong Qin was essentially running the government now, having successfully purged the Crown Prince's party. He had even hinted in court at the possibility of negotiating peace with the Tian Dynasty. Many court officials agreed, and even the few who objected with talks of an intractable conflict between Yan Country and the Tian Dynasty didn't cause any upheaval. It seemed, then, that peace talks were feasible.
