As soon as Zu An heard those words, he pointed to Qiao Xueying and exclaimed, “Her! Let her go first!”
“…” Qiao Xueying.
“Wow, I really should thank you for your generosity, huh?” Qiao Xueying shot Zu An a deathly glare.
“You aren’t even my woman, so why should I protect you? Not to mention, we’re enemies now. Haven’t you heard of the saying ‘kick them while they’re down’?” Zu An wasn’t embarrassed in the least.
Qiao Xueying sighed deeply and said, “Haaa, you do have no reason to protect me.”
Zu An was a little flabbergasted by how easily Qiao Xueying was going along with him. “Am I hearing things? You’re actually agreeing with me?”
Qiao Xueying rolled her eyes and said, “What’s wrong with you? Why do you look so horrified when I’m agreeing with what you said? Do you actually enjoy having me refute you? Disgusting!”
On the stone table, Chu Chuyan burst into laughter. The two of them always bicker with one another whenever they meet. It really feels like a love-hate relationship.
The black-armored general shot a glance at Zu An before saying, “At least you’re much franker than that man earlier on, a genuine scoundrel.”
“Wait a moment, why am I a scoundrel? Haven’t you seen how devoted I am to my wife?” Zu An immediately lost his temper. “Oh, wait a moment. Does that mean that Shi Kun abandoned her? Did he try to use her as a shield so as to buy time for his own escape?”
Qiao Xueying was taken aback. “How did you know? Have you been spying on us?!”
“I don’t have such an interest.” Zu An shrugged. “Do I even need to watch to see it to know? It’s a scene so cliché in drama series that it hardly interests me anymore.”
“What is ‘drama series’?”
Neither Qiao Xueying nor Chu Chuyan had heard of it before.
“That’s not important. The important thing is that you should have finally seen what kind of a man Shi Kun is. He’s someone who values his own life above others. Putting aside a servant like you, I reckon that he wouldn’t hesitate to abandon his own father in times to danger!” said Zu An. “That’s why I say that women like you are shallow. You think that good-looking guys are bound to have pretty hearts too. Please! Men who look good are bound to be creeps!”
A split second later, he quickly supplemented, “Cough cough, I’m the exception, of course. Someone as handsome and gentle and kind as me is one-of-a-kind in the world!”
“Stop it, I’m going to puke.” Qiao Xueying rolled her eyes. “It’s already bad enough that I’m going to die here, so can you at least stop torturing me?”
“Hey, are you going to continue being so rude?” Zu An was displeased.
The black-armored general finally interjected with a cold harrumph. “How long are the two of you going to fight for? Don’t worry, I’ll take both of your lives at once so that you can continue bickering on your way to hell.”
It raised its hands, and two sabers materialized before their heads like a guillotine. It looked like they would fall at the next second and decapitate the two of them.
“Ah Zu!” Chu Chuyan cried out in alarm, but she couldn’t move at all. Even if she was in her peak condition, she still wouldn’t have been a match for this black-armored general.
Qiao Xueying closed her eyes. Ever since she was treated like a shield by Shi Kun, her heart had already died. At this point, death felt almost like a relief to her.
It was then that Zu An suddenly spoke up, “Brother Zhang Han, there’s a question that I need to ask you.”
Those abrupt words left Chu Chuyan taken aback. Even Qiao Xueying also opened her eyes in intrigue. Who is he talking to?
The two women took a look around, but there was no one else around.
“Zhang Han…” The black-armored general shuddered upon hearing the name. It took a long while before he finally responded wistfully, “It has been a long time since anyone has called me that. I’ve almost forgotten my own name.”
Qiao Xueying’s lower jaw nearly dropped to the ground. The zombie general has a name, and Zu An actually knows it? What’s the world coming to?
Chu Chuyan was stunned too. Zu An had really given her a lot of surprises over the last few days. More and more secrets were surfacing from him, stoking her curiosity. She realized that she had never really gotten to know the real Zu An all this while.
“How do you know my name?” Zhang Han turned to Zu An with doubt in his eyes.
Zu An smiled and said, “If I say that we’re friends in our previous life, would you believe me?”
He had already used his skill ‘Befriend a Rich Man’. Yet another 100,000 silver taels going to waste… Damn!
He had learned his lesson from his previous failure with Shi Kun. He knew that even if he became friends with the target, he still couldn’t change the target’s train of thought. Thus, he chose to proceed with this matter carefully, not daring to be too direct.
“Friends?” Zhang Han was stunned for a moment before roaring into laughter. “I, Zhang Han, have no friends. I didn’t have any before, and I’ll never have any!”
Despite those words, Zu An noticed that the two sabers in the sky subconsciously moved sideward a little.
He sighed softly and said, “Y’know, we have a word for people like you—tsundere. Are you sure that you don’t want to have friends? Surely it must be lonely for you to guard this lifeless tomb all alone for so many years?”
Zhang Han was silent for a while before sighing deeply. “Lonely? Time already holds no meaning to me, so what does loneliness count as?”
Both Qiao Xueying and Chu Chuyan glanced at one another in bewilderment. The scene before them was simply too incomprehensible. In the dingy depths of this underground palace, Zu An is actually having a philosophical debate with a zombie?
However, Zhang Han soon snapped out of his daze. He stared at Zu An with blue flames burning intently in his eyes as he asked, “Who in the world are you? How do you know my name?”
“A woman named Mi Li told me,” replied Zu An.
He made sure to assess the black-armored general skeleton carefully as he said those words, hoping to garner some information from the latter’s reaction.
“Hmmm~” A surprised, feminine remark sounded from the depths of the underground cavern. However, it was so soft that others couldn’t hear it at all.
“Her Majesty? No, that’s impossible!” Zhang Han shook his head vehemently with a fearful look on his face, as if he had just learned something incredibly terrifying.
“Her Majesty?” Zu An’s eyes lit up as he remembered a piece of history in his previous life.
In the Spring and Autumn–Warring States period, the Qin Country was originally on good terms with the Jin Country. It supported the fleeing Duke Wen of Jin onto the throne, ushering in prosperous times for the Jin Country, who swiftly moved to conquer the states around it. Unfortunately, the Qin Country harbored great ambitions—it intended to conquer the Central Plains, and the Jin Country was both literally and figuratively standing in its way.
The Jin Country couldn’t bear the notion of the Qin Country expanding its influence to the Central Plains either, so a conflict broke out between the two countries. It eventually led to the Battle of Xiao, where the Jin Country set up traps for the Qin Country along the way and defeated the latter’s army. That led to a complete fracturing of relations.
Having become enemies with the Jin Country, the Qin Country soon proposed a political marriage with the Chu Country in order to strike an alliance. It just so happened that the Jin Country was a common enemy between the two of them, so it didn’t take much for them to get together on the same bed.
In the next hundred years to come, the Qin Country and Chu Country sustained their bonds by intermarriage. The queen of the Qin Country would often be the princess of the Chu Country, and the men of the Chu Royal Family went by the surname of ‘Xiong’ while its women went by the surname of ‘Mi’.
‘Mi’ was a truly rare surname, so it was easy to link it to the Chu Country.
However, the Chu Country’s princesses who had married into the Qin Royal Family were only able to become queens. Theoretically speaking, there were only two of them who were qualified to be termed as empresses.[1]
However, based on what he knew, neither Qin Shihuang nor Qin Ershi had any historical records on their empresses.