Ye An peered over to look at the message. "What is this? An invasion?" She looked at Xi Chen in alarm.

Xi Chen's brows furrowed at the news. The last invasion was still fresh in his memory. He was merely a boy then and was involuntarily forced into the thick of things.

10 years ago, Winter

A young boy was sitting by the window sill, his brows furrowed in concentration as he tried to paint the scene outside on a piece of rough yellowed paper. Snow had been falling heavily since dawn, the barren pine trees outside the downtrodden hut were piled with heavy snow. Looking at the cloudy sky, it seemed as though a snowstorm would be rolling in soon. 

The young boy's features were somewhere in between a boy's and a man's. His cheeks had not fully grown out of their softness but his jaw was already sharpening. Separate animal furs were stitched together into a coat and piled on top of his small frame to keep him warm.

From the other side of the small room, an elderly man spoke to the young boy in his gravelly voice. "Xi Chen, don't sit by the window. You'll get a cold. Close the shutters and come help me keep this fire lit." 

Young Xi Chen obediently latched the window shut before hopping off the stool as he answered, "Alright, grandpa."

Both the elderly man and the young boy fanned the fire with all their might to keep it crackling.

"Don't tell your grandma I asked you to do this with me or she'll skin me alive." The elderly man said to the young boy mischievously.

"Alright, grandpa. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me." Young Xi Chen replied, mirroring the elderly man's playfulness.

The door to the hut opened suddenly to an elderly woman. Flakes of pristine snow had settled on the headscarf covering her equally white hair. She entered the room as she carried a basket filled with sweet potatoes. "Gosh, the snow is everywhere! Are you done lighting up the fire?" She asked while dusting snow off her clothes. "Mr. Hua! I asked you to light the fire! Why are you making Xi Chen do all the work?" The elderly woman scolded her husband once she noticed what they were doing. 

The elderly man looked at his wife sheepishly and quickly went to his wife to help her dust off the snow on her headscarf in a clumsy bid to make amends as young Xi Chen candidly answered, "A man must work for his food, grandma."

The young boy's guileless retort made the elderly couple laugh.

"Yes, yes. Our Xi Chen is absolutely right." The elderly woman answered as she ruffled the boy's hair fondly. The elderly man gave the boy a wink and a thumbs-up behind his wife's back.

"Here. Let's have some roasted sweet potatoes for lunch today. Lao Wang gave me his best sweet potatoes." The elderly woman spoke while she popped the sweet potatoes straight into the fire.

"Oh, and I saw a few soldiers from the border having a meal at the tavern beside Lao Wang's cart. Such fine men." The elderly woman sighed.

"Mrs. Hua, is that something you should mention in front of your husband, hmm?" Her husband asked, his lips pursed in displeasure.

"Why, Mr. Hua?" The elderly woman batted her snowy white eyelashes innocently.

The elderly man pursed his lips once again and turned his face away, refusing to answer.

"Oh, look. The sweet potatoes are cooked!" His wife smirked as she watched her husband, already knowing what his response would be.

This immediately got the elderly man worked up and exclaiming, "No, they're not! Woman, do you know how to roast sweet potatoes?!" 

Xi Chen and the elderly woman looked at each other and burst out in laughter. The elderly man was flustered at first but laughed along in the end.

Suddenly, the deep bellowing of a war horn emanated from the direction of the military barracks, which were only a few miles away.

The laughter and joy were sucked out of the small hut in an instant.

The three of them stood still in shock and then the elderly couple started packing as fast as they could.

"Xi Chen, put out the fire. Quick!" The elderly woman instructed.

In the flurry of activities, the door to the hut smashed opened from the outside. Three men in military uniforms stood at the doorway. 

The soldier in the center stepped into the hut with the two other soldiers flanking him. He then turned to talk to the person on his left. Something wasn't quite right. The men were wearing military uniforms but were speaking to each other in a foreign language and their physical features were slightly different. They had deeper set and much darker eyes with thicker lips and high cheekbones.

"Northerners." The elderly man breathed in fear. His wife shoved Xi Chen behind her back protectively when she heard it.

"Yes, you're a smart one for an old geezer, aren't you?" The man in the center spoke in a heavy accent.

"Those uniforms... Those are the uniforms of the soldiers I've met earlier... Officers Zang, Yuan, and Wen..." The elderly woman spoke, her voice barely a whisper.

"If you know who we are, then you know what's coming." A smirk forming at the man's mouth as he started walking towards them slowly like a hawk zeroing in on his prey. The two men behind him followed suit, entering the tiny hut.

"ARGHHHH!" The elderly man ran towards the Northern man with all his might. He pushed the bag he had packed in front of him towards the man's towering height.

His wife took this chance to grab hold of Xi Chen's hand and escaped through the back door. They ran from the hut and never looked back.

Both the elderly woman and Xi Chen ran through the forest until the sun was setting on the horizon. In the twilight, they finally stopped at a cave. Xi Chen saw that the elderly woman was shivering so he started to remove his fur coat. The elderly woman noticed his movement and put her hand over his to stop him.

"I'm not shivering from the cold." She said bleakly.

Both of them sat in silence, panting, trying to digest what has happened and trying their best not to wonder about what was happening or has happened to the elderly man they left back in the hut.

Xi Chen sniffed and reached into his coat. He took a sweet potato out and passed it to the elderly lady. "Here, I pocketed some when I was putting out the fire.."

The elderly woman took the sweet potato from Xi Chen in silence and suddenly started sobbing. The sweet potato was still warm to the touch. A reminder that just mere hours ago, she was bantering with her husband. Now, everything had been turned upside down.

"Grandma..." Xi Chen called as tears started pooling in his eyes.

He had heard about the Northerners. They were always featured in local folklores as ruthless mercenaries. Northern children were trained to kill as soon as they were able to walk. And the Northerners never leave any survivors behind.

Both of them ate in silence.

"Xi Chen, we can't stay here for long. We need to go south, towards the capital." The elderly woman started once they finished their meal.

"But you said we should never enter the capital." Xi Chen replied.

"But there are Northerners here now. This place isn't that much safer. And we will just be passing by the capital to reach the southern plains." The elderly woman explained.

"... Alright." Xi Chen answered after a moment's hesitation. 

The north was all he ever knew. He knew that he was born in the capital but he moved here when he was really young and grew up here with this elderly woman in front of him and her husband who treated him like he was their biological grandchild. He had never even once traveled to the capital for the past twelve, thirteen years that he had been living in the northern region, much less the faraway southern plains.

The snowstorm had just begun but they needed as much lead time as they could get to make it to the southern plains. So they both wrapped their clothes tighter against their body as they stepped out of the cave. Gales of wind were blowing against them with every step into the snow-laden landscape. Despite that, they continued south. 

The strong currents of the wind were deafening. When both of them heard the galloping of horses, it was too late.

"There they are!" A voice bellowed in a foreign language behind them.

Xi Chen turned to look and saw that it was one of the men from earlier. They were now on horseback and were readily galloping towards the both of them.

"Grandma, run!" He grabbed hold of the elderly woman's hand and started running.

The elderly woman started running but tripped and fell. She was exhausted and knew that she could no longer run.

"You go!" She yelled in between gasps of air, letting go of Xi Chen's hand.

"No! Grandma! Come on! I'll carry you!" Xi Chen grabbed hold of the elderly woman's arms and wrapped them around his shoulders as he attempted to carry her.

At the time, he was only about the elderly woman's height. He kept stumbling as he tried to carry her while running through the thick snow. Xi Chen started sobbing in frustration as he fell into despair.

In the end, the elderly woman pushed Xi Chen away with all of the energy that she had left.

"Leave me! Run!" She demanded. 

Xi Chen stood there, unable to move. "But-"

"Please! Just go!" Her eyes pleading.

Xi Chen bit his quivering lip as he started stepping backward, away from the elderly woman. His heartbeat pounding deafeningly in his ears, his breath erratic.

"Quick!"

Xi Chen took a deep breath as he closed his eyes and sharply turned away from the elderly woman before running again.

Behind him, the Northerners were bellowing their war cry in glee as they swung their sickles and galloped towards the elderly woman.

Xi Chen turned to take one last look at the elderly woman as he was running not knowing that what he would be witnessing would be imprinted in his memory forever.

One of the swinging sickles caught the elderly woman right at her throat. Blood sprayed from her wound and all Xi Chen could see was red. Time slowed as the elderly woman looked at Xi Chen in the eye and mouthed, "Go. Run."

Tears pooled in Xi Chen's widened eyes that were involuntarily glued to the horrid scene. 

"Go." The elderly woman mouthed one last time as blood gurgled out of her throat.

It took Xi Chen tremendous effort to avert his eyes and continue running as the Northerners celebrated their kill. He could no longer hear the Northerners, all he could hear was the insistent pounding of his heart and the loud ringing in his ears.

He didn't know where he was going, he just kept on running until the full moon was high up in the sky. By the time he finally stopped running, his tears had long dried. His head was throbbing through his skull from all the crying and sobbing. Xi Chen leaned against a tree and sat down, gulping for air as he stared blankly into space with his empty red-rimmed eyes. Some time passed until he eventually fell into a deep sleep in the midst of a snowstorm.

Xi Chen could still clearly remember the hell that ensued after. The way crimson mist cast a red haze in the air for months, the tang of iron permeating his airways, the way he could almost taste the blood on his tongue. It wasn't a memory worth reminiscing.

"Lieutenant Yun!" Ye An called as Xi Chen blinked back into the present.

"My apologies, Your Imperial Majesty. Yes, it seems like that's the case. I don't understand. There hasn't been any invasion for ten years. In fact, I patrolled the surrounding areas only recently and there haven't been any abnormalities." 

"Ten years? What do you mean?" Ye An muttered, confused. But without waiting for an explanation, Ye An declared "This won't do. I need to call for an emergency meeting."

"I believe General Shao would call for a private meeting with you soon." Xi Chen replied, remembering the military protocol that was ingrained in him.

"No. I'll hold a court meeting. I'll listen to what everyone has to say on this matter." Ye An was going to do things her way.

Xi Chen hesitated.

"Let's go, Lieutenant Yun." Ye An commanded.

"Yes, Your Majesty. As you wish."

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