Xiaocui’s chatter brought her back from her thoughts—

“By the way, Yanyu, there are some clothes in the box. The housekeeper had them brought for you based on your size. They are all clean. Try them on to see if they fit. If not, I can help you alter them. I’ll go to the kitchen to see if there’s anything to eat.”

“Please wait a moment.” Zhu Yanyu hurriedly called out to Xiaocui. “My brother’s fever hasn’t gone down. Could you please ask the kitchen to make a bowl of brown sugar ginger soup?”

“Sure, I’ll tell the kitchen aunt.” Xiaocui agreed readily and left like a little bird.

Zhu Yanyu watched her leave, then opened the wardrobe and randomly picked a pink cotton dress with a green embroidered jacket, simple and elegant, clearly clothes for a maid.

After changing, Xiaocui came in with a food box, which contained a bowl of ginger soup, a bowl of porridge, and two side dishes.

Zhu Yanyu carefully picked up the ginger soup and fed it to her sleeping brother to help him sweat more. She asked Xiaocui for permission and decided to eat in Xiaocui’s room next door to avoid disturbing her brother’s sleep.

Zhu Yanyu followed Xiaocui out of the room and found that her room was at the end of a row of houses, which were for the servants to live in.

“The Commander is strict in managing the army. Although this is not the Commander’s residence, the managers here do not dare to neglect the rules. Male and female servants live separately. Your brother is only allowed to stay with you because he is young and sick. Once he recovers, he will have to move to live with the other young servants.”

Xiaocui chatted with Zhu Yanyu while eating, telling her many things. Zhu Yanyu learned that this was the Commander’s horse ranch, with hundreds of horses, not only for ordinary breeding but also for training excellent warhorses.

The Commander loved horses very much. He spent nearly a third of the year living on this horse ranch, where military affairs and documents were also handled. Nearby was the Iron Armor Camp, which had followed the Commander for many years.

“Our Commander is amazing. He has never lost a battle since joining the army. People say he is the military god of the Great Qi, defeating several small countries in the northwest, and even the Mongol tribes and Goryeo are afraid of him. Let me tell you, the Commander’s name can stop children from crying at night here.”

Stop children from crying at night? Like a scary old woman?

Zhu Yanyu thought jokingly, not that she wasn’t afraid of that man, but she was trying to use this method to dispel her fear of him. After all, she still wanted to find a way to survive for herself and her brother by taking care of horses near that man.

After chatting with Xiaocui for almost an hour, most of the time Xiaocui was expressing her endless admiration for the wise and mighty Commander. In the end, Zhu Yanyu felt her ears were about to grow calluses, and she had a rough understanding of that man.

He was an orphan and was forced to go to the battlefield at the age of ten to survive. He made a name for himself on the battlefield, leading troops to victory at the age of thirteen, and then one victory after another, one heroic story after another.

At the age of twenty, he was appointed as the youngest general in the history of the Great Qi, tasked with attacking the northern neighboring countries, capturing dozens of cities. At the age of twenty-four, he expanded the territory of the Great Qi to the border of Mongolia, and the Goryeo in the northeast also surrendered, officially becoming the King of the North, commanding hundreds of thousands of troops, and praised by the people as the “Military God.” Now that the war has ended and the northern border is peaceful, the twenty-seven-year-old military god is still single, and countless noble ladies in the capital want to marry him, even the princess admires him.

In the Commander’s residence, beautiful concubines were sent in one after another from various powerful figures, but it is said that he did not even look at most of them and gave them to his subordinates as rewards.

He did not lack women, so he did not care about women.

He was absolutely calm and restrained about beauty, and in fact, he showed little interest in various desires. After years of war, his treasury was full of valuable spoils of war, rich enough to rival a country, but his life was still as simple as before.

This was the impression that man gave people: detached from worldly desires.

But can a person really be detached from worldly desires? Especially a man like him, who could command the wind and rain, if he stamped his foot, it would shake the earth—such a man, detached from worldly desires?

Zhu Yanyu did not believe it.

But this was not her concern. What she should do was to recover quickly and then prove her worth to that man.

At night, Zhu Xiangyu woke up from his deep sleep, and Zhu Yanyu fed him medicine and earnestly told him about their current situation.

“From today onwards, we siblings are no longer named Zhu, but Gu, because when Father was young, he raised horses in the border area, so I learned some skills, and when you were born, our family had already settled in the capital, so you don’t know anything about horses, understand?”

“I understand.” Although Zhu Xiangyu was young, he was very smart. He understood why his sister made up this background.

Their mother’s maiden name was Gu, so using this surname was also a way to commemorate their mother.

“Father passed away from illness, and Mother followed him because she missed him too much, so I wanted to take you to the border area to seek help from our uncle, but we couldn’t find our uncle’s family, and on the way back, we encountered bandits who robbed us of all our money…”

“Sister.” Zhu Xiangyu suddenly called out.

“What is it?” Zhu Yanyu looked at her brother and gently touched his somewhat pale face.

Zhu Xiangyu blinked, his eyebrows filled with affection for his sister. “We must not let others know our true identity, right?”

“Yes.”

“But what if the Commander sends someone to investigate…”

“Don’t worry.” Zhu Yanyu understood the boy’s concern and hugged his thin body, gently comforting him. “Before that happens, I will find a way to make the Commander reluctant to kill—us.”

“How will you do that, Sister?”