When you can fall for chains of silver you can fall for chains of gold

[diditmywei]

Wei Wuxian had gotten reckless with his scouting.

For a long time, he had always scouted with Jiang Cheng, or with a group of junior cultivators from Lotus Cove. But in recent years, Jiang Cheng had more and more often been invited to war councils and meetings with the seniors of his clan, while Wei Wuxian was left out. Jiang Cheng excluded him more and more, and then scolded him for not taking thing seriously. It stung Wei Wuxian's pride, but he did his best not to complain. If he was not wanted in Lotus Cove, and not wanted in the war councils, he would stick to what he was good at.

Scouting alone was easy for him. He was strong enough to easily handle just about any small group of scouts from Gusu, and larger groups were easy to spot. Even most senior cultivators he could handle one-on-one, and it was unlikely that he would run into more than one senior cultivator as long as he stayed on the Yunmeng side of the boundary.

He knew very little about Gusu. Once, the two clans had been very close, until an ancestor from the Jiang clan tried to conquer Gusu. The army seized a province and then was beaten back. They advanced a little further, retreated, advanced again, retreated further, and the new boundaries were established in that way. Varying, contested, violent. No one could agree any longer where the boundaries lay, and the confusion only led to more conflict.

So Wei Wuxian should probably not have been surprised when he came out of a thick section of woods into a little clearing and a small group of cultivators was there. The juniors startled to see him, quickly seizing bows to aim at him. Wei Wuxian had his own bow, and he had an arrow notched just as quickly, but there were two of them and only one of him, and another cultivator stood just behind them. He looked older than the two with the bows, perhaps twenty or so, same as Wei Wuxian.

This one seemed somewhat familiar. He was high-ranking, a member of the Lan family, and Wei Wuxian thought that they might have crossed blades once or twice. They had been evenly matched, which made it a problem that now he had backup while Wei Wuxian had none.

Giving the group a nervous smile, Wei Wuxian carefully lowered his arrow. He wouldn't be able to kill more than one of them, and if they attacked in earnest, he would almost certainly die. Better to yield the fight and hope they'd let him go. If they didn't recognize him, they might let him go, and they might kill him. If they did recognize him, they might realize that he was a valuable political prisoner. He hoped they wouldn't recognize him.

"Ahh, I've taken a wrong turn!" he exclaimed, pulling a despairing face and looking around himself. "Is it this way to Wuluo?"