[Alternate t.i.tle: Missing

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The Northwestern Xirongs were so badly beaten that they didn't dare to try invading again, thusly meaning that there was no need for tight defenses in the Northwest. Zhongli Luo simply chose to stay in the Northwest like she was told, living a comfortable and easy life. With Jiahui by her side, she can just say that she doesn't want to go anywhere, like her father-in-law that stays home all day with no obligations.

Though she knew that Rong Chen and Mrs. Yu were very fond of her, her heart clenches from not being able to call them her sworn mother and father. Nowadays, she's now a proper half-daughter of the Rong family – or, in their eyes, a half-son – and she can now appropriately call them her parents.

It's a true pity that they were only married for half a year when something happened in Jingzhou. When the prefecture's Head Official was in office, he oppressed the people all year round, and where there's oppression, there is rebellion. Jingzhou's citizenry were forced into dire straits, and after talking it over, they actually did rebel, killing the Official's family, causing a huge uproar, and still considering whether or not to strike. Jingzhou isn't far from the capital, and civil unrest isn't a common, trivial matter that's easy to solve. Didn't the Founding Emperor stake his claim like so? As the court is current has too many useless people in it, Zhongli Luo ended up getting sent off on a campaign.

Rong Jiahui came with Zhongli Luo all the way out to the city gate. It's still cold out, and the former is wrapped in an imperial-purple outer robe with her frozen, pale face sticking above its fur collar, making her look a bit inexplicably childish.

“Come back soon!” She shouted from the city watchtower at Zhongli Luo's gradually shrinking figure.

Zhongli Luo waved her hand from far away, indicating that she had heard.

Jiahui smiles.

At this moment, the maids urged her, “Madam, let's return.”

She could no longer see Zhongli Luo's figure, so she nodded, following them back down the tower.

Still, she's a bit glum. This emperor… really loves to get between them. Why isn't he just letting them live their days out peacefully in the safety of their home? He insists upon making her wife leave her at home all alone.

She couldn't stand the loneliness of having no one else in the house, so she had no choice but to temporarily relocate to her parental home.

Her sister-in-law, Song Heng, gave birth to a handsome little nephew. Her dad's happy, her mom's happy, she's happy, and Song Heng's parents are happy, but Rong Jiaze is comparably not happy.

He stared all day long at this kid that was almost the spitting image of him when he was a child and didn't feel good at all.

Jiahui is contrarily amused. She liked her little brother the most when he was a kid, but unfortunately, that little brother was fated to grow up. She didn't much like this kid post-growing up into a bear, but this time she gets a little cutie, so of course she's happy.

While Jiahui was having fun playing with her nephew, she turned around as saw Jiaze looking at his own son with a gloomy face. She reached out and slapped him.

“Is that really your att.i.tude towards Yuan'er?”

Yuan'er was born in January, so his grandfather had chosen that as a childhood nickname for him.

He's over nineteen, but he still looks like a child. “I'm just jealous,” he said. “I was hoping that I could have a pretty little girl that I could dote on, like how dad loves you a lot, or how our uncles dote on their girls. That'd be great.”

Upon remember how he was supposedly hoping for a daughter that looked like his big sister, Jiahui's annoyance could not be contained.

“How about you go dote on your wife? Ah-Heng is just a few months younger than you, but she's much more sensible.”

“Ah-Heng… I think she still loves me a lot…”

“You need to look towards the future.”

She pats him on the shoulder, beginning to persuade him. “Sis is urging you to dote on your wife. Tell me, does your grandfather-in-law dote on her?”

He nods. “Yes!”

There's also several of her older brothers… if it weren't for his father-in-law yelling at them to stop, they probably would have carefully taught him a lesson…

“If you were Ah-Heng's dad, and you had such a pretty, lovable, and intelligent daughter who, once she hits fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, gets enchanted away by a stinky brat who comes out of nowhere, what would you do? Do you marry that daughter off, or no?”

Jiaze suddenly went silent…

“The reason I say this is that a daughter will always be abducted by someone else further down the line,” Jiahui continues, “so you may as well dote on the wife that you stole from someone else's family! Don't think about such trivial c.r.a.p all the time, it makes people want to hit you just from looking at you.”

He thought it over, seeming to find no fault in the logic.

“Ah-Heng!” He shouted loudly and ran off.

Though this joker has no intention of paying any more attention to his son than he was before, she thinks this is a qualitative step in that direction.

It's just that while Marquis Zhenguo's Estate is lively, the person that's missing makes her somewhat uneasy. After not even a few days, her happiness from the beginning gradually dissipated.

In only about a half month's time, she sunk into eternal longing regardless of the days or nights.

Today, as soon as she closed her eyes, her whole body felt light, as if it were floating. She didn't know where she went, but when she stopped, she found herself standing on the surface of a wide river. The water rushed rapidly, waves surging violently forth, but the sh.o.r.e was calm and undisturbed.

She noticed some people talking on that sh.o.r.e. She didn't know what they were saying, but she had a nice surprise upon seeing one of their figures; it's her Zhongli Luo!

“Ah-Luo!” she shouted, yet none of them seemed to hear.

Despite that, being able to see her lover's faraway heroic stance makes still her greatly happy.

Her happy observing was interrupted by a mad mob swarming them from a ways away. They raised their blades and cut the mob down, but they were sadly outnumbered, and they all slashed towards Zhongli Luo. She was unable to dodge this, and one of them took advantage of a gap to swing right towards her forehead. She lifted an arm to block it, taking a huge cut on her arm, and fell backwards, submerging into the river.

Jiahui had been terrified by the sudden turn of events. She knelt down to frantically try to go into the water and search for Zhongli Luo, but it was all no use. She watched as her personal soldiers jumped into the water one after the other to search, soundlessly weeping and sobbing, feeling that her surroundings had turned black and white.

She startled awake, regaining some of her awareness from being so immersed in the dream. A hand over her chest, she gasped for air repeatedly, and her forehead was coated in sweat when she felt it. Her pillow had long been soaked with her tears.

Her heart hurt as if it had been torn.

“Bai Lu! Shuang Jiang! Gu Yu! Xiao Lu!” She loudly called the names of all her personal maids.

Bai Lu was the first to come in, and was shocked seeing her covered in sweat and pale-faced.

“Madam, what's happened to you?”

“I just had a nightmare,” Jiahui spoke as she wept.

Bai Lu immediately heaved a sigh of relief. She went to sit next to Jiahui and console her. “Be at ease, then. It's just a dream that's gone against you, don't think too much about it.”

She almost didn't dare to think of the dream's contents, and shook her head. “It was too real, I can't! I have to find Ah-Luo.”

“You dreamed of the Marquis?”

She nodded, panicking. “I dreamed of her plunging into a lake. Do you know how huge and roaring that river was? I was standing on it in the dream. I could only think about how I couldn't see its edges, and I was so scared…”

Hearing her talk like this in the middle of night also has Bai Lu getting a be scared. She barely managed to smile at her. “You must have had this dream because you missed the Marquis too much. The Heavens are on his side, so how could something happen to him? You should take it easy.”

Though Jiahui was used to being simple-minded, if she had such a dream when Zhongli Luo was at her side, then all she would need to do was turn to look at her to forget about it. However, Zhongli Luo is far away in Jingzhou, and she can't not be anxious.

“I'm going to Jingzhou.”

Bai Lu was badly shocked. “How can you go to the middle of a warzone? It was trouble enough back when you insisted on going to the Northwest, but at least it was quite stable at the time. It was just too remote and the journey was a bit dangerous, but this, now…”

“I must go to Jingzhou,” Jiahui replied, determined. “I have to see that she's safe and sound with my own eyes, or else I won't be able to sleep peacefully anymore before she gets back.”

“The Marquis will certainly write a letter if something's happened. It'd be best if you just waited for that letter to come.”

“Jingzhou isn't far, but the journey would still take several days' work. Waiting for a letter would take too much time.”

“But… Marchioness, they won't approve of this.”

Jiahui goes silent. She can still remember how furious her parents were when she recklessly ran off the last time, and she feels a slight despair.

However… Zhongli Luo is too important.

She sighed. “I don't need their approval. I'm in complete control of my own decisions.

Seeing that there was no persuading her, Bai Lu had to give up.

After making her decision, she laid down once more for a sleepless night.

The next day, all she said was that she wanted to go out, but didn't say where. The Rong family didn't think much of it, just informing her that it was still bitterly cold out and she should come back soon.

She smiled in agreement, left Marquis Zhenguo's Estate, then turned around and had people escort her to Jingzhou.

She traveled quickly, day and night, and without rest, and it only took three days to get to the outskirts of it.

Before she even entered the city, she heard the news that Zhongli Luo was cut down, fell into the water, and was currently missing today…

She nearly faints. Firmly digging her nails into her palm, she barely managed to regain some clear-headedness, and she takes a deep breath before going inside.

Jingzhou's angry mob was, in the end, just a wild group of people, and if it weren't for their crazed ambush before, then they would not have put up a fight and wouldn't be hard to deal with. As of right now, every last one of them had been killed without restraint by the enraged officers, and now everyone surrounded the river bank, hurrying to fish up Zhongli Luo's corpse from out of it. Her subordinate had learned of Jiahui's coming, and quickly knelt down to beg for forgiveness.

Jiahui didn't want to listen to all their conjectures. “Have you found her?”

They shook their heads sadly.

Her eyes turn red, and she tries her best not to choke up as he speaks. “Then, what's actually going on here? Why was she forced into the water with no rhyme or reason?”

As they knew she wasn't an outsider and there was no good reason to keep this matter concealed, after they planned out their words, the army conveyed to her what had happened after they had come over here.

Though she had come here to suppress the angry mob, after she had learned of what the deceased High Official had done, she couldn't help but sympathize, and she was willing to ask for mercy in their favor. They were also happy about that at first, but today… it wasn't know what they had discussed among themselves, or maybe, who had riled them up, but they'd actually gone mad, vowing to kill their way into the capital and seize the throne from the so-called mutt of an emperor.

Jiahui quietly sobbed in burst. What an idiot, only knowing how to think about others and not giving any consideration for herself. If she had any sympathy for the mob before, then it's now become deep-rooted hatred. Hurting her true love is something that cannot be forgiven.

“I'm going downstream to find her,” she says.

“Madam, it's better for us subordinates to handle this. Furthermore, we've already sent people there to look for…”

…The Great General's body…

“I'm going to find her,” she replied, serious and unflinching. “I have to go find her myself. If I can't, then I'm dying here with her! Whether it's life or death, we go together!”

With that, everyone immediately felt a deep reverence for her, and didn't say anymore.

The author says: Finally made a little trouble to have big sister be at peace with staying at home all the time.

The translator says: RIP Zhongli Luo. At least you didn't die a virgin! (Put your pitchforks down, I don't translate BE.)