Alright I have a confession! I didn't really want to update this story. I only did because there are still plenty of people(hopefully) who actually enjoy my writing. I can handle spams, but I don't do flames. I've gotten some flame emails and they weren't too kind. Flames are mean and they don't do anything but hurt feelings. I'm not the emotional type, but saying that my story quote 'sucks because everyone died' isn't cool!

Anyway this is for those you who actually wanted an update.

21. A Promise Kept

Zhang Xing Cai's mind ceased to make sense to her. So she gave up on trying to sort out the flashes of memory and the flashes of reality that happened between the hours she spent in absolute darkness. That darkness was the only time she was at peace, but even then, something wasn't right. The voices that rang in her head did so continually. Was this really what death was like? Wasn't she supposed to be in the heavens and weren't the heavens supposed to be full of light since they were in the clouds?

This was nothing like she had thought death would be like. Everything was black. It was as if she was blind or something.

Every once in a while, she would have a flash of the world outside of her own confusion, but when those did happen, she usually saw blood. So she would close her eyes against them and force her mind back into darkness, which wasn't too hard considering she was constantly being pulled back into the darkness whenever she wasn't in it.

The voices she heard at first were from so many different people that she couldn't attempt to count them all.

x

"Quick, get her to Hua Tuo!"

x

"What's wrong with her?"

"An arrow wound to the gut."

She thought she felt some hands on her.

"She's cold, far too cold to be normal."

x

"Hua Tuo, who is she? She's wearing armor, but I didn't think that Shu had any woman soldiers."

"Lord Sun Quan, she's an officer of Shu."

"An officer? Then let her die, but… who told you to try and save her in the first place?"

"Master Lu Meng, he said that she would be a valuable hostage, and you forget lord, I don't serve Wu, Wei or Shu. I serve life. So I fight for anyone who needs my help. Be they Guan Yu, Cao Cao or even you."

"Alright, alright, I get it. If Lu Meng told you to save her then go ahead."

x

After an eternity, there were only a few voices she could hear.

"How is she?"

"Sun Quan! Ugh, you scared me."

"Sorry."

"Hua Tuo said that she's past the worst of it. Her temperature is rising, which he said is good. It should be back to normal soon."

"But she's still not breathing right."

"Yes, he said that once we get the cold out of her, it too will be normal again."

There was a pause.

"Anyway, Lu Xun, I've heard from our spies that Shu's already planning an attack."

"Yes."

"Now that we no longer have Lu Meng with us. Lu Xun, I was hoping you'd become my master strategist."

x

When everything came to focus, Cai found herself in a bed that was in a red tent. Red, why red? She had only ever been in white and green ones. Why... Wu. Even the thought of the word sent a wave of anger through her.

She sat up to find that she was very dizzy, but she didn't care. She knew she had heard Sun Quan's voice multiple times and she was set on killing him. So she stood up and made her way toward the bright light that must be the exit. Her feet didn't do a very good job of staying under her and that made walking hard.

Before she got to the flap of the tent, she collapsed, but she wasn't sure why. Had she tripped on something? All she knew was that commotion had been stirred outside. She heard alarmed voices and loud order given, but that's all she remembered because the darkness in her mind called her back inside it.

x

The next time she came to, she saw Sun Quan standing halfway between her bed and the entrance of the tent. His back was turned to her as he discussed something with one of his soldiers.

She jumped to her feet and lunged at him. Before he had time to react, she had already leaped onto his back and tackled him to the ground. He lay on his back facing her. She had a knee on either side of his waist. She wasn't clear on how they ended up like this, but she used it to her advantage and thundered her fists into him wherever she could. Impressively enough, he blocked most of her blows with his palms, but she did manage to hit him in the face and gut a few times.

"Get her off!"

Then a petrifying pain swept across the back of her head. She fell on her back with her arms and legs sprawled across the floor.

"Idiot! Hua Tuo went through all that work to save her. Now we can use her as a hostage and you nearly bash her skull in!"

x

The next time Cai woke up, she found that on top of everything else, her head hurt too. So this time, she didn't bother sitting up, but when she felt a hand on her forehead, she slapped it off.

She must have shocked the person since she heard a cry of surprise and some guards rush in.

"No! Stay where you were. I'm quite alright."

She recognized the voice right away. She popped her eyes open and sat up.

"Hua Tuo, you're here!"

"Yes, and you're lucky to be here as well."

"What happened?" She asked him as she tried to remember herself.

"To you, everything. When Lu Meng found you, you were cold as snow on a mountain and half bleed out. I managed to stop the bleeding thanks to the fact that the blood had halfway frozen on you skin. So I stitch you closed, bandaged you up and warmed you up. I must say that your recovery wasn't easy, but I think that you're one of my best success stories yet."

That wasn't very encouraging, but Lu Meng was the one to find her? He clearly hadn't known who she was at the time.

"Lu Meng? Ha!" She spat.

"Actually, Lu Meng's been very gracious about showing mercy on the women and children of Shu."

"What about the soldiers?"

He didn't answer.

"But I was certain that I died too."

"If you did, no one could guess what you would have died from first."

"First?" She questioned.

"Child, you had an arrow in you and you were freezing to death! It's a miracle that none of you skin is black and swollen and that you're even alive at all."

There was a pause that lasted an uncomfortably long time. She knew that there was something else he needed to tell her. If it was about the others, he didn't need to waste his breath. She may be dazed and confused, but she hadn't lost a moment of her memories.

"Unfortunately, there is also some bad news."

"I remember about Guan Yu and Guan Ping. You don't have to remind..."

"No, no... It's not about them." He paused again. "My lady, did you know that you were with child?"

"Yes, I... Wait! What do you mean 'were with child'!"

He sighed.

"Your internal temperature was so low that... that is was impossible for the child to survive. Your body will expel it once it realizes that it's trying to support a dead..." He didn't finish.

Cai wouldn't have heard him if he did. She had tempted the fates to try and make things worse for her, they just did.

She sank back down into the sheets.

x

Hua Tuo left the next day. By then, Cai was back on her feet with some Wu guards no more than a few paces away. Considering she was a hostage, she was treated fairly well. She was feed and all, but it was like living in a portable prison. She was only allowed in the tent Sun Quan had destined for her and no more than fifty paces from the main camp. Not to mention that she wasn't allowed in the armory, stable, soldier's, officers', lord's or strategizing tents. So that didn't leave her with many options of places to be, but she found a spot just outside the camp where she could sit by the river and watch the setting sun.

Her thoughts led her to places she didn't know it could go. She mostly thought of the past. She revisited her time with Ping often. She thought of that night at the pub in Chengdu. That had been the last time all of the Liu, Guan and Zhang children were together. A mere few years later, half of them were dead.

There was one thing that lingered in her mind.

"No Ping! You're not going to die! Don't say things such as..."

"Xing Cai, I can no longer protect you. For... Forgive me."

"No Ping, you can't die. You know why? You're going to be a father now."

"No Cai, some... other man... is going to be."

"Ping, I can't..."

"Ah, Xing Cai, there you are."

She was snapped out of her thoughts by the sudden and rude interruption of Sun Quan, but she recovered from it quickly so that she could calmly reply.

"It's Lady Zhang, actually." She corrected without turning around.

She didn't like it when her enemies called her by a name as casual as the one her friends used.

The emperor of Wu didn't respond. That, or he didn't notice the cold tone in her voice. When she did turn around, she saw that he had. Instead of lashing out like she expected him to, he brushed off her rudeness with a wave of his arm.

"Very well. Then Lady Zhang, I would appreciate it if you would return back to your tent at this time."

He had been trying to be nice to her, she didn't understand it, nor did she really care to. He was her absolute and undeniable enemy no matter what kindness he ever showed her. No matter what he did, it would never make up for the fact that he betrayed the peace treaty he and Liu Bei had made, which resulted in Ping's death and the death of her child, the death of the family she would never have.

"It's not sunset yet." She reminded him coldly.

He had always wanted her back in her tent by sundown. She only complied because she had to. She didn't have the strength to fight off the guards, yet. The whole time she was here she had been stretching the bounds of her captivity and this was just another chance to. Besides, what could he do to her? If he wanted to use her as leverage, then he would have to make sure she was never harmed. She knew that the others in Shu would never trade her, wounded and hurt, for any part of Ye. At least, she hoped they wouldn't. If she was going to be of any use to Sun Quan, she would have to be the very definition of good health. So they couldn't beat her and that meant they had no leverage on her to behave. They had nothing. There was nothing else for them to take away from her. They had already taken it all. Now all they could go was hole her up in the tent.

"Tomorrow we're going to settle into Mai castle. It will be an early morning. I thought you could use the rest." He explained.

Why did he even bother to pretend to be genuinely concerned with her well being?

"Don't bother using up your precious time to think about me." She mumbled under her breath.

x

The next day, Wu settled into Mai castle, just as Sun Quan had told her. Since all her things were still in her chambers, they let her keep it as her own. What they didn't know was that it had a lock from the inside. So Cai locked the lock tight and piled as much furniture in front of the door as she could. She didn't want to see any more red uniforms as long as she lived!

It didn't take long for someone to realize what she had done. For a while, they tried bursting the door open. When that didn't work, they sent a few soldiers to try and scale the wall to get in through her window. When this started, Cai simply took a piece of wood she broke off the trunk and used the rugged edge of it to cut the ropes with a seesaw motion. After she sent four soldiers to the doctor with various broken bones, they didn't try that again.

They must have known that she wasn't going to give in and let them in her chambers. So they gave up after two days. What they didn't know was that after cutting all those ropes, she now had a grapple hook and enough rope to scale the wall herself. All she had to do was wait for the right moment to leave and she would have to leave soon since she hadn't eaten for two days because they had no way of getting food to her. Luckily, she had thought of that and stole some meat buns when no one was looking before she locked herself in her room.

That night, she tied the pieces of rope together and put the grapple hook on the end. She grabbed her sack and put the meat buns inside. She changed into the spare black dress she had brought with since the armor would only slow her down. Then she waited by the window for the centuries to change shifts.

The guard must have been lazy and walked away before his replacement came. So Cai used this to her advantage and started climbing down the wall. It was thanks to all the knots that she managed to make it to the ground, but now she had to hurry. When the new guard came and saw the rope, he would raise the alarm.

She swung the sack over her shoulder and started up toward the rolling hills. It had taken them a few days to cross the tight woods and rough layout of the hills, but they had taken horses. Cai was on foot. She would be able to climb up and down the ledges that they had to waste so much time going around.

If she would make it a few miles into the hills, she would be in the clear. No search party would be able to keep up with her then.

Cai knew she didn't have much as far as endurance went so she took a break whenever she needed one. Better to stop and rest often than push too hard and exhaust herself.

It was good to be alone, and it was good to have a task ahead of her other than her own full recovery, which she was only jeopardizing by doing this. So she made sure not to strain herself but didn't stop longer than she needed to either. By morning, Mai castle was well out of her sight. She could hear the search party, but they were a long ways back and they would return to the castle by sundown. She had already covered more ground than what any person could cover in one day. So she wouldn't have to worry about looking behind her anymore. There was only the path ahead. All she had to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other.

"You ha... have to go on...without me. Just... just make sure that he... deserves you. Promise me that you... that you will go on. That... you'll never give up... that you'll never let go."

"I promise."

There were few times in her life that she said something she really meant. The first, was when she swore her loyalty to Shu. The second, was when she told Ping that she wasn't going to regret it at Mt. Dingjun, which she still didn't. The third and final time, was when she promised to him that she would live on. She had almost broken that promise, but now she remembered it and she was going to live on. She wasn't going to be a hostage to Wu, Wei or even Guan Ping's memory. It wasn't what he wanted for her. Now, it wasn't she wanted either, but she wasn't going to go and forget about him too soon.

She stopped her march turned toward the direction of Mai castle.

"Thank you, Guan Ping, for everything. I'll never give up. I'll never let go. I promise."

A tear swelled in her eye. A quiet and mournful gasp escaped her. She whipped her eyes dry and continued toward Baidi castle.

SURPRISE! SHE'S ALIVE! Mwahahahaha!

A lot of people didn't like it that Xing Cai died. I was planning on continuing the story through Ma Chao's perspective, but I guess the story will continue with Xing Cai. This is because some nice people informed me that killing Cai won't benefit the story. I'm sorry. I'm not a professional author and the only way for me to learn is to try.

A lot of you may not like this story any more, but please, no flames! Only constructive criticisms please!