While sitting at the head of his desk, he stared at the two ravenous guards before coughing twice purposely.
The guards were so focused on eating those thin and tender slices of rabbit meat that they didn’t even raise their heads.
Tang Yan’s expression turned stormy. He stood up and walked towards the guards.
One of the guards spared a glance at Tang Yan before turning back to his food and eating even faster.
Wave after wave of that delicious-smelling rabbit hotpot attacked his senses. Coupled with how the guards were wolfing down the food, Tang Yan felt himself getting even hungrier. When he saw that there wasn’t much left in the bowl containing the rabbit hotpot, Tang Yan quickly spoke, “How is the taste of Honoured Lady’s food?”
The two guards hurriedly nodded. In their rush to eat, they couldn’t even speak; they simply raised two thumbs up.
Tang Yan hadn’t expected these two guys to be so thick. They couldn’t understand what he was getting at all.
“How tasty is it?”
One of the guards replied with a mouthful of meat, “Sir, you follow His Highness Prince Jin every day, so you must eat good food really often. You can’t possibly be trying to fight with us for this hotpot, right? You just bestowed this to us too!”
Tang Yan didn’t know how to reply to that. His face flushed red and he harrumphed. He scolded them angrily, “All you know how to do is eat! What a bunch of gluttons! Hurry up and eat faster. Can’t you tell that the whole tent smells like rabbit hotpot now?”
Actually, Tang Yan’s reminder was completely unneeded. In less than fifteen minutes, the whole bowl of steaming rabbit hotpot had disappeared down the gullets of the two guards. There wasn’t even a single drop of soup left.
Tang Yan wanted to kick both of them out of his tent in rage.
After Wenqing returned from sending the rabbit hotpot, she reported Mo Chenggui and Tang Yan’s reactions to Chu Lian.
Chu Lian simply smiled faintly and entered her tent to rest for the night.
The next day, the party set off early in the morning.
By this time, they had already covered more than half of the distance to Liangzhou.
In the afternoon, the party was just preparing to set off again after a break when Tang Yan received some news about the northern border. The report said that something unexpected had happened in the northern border troops and there was a fierce battle going on outside Liangzhou City.
Before Chu Lian could react, Mo Chenggui had already started getting antsy.
They were already travelling at the fastest speed they could manage, since they were using a small road and not the well-maintained highway.
However, since there was a female guest amongst their party and they had those cotton clothes, blankets and other goods slowing them down, they couldn’t travel at a faster pace.
Mo Chenggui immediately called for a meeting with Chu Lian and Tang Yan. He spoke bluntly and said that he was going to take House Jing’an’s private soldiers with him and head for the northern border first.
Mo Chenggui was an old servant of House Jing’an and was already biased towards Chu Lian. He also looked down upon Tang Yan as a subordinate of Prince Jin. Even though he was supposedly having a discussion with Chu Lian and Tang Yan first before leaving, he was actually just informing them of his actions.
Later in the afternoon, Mo Chenggui led House Jing’an’s soldiers and left. He even took along the secret bodyguards that Matriarch He had sent to protect Chu Lian’s safety.
Thus, the size of the party was halved instantly.
After another day had passed, the party finally passed by a small town and rested there for a night. However, when it was time to depart the next morning, Chu Lian was told that Tang Yan was having a high fever.
She was speechless. Even though the weather had been terrible this whole time, she hadn’t suffered even the slightest sniffle. Conversely, it was Tang Yan who had fallen sick from the bitter cold.
When it rained, it poured.
Although Tang Yan didn’t practise martial arts, he wasn’t a weakling by any means. However, as young as he was, he had never experienced such a harsh winter before and he was bedridden by illness.
Tang Yan’s high fever refused to break. His condition was getting worse and he couldn’t even ride a horse or even the carriage. The party could only stay in the small town for another day. However, when it came to the following day, Tang Yan’s condition hadn’t improved at all.
Chu Lian was starting to get impatient even as she worried over Tang Yan. A delay of a day or two was still acceptable. They could still make it in time if they rushed a little more on the last leg of the journey. However, Tang Yan’s sickness hadn’t improved even up to the third day.
Without waiting for Chu Lian to speak, Tang Yan asked Chu Lian to make a move first.
They left half of Prince Jin’s men to take care of Tang Yan while Chu Lian and her group left first for the northern border. They couldn’t bring much with them considering their smaller numbers, so they left most of the material goods with Tang Yan’s group to bring along later.
On the afternoon of the third day, Chu Lian led her party and left the small town.
By now, they were only three days away from Liangzhou.
Chu Lian took special care on the way. Finally, there was just a day left before they would finally reach the northern border.
Right now, as they sky turned dark, Manager Qin ordered the carriages to stop and they found a dry clearing to rest for the night.
They thought that they would be able to reach Liangzhou City peacefully after being so careful, but who could have expected that they would get sneak attacked in the middle of the night?! Wenqing was the first to discover the attack with her sharp senses.
Chu Lian was shaken awake by Wenlan.
After getting informed of the situation, Chu Lian quickly pulled on her clothes and grabbed the keen dagger hidden under her pillow, hiding it in her sleeve.
Despite the cutting, cold wind outside, Wenqing rushed into the tent carrying her sword, dressed only in her sleep clothes. Even though Chu Lian couldn’t see Wenqing’s expression in the dark, she could hear the worry and anxiety in her voice. “Third Young Madam, someone’s attacking us and their numbers are too much. We’re not their match. You have to leave first, quickly!”
When she finished speaking, she shouted at the stiff Wenlan. “Wenlan, what are you doing freezing up now? Hurry up, take Third Young Madam with you and run! The horses are tied to the third elm tree next to this tent. Get Third Young Madam on a horse and escape from here!”
Wenlan came to her senses after getting shouted at by Wenqing. She immediately pulled Chu Lian’s wrist and led her out of the tent.
Once they left the tent, Chu Lian could hear the sounds of fighting as well as shouts in a language she couldn’t understand. Under the flickering torchlight, she could see that their attackers were wearing furs and their hair was tied up in long, thin braids.
Chu Lian’s eyes narrowed.
These people were the barbarians!
They wielded broadswords in their hands and their actions were just as ferocious as their appearances. However, they weren’t very skilled. They could only depend on their massive strength when fighting the people of the Great Wu Dynasty.
One of the guards didn’t dodge in time and Chu Lian watched with her own eyes as his arm was lopped off. The guard collapsed on the ground and groaned in pain.
The sounds of battle roared around them. Although Chu Lian couldn’t bear to leave, her measly self-defence skills weren’t enough to fend off the strong barbarians. As much as she wanted to stay and help to fight off their enemy, she knew her own strengths clearly. She didn’t know a single thing about army formations and fighting.
Staying here would just be burdening them.
Thus, Chu Lian bit her lip and followed Wenlan blindly, running in the direction of Wenlan’s tug on her arm.
As their breaths shortened and their footsteps became heavier, they finally found the place where the horses were tied, as Wenqing had described.
Wenlan was in the middle of untying the reins when they heard the sounds of two people talking close by.
Chu Lian turned to the direction of the talking in caution.
The voices of the three men running towards them sounded strange, and their footsteps sounded even stranger.
