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Chen Qing Xu was silent for a long time. She paced restlessly in the same place for two steps. Then, she sighed deeply: “Marshal… have you ever heard of the Bone of Impurity?”
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The bandits and mobs in the Central Plains area had caused Cai Fen great distress. After all, General Cai is already of old age. Although the army in the Central Plains appeared powerful and magnificent, in fact, it was also called the ‘retirement army’ by others. It was not located in an area where neither villages nor shops could be seen, it’s steadily in the middle. Apart from the occasional disorder, it was basically used to distribute reinforcements to the border.
At this time, most of Cai Fen’s troops were divided by the north and the west. He had no Eagle Armors on his hands. Combined with his cautious nature, he did not dare to take any risks, being hara.s.sed by the mob.
Gu Yun spent three to five days figuring out the origin and development of these mobs, personally familiarizing himself with the terrain on the map, then sent someone to contact General Cai to prepare to surround them from two sides.
The rebellious bandits did not know the leader of this troops from the capital, but after several explorations, they found that the group was even more well-off than Cai Fen’s. They have Heavy Armors and guns, but never fired them. They only sent out Light Cavalry, and each time they would chase after for a mile or two then retreat, confirming that this army only had appearance but no substance. As they were planning to encircle them, Cai Fen suddenly made a move, completely changing his previous style of fighting but not pursuing, pouring out the remaining troops of the Central Plains Garrison to raid and encircle the rebellious mob.
In fact, there was not much in Central Plains Garrison force. If the two sides clashed, there was no certainty who would emerge victorious, but the bandits were accustomed to the leisurely fighting style of ‘you enter, I retreat’. a.s.suming that they were slippery loaches, they did not have the heart to use all their acc.u.mulated resources to carelessly engage in battle, hence reusing their old trick of retreating while fighting, hiding away from Cai Fen. On their way to withdraw, they ran into Gu Yun who had been waiting for a long time.
Gu Yun ordered the Heavy Armors loaded with spears to aim their muzzles directly at the bandits. The bandit leader saw that the “young masters’ army” was coming to scare them again, he immediately ordered his men to rush into the Heavy Armors’ formation.
The defensive line of the Heavy Armors broke in an instant, the Light Cavalry ‘struggled’ to resist. The bandits discovered that there was nothing inside the muzzle, that these were technically papers. Under great joy, they became all the more fearless, directly rushing forward.
Until the bandits were all trapped inside, the ‘paper’ Heavy Artillery suddenly sounded. The bandits were caught off guard, men and horses fell down. Before they could retreat, they were surrounded by the Light Cavalry and the Cai army that have always been dodging them all these time coming out from both sides, capturing them inside the pot.
The bandits’ formation scattered, the legendary leader ‘Huo Long’ was captured alive. Gu Yun’s eyes ached from the unsightly and b.u.mpy appearance of the bandit. He intended to throw the man directly to Shen Yi to play with. “Ask him where his accomplices are, who had instructed him, where his old nest is, and if there is anything for us to rob from them…”
Shen Yi choked and coughed fiercely: “Marshal, you have turned mad from poverty!”
Gu Yun waved his hand: “Beat him if he doesn’t speak… use torture to extract information, I will go catch up with Old Cai.”
He was about to leave when he saw a guard holding a short sword with a peculiar shape. It was a bit longer than a dagger, the tip was bent slightly inward, creating a beautiful curve. It was quite different from the short sword in Central Plains. Gu Yun felt that it appeared familiar. He reached out to receive it.
“Marshal, this was found on the bandits leader’s body.”
Gu Yun took the short sword and touched the blade with his fingers. He squinted and whispered: “This is from the barbarians?”
“It is the short sword of the Eighteen Tribes.” Chen Qing Xu came over and said, “Marquis, have your iron plates loosened?”
“No, I am sorry for troubling Miss Chen to run around with us in the middle of the night.” Gu Yun shook his head and held the handle of the blade for a moment. “Tch, with a handle this short, would it not get in the way?”
“It is not short, this is a blade for women,” Chen Qing Xu took the curved short sword and measured it with her hand. “The Man of Eighteen tribes dined on wind and drank dew, fighting for food against the beasts of the gra.s.sland, thus there is often such a groove at the handle. In case of clashing with a powerful beast, it can prevented the sword from dropping off during the fight. The steel material of this short sword is of high quality, the original owner must have been one of high status. And the handle is mostly tailor-made, the hands of the person must have been very small, similar to mine, it should be a woman – Marquis sir, look here.”
She flipped the handle around for Gu Yun, there was a complex pattern on the underside, like a totem entwined by numerous flowers and vines, wrapped in the middle was a flame.
Chen Qing Xu said, “I saw this pattern of flowers and vines in an abandoned ruin of the Eighteen Tribes. I heard the slaves of the Han people who were captured say that it was the symbol of Eighteen Tribes’ G.o.ddess.”
“I know,” Gu Yun’s face suddenly turned grave. “I also know who the symbol in the middle stands for.”
There was no telling when Shen Yi had come closer. As he caught sight of the pattern, he let out a heavy breath: “The heart of the earth?”
Chen Qing Xu asked in confusion: “Who?”
Shen Yi: “Hu Ge Er… Xiu Niang, she… Hasn’t she been dead for years? How could it be…”
Gu Yun waved at him, took the knife and turned to the place where the bandit leader Huo Long was being imprisoned. He signaled with his hand to dismiss all the guards.
He was holding the knife, neither joy nor anger could be detected on his face. The slightly curved knife was already very old, yet it was still sharp, bringing with it the feeling of inhumanity, that it would dig out a layer of flesh and blood as soon as it was stabbed into the body.
Gu Yun pinned the tip of his knife to Huo Long’s chin: “I heard that you did not confess where your old nest and your rebel army are, you have also refused to say who caused you to take advantage of the situation to hara.s.s the Cai Army?”
Huo Long: “Bah, little white face!”
Gu Yun laughed as he heard this, enjoying it quite a bit – in his view, scolding men as ‘little white face’ was the same as calling women ‘fox spirit’ – it showed that the people being cursed at was very good looking.
“You can talk to your heart’s content.” Gu Yun said to Shen Yi. “In the face of national difficulties, this man had colluded with a foreign country, being in communication with the Man. Those barbarian bunch have not entered the gate yet you are already here licking their feet first… It is a waste of my time interrogating you, put this information on display for everyone to see tomorrow.”
As Huo Long heard the first half, he was confused, he then became more and more frightened. He could see that Gu Yun was not joking. With a disdainful att.i.tude, he rose slowly to leave. Huo Long struggled hard: “Pouring mud on others! Dog officer! All the brothers know that I am a man who stands up to heaven and earth. You dare to slander my reputation with such nonsense…”
“Pouring mud on others?” Gu Yun shook the Eighteen Tribes’ blade in front of the Huo Long: “People in Central Plains call this thing Wolf’s Fang steel. The curved crescent tip is the typical design of the barbarian, isn’t this yours?”
Huo Long was stunned.
“The scabbard and groove are specially made. The sheath was made from the best leather, and the totem on the handle are as lively as real, this must have been made by a renowned expert. Ordinary barbarians would not be able to have this. If the original owner was not wealthy, they must have belonged to n.o.bility.”
Gu Yun lifted his chin slightly and glanced at Huo long. “I am telling you Ugly, your brothers all know you carry this thing on your body all day, but n.o.body knows the origin of it, am I right? Tch, a bunch of ignorant country b.u.mpkins…”
“Wait! Hold… Hold on!” Huo Long cried out: “That… That thing belonged to my nemesis, it is not…”
Gu Yun laughed aloud, “Is that so, sounds quite reasonable. I have seen people carry objects from their lovers. But this is the first time I had seen someone who missed their nemesis this way. What kind of hatred could be so lingering and melancholic? Come and give me some insight.”
“That woman put down more than a hundred brothers of my camp with poison, stabbed them one by one, and finally set off a fire, burning the hilltop to a clean. The entire mountain, even the birds were burnt to ash. I was the only one who could escape, leaving me with all these scars.
“I did not f.u.c.king know where she came from, nor did I know that she was a barbarian. I only carried this knife to remind myself of my past humiliation!” Huo Long furiously roared: “Dog officer, you can slander me for anything, but if you dare to pour this bucket of s.h.i.t on me, even if I became a demon, I will still bite you to death!”
Shen Yi let out an unamused laughed and said: “Your teeth are still so sharp, continuing with your made up tales: a barbarian woman barging into a bandit’s nest for no reason, burning the bandits on the mountain all on her own? How fresh – Marshal, do the theatre troupes invited to your manor ever had such an interesting play?”
Gu Yun sighed: “I cannot even afford any meat, all day slurping porridge, what theatre troupe …”
Huo Long stared at them: “Marshal… Which Marshal?
Gu Yun spun the blade in his hand at a dizzying speed, giving him a malicious smile.
Huo Long instantly came to a realization, he shudder: “You…You are… Gu…Gu”
“Don’t just claim people to be your relatives. Who is your aunt*?” Shen Yi interrupted him, “Tell us how you have colluded with the barbarians and hara.s.sed the people.”
*The word aunt [姑 -Gū] and Gù [Gù Yún] sounded similar.
Huo Long’s face reddened: “I said it was my enemy! G.o.dd.a.m.nit, if there was any word that was untrue, let me be struck by lightning!
“That woman went with a small caravan at the beginning, she seemed to had been separated from her family, paying someone to give her a ride. We stopped and robbed the caravan on the way. Seeing that she was quite beautiful, we also captured her to the mountain altogether. She was carrying a baby still in diaper, it doesn’t look to be a full month old, and she herself was also pregnant…”
Inside, Shen Yi was terrified, but on the outside, he asked as calmly as possible: “When did it happen?”
Huo Long said: “Nineteen… twenty years ago.”
Under the dim light, Gu Yun and Shen Yi exchanged a look. It sounded similar to the story of when the barbarian G.o.ddess fled that year, then the baby should be Chang Geng, but what was the one in Xiu Niang’s belly?
Shen Yi: “What happened afterwards?”
Huo Long leaned back and said in a hoa.r.s.e voice: “Most of the other people who were captured in the mountains threw a tantrum. But she was different. The woman’s appearance looked good, but her brain seemed to not working quite well. She did not respond when people talked to her, did not cry out when being beaten, did not resist whatever people ordered her to do. Within only a few months, she prematurely gave birth to a baby.”
Gu Yun’s hand holding the knife tightened slightly…somehow, when he heard this, he suddenly felt a kind of terror. The intuition that had never been wrong for so many years seemed to be stirring the string in his heart.
“They all said that women who had just given birth are not clean. For a period, n.o.body would touch her nor care about her, but for fear that she would run away, we chained her feet in the room, giving her some food everyday, yet she did not die…
“After a while, one of my little brother with his brain soaked in water, missing that woman’s beauty, he had sneaked away to come see her. When he came back, he had told me in horror that there was only one baby left at her side, the other one was gone.”
Shen Yi almost forgot he was interrogating, he blurted out: “Which one is missing?”
“Who the h.e.l.l knows, they are all half-dead babies, bare-boned, only as large as a mouse.” As expected, Huo Long was immediately alert. “Why are you asking about this?”
Shen Yi paused, strongly whipped the lash in his hand at the side, he said coldly: “If you cannot answer anything then what would be the d.a.m.n point of speaking of it? There is nothing strange about missing one little Man brat, I am telling you to confess everything from start to end. What are you waiting for? Beating around the bush like this.”
Huo Long was not angry, but instead, his expression turned tense: “… No, it is not surprising for the child to die, the lives of these brats are cheap, whether one lived or died is nothing much. But curiously, my brother said, he did not see where the corpse was. The woman was locked in the room, she basically could not get out. She couldn’t have buried it in the ground, but she had not thrown it out, nor did she keep it in the room, the child just… just vanished in thin air.
“At that time, the few brothers guarding said they saw a light of fire in the woman’s room in the middle of the night. At first, they a.s.sumed she was cooking food in secret, but later, it was said that there are many crows circling over her room during that time…”
Shen Yi felt gooseb.u.mps raise up, he unconsciously looked at Gu Yun.
The burnt corner of Huo Long’s eyes twitched a few times: “This matter once made everyone in the camp felt uneasy. Some people said that this wretch was abnormal, demonic and evil, they had wanted to simply get rid of her. There were also some lechers who were reluctant to do it, both sides fighting pointlessly for a long while without result. At that time, big brother saw that she was obedient, good at working, and was also energetic in bed, he decided to keep her, even raising the half-dead brat of hers for a few years…”
“That woman, truly is a monster…” Huo Long let out a breath: “Truly, if there are no men coming to find her at night, she would use many different methods to torment the child. His cries and shouts could be heard from even the next mountain. Several times, the brothers in the camp could not bear to look anymore, telling her to restrain herself. On the surface, she obeyed, then would go back to her room and continue on.”
Gu Yun stood up abruptly.
Shen Yi’s heart was also startled. Gu Yun reluctantly placed the hand holding the knife behind his back, green veins popping up.
Fortunately, Huo Long did not notice, as if immersed in past memory, he muttered: “There is an old saying, even ferocious tigers do not eat their youngs. Although those of us are merciless and evil, we are not afraid of retribution, but we have never seen a woman so cruel before.
“But there was no telling what kind of brainwashing spell she had cast on my big brother. He insisted that this kind of no good woman was suitable to stay on the mountain, that she should be one of our own. He seemed to have lost his mind to beauty, even ended up given her his own life!”
Gu Yun’s voice was dyed with a little dryness that was hard to detect: “How?”
“Poisoning. Barbarian women are all poisonous. She stayed in our camp, enduring for many years, not showing any trace, gradually the brothers let their guard down and easily fell into her trap. She killed everyone in the camp, even the women, slaves, hostages captured into the mountains much like her, no one was spared. Then, she finally started a fire and burned the mountain to the ground.” Pain flashed on Huo Long face for a moment, he loudly cursed, letting out a long string of dirty words.
This time, no one had the mind to interrupted him anymore. Gu Yun’s expression was incredibly unsightly, appearing as if he could no longer restrain himself.
“My stomach was upset that day, I did not dare to drink lots of wine and water, I could barely have enough strength to climb out of the sea of fire and regain my life. The knife… The knife was pulled from my big brother’s chest. If I ever see that woman again, I will cut her to million pieces!”
Gu Yun whispered: “She brought along a young child to kill and burn the mountain together.”
“She put the cub in the basket,” said Huo Long. “Carrying it on her back, the cub always looked half-dead and boneless. Lying in the bamboo basket, it only stared – staring at dead bodies everywhere and did not even cry out. After so many years, if it does not die in that wretch’s hands, it must definitely be a monster itself.”
Gu Yun turned away without a word.
Shen Yi rushed out after him: “Marshal, Marshal!”
“This man cannot live,” Gu Yun said quickly in a low voice. “Old Cai is still here, while he still had not noticed, make this eyesore be silenced forever, remember to handle it cleanly.”
As he said this, Gu Yun suddenly seemed to remembered something, his footsteps halted, his expression filled with haze: “No, I forgot there is still Jia Lai Ying Huo. That year at Yanhui Town, he and Xiu Niang had been in contact. That barbarian must know something.”
Shen Yi was frightened: “Marshal…”
“He had never told me,” Gu Yun’s shoulders suddenly collapsed, but the steel plate on his body prevented his back from bending, his stance was indescribably stiff.
“He had never told me, not even mentioning a single word… I know that barbarian woman’s head is full of thoughts about vengeance for her country, she must have not been very kind to him, but there is still a blood connection…”
Shen Yi hurriedly said, “You don’t know what that insane woman Hu Ge Er did. Twenty years ago, you are still a child with knotty nose. It’s alright Zi Xi, this matter had nothing to do with you!”
“That time when we picked him up in the snow, it was not because he was a young foolish child sneaking out to play,” Gu Yun whispered. “He clearly could not endure the torture anymore, that is why…”
And they had been so ‘kindly’ to bring him back.
Shen Yi was not able to answer.
For a long time, Shen Yi whispered, “If… I am asking a hypothetical question, what if, the child left alive is not the son of the Royal Consort…”
Shen Yi could not help recalling that scene many years ago, the young boy Chang Geng stood in front of him, calmly said that he was no prince, that the disability on his feet was caused by Xiu Niang.
Gu Yun raised his eyes: “What do you want to say?”
“It does not matter who the mother is. There’s not much difference between the Eighteen Tribes’ witch and the witch’s sister. The problem is… whose child was Hu Ge Er carrying?” Shen Yi licked the corners of his dry lips with difficulty.
That year, the younger sister of the consort also lived in the palace, she was to be wed to the one of royal bloodline. Would former Emperor Yuan He commit such a thing as stealing something he was keeping guard of?
If the former Emperor truly was this shameless, it would be a relief to everyone, but what if…it wasn’t so?
If it was not the former Emperor, there was no doubt that the most suspected person would be the one who had helped the two women escape at that time, who harbored ill intentions, but was able to enter and exit the palace, even had the ability to release the Eighteen Tribes witches, then took over the line of spy that they left in the palace many years later…
With all these conditions combined, one can easily be reminiscent of Master Liao Chi and his group of Dong Ying spies.
Shen Yi felt cold all over: “Marshal, this…”
Gu Yun looked up at him, his eyes resembling sharp blades, Shen Yi suddenly could not open his mouth.
“Digest it in your stomach.” Gu Yun lowered his head and stroked the knife with both hands: “On the Northern Man side, I will clean it all up sooner or later. Don’t mention this matter any more.”
Shen Yi: “… Yes. ”
Gu Yun’s face was as heavy as an iron. His back was supported upright by the steel plate, making him appear all the more heavyhearted. He went to find Chen Qing Xu himself.
“Miss Chen, I would like to have a word with you.”
Chen Qing Xu did not know what was going on, she followed him to one side.
Gu Yun said, “Miss Chen is well-versed in medicine, you have also been in the barbarian area for half a year. I have a question to ask you.”
Chen Qing Xu hurriedly lifted her robe and bowed: “I dare not”.
Gu Yun absentmindedly gave her a hand: “Do they have any special witchcraft there…that makes use of babies?”
Chen Qing Xu was startled.
Gu Yun immediately caught her surprised expression in the blink of an eye: “What’s wrong?”
Chen Qing Xu was silent for a long time. She paced restlessly in the same place for two steps. Then, she sighed deeply: “Marshal… have you ever heard of the Bone of Impurity?”
