Chapter 37 You’ve Finally Come
The rain fell on the muddy ground, with the air moist and smelly all around.
Following the driver’s direction, Su Muge saw a white swollen body lying under the wheel of their carriage!
Su Muge put on her straw rain cape and jumped out of the carriage. “Make the carriage go backwards a bit.”
The driver’s hands were shaking, he pulled the reins, and made the carriage go backwards with difficulty.
When the carriage moved away, a corpse was exposed on the road.
Su Muge took out the sheepskin gloves when she used for making her medicine and put them on, turning the front of the body over.
From the body’s livor merits and the extent of the swelling, it could be implied that the body had been dead for at least five days.
“It’s, it’s, Hu, Old Man Hu, it’s Old Man Hu!” The driver was huddled in his seat. In such a situation, he would not even bother to think about why a young miss could remain so calm when she saw the body. Instead, he had been trembling, looking at that pale face of the corpse after Su Muge turned the body over.
“You knew him?” Su Muge looked at the driver.
The driver nodded. “Eldest Miss, he was also a carriage driver from Su Mansion. He went to Zhou county with the Lord not long ago.”
Su Muge frowned. “You mean he left Su mansion with the Lord?”
“Yes, yes.”
Su Muge checked the corpse carefully. The dead man’s fatal injury was in his heart, which was caused by a sharp weapon. He died with that one stab. There was no obvious trace left by fighting on his body.
In other words, the person who stabbed the man was a master. He was too fast to leave his opponent with any time for resistance.
“Wait here for me. I’m going to look around and see if there’s any other clue.”
Su Muge checked around but found nothing. It had been raining for days, and any trace impossible had already been washed away.
When walking back to the carriage, Su Muge’s eyes were still fixed on the body on the ground, her eyes were gloomy.
“Eldest Miss, let’s, let’s go, go back.”
“You shall ride the horse back to ask someone to come and cope with the body. Do keep investigating about it. I think my father probably has been robbed. I’ll keep going to Zhou county myself.”
The driver looked at Su Muge in surprise.
“Eldest, Eldest Miss, you are, you are going by yourself…”
“Yes.”
Su Muge went forward to the carriage and drew out her dagger to cut the reins off one horse.
“Then, then please take care of yourself, Eldest Miss.”
Su Muge responded, pulled the body aside and covered it with branches. After this, she jumped on the carriage and took the whip, going further and further away.
The driver jumped on to his horse as well. If everything went smoothly, he would be able to return to Shunyang prefecture before getting dark.
Su Muge rode the carriage along the post road. The nearer the Zhou county, the harder the road became. There were signs of being flooded at some places.
It was getting dark, and Su Muge could not see the road clearly in front of her. She had to camp out tonight and it was fortunate that the rain was getting smaller.
Before the darkness cast down, she found a clear space, tied the carriage and went back to sit on it.
Su Muge found an oil lamp from a small drawer inside the carriage and lit it up. Then she had her dinner, the solid food from her package, with some water.
The main purpose of her visit to Zhou county was to find out about the current situation there, help with the flood, and look for Su Lun.
Whether Su Lun was disappeared for real or not, he must appear at this critical moment!
The wind was howling outside the carriage, making noises on the curtain. It was so quiet around that there was only sound of the rain pattering and the sound of Su Muge chewing and swallowing her food.
Suddenly, there was another sound of rustling.
Su Muge paused as she was holding the kettle in her hand. She covered her face with a piece of cloth, pulled out the dagger from her leg, leaned against the side of the carriage wall and listened carefully with alert.
The rustling went off and on. If it were not for Su Muge’s sensitive hearing, it could have been hard to be noticed.
A moment later, the noise came close, and Su Muge tightened her hand with the dagger in.
Along with a strong howl of the wind, Su Muge opened the curtain abruptly and jumped out of the carriage. The dagger in her hand flashed in the darkness with coldness and was stabbed accurately towards the direction of the noise, quickly and fiercely.
“Ouch!” There was a cry of a child out of shock. Su Muge held back the dagger in her hand just in time to avoid hurting the child. With the faint light, she saw a child of the age of six or seven in her hand.
At the same time, the child was looking at her with those frightened eyes. He was trembling.
“Tong’er!”
A shrilling cry came out behind her. Su Muge let go of the child and swiftly moved her body to avoid the attack.
“Ouch!”
After a short cry out, something fell to the ground heavily.
Su Muge tried to keep the balance and looked back. What fell on the ground was an old woman who was over fifty years old.
Su Muge frowned.
“Granny, granny are you all right?” The little boy got up from the ground and went to help the old woman.
It was obvious that the old woman had a bad fall since it took her some while before she could sit on the ground with the help of the boy.
“Who are you?”
“We, we just ran out from Zhou county…” The boy replied Su Muge while trembling with fear and alert.
Su Muge frowned. “You came out from Zhou county?”
“Yes, Young Master. Please be mercy to us and save us. We haven’t had any food for several days. On our way out, we didn’t see a single person. We saw your carriage and wanted to come over to beg for some food.” The old woman gasped and spoke weakly. She was begging Su Muge.
“Only the two of you?”
The little boy nodded. “Yes. People in the village left as early as they could. Some of them have been washed away by the flood…”
It seemed that they were not faking. When Su Muge was about to put away her dagger and hold them, she suddenly stopped to look at the woods behind them.
“Stay here and don’t move!”
Su Muge clenched the dagger in her hand and was ready for a fighting when the sense of killing in the woods suddenly disappeared.
Su Muge checked it for several times. After she was certain that there was no danger, she took a deep breath and put away her dagger.
She went forward and helped the old woman and her grandson up. “I have no idea when the rain will stop. You can rest in the carriage with me tonight.”
When they heard this, they were about to kneel down and make a kowtow to thank Su Muge. She stopped them.
The clothes on both of them were wet, and they would definitely get sick staying like this. She could only take out the clothes had prepared for herself and let them get changed.
She also took out the solid food from her package. “You haven’t eaten in so many days, so don’t eat too much. The stomach will need time to recover.”
“Thank you, Master. Thank you so much.”
When the two were full, she gave them two pills to prevent them from cold and fever, and the two slept in the carriage.
The carriage was not big. Su Muge was worried that someone would come in at night. After all, she was afraid of that sense of danger in the woods.
…
Outside Yanxia prefecture.
Xia Houmo was riding on a black horse. His purple and gold armor looked heavy and bloodthirsty in the dark.
The southern barbarian army raided Yanxia pass at midnight, and Xia Houmo, the King of Jin, led the troops in person to fight back.
However, the southern barbarian army was nowhere to be found when Xia Houmo arrived.
Someone showed up at your own house, provoking a battle, but when you came out and was ready to fight back, your opponent was missing. And the most ridiculous thing was that the people Xia Houmo had sent out could find no trace of the southern barbarian army.
It was like some tricky fantasy when this happened to the troops of Xia Houmo.
The King of Jin was angry, and thus the consequence could be very serious.
Shortly after, an officer came on a horse.
“Lord, we’ve searched all possible places and found no trace of the southern barbarian army.”
Hearing this, the people presenting only felt that the air around them was cold, and even their breath became depressed!
The eyes of Xia Houmo were integrated with the darkness, and his eyes were cold.
There was also graveness on the face of Donglin.
“Where on earth can they hide?”
The vice general of the troop looked at Xia Houmo.
“Lord, what should we do?”
The dark eyes of Xia Houmo slightly moved. “You’ve searched all the places?”
“There were at least five thousand people sent by the southern barbarians this time. Hiding outside Yanxia pass without being found or showing any trace. It’s almost impossible!”
“How about the barrack?”
Donglin looked at Xia Houmo in surprise. “The barrack is where our soldiers and horses usually rest after training. How can they get there?”
With the eyes of Xia Houmo moving, Donglin felt harder to breathe. “I’ll send somebody to search now.”
The vice general could still not believe this. “Lord, you really think they are hiding in our barrack?”
“We’ll know the answer soon.”
The person Donglin had sent came back in less than half an hour.
“Lord, our people did find some suspicious traces in the barrack.”
There was a look of gloomy on Xia Houmo’s face.
“Yes?”
“There were a lot of new footsteps in the barrack but we stopped training our people and horses three days ago.”
The eyes of the vice general were widened in astonishment.
“How dare they hide in our barrack! Aren’t they afraid of being caught in a jar like a turtle?”
“Those southern barbarians have learned to play tricks with us!”
Xia Houmo held the reins tight in his hands. “Since they want to be caught in a jar like a turtle, then let me fulfill their dream! Let’s head to the barrack.”
“Yes!”
The sky was turning bright.
Su Muge opened her eyes and moved her body.
The rain was not heavy at the moment, but it did not stop.
The old woman and her grandson also got up when hearing the noise outside.
Opening the curtain of carriage, the old woman looked at Su Muge with an apology.
Su Muge had taken the black cloth off her face. She had changed her face into Su Lun’s when the two were sleeping last night.
“Young Master, thank you for saving us. If it were not for you, we could have died!”
Su Muge washed her face simply with the raindrops and looked at them. “What’s your plan next?”
The old woman sighed while looking at her grandson. “This child had a miserable childhood. His parents died and I brought him up. Now our village is flooded, we are homeless and we don’t know where to go.”
“Do you know about the situation of Zhou county?”
“The villages around Zhou county are all flooded after the dam broke. The only place one can stay is in the county. But now it’s still raining and no one is sure about whether the county will also be flooded. Therefore, many people in the county have also run away.”
“Are you familiar with the landform around Zhou county?”
The old woman nodded. “I have been living in Zhou county for most of my life. I don’t know it completely, but I know most of it.”
“Would you like to accompany me to the county?”
The old woman hesitated and didn’t answer.
The little boy went forward and dragged her clothes. “Granny, the Master helped us. Shouldn’t we pay him off?”
Looking at the little boy, the old woman finally agreed and nodded at Su Muge. “So, Master, is there something important for you to deal with in Zhou county? Or else you wouldn’t have come at such a time.”
Su Muge nodded her head, but said no more.
After breakfast, the old woman and her grandson went on the carriage. The three left together.
Only after a short moment, a black figure came out from the woods and chased after them in the direction they left…
