Xiao Fu’s legs suddenly moved. He spun around to face the constable, and the whip came down across his head and face, yet he protected Zhan Haoting behind him from every blow.
Not far away, another constable kicked Fifth Grandfather into a ditch beside the road. It was filled with rainwater, and in the blink of an eye, the old man’s head disappeared beneath the surface.
A little farther ahead, a constable was cursing Ninth Aunt while brandishing his whip at her. She was clutching a child in her arms.
Ninth Aunt’s expression was vacant, as though she had lost all desire to live.
The child wailed incessantly, its pale little face pressed against her chest.
Zhan Haochen clenched his fists, grief and indignation churning inside him. He wished he could tear open this bleak and oppressive world.
But when he lowered his head and saw the mud covering his body and the flesh hanging from his battered feet, his courage faltered.
They could never go back.
They had fallen from lofty, powerful nobles to ants anyone could trample and bully.
And there was no end to their suffering.
As though resigned to his fate, he struggled to his feet, went to pull Fifth Grandfather out of the ditch, and took Ninth Aunt’s child from her, soothing it in his arms.
The rain grew heavier. The trees lining both sides of the official road twisted in the howling wind like ghostly shadows.
People in the procession fainted and fell with increasing frequency. At first, the constables would lend a hand, but later they simply stopped caring.
Xiao Fu and Zhan Haochen had to carry Zhan Haoting between them, making their progress even more difficult.
Cheng Yao offered to carry Zhan Haoting herself, but naturally, the two men refused.
Then one sentence from Cheng Yao silenced them both.
“He needs his medicine.”
Neither of them was a fool. They had long since guessed that she possessed some miraculous medicine.
Her words only confirmed their suspicions.
Cheng Yao carried Zhan Haoting at the very back of the procession, while the other two walked ahead of her, covering for her.
Whenever a constable urged them on, they would bow and scrape, saying, “It’s slower when carrying someone, Constable. Please show us mercy. Don’t worry—we’ll keep up.”
After hearing this so many times, the constables eventually grew too lazy to urge them anymore.
Nor were they worried that Zhan Haoting might escape.
Those sentenced to exile were all close relatives of the Zhan family within three generations. If he fled, His Majesty would execute his entire clan, giving him an even better excuse to kill them. Zhan Haoting was doomed to die.
With Zhan Haoting on her back, Cheng Yao was so weighed down that she could barely breathe or move her legs.
She had taken only a few steps before she could go no farther.
He was thin, but he was tall, with a large frame as well!
He was far too heavy!
Cheng Yao focused her mind and tried to send him into her spatial dimension.
To her surprise, it worked!
Thank goodness!
She placed Zhan Haoting on the ground and panted heavily.
Since he was inside now, he could stay there for a while. Otherwise, if he remained outside in the rain, he would likely die.
As for how to explain her disappearance to the constables, that was Xiao Fu and Zhan Haochen’s problem. Let them worry about it.
Cheng Yao tore off Zhan Haoting’s tattered undershirt, then cut open the bulletproof vest that had already been ripped apart and stained with blood.
He was covered in wounds. They had long since festered, their edges either pale or bluish-black, and a faint stench emanated from them.
Cheng Yao prodded one of his wounds, but he showed no reaction. Only the faint rise and fall of his chest proved that he was still alive.
Cheng Yao’s fingertips trembled slightly as a tremendous fury suddenly rose within her.
This body had once belonged to Da Feng’s sharpest blade, a man who had slaughtered countless invaders. Now his limbs had been broken, and he had been discarded like useless trash.
You bastard emperor, just you wait!
Cheng Yao used the shower to wash the grime from his entire body. She washed his hair with shampoo, dried it, and tied it up on top of his head with a hair tie. Then she moved him onto the bed and dried the water from his skin.
After that, she took out her toolbox, selected the tools she needed, put on a pair of gloves, and began scraping the rotten flesh from his wounds before stitching them closed.
Her movements were clean and decisive, without the slightest hesitation.
Pus and blood flowed from the wounds, accompanied by a foul stench, but her expression did not change. She applied medicine to Zhan Haoting’s injuries, reset his broken bones, and wrapped them in bandages to hold them in place.
As for his legs, the poison in his body was responsible for their paralysis. He would need to be bled and given medicine to detoxify him.
But he had already lost too much blood. She had no antidote, and her spiritual spring water was limited, so she could not deal with the poison for the time being. All she could do was give him an antibiotic injection.
The entire process took more than an hour, and yet by the time she finished, tiny beads of sweat had formed on her forehead and her breathing had grown slightly labored.
The moment she withdrew her hands—
The man suddenly opened his eyes.
They were cold beyond measure, black as an abyss.
He said nothing, but his gaze was like a blade, stabbing straight into her heart as if he intended to dissect her and see through her completely.
Cheng Yao’s heart jolted. She had not expected him to wake so suddenly, and for a moment, she did not know what to say.
Even with his mind clouded, this man was still the same ruthless commander who could claim an enemy general’s head amid ten thousand troops. No excuse she offered would fool him.
He stared at her relentlessly. His lips moved, but in the end, no sound came out.
Fine. Since explaining herself would be difficult, she might as well say nothing at all.
But just as she turned around, his fingers moved—so slightly that it was almost impossible to notice—and hooked around the wet edge of her sleeve.
Cheng Yao’s footsteps halted.
She did not turn back. She merely curled her fingers in secret, the palm hidden inside her sleeve growing faintly warm.
That small tug was neither an attempt to stop her nor a threat.
It was permission. Trust. The only response he was capable of giving in his confused state of consciousness.
She was about to speak when she heard him force out a few words from his throat.
“Where is this?”
His voice was so hoarse it was barely recognizable, as though it had been scraped raw with sand.
Could he not see?
Cheng Yao waved a hand in front of his face, but his eyes did not react.
Was he blind, or did her spatial dimension block his sight?
After a moment, she said, “We’re resting in an abandoned temple. You’re exhausted. Go to sleep.”
Zhan Haoting slowly closed his eyes. His fingers slipped from her sleeve, and his breathing gradually evened out. The corners of his tightly pressed lips relaxed almost imperceptibly.
Cheng Yao let out a long breath of relief.
This man’s killing intent was overwhelming, and his presence was oppressive. Even though he could not get up or see, she still felt nervous around him, as if deceiving him were a crime so grave that she would have to answer to heaven and earth for it.
She left him lying on the bed and took a hot shower herself.
It had only been two days since she had last bathed, yet she already found it unbearable. If she had to go two months on the road without washing…
Just imagining it made her shudder with disgust.
After her shower, she enjoyed a hot pot meal, followed by a mousse cake and a handful of cherries.
Then she took out a blender. Using lamb that had been stewed until it was falling apart, she blended half a small bowl of minced meat and some cooked greens. She planned to feed it to Zhan Haoting.
He had difficulty swallowing, so Cheng Yao came up with a solution: she knocked him unconscious, took out a large syringe, and injected the food into his throat.
After feeding him that, she gave him some corn juice and fruit juice as well.
Time stood still inside her spatial dimension. Everything she collected remained exactly as it had been, so she never had to worry about anything spoiling.
These were foods she had stockpiled during the apocalypse. Once brought into this era, they remained perfectly preserved.
Thinking of how hard Zhan Haochen and Xiao Fu had worked over the past two days, she used the remaining minced meat, added two drops of spiritual spring water, and shaped it into meatballs. She packed them into a lunch box.
She dressed Zhan Haoting in a black tank top and shorts, then put a new bulletproof vest on him and covered it with a fresh men’s robe. It was clothing from this dynasty that she had scavenged; to outsiders, she could simply claim that it had been sent by her maternal grandmother.
After dressing herself properly, she drank a can of soda, then carried Zhan Haoting on her back and stepped outside.
