Before anyone could react, the two men in gray stepped forward, roughly seized Shao Yutong, Zhan Yurong and her daughter, along with the old physician who had been frightened into collapsing, and swiftly carried them out of the cave. They disappeared into the vast darkness of night.
…
At dawn the next day, after resting by the river for the night, the exile party was still hungry, but their spirits had improved somewhat. Everyone busied themselves taking care of their needs, fetching water, and reheating the grilled fish left over from the night before. Once the bustle was over, Constable Wang urged them onward, and they once again set out on the long road of exile.
A few people suddenly remembered Shao Yutong.
“Strange. Why haven’t that mother and daughter caught up with us?”
“They had nothing to eat or drink. Perhaps they collapsed somewhere,” Madam Lan said gleefully, clapping her hands. “What goes around comes around. Heaven has finally opened its eyes! Even the air feels fresher now!”
Several women beside her chimed in.
“It’s better that they didn’t come along. Otherwise, we’d always have to worry about someone secretly harming them.”
“They aren’t prisoners, yet they insisted on following us. Aren’t they shameless?”
“I think the wolves probably got them last night! Such a young girl, yet so malicious. If she doesn’t die, there’s no justice in this world!”
Old Madam Zhan heard every word. Her heart felt as though it were being pricked by needles, and grief overwhelmed her until she burst into tears.
“My granddaughter only made a mistake because her good intentions went wrong. You beat and insulted her, then drove her out of the group. Now the lives of that mother and daughter are unknown, and you still curse them like this. How can your hearts be so cruel?”
Madam Lan was no pushover. She immediately planted her hands on her hips and retorted, “Old Madam, the most disgraceful thing about Shao Yutong is that she’s conceited, competitive, and always trying to steal credit. That day, she incited everyone to eat the wild boar. Hao Ting’s wife tried to persuade her nicely, but she refused to listen and even talked back. Everyone was already starving. After she kept tempting them, how could they possibly resist?”
“You… You’re talking nonsense!” First Madam Zhan was so furious that her whole body trembled. “My Yutong would never be so thoughtless!”
Feng Xianxian curled her lip. “Grandmother, you were unconscious the entire time, so there are many things you don’t know. Shao Yutong has done things far worse than that.”
“What?” Everyone turned toward Feng Xianxian. “What else did she do?”
Feng Xianxian had been bottling up her frustration for a long time, and no one usually paid any attention to her. Now that everyone was finally focused on her, she opened the floodgates.
“The night before last, Shao Yutong tricked me. She told me that Big Brother and Big Sister-in-law had disappeared and asked me to report it to the guards. I refused, but she said that Big Brother and Big Sister-in-law were wanted criminals of the imperial court. If they escaped, the entire clan would be implicated. That was why I went to find the guards. Who could have known that when they arrived, Big Brother and Big Sister-in-law were perfectly fine? The guards cursed me out and even whipped me several times, while Shao Yutong ran off by herself.”
“Oh…”
Who didn’t know about that?
It was simply because she had been foolish herself!
Everyone immediately lost interest and stopped paying attention to her.
Feng Xianxian was indignant. “What kind of reaction is that? Wasn’t what she did bad enough?”
Old Madam Zhan shot her a sidelong glance. “Didn’t you hear what Yutong said? If Haoting and his wife had escaped, the entire clan would have been implicated. She was thinking of the family. You people don’t know how to recognize kindness, so stop maliciously speculating about her.”
“Grandmother, she clearly set a trap for me and framed me!” Feng Xianxian was filled with grievances and resentment. But then she remembered that she held no position in the Zhan family now. If she lost her temper again, they might no longer tolerate her. She could only swallow her anger.
“Forget it, Grandmother. There are some things you don’t know, so you should say less. You’ll only make yourself sick.”
“I’m injured, not senile!”
“You were unconscious for so long, and you still don’t think you’re confused?”
“Madam Feng, are you hoping I’ll die?”
“…”
Cheng Yao was walking in the middle of the procession, listening to the argument with a slight furrow between her brows. Without drawing attention to herself, she released her powers of perception. Sure enough, she could not sense the presence of Shao Yutong or Zhan Yurong.
Had they truly failed to catch up?
For some reason, Cheng Yao felt an inexplicable unease in her heart.
With Shao Yutong’s tenacious, cockroach-like vitality and her relentless ambition, she would never give up on the exile party so easily.
Even if she had fallen behind for a while, she would certainly find a way to catch up.
The fact that there had been no news of them at all was highly unusual.
“Could something really have happened?”
Cheng Yao slowed her pace and dropped to the very back of the procession. Pretending to adjust her shoes, she waited until no one was paying attention, then focused her mind and once again attempted to use her extremely draining teleportation ability. She locked onto Shao Yutong as her target.
However, the instant her thoughts stirred and she was about to cross space and pinpoint Shao Yutong’s location, an unprecedented sense of obstruction and violent rejection suddenly surged toward her.
“Ugh…”
It was as if she had crashed into an invisible wall brimming with repulsive force. Cheng Yao felt her soul shudder violently, while her head rang as though it had been struck by a heavy hammer. Her vision went black in waves.
A metallic sweetness rose in her throat, but she forcibly swallowed it back down.
She staggered a step and caught hold of a nearby tree trunk, barely managing to steady herself. Her face turned as pale as paper, and her breathing became ragged and disordered.
“What’s happening?” Cheng Yao thought, shaken to the core.
Teleporting to the imperial palace, the locations of medicinal herbs, and other places had exhausted her to some degree before, but she had never encountered a situation in which she was directly “bounced back”—much less one that caused her own ability to recoil upon her.
It was as though some force was blocking her. Or perhaps the place where Shao Yutong was located was enveloped by a higher, more powerful law or energy that prevented Cheng Yao from seeing or approaching it.
“Could Shao Yutong really be dead?” The thought flashed through her mind.
If the target had died and its aura had vanished, it would make sense that the failure to lock on had caused a backlash.
But she immediately dismissed the idea.
No. Impossible.
Shao Yutong was the chosen daughter of destiny in this world’s original storyline, blessed with powerful protagonist’s luck.
If this central heroine had truly died, the world would likely have plunged into violent upheaval—or even collapsed entirely.
Yet the world was still functioning normally.
Once death was ruled out, only one possibility remained—
Shao Yutong had not only survived; like every protagonist who seemed impossible to kill, she had encountered a new and tremendous “opportunity” in the midst of despair!
The energy field accompanying this opportunity, or the place where she now found herself, was powerful enough to interfere with or even block Cheng Yao’s teleportation ability.
At the thought, Cheng Yao’s heart sank.
Shao Yutong was already scheming and wildly ambitious. If she now won the favor of some top-tier power or became entangled with one, it would be an outright disaster for everyone around her.
With destiny’s favor upon her and powerful allies at her side, Shao Yutong would become even stronger than the heroine portrayed in the original novel.
A powerful sense of danger washed over Cheng Yao. She looked at the exile party trudging ahead, then felt the lingering ache in her head. Her gaze turned razor-sharp.
She had to increase her strength as quickly as possible.
She had to make full use of her spatial abilities and everything she knew. Shao Yutong’s “opportunity” was the greatest warning of all.
In these chaotic times, falling one step behind meant falling behind at every step. Cheng Yao would never allow herself or the people she cared about to become pawns on someone else’s chessboard—or worse…
sacrificial pieces.
Cheng Yao took a deep breath, suppressing the surging qi and blood in her body as well as the distracting thoughts in her mind. Then she quickened her pace and caught up with the procession.
…
After days of travel, exhaustion and hunger clung to the exile party like maggots in the bone, steadily draining what little strength they had left.
