"He's looking for death!" Huo Tingshan's five fingers abruptly tightened, the letter in his palm instantly crumpled by him. As if still not venting his anger, he threw the paper ball onto the ground.
The ball bounced and rolled forward, then hit the wall and rolled back.
Chang'an.
The Cui faction had been eradicated, the Fifth Prince was killed earlier, and now the entire Chang'an was in Ji Xianbai's hands.
It was that old widower Ji Xianbai again. If he couldn't get a capable wife, he should just marry one himself, how dare he set his sights on my wife.
Damn him!
"Great General..." Guo Dajiang suddenly seemed flustered for some reason.
Huo Tingshan was furious, his tone icy yet agitated: "What is it?"
Guo Dajiang frantically signaled to him with his eyes.
Huo Tingshan calmed down slightly as if remembering something, and quickly turned his head to look.
He saw that the paper ball he had crumpled and casually thrown away was now picked up by Pei Ying.
The exterior of this letter, delivered from outside the wall, was particularly distinctive. To attract maximum attention, the letter was bordered with cinnabar red and sprinkled with gold powder, ensuring it would shimmer even in sunlight.
The paper used was also high-quality mulberry bark paper, not something ordinary families could afford.
All these details combined were enough to prove the sender's considerable wealth.
"Wife..."
Pei Ying ignored him and directly opened the crumpled paper ball.
Whose letter was this, to make him so furious?
The creases on the letter slowly smoothed out, revealing the elegant and handsome handwriting inside.
Upon seeing clearly what was written on the letter, Pei Ying felt a sense of bewildering emptiness and absurdity. She recognized every character, but combined, they were utterly preposterous, so absurd that her thoughts jammed and halted like an old, broken machine.
The cinnabar characters on the paper seemed to detach from the page itself, leaping menacingly before her eyes. Each character transformed into a tiger-like beast with sharp fangs and claws, clamoring to devour human flesh and blood.
Pei Ying almost instinctively turned to look at Huo Tingshan, her eyes slowly reddening. "Huo Tingshan, what does this letter mean? Nannan... Nannan came home yesterday, didn't she..."
She stared unblinkingly at Huo Tingshan. "Huo Tingshan, speak! Say something!"
The man's Adam's apple bobbed. He walked over and held her arm. "Wife, the little girl went to Madam Lü's place yesterday and... hasn't returned since."
The last four words were spoken very softly, as if afraid of startling the person before him.
Yet she was still startled. The beautiful woman's face instantly turned deathly pale, and her legs gave way. If the man hadn't caught her in time, she would have collapsed to the floor.
With things having reached this point, there was no possibility of further concealment. Huo Tingshan had no choice but to explain: "Meng Congnan and his wife were bribed by villains. The little girl was tricked by Madam Lü yesterday at the rented house they were staying in and was quietly smuggled out of the city by people lying in wait. The ones who kidnapped the little girl are from the Chang'an Ji faction. This group is at odds with Cong Liuqi in Jingzhou, so it's impossible for the Ji faction to send large numbers of troops to move through Jingzhou territory. Wife, I have already sent people to search for the little girl. We should have news soon."
Pei Ying gradually stopped hearing his subsequent words. Starting from "quietly smuggled out of the city," her ears began to ring, and she could no longer make out what he said afterward.
Her mind was filled with only one thought: her daughter did not come home last night.
Her daughter had been kidnapped by villains.
"Huo Tingshan, Nannan is gone." Pei Ying clutched tightly at the hand supporting her, her grip so strong that her neatly trimmed, rounded nails left deep crescent-shaped marks on the man's hand.
"We will find her." Huo Tingshan looked at her reddened eyes, his heart aching as if pricked by needles. At this moment, he could only repeat, "I have sent people to search. We will find the little girl and bring her back."
Pei Ying closed her eyes in his embrace, clear tears streaming down from the corners of her eyes. "It's all my fault. I shouldn't have let her go out yesterday."
Huo Tingshan raised his hand to wipe her tears. His palms were rough all over. His thumb brushed over her fair, soft skin, leaving a faint red mark.
Her eyes were already red, and wiping them only made them redder.
Huo Tingshan momentarily lost his composure and simply said, "Wife, you mustn't blame yourself. One can be vigilant against thieves for a thousand days, but guarding against them every single day is impossible. We hadn't seen them for years, so their sudden visit was somewhat abrupt. But their mention of borrowing money likely served to lull us into a false sense of security, making us think their only purpose was to beg for money, with no other intentions. Who could have guessed that people who shared a past bond with the little girl would turn out to be wolves in sheep's clothing?"
Pei Ying murmured through her tears, "Even if I didn't stop her from going out, I should have gone with her. It's my fault for avoiding it..."
Guo Dajiang stood at the doorway, looking helpless and confused, not understanding why the mistress was taking the blame upon herself.
But Huo Tingshan keenly sensed something deeper.
She wasn't that "Lady Pei" from before. She had no particular feelings for the Meng family and wasn't clear about how they used to interact. Perhaps that was why she declined Madam Lü's invitation.
There was nothing inherently wrong with that, but their daughter had met with misfortune.
However...
Holding the person in his arms, Huo Tingshan felt a sense of relief he couldn't express to others: thankfully, she hadn't gone along.
This situation was different from last time. Back then, his wife went missing at the Yunxiu Tower in Xiaojiang County, Bingzhou. The entire area around Xiaojiang County was part of Bingzhou territory. At that time, he had already taken control of Bingzhou. Not to mention a large county town, even if he insisted on sealing off several smaller townships, it wouldn't have been impossible.
Simply put, Bingzhou was under his control; he could cover the sky with one hand there.
But now he had only captured one strategic route, Chenyuan Dao. The other counties still belonged to Jingzhou. If he led troops there, he would definitely be resisted by the city garrison. By the time he spent effort subduing them, even if the kidnappers were truly in the city at the time, they would have long since fled upon hearing the news.
The difficulty of tracking them down this time was absolutely not on the same level as before.
Pei Ying's originally vacant eyes suddenly flickered. Her gaze slowly lowered, settling on the mulberry bark paper still clutched in her hand.
Huo Tingshan noticed the subtle change in her expression, and his face changed dramatically. "Pei Ying, I'm telling you, don't even think about it!"
With that, he snatched the paper ball from Pei Ying's hand. With a single tightening of his grip, he crumpled the paper back into a ball and threw it out of the room.
"But Nannan has been captured. She's still so young, not even eighteen. And her captors are men. What if those men have impure intentions?" Pei Ying felt she was going mad.
Just the thought of it was enough to easily burn away all her reason.
"The little girl has value to the Chang'an Ji faction. The people who kidnapped her must have received orders beforehand. They won't lay a finger on her, not in any way," Huo Tingshan tried to reassure her.
Pei Ying, her eyes red, began to struggle. "But what if they never get what they want over there..."
"Do you really think that if you go to Chang'an, the little girl will actually be returned? That scoundrel Ji Xianbai would resort to such despicable means. Do you think he's a man of his word? If you really go to Chang'an, it would be like throwing meat to a dog—gone without a trace. He needs a weakness to control you. Why would he easily let her go? Pei Ying, calm down!" Huo Tingshan held the struggling woman in his arms tightly.
Under his increasingly stern reprimands, Pei Ying felt something within her sink. That sinking part solidified into a calm version of herself, nodding in agreement with Huo Tingshan's words.
Indeed, she should not go to Chang'an.
No negotiations had even taken place; matters were far from reaching that point. Moreover, today was only the second day since Nannan's disappearance. This place was very far from Chang'an; Nannan certainly hadn't arrived there yet.
Searching for her now meant a high chance of finding her. It was still too early to talk about going to Chang'an.
But the other half of herself, still floating adrift, was in agony and gradually becoming hysterical. She couldn't control the thoughts of the hardships her daughter must be enduring, the fear that she might be molested or abused by strange men, the worry that she wasn't eating well or dressed warmly enough, and the anguish over her daughter's emotional collapse after being betrayed by a close relative.
Too many worries, all weighing heavily on her heart.
She used to see news reports about children being kidnapped in northern Myanmar, with the kidnappers demanding huge ransoms. The families of the victims would go to extreme lengths, even selling all their possessions and going deep into debt to scrape together the ransom to send.
Did those parents not know that paying the money might result in losing both the person and the money? Of course they did.
Yet, they still chose to pay, because the one taken was their own flesh and blood.
"Pei Ying, give me one month," Huo Tingshan bent down, pressing his forehead against hers, then kissed her tear-filled eyes.
"Huo Tingshan, I cannot live without Nannan. Please, help me find her and bring her back." Pei Ying's red-rimmed eyes brimmed with tears. After holding his gaze for a moment, she buried her face in his chest, her tears dampening his robe.
They were merely tears with a slight warmth, yet they made a spot in Huo Tingshan's heart feel as if seared by fire, aching unbearably—both for her formality and for her tears. "She is my daughter too, my lady. There's no need for such politeness with me."
Pei Ying kept her face buried in his embrace, her hands clutching his robe tightly, crumpling it into a wrinkled mess.
The wilderness.
Meng Ling'er didn't know how long she had been walking, only that she had crossed one stretch of woods only to enter another. Sometimes the wind blew, pushing clouds to veil the red sun. Without the sun, she instantly lost her sense of direction.
She had to stop, find a broken tree stump, and examine the growth rings on its broken surface to determine north and south.
Her footsteps never ceased. When hungry, she ate wild berries; when thirsty, she ate sour fruits, squeezing out their juice to drink, avoiding drinking from streams as much as possible.
Her mother had said there were invisible tiny creatures in water, and it was safest to boil it before drinking. But now she had no flint, and her fire starter had been soaked in the river and was useless.
Midway, she passed by an official road. It wasn't that she didn't encounter passing merchant caravans, but Meng Ling'er dared not stop them.
Meng Congnan was her biological father's cousin. If even such a close relative was untrustworthy, how much more so were other merchants?
What if they saw she was just a young girl alone and intended to do her harm? She was outnumbered and alone. She might kill one, but not necessarily a whole group. If a conflict arose and they captured her to hand over to the authorities, it would be even worse.
Her father was currently at war with Jingzhou. If the Jingzhou side found out she was here, it would certainly be disadvantageous to the war situation. How could the Chenyuan Pass, which her father had worked so hard to capture, be given up because of her?
Hiding in the grass, she waited for this caravan to pass before continuing north.
Time flowed by bit by bit. The golden crow in the sky gradually sank westward. Panting heavily, Meng Ling'er climbed up a small hillock, pondering where to spend the night.
Every breath made her mouth and throat feel drier, parched almost to the point of smoking. Standing for long also made her dizzy and lightheaded. She hadn't drunk water for too long. Now, Meng Ling'er realized that relying solely on the juice from wild berries was insufficient for her body's needs.
She needed to find a clean water source.
Just then, ahead, several faint white trails of cooking smoke rose slowly into the rural sky.
Meng Ling'er paused slightly, licked her dry, cracked lips, and finally stepped towards the direction of the smoke. As only a faint afterglow remained in the sky, she reached the source of the smoke.
It was a small village separate from the townships. From the higher ground earlier, she had roughly counted the number of smoke trails and the visible houses. Combining the two, she guessed this small village likely had no more than thirty people.
Just as she slowly approached the village, she suddenly heard the sound of children laughing and playing.
Meng Ling'er hid herself in the woods, quietly observing outside. She saw four children of elementary school age herding a flock of startled sheep back towards the village.
No other children, no adults.
Meng Ling'er stepped out from the bushes and called out to the children.
A little girl turned at the sound. Seeing a stranger didn't frighten her; she just looked curiously at this young lady, covered in dust, her face smeared with mud, making her exact features unclear.
The little girl walked over. "Who are you? How come you're here?"
Meng Ling'er recited the story she had prepared. "I am a merchant's daughter. I travel with my family for trade. Unfortunately, we encountered bandits in the woods and I got separated from them. I'd like to buy two pieces of flint from your home."
She always carried a purse when going out, but it had been torn off by those men. No matter, she still had jewelry on her. She could shave off a small piece of silver with her dagger—that would be enough.
After speaking, Meng Ling'er produced the small silver piece.
Fearing that wealth could tempt people, she had shaved it very small, only about a quarter the size of a fingernail.
The little girl was mesmerized by the shiny silver. "Sister, two pieces of flint don't cost this much silver."
"Then bring me a meal as well, and water," Meng Ling'er said, pressing the small silver piece into her hand.
The little girl tilted her head. "Sister, why don't you come home with me? This silver could let my parents make a big feast."
"No, I'll wait for you here," Meng Ling'er shook her head. "I'm hungry. Please hurry."
She would not enter the village. Although this village might have simple, honest customs, the opposite was also possible.
The little girl, clutching the silver piece, took two steps. "Sister, wait for me here. I will definitely come back."
Meng Ling'er: "Alright."
After the little girl left, confirming there was no one else around, Meng Ling'er quickly climbed a tree, hiding within the dense canopy.
The last light in the sky slowly faded, and darkness fell. About two hours later, Meng Ling'er saw through the gaps in the leaves the approach of torchlight.
She focused her gaze. Two people were coming—one short in stature, the little girl from before; the other much taller than the girl, with a slender build. From the voice, it seemed to be a youth.
"Brother, right there. The sister was here earlier."
"There's no one here. Are you sure you remembered correctly?"
"I remember correctly."
Meng Ling'er looked behind them. Seeing no one else, she quickly descended from the tree.
Zheng Yu was startled, hastily pulling his younger sister Zheng Ke back a step. After seeing clearly that the figure before him was slender, he let out a sigh of relief. "Young lady, you gave me quite a fright."
Meng Ling'er looked at the wooden food box in his hand and reached out. "Thank you."
Zheng Yu handed over the box and said, "I heard from my younger sister that you, young lady, encountered bandits in the forest and got separated from your family. Why don't you rest in the village for a night and I'll take you to the county to report to the authorities tomorrow?"
Meng Ling'er took the box. As soon as she smelled the fragrance of the food, her stomach began to growl continuously. Without caring about the brother - sister pair, she sat down on the ground right away, opened the box and started to have a meal.
The little girl remembered that she wanted water. There was soup in the food box. Meng Ling'er ignored the soup and directly picked it up and took a big gulp.
After the hot soup went down her throat, she felt that her parched throat, which seemed to be on fire, felt much better. She picked up the chopsticks and began to eat quickly.
She devoured the food so quickly that the Zheng siblings beside her were stunned.
After finishing the meal, Meng Ling'er casually wiped her mouth and asked, "Where are the flints I asked for?"
Zheng Yu took out two flints and gave them to her. "In the mountains around here at night, there are not only wolves but also black bears. A hunter went into the mountains a few days ago and met a black bear. Do you know what black bears are? Unlike tigers and leopards that lock the throat with their fangs when attacking people, black bears always like to eat their prey alive. If you run into a black bear, you'll wish you could go to see the King of Hell soon."
A look of fear flashed across Meng Ling'er's eyes, but she didn't say a word.
Zheng Yu rubbed his forehead and said, "Why are you so stubborn?"
"Go back," Meng Ling'er said.
Zheng Yu thought for a while and asked her, "There are two entrances to the village. You said you got separated from your family. Maybe they are looking for you now. What's your name? If someone comes to the village looking for you, I'll tell them."
Meng Ling'er originally wanted to keep silent, but then she thought that since she was missing, her parents would definitely send people to look for her. It would be a pity if they missed each other because of this.
However, there were also other people looking for her, so she couldn't use her real name. And the surnames of her father and mother were too well - known. The other party would definitely recognize them.
A flash of inspiration crossed her mind. Meng Ling'er said, "My surname is Chen, and my name is Chen Xuehuo."
