Divide into two groups

A hostile gaze was fixed on Chijin, while her arms shielded the other children behind her, as if Chijin had come not to save them, but to kill them.

"And you? Who are you?" the little girl asked warily.

Han Jiang said, "He's just a passerby who was arrested and brought in. He was just rescued by this elder brother from the Vermilion Bird Pavilion."

The little girl focused her attention on Han Jiang, her eyes full of probing.

The cold rain and the crimson gold separated them, and the cold rain began to approach the children.

"Don't come any closer!" the little girl shouted.

The other children behind them didn't dare to move.

Han Jiang asked, "Were you also captured?"

No one answered.

It seems the little girl in front of me is the leader; with her blocking the way, no child will speak up.

Han Jiang had no choice but to bypass the little girl and find another way to break through.

She spotted the two children washing clothes and asked, "Where are your parents?"

Sure enough, children easily lose their composure when their parents are mentioned.

The child immediately burst into tears.

"I will never see my parents again!"

The other children followed suit, becoming saddened, including the little girl whose eyes welled up with tears. But she quickly rallied, saying, "Don't cry! If we're taken away, we'll really never see our parents again!"

"Arrested? Who arrested you?" Han Jiang asked.

The little girl said, "Sister, you haven't been transformed yet, so you can go with the Vermilion Bird Pavilion. But we can't. The Vermilion Bird Pavilion won't let us go!"

Hanjiang turned to look at Chijin, trying to understand what the little girl meant.

Chi Jin was equally bewildered: "Why won't the Vermilion Bird Pavilion let you go?"

The little girl said to the children hanging out the laundry, "You go and let the new ones out, then hide. I'll hold them off!"

The four children picked up the cloth bag and ran along the opposite corridor into another courtyard.

“Little sister, tell me what happened, and I will never hurt you,” Han Jiang said.

The little girl's level of trust in Hanjiang was significantly higher than that in Chijin.

But she remained silent.

Han Jiang turned to Chi Jin and said, "You should leave for a moment."

With the red gold here, the young girl probably won't let her guard down.

Why would the Vermilion Bird Pavilion frighten children so much? Clearly, the Vermilion Bird Pavilion has always been seen as something superior to the government, something that makes people feel more at ease.

Chi Jin slowly withdrew from the courtyard, allowing Han Jiang to take a few steps closer to the little girl.

"There are no more people from the Vermilion Bird Pavilion here now, only me," Han Jiang said.

The little girl was still just a child and relied on adults. She seemed to be wavering and wanted to believe in Han Jiang.

Han Jiang has a harmless-looking round face, with a gentle expression between her brows, making her seem easier to get along with than others.

"Sister, we're doomed, you should leave now," the little girl said.

Seeing that the little girl was willing to talk, Hanjiang immediately softened her tone and asked, "How could this be? Little sister, can you tell me what happened?"

“We were all captured and subjected to human-demon transformation,” the little girl tentatively said. “We are no longer human.”

"It doesn't matter if they're not human; humans and demons coexist in this world."

"But they said we are failures, neither human nor demon, and the outside world will not accept us. The people of the Vermilion Bird Pavilion will capture us and kill us all!"

“The Vermilion Bird Pavilion wouldn’t do that.” Chi Jin walked back into the courtyard. He hadn’t gone far; he could hear the people inside talking from the courtyard gate.

He repeated, “As the Deputy Envoy of Yinzhou of the Vermilion Bird Pavilion, I guarantee that I will never kill you. Innocent people should not be harmed again; the ones who truly deserve to die are those who carried out the conversion.”

“That’s right.” Han Jiang walked to the little girl’s side.

The little girl kept staring at the crimson gold and didn't notice that Han Jiang had already taken her hand.

"Little sister, we will take you out."

"Really? Even if we are neither human nor demon?"

"The people who are trying to reform you are bad, so they are lying and deceiving you. But we are good people, we are telling the truth, and we are here to save you. And your parents don't care whether you are human or demon; they only care about you. Come with us!"

Han Jiang's words seemed to have convinced the little girl, and she grasped Han Jiang's hand in return.

Chi Jin probed the little girl's spiritual energy and found that it was indeed mixed with demonic energy, but the spiritual energy always outweighed the demonic energy.

The rebels attempted to transform people into demons, but children, with their abundant spiritual energy, were more difficult to transform than adults, and almost all attempts failed. This resulted in the children undergoing transformation possessing both spiritual and demonic energy, neither truly human nor demonic.

Only a very few products were successfully made, but they have all been taken away from here.

The rest are all failed products and products that haven't been converted yet.

I roughly counted about twenty children during the cold season.

The little girl was the oldest, but she was only twelve years old.

According to her, some children died because they couldn't resist the "transformation," but no one has ever seen their remains; a few others went insane and were locked in another courtyard, but she didn't know where they were.

They were confined to two connected courtyards, and meals were delivered to them at set times each day.

Before the arrival of the cold and the red gold, there was no door in the courtyard, but a wall.

The arrival of cold weather shattered the illusion of reality, and the original gate to the courtyard was revealed.

“We can’t take so many children to find the crazy ones. First, the group is too big and it’s inconvenient to move around; second, if the crazy ones attack them, the two of us can help them,” Chi Jin and Han Jiang discussed.

Actually, you can't protect her all by yourself. Han Jiang wanted to say that, after all, her combat power was practically zero.

The result of their discussion was that the two of them would take the twenty or so children away from here first, and then Chi Jin would bring the people from the Vermilion Bird Pavilion to come and find them.

Han Jiang considered that this was part of the main storyline, so it should be left to the male and female leads to handle. She, as cannon fodder, should go out with Chi Jin first.

"Remember to look for my junior sister." Han Jiang didn't forget to echo her previous image as a good senior sister, and gave Chi Jin a word of advice.

"Don't worry." Chijin counted the number of people again and led the group out of the courtyard.

But the moment he stepped out of the courtyard gate, the previously quiet child suddenly roared and pounced on another child, along with the two children around him.

Four or five people were wrestling together, and a strong demonic aura emanated from the air.

The other children were terrified and retreated back into the yard.

Chi Jin flung out the rope he had used before. Empowered by his magic, the rope seemed to come alive, pulling at the two children and forcefully pulling them out of their struggle. He bound them tightly from arms to legs, and the two children fell to the ground, thrashing about like fish on land. His face was contorted in a ferocious grimace, emitting low growls that were incoherent, his eyes now only showing the whites of his pupils.

Seeing that someone was tied up, the others changed their targets from each other to the tied-up person.

The bound child was unable to fight back and could only endure being punched in the face by others.

Crimson Gold tried to shake them off with his magic, but they quickly surrounded him again, relentlessly.

Even after losing consciousness, their bodies will automatically stand up and continue fighting.

Just when I was feeling lost and helpless as the cold weather arrived, a familiar fragrance wafted through the air, making me feel refreshed all over – “It can cure anything!”

Or perhaps it's the Sleeping Grass of Shenlu Valley. Cang Jingqi once said that this grass could make people sleepy. Later, Han Jiang specifically looked it up and found that the essence of this grass is to calm a person's spiritual energy, thus making them drowsy. It is also effective against demons.

The reason it's called "the cure-all" is because while calming spiritual energy, it can effectively suppress the dissipation of spiritual power. Throughout a person's life, spiritual energy gradually dissipates; injury and illness accelerate this dissipation. When a person loses all their spiritual energy, that's the end of their life. The dissipation of demonic energy is slightly slower than that of human spiritual energy, hence demons have longer lifespans.

Sleep Grass inhibits the dissipation of spiritual energy, which is to say, it prolongs life. It can suppress the dissipation of any kind of poison, so naturally it can "cure anything".

Hanqi itself possessed extremely strong spiritual energy. After absorbing the Sleeping Grass, the spiritual energy could not dissipate, resulting in a stagnation of spiritual energy, which nearly caused him to die in Shenlu Valley.

How did sleep grass end up here?

The children, who had been acting wildly, slowed down, collapsed to the ground, and closed their eyes.

Han Jiang noticed that talismans had been pasted on their backs at some point, and the talismans emitted a rich fragrance.

"Senior Sister!" Han Qi climbed over the courtyard wall and landed beside Han Jiang.

Han Jiang turned around in surprise, then asked with delight, "Junior Sister! Are you alright?"

Hanqi shook his head, and then Wenxu and Cangjingmo arrived one after another.

“We saw you from the courtyard gate, but the gate was enchanted, so we couldn’t come over directly. We had to throw out a talisman first and then climb over the wall,” Wen Xu said.

Han Qi was captured while sparring with Cang Jingmo, who then chased him all the way here, where he encountered Wen Xu, who had also come. However, Cang Jingmo was there to rescue Han Qi, while Wen Xu was there to complete a storyline with Cang Jingmo.

This is indeed the main storyline.

That said, ever since Han Jiang encountered those two dark figures in the alley, he hasn't seen Cang Jingqi again and has no idea where that guy went.

"Second Prince," Chi Jin bowed to Cang Jingmo, "how did you manage to quiet them down?"

“When I went to Shenlu Valley to collect herbs last time, I picked some Sleeping Grass and took some of it to make talismans, thinking that they might come in handy. I didn’t expect that Miss Wen and I had the same idea.” Cang Jingmo casually mentioned Wen Xu.

At this point in the plot, Cang Jingmo should have used the talisman. To make up for the mistake in the three sects' treasure hunt, Wen Xu used the talisman first, adding a highlight to her own story. If she lost the bet, Cang Jingmo would see it as showing off. Fortunately, Wen Xu had a good impression of Cang Jingmo before, so she won the bet, and her favorability rating increased by several points.

However, Wen Xu's intervention affected Han Qi's perception of Cang Jingmo, which may have some impact on the subsequent plot.

Wen Xu thought to herself that her target was the male lead, and it would be advantageous for her if the female lead distanced herself from the male lead. As for what would happen next, she had no time to think about it now.

Chi Jin and Cang Jingmo shared the information and, after a discussion, decided to split into two groups. Chi Jin and Han Jiang would take the children away first, while Wen Xu and the others would go to find the rest of the children.

This is also the division that is closest to the original plot, adding two positions, "Cold Descent" and "Warmth," to the original division.

As the cold descends, warmth embraces and bids farewell.

"Be careful," Han Jiang said.

Wen Xu lowered his voice and said, "Come back later and take Han Qi with you. Cang Jingqi will enter a mental illusion, and I must go with him. This is the most important part of my mission!"

Hanjiang turned her head to look into Wenxu's eyes, but she couldn't see them clearly, perhaps because it was too dark and the clouds had obscured the moon and stars.

She hesitated to agree.

Chi Jin urged, "Let's go, junior sister."

Han Jiang was still in a daze. She had a bad feeling that she couldn't agree to this request.

Wenxu tightened her embrace, trying to remind Hanjiang to hurry up.

"I know it's dangerous, but Hanqi is strong, she will protect you. Hanjiang, for the sake of going home."