Chapter 61
Fan Changyu did not sleep well and had a fever again at night.
She was trapped in a nightmare, with a vast white snowfield in front of her and large flakes of snow falling.
She was running barefoot in the snow wearing thin clothes. Her feet were almost frozen and numb, but she did not dare to stop.
At first, Fan Changyu didn't know what she was chasing, until she saw a couple walking hand in hand in the snow in the distance, she finally knew why she was so anxious.
It’s dad and mom!
She ran forward even harder, her heart aching and her eyes suddenly filled with warmth: "Dad, Mom!"
The two figures in front of her were clearly not walking very fast, but she just couldn't catch up with them no matter what she did. She was so anxious that she almost burst into tears.
The woman in the snow finally turned around, with the same gentle expression in her memory, and said to her, "Chang Yu, be good and go back."
Fan Changyu didn't know why she was so sad. When her tears flowed, her heart ached. She asked helplessly, "Where are you going?"
The woman did not answer her, but turned around and continued walking forward with the man.
Fan Changyu stood there in a daze, feeling as if he had forgotten something. His chest was suffocating and painful, and it was extremely difficult to breathe through his mouth and nose, as if he was drowning in water.
When Xie Zheng got a basin of warm water to reduce her fever, he found that she seemed to be in a nightmare. Her whole body was trembling and shaking. She was sweating profusely, soaking her hair and underwear. Her originally pale face was abnormally red due to the high fever. She was mumbling something in her sleep, and the corners of her eyes were slowly wetted by tears.
"In a nightmare?"
It was the first time Xie Zheng saw her so ferocious and yet so fragile. His heart felt like it was blocked by a ball of wet cotton, soft yet stuffy. He pushed Fan Changyu and said, "Wake up."
But Fan Changyu was in such a deep state of terror that he showed no signs of waking up.
He saw that Fan Changyu had almost crushed her left arm while struggling unconsciously, so he had to use one hand to avoid the wound on her arm and pressed on her shoulder to stop her from moving. He then coldly ordered the guards standing outside the house: "Go find a doctor!"
After the doctor finished examining Fan Changyu during the day, Xie Zheng saw that her condition seemed to have stabilized, so he asked his personal soldiers to send the doctor back. After all, if he left the doctor here, there would not be any extra room in the old woman's house for the doctor to rest.
Who would have thought that Fan Changyu would suddenly faint in the middle of the night.
What kind of nightmare was this?
Xie Zheng frowned unconsciously, and when he found that she was bleeding because she bit her lips and teeth too tightly, he raised his hand to pry open her jaw, but she accidentally bit his knuckles.
He struggled a bit, but Fan Changyu bit his teeth even tighter, breaking the skin almost instantly and leaving a circle of bloody teeth marks.
Xie Zheng just frowned slightly and let her bite his index finger all the time.
He felt the person in his arms trembling all over. The thin back curled up in a ball awakened some dusty memories in him. He had never comforted anyone in his life, but at this moment he hesitated for a moment, slowed down his tone and said, "It's just a nightmare, there's nothing to be afraid of."
When he was young, the nightmare of that woman's skirt dangling under the beam had haunted him. He would wake up in shock every time, either alone in the endless darkness, or with the lights on and Wei Yan standing at the head of the bed, looking at him coldly as if he were watching a dead dog.
Wei Xuan would bring the young children of the Wei clan to mock him, imitating his nightmare and panic and making fun of him.
After that, he was no longer afraid of having nightmares.
He crawled through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood to save his life. The blood on his blade was more than that of the fierce ghosts in his dreams.
At this moment, Fan Changyu's trembling figure seemed to overlap with the self in his memory.
Xie Zheng's eyes darkened a little, and while waiting for the doctor to come, he let Fan Changyu bite his knuckles, half-hugging her, and patting her back gently with a somewhat stiff motion.
The most common phrase is: "Don't be afraid."
Don't be afraid, nightmares will eventually end.
When the guards lifted the doctor out of the quilt and brought him back at full speed on horseback, Fan Changyu had calmed down, but had fallen into a deep sleep due to exhaustion.
Xie Zheng was sitting on a wooden chair in the room, his posture casual, a row of teeth marks on his left index finger, bloody and mangled. His eyes were blank, his eyes half-closed, his hair scattered in front of his eyes, and it was unknown what he was thinking about.
After the trembling doctor was carried into the room, he glanced at her with a casual but oppressive look and said, "She's in a nightmare."
The doctor was dragged here from his bed in the middle of the night as if he was sleepwalking, but it turned out that he was just having a nightmare!
He was so angry that he dared not utter a word. The man in the room glanced at him and broke out in a cold sweat on his back. He had no choice but to accept his fate and went to feel the pulse of the woman on the bed trembling with fear.
When taking the pulse, the doctor was surprised to find that the patient, who was weak in the afternoon, now had a much more stable pulse.
He secretly glanced at the handsome and gloomy man beside him, but he didn't dare to say that the woman on the bed was fine. After thinking for a long time, he wrote a prescription for tranquilizing the nerves and said, "The lady must have been frightened. Drink this tranquilizing medicine and you will sleep more peacefully."
The personal soldier looked at Xie Zheng, and when he saw him nod, he took the doctor to the kitchen to boil medicine.
After the tranquilizer was boiled and brought over, Xie Zheng pinched open Fan Changyu's jaw as usual and fed her the medicine spoonful by spoonful.
The two rows of bloody teeth marks on the index finger of my left hand began to cause a slight pain.
After feeding the medicine, he glanced at it and said nothing.
The personal guard handed over some medicine for wounds: "Master, can you put some medicine on the wound on your hand?"
Xie Zheng didn't take such a minor injury seriously and just said, "It's no big deal."
When the personal soldier left with the bowl, he secretly glanced at Fan Changyu who was sleeping on the bed, and a surge of fear and shock was secretly rising in his heart.
Although this woman is pretty, she is not stunningly beautiful. How could the Marquis be so interested in her?
However, recalling the scene of her picking up an adult man with one hand and throwing him far away, the guards suddenly shuddered.
This arm strength is probably on par with their marquis, right?
-
After taking the tranquilizer, Fan Changyu slept much more soundly in the second half of the night and his fever disappeared.
Xie Zheng slept lightly on the bed for two hours. Just as the sky was getting light, there was a very light knock on the door.
He glanced at the bed and saw that Fan Changyu was sleeping soundly. He picked up the cloak on the stool beside him and walked out of the room almost without making any noise.
When the guards outside the house saw him coming out, they lowered their voices and said, "My Lord, we have found Sui Yuanqing's whereabouts. He is indeed hiding in Qingfeng Village! When Qingfeng Village was attacked, he took some people from Qingfeng Village and escaped through the path in the back mountain. Now he has been forced to Yansong Mountain by our people."
Xie Zheng's eyes were filled with coldness: "Guard the main road down the mountain, release the hunting dogs into the mountain, and see how long he can hide."
The personal soldier couldn't hide his excitement, and said with a fist: "I will do it right away!"
A gust of cold wind blew by, and Xie Zheng looked at a dead leaf covered with frost and snow that fell to his feet, and suddenly said, "Today the wind is blowing from the southwest."
Before the guards understood what he meant, they heard him say, "Let the smoke rise from the upwind side, and take the bandit leader's body with you, and whip it."
After being startled, the guards' faces turned even happier: "I obey your orders!"
The corpse of the leader of Qingfeng Village was whipped at the foot of Yansong Mountain. The remnants of Qingfeng Village hiding on the mountain must have been frightened out of their wits.
When they are stifled enough by the thick smoke, we will release the hunting dogs to chase them. There will be no worry about forcing out the remaining bandits hiding in Yansong Mountain. By then, we only need to guard the major roads leading down the mountain, and it will be like catching turtles in a jar.
-
It was another snowy day, but Yansong Mountain was covered with thick smoke. The thick smoke rising from several piles of burning pine and cypress branches was blown by the wind into the depths of the forest. Hunting dogs shuttled through the dense forest, and the barking sounds of dogs came one after another, as if they were jackals chasing prey.
The bandits hiding in the mountains were frightened and fled in all directions. As soon as they appeared on the mountain road, they were ambushed by the officers and soldiers who had been lying in ambush long ago.
But when the thick smoke on the mountain dissipated and the officers and soldiers counted the number of captured bandits, neither Sui Yuanqing nor the female bandit from Qingfeng Village were seen.
The young general who led the troops put a knife to the neck of a bandit and shouted, "Where are Qin Yuan and the female bandit named Yan?"
The bandit begged for mercy, saying, "I didn't know. When the smoke started, we couldn't stand the fumes. We were also chased by dogs and ran away in the woods."
Seeing that he could not get any information from them, the young general had to send people into the mountains to look for them. However, they only found two soldiers whose throats had been slit and their armor had been stripped off.
The young general saw the corpse and cursed: "Oh no! Hurry and chase them down the mountain!"
At the foot of a mountain, there was a gurgling stream. Two men dressed as soldiers, who had been riding their horses at full speed for dozens of miles on the official road, finally stopped by pulling the reins, rolled off their horses and rushed to the river. They did not care about the snow on the bank and directly lay on the ground to drink a few gulps of the cool river water.
One of them knelt by the river bank and suddenly burst into tears.
The voice was shrill, obviously that of a woman.
The man who drank a few sips of water and then lay on his back gasping for breath in the snow did not offer any words of comfort. After he recovered, he took off his armor, threw it into the river, climbed up, and strode towards the warhorse.
The crying woman was so frightened that she stopped crying when she saw that he seemed to be leaving alone. She hurriedly chased after him and said, "Brother Qin, where are you going?"
These two people were Sui Yuanqing and Yan Shisanniang, who had killed two officers and soldiers, put on their clothes and escaped from Yansong Mountain.
Sui Yuanqing was about to climb onto the horse's back when someone grabbed his arm tightly.
He lowered his eyes to look at the woman who was looking at him with tearful eyes. She was tall among women, her facial features were not pretty, and her face had a light blush from years of sun exposure that came from being a mountain girl. If she were placed in the Prince Changxin's mansion, she could be considered a rough maid at best.
He thought he had fallen in love with this kind of woman who was skilled in martial arts and had a wild and unruly nature, but as it stands now, it seems that is not the case.
The only thing that made him itchy was that woman.
He has a pair of sparkling peach blossom eyes, and he looks especially affectionate when he smiles.
At this moment, he raised the corner of his lips, and slowly pulled away Yan Shisanniang's hand that was pulling his arm: "The world is so big, I have my own place to go, so let's say goodbye now."
The smile on the corner of her mouth was so cold, but it was also beautiful.
Yan Shisan Niang was stunned. When she came to her senses, she had already grabbed Sui Yuanqing tightly. Her nails seemed to dig into his flesh through his clothes. She asked him almost frantically, "What do you mean? Are you going to leave me alone?"
Sui Yuanqing raised an eyebrow, as if he thought her question was a bit stupid, and laughed, "Why not?"
The woman's nails were so sharp that they scratched his arm painfully.
He frowned, completely lost his patience, pulled the woman's hand away and jumped directly onto the horse.
Yan Shisanniang said in a hateful voice: "Qin Yuan, you have no conscience! My elder brother led the soldiers away in order to help us escape. Are you worthy of my elder brother?"
Sui Yuanqing sneered: "Escaping from the hands of the government depends on one's own ability, right? Otherwise, how do you think those people on Yansong Mountain died?"
Yan Shisanniang burst into tears and said, "Have you forgotten that I was the one who rescued you from the river? You can't do this to me..."
Sui Yuanqing suddenly smiled, and even leaned down on horseback to be at eye level with Yan Shisanniang: "You saved me, but didn't I also bring you out of Yansong Mountain? Why can't I do the same to you?"
Having said that, he straightened up, pulled the reins, whipped the horse and rode away.
Yan Shisanniang burst into tears hysterically and cursed, "Qin Yuan, you will not die a good death!"
Sui Yuanqing turned a deaf ear to the woman's crying and cursing behind him. After riding for a distance, he took out the painting from his arms that he had later searched for in Fan's house.
The painting seemed to show a family of three. The man was extraordinarily handsome, the woman had a youthful look on her innocent smile, and the little girl who looked very much like the woman had mischievous eyes.
The bloody hole on his shoulder that was stabbed by Fan Changyu was still painful, but Yuan Qing's mood suddenly became very good.
As soon as he got the painting, he guessed that the ghost-faced man who hurt him was Xie Zheng.
As for the relationship between the woman in the painting and him...
Could it be that she is the woman he keeps outside?
Is the child in the painting their daughter?
As Yuan Qing looked around the painting a few more times, the woman in the painting looked like a young girl. If she had a daughter of this age, she would have to be at least 20 years old.
But when he thought about his brother's escaped concubine, who gave birth to a son for his brother and looked no different from a young girl, he slowly began to believe this guess.
No wonder the woman guarded the dry well in the backyard so tightly that day. Xie Zheng must have been forced to leave Qingping County due to the war, and she knew she couldn't escape with a child, so she hid the child in the well.
Thinking that the woman had given birth to a daughter for Xie Zheng, Yuan Qing's face turned unhappy. He put the painting back into his arms, leaned on the horse's belly and continued to move forward.
No matter what, with this painting, this trip to Qingping County was not in vain.
At least I know where Marquis Wu'an's weak spot is.
The author has something to say:
Sui Yuanqing: Found the woman and daughter of Marquis Wu'an!
Changning: ???
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