"Hate it! Why don't you take me with you?" Duan Xinyan stomped her feet in anger as she watched Jian Ning riding Qiu Ge away.
She really wanted to know what it felt like to fly on a giant snake. Now, the people of the entire capital called her elder sister the Goddess and the giant snake the Snake King, which made her feel very proud. Well, Duan Xinyan thought her elder sister must have been busy with something important and that was why she didn't take her with her. So, she decided to go back and accompany her mother in her elder sister's place.
I'm sure my eldest sister will be very happy when she finds out.
Thinking of this, Duan Xinyan became happy again. She had been going to the princess's courtyard quite frequently recently. Because her mother forced her to marry Prince Yong as a concubine, she had never been to her mother's courtyard once.
The two of them bumped into each other occasionally, but her mother had no desire to speak to her, as if she was harboring something, constantly uneasy. Duan Xinyan even thought her mother was worried because she hadn't gotten the chance to marry Prince Yong. What good was Prince Yong? He watched her get beaten without saying a word, and even if he married her as his principal wife, she would still be a successor.
She doesn't want to marry him.
What's more, she was just a concubine, which she didn't want at all. Jian Ning didn't even want any reward. As long as the emperor took back the order to marry her to Prince Yong, she would be happy even if her mother was unhappy.
Who wants to marry a bigot?
She was happy at the thought that she didn't have to marry Prince Yong, and she happily returned home with her maid to accompany the princess in place of Jian Ning.
Pei Xiyuan and his group packed up their things and checked out of the hotel. They took Meixiang with them and set off out of the capital. They split into two groups. One group followed Pei Xiyuan to Dazhou County to find Blind Liu, while the other group, led by a skinny old man and a few others, took Meixiang to the Kingdom of Yue.
Meixiang's father could not survive the smallpox virus. The skinny old man was the high priest of Yue Kingdom. He brought a handwritten letter from Concubine Li to Pei Xiyuan, telling her that Meixiang's father had a birthmark on his body. It was confirmed that Meixiang's father was Concubine Li's long-lost son.
The priest hesitated to speak before leaving. He felt that Jian Ning would become a hidden danger to the Yue Kingdom and wanted to persuade Pei Xiyuan to get rid of Jian Ning, but was rejected by Pei Xiyuan.
Yuuji also disagrees.
Jian Ning saved his general's life. Even if the two countries go to war in the future, fighting on the battlefield is a man's job. What does it have to do with a woman like Madam Jian?
Because both he and Suo Wenzhen were strongly opposed to this act of repaying kindness with enmity, the priest thought about it and finally swallowed his words of advice and just sighed silently.
Pei Xiyuan, Xiong Er, and Suo Wenzheng had been riding horses for a day when they ran into the Ma family father and son who had just disembarked when they turned to the waterway. Ma Xiaomai saw them and shouted, "Dad, I recognize them. They almost fought with my master that day, and later ordered a lot of wine from my master."
Ma Fuquan glanced at Pei Xiyuan and saw him bowing to him with a fist. He also bowed in return without saying anything. He led Ma Xiaomai and Ma Xiaodou to escort the goods.
After getting on the official road, Ma Fuquan looked back at Pei Xiyuan and the others heading to the boat, wondering where the people of the country had been going by boat in the past few months. This was a ship heading south, so wouldn't it be a long detour back to Yue Country?
"Dad, look at what they are doing?" Ma Xiaomai was still dressed like a farm boy, but before coming, Tian had given the two brothers new clothes, and they both looked very energetic.
Especially Ma Xiaomai, a fifteen-year-old boy who was almost as tall as Ma Fuquan, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, looking more and more like Ma Fuquan, with quite a heroic aura.
"Just take a look, let's go." Ma Fuquan looked away and saw Ma Xiaodou picking up a branch from somewhere and using it as a sword, shouting nonsense and kicking up dust. He frowned and shouted, "Behave yourself, these shoes can withstand a lot of wear and tear. If you kick the shoes made by your grandma, your mother will beat you up and I won't care."
"Dad, I'm fighting the bad guys who kidnapped Ah Man. Can my aunt find Ah Man?" Ma Xiaodou threw away the branch, ran over and asked while looking up at him, pulling his clothes.
"able!"
Ma Fuquan learned from Jian Ning that due to the smallpox epidemic, the people who had abducted Ah Man were unable to enter any of the cities along the way and were forced to hide in the wilderness or in remote villages. As long as Jian Ning continued searching with drones, finding them would be a matter of time.
He was only worried about one thing, that is, Ah Man would contract smallpox and die early due to delayed treatment.
What Ma Fuquan was worried about was exactly what Jian Ning was worried about. She and Ding Youtian followed the signposts left by Huo Jincheng, and with the help of Brother Qiu, they chased to a small hill outside Jiqing City and successfully found Huo Jincheng and the others.
After just half a month of not seeing each other, Huo Jincheng's eyes had become sunken, his beard was unshaven, and his hair was messy. Jian Ning didn't recognize him at first sight.
Of the four guards he brought with him, two contracted smallpox on the way back to Heze County. Even though they haven't fully recovered yet, they still insisted on coming with Jian Ning and Ding Youtian.
Jian Ning had just examined Huo Jincheng's body when Ma Fuquan sent a message asking if A Man had any clues?
"All we know for sure right now is that Man'er is still alive. Huo Jincheng saw the mark she left behind three days ago," Jian Ning told him.
Ma Fuquan: [That's good. I told you that girl was smart. Fortunately, Huo Jincheng also has a sense of precaution and taught her these things early on. They really came in handy.]
Jian Ning was about to tell him that Huo Jincheng taught Ah Man these things mostly because Duan Xinning had been missing since childhood. Before she could put her thoughts into words, she heard Ding Youtian calling out, "Madam, come and see, there seems to be a mark left by Ah Man here."
【We'll talk about this later.】
Ding Youtian saw a mark that was suspected to be carved by Ah Man on the bark-peeled trunk of a tree behind the hill.
It is called suspected because what is drawn in the circle is not a cross, but four small circles of different shapes.
Jian Ning stared at them for a moment and pointed at the four circles. "Do you think they could be eyes, nose, and mouth?"
Ding Youtian nodded. "It's very likely. Look at this..." He pointed to the long circle representing the mouth. "The two ends go up. The corners of the mouth only turn up when she smiles. If it really was left by Man'er, is she trying to tell us that she's fine and hasn't contracted smallpox?"
After he said that, he looked at Huo Jincheng who remained silent.
"Man'er learned painting, so she wouldn't paint like this. I'm afraid it might not be left by her." Huo Jincheng said in a hoarse voice.
"Not necessarily." Jian Ning shook her head. "Perhaps because time was tight and someone was watching her the whole time, it's possible that she took the time to draw it secretly."
Huo Jincheng narrowed his eyes slightly, thinking that they might be comforting him. If it was really Ah Man, he would just paint according to his instructions. Why would he just draw it randomly and let people bother to guess?
"Shouldn't we just look around here? Wherever there's water, there must be people living there. Let Brother Qiu go find some water first, and we can rest for a while."
Jian Ning patted Brother Qiu: "Go ahead, but try not to fly. It's broad daylight, and you might scare others."
Brother Qiu came back not long after he left. He looked a little excited and wagged his tail to signal them to follow him.
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