While drifting in and out of sleep, Xiao Nanhui felt a burning pain in one of his legs.
She wanted to turn over and pull her leg back, but it felt like a huge rock was pressing on her body and she couldn't move at all.
She was so angry that she yelled in her dream and suddenly woke herself up.
There was a bright sun above my head, as big as a washbasin.
She blinked, moved her fingers, and touched the thing pressing on her body.
There were several huge sacks, very heavy, and occasionally some sand-like stuff leaked out and fell on her face. She licked it with her tongue.
Salty is salt.
She had only seen this kind of salt in burlap sacks once, when she saw it from a salt smuggler who was caught.
He took a deep breath and pushed with all his strength, and the sack fell to the ground. Xiao Nanhui sat up on a broken cart and finally got back his leg that was about to be scorched by the sun.
At the same time, several big men who were sitting under a saxaul tree not far away to enjoy the cool air turned around when they heard the noise, with some surprise on their dark faces.
Xiao Nanhui swallowed hard, trying to moisten his dry throat.
"Excuse me, where is this?"
When those people saw her start talking, their expressions became a little strange. Xiao Nanhui heard a few of them muttering something in a very difficult dialect.
She spoke in a somewhat unbelievable manner, and this time she no longer used Mandarin, but the dialect of the Suyan area in western Lingnan.
"Is this Suyan?"
The leader looked at Xiao Nanhui in surprise, nodded, and said, "We're almost at Suyan." After a pause, he asked, "Aren't you coming from Lingdong?"
Xiao Nanhui knew that this was the usual xenophobic style of Lingxi, so he chuckled and said, "A few days ago, I did some escort business in Tongcheng, but I got ripped off."
Hearing it was a fellow villager, the leader didn't shy away and said bluntly, "No wonder. That man gave us silver and said he would send you to Suyan as fast as he could. We were thinking, this trafficker is quite interesting. He even paid for the sale himself. It turns out he's afraid you'll run back to settle the score with him."
After saying that, he burst into laughter, and the people around him also laughed foolishly.
Xiao Nanhui couldn't laugh.
"Selling people? Selling whom?"
The laughter stopped abruptly.
"Sell you."
A gust of wind blew by, and a ball of dried pigweed rolled past happily.
The atmosphere was weird for a moment.
"Well, can we discuss..."
"No." The leader stood up, and the five or six people following him also stood up.
Xiao Nanhui felt a splitting headache and subconsciously touched his back.
Fortunately, Pingxian is still there.
She smiled at them and whispered "sorry".
A few men's screams were heard in the Gobi Desert, and after a series of clanging and banging sounds, calm quickly returned.
Another half incense stick of time passed, and a figure riding a camel came onto the road and headed straight to the west.
Xiao Nanhui wrapped himself up like a dumpling.
The clothes she was wearing were taken from those people and smelled of sweat, but she had no choice but to endure it.
She was very familiar with the weather in the Gobi Desert. If exposed to such scorching sun, she would become weak and dehydrated within an hour. Sometimes wearing thicker clothes was the key to saving her life.
This camel is an old camel. Not only can it avoid places with quicksand on its own, it also knows the way to Suyan.
Those people were helpful, and her next step was to find a way to get to Suyan, which was at the edge of the Bai family's territory. Xiao Nanhui began to check her belongings to see if they could make it to her destination.
There were two water bags on the camel's back, both about 70% full. She breathed a sigh of relief. In this desert, the only thing that couldn't be created out of nothing was water. As long as there was water, everything else wouldn't be a big problem.
She untied the leader's bag that she had just taken away. Inside was a dagger, a few strings of copper coins, some dry steamed buns, and a small bag of coarse salt.
Although it's shabby, it's enough.
Xiao Nanhui raised his eyebrows and touched Pingxian's back, which was hot from the sun.
It's really strange. All the copper coins and silver coins on her were searched away, but those people left the Pingxian to her. Perhaps they didn't realize what a Pingxian was?
She then remembered that she should have been clutching that jade pendant before she fainted. That bracelet-shaped pendant. But when she woke up, it was gone. She wondered if those salt merchants had found it and taken it for themselves, or...
A moon-white shadow flashed through her mind, and the scene of that night in Xuemi Palace came up without warning, unable to be suppressed.
Because of the orchid, her memory became dreamlike and unreal, but for some reason, she always felt that it should be a man, and someone who was somewhat familiar.
Who was that man? Did he save her? Then why did he sell her to Suyan?
She remembered that she seemed to be buried in that man's arms at last, and her face suddenly turned red, perhaps because of the heat or something else.
Throughout her life, apart from being beaten, she has never had such close contact with other men.
Even Xiao Zhun had never done anything that was beyond the norm.
Thinking of Xiao Zhun, Xiao Nanhui felt cold again.
Looking up, she saw the wind and sand everywhere. When would she see him again?
******************
Suyan Suyan, the rock of the stars.
The sky is vast and solemn, with no clouds in sight. It has been a holy place for astrology and astronomy since ancient times.
However, due to climate change and the drastic changes in the world, Suyan is now just a barren land that is poor due to lack of water.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
