Chapter 50: Battle with Yang...
Yang Yan's back was extremely stiff, but he still said in a hoarse voice: "I know."
Chai Heng looked at him, who was obviously enduring but still accepted all the heartbreaking words she said, and couldn't help but take a deep breath.
To suppress the slight bitterness in his chest, Chai Heng put away the ointment and sat in the tent with Yang Yan.
"Actually, there were times when I thought you were great." Chai Heng said seriously.
Yang Yan restrained himself: "Really?"
"I still remember how terrified I was when I first returned to the Chai Mansion. My sisters were all well-educated and well-mannered, but I was the only one who knew nothing and never satisfied Mother. The teachers at school didn't like me, and others laughed at me, but you were the only one who wasn't like that."
"When my mother gave me a hard time, you helped me out. When the teacher reprimanded me, you took my punishment. One year, the grandson of the Minister of Revenue stopped me by the academy's pond and, as a joke, said he was going to feed me to the fish. He accidentally pushed me into the pond. I couldn't swim at the time, so I thrashed around. My classmates on the shore saw us but were afraid to get in. You jumped in and pulled me out. Once you were out, you knocked the grandson of the Minister of Revenue to the ground with one punch and threw him back in. At that moment, I thought you were the best person in the world."
As Chai Heng spoke, she couldn't help but laugh. Her eyes reddened, but there were no tears. "Later, when Furong Mountain was in trouble, I knew you'd been manipulating the situation, and it was a difficult job for you. That's why I didn't ask you for help after Xue Huaiyuan killed so many people there. I know you must have been doing your best for Furong Mountain behind the scenes."
"So, Yang Yan, I tricked you into coming here for Cui Miao, putting you in danger. This is all to make up for the traps you set for me for Xue Ruyue. If we're still alive after today, I won't hold you accountable for those past events."
But not settling accounts doesn't mean forgiveness.
Yang Yan didn't know why, listening to her words, he didn't feel any sense of atonement or relief, but only uneasiness. He was afraid that she would say something to ask him to stay away from her. Sure enough, the next moment, he heard her whisper:
"After today, promise me that if we are still alive, we will not meet again."
The words fell.
Yang Yan felt as if his heart was blocked.
It turns out that at this point in their lives, even meeting her again is a luxury for him and her.
But this is what she wants.
How could he bear not to give it to her?
He turned his face away, afraid that he looked too embarrassed: "Okay."
*
Zhou Jiu was very nervous in the inn. He did not receive the news that Yang Yan had returned safely. Instead, he only received the flames rising from the Xirong camp.
Chu Yanhuai was originally still worried about Yang Yan's insistence on running to the Xirong camp. He was anxiously thinking about how to bring this pretending romantic back alive in the government office. However, the fire in the Xirong camp aroused his burning fighting spirit.
Without destruction, there is no construction.
If we don’t take advantage of this time to attack the Xirong’s lair, when will we wait?
Without thinking, he immediately summoned his elite troops and was about to attack the Xirong camp. However, when he was about to leave, he was stopped by the military supervisor Xue Huaiyuan.
"Since we set out from the capital, Lord Xue, you have repeatedly obstructed the army's advance. Either you said the mountain roads were difficult to travel and you were afraid that the soldiers would be injured, or you said it was difficult to transport the armaments and asked us to wait a little longer. Now you are obstructing my attack. What is your intention?" Chu Yanhuai was a rough military general and had long been impatient with Xue Huaiyuan.
I don’t know where this broken rule came from, but now all generals are subject to the constraints of this military supervisor.
Xue Huaiyuan had been an official all his life, and his greatest skill was to guess the emperor's intentions. He naturally knew that the emperor hoped that all the generals in charge of the army would behave humbly, so he pretended to be flattering and said, "General Chu, you don't know, when leading troops abroad, the most fearful thing is impulsiveness. The Western Rong camp was burned down without warning, what if it was a trick?"
"Sometimes we still need to wake up and sober up."
Chu Yanhuai's eyes suddenly turned cold. "General Xue asked me, the general, to wake him up? Could it be that you yourself are not clear-headed enough and don't know how much your life is worth?"
Xue Huaiyuan's hair suddenly stood on end. "What do you mean? I've been a military supervisor for so many years, and no one has ever dared to speak to me like that. Even Prince Jing and his wife have treated me with great courtesy."
Chu Yanhuai said coldly, "That's because Prince Jing and his wife are good-tempered, but I'm not. Go to hell."
With that, he waved his hand and ordered his soldiers: "Shut up this annoying mouth of his and chop him up right outside. Oh, and he's not sober yet, so give him twenty slaps on the mouth first and let him go sober."
"yes!"
The soldiers obeyed the order and dragged him out.
Xue Huaiyuan had never imagined that he would fall at the hands of a young man. He suddenly remembered what the sage had told him before he sent him here: Chu Yanhuai was a straightforward person who was not good at adapting. But he still held on to a glimmer of hope and threatened him: "I am the military supervisor sent by the sage. If you kill me, it would be a provocation to the sage's will. Do you still want to be the general?"
He was dragged out, his legs leaving a long mark on the ground.
Chu Yanhuai felt annoyed watching and listening.
He had been putting up with this Xue guy for a long time: "He's going to die anyway, so after slapping him in the face, break his legs too."
After saying that, he added to Xue Huaiyuan: "Oh, you see, after returning to the capital, will the saint dismiss me from my position as general because I executed you?"
A clapping sounded from the courtyard, accompanied by cries of "Ahhh." Chu Yanhuai didn't want to breathe the same air with this lousy military supervisor for a moment, so he waved his hand again.
His subordinates understood from his expression: "Are you going to cut off General Xue's tongue as well?"
This young deputy general is able to draw inferences about other situations.
Chu Yanhuai believed that he actually did not have any habit of torturing others: "That's not necessary. Drag him away and let him die far away."
"good."
The subordinates who obeyed the order hurriedly dragged the shouting Xue Huaiyuan away.
At the same time, he led all his elite troops to attack Xirong.
"Come on, brothers, let's charge towards the Xirong camp together and not let any Xirong soldier go. Most importantly, if we can break into the Xirong Royal City, that would be even better. Take Tuoba Ye's head! That way, the senior members of the Jingnan Army can fight more easily on the first battlefield!"
Chu Yanhuai was wearing armor and waving a spear, giving orders to the soldiers under his command.
At the same time, Zhou Jiu was waiting for another unexpected guest at the inn. When he saw her for the first time, Zhou Jiu almost didn't recognize her.
"Mrs. Chai?"
Zhou Jiu was in the government office. When he heard the bailiff say that someone was looking for Lord Yang outside, he went out. After he went out, he stared at the beggar for a long time but could not realize that it was Madam Chai.
Her face was ashen, like a beggar, and the delicate jewels and hairpins in her hair were gone, as if they had been robbed. She burst into tears when she saw Zhou Jiu.
After all, she is Chai Heng's mother. No matter how bad her relationship with Chai Heng is, I think if the adults are here, they will treat her well.
Zhou Jiu hurriedly brought her in, and then asked the servants of the government office to boil water for her to take a bath. After changing her into clean clothes, he asked her in detail and found out the whole story.
It turned out that she had returned to her hometown in Jiangnan a few days ago and passed by Furong Mountain. Thinking of Chai Heng going back, she couldn't help but turned there. She stayed in an inn nearby for three days and asked the nanny beside her to appear in Furong Mountain several times every day, thinking that if Chai Heng found out one day and met the nanny by chance, she would come to see her as her mother.
Chai Heng didn't come to her birthday party.
Mrs. Chai said she didn't care, but she was actually worried. If he didn't come to such an important birthday, what would happen in the future?
She said she would go back to Furong Mountain and she didn't even say hello to her as her mother.
Mrs. Chai felt increasingly sad these days. Although she always felt that her daughter was always brandishing swords and guns, which did not conform to her idea of a lady, she was the one she had carried for ten months before giving birth. She disciplined her but never thought of losing her.
So I thought about it and decided.
She wanted to have a good talk with Chai Heng to find out if she was too harsh on her in the past few years, or too close to Xue Ruyue, which made her unhappy.
After all, they are mother and daughter, so there is no huge hatred between them.
Moreover, she had disciplined Chai Heng in the past few years and had the nanny spank her hands, but she had never hit her too hard. Madam Chai didn't know why Chai Heng didn't go home.
Thinking this way, she saw that Chai Heng could never meet the nanny, so she simply asked the nanny to go to Furong Mountain to ask, and only then did she know that Chai Heng had come to Linzi City.
Mrs. Chai didn't know where else Chai Heng could go, so she followed him to Linzi City. However, they encountered refugees on the way, and all their gold, silver and treasures were robbed. They also lost their nanny along the way. It was only by asking the government along the way that they finally arrived here.
"My lady is in the Xirong camp. My lord has gone to look for her. I don't know if she will come back."
"You wait for news in the government office first. Maybe there will be news in a few days." Zhou Jiu could only patiently comfort Mrs. Chai.
"Is that so?" Mrs. Chai nodded, looking a little dazed.
Zhou Jiu had tried to persuade everyone this year, but adhering to the lesson he learned from Yang Yan, he still said, "If Madam can come back alive, you must also be careful not to push her too hard. Pushing her too hard will backfire."
He tried everything to win over his wife but failed.
His family members are such an example.
Mrs. Chai murmured, "What can I force her to do? I just want her to come home and see me."
"She hasn't been home for so long. Even if she has any dissatisfaction with me as a mother, she should come back."
"It's a dangerous place out there. She's just a girl and doesn't know how dangerous it is. How can it be better than home? We, her relatives, will never hurt her, but the people outside may not."
After experiencing the incidents of refugees looting jewelry, Mrs. Chai became even more convinced that the world was a mess and nowhere was good except home.
*
Before Tuoba Ye ascended the throne, a fortune teller had told him that the fortune of the Western Rong nation depended on water and would be burned if it encountered fire.
When his two elder brothers were in power, the entire Western Rong army was thrown into chaos by a fire set by the Da Qi people. Now, the same fire burned his soldiers and caused them to flee.
"Why is there a fire?"
When Tuoba Ye learned the news, he was discussing with the imperial teacher in the camp how to encircle and annihilate the Jingnan Army on the Wu Yue battlefield and at the same time exhaust the already elderly Prince Jing and his wife to death.
Unexpectedly, the fire had already spread before the tactics were even discussed.
He killed more than a dozen soldiers guarding the camp in one breath. When he killed the last one, the soldier kowtowed repeatedly: "Your Majesty, please spare my life, spare my life, we didn't expect it."
"Those three Qi men were truly reckless. The girl had everything in her sleeves, and she happened to have three tinderboxes. They each took one, and after escaping the tent, they weren't afraid of swords or axes, setting fire to anything they caught."
"Tent after tent was burned, and the soldiers were panicking, not knowing whether to put out the fire first or capture them!"
"Nonsense!" Tuoba Ye's eyes were bloodshot, clearly furious. "There's an old saying in the Central Plains: 'A cornered dog will even jump over the wall.' You should have killed them then and there. If you didn't, you should have kept them under strict surveillance instead of letting them stay in the tent! Idiot!"
Tuoba Ye was extremely angry and held a large knife across the opponent's neck. "Where is Lu Shichu?"
"Lord Lu's tent was also burned. I don't know if he's safe, but when we went there, we couldn't find him!"
"Why doesn't he just die? Huh?" Tuoba Ye was furious. He raised his knife and chopped the man in front of him. The man's head fell to the ground, and blood gushed out from his neck like a fountain. The other soldiers watching were trembling with fear.
"I'm willing to cooperate with him because I'm interested in the Da Qi city defense map, and I also want him to bring Yang Yan or Prince Jing and his wife to me and kill them. He actually caused such a big mess for me. Who really thinks he is a prince of the current dynasty? Does he really think that his status as a prince means he can be treated as a guest of honor in my place?"
Tuoba Ye kicked over the painting table in the tent, and the guards around him knelt down and trembled.
"Kill him!"
"Pass the order! Be it Lu Shichu or the other three Qi people, as long as you see them, kill them all! Don't spare any!"
"yes!"
The sound of killing was deafening in the Xirong military camp. At the same time, Chu Yanhuai led his troops to attack.
A nearby soldier remarked, "Who could have imagined that this group of Xirong troops would be caught in the fire for the second time?"
Chu Yanhuai snorted coldly, "Last time, it was his two brothers who fell, but this time it was him. It's fate. His two brothers died at his hands, and that was also fate. Similarly, today I swear to take his head, and that's also fate!"
Chu Yanhuai said this and led his soldiers straight to Tuoba Ye's tent.
The sounds of burning and killing filled the air.
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