Withered Flowers
"—So, you fell into darkness at that moment, and when you woke up again, it was now?"
Jiang Nian put the pile of boxes back on the ground, dusted off her hands, and looked at the soldier who was about to take her to the wishing tree, but was knocked unconscious on the way to change shifts and was now found at the bottom of the box.
The soldier nodded and scratched his head in confusion. "Yeah, I didn't expect that."
The wind was getting stronger and stronger, and it seemed as if it would not stop until it had messed up the furnishings in the venue. Jiang Nian raised his hand to block the cold wind mixed with leaves and took a few steps towards Shichan Hall.
She had something she wanted to ask the soldiers, but this place was obviously not a good place.
There are dangers lurking everywhere. Instead of standing here and playing word games with the soldiers, it would be better to invite him into Shichan Hall to see if there are any new clues.
Although the soldier's position is still unclear, on the surface, she is just a maid who has lost her lover, and he is the one patrolling and guarding the grounds.
Now, using the excuse of going in for patrol or looking for a lady would not arouse too much suspicion.
Jiang Nian lowered his eyes to sort out the current situation, then raised his head and pretended to be helpless to the soldiers.
"I'm very worried that the young lady has met with misfortune in Shichan Hall... Could you please help me find her whereabouts?"
The soldier had no doubts and agreed readily.
"Okay, I also want to see where the other colleagues have gone."
The two reached an agreement, and Jiang Nian no longer hesitated. He reached out and pushed open the wooden door behind him.
—
The bloody smell in Shichan Hall was extremely strong. The carefully arranged incense mat was left with only the decorations that had been pushed over in a panic. A long cloth was barely hanging in a light-colored wooden basket, and the end of the white cloth was stained with a blood-red mark.
The crimson sunlight shone through the fragile window paper, casting long shadows on the dirty wooden floor.
The silhouette of the carved shadows in the distance was gilded by the setting sun. The dull, old, and unpleasant smell in the air covered up all the original flowers and incense. The flowers placed in other places were now only left with withered branches.
Jiang Nian quickly scanned all the furnishings in the hall, and her eyes finally fell on the place where the prefect girl had come to find her.
On the wooden floor, an object that looked like a decoration fell.
The soldier was surprised by what happened in Shichan Hall. He walked around with his guarding weapons and returned to Jiang Nian with a frown.
"Miss... do you know what happened here?"
"It doesn't have to happen in the hall. I just want to see the 'cause' of this incident from other people's perspective."
"..." Jiang Nian silently hid the object he had picked up in his sleeve, turned around and smiled at the soldier, "It just so happens that I also want to know the 'process and results' from your perspective. Why don't we exchange information?"
With no better channel for exchanging information, the soldier, completely unaware of what was happening around him, scratched his head again, thought about it, and found nothing wrong, so he nodded and agreed.
"I just promised to take you to the wishing tree, but on the way back, we encountered an unknown attack."
"I had already returned to the agreed-upon shift change location, but I didn't see the person who came to take over the shift on time, so I had to stand there and wait."
Jiang Nian caught the words in his reply and pondered for a moment.
"You mean you haven't seen your replacement?"
Did Yan and the others start to act at that time? No, they would send a predetermined signal before taking action.
Don't act rashly.
The soldier was confused and nodded again. After a while, he asked, "Does the girl have any ideas?"
Jiang Nian thought for a moment, then made up his mind.
She looked up and smiled at the soldier who was much taller than her. After deliberately giving him an appearance of being very weak and in need of help, she slowly began to talk to him.
"Before coming to Shichan Hall, I met some other people, and 'they' said they could take me to the wishing tree."
"Since you didn't show up after waiting for a long time, I had no choice but to follow 'them'."
Jiang Nian paused for a moment, observing the soldier's expression as he continued:
"As luck would have it, before 'they' and I were halfway there, we smelled something 'unpleasant' at the gate of Shichan Hall. So they asked me to wait in this corridor for a while while 'they' went to check on the situation and come back."
"But... as you can see, I waited in that corridor for a long time, but no one came back. Then I thought it was not a good idea to just wait, so I had to leave on my own."
Before entering Shichan Hall, Jiang Nian explained the wooden sign.
Because he heard movement in the wooden box, he was worried that some small animal had run in and was trapped inside, so he threw a wooden sign in to test it out, so that he could use the sound of the wooden sign falling to the ground to determine whether there was an animal trapped inside.
Jiang Nian made up this story on the spur of the moment, just to fool the man. He didn't expect that this naive soldier actually believed it.
......I really don’t know how he managed to become a soldier under Meng Yao.
Seeing Jiang Nian staring at him, the soldier looked away a little embarrassedly. After a moment, as Jiang Nian wished, he asked, "When you say 'they', are you referring to other soldiers?"
Jiang Nian curled his eyes and shook his head.
"No, 'they' told me that 'they' are the group of people who serve the Fifth Prince."
"As for the other soldiers, I haven't seen them either..."
Shichan Hall was silent for a moment. Jiang Nian blinked and pretended to be confused.
"You're not talking, so could it be that those people aren't the ones around the Fifth Prince?"
The soldier was lost in thought because of her words. Seeing Jiang Nian looked a little flustered, he comforted her:
"No, the Fifth Prince does have a group of people around him, but they are different from us 'outsiders'. They can be called his confidants."
"However, ever since I was assigned to the Fifth Prince's staff, I've been doing this kind of work, guarding the surrounding area to prevent chaos. I don't know who those people are."
"So when you suddenly mentioned them, I was a little taken aback."
The soldier's expression did not seem to be a pretense, and he really had no idea about what was happening with Meng Yao and his group.
Jiang Nian retracted his gaze and asked casually, "So, you don't know about the colleagues who came on this mission with you?"
"Ah? You're quite perceptive, girl. That's indeed the case."
The soldier did not take too much precautions against Jiang Nian's roundabout questions and admitted them directly.
"Because the Fifth Prince is a serious person, the people he sends to guard him are different every time. Sometimes when he's in a bad mood, he'll even use us as a scapegoat."
"Surgery?"
"Well, they fire people at any time. Maybe they're afraid that secrets will be leaked."
Seeing Jiang Nian's thoughtful look, the soldier stopped talking and asked:
"Miss, are you trying to find out something by asking these questions?"
"Um."
There was a bloody smell all around Shichan Hall, but there was no trace of blood when looking around. This strange smell seemed to appear out of thin air and float in the air.
Unable to find the source of the smell, Jiang Nian instinctively felt that he could not stay here for long, so he gestured to the soldiers:
"I was planning to get information about other people from you so I could ask about my young lady."
"But after listening to what you said, I haven't found any useful clues."
Seeing her pointing at the main door they came in through, the soldier looked around, but when he found no clues to analyze, he followed Jiang Nian out of Shichan Hall.
—
When saying goodbye to the soldiers, the sky was still holding the setting sun. Jiang Nian clutched the hair accessories in her hand and walked in the direction she had agreed with Ai.
The invaders came suddenly, and Yan and his team's plans must have been interrupted.
And those soldiers whose whereabouts are unknown are likely to be related to the invaders.
From the soldiers' perspective, the outbreak just now lasted only a few minutes.
But she and Ai had just been behind Shichan Hall, and the houses inside the wall were not far away. If there was any quarrel or fight, even if she didn't notice it, Ai, who was highly concentrated, would be able to detect it.
But at that time, they did not realize that something unexpected had happened around Shichan Hall.
Could an invader really be able to take away those soldiers with self-defense weapons without anyone noticing?
No matter how they were transformed through human experiments, it was impossible for them to increase their combat power so much in just one month.
Jiang Nian lowered his head in thought as he walked along the path in the garden towards the place where he had just started.
Also, now that this emergency has happened, why is there no information from Yan?
——Could it be that those who took the soldiers away have higher martial arts scores than Ai and Yan?
Apart from the three that we can clearly see at present, there is actually a fourth party lurking deep in this scene?
A sudden flash of thought made Jiang Nian break out in a cold sweat. The lonely wind was getting louder and louder, and the sky was getting darker and darker. Needless to say, the day was almost coming to an end.
I wonder where the other nobles went except for the young girl who was the prefect.
I just came out of Shichan Hall and was walking back, but I didn’t meet anyone along the way.
It seemed that in this huge Huachao venue, there were only her, Ai, and Meng Yao and a few others.
......
It was as if it was a performance stage specially reserved for these "important people".
A series of memories flashed through Jiang Nian's mind, and then the picture froze on the long-haired man he saw in front of the pond with dead fish when he and Ai were working together.
His appearance was exactly the same as the inner worshiper seen in Pingzhou at that time.
Pingzhou and Cangjun are extremely far away.
For an ordinary person, it would be difficult to get here in such a short time, right?
Recalling how the man opened the space with his bare hands and then disappeared before his eyes, Jiang Nian found it hard to believe that there were such strange and bizarre things in the world.
It was strange that I traveled through time after a car accident and found that there were former time travelers like Shou Zan here.
If you discover something beyond your own knowledge, wouldn’t it become a fantasy novel?
Jiang Nian instinctively no longer wanted to meet that strange person.
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