Chapter 16 A Hero Saves a Beauty His ears were alarmingly red in the moonlight...

still no one responded.

Jiang Yanyi was quick to sense something was wrong.

This place was in a concave corner, and the soldiers in the sentry tower could not see this side.

She was worried about Qiu Kui, but she also knew that as a woman, if she really encountered anything, she would have no power to fight back at all. She shouted without hesitation: "Help - ah -"

A dark shadow suddenly emerged from the bushes. As soon as Jiang Yanyi shouted "Help", his mouth was covered and he was pushed to the ground.

All the chestnuts in the basket spilled out, and the lantern fell to the ground. The candle inside quickly ignited the paper cover.

Jiang Yanyi's back was pressed by gravel on the ground. She screamed in pain but could only make a grunting sound.

The man covered her mouth and nose tightly, and his body exuded a sour smell of not taking a bath for years. Jiang Yanyi scratched and pinched the man, her nails digging deeply into the flesh on the back of his hand.

The man felt pain and hit Jiang Yanyi's abdomen hard with his knee.

Jiang Yanyi immediately curled up in pain, and her eyes went black.

"Bitch, you've fallen into my hands!"

The man spat, and the voice sounded somewhat familiar.

Jiang Yanyi raised her eyes with difficulty, and with the help of the light from the lantern, she could barely see the man's face full of pits and black spots.

It turned out to be the pockmarked face who had teased her the day he first came to Huotouying and had a bowl of porridge splashed on him by her!

The pockmarked face gently touched Jiang Yanyi's face with the back of his hand, and when he smiled, he showed a mouthful of yellow teeth, with naked desire in his eyes: "This little girl is so pretty..."

Jiang Yanyi almost vomited, and she didn't know where she got the strength from. When the pockmarked face didn't cover her mouth so tightly, she turned her head and bit the pockmarked hand with all her strength, almost tearing off a piece of flesh.

The pockmarked face was distorted with pain, but he didn't dare to scream, so he could only bite his back teeth and endure it.

"Bitch--"

He was in pain and slapped Jiang Yanyi hard.

Jiang Yanyi's ears were buzzing from the slap, and he finally opened his mouth, but he didn't care about that, and shouted: "Help--"

This miserable sound was heard far away in the night.

Feng Shuo and several guards were walking to a bend near the concave corner, and Chi Qing rode with him.

"Why is there no sentry at this corner?" Feng Shuo had been marching and fighting for many years, and he could tell at a glance that the concave corner was a blind spot for both sides.

Chi Qing said, "The sentry towers were set up originally."

He took a look at the nearby terrain and analyzed, "The sentry tower on this side of the bend is less than a hundred feet away from the next sentry tower. Setting up another sentry tower in the middle is just to keep an eye on the concave corner, so it's not worth planning."

Unexpectedly, as soon as he finished speaking, a woman's miserable cry for help came from the front.

Without waiting for the people near the sentry tower to react, Feng Shuo frowned and rode over first, and his followers followed closely.

Chi Qing slapped himself on the forehead and hurriedly urged his horse to follow.

When the group arrived at the section of the road at the concave corner, they looked around with torches, but there was no one at all. The only place where people could hide was a patch of grass near the wooden fence.

The attendants surrounded the grass in a fan shape and searched through it with knives.

Feng Shuo found that there seemed to be black ash left after something was burned in an open space. He rode closer and keenly found a few sugar-roasted chestnuts that were trampled into the mud.

His eyes suddenly became cold, and he drew the sword at his waist and pushed aside the taller grass on the side. Sure enough, he found more sugar-roasted chestnuts and a bamboo basket in the grass.

"Master, there is a woman here!" The attendant

who was searching the grass shouted.

Feng Shuo urged his horse to go over and found that the person lying in the grass was the cook he had seen in Huotouying before.

The cook is here, so the cook should be here too.

Feng Shuo glanced at Qiu Kui lying in the grass. Blood was oozing from her forehead, and there was blood on the palm-sized stone beside her. It was obvious that she had been hit on the head with a stone.

"Is she still alive?" Feng Shuo asked.

The attendant sniffed Qiu Kui's breath and replied, "She's still breathing."

The night covered the traces of the grass being messed up. Feng Shuo was on horseback, and his vision was wider than that of the guards. With the light of the torch, he suddenly found that something seemed to have been dragged behind the grass.

He turned over and dismounted, took the torch handed over by the attendant, pushed aside the grass and walked all the way to the wooden fence that was more than ten feet high.

Sure enough, a large hole was found under the wooden fence.

And the grass outside the fence seemed to have dragging marks.

The henchmen who followed were terrified. The weeds covered the place, so from outside they couldn't see that there was a big hole that two people could get out of at the same time.

Feng Shuo looked grim. He kicked the wooden fence and flipped over the fence.

He threw away the torch and searched along the traces of the weeds that were pressed down in the moonlight. His steps were as light as a big cat and he made no sound.

Behind the bushes was the poplar forest. Feng Shuo followed the pressure marks for a while and found that the pressure marks on the ground suddenly disappeared.

He looked around and fixed his eyes on a tall poplar tree not far away.

The pockmarked man was hiding behind the tree. He tried to control the sound of his heavy breathing and stared at the back vigilantly with a dagger in his hand.

After Jiang Yanyi shouted for help, he was knocked unconscious by his knife.

He was ready to fight to the death. If he was caught, he could just take Jiang Yanyi as a hostage.

But when he looked back again, he found that the young man who had just come to him was gone.

Pockmarked Face felt something was wrong. He raised the dagger in his hand high and carefully stuck half of his head out from behind the tree.

A black shadow suddenly fell from the tree. Feng Shuo stepped on the top of Pockmarked Face's head. When he landed, he spun around and kicked Pockmarked Face in the chest with his other foot. Pockmarked Face flew backwards and hit a poplar tree. He spat out a mouthful of blood and fainted.

Half of his life was almost gone.

Feng Shuo then glanced at Jiang Yanyi who had fainted under the tree, and his breathing stopped slightly.

She lowered her head, and the scattered hair on her temples

revealed a kind of charm in her sad beauty. There was not much blood on her lips, which made people feel pity for her but also inexplicably want to ravage her. The five bright fingerprints on her left face were particularly shocking against her pale skin.

Two of the ties of her clothes were torn off, revealing her delicate collarbone and half of her round shoulders. The crabapple-colored vest was faintly visible under the outer shirt, wrapped around her chest, and it was round and bulging. Although the embroidery was not clear, it made people imagine more.

The thin red lace extended all the way to her snow-white neck, and was tied into a fragile knot behind her black hair.

The moonlight shone through the gaps in the forest, and her porcelain-like skin seemed to glow.

A crow's cry in the forest startled Feng Shuo back to his senses. He quickly retracted his gaze, took off his cloak, turned his face to wrap it around Jiang Yanyi, and hesitated before holding her up.

Her ears were alarmingly red in the moonlight.

When a group of followers came over, they saw their master holding someone in his arms, wrapped tightly in a cloak, and walking out in big strides, leaving only one sentence: "Take the person inside back to the barracks!"

The followers looked at each other in bewilderment. For so many years, there was not even a female bird in the master's house. This was the first time they saw their master holding someone like this.

It was already midnight, and there was no light in the barracks. Only the sentry towers and the braziers on the three-legged wooden frames were still burning with torches.

The women in Hu Yanglin's barracks were worried when they saw that Jiang Yanyi and Qiu Kui had not returned.

"Master Jiang and Qiu Kui have not returned at this time. Did something happen?" a woman whispered.

Someone immediately answered, "Why don't we tell Captain Guo?"

Captain Guo was the small leader who was now in charge of the barracks here.

Chunxiang lay on the bed, looking at the empty bed of Jiang Yanyi and Qiu Kui opposite, listening to the women talking about these things in low voices, her heart beating like a drum.

In the evening, she met Liu Cheng in Hu Yanglin, and Liu Cheng's words echoed in her ears again.

She didn't know Liu Cheng's plan, but Jiang Yanyi hadn't come back yet, so Liu Cheng must have done something.

Afraid that the barracks would find out that someone was missing and now they were looking for him to ruin Liu Cheng's plan, Chunxiang immediately acted impatient and shouted at the two people who had just spoken: "What are you making so much noise for? Can't you let me sleep?"

She has always been the most domineering among women. If she was annoyed, women would never touch her again.

But tonight, the two women who were talking were not stopped by Chunxiang. Instead, they muttered in low voices: "I don't know what she is so proud of all the time. Master Jiang is a cook on the stove and he is not as ostentatious as her."

"She thinks it's great to marry a general. She doesn't think about her own status. How can a slut in the barracks expect to be someone's concubine in the future?"

"She drank so many medicines and can't have children anymore. What's the point of marrying her?"

Every word hit Chunxiang's sore spot.

Chunxiang was so furious that she got up from the bed, walked over, grabbed the hair of the woman closest to her, and started slapping her: "You bastard, you acted one way when I was good to you before, and now that the new bitch is in power, you act the same way again!"

The fight broke out, and the women who didn't want to get involved and pretended to be asleep had to stand up to separate them.

Chunxiang was held back by several women but she didn't stop. She cursed: "What do you think that Jiang is? She hasn't come back yet, and she might be in bed with that wild man!"

"If you're not afraid of her revenge in the future, and you want to ruin her by reporting tonight that she didn't come back to the barracks, go ahead and try!"

After saying that, she stormed back to her bed.

The women in the barracks had never had much contact with Jiang Yanyi. After being frightened by Chunxiang, they thought it was better to have less trouble and went to bed.

When they went to Huotouying the next day and asked about it, Chef Li, they knew that Jiang Yanyi had not come to the stove today, and they felt something was wrong.

Chunxiang had already dragged Liu Cheng to a secluded place and secretly asked him about what happened last night.

"Have you already given that little bitch..." Chunxiang secretly made a gesture of wiping her neck.

Liu Cheng looked around with a vigilant look, but he still had a smile on his face, seemingly the same as usual: "What are you talking about? I stayed in the barracks with Zhao Si and the others last night."

Chunxiang felt that Liu Cheng didn't tell her the truth. She wanted to ask something else, but Liu Cheng said, "Don't worry, no matter whether she is dead or alive, no one will find out about us."

When Chunxiang heard this, she immediately understood that Liu Cheng probably took action last night.

She couldn't help but panic. She didn't care about Jiang Yanyi's life or death, but this was a life after all. If she was suspected, her own attempt to take credit would also be found out, and she would never be able to clear herself even if she jumped into the Yellow River.

"No, what if..." Chunxiang just started to speak, but was interrupted by Liu Cheng.

"Okay, I've been out for so long, I have to go back, otherwise it will arouse suspicion." Liu Cheng said and left first.

Chunxiang stamped her feet in anger, feeling panicked and sad. It was obvious that Liu Cheng didn't care about her safety.

There was a sudden noise outside, someone was calling Chunxiang's name, so she had to put away her thoughts and go outside.

"They keep shouting, are they calling my soul?"

For some reason, her right eyelid has been twitching since this morning, and she is particularly restless.

When she got outside the barracks, Chunxiang's face changed suddenly.

The one who came was the flag officer who had taken her to receive the award before.

The flag officer was born with a fierce look, and the scar on his face became more ferocious when he looked at Chunxiang. He waved to the soldiers behind him and shouted, "Take this bastard who pretended to be a cook in the fire camp and received the reward from the general!"