Chapter 60

Chapter 60: Du Yinsui had no choice but to combine her quilt with Jiang Wu’s…

After traveling for two days, under Tan Wang’s deliberate control, the group took a detour. In a straight line, they hadn’t covered two days’ distance, but it was farther from the town than where Zhao Qi and Cui Wu were "killed by wolves."

Tan Wang set out the evening before and returned with the sun high in the sky. He had successfully brought back his son and the old servant caring for the child.

Tired but in good spirits, Tan Wang returned to the ruined temple, only to find everything had gone wrong. In that short night, seven prisoners had escaped, including Jiang Wu!

Why didn’t they chase? They should have tried to pursue right away!

The remaining people in the temple weren’t as important as Jiang Wu alone, let alone the escaped former Crown Prince’s mentor Qin Chongli and former Marquis Xuan Ning Liu Yaozu. Even if they lost the luggage or the others, getting those back was most important!

Tan Wang was so angry his head throbbed.

Zheng Yi was loyal, but he wasn’t flexible at all!

Now wasn’t the time for blame. It had been nearly four hours since Jiang Wu and the Qin family disappeared. Tan Wang quickly told Zheng Yi to gather the group and started searching the area.

According to Zheng Yi, they had faced three attacks the night before: one group claiming to be rebels under the Tiger King, some refugees, and another group that hid, only started a fire without fighting, and then ran off.

The exiled group and those attackers left many confusing tracks around the ruined temple.

Tan Wang worked hard, searching around the temple in several directions, and finally found the tracks of a donkey cart heading southwest.

The tracks were fresh, looking like their own from yesterday. Tan Wang followed them for a while and realized they weren’t from their arrival but from a cart going back.

After three attacks the night before, the enemies might return. With only seven guards left, Tan Wang didn’t dare split the group. He took the whole exiled team to chase the cart tracks, hoping the escapees hadn’t gone far. If they had, he’d find a safe spot to leave the group and pursue with a few men.

Delayed by this, Tan Wang started the chase at noon.

Luckily, the donkey cart had several people on it, and the tracks from last night were fresh. Tan Wang could make out the hoof prints and cart marks.

Along the way, Tan Wang found a small girl’s shoe and a piece of reddish-brown cloth on a branch. The shoe was dirty but finely embroidered, likely from the Qin family’s little girl. The cloth matched the prison clothes exactly.

Sure he was on the right path, Tan Wang sped up.

On a hillside, he saw fresh donkey dung and looked down at the small village below.

The cart tracks led into the village. Tan Wang signaled the main group to camp at the entrance and took only Zheng Yi and Ma Datou into the village.

The village was empty. They passed several houses without seeing anyone, a common sight after entering Daizhou. Without crops or food, lifeless villages were abandoned.

Luckily, the village was small and poor. The main road had some stones, but other paths were dirt.

Tan Wang and his men lost the trail once but quickly found it again.

But…

Tan Wang saw shallow tracks only visible up close and felt a bad feeling.

Soon, that feeling came true.

In the courtyard where the tracks ended, they found Jiang Wu’s donkey cart with the donkey and cart locked in the main room. The bamboo tubes, pots, dried meat, flour, and bedding were all there, but the people they wanted were gone.

The main room held many chests full of belongings. Tan Wang knew at a glance it wasn’t one family’s stuff. When he searched the wardrobe, familiar jackets spilled out from the overstuffed closet.

In Li Village, Du Yinsui used a ginseng root to have Tan Wang trade for winter clothes for her… Tan Wang squatted down, looking through the clothes, his face grim.

The people eager to escape left behind the donkey cart. In this famine-stricken place where people turned to robbery and cannibalism, they threw away the hard-earned food they had gathered along the way. Now the weather was so cold that wearing a padded jacket felt freezing, yet they even left behind winter clothes and bedding. Had they found a better choice, or…?

The bad feeling grew stronger. With no donkey cart tracks to follow, Tan Wang led his men to search the whole village.

In one courtyard, a pit was full of broken bones, some with clear bite marks. Another courtyard had a stinking building that seemed to have held many people, living and doing everything inside; though empty now, it was filthy. Three other courtyards held heaps of corpses with skulls on poles like flags…

Tan Wang found no sign of Jiang Wu and his group.

It wasn’t until Ma Datou opened the side room in the courtyard with the most bodies that they found more.

The iron pot held a whole stew of meat, two big vats filled with what looked like roasted meat crumbs, and hanging from the beam…

"It’s Liu Yaozu," Ma Datou said with a sick look after checking the fresh salted body hanging at the front.

So, the third wave of attack, the burning branches, were indeed a trick to come back and save Liu Yaozu. How foolish of Jiang Wu, who after eighteen years still knew nothing of what his uncle had done.

With the donkey cart and Liu Yaozu here, where were Jiang Wu and the others?

Zheng Yi looked at the boiling pot, the vat of meat scraps, and the piles of bodies outside.

These people, who didn’t seem to have gone hungry at all, what did they eat…?

Tan Wang couldn’t accept this.

Then he pulled a child’s bones from the pot and dug out unburnt bits of prison clothes from the ashes under the stove.

A new clue came up. When they went back to the courtyard littered with bone and trash, they didn’t just skim the surface.

They found human skulls, scraped clean. Adult and child.

They sorted through a tangled heap of hair.

Black and gray-white.

Just by searching the top layer, they quickly counted enough.

But was it really them…?

If not them, who else set up this escape plan using so many people for them?

Tan Wang crouched in the yard, holding a clump of hair much like Qin Chongli’s beard, thinking for a long, long time.

No matter how Tan Wang thought, he never imagined there was no one else—from start to finish, it was only Du Yinsui.

Just like he never realized the people he desperately sought were less than a kilometer away.

A kilometer was the farthest Du Yinsui could catch a faint scent.

Rather than running far, she wanted to see if Tan Wang and his men would find the village and finally give up the chase.

But Du Yinsui hadn’t expected Tan Wang and his men to be so slow. It was over two hours past noon when they finally reached the village.

Still, it gave those who had been freed and scattered like startled birds enough time to flee farther.

The guards’ presence lingered in the village for a long while. Du Yinsui knew they had searched the whole place and found her setups.

The only question was whether Tan Wang would choose to believe it.

Du Yinsui hoped he was clever enough. Believing was one thing; choosing to accept was another.

She had laid everything out for him. If Tan Wang knew how to shift blame, he’d accept this "truth."

It was better to pin things on the refugees or the Daizhou officials—who were already failing and about to face the court—than to take the fall for "escapees."

The guards returned to the village entrance by evening. Instead of leaving, the main group entered together and settled in a house there. By the scent, they planned to stay overnight.

Du Yinsui wasn’t happy.

Their staying meant she couldn’t leave either. They had shelter with roofs, but she had to sleep in the cold wilds again, unable to light a fire for safety.

That night was freezing.

Luckily, Du Yinsui had packed enough bedding.

But Qin Chongli was old and needed a child to warm him.

The little one was only one, and she couldn’t let Chu Xiulan freeze alone.

Resigned, Du Yinsui combined her quilt with Jiang Wu’s. With better days almost here, she pretended not to smell the bittersweet scent beside her again, just to stay warm and not freeze before dawn.

Thankfully, the hardship lasted just one night.

The next morning, after they finished the last jerky with cold water, the scent from the village shifted.

Tan Wang led his team north.

Whether he truly believed it didn’t matter yet. At least for now, no one chased them.

To distract Tan Wang, they had abandoned the donkey cart, the food and herbs gathered on the road, and even the silver Tan Wang gave them in that cannibal village. But with Du Yinsui, starting from scratch was easy.

Her differences from ordinary folk were no secret to the others now. With freedom, Du Yinsui let herself go.

When food ran low, she stood on tiptoe under a tree, and Chu Xiulan dug up wild yams.

Without meat, they found a fish-filled creek, broke branches, and Qin Chongli fished hard.

When tired from walking, raiding refugees showed up, letting them rob back—turning a donkey cart into a carriage, as riches came fast in chaotic times.

To leave troubled Daizhou sooner, they headed straight West, taking the shortest route into Shuzhou, then southwest through Yuzhou to Yizhou near the Jin Kingdom.

The journey was fine except for getting into cities and past checkpoints. Not because of their identities, but Daizhou towns refused non-locals, even if they didn’t look like refugees.

A few times, spotting endless refugee lines at city gates from afar, they gave up. Those cities might not hold out long. Daizhou had refugees everywhere, and they even saw rebel forces a few times.

Without city access, shopping was impossible, but their carriage drew in many bandits along the way.

For Du Yinsui, picking the right bandit group to ambush and loot worked just as well in this new world.

Later, city entry didn’t matter. Jiang Wu’s travel passes only proved useful when entering Shuzhou.

Even the Shuzhou-Daizhou border was chaotic. Daizhou refugees spilled into nearby states, adding strain. With poor disaster relief, Daizhou was unsalvageable; Shuzhou had to fend for itself.

Near Shuzhou’s center, refugee troubles lessened, and they finally entered a city to restock.

Amid Daizhou’s chaos, with refugees everywhere and mountains stripped bare, Du Yinsui always found food in hidden corners.

Away from the exile group and without the guards’ promised supplies, they ate better than during exile. Enough food eased the travel fatigue. Everyone felt escape was better than exile. Even Jiang Wu, calmed by Du Yinsui’s daily coaxing, gradually settled his past pain.

In short, five of the six were doing well, except…

Entering Tingchuan City in Shuzhou’s center, Jiang Wu spotted a new anti-bandit notice at the gate. It vaguely mentioned vicious bandits in Daizhou without details or faces, just three uniquely ugly skulls…

Those were the skull flags Jiang Wu once drew.

Jiang Wu read the notice twice but found nothing about them or the bandits’ crimes.

Likely, as they’d guessed on the road, the Crown Prince being a woman was shock enough—if she’d been eaten during exile, it would be unspeakable.

This was for the best.

Jiang Wu thought so, and Qin Chongli agreed completely!

They entered the city and lodged at the inn.

Qin Chongli, holding back since the gate, finally touched his bare chin, tugged his headscarf, and said timidly, "Little Du girl, since the government put up that bandit notice, they must believe it, right? So can I… stop dressing as an old lady?"