Volume 1: This Heart's Inclination Chapter 27: Encounter on the Road

  Tai Shi Lan felt as if she was dreaming.

  Four sides are sealed and closed, vaguely like a thin layer of gauze, consciousness is also covered with a layer of gauze, as if awake but not awake, in the daze there is a familiar breath in the air, also fragrant but not fragrant, making people smell it, feeling clean.

  It seemed as if the wind had blown in, and the starlight and moonbeams were pouring in one line after another... She thought vaguely to herself, wasn't this a cow cart? Didn't a cow cart have four horizontal bars that allowed you to see the stars and moon directly? Why did she feel like she was in a relatively enclosed space now? Hmm... Was she still swaying back and forth, still on the cart?

  She wanted to open her eyes and see clearly, but somehow, her eyelids as well as every part of her body felt heavy and couldn't be lifted.

  Especially right arm.

  The numbness has gone, now it's a cool feeling, the pain is still there but has eased a lot, and there's also a gentle touch, as if a pair of nimble fingers are lightly stroking her injured area, then the fingers slowly move down...

  Tai Shi Lan suddenly opened his eyes!

  Dark car top, slightly swaying carriage, strong medicine smell and faint fragrance that can't be hidden in the car, wind slips in from the opened curtain, outside starlight takes advantage of the gap to enter... It's indeed the same as what I felt in my dream.

  But there was no one.

  The tip of the nose still retains a faint fragrance, recalling the moment I opened my eyes, it seemed that I had also felt the soft and large sleeves brushing against my cheek like clouds.

  Or is this still a dream?

  Or at the moment she opened her eyes, he magically rode the wind and disappeared, turning into a black light shadow that swept towards the floating clouds.

  Tai Shi slowly sat up and found that during his semi-unconscious period, he had been transferred from the ox cart to a relatively closed horse-drawn carriage and was wearing handcuffs. However, the wound on his elbow had been treated at some point, and it was done extremely well, with no idea what medicine was used, even the severe pain had subsided a lot, apparently there was no need to worry about leaving any disability.

  Tai Shi Lan Ke did not think that those eunuchs had good intentions.

  She touched her elbow, and the hidden dagger was still in the left sleeve of her clothes.

  She thought for a moment, then took out the Human Needle and slowly inserted it into the grass mat under her body, all the way to the carriage board.

  The blade was very thick, but it was still pierced through by human strength, only revealing a little tip, which was covered by the grass pad.

  Just as she had hidden everything, the car door creaked open and a bowl of rice was thrust in. The person delivering the food pushed the bowl heavily towards her face.

  She picked up the bowl and ate, the food was coarse and inferior, fortunately it wasn't spoiled. Tai Shi Lan ate until not a grain was left, finally even licking her lips, thinking that having a bowl of soup would be great.

  After eating, she lay down and thought about the movement of that sword that Rong Chu had seen on Lu Ming Mountain. As she thought, due to her injuries not being light and her body being tired, she gradually fell asleep.

  In a daze, she felt the wind blowing through the curtains, and her clothes brushing against her face. She vaguely thought that he had come again so soon, but suddenly felt something was off. The breath on her nose seemed... thicker than before. However, this time her consciousness lasted for a shorter period, and she soon knew nothing. When she woke up again, she found that her injuries had improved somewhat.

  The carriage rumbled forward, she dozed off and on, every day she could feel the approach of a mysterious person, except for the second time when her breath was a bit off, otherwise it seemed to have returned to normal, that clean and special fragrance, the man came and went like a dream, each time after he left, her wound healed a little. Apart from this, no one else showed up, even the food delivery person only revealed one hand, if she wanted to use the restroom, she would knock on the carriage door, there would be an old woman who would escort her to the restroom and keep watch, but not speak to her. If it were someone else, in such a long darkness and loneliness, they would have gone mad from guessing and suspicion, but she was getting whiter and plumper by the day, her eyes shining brighter like a wolf's in the dark.

  She is used to being alone and likes being alone.

  As a child, she wandered around with her mother, who sang on Tianqiao Bridge. Every day, after singing hoarse, she had no strength to talk to her daughter, and often stayed alone in the dark under the bridge piers. After the age of three, she was taken into the institute, where at that time, her three best friends were not yet admitted, and the rest were all old men and uncles, and she was still alone.

  This is her most familiar environment, and even injuries heal quickly.

  It's been many days in the blink of an eye, Ta Shi Lan estimated that they might have walked for ten days on the road. The warm wind creeping into the carriage was slightly hot, and the accent of the people outside the window had also changed.

  That night, she spoke with the guard for the first time.

  "Hey, young man," she called out to the person delivering food, saying in a low voice, "Help me out, I'll give you some silver, and you let me go!"

  The person delivering the meal hesitated for a moment, seemingly hesitant, then rough palms opened up, "Where's the silver?"

  She took off a pearl button from her collar and handed it over. She didn't like finery, the clothes she got from Cuī Shì Zhú were all very simple. This pearl button wasn't taken off because it wasn't an ornament.

  He grasped the pearl tightly in his hand, held it up to the sunlight to examine its color, and then let out a cold laugh before turning around and walking away.

  "Hey!" she called out to him, "You've taken my pearl..."

  "What's it to you?" The man sneered, thrusting a face full of pockmarks and scars in, "Your stuff should've been handed over to us from the start! If Master hadn't forbidden us from getting close, we'd have stripped you bare long ago! Think you can leave? Dream on!"

  "Despicable! Shameless! Degenerate! Abominable!" she cursed.

  "I'm despicable, so what?" The man let out a strange, mocking laugh as he gazed at her staring fixedly at the key on his waist, her eyes filled with resentment and anger. He became even more pleased with himself, and with a flourish, he removed the key from his waist and dangled it in front of her. "Look, the key to unlock your handcuffs is right here with me. What are you going to do? Not satisfied? Then come and take it! Come on!"

  The key was dangling from the coarse fingers, which had just been stained with precious pearl powder. She stared at those fingers, her eyes turned red, and suddenly she rushed out!

  "Goodness gracious!" The guard didn't expect her to have such a violent temper, and was startled into taking a step back, causing the keys to clatter to the ground.

  With a thud, she also fell to the sandy ground, her head and face covered in dust, her body thrown backward against the horse's leg. The startled horse shifted its hooves, causing the carriage to rock violently, and with a loud creak, it pinned down the key.

  "Get out of the way, you madwoman!" The coachman, still shaken, didn't dare to strike her and instead hastily drove the carriage away, moving the wheels to find the key, but it had already been flattened.

  "It's okay, I still have a spare..." The man wiped his sweat and muttered to himself, kicking the useless key into the roadside grass. His foot was still waving in front of her, "Want the key? Ha! It's over there, you have the guts to go pick it up! You have the guts to pick it up and unlock your lock! Go on! Why aren't you going?! Haha!" He laughed loudly as he pushed her back into the car.

  She fell silent, wiping her face, glanced at the grass thicket, and her eyes were no longer red, nor was there any sorrow or anger on her face, as calm as a mountain.

  That night, she had diarrhea and frequently went to the roadside bushes to solve it. The mother-in-law who was watching her was initially still vigilant, but when she was called up for the sixth time, she fell asleep with a yawn while standing.

  ……

  That night, the carriage finally drove into a courtyard. Since they started their journey, the eunuchs had been staying in inns, and Tai Shi Lan was always locked inside the carriage, heavily guarded by local officials and soldiers. This time, the carriage drove directly into the inn, and Tai Shi Lan sat inside, hearing someone seemingly coming out to greet them. A man's voice was rough and tense, "Who are you! You can't just barge in!"

  "...I said who had such a big show, it turned out to be the adults of the inner five guards in the palace, haha..."

  The guard handed over his waist card, and the rough voice responded after a while, with tension gone, and a hint of flattery, "So it's Constable Chang from the Western Bureau, renowned as one of the top ten masters in the Western Bureau! I've long admired you!"

  Tai Shi Lan quietly remembered this name.

  "Alright, alright." The eunuch's mood was lifted, and he let out a high-pitched chuckle. The two men's conversation gradually grew softer, and it became hard to make out what they were saying. "...Our family has received an imperial decree to escort a serious offender...I am too...it would be better if we joined forces...this matter is of great importance...isn't this difficult?...then I'll have to rely on your help, eunuch...my prisoner is being sent for burial, what about yours?...I don't know what crime mine committed, supposedly it's not allowed to ask, it's no trivial matter..." The voices grew fainter and fainter, and the two men probably walked into the house.

  After a while, Tai Shi Lan heard the sound of horse hooves and opened the curtain to take a look. Another carriage was approaching and stopped beside hers.

  That carriage was not an ordinary thick wooden carriage, but a mixed iron one, with no gaps in the air, only a palm-sized window on top, and four sides were guarded by iron armor, guarding much more strictly than her.

  She glanced at the horse carriage again, and then lay down. Her left hand tightly grasped a key, which was the sixth time she "pulled her stomach" and picked up from the grass to restore the lock chain key.

  With his right hand, he slowly pulled out the human spear from under the grass mat.

  At this moment, midnight.

  Suddenly a loud explosion shook the sky and earth!