Fish Meat – Chapter 124
by Little PandaThe First Year of Zhao Wu
The Path of Ten Thousand Directions (3)
“Wenjun?”
Zhen Wenjun’s facial features twitched as she laughed madly and painfully, showing no reaction no matter how Wei Tingxu called her.
Wei Tingxu held onto her hand firmly, refusing to let go, as Zhen Wenjun pushed her back, causing her to fall out of the carriage. Wei Tingxu lost her balance and tumbled down, but fortunately, the southern climate is humid and rainy, with lush vegetation. She landed on thick wild grass, and thanks to Zhen Wenjun’s supervision of her regular medication and massages, she wasn’t injured and quickly stood up.
Not only those inside the carriage, but all the attendants were laughing. Over a thousand eerie laughs echoed over the Wild Fox Ridge, surrounding Wei Tingxu.
She realized she was the only one not laughing.
Zhen Wenjun jumped out of the carriage and grabbed Wei Tingxu by the neck.
Wei Tingxu immediately leaned back, using the motion to free herself from Zhen Wenjun’s grip, and took the opportunity to roll aside. She knew Zhen Wenjun was much stronger and being caught would be a dead end.
“Wenjun, clear your mind.” Wei Tingxu’s waist ached from the evasive action, understanding she probably couldn’t dodge another attack from Zhen Wenjun.
“Hee hee hee…” Zhen Wenjun kept laughing, sweat covering her head, her eyes unfocused.
Wei Tingxu understood she couldn’t wake her up.
Ah Liao, Xiaohua, and others, along with thousands of attendants, shrugged and bowed their heads, either crying or laughing indistinctly, slowly approaching and encircling Wei Tingxu. She supported her back, sensing something above her head.
Looking up, Wei Tingxu saw a ghostly woman hanging upside down from a tree branch, her long black hair swaying in front of her eyes, revealing a bluish face. Blood-red eyes as large as copper bells reflected Wei Tingxu’s image.
A bird screeched across the sky, and Zhen Wenjun opened her eyes, drenched in cold sweat.
She was still in the Wild Fox Ridge, not knowing when she had fallen to the ground, covered in mud and water.
Amidst the chaos of memories, there were many strange sounds.
Zhen Wenjun sat up, inspecting herself. Apart from the mud, she had no visible injuries, but her facial muscles were incredibly sore. What had happened? It didn’t seem like she had fought and injured her face.
While rubbing her face, she stood up. The carriage and Ah Liao’s green shaft were still there, but the atmosphere seemed off.
Realizing something was wrong, Zhen Wenjun immediately opened all the carriage curtains, finding them empty. Where had Wei Tingxu gone? Ah Liao and all her maidens were nowhere to be seen.
Wei Tingxu couldn’t have left without a sound while she was unconscious. What had happened?
Zhen Wenjun’s mind felt stuffed with a large ball of water-soaked cotton, giving her a headache whenever she tried to think. She rushed through all the carriages, lifting the curtains one by one, but saw no sign of Wei Tingxu or the others.
Calling out Wei Tingxu’s name, she ran and shouted, starting to pant heavily, with nausea and headache attacking simultaneously.
This feeling was unusual; she was poisoned.
The “hee hee hee” laughter of the fallen attendants brought back some of Zhen Wenjun’s memories. She recalled that after entering the Wild Fox Ridge, the convoy kept circling in the same spot. The innkeeper had said there were ghosts in the forest, and it felt like a “ghost hitting a wall” (an idiom meaning being stuck in a loop). What happened next?
…Then she encountered something extremely terrifying.
Everyone except her was laughing inexplicably! Wei Tingxu, Ah Liao, and Xiaohua all came to kill her. Naturally, she couldn’t fight back and kept running. While running, she was suddenly grabbed by a ghost hand emerging from the ground and slammed face-first into the ground, a ghost head right before her eyes, scaring her into unconsciousness.
Could it be true, as the innkeeper said, that the Wild Fox Ridge harbored vengeful spirits unable to reach the Country of Flowing Fire?
No, it didn’t make sense. How could a mere ghost face scare her into fainting? She never believed in ghosts and gods. If a ghost face appeared before her, she would certainly grasp it with one hand, brush aside the hair, and see who was behind the trick.
“It’s mushrooms.”
Zhen Wenjun turned to see Xiaohua struggling to stand, rubbing her face as well.
“We were all poisoned by mushrooms,” Xiaohua realized her face muscles were extremely sore, and there were dried tears under her eyes, uncertain if they were tears of laughter.
“Mushrooms? What mushrooms?” Zhen Wenjun had no memory of eating mushrooms.
“Last night, I had the innkeeper prepare food for everyone. She claimed the inn’s food reserves were insufficient, so she used wild vegetables and mushrooms. Zhong Ji and I tested for poison with silver needles and found nothing unusual. Looking back, we were careless. Some poisons don’t threaten life but cause hallucinations, and these toxins take time to manifest, making them hard to detect,” Xiaohua snorted. “That inn is a black shop! The innkeeper must have done this often, mastering the precise dose of poison.”
Zhen Wenjun finally remembered that she had been woken up by hunger early in the morning and went to the kitchen to find food. There was nothing in the kitchen, not even a piece of steamed bread. Thinking that people in this area might not eat steamed bread, she saw a bit of soup at the bottom of a pot and scraped it out to eat. The two sips of soup weren’t filling, so she went to the convoy’s camp, found some reserve dry food, and gnawed on five hard steamed buns, filling herself about seventy to eighty percent. If not for saving food, she could have eaten three more.
No, now wasn’t the time to think about steamed buns.
When she scraped the pot in the kitchen, the sun hadn’t risen. Her hunger-fogged mind only remembered eating porridge, not what kind. If she hadn’t been feverish and had a stomachache, she might have been more alert and identified the oddity of her food.
“Before departure, the innkeeper earnestly warned us about ghosts in the Wild Fox Ridge, planting a vivid, traceable fear in our hearts. Once the toxins acted, they would trigger hallucinations corresponding to ‘ghosts,'” Zhen Wenjun surveyed her surroundings. “The roads in the Wild Fox Ridge were likely altered long ago, combined with the thick fog, making it easy to get lost, like encountering ‘ghosts hitting a wall.’ Indeed, a seasoned robber.”
“They’re not robbers,” Xiaohua tapped the goods on the carriage. “I glanced at them; nothing’s missing, and the attendants are unharmed. Only the maidens and Ah Liao are gone. Why…”
“Could they be human traffickers? Specializing in selling women?” Zhen Wenjun was quick to react.
“If they were human traffickers, why leave us behind?” Xiaohua questioned back.
A voice from afar interrupted their conversation: “Because you look burly and strong, not fetching a good price.”
Zhen Wenjun and Xiaohua saw someone emerging from the dense fog. Recognizing her, Zhen Wenjun was overjoyed.
“Ah Xi?” Seeing Ah Xi appear, Zhen Wenjun exclaimed, “I knew you’d come!”
Li Yanyi had given Zhen Wenjun some information about the Road of Ten Thousand Directions, including maps, but after staring at the scrawls for several nights, she couldn’t make out north, south, east, or west, let alone the location of the Country of Flowing Fire. What Li Yanyi provided was unreliable; the real hope lay with the skilled individuals among the common folk.
Ah Xi was her greatest hope. Her words revealed her discontent with her lineage, her father, and the Road of Ten Thousand Directions. She longed for the Road of Ten Thousand Directions and the Country of Flowing Fire but was still wrestling with herself. Once she could convince herself, she would come.
“I didn’t want to come either, but you saved my life in Beijiang. The Zhong family isn’t ungrateful. With your understanding of the Road of Ten Thousand Directions, rushing like this, you’d need countless lives. Alas, call it my bad luck.” Already resigned, facing her desires, Ah Xi came.
Shaking Zuo Kunda awake, he continued laughing uncontrollably. Zhen Wenjun’s shaking and splashing of water eventually brought him back to some awareness.
Zhen Wenjun instructed him to guard the goods and stay put until her return.
“That shop is a mobile black shop at the Road of Ten Thousand Directions entrance, specializing in kidnapping Central Plains women and selling them to Guxi Kingdom.”
Ah Xi initially intended to chat slowly, but Zhen Wenjun, worried about Wei Tingxu’s safety, quickly gathered horses and asked Ah Xi to lead the way as they talked while moving.
“Specializing in kidnapping Central Plains women?” Zhen Wenjun was puzzled.
“This traces back to Guxi Kingdom’s history.” As a half-Guxi native, Ah Xi had never returned to the land she despised since her awakening. Yet, the blood within her stirred, and through side inquiries and reading ancient texts, Ah Xi had come to understand this nation thoroughly. “Guxi Kingdom traditionally favors men over women. Many female infants are killed or abandoned at birth. Their ancestral belief is that men continue the family line, and women are merely tools for reproduction. Everyone knows it: spending money and effort to raise a daughter only to marry her away for another family to bear children is a loss. No one wants to make a losing deal. Under this belief, the status of women declined, and fewer daughters were raised, reducing the female population. Guxi men reaching marriageable age struggle to find partners. Women in Guxi have become expensive commodities, accessible only to the wealthy or nobility, while many poor men never encounter women in their lifetime. Even so, they haven’t considered elevating women’s status. Unlike Da Yu, they remain a secluded southern nation, indifferent to outside changes, acting solely on brute strength. The notion of women as mere commodities persists. When my mother and father united, it violated Guxi’s greatest taboo. Guxi men believed a Central Plains man had stolen their property, so they violently reclaimed it. Afterward, they deemed my mother defiled by an outsider and sacrificed her to the heavens. This barbaric nation hasn’t changed. With the limited number of women unable to satisfy their desires, they began coveting foreign women. Beautiful and docile Central Plains women are favored by Guxi nobility.”
“The innkeeper kidnapped the maidens to sell them to Guxi nobles?” Xiaohua now understood why she, Zhen Wenjun, and the attendants were left behind. The attendants were all men. She and Zhen Wenjun had Hu characteristics, not resembling Central Plains women, likely fetching a low price in Guxi, thus dismissed by traffickers.
“Yes. Three years ago, a young Central Plains woman could sell for a thousand gold in Guxi. Ordinary Guxi people can’t even afford their own women, let alone Central Plains women. They face a solitary life. Only nobles can afford to buy Central Plains women,” Ah Xi explained, looking at Zhen Wenjun. “The prettier the Central Plains woman, the more sought after, and the higher the price.”
“They… they buy women to do what?” Zhen Wenjun’s heart sank as her thoughts spiraled, unable to imagine the vilest scenarios involving her lady.
“Naturally, they become breeding slaves,” Ah Xi replied.
Hearing those words filled Zhen Wenjun with rage, nearly bursting her chest. She whipped the horse forward angrily. Xiaohua, too, was terrified, unable to imagine such vile things happening to her lady… Shaking her head vigorously, Xiaohua sped up to follow.
“Hey, why are you two running so fast? Without my guidance, do you know where to go?” Ah Xi, unfamiliar with horseback riding, dared not gallop recklessly, fearing she might fall.
Zhen Wenjun had already noticed the tracks on the ground. The constant rain had softened the soil, leaving clear marks. Even without Ah Xi, she could track the traffickers.
The more she thought, the more anxious she became. She knew the Road of Ten Thousand Directions was dangerous; why did she let Wei Tingxu come? She should have been more forceful, sending Wei Tingxu back no matter what she said. Even if Wei Tingxu got angry and ignored her for two months, so what? It was better than facing danger now.
Wei Tingxu had always operated within Da Yu, where Wei family influence provided cover. Outside Da Yu, with limited resources, she could easily encounter danger.
Zhen Wenjun was filled with regret.
Once she found Wei Tingxu, she’d immediately send her back to Da Yu, without hesitation!
Now, she could only hope for Wei Tingxu’s safety.
After galloping for over an hour, Ah Xi felt her brain rattling, but they finally emerged from the damp forest to see a short city.
Accustomed to Da Yu’s solid and grand fortresses, the Guxi Kingdom’s city walls weren’t even built in a straight line. The walls were less than three zhang (about 10 meters), and Zhen Wenjun, with her keen eyesight, saw a few yawning soldiers strolling atop, walking a few paces and chatting, not at all like vigilant city guards.
Hiding behind the trees, Zhen Wenjun and Xiaohua considered storming in, but Ah Xi stopped them.
“I know you’re anxious, but acting rashly won’t help. If you go in and get caught, your companions will be doomed,” Ah Xi advised them to stay calm. “Look, the guards on this side seem sparse because they rotate shifts every hour. Regular guards will soon replace them, not to mention fifty elite soldiers below the city gate. Guxi’s weapons may be outdated, but you are only two people. Can you fight a hundred, let alone a thousand?”
Zhen Wenjun asked Ah Xi, “Do you have any strategies?”
Ah Xi smiled, “You’re asking the right person. Do I look like a Hu person?”
“You don’t resemble a Hu person like us,” Zhen Wenjun replied.
Ah Xi patted Zhen Wenjun and Xiaohua’s heads. “When you come out, be quick; don’t let me truly get hurt.”
Many vehicles and horses passed through the Guxi city gate, each requiring a pass token to enter. Guxi men and women all wore white tall hats and white robes, looking as if they were attending a funeral.
Two men rode out from the city and heard a delicate Central Plains woman’s cry for help as they neared the rainforest corridor.
“Help… help!”
Sensitive to Central Plains women, the Guxi men immediately stopped their horses, looking into the rainforest. They saw a frail Central Plains woman leaning against a banyan tree, about to faint. They rushed forward to seize her, one grabbing her arm and the other her ankle, nearly tearing her apart.
“I saw her first! I grabbed her first!”
“Who said that? Can’t you see I hugged her first?”
“She’s mine!”
“She’s mine!”
They argued fiercely in Guxi language, not caring for the woman’s life, likely tearing her to death.
Ah Xi, in pain, couldn’t pretend to be weak any longer and shouted, “Zhen Wenjun! Xiaohua! What are you waiting for!”
“Huh?” The Guxi men looked up to see two shadows looming over them. Before they could react, Zhen Wenjun and Xiaohua knocked them out with a chop each.
“Are you even human?” Ah Xi, tears streaming from the pain, scolded the two for using her as bait without timely intervention.
“The moment of triumph is the most careless,” Zhen Wenjun apologized to Ah Xi while stripping the men’s robes. “Sorry for not telling you beforehand; the key to luring the enemy is authenticity.”
Ah Xi wanted to jump up and knock Zhen Wenjun’s head, though reaching it might be challenging.
Zhen Wenjun and Xiaohua were tall, while Guxi men were generally smaller than Da Yu men. Zhen Wenjun fit their clothes perfectly, while strong Xiaohua turned them into tight outfits.
Zhen Wenjun had considered cutting off their faces for human-skin masks to infiltrate the city, but she had no grievances with these men and hesitated to skin them. Besides, Xiaohua was clever and would definitely question the source of the disguise. Fortunately, Guxi men wore wide-sleeved robes that hid their features, and she and Xiaohua had Hu appearances, allowing them to blend in with simple makeup. The problem was Ah Xi; what to do with her.
“Easy,” Zhen Wenjun said. “She’s our slave; taking her anywhere isn’t strange.”
Xiaohua agreed with a nod.
Ah Xi: “…”
Using pass tokens, they entered the city smoothly. The gate guards eyed Ah Xi enviously, admiring these two young men possessing such wealth. This Central Plains woman should fetch a good price.
Ah Xi ignored the guards’ sticky gazes, focusing on the surrounding Guxi conversations. Her mother was indeed Guxi, but she had no memory of her mother. Her father was well-traveled and multilingual, using Guxi with his wife. Ah Xi spoke fluent Guxi as a child, though she’d forgotten much over the years, now struggling to understand the gist.
“Today is their biggest bi-monthly slave market day, displaying rare Central Plains slaves for noble bidding, the highest price winning,” Ah Xi heard people discussing excitedly.
“Slaves,” Zhen Wenjun ground her teeth in anger. She saw Guxi men, well-dressed, riding horses with Central Plains women tied behind. Clothing indicated wealth, with more opulent men leading younger, prettier women, trophies of wealth and lineage. Iron collars chained these women by the neck, forcing them to keep pace or be dragged.
Zhen Wenjun couldn’t believe such a vile nation existed; by comparison, Da Yu women lived relatively well.
She couldn’t let Wei Tingxu fall into such a country!
All, whether spectators or noble carriage riders, eagerly headed in one direction. Ah Xi said they were going to “Xuanguan” market, where Central Plains slaves were displayed. Zhen Wenjun and Xiaohua kept calm, following the crowd. Upon reaching the market, they understood the name “Xuanguan.”
From afar, they saw a row of large wooden cages descending, containing three Central Plains women, heads bowed. The cages slowly lowered before a platform divided into three sections, each filled with well-dressed men.
“They’re all Guxi nobles,” Ah Xi explained. “Look at their hats; though all are white wrapped hats, the gemstones signify status. Guxi lacks an emperor or king, having only three rivalrous nobles. These three have contested for over a century, unable to unify the small Guxi Kingdom. They fight over everything, including slaves. Today, they’re competing for people.”
Ah Xi was right; in several rounds, the nobles bid against each other, attempting to outdo one another. Zhen Wenjun noticed the nobles with greenstone and blue sapphire focused on battling each other, while the red gem noble seemed to wait for something, remaining silent.
“The last round, featuring ‘rare items,'” Ah Xi heard the auctioneer announce.
The final cage descended, revealing Wei Tingxu, as Zhen Wenjun had expected.
Only Wei Tingxu was in the cage.
Zhen Wenjun saw she still wore her own clothes, her heart easing, until noticing blood at her mouth.
Wei Tingxu knelt in the cage, hands chained in front, linked to the cage floor. Her fair, bright face highlighted the wound, a scarlet bloom in snow.
She held herself with regal dignity, unlike a commodity awaiting sale, exuding a commanding presence.
Everyone present stared, captivated by this Central Plains woman. Zhen Wenjun gripped her sword, ready to rush forward, Xiaohua equally seething. Ah Xi, frightened by their resolve, desperately restrained them.
“With so many guards, are you seeking death? Stay calm!”
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