Chapter 135 Mountain Stronghold

Chapter 135: Mountain Village

At night, they stayed in a farmstead in the outskirts. The next day, the soldiers set off on foot. With their large numbers and under the command of a Thousand Commander, no one dared to provoke them easily.

Song Tingzhou, accompanied by Xue Sheng, first went to rent horses locally. There was only one local squire in this town. While the head of the household was easy to deal with, they could only spare three carriages—truly astonishing.

Even in Spring Water Town, the Fang family alone had seven or eight carriages, and the He family had two or three. This town was so impoverished it was hard to imagine.

Thus, they still needed three more carriages, which would have to be rented from the neighboring town. However, according to the locals, even riding a horse to the nearest town would take at least six days for a round trip. On the other hand, the county seat was relatively closer—only three days there and back.

But to enter the county seat, one needed a household registration. If Xue Sheng, a servant, entered the city alone, he would be mistaken for a runaway slave. Only Song Tingzhou could personally take the documents into town.

Song Tingzhou wanted to leave the remaining twenty soldiers with Meng Wan and their group, while he and Xue Sheng hurried back as quickly as possible. But Meng Wan couldn't bear the thought.

"Why not let Prince Qin go with you as well? His martial arts are even more formidable than Xue Sheng's. That would put my mind at ease."

Song Tingzhou looked at Meng Wan's face, gaunt from the constant travel, and frowned. "I can't rest easy if you and Mother don't have a martial arts expert by your side. How about this: I'll take Xue Sheng and five soldiers. We'll ride there and back as fast as we can. For these three days, stay in the farmstead and don't wander off."

Meng Wan met Song Tingzhou's worried gaze and willingly nestled his cheek into his broad palm. "Relax. We'll be fine staying in the farmstead. This area is full of mountains, so you and your men need to be extra careful on the road."

He had said this out of concern, but little did he know it would prove prophetic.

Eager to get to his post as soon as possible, Song Tingzhou didn't delay. He immediately set out with Xue Sheng and five soldiers, carrying some dry rations and water pouches, and rode away on horseback.

The terrain was treacherous, and there was no main road leading to the county seat. They rode for a day, passing a narrow path built on a cliff, with a bottomless abyss below.

Not daring to ride their horses, they had to lead their horses on foot. One soldier, terrified of heights, had to grit his teeth and edge across.

This cost them more time. Song Tingzhou was anxious to rent horses and return quickly, but he secretly regretted bringing these men along—they only slowed him down.

When it rains, it pours—and rain it did.

A fine, drizzling rain fell on them, adding a chill and dampness that no amount of clothing could keep out. Even Song Tingzhou found the dampness uncomfortable.

The drizzle continued without end, and a thin fog gradually formed among the mountains. The rain kept falling, and the fog only thickened, until even the path beneath their feet became hard to see.

The world was shrouded in thick fog. Occasionally, they could hear the clatter of hooves and the soft coughs of someone unwell.

Song Tingzhou was focused on watching the path ahead, walking at a steady pace. But suddenly, a short shout came from behind him, followed by the panicked neighing of horses.

One of the soldiers had apparently slipped and fallen off the cliff, still clinging to his horse's reins. The horse, startled, kicked Song Tingzhou's horse, spooking it too.

Song Tingzhou instinctively tightened his grip on the reins, but quickly realized his mistake and let go. However, it was too late—the horse dragged him to the edge of the cliff, and he was sent plunging over the edge.

Even though Song Tingzhou tried his best to press himself against the cliff face, sliding down to slow his fall, the fabric at his knees quickly tore, and his fingers were cut and bloody by the jagged rocks.

The cliff was too steep. Although he managed to slow his descent a little, he still fell at great speed.

"Brother Wang!"

"Sir?"

"Oh no, it's Sir and Brother Wang!"

"What? Sir!"

"Sir!"

...

When Song Tingzhou woke again, excruciating pain shot through his left leg and fingers. He slowly opened his eyes. The room was dim, and the faint light from an oil lamp allowed him to barely make out his surroundings.

The ceiling seemed to be made of thick bamboo, and the walls too appeared to be woven from bamboo strips. The tables, chairs, and storage chests he glanced at were all bamboo products. This was a bamboo house the likes of which he had never seen.

"You're awake?" A girl's crisp voice came from the doorway.

Song Tingzhou turned his head to see a young girl in ethnic attire holding a bowl of herbal medicine with a strong, pungent aroma.

She looked about seventeen or eighteen, with a round, ruddy face and a dark reddish-brown complexion. She wore a long gown and shorts made of blue-black indigo cloth, a silver necklace and woven colored thread ornaments around her neck, trimmed cuffs and collar with floral fabric, and a belt woven from colored strips.

Her speech had an unfamiliar accent—a local dialect. Song Tingzhou had to mull over her words to understand roughly.

"Thank you, miss, for saving me. May I ask how long I've been unconscious?"

His greatest worry was that his long unconsciousness would cause Meng Wan and Chang Jinhua to panic.

The girl seemed a bit shy. Realizing Song Tingzhou might not fully understand her, she shook her head timidly, gesturing to indicate he hadn't been out for long.

Song Tingzhou let out a small sigh of relief and asked again, "And where is my bundle?" The silver inside was trivial, but the appointment documents were irreplaceable.

His voice was weak. The girl, either she didn't hear him clearly or she was evading, averted her eyes and muttered a few more words he couldn't catch.

Song Tingzhou sat up on the bamboo bed. He was still wearing his inner garment, but his outer robe had been replaced with a short jacket made of dark blue coarse cloth. His body was racked with pain, and his bloody fingers and palms were covered in a dark green herbal paste.

All that was bearable, but his left leg hurt so much he could barely move—it was likely broken.

There was no way the girl had changed his clothes; someone else must have done it.

Looking at his bandaged leg, he asked, "Miss, did you call a physician for me?"

The girl roughly understood "physician," but her reply was too hard to follow.

Just as he was about to ask more, an older man entered. He wore similar blue-black attire: a short mandarin-collar jacket with front buttons and a small chicken flower pattern embroidered on each side of the chest, and wide-legged trousers. Surprisingly, he could speak a bit of halting Chinese.

"You're Han Chinese, right? Our village has a shaman who set your bones and applied herbal medicine."

Relieved to have a way to communicate, Song Tingzhou said politely, "Thank you, uncle, and the shaman for saving my life. I am indeed Han Chinese. My family is in Pingshi Town. Could you trouble yourself to send me there?"

To be honest, Song Tingzhou didn't trust some shaman he'd never met. His greatest anxiety now was returning to town.

The older man's face was cold and wary. "You're from Pingshi Town?"

Noting the suspicion in his tone and thinking of Meng Wan and the others still stranded in town, Song Tingzhou quickly said, "What's wrong with Pingshi Town? I'm just a passing merchant who stopped there to rest."

The man's expression relaxed a bit. "That town has some bad rumors. Our village is nearby, but we'd rather take a detour to the county seat than go to Pingshi Town."

Song Tingzhou's heart tightened. "Bad rumors? Are people getting hurt? Please, uncle, send me back to town quickly. I'll pay you handsomely."

The man looked apologetic. "We don't want your gold or silver. You can stay here to recover. We can pull you to the outskirts of town on a cart, but we can't enter. So you'd better wait until you can walk before going back to your family."

It seemed that danger did exist in the town, making him and his kin unwilling to set foot there.

The more the man spoke, the more anxious Song Tingzhou grew. But with his injuries and unfamiliarity with the mountain paths, he had no way back to Pingshi Town except to wait for Xue Sheng to find him.

"Could you deliver a message for me? You don't have to enter the town—just go to the farmstead just outside town. If you don't want to interact with anyone, I'll write a few letters, and you can just toss them at the gate."

That was acceptable. The older man thought for a moment and agreed. "The Yao chief has paper and a brush. I'll go ask him for some. After you write, I'll send a few Danu to deliver it to the farmstead near Pingshi Town."

Song Tingzhou was deeply grateful. "Thank you, uncle. There's silver in my bundle; please accept it as a token of thanks."

"Bundle?" The older man met his daughter's evasive gaze and, instead of answering, called her outside.

"Lan Duo, did you take that Han man's bundle?"

Lan Duo covered her face with her hands. "I didn't mean to, Father. I..." She had never seen such a handsome man in the village—more appealing than even the most popular guy, Shan Hu. Being in the bloom of youth, she couldn't help but be smitten and had other ideas.

The older man sighed. In his youth, he too had longed for the world beyond the village, ventured out with other young men, and dealt with Han people.

"Han men marry young and take many wives in their lifetime. Judging by his clothes, his family must be wealthy. Who knows how many wives he has? Our village is better—after you marry, you can still live at home, or if you don't wish to marry, you can take a Danu as a husband."

Lan Duo recalled Song Tingzhou's handsome features and the cool, steady demeanor in his speech, and still found him superior to the young men in the village. She bit her lip and pleaded with the middle-aged man, "Father, I just want him. Let's not return his things. Let him stay in the village."

The middle-aged man refused, "How can that be? Stealing is wrong. The goddess Miluotuo will blame us."

The young girl, for the sake of her beloved, grew more stubborn the more her family opposed her. "We are not stealing. Once he stays and marries me, I will return the bundle. The goddess Miluotuo knows my heart and will not blame me."

The middle-aged man looked at his daughter's stubborn eyes and sighed deeply. "As you wish." Their tribe had great freedom in love and marriage, with no concept of social status.

Moreover, he thought of the tall young Han man staying in his house, who said his family was in Pingshi Town. That place was probably a death trap—if he lost his family, he might settle down in the village and live a stable life with his daughter.

Song Tingzhou was unaware of what the father and daughter had discussed. When the middle-aged man brought back brush, ink, and paper, he cut the paper into several pieces and wrote words large and small on each. Some pieces had more writing, saying he was in a mountain village about a day and a half's journey west of the town; others bore only two characters—"Don't stay."

He wrote carefully, not knowing that the middle-aged man who had promised to deliver the letters to the town had gone back on his word and tricked him; the papers were secretly burned.

After recuperating in the village for a few days, Song Tingzhou's wounds on his knee and hand began to form scabs, but because his left leg was fractured, he still could not get out of bed.

He was frantic with worry, eager to return to the town, yet he did not ignore the strange looks around him.

"Miss, I already have a husband at home. You are not married yet, so it is not appropriate for you to be alone with me," Song Tingzhou said tactfully to Lan Duo.

Hearing this, Lan Duo bit her lip and, in her halting Chinese she had learned from her father these days, said, "So you have a wife. But after you marry me, you can only be good to me alone." By the end, she was very shy, her cheeks flushed.

Song Tingzhou's expression turned cold, and a flash of impatience crossed his eyes. "Miss, you may not have understood me. I already have someone I love. How could I marry you?"

Rejected so coldly, Lan Duo felt heartbroken and wronged. "Even if you are married, they are in Pingshi Town. Pingshi Town has a mountain demon. The town head often captures outsiders to feed it. If you have a husband, he must have been eaten by it long ago!"

Ignoring the excruciating pain in his left leg, Song Tingzhou sat up abruptly and tried to get out of bed. "What is this mountain demon? And what town head in Pingshi Town? I've never heard of it!"

Lan Duo looked at him with pity and wanted to help him, but was frozen by his icy gaze and too timid to come near.

Lan Duo's father heard the commotion and came in from outside, helping Song Tingzhou back onto the bed. "Lan Duo is not lying to you. Before, we only heard that Pingshi Town had a mountain god, but it didn't harm people. The town mostly offered it fruits and livestock as sacrifices."

He continued slowly, "Until last year, when many people in Pingshi Town suddenly died for no reason. Then some Taoist priest came, and I don't know what he said to the town head, but after that, Pingshi Town started offering living people as sacrifices. At first, the surrounding stockades didn't know, but the young people who went to the town never came back."

At this point, a look of fear crossed Lan Duo's father's dark face. "At the beginning of this year, a young Danu from our stockade went missing in town. On the third day, he ran back, saying there was a monster in Pingshi Town with the body of a dog and the head of a human, eating people on sight. It was terrifying!"

Song Tingzhou absolutely did not believe in ghosts or monsters harming people, but Lan Duo's father described it so vividly, as if he had seen it himself.

"Is that young man who ran back still in the stockade?" Song Tingzhou wanted to ask him for details about the mountain demon.

Lan Duo's father showed pity. "He died long ago. When he came back, his body was all bitten, covered in wounds. He didn't survive the night."

Unable to bear his daughter's sad expression, Lan Duo's father could only try to persuade Song Tingzhou.

"Your family is in town, and they will surely be tricked by the town head into being live sacrifices to the mountain demon. Going back is just seeking death. It's better to stay in our stockade and live well with Lan Duo. She has no mother since childhood; only us in the family. If you stay, we will all treat you well."

Lan Duo looked at Song Tingzhou expectantly, hoping he would give in and agree.

Hearing that the danger in Pingshi Town came from a monster and the town head who tricked people into being sacrificed, Song Tingzhou's heart, which had been tense these past few days, actually relaxed a lot.

Wan'er has experts like Qin Jiao by his side, and he is intelligent himself; it's unlikely he would be deceived by the town head.

Song Tingzhou's eyes still held little warmth, and his words were hard and cold: "I have already explained to Miss Lan Duo that I have a husband at home. It's not proper for a young lady's reputation; in the future, she needn't trouble herself to bring me meals."

But nothing's set in stone. He still needed to return early to reunite with Wan'er. Counting on these villagers might be tough, and he had no idea when Xue Sheng would find him.