"I can't open it! I've already pried open the latch." Su Qing was so anxious that she was sweating profusely.
"Is there something else that's been fastened?" Ju Mu'er asked quickly.
"No," Su Qing replied while searching, then looked up carefully and said, "Oh dear, it seems like it's bolted on top too." She had only opened the bottom part, but there was still something bolted on top.
Su Qing was too short to reach the top of the window frame. She tried standing on tiptoe, but it still didn't work.
Ding Yanshan said urgently, "Shorty, come down, I'll do it." As she spoke, she forcefully pulled Su Qing down.
Su Qing was unconvinced and muttered, "I'm only fourteen. When I grow up to your age, I'll be just as tall."
Ding Yanshan ignored her, grabbed the hairpin, stood on the chair, and started fiddling with the wooden latch. Seeing that she knew how to do it, Su Qing quickly ran behind the door to listen for any sounds outside.
After a while, Ding Yanshan's arm ached, but she finally managed to pry open the wooden latch. She suppressed the urge to shout and whispered, "I'm done, I'm done."
Su Qing rushed over: "Don't rush to open it, let's check if anyone is outside first?"
Ding Yanshan peeked through the crack in the door and shook her head, saying, "No."
Su Qing said, "Let me see."
Ding Yanshan thought this was quite scary, so she jumped down and let Su Qing go up.
Su Qing quietly opened the window, peeked out for a while, then gently closed it and jumped down.
“I think we can escape.” She said in a low voice, a little excited. “Although the window is high, there’s muddy ground below. If we jump down and try not to shout, the noise shouldn’t be too loud. Once we’re out, the woods are close by, so we can run inside quickly. Once we’re inside, it’ll be easy to hide.”
"What's the sky like now?" Ju Mu'er asked.
"The sun is almost setting," Su Qing replied.
"Now is the perfect time, you should hurry up and leave. They just came to check once, they won't come back so soon. Now that they've eaten and drunk their fill, it's their time to relax. If you leave now, you still have a chance to get out of this forest before dark."
"What about you, sister?" Su Qing was quite dissatisfied with Ju Mu'er's constant use of "you all." "If you're not leaving, sister, I'm not leaving either."
"No, you have to go." Ju Mu'er's tone became stern: "If I go with you, I'll only be a burden and slow you down. I'll be the one who tires you out. If anything happens to you, I'll never have peace of mind for the rest of my life. Qing'er, you're the only one who knows the story of that bird. Do you remember what I told you?"
Su Qing's heart skipped a beat, and she nodded: "I remember." She paused, feeling a little like crying: "But I don't want to leave. I want to stay with my sister. I can protect her."
"Fool, what can you do here besides wait to die with me? You should get out and find someone to rescue me."
“Yes, yes.” Su Qing perked up immediately: “Yes, I’ll go find someone to come back and save my sister.”
"Yes." Ju Mu'er nodded vigorously: "Sister will be waiting for you here."
Su Qing's eyes welled up with tears, and she rushed over to hug Ju Mu'er: "Sister, you must wait for me to come back. I will do my best as soon as possible."
Ju Mu'er was also panicked, but she put on a calm and composed demeanor: "Alright, there's no time to lose, you should leave now."
At this moment, Ding Yanshan, who had been watching them the whole time, asked, "Which way?"
"Come with me!" Su Qing felt full of energy at the thought of getting help.
Ding Yanshan frowned. She desperately wanted to escape, but following a young girl made her feel uneasy. Before she could say anything, Ju Mu'er pulled Su Qing aside and said, "Qing'er, you must remember what I said."
Su Qing bit her lip, thinking about what she had said about giving her the sheet music and zither after her death, and shook her head, saying, "I will definitely bring people back to save you."
“If they come back and don’t find me, and these bandits have escaped, then Qing’er, remember this: there’s another clue. They hijacked the carriage that brought us here. I wrote my name inside the carriage.” She stretched out her hand, revealing her injured fingertips. She had scratched herself while picking at the seams of the carriage floorboards, and she had written her name in blood on the corner of the floorboards to leave a mark for future identification of the carriage.
"I understand. That way, the carriage can serve as evidence, and we can follow it to find those bastards." Su Qing took a deep breath, holding back her tears. Regardless of what happens with the carriage later, what's in front of her is what matters most. "Sister, I'm leaving."
"Take care, Qing'er. If... you can take care of my father for me." Ju Mu'er squeezed Su Qing's hand tightly, then couldn't help but hug her. Perhaps this was the last hug. Ju Mu'er bit her tongue hard, forcing her eyes back. She smiled and said again, "Take care, Qing'er."
Su Qing gritted her teeth and said, "Wait for me, I'll bring people over soon." She turned to Ding Yanshan and said, "Let's go."
Although Ding Yanshan wasn't confident about escaping with this girl, she was certainly more willing to try running away than wait to die here. She turned to look at Ju Mu'er, feeling a pang of guilt at leaving a blind person like her alone. She bit her lip, unsure of what to say, and finally simply said, "Then we're leaving."
"Take care, and make sure you get home safely," Ju Mu'er said to Ding Yanshan as she helped her into the chair.
Su Qing climbed onto the windowsill and turned to Ding Yanshan, instructing, "Remember, when you jump, you absolutely mustn't scream, even if you break your leg. After you land, don't linger, don't say a word, just run with me to the woods over there, understand?"
Ding Yanshan nodded. Su Qing peeked out to check the surroundings, then turned to Ju Mu'er and whispered, "Sister, I'm leaving. You must wait for me."
"Okay." With Ju Mu'er's response, Su Qing suddenly leaped out of the window.
The dull thud as the chair hit the ground was neither too loud nor too soft, making Ding Yanshan and Ju Mu'er hold their breath in tension. After that, there was no further sound, indicating that everything had gone smoothly. Ju Mu'er then leaned on her chair and urged, "Miss Ding, you should hurry up and go too."
Ding Yanshan climbed onto the chair and toward the windowsill. Ju Mu'er couldn't help but say again, "Miss Ding, listen to me, playing dumb can save your life."
Ding Yanshan was startled. Before she could think it through, she pushed off with her foot and jumped out as well.
Inside the house, Ju Mu'er heard the sound of her landing and the sound of the two running quickly. The tension in her heart finally eased.
Her legs gave way and she collapsed to the ground.
The floor was cold, bone-chillingly cold. That chill seeped into her body, seeping into her heart. The icy feeling grew heavier and heavier, finally releasing the fear she had been suppressing.
She was scared, terrified.
The silence and loneliness made her even more afraid.
Ju Mu'er didn't know how long she had been sitting there; perhaps not long, perhaps a long time. In any case, she suddenly came to her senses. She couldn't just sit and wait to die; it wasn't the last moment yet, and she absolutely couldn't give up.
She got up, but couldn't find her bamboo cane. She panicked and groped around, finally remembering that she had put it on the bed. She felt her way back to the edge of the bed and found her bamboo cane.
Having obtained the bamboo cane, she felt a little more at ease. But it was useless; the bamboo cane couldn't save her. Ju Mu'er sat down on the edge of the bed. The room was cold, growing colder and colder, and she shivered. She didn't know what she could do. She didn't know if Su Qing and the others would be able to return to the city safely, and she didn't know when the robbers would come and open the door to her room.
Ju Mu'er trembled. She dared not imagine what would happen after they opened that door, she dared not imagine what she would encounter, but she suddenly thought of Long Er. She remembered his arrogance, his pride, his pettiness, and how good he had been to her...
Ju Mu'er had no idea that Long Er was also thinking about her at that moment. He was thinking about her, but at the same time he was furious.
Li Ke and his team lost track of the person!
He rushed over in a panic, only to hear this terrible news.
Li Ke didn't dare raise his head, his heart filled with self-reproach. They followed the two bandits who had kidnapped Ding Yanshan, and saw them reach the foot of the mountain, abandon the carriage, and ride horses uphill. Afraid of revealing their whereabouts by following too closely, they followed at a distance. Unexpectedly, the terrain in the mountains was so complicated that after following for a while, they lost sight of her in the blink of an eye.
They searched the surrounding area for a long time, but could not find any trace of the two robbers.
Long Er was so angry he didn't even want to curse anymore. The direction the spies from Fuling Temple were investigating was the same as the direction Li Ke and his group were following, and on top of that, a scout reported finding a suspicious carriage nearby. Therefore, Long Er concluded that this area was the most suspicious hiding place.
He rushed over eagerly, thinking that Li Ke and the others would surely make progress in tracking Ding Yanshan, but to his surprise, he couldn't find the door when he got there.
Long Er stared at the massive mountain in front of him and asked, "How many people did you send?"
"We've split into ten groups of five, and they've all gone up the mountain to search," Li Ke reported, without looking up. The search party hasn't sent back any news yet, so they probably haven't found anything. With the sun about to set, the search will become even more difficult once it gets dark.
"Where's the carriage?" Long Er asked again.
“They’re all parked over there.” Li Ke pointed in the direction and added, “The brothers found three suspicious carriages within a few miles. They look somewhat like the ones described by Guard Chen and the others, as well as the carriage that kidnapped Miss Ding. The brothers impounded all those carriages, but the drivers all said they were used by farmers to transport goods. The brothers couldn’t find anything out.”
Long Er said curtly, "Go ahead." Without looking at Li Ke, he walked towards the carriage on his own.
Li Ke breathed a sigh of relief and quickly ran up the mountain to join the search team.
Long Er arrived at the parking area and saw the three carriages and three drivers. The carriages were all similar, and the drivers all looked like farmers. Long Er looked at each carriage one by one; they were all very simple, made of wooden planks, and empty inside, with little cargo.
Just by looking at it like this, you really can't tell anything.
Long Er circled the three cars, imagining where Ju Mu'er would sit if she were thrown into one of them. If he were the one kidnapping her, he would definitely put her in the innermost part of the car to prevent her from jumping out or calling for help halfway through the journey.
So what will she do once she's in the car? Is she scared, and since she can't see, will she just sit there blankly?
Long Er jumped onto one of the vehicles and walked to the back of the carriage. He didn't believe she would do nothing; she would leave something behind. Something to prove that this vehicle had imprisoned her.
Long Er carefully examined the first car for a long time but found nothing. So he jumped into the second car and threw out all the rags and odds and ends from inside to search carefully, but still found nothing.
Long Er jumped into the third vehicle. Inside, there were some scraps of cloth, probably used for padding cargo, worn and darkened. Long Er patiently searched through them, when suddenly he froze. Underneath the scraps of cloth in the corner, there were two dark red characters—Mu'er.
Long Er stared at the two words, somewhat incredulous. He blinked, looked again, and it was indeed those two words.
Mu'er.
His Mu'er.
For a moment, Ryuji was completely unaware of his own feelings. Just as he had thought, she wouldn't just wait idly. She was so smart; she would definitely leave him a message.
But the dark red stung his eyes. He noticed that there was also dark red in the cracks between the wooden planks, which must have been written by her with her fingers, which had been worn raw.
Long Er jumped off the carriage and asked expressionlessly, "Whose carriage is this?"
A coachman stepped forward tremblingly: "Replying to you, sir, it was I who said it."
What did you do with this car today?
"I only transported grain to the village twice."
"You transported them all yourself."
"Yes." The driver seemed very nervous.
Long Er nodded and walked towards him. He reached the coachman's side, gave him a cold smile, then reached out and, with lightning speed, grabbed his neck, slamming him against a nearby tree trunk.
Long Er smiled, his murderous aura palpable. He spoke clearly, word by word: "You'd better tell me right now where you sent the blind girl, or I'll strangle you right now. I don't care if you're a real farmer or a fake one."
Author's Note: They're about to reunite; I hope the scene will surprise you.
39 bravely escaped and went to fetch reinforcements.
Su Qing led Ding Yanshan and ran into the woods in one breath. Neither of them dared to stop or look back, running as fast as they could for a long distance. They only stopped when they were completely out of breath and could run no more.
Su Qing found a clump of bushes to hide under, pulled Ding Yanshan down to squat down, and whispered, "Let's stop for a moment, I'll tell you about the plan."
Ding Yanshan, panting, also hid.
Su Qing asked, "Can you ride a horse?"
"meeting."
"That's great." Su Qing picked up a twig and gestured on the muddy ground: "Let me tell you, we are here now. This is where we are being held. This is where my sister and I were taken down from the carriage. We are very close to it. I saw them leading the horses in this direction. There should be a place to hide the horses there."
"Then what?"
“If we keep going like this, we won’t be able to escape before dark,” Su Qing said.
Ding Yanshan agreed: "That's right, if there are wolves at night, we're in trouble."
Su Qing glared at her: "If we waste time, it will be too late to save my sister."
Ding Yanshan felt inexplicably ashamed by what she had said. She cleared her throat and asked, "So, what are you planning to do?"
"Let's go steal the horse first."
"Stealing a horse?"
"Yes, with a horse, you can take me with you, and we'll be able to get down the mountain faster."
"I'll take you with me?"