imperial psychologist

Chapter 682
Several people checked again and again, and finally decided to leave here.

Near the entrance of the village, several people saw an isolated stele. The front of the stele had been eroded by wind and sand, and many handwritings had been blurred. Bo Ling picked up a few leaves from the side and scraped off a few sticking to it. clods of soil.

Mu Cheng and Li Yiru also came closer to have a look.

It seems that this is the last epitaph here.

The craftsman who carved the stele was a refugee who fled from Fuzhou all the way here. He was more than a few years old, and he coughed up blood every day after leaving Zhuozhou. The "Xiaojia Village" in Jiangbei remained.

When he came here, the village was already empty, and only the hungry people who also fled from north to south to avoid war would stay here for a short time, and get up again at dawn the next day to cross the south.

"From Fuzhou to the south, traveling thousands of miles, all you see is the face of a scorpion, and all you hear is men crying and women crying.

"In winter, the north wind howls, the forests and valleys are frozen, and you can't keep out the cold if you eat one day. You will be hungry for a long time. How can you survive? Even the dead bones are blocked in the road, passing by the car, panting for help, staring at the ground, and starving every day. More than a thousand people were killed..."

The more people look back, the more they feel that things hurt their own kind, and the sadness comes from it.

Children were abandoned between the roads, or thrown into ditches, and when they died of starvation, their flesh was eaten, or slaughtered like cattle and sheep.

There are villains who coax people to quiet places and kill them, or eat them themselves, or sell them; there are women who lean on dead people and eat their flesh alive; the door of the house, or cut off their heads to beg a morsel from the high door...

All these appalling things happened endlessly during the old man's journey south.

"At the beginning of the disaster, they were just poor and settled down. They had nothing to cover and store. They could not support themselves. They sold their clothes and utensils, or dismantled and sold houses and wood. When they searched and looted everything, they had to flee everywhere. Helping the old and the young, weeping halfway , sick and hungry, staggering on the road;
"It was not long before the family of Zhonghu, and the solar eclipse did not continue, and it was like this again;

"Not long ago, a well-off and prosperous family, sitting on a mountain of food, is like this.

"Sad husband..."

After that, the handwriting has been mixed with the yellow sand, and it can no longer be distinguished.

The three stood silently in front of the stele.

There are many bones in the village, and I don't know which pile is the former stele carver.

Following the stone road at the north entrance of the village, the three of them returned to the main road. Bai Ling couldn't help turning his head, and took a last look at the lonely brick house here.

Autumn in the northern country is already deep, and the vegetation is no longer as luxuriant as in spring and summer.The creepers that climbed up the tile walls withered and withered, leaving a desolate scene.

In the silence, the heaven and the earth seemed to be silently taking back the land that belonged to him.

All the sorrows and sorrows in the world, all the struggles, all the laughter and songs and the cries of desperation, are all blown away in this bleak autumn wind, blowing away without a trace.

Regardless of whether there will be people living here in the coming year, when spring comes next year, it will be green again.

Bo Ling couldn't help shivering.

……

After leaving the empty village, several people referred to the map in Li Yiru's hand and found that there was an official post station about thirty or forty miles ahead.

Li Yiru himself was not sure how credible this map was - after all, it was the old version made by his great-grandfather during the Tianqi period.

The village they just searched is already the closest and largest village to the official road nearly [-] miles to the north. If this is the same scene here, it is not optimistic whether the post station exists.

Several people discussed for a while, since they have enough water and food, why not go to find the post first.

If the post station is still there, it may be able to catch the carriages and horses of other business trips. If it is not there, then you can only find a nearby cottage to see if you can buy a donkey or mule to travel—you have to walk from Jiangzhou Going to Zhuozhou, and it is still in the cold season like this, the risk is almost unbearable.

At noon that day, several people took a short rest in a shaded place in the forest, chewing dry food and water in silence.

The sun outside is getting stronger and stronger, as long as the skin is exposed, there will be a burning pain as soon as it is exposed to the sun, but in the shade, the wind makes people feel chilly, and people can't help but feel it. The collar tightened again.

After eating, several people were a little sleepy, so everyone leaned against the tree trunk behind them and squinted their eyes to rest.

"By the way, have you heard the name 'Deer Hunter' before?" Bai Ling asked suddenly, "Where are these people coming from?"

"I don't know." Mu Cheng closed his eyes and said, "That red hair doesn't look like Zhou people, maybe it's a gangster."

"Yeah," Bo Ling said softly, "the language is not the same either."

"But why would the gold thief kill the ship thief?" Li Yiru interjected, and when he mentioned this, he suddenly remembered what the gray-robed man said last night, "At that time, what did that man say about 'buy one get one free'... what does it mean? "

Mu Cheng and Bo Ling embraced each other at the same time.

After getting along for so many days, the two of them can almost be sure that the other is carrying a secret, but it is not known who the "send one" in the gray-robed population refers to.

But even so, Bai Ling is still [-]% sure that the person these gray-robed men are looking for is Mu Cheng.

The reason is very simple - if the emperor really became suspicious and secretly offered a reward to send someone to find her, then according to Chen Yicong's temper, no matter what she is worth, it is impossible for her to be worth less than the rich young master in the borderlands.

Since the gray-robed man first locked on Li Yiru, it can be seen that in their eyes the value of the boy is the highest, so the second highest "gift" most likely refers to Mu Cheng among the three.

"If you want me to say," Bo Ling said softly, "the words of these gray-robed men—"

"That can't be taken seriously." Mu Cheng continued to reply.

The two smiled in unison at the same time.

Li Yiru tilted his head suspiciously, then sighed again, "Then I guess my trip to the northern border will come to an end when I get to Zhuozhou..."

He lowered his head, took out two gold leaves from his bosom, and handed each of them to Mu Cheng and Bo Ling.

"I wanted to talk to my two elder brothers about this earlier," Li Yiru said regretfully, "Two elder brothers, take it as a souvenir. If you have the opportunity to come to Shuzhou in the future, you will be able to find me soon with this family emblem gold leaf."

"Okay." Bo Ling quickly took the golden leaf, "I've wanted to go to Shuzhou for a long time."

Mu Cheng didn't speak, but silently wrapped the leaf in a handkerchief and put it in the bag.

……

This afternoon, several people hurried and hurried, and finally came to the post station shown on the map after nightfall.

From a long distance, several people saw dozens of tall horses tied to the open-air stables by the roadside. The horses swung their tails and buried their heads in grazing. Behind them were carts neatly placed, full of sacks.

Opposite the stables, the two lanterns of the official post hang high.

The three of them were all happy—they looked familiar to the cavalry, wasn't this the group of people who went to Zhuozhou from outside Jiangzhou City, maybe because of the rugged official road, they were chased up by them...

Several people quickened their pace and walked forward until the last dozen or so steps away, when Li Yiru suddenly braked.

"Wait..." He frowned and pulled Bai Ling and Mu Cheng back, "The number of people in the station... Doesn't it sound right?"

(End of this chapter)