Night was truly no time for traveling, so Chu Hengyuan and his party found a small inn to stop for the night. This finally gave Chu Hengyuan some time to think about his Aran. He wondered if that heartless, wicked girl was thinking of him just as he was thinking of her. Perhaps, now that she was free from his pestering, she had already drifted off into a sweet dream.
The wicked girl being thought of was still traveling under the moonlight. Having chosen a different route, Aran had to spend more time on the road if she wanted to meet Chu Hengyuan beyond the pass. After covering another long stretch, she finally found an abandoned mountain temple to rest. Fortunately, it was late autumn, and the area around the temple was littered with dead branches and rotting leaves; it wasn't hard to get a fire going. Otherwise, the night would have been unbearable without anything to keep out the cold.
"It's all that stinking man's fault for not taking me with him, leaving me here to suffer. Stinking man, wicked man," Aran muttered as she added dry firewood to her blaze. "I wonder if he'll be surprised or touched when we rendezvous beyond the pass?" Once the fire was burning well enough, she went out to retrieve her dry rations and water from her horse, then sat by the fire to eat, continuing to think about that stinking man as she did.
Chapter 293