Jiang Wuyan had just sat up when she heard the door being pushed open gently.
No matter how careful one was, an old door would always make a sound. Moreover, with Jiang Wuyan's sharp hearing, she immediately turned her head toward the door: "Who's there?"
No one answered. Instead, a gust of wind blew in, as if the wind had blown the door open.
Yet, what the intruder did not know was that the wind had also carried his scent along with it.
The intruder approached very cautiously. Had it not been for the scent riding on the wind and the sharp instincts honed in the dark, she probably would have remained completely oblivious.
While maintaining a blank expression on her face, her hand quietly tightened around her blind cane—
"Swish—"
A pebble came flying over in a familiar arc, striking her arm. At the same time, a child's curses rang out: "Bad woman, get out of my house!"
"You little brat, have you got a death wish?!"
Tao Dachai's voice followed immediately, sounding as though he was chasing after the child. He seemed to pin the child down, and the sound of him beating the child was heard next. After a brief venting, he was heard saying: "This little rascal is simply too outrageous. I'll make sure to teach him a good lesson!"
Jiang Wuyan merely hugged her blind cane to her chest like someone lacking any sense of security, putting on a frightened appearance.
"I am terribly sorry..." Tao Dachai's mumbling voice drew closer as he said, "I..."
"Get out of my house, get out!"
The child was stubborn to a fault. Having just taken a severe beating, he actually managed to crawl back up. Even though his words were slurring, he was still roaring with all his might.
Tao Dachai seemed to have his hands full with him as well. Right at that moment, Xiao Jinxu happened to return, standing at the doorway and asking with curiosity: "What's going on?"
Seeing this, Tao Dachai muttered a couple of apologies, set down the food meant for dinner, grabbed the child, and left.
Jiang Wuyan felt her way over to the table and sat down. She could smell the food on the table—it was still rice gruel, accompanied by a small plate of greens and a sweet potato.
Compared to her previous meal, in such a secluded little village, this dinner could be considered quite decent.
Yet Jiang Wuyan did not touch it.
"Why aren't you eating?" Xiao Jinxu stood beside her, asking with his usual concerned tone.
However, Jiang Wuyan detected the barely concealed abnormality in his tone. It was as if he were dying for her to notice it, so she simply went along with it and asked: "You seem to be anxious about something?"
Xiao Jinxu was slightly startled, then sat down beside her. Without any pretense or concealment, he blurted out openly like a simpleton: "I just went out for a stroll."
Jiang Wuyan had slept quite a long time, so his stroll had covered quite a distance: "You went out of the village?"
"Ah, yes. I figured we had to leave and go back eventually, so I wanted to find a way out and check whether those people had tracked us down here, but... it seems we're trapped here."
Everything he said sounded like it was for their own good, but the more pressing issue right now was—
He discovered that after leaving the village and walking in a huge circle, there was no other way out. No matter which direction he took, the dead end was always this village and the platform where they had descended.
Tall trees stood densely packed all around, concealing small ravines within. The mouths of these ravines were narrow, with taller trees growing from the bottom of the ravines all the way up to the upper tier. If one wasn't paying attention while walking through the woods, they could easily stumble and fall into these abyss-like small ravines.
After a thorough investigation, his conclusion was that there was a fault beneath Wugu Cliff. The "cliff bottom" directly below the platform and the cliff bottom reached by taking a detour around Wugu Cliff might not be the same cliff bottom at all.
This also explained why those who fell straight down Wugu Cliff left behind "no trace of their bones" and could not be found.
Because the people who fell were on the "upper tier," while the cliff bottom reached by taking the detour was on the lower tier.
Yet this was merely Xiao Jinxu's conjecture. The greater problem was that the assassin and his guards could not find him, and he could not find the way back either, as if they were trapped within this geological fault unless they could climb up the cliff.
However, while going down was easy, going back up proved somewhat difficult...
When Xiao Jinxu told Jiang Wuyan this, she was not surprised at all, as if she had known it all along.
Xiao Jinxu asked her anxiously: "We must find a way to leave. I feel this village... is rather strange. What do you think?"
Jiang Wuyan did not know whether he was deliberately probing her or simply empty-headed and mediocre, but since he chose to hand the initiative over to her...
She could hardly be blamed for setting up the stage properly.
"I am blind, I cannot see."
Xiao Jinxu: "..."
"However," Jiang Wuyan tilted her head slightly and smiled at him, "you can see. Could you help me do one thing?"
When she was cold and aloof, she gave off a feeling of keeping people a thousand miles away, as though everyone were her enemy.
Yet when she smiled, she possessed the enchanting allure of a sorceress.
He seemed bewitched, staring fixedly at her smiling face: "What do you want me to do?"
"Go... and steal something."
——
Xiao Jinxu went out again, and when he returned, he brought back plenty of wild fruits.
However, as a noble Crown Prince, the fact that he managed to think of picking fruit was already impressive enough; one could hardly expect him to identify the fruit or employ any actual foraging skills. The fruits he picked were a hodgepodge—red ones, green ones, big ones, small ones, some even bruised and squashed.
Seeing that Jiang Wuyan refused to touch the dinner Tao Dachai had brought, he enthusiastically offered the fruit, suggesting she taste them first.
Jiang Wuyan picked up a fruit, brought it under her nose to sniff, and said indifferently: "Do you want me to eat first, or do you want me to test the poison for you?"
"What kind of talk is that?" Xiao Jinxu asked, sounding aggrieved. "I went through all this trouble to pick these fruits for you just to thank you for saving my life. How can you think of me like that?"
Jiang Wuyan said nothing. She simply sorted the fruits, dividing the edible ones and inedible ones into two piles, after which she picked up a fruit, wiped it clean, and put it in her mouth.
She needed to replenish her energy; there were things to do tonight.
Seeing this, Xiao Jinxu picked a fruit of the same variety from the same pile. Watching her eat with apparent relish, he too took a confident bite—and nearly choked on the sourness!
"Ptoo—why doesn't yours seem sour?"
"Luck, I suppose," Jiang Wuyan replied indifferently. After eating two fruits, she returned to the wooden plank bed to rest a while longer.
"You..." This was the first time in his life Xiao Jinxu had encountered a woman who repeatedly gave him the cold shoulder, and moreover, this woman was fickle—one second she would suddenly beam at you with smiles, and the next second her expression would flip completely.
At times she seemed pitiful and mysterious, while at other times she seemed cold and merciless, practically asking for trouble.
Yet a woman like this inevitably tempted one to investigate further...
Seeing that she remained indifferent to his anger and felt her way onto the wooden plank bed to lie down, Xiao Jinxu deflated as if he could do nothing with her, sat down beside the bed, and praised: "You're quite something, aren't you? Just by sniffing so many fruits, you could tell them all apart?"
Having a sharp sense of smell didn't necessarily mean knowing which ones were poisonous and which ones weren't, did it?
Jiang Wuyan, now lying down, raised a hand to rest on her forehead, feeling the heat radiating from it.
As expected, she was running a fever. Her physical condition was already relatively poor to begin with, and she had numerous injuries on her body; catching a chill while having infected wounds made a fever entirely natural.
At that moment, apart from feeling weak and sore all over, she was also hit by wave after wave of chills, especially in the mountains where the nighttime temperature dropped drastically.
She lowered her arm and said faintly: "Lie down, and I'll tell you."