Chapter 5
The teacup Zhao Linlang had used to block the concealed crossbow bolt was still perfectly intact. She curled her finger and flicked it against the cup, causing the small object to shatter. Two fragments shot toward an assassin, one striking him squarely in the back while the other slammed into the first, tearing straight through his abdomen.
Chai Zheng knew her parents well enough. Once they started fighting, the scene was bound to turn extremely bloody.
Of the four men who had come, only two managed to escape.
The commotion downstairs suddenly resumed.
Chai Yuandao reached out and pulled back the corpse hanging from the window. The man had lost a considerable amount of blood, and his death had been anything but peaceful. A section of his intestines was hanging out, and the exterior wall of Songhe Tower was probably covered in bits of flesh and blood. Yet strangely enough, no screams could be heard, at least not for the moment.
“Looks like the people behind this assassination attempt aren’t ordinary,” Chai Yuandao remarked.
He laid the corpse on the floor and quickly searched it, retrieving half a banknote and a handful of fine needles as thin as ox hairs.
Chai Yuandao was somewhat puzzled. If the man had released these concealed weapons before attempting to escape, even if he failed to injure anyone, he could at least have increased his chances of getting away safely. Could these things really be so rare that he would rather risk his life than leave them behind?
Chai Yuandao stared at the needles until his eyes nearly crossed, but he still couldn’t find anything unusual about them.
Just then, Zhao Linlang finished searching the other corpse.
This one was even stranger. There wasn’t so much as a banknote anywhere on his body, yet tucked inside his clothes was an ordinary wooden box.
The box was crudely made, had no lock, and could be purchased almost anywhere on the street.
The three adults exchanged glances, all suspecting that some kind of mechanism must be hidden inside the box.
Zhao Qian even suggested, “Perhaps we’d better throw it somewhere farther away… These four assassins were highly skilled but didn’t seem particularly intelligent. They came in a hurry and retreated just as quickly. Their preparations were meticulous, yet the entire operation was carried out carelessly. Something about this doesn’t add up.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than the floor of the second story suddenly began to tremble.
Zhao Linlang lost her footing, and the wooden box slipped from her hand.
Two black magnetic spheres rolled out.
The fine needles, influenced by the magnetic spheres, immediately slipped free of Chai Yuandao’s control, leaving several cuts across his palm!
Yet none of this was the attackers’ true objective.
Chai Zheng had already noticed that the shaking was most violent directly beneath their position.
The wooden floorboards split almost instantly, collapsing downward into a funnel-shaped opening.
No matter how sturdy the redwood table was, it couldn’t protect them when the floor itself had been pulled out from under them.
Chai Zheng and Ruan Linshuang fell together.
Ruan Yuzhang reacted a little too slowly. He was, after all, a delicate scholar. In his attempt to save the children, his arm scraped against a sharp splinter of wood, immediately leaving it covered in blood.
Chai Zheng was the first to fall into a loosely woven sack with wide mesh openings.
The hole deliberately cut into the floor wasn’t particularly large, just big enough for children to pass through. As a result, Ruan Linshuang was unable to escape either.
As for her father, he was struck on the back of the head and immediately lost consciousness.
The opening of the sack was quickly tied shut.
Chai Zheng felt herself being placed on something soft and squishy…
She reached out through the sack and felt a human spine beside her. From this, she concluded that whoever had kidnapped them was probably a remarkably agile fat man.
The sack was fairly large. As long as the two children didn’t move around too much, there was plenty of room inside.
Chai Zheng wasn’t panicking in the slightest.
After all, no matter what suffering she endured in this lifetime, it couldn’t possibly be worse than what she had experienced in her previous one.
She had already resigned herself to the possibility of repeating her former tragedies, so she was determined to take everything in stride.
She quietly comforted Ruan Linshuang.
“Sister, don’t be scared… I’ll protect you.”
No matter how outstanding Ruan Linshuang would become in the future, she was only four years old right now. Having been kidnapped and personally witnessed her father getting injured, it was only natural that she would feel frightened and upset.
She huddled beside Chai Zheng and gritted her teeth.
“Father says that a gentleman conducts himself uprightly to illuminate the Way and keeps his actions righteous to uphold justice. Therefore, he has nothing to fear (Note). Although I’m not a gentleman yet, I’m not afraid in my heart either.”
“…”
To think that she had already learned such rigid, overly serious principles from her father at such a young age.
There wasn’t anything innocent or adorable about them.
Chai Zheng pursed her lips and muttered, “You’ve got me. You never need to become a gentleman.”
Both children were afraid the other would get hurt, though their methods of protecting each other were rather different.
Ruan Linshuang held Chai Zheng’s hand, while Chai Zheng pulled apart two openings in the sack’s mesh and motioned for Ruan Linshuang to look outside.
Their kidnappers were far too careless.
They had treated both girls as ignorant little children. They hadn’t knocked them unconscious or even blindfolded them, openly exposing their destination.
The surrounding air gradually became more humid.
Before long, Chai Zheng caught the distinct smell of fish.
Through the openings in the sack, she discovered that they were at the busiest ferry dock in Chang’an.
A porter carrying a sack on his back only needed to slow his pace here, and he would quickly disappear into the crowd.
Even if her parents gave chase immediately, they would probably be unable to find him in such a short time.
A moment later, the sack shook violently.
Ruan Linshuang whispered, “We’re on a boat.”
It was an utterly unremarkable fishing boat.
The cabin was fairly spacious. Apart from the boatman, there was an elderly man wearing a bamboo hat.
The sack containing Chai Zheng and Ruan Linshuang was placed in front of the old man.
The fat man who had kidnapped them wasn’t completely heartless. He still remembered that there were two little children inside, so he handled the sack carefully.
The elderly man spoke the language of the Central Plains rather poorly. His words were heavily accented and muddled, and he often had to repeat himself several times before he could be understood.
“How did the plan go?” he asked.
“Not very well. We lost two brothers.”
The fat man lowered his voice.
“Before the operation, you never mentioned how capable our opponents were. You only said one group would lure them away while the other kidnapped the targets, and that we should follow your plan. We may be bandits, and we’ve never done anything to earn ourselves good karma. We know that once we’ve chosen this path, there’s no turning back, and death will eventually catch up with us… But you owe me an explanation for this.”
As he spoke, he loosened the rope securing the sack.
Ruan Linshuang quickly grabbed Chai Zheng and rubbed her face several times, leaving her fair, clean cheeks red and dirty.
She even rubbed Chai Zheng’s eyes until they hurt.
Chai Zheng’s eyes filled with tears, and she pouted miserably.
Meanwhile, despite being only four years old, Ruan Linshuang was already an extraordinarily talented actress.
She cried even more pitifully than Chai Zheng, tears streaming down her delicate face.
The fat man became even angrier.
“The people you wanted us to kidnap were actually two children?!”
“…Two children?”
Chai Zheng thought, “So Linshuang was one of their targets too? She wasn’t just dragged into this because of me?”
The bamboo hat, which concealed most of the elderly man’s face, tilted upward slightly, revealing his eyes.
Chai Zheng’s heart contracted in fear.
The elderly man had only one intact eye.
Its pupil was an eerie blood-red color, making him look like some unnatural creature that had been deliberately altered and cultivated into a monster since childhood.
His other eye socket was completely empty.
Someone had gouged out the eyeball.
The injury was many years old, and most of the wound had healed. However, the healed flesh had sunk inward, giving his appearance an unsettling, sinister quality.
The elderly man was also stunned for a moment when he saw Chai Zheng and Ruan Linshuang.
He reached out with a trembling hand and touched the top of Chai Zheng’s head, seemingly unable to believe that these were the people he had been desperately trying to abduct.
The realization dealt him a tremendous blow.
He appeared dazed, muttering over and over.
“How could they be so young? The divine oracle cannot be wrong. Could I have miscalculated the time… But I can’t afford to wait. I can’t afford to wait…”
At least the first few sentences contained some meaningful information.
After that, he was merely lamenting his miserable fate, fearing that he would never live to see the day when peace and order were restored to the land.
The more Chai Zheng listened, the more convinced she became that this elderly man wasn’t from Great Jing.
Although Zhao Qian would eventually become a useless emperor, he had actually done a fairly decent job during the early years of his reign.
He might not have been praised as an enlightened ruler by everyone under Heaven, but he had at least maintained the appearance of peace and prosperity.
Yet the elderly man was utterly devastated.
The sight of the two little girls in the sack seemed to strike him as cruelly as being kicked in the face.
Overcome with anguish, he began cursing the heavens for being blind and lamenting that his country would ultimately cease to be a country.
The fat man was frightened by his almost deranged behavior.
He pulled the sack backward, placing the two little girls in the shadows behind him.
Even though Chai Zheng knew that the fat man would hand her over to someone else for a little more money, at this particular moment, he could still be considered a relatively conscientious merchant by the standards of kidnappers.
Chai Zheng even took a few extra glances at him.
If she grew up and he was still alive, and they happened to cross paths again, she could just beat him until they were both bruised and bloodied.
There was no need to kill him.
The elderly man continued raving for a while before gradually calming down.
In that brief span of time, he seemed to have aged several more years. Even his voice had become hoarse.
“I’ll pay you double the amount promised. As for your fallen brothers… I genuinely didn’t know how difficult this operation would be. I’m deeply sorry for the irreparable losses you’ve suffered. If you don’t mind, I’ll compensate you with money.”
He spoke with the extravagance of someone wealthy enough to rival an entire nation.
“This envelope contains the other halves of all the banknotes. Besides that, I have a brocade pouch here. You can take it as well.”
The brocade pouch wasn’t particularly large. It didn’t look capable of holding many gold or silver ornaments.
The fat man accepted it skeptically and weighed it in his palm.
The elderly man continued, “Rest assured, the item inside that pouch is worth a thousand pieces of gold. It’ll provide you with enough wealth to live comfortably for several lifetimes.”
The fat man wasn’t entirely convinced.
Afraid that he might leave without understanding what he had received and then be unable to find anyone to hold accountable, he opened the pouch right there.
Inside was a golden branch about two inches long.
Three cat’s-eye gemstones were embedded in it, surrounded by exquisitely carved scales.
Whenever the branch was turned slightly, those scales reflected a shimmering green light.
The fat man had some knowledge of valuable objects, so he naturally understood that something like this could fetch an excellent price on the market.
He carefully put the branch back into the pouch and asked, “Do you still want these two children? If not, I’ll have someone send them back.”
The elderly man hesitated for a moment.
“Leave them here. My master is still waiting.”
Even if the elderly man had decided to send Chai Zheng back now, she would have thrown a tantrum and used every trick she could think of to stay.
That golden branch had displayed unmistakable regional characteristics.
There were probably no goldsmiths in the Great Jing Dynasty who would willingly craft such a strange-looking ornament.
Moreover, the materials used to make it were extremely difficult for ordinary people to obtain.
Even if the elderly man’s master wasn’t fabulously wealthy, they must at least belong to an official or aristocratic household.
Chai Zheng thought again, “Before kidnapping us, this old man didn’t know our exact ages. Leaving Linshuang aside for the moment, I’m the treasured daughter of Duke Chai’s household. Anyone asking around Chang’an should have been able to find out my age easily… This old man isn’t from Great Jing. I’d say there’s an eighty or ninety percent chance he came from the Kingdom of Musang.”
After the fat man disembarked, the boatman raised the anchor and hurried to leave the troublesome area behind.
Inside the gently rocking cabin, only three people remained: the old, the weak, and the helpless.
Ruan Linshuang tucked Chai Zheng farther behind her.
Then she lifted her pitiful little face and said, “Please don’t kill us. I can be useful to you.”
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