Still no one responded.
Jiang Yanyi keenly sensed that something was wrong.
This place is located in a concave corner and the soldiers in the sentry tower cannot see this side.
She was worried about Qiu Kui, but she also knew that as a woman, she would not be able to fight back if she really encountered anything. She shouted without hesitation: "Help—Ugh—"
A dark shadow suddenly jumped out from the bushes. As soon as Jiang Yanyi shouted "Help", his mouth was covered and he was pushed to the ground.
All the chestnuts in the basket scattered out, the lantern fell to the ground, and the candle inside quickly ignited the paper cover.
Jiang Yanyi's back was pressed by the gravel on the ground, and the sharp pain made her scream but she could only make a grunting sound.
The man covered her mouth and nose tightly, and his body exuded a sour smell of not taking a bath for years. Jiang Yanyi scratched and scratched the man, her nails digging deep into the flesh on the back of his hand.
The man felt pain and hit Jiang Yanyi's abdomen hard with his knee.
Jiang Yanyi suddenly curled up in pain, and his vision went dark.
"You stinky bitch, you've finally fallen into my hands!"
The man spat, and the sound sounded vaguely familiar.
Jiang Yanyi raised his eyes with difficulty, and with the light of the burning lantern, he could barely see the man's face full of pits and black spots.
It turned out to be the man with the pockmarked face who had teased her on the day he first arrived at Huotouying and had a bowl of porridge thrown by her!
The pockmarked man touched Jiang Yanyi's face with the back of his hand, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth as he smiled, his eyes revealing undisguised desire: "This little girl is so pretty..."
Jiang Yanyi almost vomited. She didn't know where she got the strength from, but when the pockmarked man's face didn't cover her mouth tightly, she turned her head and bit the pockmarked man's hand with all her strength, almost tearing off a piece of flesh.
The pockmarked man's face was distorted with pain, but he dared not cry out. He could only grit his teeth and endure it.
"Bitch—"
He was so angry that he slapped Jiang Yanyi hard.
Jiang Yanyi's ears were buzzing from the slap, and he finally opened his mouth, but he didn't care about anything else and shouted, "Help—"
This shrill sound was heard from far away in the night.
Feng Shuo and several of his personal guards were walking towards a bend near the recessed corner, and Chi Qing was riding a horse alongside him.
"Why isn't there another sentry tower on this side of the bend?" Feng Shuo had been marching and fighting for many years, and he could tell at a glance that the concave corner over there was a blind spot for both sides.
Chi Qing said: "The sentry towers were all set up originally."
He took a look at the nearby terrain and analyzed: "The sentry tower on this side of the bend is less than a hundred feet away from the next sentry tower. It is not cost-effective to set up another sentry tower in the middle just to watch a concave corner."
Unexpectedly, as soon as he finished speaking, a woman's shrill cry for help came from the front.
Without waiting for the people near the sentry tower to react, Feng Shuo frowned and rode over first, and his followers quickly followed.
Chi Qing slapped himself on the forehead and urged his horse to follow.
The group reached the corner and looked around with torches, but there was no one in sight. The only place where someone could hide was a patch of grass near the wooden fence.
The followers surrounded the bushes in a fan shape and searched through them with knives.
Feng Shuo found that there seemed to be black ash left by something burnt in an open space. He rode his horse closer and keenly discovered a few sugar-roasted chestnuts that were trampled into the mud.
His eyes suddenly turned cold. He drew the sword from his waist and pushed aside the tall grass. Sure enough, he found more sugar-roasted chestnuts and a bamboo basket in the grass.
"Master, there is a woman here!"
The henchman who was searching the bushes called out.
Feng Shuo urged his horse over to take a look and found that the person lying in the grass was the kitchen assistant whom he had seen in the Huotou Camp before.
The kitchen helper is here, so the cook should be here too.
Feng Shuo glanced at Qiu Kui who was lying in the grass. Blood was oozing from her forehead and there was blood on a palm-sized stone beside her. It was obvious that someone had hit her on the head with a stone.
"Is the person still alive?" Feng Shuo asked.
The attendant checked Qiu Kui's breath and replied, "He's still breathing."
The darkness of night concealed the traces of the ruffled grass. Feng Shuo was on horseback, with a wider field of vision than the guards. With the light of the torch, he suddenly discovered that something seemed to be dragged behind the grass.
He dismounted, took the torch handed to him by his personal attendant, pushed aside the grass and walked to the wooden fence that was more than ten feet high.
Sure enough, a big hole was found under the wooden fence.
The grass outside the fence also seemed to have drag marks.
The followers who followed were horrified. Covered by the weeds, no one from the outside could see that there was a hole big enough for two people to crawl out at the same time.
Feng Shuo looked grim. He kicked the wooden fence and flipped over the fence.
He threw away the torch and searched in the moonlight along the traces of flattened weeds. His steps were as light as a big cat and made no sound at all.
Behind the bushes was a poplar forest. Feng Shuo walked for a while following the indentation and found that the indentation on the ground suddenly disappeared.
He looked around and fixed his eyes on a tall poplar tree not far away.
The pockmarked man was hiding behind the tree. He tried hard to control his heavy breathing, staring back vigilantly, with a dagger in his hand.
After Jiang Yanyi shouted for help, he was knocked unconscious by his knife.
He has made preparations to fight to the death. If he is caught, the worst that can happen is that he will take Jiang Yanyi as a hostage.
But when he looked back again, he found that the young man who had just come to him was gone.
The pockmarked man suddenly felt something was wrong. He raised the dagger in his hand high and carefully poked half of his head out from behind the tree.
A black shadow suddenly fell from the tree. Feng Shuo stepped on the top of the pockmarked face's head. When he landed, he made a spinning kick on the pockmarked face's chest with his other foot. The pockmarked face flew backwards and hit a poplar tree. He spit out a mouthful of blood and fainted.
Half life is almost gone.
Feng Shuo then glanced at Jiang Yanyi who had fainted under the tree, and his breathing stopped slightly.
She lowered her head, and the scattered hair on her temples revealed a kind of enchantment in her sadness and beauty. There was not much blood on her lips, which made people feel pity for her and inexplicably gave rise to a desire to abuse and ravage her.
The five distinct fingerprints on her left cheek looked particularly shocking against her pale skin.
Two of the laces of the dress were torn off, revealing a delicate collarbone and half of a round shoulder. The crabapple-colored hoodie was faintly visible under the outer shirt, wrapped in front of the chest, round and bulging. Although one couldn't even make out the embroidery, it made people imagine more.
The thin red ribbon extended all the way to her snow-white neck and was tied into a fragile knot behind her black hair.
The moonlight shone through the gaps in the shade of the trees, and her porcelain skin seemed to glow.
The cry of a crow in the forest startled Feng Shuo back to his senses. He quickly retracted his gaze, took off his cloak, turned his face and put it around Jiang Yanyi, and after hesitating for a moment, he picked him up horizontally.
His ears were startlingly red in the moonlight.
When the followers rushed over, they saw their master holding a man in his arms, wrapped tightly in a cloak, and walking out at a fast pace, leaving only one sentence: "Tie the man inside and take him back to the barracks!"
The attendants looked at each other in bewilderment for a moment. For all these years, there had not been even a female bird in the master's house. This was the first time they had seen the master hugging someone like this.
It was already the hour of Hai, and there was no light in the barracks. Only torches were still burning in the watchtowers and braziers on three-legged wooden frames.
The women at the Huyanglin barracks couldn't help but feel worried when they saw that Jiang Yanyi and Qiu Kui hadn't returned yet.
"Master Jiang and Qiu Kui haven't come back at this time. Could something have happened?" a woman whispered.
Someone immediately responded, "How about we tell Captain Guo?"
Captain Guo is the small leader who is now in charge of the barracks here.
Chunxiang lay on the bed, looking at the empty bed of Jiang Yanyi and Qiu Kui opposite her, listening to the women discussing these things in low voices, her heart beating like a drum.
In the evening, she met Liu Cheng in the poplar forest, and Liu Cheng's words echoed in her ears again.
She didn't know Liu Cheng's plan, but Jiang Yanyi hadn't come back yet, so Liu Cheng must have done something.
Fearing that the barracks would find out that someone was missing and now they were going to ruin Liu Cheng's plan, Chunxiang immediately acted impatient and shouted at the two people who had just spoken: "What are you arguing about? Are you going to let us sleep?"
She has always been the most domineering among women. If she gets angry, the women in the past will never offend her again.
But tonight, the two women who were talking were not stopped by Chunxiang. Instead, they murmured in a low voice: "I don't know why she is so proud all day long. Master Jiang is a cook in the kitchen, but he doesn't show off like her."
"You think it's great to be with a general, but you don't even think about your own status. How can a slut in a military camp expect to become someone's concubine in the future?"
"She either drank too much medicine or she would have been infertile long ago. What's the point of marrying her?"
Every word hit Chunxiang's sore spot.
Chunxiang was furious. She got up from the bed, walked over, grabbed the hair of the woman closest to her, and started slapping her: "You bitch, you used to be so rude when I did you good things, and now that the new bitch is in power, you are so rude again!"
A fight broke out, and the women who originally didn't want to get involved and pretended to be asleep had to stand up and stop it.
Chunxiang was held back by several women and refused to give up. She cursed, "What do you think that Jiang is? He hasn't come back yet. He might be in bed with that wild man!"
"If you are not afraid of her revenge in the future, and you insist on reporting tonight that she did not return to the barracks to ruin her, go ahead and try!"
After saying that, he stormed back to his bed.
The women in the barracks had never had much dealings with Jiang Yanyi, and after being frightened by Chunxiang, they thought it was better to have less trouble and went to rest.
When they went to Huotouying the next day and Chef Li asked about it, they learned that Jiang Yanyi had not come to the kitchen today, and they felt something was wrong.
Chunxiang took Liu Cheng to a secluded place and secretly asked him about what happened last night.
"Have you already given that little hoof to..." Chunxiang secretly made a gesture of wiping her neck.
Liu Cheng stared around with vigilant eyes, but still had a smile on his face, seemingly no different from usual: "What are you talking about? I stayed in the barracks with Zhao Si and the others last night."
Chunxiang had a hunch that Liu Cheng was not telling her the truth. She wanted to ask more questions, but Liu Cheng said, "Don't worry, no matter whether she is dead or alive, no one will find out about us."
When Chunxiang heard this, she immediately realized that Liu Cheng must have taken action last night.
She couldn't help but become even more panicked. She didn't care about Jiang Yanyi's life or death, but this was a life after all. If she was suspected, her attempt to take credit would also be discovered, and she would never be able to clear herself even if she jumped into the Yellow River.
"No, what if..." Chunxiang just started to speak when she was interrupted by Liu Cheng.
"Okay, I've been out for so long, I have to go back, otherwise it will arouse suspicion." Liu Cheng said and left first.
Chunxiang stamped her feet in anger, feeling panicked and sad. It was obvious that Liu Cheng didn't care about her safety.
There was a sudden commotion outside, someone was calling Xiang's name, so she had to put her thoughts aside and go outside.
"You keep shouting, are you calling for the soul?"
For some reason, her right eyelid has been twitching since this morning, and she feels particularly uneasy.
When Chunxiang got outside the barracks, her face suddenly changed.
The person who came was the flag officer who had taken her to claim the reward.
The flag officer was born with a fierce look, and the scar on his face looked even more ferocious when he looked at Chunxiang. He waved to the soldiers behind him and shouted, "Tie up this lowly person who pretended to be a cook in the Fire Camp to receive the reward from the general!"