Almost there.
These two words, in Lu Dantao’s brief life of a little over ten years, she had heard countless times. Ever since she could remember, these two words had followed her like a shadow, lingering around her ears.
Sometimes light and fleeting, sometimes heavy and weighty, but most of the time, they were like fallen leaves in the wind, spoken and then gone.
If one had to point out a purpose, it would probably be either a sedative or a stimulant.
For example, when studying became too exhausting and she wanted to give up, the teacher would soothe her, saying, “Hold on, almost there. Once the National college entrance exam is over, it will be easy.”
Or when she was little and asked her parents when they would come home, they would hurriedly reply over the phone with a single “almost there,” and then there would be nothing more. When she saw them again, it would only be another “almost there.”
When Xue Yao said these two words, to Lu Dantao, it sounded no different.
She held no hope at all.
Still, she was curious—
She raised her head and looked at the young man beside her. He stood upright, an indescribable certainty gathered in his brows and eyes, as if he were completely familiar with this desolate mountain wilderness.
The way he looked… it really seemed as though he was the one who had transmigrated into the book.
A minor character destined to die early, where exactly did he get this confidence from day after day?
“With the way he’s acting, it’s like he’s been to this deep mountain forest before.” She lowered her head and muttered softly.
Xue Yao: …
He truly had never been here.
But that old pine tree had appeared again and again in his childhood memories.
The Xue family army was powerful. Among the three sons of the Xue family, only the eldest brother and second brother were stationed at the border all year round.
As for his father, his elder sister, and his younger self, they had always remained in the capital.
His father had spent half his life on the battlefield. To him, the capital was like a birdcage. To pass the long and tedious days, what he loved most was recounting stories from his prime years.
He never spoke of glorious military achievements, nor of the tragic scenes of life and death. Instead, he was especially fond of telling a seemingly insignificant old story—
When the Defender Duke was young, he had once been just like Xue Yao at this very moment, relentlessly pursued by the Northern Barbarians and lost deep within the mountains.
The Northern Barbarians had occupied the borderlands for a long time and were extremely familiar with the terrain. Just as he had reached a dead end, a crooked old pine tree suddenly came into his sight.
In a daze, the Defender Duke mistook it for guidance from an immortal and followed the direction in which the tree leaned. By sheer luck, he avoided the Northern Barbarians’ pursuit and found a stream. Following it all the way, he unexpectedly came across a family living in the mountains. With their help, he survived a desperate situation.
After returning to the army, he eventually drove the Northern Barbarians out of Shouzhou.
His father’s words were engraved deep in his heart.
He had never set foot on the borderlands, yet in his mind, he had already traced this land thousands upon thousands of times.
Not long before something happened to the Defender Duke’s Residence, his father had even told him that if he ever had the chance to go to the border, he must make sure to visit Xiaomao Mountain.
There was a thatched hut there, built by his father with his own hands.
Unexpectedly, after all the twists and turns, he still ended up here.
This was Xiaomao Mountain, Shougou Ridge, the very place his father had once accidentally wandered into.
If they went further ahead, they would come upon a mountain stream, and that thatched hut was located right beside it.
After so many years, whether the hut still remained, no one could say.
But the news that Pei the traitor and his men had obtained, about traces of former Xue family subordinates still lingering in Xiaomao Mountain, perhaps he could find clues in that hut.
However.
There was a saying in the world that ideals are full, while reality is lean.
There was also another saying, that even a horse can be run to death across mountains.
From the faint light of dawn, the two of them walked until the sun hung high in the sky, and only then did they barely reach the vicinity of the old pine tree.
The pine tree grew sideways out of a crack in the rock wall, undoubtedly matching the image his father had described in Xue Yao’s memory.
But beneath the tree, there was not the slightest trace of any thatched hut.
Xue Yao frowned and took a few steps forward, intending to investigate more carefully.
Unexpectedly, the person behind him did not follow his pace, and even tugged his robe askew with those small hands.
He stopped in his tracks, about to turn around and tell her to let go of his clothes, when he suddenly realized that she seemed to have been silent for quite a while.
He turned his head, only to see Lu Dantao looking completely drained, her whole body limp as she drooped her head. At some point, a piece of withered grass had gotten stuck in her hair bun, swaying with each of her weak steps.
He raised a hand and nudged her shoulder. “You…”
Before he could finish speaking, she suddenly lifted her head.
Her small face was filthy, her lips somewhat pale, her almond-shaped eyes red, her expression utterly despairing.
Xue Yao’s brow twitched.
Immediately after, he heard her shout with a sobbing tone, “We’ve been walking for so long! Where exactly are we going?!”
“I’m so hungry…”
“I can’t walk anymore…”
Lu Dantao sniffed, still clutching Xue Yao’s robe, and used the pull to drop herself onto the ground.
She no longer had the energy to think about whether there might be snakes, insects, or rodents on the ground. If she starved to death anyway, her body would rot and stink, and in the end she would just become a pile of white bones.
Xue Yao was tugged off balance by her, his robe loosening slightly and revealing his clearly defined collarbones.
Suppressing his impatience, he bent down and pried her fingers off his robe one by one.
Lu Dantao let him do as he pleased, too lazy to struggle. With the last bit of strength she had, she slapped his hand away hard, then withdrew her own and rested it on her knees, curling into a small ball, her head lowered as she remained silent.
Xue Yao froze for a moment, glancing at the faint redness on the back of his hand, before his gaze slowly shifted to the girl’s face.
Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves, illuminating her dirty cheeks.
There were patches of gray and black all over, clearly the result of her wiping sweat haphazardly with her sleeve earlier, even leaving behind a distinct streak of mud.
Her eyelids drooped weakly, her lips pressed tightly together, both aggrieved and angry, looking pitiful beyond words.
Xue Yao silently looked away, straightened up, and casually plucked the withered grass from her hair before turning to leave.
Lu Dantao did not move at all.
Go on then, leave if you want. She could not walk anymore anyway, so she might as well just rot and stink here alone.
She was really so hungry.
Since leaving the apothecary yesterday morning, she had only eaten one bowl of noodles and two meat buns, and then began this extreme endurance challenge like a pentathlon.
‘Am I seriously not competing in the Olympics?’
‘No one said it would be this miserable after transmigrating into a book…’
‘I clearly read so many analysis posts. I’m practically a prophet in this world. At the very least, I should have ended up as some kind of Imperial Preceptor.’
‘And now I’m surviving in the wilderness like Bear Grylls.’
She bit her lip hard, pressing it tight, refusing to let any sob escape.
If she had known it would turn out like this, she might as well have run away from the capital to Jiangnan back then, found a village, and lived there incognito.
Or perhaps, yesterday she should have simply let Pei Di take her by force. At least she would have eaten well and slept well. It had to be better than starving to death in this deep mountain forest.
Lu Dantao stared blankly at the wild grass before her, swallowed, and pressed both hands over her stomach.
Suddenly, her eyes felt a little hot. She blinked hard, not wanting the tears to fall.
‘Wah… I was born in a peaceful era, never suffered a bit, and now after transmigrating into a book, I have to eat grass.’
Just as she tremblingly reached out her hand, intending to pluck a few blades of grass and stuff them into her mouth to stave off hunger, a distinct, well-defined hand suddenly appeared before her eyes.
The palm was broad, the joints clearly defined, holding several plump, reddish wild fruits.
She lifted her head in a daze.
Seeing that she did not react, the owner of the hand pushed it a little closer toward her.
Only then did Lu Dantao finally come back to her senses. She stared at the fruits and swallowed, her gaze slowly moving up to Xue Yao’s face as she asked hoarsely:
“…Are these fruits poisonous?”
Xue Yao: …
He silently took a breath, picked up one fruit, and put it into his mouth. Right in front of her, with a crisp “crunch,” he bit into it.
The sound was sharp, the juice rich.
Lu Dantao’s eyes widened instantly.
With lightning speed, she grabbed one, wiped it casually, and stuffed it into her mouth.
Sweet juice burst instantly across her tongue.
She devoured two or three in quick succession, swallowing them almost whole. Only when the cool flesh of the fruit truly settled into her stomach did the tears she had been holding back for so long finally roll down.
“Wuu…” she cried indistinctly as she ate, “So good…”
Back when Lu Dantao watched 《Cooking Master Boy》, she had thought it was ridiculously exaggerated, that only in anime would there be moments where food was so delicious it made people cry.
But now, as she gnawed on the fruits, tears streamed down her face. One hand kept picking up wild fruits and stuffing them into her mouth, while the other stayed busy wiping away her tears.
If her mouth had not been occupied, she would have wanted to start singing the theme song of 《Cooking Master Boy》.
Xue Yao looked at her small face, a complete mess of tear streaks and dirt, and felt a moment of speechlessness.
He took out all the remaining fruits from his chest and stuffed them into her hands, keeping only two or three for himself, then stood up and said, “Once you’ve eaten and have some strength, we’ll move.”
“Move where?” Lu Dantao hurriedly gathered the fruits into the fold of her robe, stood up and patted the dust off her backside and legs. She carefully checked herself for any bugs before quickly catching up to Xue Yao. “Where exactly are we going?”
The young man ahead did not respond at all.
Does this guy not have a mouth or something!
Lu Dantao clenched the fruit in her hand, made a fist, and swung it at him through the air.
…Forget it. For the sake of him finding her food, she would let it go for now.
Xue Yao stopped beneath that old pine tree, his gaze carefully sweeping over the surroundings.
His father had once said that back then, it was by following a uniquely angled branch on this old pine tree that he had found that life-saving stream.
But now, the direction that branch pointed to… was clearly a solid mountain wall.
How could a mountain wall save a life?
He took a few steps forward, about to examine it more closely, when the ground beneath his feet suddenly gave way.
Xue Yao lost his balance completely and fell downward. Wild grass and broken branches scraped against his clothes, producing a sharp rustling sound.
Lu Dantao, who had been busy munching on fruit, lifted her head at the noise, only to see that Xue Yao, who had just been standing there, had vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye.
She rushed over at once and looked down from where he had been standing, only to realize it was actually a hidden steep slope, with a patch of vegetation clearly crushed flat.
She quickly leaned forward and shouted down, “Yan Yun?”
“Are you down there?”
After a brief silence, his muffled voice came from below. “Mm.”
Xue Yao shook his head slightly where it had been lightly struck, then narrowed his eyes as he looked at the collapsed thatched hut before him.
With an expressionless face, Xue Yao called up to Lu Dantao from below:
“Stay up there.”
Lu Dantao turned her head and looked around. Although the sun was already up, the forest was so dense that it still felt gloomy and eerie.
Leaves rustled from time to time, and she kept worrying that it might be Pei Di bringing people in pursuit.
Now that she had eaten something and regained a bit of clarity, those earlier thoughts of ‘I might as well let Pei Di capture me’ had already flowed away with her tears.
Being captured by him was absolutely not an option.
Setting aside the fact that she could not endure that kind of imprisonment, she was currently in the original host’s body. That man was the murderer who had wiped out the original host’s entire family. If she ended up staying by Pei Di’s side, it would be utterly revolting.
Of course, those were still secondary concerns.
She leaned forward and peered downward. The most crucial point was—
‘What if this bastard doesn’t come back up? What if he just leaves me here?’
At that thought, she decisively shouted down, “I’m coming down to find you!”
Xue Yao suddenly raised his head. Seeing his own disheveled state, he quickly scrambled up from the ground and called out to stop her, “Don’t come down.”
Lu Dantao ignored him completely. She looked around, then carefully stuffed the remaining fruits deeper into her robe to make sure they would not fall out.
Then she reached out and grabbed a clump of wild grass that looked fairly sturdy, cautiously placing her foot onto the slope, intending to slowly slide down.
But after only moving two or three steps, the grass she was holding could no longer bear the weight.
With a “snap,” the stalk broke.
Lu Dantao let out a startled cry, and her whole body, carried by momentum, began rushing uncontrollably down the slope.
Xue Yao had just gotten up from the ground when he heard a rush of wind and the sound of grass brushing above his head. He instinctively looked up, only to see a petite figure rapidly enlarging in his vision, leaving him no time to dodge.
“Bang!”
Lu Dantao crashed solidly into his arms. The immense force sent both of them tumbling into the deep grass, and they could not stop themselves from rolling further down an even steeper slope.
Amid the dizzying spin of heaven and earth, the two clung tightly to each other, the same thought flashing through both their minds—
‘So smelly!’