The waiting felt especially long.
The mountain wind whistled eerily through the bare branches.
Ming Zhao felt that the retainers had left, her grandmother was in poor health, and there were no trusted people around her—only the stragglers following behind. She didn’t want to gamble on human nature.
Mingshu clung tightly to Ming Zhao’s embrace, her small body trembling incessantly. Grandmother leaned against a rock, too weak even to cough, her chest rising and falling faintly.
Finally, Zhao Yong’s figure reappeared, and he gave a safe signal.
Ming Zhao breathed a sigh of relief. Supporting her grandmother and carefully leading Mingshu, she made her way toward the mountain hollow.
The scene before them was even bleaker than expected.
The so-called village was nothing more than three or four low, dilapidated shacks built of mud and stones, their roofs covered with thatch and tattered felt.
One of them was half-collapsed, and smoke was rising from there. In the embers of the charcoal fire, a broken clay pot was simmering, containing a paste-like substance of unrecognizable origin, emitting a strange odor that mingled wild herbs with mildew.
The other two shacks were empty, containing only tattered straw mats and fragments of pottery.
There were no chickens or dogs, no livestock, not even any intact traces of life. Only withered leaves and dust, swept up by the cold wind, swirled in the deathly silent hollow.
“It seems like refugees stopped here temporarily and then left, or…” one of the retainers whispered, swallowing the second half of his sentence.
Or, they had already died elsewhere.
Ming Zhao walked over to the embers, crouched down, and carefully stirred the contents of the clay pot with a stick.
In the paste, she could see scattered bits that looked like grass roots and tree bark. After a moment of silence, she looked up at Zhao Yong and said, “The fire isn’t completely out yet, so they must have left not long ago. This place is sheltered from the wind and warmer than outside. Uncle Zhao, have someone bring everyone over. Let’s rest here for now. Don’t light a fire yet. After the Hu cavalry have passed, we can build up the fire, use this clay pot to boil some hot water, and let everyone eat the last of their dry rations with the hot water.”
She stood up, her gaze sweeping over the dilapidated shacks. “Assign a few people to search these shelters carefully. See if there’s anything useful left behind, even if it’s just a few scraps of cloth or some rope. Then arrange for people to take turns keeping watch, expanding the perimeter a bit.”
Her arrangements were orderly, carrying a calm decisiveness that belied her age. The others seemed to find a pillar of strength in her and began to act as instructed.
The people behind them were also brought over. Their group had been fortunate so far, with no casualties.
The results of the search were disheartening—almost nothing was found. However, beneath a pile of dry grass in one corner, they discovered a small, curled-up body, already stiff and cold—a child of about two or three years old, emaciated to skin and bones, his little face blue and purple, long since lifeless.
The maidservant who found him let out a startled cry and stumbled back several steps. The others gathered around and fell silent, a chilling sense of shared sorrow spreading among them.
Ming Zhao walked over, glanced silently at the child, and said to Zhao Yong, “Find a place to bury him. Let him rest in peace.”
Zhao Yong’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he replied softly, “Alright.”
In these chaotic times, death was all too common.
Once the Hu cavalry had moved far enough away, several scouts returned along the marked path. The campfire was rekindled, burning brighter than before, bringing a hint of warmth.
Leading the way was Zhao Yong’s son, Zhao Huaiyuan, fourteen years old this year but already skilled in martial arts. His name had been given by Zhao Zhen, and he was originally supposed to join the army next year at fifteen, but chaos had erupted unexpectedly this year.
Fortunately, he had been scouting the path ahead and even brought back some food seized from a mountain stronghold during an internal conflict. The group managed to retrieve it, temporarily alleviating their urgent needs.
A clay pot boiled with stream water from the mountains, steam rising in wisps.
The people sipped hot water while slowly nibbling on cold, hard biscuits, chewing with deliberate slowness.
Ming Zhao let the boiled water cool slightly before carefully feeding a few sips to her grandmother. The elderly woman swallowed with difficulty, a faint hint of color returning to her ashen face.
Mingshu leaned against her, taking small sips of hot water, her large eyes staring blankly at the flickering flames.
“Young mistress,” Zhao Yong approached and sat on the other side of the fire, his face cast in shifting light and shadow by the flames. “This can’t go on. With so many people, our food won’t last more than two days. Even if we hide deep in the mountains, without food, we won’t need the Hu people to come for us—we’ll perish on our own.”
“I know,” Ming Zhao stared into the fire, the orange light dancing in her dark pupils. “Uncle Zhao, you mentioned earlier that there might be small paths in this area, trodden by hunters or fleeing refugees. Are we heading roughly in the direction of Huguan now?”
Zhao Yong thought for a moment, nodding uncertainly. “The general direction is correct, but the mountain paths are winding, with many forks. Without a guide, it’s easy to get lost. And even if the direction is right, Huguan… is simply too far away.”
His voice carried a sense of helplessness.
“We don’t necessarily have to reach Huguan directly,” Ming Zhao’s voice remained steady. “What we need is to survive, to find Father. As we head north, the Hu people may be wreaking havoc, but the Han people won’t be completely wiped out. There must be others like us—those unwilling to flee south or unable to escape, struggling to survive in the wilderness. There might even be scattered government troops or local strongholds defending themselves. Only by finding them will we have a chance.”
She raised her eyes to look at Zhao Yong. “Uncle Zhao, starting tomorrow, we must not only scout the path and watch for the Hu people but also pay attention to any signs of human activity—fresh footprints, recently extinguished campfires, discarded debris, even feces. We can’t overlook any trace. What we’re searching for isn’t just a path but signs of people.”
Zhao Yong was taken aback for a moment before nodding firmly. “I understand!”
They weren’t blindly heading toward a distant, elusive destination. They were searching for the scent of their own kind in this land of death, seeking a glimmer of vitality.
Night deepened, and the mountain wind grew especially biting, whistling sharply through the broken gaps of the makeshift shelter.
Most people huddled by the campfire or in the relatively intact corners of the shelter, drifting into fitful sleep, occasionally punctuated by suppressed murmurs or sobs.
Ming Zhao did not sleep.
She couldn’t. She sat beside her grandmother, cradling the old woman’s cold hands in her own still-warm ones. Her gaze drifted past the flickering flames to the boundless darkness outside the shelter. The outlines of the mountains loomed like crouching beasts, and the stars above were distant and cold.
She found herself standing on a narrow log bridge. The bridge was rough and decaying, covered in slippery moss, its ends vanishing into thick, impenetrable gray fog, with no discernible beginning or end.
Below the bridge was not rushing water but a bottomless, churning darkness as thick as ink, exuding a bone-chilling cold and a cloyingly sweet scent of decay.
“Come down…”
“Ming Zhao… come down…”
The voices rose from the abyss beneath the bridge, layered and overlapping, belonging to men, women, the old, and the young, carrying a strange, bone-penetrating allure.
The voices were not loud, yet they were unnervingly clear, piercing through the thick fog to ring directly in her ears, echoing deep within her heart.
Ming Zhao looked down.
In the churning darkness below the bridge, countless hands stretched out.
Those hands were pale and swollen, some stained with filthy mud or dark red scabs, their fingertips curling slightly, beckoning to her.
Arms densely packed, like aquatic weeds, crept up from the depths of the darkness, almost reaching the bridge planks.
“It’s not cold here…”
“There is no hunger here…”
“Here… your mother awaits…”
A gentle woman’s voice stood out with particular clarity, carrying a faint warmth that belonged to her mother, Yu Hanzhang—a warmth long blurred in memory. Ming Zhao’s heart clenched violently.
No!
She bit down hard on her lower lip, the taste of blood spreading across her tongue. It was a trap! The seduction of the abyss!
She stepped backward, one step, then another.
The rotting bridge planks groaned under her feet, as if they might snap at any moment.
“You cannot escape…”
“You belong here…”
“With us…”
The voices suddenly turned sharp and venomous, the beckoning arms stretching upward more urgently, their icy fingertips nearly brushing the hem of her skirt.
Fear flooded her body like water.
Ming Zhao whirled around and ran toward the other end of the bridge, into the unknown shrouded in gray mist.
She ran desperately, faster and faster, until her foot landed on the slickest patch of moss—!
She could even feel the despairing slip of her sole against the wet wood.
Her body lost balance, tilting backward.
The world spun upside down before her eyes—the gray mist, the decaying bridge wood, and below, countless eager, pale faces and waving arms all reaching for her.
Icy darkness, carrying a sweet, rotten stench, engulfed her, swallowing her whole.
“No—!”
Her eyes snapped open, a choked, stifled gasp escaping her throat.
Her heart hammered wildly in her chest. Cold air rushed into her burning throat, carrying the scent of dying embers and the stale air of the shack, stinging her lungs.
Cold sweat covered her forehead and back. As the chill wind blew in through the holes, she shivered.
The sensation of falling felt so real, as if her limbs were still sinking downward.
Instinctively, she curled up, her hands gripping the rough straw mat beneath her until she confirmed it was solid ground, not the void of an abyss.
Inside the shack, the light was dim. The embers of the campfire glowed faintly red, barely outlining the sleeping forms of her grandmother and Mingshu.
Her grandmother’s breathing remained weak and labored. Mingshu murmured restlessly in her sleep, her small head nuzzling into Ming Zhao’s embrace.
Outside, the mountain wind wailed, like the resentful sighs of the spirits in her dream, echoing from near and far.
Ming Zhao gasped for breath, slowly calming her racing heart. The chill and terror of the dream had not yet fully faded, but the pressures of reality—
hunger, cold, pursuers, her grandmother’s illness, the lives of over a hundred people—
descended upon her shoulders once more, heavier than mountains, colder than ice.
She did not disturb anyone, only slowly sat up, holding Mingshu tightly in her arms, wrapping the old coat that had slipped off more securely, and gazed out through the broken hole of the shack into the still deep night.
This damned heavens, couldn’t they give her a way to survive?
Others traveled through time with all sorts of cheats, while she had to play a survival game—the hellish kind.
Ming Zhao felt that this Jin Dynasty was nothing but hell disguised as the human world.
But she hadn’t done any evil in her past life either.
Couldn’t they let her live a few good days?
Author’s note: