Chapter 29
Chapter 29: A Close Call
Gu Shi Yi clasped her fists and gave him her most sincere, exhausted smile.
“Brother, can we not fight? Can you let your little brother go?”
The man didn’t answer. He drew his saber and swung.
Gu Shi Yi sidestepped with a soft sigh, kicked him hard in the ribs, and sent him sprawling. He tried to push himself up. Gu Shi Yi stepped in and punched him square in the forehead.
Bang!
His eyes went wide. His gaze turned empty, and he fell backward, out cold.
Gu Shi Yi exhaled.
“I told you not to fight.”
She brushed dust from her sleeves, turned, and went to pick up Great King, still muttering under her breath.
“Now the horse ran off, and my bundle’s still on it. That’s my entire life savings. If it’s gone, I’ll be begging on street corners. I have to go get it back…”
She hadn’t even finished complaining when something screamed through the air.
Whoosh!
Gu Shi Yi’s face changed. She couldn’t turn in time. She lunged forward, planted her hands, and rolled hard into the grass across from her. An arrow scraped her shoulder and sank into the dirt beside her with a vicious thunk.
Gu Shi Yi didn’t pause to admire it. She rolled again—twice—until she crashed into the bushes by the road. A large boulder sat there like a gift from heaven. She tucked herself behind it, heart hammering, and peeked out.
Pu Yun Tian.
The same Pu Yun Tian who had “left town.”
He stepped into view as if he’d been waiting for her to breathe wrong. Behind him stood his vicious servants, weapons in hand. Pu Yun Tian held a small bow, the string still trembling.
So that arrow had been his.
Gu Shi Yi frowned and glanced at her left shoulder. The scrape wasn’t deep, but a strange heat pulsed under the skin. Her expression tightened. She wiped a finger through the blood, brought it to her nose, and felt her temper explode.
“Fuck your mother. You poisoned it?! Do you really have to play this dirty?”
This wasn’t a warning. This was an execution.
Gu Shi Yi wanted to slap herself.
If I’d known there was an ambush, I should’ve run the moment I saw them. Now the horse is gone, the poison’s in, and I’m just waiting to be dragged back like livestock.
She bit her lip hard, then tapped several points around the wound. The bleeding slowed. The pain dulled—only to be replaced by an itchy, creeping sensation that crawled under her skin.
Poison spreading with blood. Classic.
Her bundle had antidotes. Of course it did. Years on the road had taught her that much.
Her bundle was also currently galloping back into town on a half-dead horse.
“Damn it…”
She forced herself to think. Great King was still with her. She set him behind the boulder and lowered her voice.
“Hide. Stay hidden. When things settle, I’ll come back for you.”
Great King wriggled, flashed into a streak of green light, and vanished into the ground as if the earth had swallowed him.
Outside, footsteps crunched closer. Pu Yun Tian’s handsome face looked carved from ice, and his eyes were worse. He lifted an arrow as if showing off.
“Kid. That arrow was poisoned. As long as it grazes skin, you’ll be poisoned in a few breaths—limbs numb, hands and feet weak. Kid… if you’re so capable, run again.”
Behind him, blades came free with a chorus of metallic whispers. The servants surged forward.
Gu Shi Yi stayed perfectly still.
Several sabers chopped down at once, slicing with cold wind. Pu Yun Tian snapped, “Don’t hit anything vital. This young lord still needs him alive to answer questions!”
The blades landed.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Not flesh—cloth.
The servants froze. Pu Yun Tian strode in, snatched a saber, and lifted the “body” with the tip.
It was nothing but a coarse shirt.
A yellow talisman was pasted to the chest.
Pu Yun Tian’s pupils tightened. He reached to tear it free—
—and the talisman crumbled into fine ash on a sudden breeze, vanishing like it had never existed.
“Cicada-Shedding Escape Technique?”
Pu Yun Tian’s face shifted.
“This kid knows Daoist arts?”
Pu Yun Tian could use that technique too. But to fool a whole group with a single talisman, then erase the talisman afterward so cleanly there was nothing to trace? He couldn’t do that.
His voice turned vicious.
“Chase!”
Veins stood out at his temple.
“How is he this hard to deal with?!”
He’d made a noisy show of leaving town to lure the kid out. He’d only sent four men to block the road so he could strike from concealment. He’d even used slow-acting poison so he could capture the kid alive.
And still—still the kid slipped away.
Pu Yun Tian ground his teeth.
“Chase!”
Behind him, the servants exchanged helpless looks. One finally dared to ask, “Young Lord… which way?”
Pu Yun Tian kicked him, hard. He scanned the road and the bushes, but there was no sign of the target. Gritting his teeth, he tossed the saber aside and made a quick calculation with his fingers. After a long moment, he pointed sharply.
“That way!”
They ran after him, leaving only a discarded shirt and the broken clay jar tossed to one side.
From beneath the jar, a streak of green light darted into the trees, quick as an angry firefly.
“Gu Shi Yi,” it muttered, “you’d better run faster.”
Gu Shi Yi was already running.
Not jogging. Not fleeing with dignity.
Running like her life depended on it, because it did.
“Master, protect me… Master, protect me…”
She was lucky. Years of being dragged around the jianghu by Old Daoist Priest had taught her countless ways to stay alive. Sewing talismans into her clothes was one of them. Two, specifically: one Cicada-Shedding Escape Technique, and one Toxin-Purging Talisman.
The Toxin-Purging Talisman could suppress poison—briefly.
Briefly was all she needed.
Gu Shi Yi ran down the official road like a person possessed, true qi churning in her chest. Dust kicked up behind her in a long, frantic tail. After two li, she cut sharply into the woods and plunged into thick shrubs, leaping and scrambling until she crossed a ravine and hauled herself up a small slope.
Right as she reached the top, the talisman’s effect snapped off like a cut string.
Her legs went soft.
Gu Shi Yi glanced down—and saw an official road not far below, with a long caravan moving along it in a line of swaying shadows.
The world tilted.
She grabbed a tree, but her fingers didn’t seem to know what to do anymore. Dizziness swallowed her. Her body pitched forward.
The ground ahead was a gentle slope. She hit it and started rolling.
At first she managed to curl up and shield her head. Then her body slammed into a large rock.
Crack.
A sound like a branch snapping—only it came from inside her chest. She spat a mouthful of blood, and her vision went black.
When she opened her eyes again, the sky above was a clear, endless blue.
“Mm…”
A painful groan crawled out of her throat. Her body wouldn’t move. She turned her head with effort and realized she was lying on a jolting carriage, on something hard and uncomfortable.
Someone leaned into view.
“You’re awake?”
A bearded face. A bulbous nose, red as if it lived in wine. His breath certainly did. Gu Shi Yi tried to speak, but blood slid from the corner of her mouth.
The man snorted.
“You were poisoned, and you rolled down a mountain. Broke a rib. Kid… you’re lucky you ran into our Sixth Master. Otherwise you’d be feeding wolves tonight.”
Gu Shi Yi tried again to form words. Her insides screamed. Her head throbbed. Darkness took her.
When she woke again, it was night. She lay on a wide shared bed in an inn. Two men on either side snored like thunder. The stench of sweaty feet was so thick it practically had weight.
Gu Shi Yi took one breath and promptly fainted again.
When she woke the next time, she was in a different carriage compartment. The bearded man was gone. In his place sat an old servant woman in coarse clothes, eyes sharp with the practiced worry of someone used to caring for the wounded. The moment she saw Gu Shi Yi’s lashes flutter, she leaned in.
“You’re awake. Do you feel any better?”
Gu Shi Yi blinked. Her throat was dry enough to scrape. She tried to speak, but only a weak sound came out.
The old servant woman didn’t hesitate. She poured water into a rough bowl, helped Gu Shi Yi up, and fed her a few careful sips. The cool water slid down like mercy. Gu Shi Yi’s mind cleared just enough for her to ask, voice hoarse, “Where… am I?”
The old servant woman propped a cloth behind her head to raise it slightly.
“We’re with the Dragon-Tiger Escort Bureau. You rolled down the mountain and ran into our Sixth Master. He saved you…”
She paused, then her face turned awkward, as if she’d stepped on something embarrassing.
“You’re… a young lady, aren’t you? Earlier, they didn’t notice. They had Liu Two and the others look after you for two days. Then… when we reached the city, we hired a physician. The physician took your pulse and only then said you’re a woman…”
She watched Gu Shi Yi’s expression carefully, worry written all over her.
“Sixth Master sent me to care for you, young lady. And… Liu Two and the others, they did take care of you those two days, but they didn’t dare do anything. In the mountains there was no doctor, no medicine, so they only fed you some rough herbs to stop bleeding. It was an emergency. Young lady… you won’t blame them, right?”
In this era, reputation could crush a person as easily as a stone. The injured traveler in front of her wasn’t truly young—probably married, even—yet she’d tumbled down a high slope like a sack of grain.
Sixth Master was softhearted. He’d seen an injured traveler and couldn’t leave her. So Liu Two and the others had hauled her into the cart. They hadn’t looked closely. Last night, they’d even slept on the same shared bed as her.
If her husband’s family found out… there’d be divorce. Disgrace. Ruin.
The old servant woman had clearly been chewing on that fear for days.
Sixth Master had even beaten Liu Two and the others for it.
“You idiots! You saved someone and didn’t even check if it was a man or a woman!”
Liu Two and his men had cried injustice.
“Sixth Master, look at her! What part of her looks like a woman? And if we stripped her to check, wouldn’t that ruin her innocence even more?”
They had no traveling physician, only ordinary bruise medicine. She’d had internal injuries, coughing blood. They hadn’t dared touch her beyond lifting her onto the cart and leaving her to rest. They’d done nothing.
But “done nothing” didn’t always protect a person’s reputation in this world.
So Sixth Master had rearranged everything: freed up a covered carriage and assigned an old servant woman who cooked meals to care for the injured.
Now the old servant woman watched Gu Shi Yi with raw worry, afraid she might choose death over shame.
Gu Shi Yi didn’t answer right away. She was looking down at her chest.
The Clay Doll.
The oilcloth pouch still hung there, safe and intact.
Only then did she finally relax.
Seeing her glance down, the old servant woman rushed to reassure her.
“Don’t worry, young lady. You fell from the mountain and even spat blood, so they were afraid you had serious internal injuries. No one dared touch you. They only bandaged your shoulder. When the physician needed to feel your ribs, I was the one who loosened your clothes…”
Gu Shi Yi blinked, then finally understood what the old servant woman thought she was worried about.
“Oh… Auntie, you misunderstood. Don’t worry. I won’t… I won’t take it the wrong way.”
What was there to take the wrong way? Staying alive was the point. And after following Old Daoist Priest for years, she’d seen more than enough of the world’s shamelessness to build a house out of it. If she truly cared about that sort of thing, she would’ve clawed her eyes out and hanged herself long ago.
The old servant woman stared, then her shoulders sagged with relief.
“That’s good. That’s good. Reputation can’t compete with staying alive. It’s good you can think like that, young lady.”
Gu Shi Yi’s internal injuries were severe, and her energy was thin as paper. After speaking a bit, she sank into sleep again.
For three days, it went on like that—sleep, wake, sleep. But the physician they’d hired was truly competent. By the fourth day, Gu Shi Yi spent more time awake. She spoke more with the old servant woman and learned her surname was Gu.
The old woman beamed.
“So we even share a surname! Eight hundred years ago, we were one family.”
Gu Shi Yi immediately took the hint and called her Aunt Gu with sincere warmth. Aunt Gu laughed, pleased.
“Good! Our family had a whole pile of boys and only two girls. Sadly, they both had rotten fates. After they married out, within a couple years one died of illness, and one died giving birth…”