Chapter 10
Chapter 10: Jin An
After that, the road turned so brutal that Jin Sui had no time left to think about the beggar child.
For nearly a hundred li around Luo City, the land looked scrubbed raw by floodwater. Mountain gullies were clogged with silt as deep as a person. The official road was barely a road at all.
The first time Jin Sui saw forced laborers shoveling mud and clearing the way, Grandpa Ling grabbed her sleeve.
“Dirty your clothes. Now.”
Their robes were already filthy, but compared to the laborers—half-starved, caked in mud, hollow-eyed—they still stood out.
If his daughter-in-law and grandson were here too, digging until their hands bled, moving a little too slow and getting whipped by the constables… they would barely have rags on their backs. They would be chewing wheat husks. Dying in the mud.
Jin Sui carried the Divine Calculations Banner, but Grandpa Ling had started using it as a cane. She kept her certificate pressed against her chest, ready to flash it the instant a constable tried to seize them for labor.
More than once, a constable with predatory eyes approached, clearly thinking they’d found two more bodies to throw into the mire.
Even in this age, Buddhism and Daoism still commanded a thin respect. If the constable cared about omens, Grandpa Ling could talk his way past with blessings and lucky words. If he didn’t, a few coins of silver smoothed the path.
When they finally reached the outer gates of Luo City, the city was sealed tight.
No commoners in or out.
Grandpa Ling tried everything he could think of to get them inside—until Jin Sui caught his arm.
“If Mother and Little An are here,” she said quietly, “they might not be inside the city at all. If they were seized for labor, they’d be outside.”
That forced Grandpa Ling to stop and think.
They shifted focus to one thing: the convoy of convicts from Chang An.
For two days they asked around. Grandpa Ling fed a particular old constable again and again, and finally handed over a full tael of silver before the man gave them anything solid.
“That batch from Chang An was supposed to be exiled to the Yan Lands,” the constable said. “But Luo City needed bodies, so they got redirected here.”
He scratched at his jaw.
“They dig and clear mud all day. Hard to find. Wait until night. Go to the camp outside the city. They’re all kept there. You might hear something.”
They went.
The soldiers’ camp wouldn’t let anyone near. The refugee camp was chaos—rags, coughing, stink—but there was no sign of the convicts.
Only after wasting a full day and night did they realize the truth: the convict camp was worse than the refugee camp. And the guards were stricter.
Grandpa Ling tried old tricks. He planned to slip in with the night-soil transport crew.
There was no crew.
The camp didn’t even bother with latrines. People relieved themselves wherever they stood.
No—worse than that. The plan was simple: isolate the main city and let the refugees and convicts rot outside the walls.
In the end, Grandpa Ling and Jin Sui blended in with a goods transport team and slipped into the camp.
They split up and asked everywhere they dared.
Two more days.
Still nothing.
They started to wonder—had Madam Jiang and Jin An never reached Luo City? Had they been driven onward to the Yan Lands instead?
Then Jin Sui saw flames and black smoke rising from the wilderness. A constable led men to scatter quicklime over the ground.
Anyone who died near Luo City was burned in piles, bodies reduced to ash and stink.
A thought rose in Jin Sui’s mind, sharp as a blade.
She didn’t dare speak it aloud, but when she saw Grandpa Ling’s face—when she watched him seem to age ten years in a heartbeat—she knew he’d reached the same conclusion.
She forced her voice steady.
“We haven’t searched everywhere. Mother and Little An are still alive.”
Then Jin Sui caught on to a missing thread.
“Grandpa… we haven’t checked where they keep the sick.”
That snapped Grandpa Ling’s head up.
Hope, thin and brutal, flickered in his eyes. He hurried to ask.
The answer made Jin Sui’s skin crawl.
Anyone with illness—fever, chills, diarrhea, dysentery—was sent to mountain caves. The officials barely bothered to look. People were left to live or die.
The refugees had named it Ghost Cave.
Anyone could enter.
No one was allowed to leave.
This time Grandpa Ling spoke to Jin Sui with unusual firmness.
“You stay outside.”
Jin Sui didn’t hesitate.
“Where Grandfather goes, I go.”
Something crossed Grandpa Ling’s eyes—affection, yes, but also a wary respect Jin Sui didn’t understand.
She had taken masks and alcohol from the pocket-space laboratory ahead of time. She’d planned a lie, but Grandpa Ling didn’t ask where the strange items came from.
The hills near Luo City weren’t tall. The caves weren’t hard to locate.
What was hard was the bodies.
Before they even reached the caves, Grandpa Ling began shouting names into the valley.
“Jin An! A Qing!”
He made Jin Sui shout too. Her voice came out tight as wire.
“Mother! Little An!”
Their calls echoed against stone. People stumbled out from caves and brush, faces hollow, hands filthy.
None of them were Madam Jiang.
They pushed deeper, to the darkest cave mouth. Grandpa Ling’s throat turned raw from shouting.
Then—clank.
A stone rolled down from above.
A thin figure stood there, half hidden in shadow, gripping another stone as if he meant to throw it. But the moment he saw Grandpa Ling, his fingers went slack. The stone dropped from his hand.
“Grandfather!”
Jin Sui had seen what it took to find this boy—bandits, hunger, sleepless roads, Grandpa Ling’s old injuries, the endless fear.
Watching grandfather and grandson reunite, warmth flooded Jin Sui’s chest. Even the body’s lingering will felt soothed.
Then the noise drew more shapes—sick people drawn by shouting, by movement, by the scent of anything that might be food.
Jin Sui snapped into motion.
“Grandpa. They’re coming. Back inside—now.”
Jin An grabbed Grandpa Ling’s hand and pulled.
“The cave only has me and Mother. Grandfather and this brother—hurry inside!”
Even in the chaos, Jin Sui shot him a look.
“What do you mean, ‘this brother’? I’m your sister.”
Jin An stared at her from head to toe, disbelief plain on his dirt-smeared face. Then he looked at Grandpa Ling, as if asking whether she was lying.
Jin Sui didn’t argue with a child. She ruffled her brother’s tangled hair.
“You’ve suffered a lot, haven’t you? It’s fine now. From here on, Grandpa and Sister are with you.”