Chapter 176 The reunion
It was truly when it rains, it pours.
After the rest, Shu Huan and Liangchen walked in the direction of Shadow Moon Village while supporting each other. However, half-way, they discovered that the road leading to the village was completely blocked by the fallen rocks from the mountain. It was impossible to went past that and they had to be further away to prevent the eruption of torrent of mud and stones.
“Miss, what do we do?” At this moment, Liangchen was completely at loss about what to do.
Shu Huan also didn’t know. She looked up and saw that the sky was still cloudy. That rain also only fell sometimes. Their clothes were always wet after being half-dried.
“Let’s go,” She sighed. “Let’s go find a flat terrain…”
Her words just fell when she felt that her hand had been grabbed tightly and she was pulled. Then, she heard Liangchen shout from surprise, “Miss, look at that side, that side!”
Shu Huan’s heart jumped and looked in the direction that Liangchen pointed at. She saw two people stumbled to this side in a distance. The clothes were so dirty that their original color couldn’t be seen, but those figures werr very familiar. When they got closer, she saw the face of the two people clearer. She immediately rushed over from happiness and shouted, “Shang Xin, Meijing!”
“Miss…,” Shang Xin and Meijing also felt surprised. They were so happy that tears fell from joy.
They thought that they couldn’t see each other ever again!
After having survived from a great catastrophe, things like being reunited again and meeting an old friend in a foreign place couldn’t be considered a happy event.
The four were exhausted. They happily wept together. After the spirit got uplifted, they also talked more.
It turned out that when escaping last night, after Meijing climbed up from having fallen, she found out that it was chaos everywhere. People run around everywhere. Moreover, it was so dark that she couldn’t see far. She didn’t know where Shu Huan and the others had gone to.
Fortunately, Shang Xin was still at her side. The two supported each other as they went out of the city. They didn’t have any place to go, so, they remembered Shadow Moon village. After all, Shang Xin’s home was there. She wanted to come back and see if she could stay there. She also hoped that she could encounter Shu Huan, but didn’t expect that they truly encountered each other.
After the joy, the four were also helpless at their current state.
Shu Huan asked them, “Do you know how the city is now?”
Meijing wiped her tears, shook her head and said, “I don’t know. We only saw dead people and collapsed houses everywhere…”
“On the way here, we had also been robbed,” Shang Xin suddenly interjected.
Shu Huan quickly looked at them carefully and asked, “Are you alright?”
“We are fine,” Meijing said with some self-blame. “It’s just that my bag had been robbed. Fortunately, Shang Xin was able to save hers. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to eat and drink to support ourselves till now.”
When Shu Huan looked in Shang Xin’s direction, she saw that there were two nail scratches on her neck. Her clothes were more torn than Meijing’s. She (SH) immediately remembered her all-out effort when she fought with Gu Xihe. Presumably, when they were robbed, she also used this all-out effort to protect one bag and escaped with Meijing.
“It’s a blessing that you are fine. Our bags still have food. If we use it scarcely, it would be enough for four to five days.”
She was also at loss for what to do after four to five days.
Shang Xin suggested, “Why don’t we go to the neighboring city? Although, the earthquake also may had happened there, the situation may be better than our Jingtian City.”
Go to the neighboring city.
Originally, Shu Huan didn’t have this intention for the time being. She only wanted to find a place to settle and clean herself up a bit. Afterwards, she wanted to return to Jingtian City to help others. The most important thing was that she didn’t know whether Ji Danqing had escaped. She wanted to go to Danqing’s place to take a look. She also wanted to go look for Gu Xihe. But under the current circumstances, she couldn’t do this anymore.
First of all, they were drenched from head to toe. There was no place to rest and no place to sleep. They were exhausted. They would only create more inconvenience if they went to help others. While the green hills last, there would be wood to burn.
Secondly, Meijing had been robbed. This shows that the situation near the city was very chaotic. Those victims who had escaped from the disaster had certainly not prepared food like them. If they were extremely hungry, they may not care about looting. Their bags were very eye-catching. However, if they didn’t bring the bags, what could they do if they were half-dead from hunger?
Liangchen advised, “Miss, let’s go to the neighboring city. At least, we need to find a place to eat and sleep enough and change the wet clothes. Otherwise, we would truly get sick. After we had rested enough, it would be easier to return.”
Shu Huan gritted her teeth, “Let’s go. Let’s go to the neighboring city.”
Shang Xin knew where the nearby roads led to. She walked in the front and led the way. When they encountered some roads blocked by the stones from the mountain, they went over them if they could. If they couldn’t, they walked a roundabout route.
The journey was very difficult. The worst thing was that the sky darkened too soon. Rain began to float in the sky again. The rain wasn’t heavy, but the chill caused by it couldn’t help but made the four shiver.
Like last night, they didn’t dare to stop to rest because it was too cold. Only exercising could make the body warm up. Fortunately, they brought a lot of candies in the bags. When they were extremely tired or hungry, they ate one and could supplement the body with some heat this way.
They walked and stopped, stopped and walked. Aside from being too tired, Shu Huan felt that the aftershocks had lessened. It wasn’t as frequent as yesterday anymore. The shock was also not so strong. This meant that this catastrophe was almost over. She just didn’t know to which extent the relieve of the disaster could be done in this ancient era where transportation and the speed of communication was underdeveloped. Otherwise, when the natural disaster had passed, there would be man-made calamities.
When they arrived at the neighboring city, it was in the evening of the next day. When they saw that only a corner had collapsed and that soldiers and civilians were doing repairs, Shu Huan felt relieved. It seemed that the disaster wasn’t too serious here. Then, the epicenter of this earthquake was indeed at Jingtian City.
Thankfully, a corner of the wall had collapsed. It was chaotic because people rushed to do repairs. When they mixed into the group of people who were as dirty as them, they were less eye-catching. By the shade of the twilight, they easily got into the city from where it had collapsed. Otherwise, perhaps they would’ve been questioned because they didn’t have a justification to enter the city.
Only after they had entered the city did Meijing let out a breath, stroked her chest and whispered, “Miss, did you see? It was not only us who had fled. There were a lot of Jingtian City’s citizens at the city gate and they had been taken away by those soldiers. Don’t know where they would be brought to….”
Shu Huan was only focused on entering the city and didn’t pay attention to these things. When she heard Meijing mention that, she was a bit surprised. She thought for a while and said, “Perhaps, they had been brought to a place to settle down.”
Shang Xin interjected, “Then, why weren’t they allowed to enter the city and were taken outside of the city?”
How would Shu Huan know the answer to this question? She only deducted from common sense, “There are too many victims. They don’t have any money on them and are hungry. If they let them into the city, the city would be in a chaos. Bringing them outside the city together, it would also be easier to hand out porridge and medicine.”
After hearing her say this, the maids didn’t have any more questions. However, they still stayed farther away from the city gate for fear that if they were discovered, they would also be taken out of the city. They almost collapsed from the fear and exhaustion of these two days. At this moment, they only wanted to take a bath, search for a clean bed and lie down on it. If they were driven out of the city, this small desire would be completely destroyed.