Chapter 409: Chapter 405: Great Victory (Seeking Monthly Votes, Recommendation Tickets)_1
 

The two men carefully wrapped up the note, put it back exactly where they had found it, and then quickly rushed back to the camp to inform Zhou Fu of what had happened.

Zhou Fu scoffed, “Bring those two men here, and make sure you don’t alert anyone else.”

“Yes!” Wei Zhan and a young Martial General responded, clenching their fists in acknowledgment.

In a short time, Mr. Dong and his trusted attendant were brought into the tent…

Yingbao curled up inside the carriage, sound asleep.

It wasn’t until the drumming of war woke her that she scrambled to her feet, dazed for a moment, and lifted the carriage curtain to look outside.

She saw two armies meeting in a fierce battle at the foot of a distant slope.

War is brutal, a fight to the death where soldiers from both sides are attacking each other tirelessly, like they are injected with chicken blood, not stopping until death.

Bored, Yingbao furrows her brows.

This endless fighting only harms the lives of the common people.

In the end, the orphans and widows of the commoners still have to toil in the fields to support the Imperial Court and aristocratic families.

Yingbao retreats back into her carriage to continue her sleep.

Lately, she had been feeling out of sorts, unsure if it was because she had stayed in the cave dwelling for too long.

Coupled with yesterday’s exertion, she was growing increasingly tired.

By evening, our side has achieved a great victory.

Wei Zhan and his men captured Xiao Mo and his close followers.

However, Xiao Chengjun had fled.

Zhou Fu did not pursue the fleeing enemy. Instead, he gradually took back control over the surrounding counties.

At this time, Yingbao returned to Dongchen Village in Chuanhe Town.

The village was in shambles, with many houses burned, but most are still standing.

The Jiang family’s house was fine, not a single structure had been burned.

Yingbao entered the house and found the rooms in disarray as if someone had gone through it.

She grabbed a broom and started cleaning the house and courtyard, rearranging the bamboo shed in the yard.

Some people from the village had already started to return, but there was no sign of her parents or Madam Wen.

Yingbao decided to ride to North Mountain to look for them.

On the way, she met several villagers coming down from North Mountain, who greeted her: “Yingbao, did you come from the village? Has Daqian’s army left?”

“They’ve already left.”

Yingbao asked, “Uncle Chen, have you seen my parents and Uncle?”

Villager: “They are all on North Mountain. If you go three or four miles along this road, you’ll see them. I came to check the situation and will go back to tell them soon.”

Yingbao nodded and continued riding along the trail towards the mountain.

North Mountain was dense with trees, but some parts had few trees, like the shoulder of the mountain, which was all mounds of graves.

Yingbao thought for a moment, then urged her horse to slowly ascend the mountain.

Reaching a fork in the road, Yingbao looked around and chose a path to follow.

However, after quite some distance, she saw no signs of people.

Yingbao furrowed her brows, looking around.

Before her stood a barren hill, distinctively barren compared to the surrounding area, with only a few trees but plenty of shrubs and weeds.

Suddenly, Yingbao recalled the Clan Leader Chen’s remarks about Jiuyang Temple.

Before long, she spotted remnants of a ruined wall hidden beneath the weeds and a boundary marker engraved with the words Yang Temple.

Suddenly there was a sharp stab in Yingbao’s heart, as if something had lodged in her throat.

After standing around awhile, she decided to go have a look.

The horse hesitated for a moment, but under the urging of its young master, it walked towards the ruins.

Sitting high on horseback, Yingbao could clearly see a mother weasel with her young scurrying around the ruins.

Then an orange snake quickly disappeared amongst the stone cracks.

She even spotted a couple of foxes staring at her.

Walking and observing slowly, Yingbao unwittingly reached the innermost part of the ruins.

There was a stone statue, now in complete ruin, even the head of the road-protecting deity statue had become fractured.

Nonetheless, the statue still stood, allowing vines to cover its entire body.

Yingbao squinted at the statue and another slightly smaller one next to it.

No matter how she looked, the statue seemed familiar.

Especially the smaller statue next to the larger one, not only was it intact, but its facial details were also very clear, resembling Chen Tiantian.

Yingbao dismounted her horse, swiftly drew her long knife, and swung it down.

There was a cracking sound, yet the statue remained undamaged.

In her head, she felt as if a thousand needles were stabbing her, the pain made her vision darken, and she almost collapsed.

It seemed that she had come to the right place after all!

The heavens wanted to prevent her from chopping the statue using this method, but she was not going to be swayed.

She swung again with the strength of a thunderbolt. The small statue began to crack with audible creaks.

But the pain in her head was even worse as if her eyeballs were about to burst.

Yingbao, heedless of danger, raised her knife and swung it down violently.

In an instant, a golden glow arose, the long knife emitted blinding light, striking heavily on the statue.

Crash! The small statue shattered in response.

The pain in Yingbao’s head suddenly disappeared.

At this moment, her consciousness was incredibly clear.

What she didn’t know was that, thousands of miles away, Chen Tiantian let out a scream, spat out a mouthful of blood and collapsed to the ground.

On North Mountain, Jiuyang Mountain, Yingbao felt there must be something within these fragments. So she came to the fragments of the small statue, poked the rubble with her long knife and suddenly saw a flash of colored light inside.

She curiously bent down, carefully traced it with her hand and saw a small golden fragment, as small as half of a fingernail, glistening like a piece of glass.

When Yingbao picked up the fragment, she strangely felt an inexplicable affinity towards it.

Very strange indeed.

She shifted her gaze back to the larger statue.

Deciding to resolve it all today, she was determined to smash both things into pieces.

Yingbao raised her long knife and robustly chopped at the large statue.

Fortunately, her long knife was sturdy and could endure more than a hammer weighing tens of pounds. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to split these two stones.

The larger statue seemed not as sturdy as the smaller one as it quickly crumbled under the blows of the long knife.

Yingbao squatted down again, meddling with the rubble to see if there was anything inside.

As expected, she found another small golden fragment, nearly half the size of the previous one. Had it not emitted a glow, Yingbao would not have noticed it.

Yingbao wrapped these two little gold fragments in oiled paper and placed them in her cave dwelling.

Afterward, she got back on her horse and took another look around the ruins.

After the two statues were shattered, Yingbao felt that the vegetation in this place suddenly thickened and the vines and leaves spread out.

After a round of inspection, noting no further anomalies, Yingbao rode her horse back.

After walking a while, she looked back to see the ruins being quickly veiled by the greenery.

What the hell?

She frowned for a while, then took out a piece of white hemp cloth, tied it to a thick tree, set up three large stones around the tree, then got on her horse and left.

Upon reaching the crossroads, Yingbao thought for a moment and took the other path.

Not long after, she saw a large crowd gathered on a clearing in the forest, with makeshift grass and tree shelters erected around.

“Yingbao! Yingbao! You’re back!”

Chen Zhu was the first to spot the little girl slowly riding towards them, he excitedly shouted: “Come over here!”

Shortly after, Jiang Sanlang and Chunniang also ran over and asked, “Bao’er, are you hurt?”

Yingbao instinctively tried to hide her hand, which had been split by the tremendous force encountered when she smashed the statues.