No grand speech, no preparation, no preamble. Straight to the point, yet incredibly smooth and fluid.
The woman fell to the ground. A member of the Royal Court’s Barbarian Shaman, she hadn’t expected her own end to be so inexplicably baffling.
The caravan guard beside her was also stunned, seemingly unable to comprehend the events unfolding before his eyes.
Fortunately, Fanli was an honest man, an upright man. He didn’t like seeing people around him troubled, so he liked to help others resolve their troubles and doubts. However, he also considered himself rather slow-witted; at least, during those six months at the inn, Siniang and Xue Three had often mocked him for being dull-minded. So, he didn’t plan on helping people solve their "troubles" directly—he knew he wasn’t capable of that. But if he eliminated the person *with* the troubles, wouldn’t the troubles be solved just the same?
As a result, there was one more corpse on the ground.
Next, Fanli sat on a mound of earth and pulled out a large bunch of sand onions from his chest.
These past few days, he had been eating a lot of sand onions every day, spending all the silver he earned from the caravan on them. This stuff wasn’t hard to find in the grasslands and the Gobi.
Add some salt, a little sour yogurt, marinate them for a while, and when eaten, they were astringent yet spicy, with a satisfying kick.
The recently deceased caravan guard had always been unhappy about this because he and Fanli slept in the same tent. Given that sand onions were known in later generations as "Mongolian leeks," one can imagine how potent the smell became when Fanli ate too many.
But ever since the day he ate a bunch of sand onions, Fanli suddenly felt his strength had increased!
Just like a beast instinctively seeking out certain trace elements to supplement itself, Fanli naturally assumed it was the sand onions that were restoring his strength.
So, he ate them. He ate them every day, ate them whenever he was free. He ate while riding, ate while walking, and even slept with them still in his mouth.
He ate and ate, until the sandstorm finally subsided.
He ate and ate, until he saw the figures of three horses in the distance.
The distance was somewhat far, so the sight wasn’t quite clear.
But on one of the horses, that small, stubborn figure made Fanli instantly recognize the person.
Fanli laughed, his smile still simple-hearted.
He waved the sand onions in his hand.
He decided to magical, strength-restoring food with his buddies!
"So, you recognized Xue Three’s dagger?"
"Yes, My lord, I recognized it. He sharpened it in the yard for half a year."
"That woman... you chopped her?"
Fanli, empty-handed, made a plain and unadorned wood-chopping motion. free\we\bnov(e)(l).com
Zheng Fan nodded and passed the waterskin in his hand to Fanli. Fanli happily took it and, with a GULP! GULP! drank several large mouthfuls.
Things in this world are so strange. It’s as if there really are countless lines connecting everyone and everything.
In summary, it might just be: Fate is inscrutable.
Fanli, following Blind Bei’s arrangements, had joined the Barbarian caravan to explore the desert, to leave a way out for the inn.
If things got desperate, they could all truly retreat to the desert and start a New Dragon Gate Inn, and Feng Siniang could change her career to selling human-meat buns.
Who would have thought that the caravan was actually a spy team for the Barbarian Royal Court? The caravan was merely its disguise; essentially, it was still collecting information for the Royal Court.
Perhaps the manager who recruited Fanli was too low-level to know the inside story, or maybe the caravan thought Fanli, being strong, dim-witted, and able to ride, was a profitable recruit.
In any case, he was brought along.
Then, by sheer coincidence, the woman in the white robe who had just escaped from the three of them bumped into the small rendezvous team Fanli was with.
The dagger Xue Three had plunged into the woman’s back served as the best marker.
In Fanli’s view, if someone was stabbed by his buddy, they must be an enemy. If his buddy hadn’t managed to kill her, then he had to finish her off. It was only natural!
And that’s how the matter was settled.
However, the two children survived; Fanli didn’t kill them.
Under Zheng Fan’s command, Xue Three took the two children to a nearby herder’s home and left them with the herder, also leaving behind some silver and two horses.
Actually, the safest way was to eliminate all sources of future trouble, but Zheng Fan couldn’t bring himself to do that.
Well, if several decades later, some prodigy desert overlord, a great khan who enjoys shooting eagles in his spare time, were to grow up and lead thousands of soldiers to seek revenge, then he would just kneel. He wouldn’t feel too regretful about it.
「Three people went out. When they returned, they became four.」
Because of the delay on the road, by the time the four of them returned to the outskirts of Hutou City, the sky was already adorned with a bright moon and sparse stars.
The gates of Hutou City were closed at night, especially since the clouds of war hadn’t completely dissipated. Fortunately, on this trip, Zheng Fan had managed to obtain an official position.
Even though this position was inferior even to Sun Wukong’s Stable Master—at least the Stable Master had horses, while Zheng Fan didn’t even have one.
Upon arriving at the city gate, he called out. A basket was lowered from above, and Zheng Fan was lifted up.
Zheng Fan held the letter and the sealed warrant given by the female general from the Earl of North Border’s household. He first met the city gate’s squad leader, then the Squad Leader, followed by the Centurion, and finally the Patrol Commander named Wang Li.