Jiang’an County, situated southeast in Shu, is six thousand eight hundred li away from Jingguan City.
And from Ten Thousand Mountains just outside Youmen Pass, it is only a little over two thousand li.
In a corner of East County City, within a simple, dilapidated civilian house, a brother and sister in patched clothes are working together: the brother blowing on the fire, the sister stirring the thin porridge in the hanging stove. However, the porridge inside is pitifully thin, with scarcely any rice grains.
Yet they treat it with utmost seriousness!
"Brother, it’s ready." The sister scoops a little with a wooden spoon scraped from a log, touches it with her tongue, then picks up a grey porcelain bowl with a cracked rim from the ground and fills it with the thin porridge.
Carefully holding the bowl, afraid of wasting the precious food inside, she heads to the dim back room.
Inside, besides a bed made of wooden planks and mud, there’s a simple wooden chest - one could see everything inside at a glance.
But in the bed lies a person, dressed in blue armor, with the right chest plate shattered, showing dried, mottled bloodstains; the person is unconscious, lips pale and dry, breathing barely discernible. A knife is hung at his waist.
This is the person the siblings found collapsed at their doorstep during a heavy rain two nights ago.
It was clear from his clothing that he was a soldier.
But this armor, unlike the thin armor of the soldiers from the County Government, is extremely heavy.
With the intention of saving a life, the siblings took great effort to drag the man inside, wiping his clothes dry and feeding him the rice paste they were reluctant to eat themselves, sustaining his weak breath. They planned to gather some herbs outside the city the next morning!
However, as soon as daybreak came the next day, before the siblings could leave the city, the County Government suddenly issued a warning, beating the drums, declaring that a group of rebels conspired with demons to seize a nearby county, ordering the city to be locked down, under martial law. Furthermore, they announced that anyone encountering suspicious individuals could report to the Government and receive a generous reward silver.
The siblings were immediately startled; the brother wanted to report to the Government, but the sister stopped him.
Because while wiping the Armored Soldier, the sister discovered he clutched a silk handkerchief embroidered with mandarin ducks - she could tell it was embroidered by a woman!
Most importantly, she found a Token!
That Token reminded the sister of a few years ago when she was only thirteen or fourteen, picking herbs outside the city to supplement the family income. When she encountered a Demon in the mountains and was hanging by a thread, someone saved her. Though the memory of that person was blurry, she only knew that the man claimed to be the Mountain Patrol Military Officer, and the Token was fresh in her memory.
"Brother, support him!"
Eyes carrying a mole, the frail girl in coarse linen clothes sat on the bed.
"Oh," the brother uttered, supporting the man’s head with both hands, struggling to lift it. Then, the girl began feeding the unconscious man the rice porridge.
Half a cup of tea time later, the brother put the man down after most of the rice soup had been fed to him.
At that moment, the brother looked at his sister, furrowing his brows: "Sis, are you sure this person is really the same Mountain Patrol Military Officer who saved you back then?"
"He couldn’t be one of the rebels the County Government mentioned!"
"I heard someone reported an armored man as a rebel, and he was captured and killed by the Government. That person received quite a bit of reward silver."
"I couldn’t possibly remember wrong, brother. Don’t even think about it," the sister frowned slightly.
"What do you take your brother for? If this man really is the same Mountain Patrol Military Officer who saved you years ago, whether he’s good or bad, we siblings owe him this favor," said the brother, a bit smooth-faced from years of scraping a living in the market, glaring.
Saying this, his gaze fell on the knife at the man’s waist, unable to help touching it, and said, "It’s so beautiful. I envy those who can step on the path of Martial Arts. If only our parents..."
He had just said this when the man on the bed suddenly let out a roar from his mouth,
The next second, his eyes snapped open, as if from some nightmare, his eyes bloodshot, like a frenzied beast.
The siblings were startled, jumping in shock.
The next second, the brother’s neck was violently grasped by the man’s hand and lifted.
The man’s voice was hoarse, but the killing intent in his eyes made the siblings tremble.
"This is our home; you were unconscious at our doorstep when we found you," the girl said quickly.
This seemed to bring back some rationality to the frenzied man, his eyes flickered, as if recalling something, his arm’s grip loosened, and then his eyes quickly reddened, his lips trembling, painfully clutching his head:
"General, I am... incompetent..."
Meanwhile, the brother almost fell to the ground, clutching his nearly twisted neck, gasping for air. First, he pulled his sister back a few steps and then spoke irritably:
"Ungrateful as the dog that bites Lü Dongbin, not recognizing a good heart. If my sister hadn’t insisted you were the Mountain Patrol Military Officer, I would have sent you to the Government already. Who knows if you’re from the Rebel army?"
The sister hurriedly pulled her brother, her gaze turning towards the man who seemed to be deeply affected, seeming to suffer greatly.
The brother, seeing a grown man in such state, also lowered his voice a bit.
After a prolonged silence, the man on the bed slowly came out of his absorbed emotions, then turned his gaze towards the frail siblings with pale faces, opened his mouth feebly, his eyes still deterging: