Chapter 453: Madly Scolding the Female Thief (1)

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

The silver moon was in the sky, and the surface of the silent river was sparkling. From time to time, a large ship with flickering lights floated past in the distance.

Below the 20-foot-tall white stone river embankment was a knee-deep reed bank. The autumn colors were already appearing, showing a greenish-yellow color. When the breeze blew, the reeds rippled like waves.

Swish, swish, swish!

Ye Jingtang was dressed as a Jianghu person with a saber and sword hanging at his waist. He was walking along the edge of the reeds and looking at the muddy ground by the river, checking for traces of horse hooves.

Little Yunli, who was not very tall, was walking beside him. She was still wearing a ruqun as a delicate young lady, but she had a gray cloak and a bamboo hat that she had casually bought on the streets. She had even taken something from the carriage. With the five-foot-long saber on her shoulder, she looked like a Jianghu person.

Zhe Yunli’s cheeks under the bamboo hat still had vermilion rouge. She looked beautiful and moving, but there was a piece of straw in the corner of her mouth. As she walked, she chatted casually. “Where did the bird go? It should be the one doing this job. It can fly along the river and sweep two to three kilometers along the river in less than fifteen minutes…”

“The bird is accompanying your martial mistress and Third Lady in the palace. If anything happens, it will fly up to the sky and call out a few times, and I’ll be able to rush back. If I take it away, it won’t be able to send the news.”

When Ye Jingtang saw Little Yunli’s appearance, he found it a little funny. He raised his hand and pulled the piece of straw out. “Miss, don’t imitate the people of Jianghu and put a piece of straw in your mouth. If your martial mistress sees it, she’ll definitely spank you.”

Zhe Yunli was a little helpless. “I’m a big girl now. I should be able to travel Jianghu alone. My martial mistress still treats me like a little girl… Speaking of which, what were you doing when you were sixteen?”

Ye Jingtang broke off the section of the piece of straw stained with red lipstick and held it in his mouth. “I was sixteen only two years ago. Not long after I took charge of the escort agency, 1 was escorting in Liang Province in July and delivering a few carriages of spices from the west to the east of Liang Province.

1 encountered horse bandits in the Gobi Desert. There were more than ten people riding a specialty of the Sha Province, ‘Full Foot Mud’…”

When Zhe Yunli heard the story, her eyes lit up slightly. She moved closer, raised her bamboo hat, and asked curiously, “What is Full Foot Mud?”

“It’s a pony with yellow hooves and very good endurance. It can run for several hours continuously in the Gobi Desert, where water is scarce. Horse bandits ride these things and follow caravans like wolves to scare the people. If the caravans can’t run away, they usually leave valuable items behind to prevent disasters.

“At the time, 1 brought eight escorts with me. I didn’t want a conflict, so I threw a bag of silver fragments. In the end, that group of horse bandits thought that it was too little and prepared to come over and snatch by force. I got the team to continue walking, and 1 alone raised my saber to meet them. I cut off two heads with two slashes, and then the horse bandits dispersed…”

At the age of 16, Zhe Yunli was still being spanked by her martial mistress. When she heard that Ye Jingtang was already licking blood with his saber in the northwestern Gobi at the same age, she sighed in her heart. She thought for a moment and asked, “Brother Jingtang, when you ran around in Liang Province, did you ever meet your sweetheart?”

Ye Jingtang shook his head and smiled. “Liang Province is too chaotic. There may be beautiful young ladies, but they all live in the cities and are protected when they go out. We Jianghu people can’t get close at all. As for those we can meet, they’re all more burly and manly than men…”

Zhe Yunli didn’t quite believe it. “The Heavenly South is also a poor place, but there are still many beautiful heroines. Brother Jingtang, you stayed in Liang Province for so long. There weren’t any locals, but you could at least see a few passing by, right?”

“Passing by…” Ye Jingtang frowned and thought for a moment. The moving back view of a figure riding a horse flashed across his mind, but he couldn’t remember it clearly after ten years. He only said, “1 should have, but they always wear a veiled hat when they go out. I’ve never seen a girl as beautiful as you.”

“Huh?” Zhe Yunli bumped Ye Jingtang with her shoulder, but she was still quite happy to be praised. “Brother Jingtang, I haven’t seen a Jianghu man as good-looking as you either.”

Ye Jingtang blinked and felt that this topic seemed to have gone off track. He was thinking about how to reply when his gaze suddenly moved, and he looked at the river bank in the distance.

When Zhe Yunli saw this, she also looked into the distance and saw that Ye Jingtang was looking at a group of buildings by the river.

The buildings consisted of more than ten houses. They had been built into a row with their backs facing the river and fronts facing the official road. At the front was an inn and restaurant, which could be considered a temporary stop. Merchants who couldn’t enter the city after the city gates closed at night would usually stay here and wait to enter the city in the morning.

On the river embankment at the side of the building complex, there was a staircase that allowed the people above to go to the riverside to wash clothes and fetch water.

At this moment, under the moonlight, there was clearly a string of black dots on the stairs. From the distribution, they looked like horse hooves.

When the two of them saw this scene, they immediately swept away the distracting thoughts in their heads and quickly walked over to check. The bluestone steps were indeed stained with mud. They looked along the traces to the river and found a string of hoof prints in the mud. Part of them had already been submerged by the gradually rising tide, but they could still clearly distinguish them.

After Zhe Yunli looked at them carefully, she said, “There are only hoof prints coming and going from here, but not going past. 1 guess he took the official road. When he arrived, he found that the place he was going to was by the river, so he went down the river embankment and turned back. After finishing, he ran over directly for convenience and took the official road from here…”

Ye Jingtang stood on the steps and looked out. He could vaguely see a large number of lights far downstream. “Fang Shijie was probably looking for a ship. Around two kilometers away is River Shore Wharf, which probably has more than a hundred boats blocking it. The boat definitely won’t be able to enter the port today. It should still be anchored by the river. Let’s go..”