Broken Bonds

67

Chapter 67

The open green grassland was full of small and trivial flowers that endlessly scattered all over the ground with a shallow fragrance, leaping over the low plains, the hilly mountain bags, and all the way to the edge of the sky, and connecting with the blue sky.

This was the capital of the Ming Dynasty, the outskirts of Beijing. 

Hundreds of horses on the prairie whizzed past dust and smoke, the wind galloped that shook the earth, and the momentum was like a rainbow. The horseshoes were buzzing, and even the grass was trembling. Behind the horses, several herders chased them with whips.

The hundreds of horses belonged to the same farm. This horse farm would not have been small. The number of breeding was only a dozen, this was specifically for some of the city’s horse farmers to provide horses. But in the past two years, the new king of the Ming Dynasty launched a large-blown attack, annihilated the surrounding small countries, and gradually unified the northwest grassland and the southern frontier; thus, the demand for war horses greatly increased. So by this easy-to-reach business opportunities, the original small horse farm also expanded the operation, becoming a special unit to the Forbidden Guards in Beijing and the Xuanwu Army of Beitang Wang to provide one of the horse farms.

A little girl in a yellow dress, aged thirteen or fourteen, rode on a tall horse and ran far from the side of the hills.

“Pan! Uncle Pan…” Her tender bright voice was obscured by the buzz of horseshoes, but a few shepherds in the distance saw her bright color. The man who ran at the front of the horse and over from the herd. 

“Ya.” The man came to the girl, smiled, and asked, “Why didn’t you go to school today? Come back so early?”

“Uncle Pan.” The girl stared at the bright eyes and rushed to say, “Today, the Beitang Wang and General Yu came back, so the school has a holiday. Later, we will all go to the city gate to see them. Beitang Wang was so good that last time it took only half a year to destroy the Lu and Ying countries. This time, it took only two months to destroy the Nan Kingdom. The emperor was overjoyed and said that Beitang Wang would celebrate a month after returning to Beijing. Also, we don’t have to go to school!”

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

“You’re so happy that you don’t have to go to school for a month?” The man wore an ugly face.

Ktf ulgi rqlar bea tfg abcuef jcv yieoor, “Ktlr lr atf qegqbrf bo atf fwqfgbg, jcv la lr cba atja qfbqif vfilyfgjafis rxlq mijrr.”

“Cii gluta, P uba la.” Ktf wjc ifa ub bo tlr ojmf, rwlifv, jcv tfiv bea tlr tjcv, qjaalcu tfg bc atf qgfaas ilaaif tfjv.

“Fcmif Ujc lr atf yfra.” Ktf ulgi ugjyyfv tlr tjcv. Vtf kjr sbecu, bcis fifnfc sfjgr biv, yea atf cbgatfgc kbwjc vfnfibqfv ojrafg jcv ibbxfv j ilaaif ugbkc-eq.

“What’s the matter with Ya’s coming to me?”

“That’s right.” That was when the girl remembered the right thing. “My dad’s looking for you.” 

“Okay, let’s go together.”

The man led the girl back to a house compound. Two people jumped off the horse, and another man appeared before them with a big scar on his face, “I let you go call your uncle, but you took half a day to come back. Did you just go play?”

“Dad, I didn’t go play, my uncle was grazing, and I turned over the hill to find him. ”

“A’Qi, don’t scold her. Today we have come a long way.” 

The big man said to his daughter, “Go back and clean up. Then go help your mother cook.”

“Okay.”

“Little Yan, you come with me.” This big man with scars on his face was not someone else, he was the good brother Yan Feili grew up with, Liu Qi*.

*Recall that he and Yan Feili were orphans and raised by a beggar called Yan. The brother by the river. 

“A’Qi, don’t call me that outside, I’m called Pan Li now.”

“Ah! Right! I forgot for a while.” Liu Qi patted his head and said he was absent-minded.

Yan Feili shook his head and knew that Liu Qi didn’t care much about what he said, nor did he care much anyway. “For so long, I haven’t seen anyone come looking for him, I’m sure that man… have forgotten about me.”

Two people walked into a room. Liu Qi closed the door behind him, sat on the opposite side of Yan Feili, and said, “Little Yan, Beitang Wang came back to Beijing.” 

“Yes, I know.”

“This morning, someone from the Beitang Palance suddenly came and said to match his beloved horse with a good horse. So, let us prepare, pick three of the best, and send it to the Beitang Palace in the afternoon.”

“That’s it…” Yan Feili thought that Moxue* was seven or eight years old and should have been a father a long ago. Unfortunately, Beitang Ao had been busy and yet to match him with anyone. “But isn’t it a bit hurried? To pick the best horses, we have to prepare a while ago.”

*Beitang Ao’s horse 🙂 

“Yes. That’s what I told the people from the palace, but they said it was a young man who was in a hurry and couldn’t wait for a moment. The Wang Ye order to pick it up quickly, saying that it would be matched within two days.”

Yan Feili jumped abruptly because he didn’t know who they were talking about…

Liu Qi drank his saliva and said, “It seems that not only us who needed to prepare horses for our horse farm, but there are also several horse farms such as Fulai and Qianli. Everyone said to send three good horses. In the end, the people in the palace will choose, and the ones who have been selected will stay. The Thousand Miles horse farm in the past two years has almost been able to suppress us. If it weren’t for you to come on time, we wouldn’t have such a beautiful win. So this time…”

Yan Feili listened indifferently to the meanings behind Liu Qi’s words, but his heart kept tumbling with the news just now. After leaving for so long, he had been holding back not to inquire. Anyway, that person was well-known in the world, and his every move will always be heard in Yan Feili’s ears from time to time. But it was the first time he heard about the other little one. Although there was no context at all, he didn’t know who the ‘young man’ was a reference to, but he can’t help but stir his heartstrings…