Nightfall

Breaking through the Barrier

Translator: TransN  Editor: TransN

Just as he walked into the mist on the mountainside, Ning Que heard the sudden rush of horses galloping as tirelessly as rainfall behind him!

Along with the gallop, those fearful memories that lay deep in his heart all these years suddenly recaptured him, which then uncontrollably inundated him and occupied his entire body in an instant, making it extremely stiff.

He bit his tongue to shake off the fear with his extremely strong willpower, then slowly turned around to look at those behind him.

The mountain path in the dense twilight had somehow disappeared, and even those clouds had gone elsewhere. What he saw was just a magnificent city standing between heaven and earth, its huge shadow cut off the official road to the north.

On the road, ten cavalrymen in black armor were galloping towards him as fiercely as thunder. The surface of the official road resonated with their approach, as all the travelers sought to make way for them.

Ning Que hid behind the tables and chairs of a tea stall, staring blankly at those cavalrymen driving past. Suddenly, he noticed that he was much shorter than those horses and passengers on the road.

He looked down to find that only a single small shoe on his foot, and he hadn’t noticed till now that his left foot had been punctured by a stone and was bleeding.

…

…

After leaving Chang’an City, he went north all the way, walking along with the caravans in a daze. After being questioned several times by those curious people from the Tang Empire, he found it could put him in danger, and so quietly left the travelers under the cover of darkness one midnight.

He did not meet any wild beasts in the wild, and he could pick up fruits to feed himself, though the hunger never really left him. By the time he came out of the woods, he had almost reached the Hebei Province. By then he had become sallow and emaciated, so he didn’t have to worry about being recognized. On both sides of the road, as well as in the mountains, were hunger-ridden kids like him.

The Wilderness suffered from a severe drought, and the Hebei Province suffered from the severe drought too. In the first year of the Tianqi era, the Great Tang Empire was struck by a rare natural disaster. The new emperor had to confront a tough test when ascending the throne. Rushing from Daze to Chang’an city, His Majesty urgently arranged for relief supplies for the people in the disaster areas. Refugees from the Wilderness had entered the Hebei Province, and those from the Hebei Province were proceeding to the south. Those who set off first were luckily relieved by the imperial court, yet the remaining ones in the Hebei Province who stayed around the vast Min Mountain had to face a more severe test.

Along the official road, both imperial officials and local government runners were counting the number of refugees in order to distribute porridge. More and more refugees were migrating from the north to the south. For the people at that time, the north was like the underworld, a horrifying world of disease and famine.

While the rest were all moving to the south, Ning Que continued, in the opposite direction, to the Hebei Province. He roughly proceeded along the road at the foot of Min Mountain, where he soon encountered ill-intentioned thieves. He hid himself in the grass to avoid being spotted. While in the grass, he found several icy corpses spread out around him.

In a small wooded region where almost all the bark had been stripped off, he was surrounded by a group of scrawny refugees. Judging from their clothes, Ning Que judged that they were from the north of the Yan Kingdom. They had naturally flown into the territory of the Tang Emperor, since the royals of the Yan Kingdom couldn’t afford the relief work.