[Alternate t.i.tle: One Loss

Too tired to type up a blurb. I need to start copypasting this stuff.]

Being touched by this strange man, Rong Jiahui immediately felt sick from head to foot, her stomach churning as she nearly throws up. She tried hard to break free, only to end up with the other immediately taking both her wrists into one big hand. She had believed herself to be rather round, but in reality she's still very small. Coming across such a st.u.r.dy and big man is something she can't resist against for the life of her.

Bai Lu hurried to rush forth and save her, just to end up also ended up getting easily dragged forward by him. Bai Lu is a maid in name, but she was raised in the Marquis's home like a half-Young Mistress, at the bottom of the heap of young maids at her beck and call. She only need bring tea or pa.s.s over water for Rong Jiahui and help her dress and freshen up, the most effortless job still yet divided up among three other people. How could she have any sort of ability to retaliate with the man dragging and pulling at her like this?

The innermost Shuang Jiang was so scared her legs went soft and she was unable to move a single step, only able to withdraw by herself into the corner and sob without sound.

After the bandit jumped off the carriage, Rong Jiahui was also roughly thrown off it due to being yanked by him, and she nearly fainted from how it hurt. No matter at what point in her life it was, she had never suffered this sort of pain! She was raised spoiled at home, and just a bit of broken skin would be a big injury; she doesn't know how many pieces of broken skin she has now, and it hurts so bad she only wants to call out for her mother.

The carriage isn't very tall and she could easily get onto it without the need of a stepstool, but to fall from the top of it to the bottom in one moment is extremely terrible.

And she doesn't know why, but at this moment she oddly recalled an event from several years ago. She was leaving the house together with Zhongli Luo, and when she went to board the carriage she discovered that her pile of useless servants had forgotten to prepare a small stepladder for her in their rush. Her figure had been too pet.i.te at the time, and the carriage was comparably a bit too tall, so with nothing for her to step on, she couldn't get on it.

However, a subordinate at the time had been quick-witted, and upon seeing that their Young Mistress seemed like she couldn't get up, swiftly pushed a boyservant out and had him kneel on the ground like a minister before a monarch in order to have her use him to step on.

Upon looking at the slightly thin back of the boy, she gulped and lifted her foot, but found herself unable to put it down after. Even though she's only a little chubby and not that heavy, and stepping up will only take a moment of effort, she still doesn't dare to do it.

Zhongli Luo had seen her raise her foot with a hesitant spirit and found some pitifulness among the ridiculousness of it. After having the kneeling boyservant go elsewhere, he said to her, “Would it be better if I helped you up?”

“Yes!”

Of course not needing to step on someone is better. Only after smiling and readily agreeing did she suddenly think of a problem.

“How are you helping me?”

She just barely said that when she felt warmth on top of her waist and emptiness under her feet, and by the time she could react, she was already in the carriage.

Getting helped up by her waist… her face had thusly turned red, and she was one half restless, and one half looking at her waist that seems to be excessively warm. She felt for the first time that she might need to start eating a bit less…

Her thoughts didn't stay in the past for too long, however, as the pain very quickly brought her back to reality, and that pain was the reason why she couldn't get up in time. The mountain bandit watched her fall and didn't think to lift her up to stand and make her walk, instead continuing to drag her along no matter what her posture was. The mountains are muddy and craggy, and though she was dressed in many layers for the cold, she still got extremely painful sc.r.a.pes all over her.

This bandit is clearly a higher-up, and this mountain stronghold is obviously not small. This region has already started to be somewhat remote with likely no one coming around these parts, and in this barren place where calling to the heavens yields no answer and calling to the earth yields no fruit, they've gotten very savage and and amply confident. They don't even pay any attention to the fame of a hundred-year old armed escort group, still daring to rob them. The escort leaders are typically modest and have had some courtesy to these stumbling blocks, but the mountain bandits don't give a bit of face to them regardless. Now there's a lot of them bothering this group of excellent armed martial artists, as when they fight, they usually rely on having a lot of people.

The incredibly afraid Rong Jiahui tries to entice him with some terms. “Big brother, this is, my… my papa is a major official in the capital, really… if you let me go back, how about I have him send you a hundred beauties later? Each one of them will be prettier than me, and younger than me, and…”

Hearing her faltering luring, the bandit leader turned to look at her with disdain. Jiahui immediately shut her mouth and didn't continue with that topic. The look in his eyes was clearly telling her that he's eaten more salt than she's ever eaten food; is that little trick meant to make him laugh to death?

As her lure wasn't working, Jiahui shut her eyes, hardened her heart, bore with the nausea, and lunged forward to bite down on the bandit's hand. It… doesn't taste good, being rough and stiff, the hard press making her teeth ache and emitting a hint of salt. After working to put all of her strength into that bite, the man finally let her ago, turning around to push her back to the ground.

Jiahui once again endured the pain of being thrown viciously down, a hand covering her since-bleeding mouth and tears kept back in her eyes as she stared in fright at the bandit chieftain's dreadful expression. She hurt all over and found it a bit difficult to climb up, only able to helplessly pick up rocks while drawing back and flinging them towards him. However, as evidenced, this large amount of rocks only seems to be tickling him.

“Are you all short on money? My dad has money, and gold, and silver, and rubies, sapphires, emeralds… whatever you want, what he has is definitely worth more money than capturing me. You can buy a lot of young ladies, so I'm begging you, don't take me…” She implored, mouth still covered.

That bandit drew near her impatiently, and the words “shut up” had just left his mouth when Jiahui's pupil's constricted in an instant. She hadn't yet figured how the best way she should escape this would be when, right before her eyes, came the most awful scene she'd seen in her life.

A long blade of unknown origin pierced straight through the air, then straight through the bandit's head. He fell to the ground in ruin like a tree that had been cut down, landing immediately to Jiahui's side. They're separated only by a few cun.

Jiahui stared at the large blade that was now sticking out of the back of the head of the one that had dragged and thrown her, blood oozing out, and her eyes went dark as she promptly fainted from fear.

When she was awake once more, she was already in an inn. Opening her eyes, Bai Lu and Shuang Jiang were in front of her as before, and the two were clearly still in a state of indeterminate panic.

“Bai Lu…” Jiahui weakly called out. There seemed to be the taste of blood in her mouth, as well as a dull ache. As she remembered everything, she immediately felt a wave of nausea.

Hearing her, the two shocked people immediately startled and fixed their eyes upon her. Turns out the Young Mistress has awoken.

Bai Lu forced a smile onto her face. “Young Mistress, you're awake. Do you want to eat something?”

Jiahui was just feeling ill, how could she keep anything down? “Where are we?” She asks them.

“The escorts brought us down the mountain and found an inn to have you rest in,” Bai Lu said. “They also sent someone to report that the leader of these so-called bandits – more like a mob – is dead.”

Jiahui thought about her own previous situation and felt an acute lingering fear, truly wanting nothing more than to return home at once. At least it's completely safe inside her house and she would have a practical army protecting her wherever she went. She doesn't want to see any sort of “true hero of Greenwood” stuff in her next life. She also knows that the towering heroes her ancestors were not all bandits, otherwise they couldn't be any sort of country-founding minister. She seriously looked way too into that knight-errant narrative! What an utmost degree of stupidity!

Bai Lu saw her looking like she was about to cry, and rushed to suggest, “Young Mistress, how about… we don't go, and just go back home?”

A few tears hung on Jiahui's face as she intended to nod, yet an image of Zhongli Luo's own face was then brought up in her mind. She grit her teeth, saying, “No, we have to go on! I don't believe in evil influences, and I absolutely can't have suffered this crime in vain by leaving this halfway finished! I want him to know that I'm not a dainty little girl that can't take the least bit of hards.h.i.+p! I want to tell him… that I can really do this!”

Isn't that just it? If she goes back like this, wouldn't her getting dragged and thrown down by that man be for nothing? Isn't there that saying: ‘extreme sorrow becomes joy'? She doesn't believe that they'll have bad luck the whole journey. Even if she's unable to make it to the Northwest and she runs into a lot of failure, she was once like a chrysalis; her parents both safeguarded her all day long and she was surrounded by ornate residences, only knowing how to sleep comfortably and paying no heed to anything outside of her window. With the twenty-four years of her last life and six years of this life, that's thirty years. She's lived peacefully and prosperously for a full thirty years, and she should break free of that bewitching coc.o.o.n.

Among the group of young professional escorts, there was one loss. Though this type of work entails putting one's life on the line, and each escort prepares beforehand in case that this trip may be one they never come back from, they've still lost a brother, and are inevitably in somewhat low spirits.

Jiahui also feels a twinge of guilt. She'd just stepped out her door to see a few armed escorts guarding her doorway step back a few paces, not daring to be too close to an unrelated young lady. They had long become accustomed to staying far away from any woman on their travels, for otherwise, both sides wouldn't have it good from the resulting cacophony.

Jiahui stared. She looked at the bright color upon some of their clothes, pursed her lips, and gave them a full salute.

“Young Miss Zhong…” Watching her suddenly come out like this, the few escorts were clearly stumped for words and didn't quite know what to do.

Though Jiahui had said from the start that she was going to properly yell at the escorts that “this old woman is the Young Mistress of Marquis Zhenguo's home, who dares give lackl.u.s.ter care towards her?!”, when she actually got to their office, she changed her mind and didn't say a single word about her real ident.i.ty. As she had been thinking of a certain guy surnamed Zhongli, she had blurted out the surname Zhong, and upon hearing this t.i.tle, she was still a bit slow to react.

Thankfully, she wasn't that slow, and blamed herself. “Respected masters, I am truly no good. I insisted upon having you all bring me to wherever in the Northwest, and had you purposelessly lose a brother.”

After that, she instructed her maid to take out some silver and offered it up. “I don't know what I can do, but I hope that one day you masters can give this small bit of my kind regards to his family.”

They didn't accept it, and one among them cupped his fist in deference. “You need not blame yourself, Miss Zhong. Life and death is ruled by fate, and if there's any wrongs, it's with that group of…”

He's aggrieved and pained at the violent end of his brother in arms and wanted to call them rapists, but looking at the rich-family girl before him, he really couldn't muster the energy to say that crude word. After turning it around in his brain a few times, he could only honestly say, “It's all the fault of that group of bandits. That we weren't able to avoid those scoundrels is our bad luck, but it's not our fault, and even more so isn't your fault. Please put your money away and do not expose your wealth. We of the Changfeng Escorts will arrange something for our brother's family.”

Hearing him speak like so, Jiahui felt deep reverence for him, and looked higher upon this Changfeng Escort group. If she returns later, she must visit their door to express her grat.i.tude. Though they've been on this trip for a good amount of days, the road before them seems to just be getting longer…

The translator says: I went back and proofread all the previous chapters, and the amount of typos made me die inside. Especially the discovery that I'd somehow managed to omit an entire, crucial sentence from chapter 5, and another one from 24… How embarra.s.sing. I'm going to proofread this stuff before I publish it from now on.