Chapter 226: The Village That Believes in the Reed God

"Ah..."

Zhang Suannai stretched her body in a big, long yawn.

The Gobitai in the early morning had not yet heated up, and the air seemed to carry a hint of moisture. Having just enjoyed a delicious meal, she felt refreshed and invigorated, even thinking it was the most satisfying meal she had eaten in the month or so since leaving the country. Perhaps it also had to do with the current environment, which allowed her to find the joy of an outing or a picnic.

As for what she said before eating?

Sorry, she forgot.

Sword Sect Disciple, bad memory.

Now, Zhang Suannai had successfully transformed back into that lawless, self-important Zhang Suannai.

"Still unable to contact the Command Center, and completely unable to receive any signals at all," Zuo You said, frowning.

"Give it up for now. With the level of Spirit Power chaos here, it will take at least a week for it to subside to a point where it won't affect various communication signals." Chen Shu looked up at the sky; it remained overcast, making it impossible to distinguish direction.

"I can vaguely distinguish direction," the Gate of All Wonders said from behind them, "but my intuition tells me that the surroundings are not safe."

"I can go in front to scout the path!" Zhang Suannai said. "My Spiritual Sense is very accurate!"

"..."

Zuo You fell into deep thought.

"Report!"

Zhou Cheng, who had been sent to scout, walked back: "This is indeed an area under the actual control of the Watcher; traces of armed forces activity were discovered one kilometer away."

"In that case, we must be careful and cautious, otherwise it is very likely we will run into Watcher armed forces, who are extremely hostile toward people from Yiguo," Zuo You said, pondering. "The best choice right now is to find a place to hide, wait out the period of Spirit Power chaos, and then evacuate once we have support from the Command Center. Teacher Chen Shu, is the food you brought sufficient?"

"I did bring quite a lot, plus some dried noodles, instant noodles, and snail rice noodles," Chen Shu twitched the corner of his mouth. "But for the seven of us, we could probably only eat for a few days at a normal rate."

"We can be a bit frugal," the Gate of All Wonders lowered his eyelids. "It will just be a grievance for Benefactor Suannai."

"I'm not aggrieved!" Zhang Suannai punched him. "I can eat a lot and I can handle hunger!"

"We can also look for food in the surrounding area. This place wasn't hit too severely, so perhaps some desert animals might have survived. I brought a pot, stove, and oil, salt, and seasonings... Why are you all looking at me with those eyes?" Chen Shu looked at the group in front of him, puzzled. "As a lover of fine food and cooking, isn't it reasonable to carry a kitchen with me after being out for so long?"

"That is reasonable," the Gate of All Wonders nodded.

"Then you guys find a place to hide, and I'll go out and find food for you!" Zhang Suannai said impatiently. "And then let Chen Shu do the cooking!"

"Report!" Zhang Tengyu also returned. "Watcher armed forces and Blue Asia Mercenary strongholds were discovered nearby!"

"..."

Zuo You remained silent in thought.

Then they could not stay here for long. Even if they weren't discovered, it would be unfavorable for the Command Center's rescue later; they needed to find another suitable hiding place.

The Gate of All Wonders raised his eyelids: "This Daoist feels that we should still slowly leave this place. With the support of my intuition and Zhang Suannai's Spiritual Sense, it is not easy to run into the Watcher's main force in this vast desert. And if we encounter small units, we have nothing to fear. If we run into the Blue Asia people, we can reveal our identities, and generally speaking, they won't open fire."

Zuo You thought for a moment and nodded.

A few days later.

Relying on the guidance of the Gate of All Wonders and the scouting of Zhang Suannai, the group had actually managed to walk all the way to the vicinity of Leche.

It was relatively safe here.

At this moment, among the group, Zhang Suannai walked at the very front, followed by the fully armed Captain Zuo You, with Chen Shu and the Gate of All Wonders walking in the middle, and the remaining two soldiers and the unnamed person walking at the back. They stopped on a hillside.

Below was a village.

The group finally saw clusters of houses and greenery.

"It seems there are still people living here."

"Let's go take a look and see if we can ask for directions or trade for some food. If it's suitable, we can stay the night."

"I'll go!"

Zhang Suannai volunteered. She pulled a Long Sword from who knows where, tossed it casually, and the sword floated in mid-air. Then, she gave a light leap, jumped onto the Long Sword, sat sideways, and slid down along the curve of the hillside.

It was like riding a skateboard.

Twenty minutes passed.

Zhang Suannai returned and said: "There are still a dozen or so people inside. I found a young person who can speak Chinese, so your translator didn't even need to be used. They saw we were from Yiguo and agreed to give us some food, and also said the road to Leche is covered by sandstorms, but they can take us there tomorrow... My Spiritual Sense tells me they aren't lying and have no malice."

The Gate of All Wonders squinted his eyes, and after a moment, also said: "No danger for now."

Having these two around was truly worry-free.

Comparable to one ten-thousandth of Qingqing.

The group descended the mountain and walked slowly into the village.

The village was almost entirely made of yellow earth houses and looked very poor. Occasionally, a few houses had vegetables planted, and tall trees grew between the houses. There were even places where grapevines grew—a rare sign of vitality after these past few days.

It was just that most of the houses had already collapsed, showing traces of explosions and fighting, and some trees had also been affected.

Captain Zuo You remained fully focused and on alert.

Chen Shu walked along while looking everywhere.

It was evident that this village originally had quite a few people, at least over a hundred households. There were even one or two houses built with bricks and stones, which were probably the equivalent of luxury villas in this village?

Oh, wrong...

Chen Shu walked past these two small brick-and-stone houses and realized they weren't residential homes, but shrines. One of them contained several deities commonly worshipped in Duqin, which he had seen back in Tasha.

These people, living such difficult lives, still had to spend their extra money on deities.

Chen Shu shook his head inwardly.

Suddenly, he noticed something wrong.

The other small house only had one statue, but this statue was not an object of worship commonly found in Duqin, and it made him feel incredibly familiar.

Recalling slightly, it looked almost identical to one of the statues in the Divine Hall behind the Yuling Hall of the Spirit Sect.

Chen Shu remembered its name—

Reed God!

Because at the time he offered sacrifices to the various deities, only three divine statues did not react, among which was the Reed God, and the Reed God was the most mysterious of all the deities, with even the Great Yi Divine History having very few records of him, so he had a relatively deep impression of this deity.

Chen Shu stopped his footsteps, his brows tightly furrowed.

The Gate of All Wonders behind him asked:

"What is it?"

Chen Shu did not speak, only pointing inside.

The Gate of All Wonders turned to look, also furrowing her brows, and only after a few seconds did she say: "Let's investigate later; I have a very strange feeling."

Chen Shu nodded and continued walking forward.

They saw a girl with dark, rough skin hiding in a house, secretly watching them, and only when she saw the Daoist robes worn by Zhang Suannai and the Gate of All Wonders did she walk out, standing in the middle of the road, timid and shrinking, saying in broken Chinese:

"Hello."

"Hello, we are people from Yiguo."

"Mm, you can find an empty house to stay in; most houses are empty. Tomorrow I will take you to find the road to Leche."

"Thank you," Chen Shu said, "we hope to trade for some food."

"You can find it yourselves; there might be some in every house."

"Hm?" Chen Shu keenly sensed something was wrong, "Where are the people? Didn't they flee?"

"Some died, some ran away."

"Did they not take the grain with them?"

"Some took it, some did not."

"How did the people who died, die?"

"They were killed by people from Lan Country."

"People from Lan Country..."

"Mm, among the people from Lan Country are some monsters; they are very terrifying, killing people for fun." The dark, thin girl looked at them timidly, "Just a few days ago, fortunately, a person from Yiguo helped us drive them away."

"A person from Yiguo?"

"Are you..." the dark, thin girl looked toward the Gate of All Wonders, "called Xuanzhen?"

"Yes."

The strange feeling in the heart of the Gate of All Wonders grew stronger, with a faint sense of unease.

The dark, thin girl pointed toward the hillside in the distance, her eyes gradually misting over: "There was a master called Tongzhi who passed through here a few days ago. We let him stay for one night, but the next day people from Lan Country came to kill, and he helped us drive the Lan Country people away, but he ended up dying too. We buried him on the mountain..."

"He said that in a few days, a person from Yiguo wearing the same color clothes as him would come, named Xuanzhen, and he asked you to help take his things back; he is buried right here."

The Gate of All Wonders felt a great shock in her heart, then fell into a deep silence, not knowing what to say for a moment.

In the end, it only turned into a sigh.