Chapter 133: On the Road

The shivering Scholar Lu was woken up by the cold. Groggy, he looked at the bonfire and saw that the heart of the fire was almost extinguished. He immediately looked with displeasure at Gouwa, who was on night watch.

He saw the fellow with the sharp chin and monkey-like cheeks, his head nodding up and down. He seemed to have fallen asleep long ago.

However, Scholar Lu didn't dare go over and scold him. His father had already given instructions.

These people were to be his future bodyguards. If he wanted them to continue accompanying him, he couldn't have any conflicts with them. He needed to handle them carefully.

Scholar Lu got up with a disgruntled expression. After putting enough firewood back into the fire, he climbed back into his quilt.

But just as he closed his eyes, and before he could even doze off for a few seconds, he felt his father poking him with a tobacco pipe.

"Little one, wake up quickly! Go fetch water from the river, it's almost dawn."

Scholar Lu let out a groan and pulled the quilt over his head with both hands.

However, the next second, the tobacco pipe stopped poking and started tapping instead.

"Hurry up! All you do all day is eat and be lazy! Are you trying to be a slacker? Slackers can't even get a wife!"

The sun gradually rose, and everyone around them slowly woke up.

Bai Lingmiao rubbed her eyes, sat up from Chun Xiaoman's warm embrace, and looked around.

When she still didn't see that familiar face, a hint of disappointment appeared on her face.

Then she looked up into the distance and saw the mist-shrouded mountain peaks.

According to Abbess Jingxin, Li Huowang's destination was there. If they really couldn't meet him on the road, they would have to go into the mountains to inquire.

She pulled her feet out of the quilt and started putting on her shoes and socks. They still had to travel later, and she couldn't be hungry.

Just consuming what was ready-made and depleting resources wasn't sustainable. They needed to economize in various ways; increasing side dishes was one aspect. With more side dishes, they could eat less staple food.

She, Xiaoman, and Scholar Lu's daughter-in-law walked into the forest together to dig for wild vegetables.

At the transition between spring and summer, wild vegetables in the forest were abundant. Before long, Bai Lingmiao's basket was filled with Solomon's Seal, wild onions, and wood ear mushrooms.

They passed a patch of mushrooms but didn't pick any.

After so many days of practice with wild vegetables, Bai Lingmiao could now generally identify them.

But mushrooms could be deadly if misidentified, so she didn't dare pick them, even though they looked normal and appeared non-poisonous.

When she returned to the bonfire with the washed wild vegetables, she saw that the thoughtful young Daoist priest had already cooked the *mian'er*.

The dough pieces, resembling tadpoles, were boiling and swirling in the hot water.

"Yang Xiaohai, an adult can do this," Bai Lingmiao said, pulling the wild vegetables from her basket into small pieces and putting them into the pot.

"It's fine, Senior Sister Bai, I enjoy cooking. Hehe."

Wild vegetables cook quickly. As the last spoon of white lard melted in the pot, a hunger-satisfying bowl of wild vegetable *mian'er* was ready.

The group eagerly ate their bowls.

When the two groups first met, they each prepared their own meals.

But after a few days, they found this was too much trouble and too time-consuming. So, Scholar Lu simply suggested they share a communal meal, with each side contributing food for one meal.

With a slurp, Scholar Lu slurped a fragrant noodle "fish" from his bowl into his mouth. While chewing, he asked, "Miss Bai, is the young Daoist master coming this way? I hope he hasn't taken the wrong path."

"That's correct. Abbess Jingxin said Senior Brother Li could only come this way; there are no other paths," Bai Lingmiao replied with a firm tone.

She was the first to notice that something was off with Li Huowang's demeanor when he left.

When Senior Brother Li spoke to her, his face was no longer gloomy. Instead, he seemed to have suddenly achieved clarity. That feeling always gave her an unexplainable sense of dread whenever she recalled it.

Precisely because of this, she had rushed back with the others, but ultimately, they hadn't met him.

That's why she brought the Lu family group, whom they had incidentally met, and hurried in the direction Li Huowang had gone. "Senior Brother Li, please don't let anything happen to you..."

"It's fine if he's alright, just fine. I was just asking." Scholar Lu offered a forced smile.

Although he was smiling, he couldn't help but feel anxious inside. His confidence in leaving the pass to escape the war was based on Li Huowang. Yet, after they met up, he found everyone else was there except Li Huowang.

After traveling for so long and still not seeing his reliable bodyguard, he was truly a bit uneasy.

The large pot of wild vegetable *mian'er* was quickly finished. Not even a drop of noodle soup was left. The soup also contained some fat, so pouring it away would be too wasteful.

After eating their fill, they set off again.

Traveling was monotonous. A whole day passed like this, with no change except the distant mountains becoming a little clearer.

The gradually dimming sky made Bai Lingmiao notice a light on a distant mountain.

"Have the people on the mountain already seen Senior Brother Li? Abbess said these people are very dangerous. Could Senior Brother Li be in danger?"

That night, Bai Lingmiao, by the light of the fire, took needle and thread to mend her own shoes. Traveling every day, it was natural for shoes to wear out.

Except for Zhao Wu, who was on night watch, everyone else was asleep. Compared to the daytime hustle, everything around them quieted down.

"Zhijian, your shoes are also broken. Take them off, and I'll mend them for you," Bai Lingmiao said to the tall man holding an iron rod.

"Uh... uh... smelly!" Gao Zhijian pulled his feet back.

"It's fine, take them off. Look, your toes are sticking out. If you don't mend these shoes, they'll fall apart."

After a stuttering attempt to decline, just as he was hesitantly taking off his shoes, he suddenly gripped the iron rod with both hands and let out a loud roar towards the right side of the forest.

This loud roar startled everyone awake. Once they were fully alert, they immediately understood why Gao Zhijian had done that.

From the dark forest came a certain sound: a crunching, gnawing sound, accompanied by a wailing, like a ghostly cry.

In the middle of the night in the forest, these two sounds appearing instantly sent shivers down everyone's spines.

"This... are we running into it again? Why am I so unlucky this year! Again?" Scholar Lu, draped in his clothes, complained with a bitter expression.

Then, he turned and cupped his hands to Bai Lingmiao and the others. "Everyone, you are also the young Daoist master's junior brothers and sisters. In this situation, you should be able to handle it, right?"

As he finished speaking, the sound continued to approach, growing closer and closer, as if it were just beyond a thicket of bushes.

The atmosphere immediately grew tense. Everyone picked up their weapons.

Suddenly, the bushes moved, and a woman emerged, covered by a red veil and dressed in colorful clothes.

"Oh heavens!! It's a female ghost!!" Scholar Lu was so scared he scrambled under the carriage.

"What is it? What's there?" Bai Lingmiao cautiously asked Er Shen.

Er Shen didn't say anything, but just kept waving her right hand, which had long black fingernails, motioning for Bai Lingmiao to come closer.