Chapter 31: This Is Life
As long as it’s a world where people live, there are countless troubles, some formed naturally, some caused by humans, and most actually self-inflicted.
As long as you run fast enough, trouble generally can’t catch up, just like that messenger swimming underwater in the stream; he learned to swim with his head buried because he didn’t run fast enough.
Yun Ce didn’t know how this society protected messengers, whether there were laws enacted specifically to protect messengers, especially military messengers. If there were, by Earthling standards, even after running ten kilometers, he still wasn’t very safe.
As witnesses to the second scene, neither the person who killed the messenger nor the person trying to find the killer of the messenger would let this pair of small man and woman go.
It was still safer to run farther away.
When the sky was about to darken, the sky over the wasteland became colorful, with fiery clouds on the horizon, bright red, and the sky overhead purple. Judging by the density of the clouds, it was impossible to see the moon tonight.
Earth farming proverbs were useless here; here, fiery clouds foreshadowed heavy rain tonight.
On the flat wasteland, when encountering heavy rain, first find high ground to camp. If no high ground is found, find a big enough tree, or there would be a risk of drowning.
The sheep cart compartment was designed very ingeniously; when besieged, connecting these sheep cart compartments formed a cart city. On a rainy day, remove the bottom board of the compartment, place it on top of the compartment, and it immediately became a small shelter from the rain. If encountering a flood, remove the cart shaft, and it became a good flat-bottomed boat.
Yun Ce decided to get the compartment onto a big tree to make a treehouse.
1 Fortunately, the compartment was made of detachable parts. In a moment, Yun Ce used rope and wooden board to lay out a platform on a big tree.
1 He took out a one-foot square small box from the dragon pearl. In E Ji’s amazed gaze, he took out a half-foot thick, half-foot long cloth-like thing from the box, then pulled out more than a dozen thin metal rods from the box, tinkered a bit, and a beautiful house with green patterns appeared on the platform.
1 With the house, E Ji threw a tantrum and demanded that Yun Ce bring the cart-pulling sheep up to the tree too.
1 One sheep, over a thousand pounds… Perhaps at this moment, E Ji thought Yun Ce was omnipotent.
1 Then, Yun Ce held the sheep’s stomach and threw it onto the platform, then tied its four limbs so it wouldn’t move randomly; any movement could endanger the tent at any time.
1 By the time E Ji gathered some dry firewood, Yun Ce had already arranged the platform, tent, sheep, food, and such properly.
1 Yun Ce glanced at the firewood E Ji gathered, jumped down the tree again, found a thick deadwood, sawed it into several sections with a rope saw, split the two-foot diameter deadwood into four pieces with an axe, chopped out the cores from the four pieces of deadwood, and made a hole in one piece of deadwood. When he used rope to bind the four pieces of deadwood together as a base and placed three stones on top, a convenient stove was ready.
1 Light the stove, and the pottery jar first boils those very large beans; this takes time.
1 The sky darkened slowly here; the color of the sky overhead was gradually deepening, and the dark clouds in the west were slowly pressing over, swallowing the scattered white clouds in the sky bit by bit. The dark clouds didn’t fully form, and some residual light still fell on the wasteland, streaking and making a group of people riding sheep and fighting appear and disappear.
1 Clearly sheep, yet the people here insisted on calling them horses; they probably hadn’t even seen a horse, yet stubbornly called sheep horses, impossible to correct.
2 “What are those people riding horses?”
2 “Sheep——”
2 “Horse, horse looks like this, you can’t fool me. 97%”
2 Yun Ce could understand short sentences E Ji said and could speak a few short sentences to her, but for longer sentences, he still needed Doggy’s wisdom.
2 Truth be told, since having Doggy, Yun Ce’s interest in learning the local dialect had been decreasing.
2 He didn’t want E Ji to know that those people on the wasteland were actually two groups of scouts fighting each other; that dead man who liked to keep his face immersed in water for a long time without coming up should have been killed by one side of these scouts.
2 Killing the messenger was to cut off external news; scouts killing each other was probably clearing the battlefield before a major battle. Last time Yun Ce had no interest in watching the fight between wild boar and giant bear; this time, for war between people, he was very interested in watching.
2 E Ji and Yun Ce weren’t as sensitive as Doggy; they only now saw the scouts fighting, but Doggy had heard it long ago and reported it to Yun Ce in advance.
2 Two teams of scouts fighting each other here meant the preset battlefields of two armies were nearby.
2 The nearby area was vast plain without obvious mountains or rivers to borrow; when two armies faced off, it could only be formation battle, that is, the formal battle Zhao Jin mentioned, knife against knife, spear against spear, face-to-face life-and-death melee, quite rare.
3 The masters here claimed to be Great Han, and it was said Huo Qubing was here; he liked surprise raids in battle. Unknown how much skill the two generals about to go to war here had compared to him.
3 Yun Ce wanted to watch the war but had no intention of putting himself on the battlefield, so the big tree he chose was absolutely outside the battlefield. Moreover, a small river wound through here, making the land loose and muddy, unsuitable for major battles, even less for cavalry battles—basically, the dead ground often mentioned in military books.
3 Plus, there would be heavy rain tonight; by then, this place would be a vast flood, should be very safe.
3 The beans were very large, needing a long time to boil soft and glutinous. Yun Ce added quite a bit of well-cooked mature meat to the earthenware pot; he also put in several kinds of special-flavored dried wild vegetables he knew from mixing with pigs before. When the beans were fully cooked, a jar of delicious bean porridge was ready.
3 The horse E Ji mentioned had a big beard; feed a bean into its mouth, and that horse would lie quietly on the wooden board for a long time, not struggling or calling even with its four limbs tied.
3 Yun Ce had never had a good impression of sheep, these animals that didn’t even call or struggle before death; even after being killed, their eyes remained gray-black, no light when alive, still stupid-looking after death. If not for the meat being too delicious, Yun Ce thought there shouldn’t be such animals in the world.
3 On this point, pigs must be praised; their death cries were so heroic. Some pigs with strong survival instinct, even after being stabbed with a knife, could forcefully break free from human restraints, carrying the knife and spouting blood, galloping toward death with a song.
3 The beans were finally boiled into bean paste, fused with delicious fatty meat, plus the flavored wild vegetables giving this jar of porridge-vegetable a compound taste; every bubble emitted fragrant aroma.
3 Yun Ce dug a full wooden bowl for E Ji with a wooden scoop; she ran to show off to the horse, then squatted on the platform holding the bowl, eating sweetly.
3 Before the sky fully darkened, Yun Ce saw a head fly into the air, blood spurting high from the neck cavity. Unknown if that head noticed the firelight here when it flew high; if it did, unknown if it would tell the enemy. Heard that some people’s heads, after being chopped off, would still say—fast knife.
4 Four words were enough to tell the enemy of his presence here.
4 Yun Ce held the porridge and waited a moment; hearing and seeing no cavalry coming, he dug a spoonful of meat congee into his mouth—temperature just right.
4 The moonless night was bitterly cold; E Ji was studying the sleeping bag Yun Ce took out. She never knew Yun Ce had such a good thing on him. Out of woman’s curiosity, she searched Yun Ce up and down, found no other strange things, but her eyes fixed on Yun Ce’s crotch, always feeling the place he wouldn’t let her touch was suspicious—maybe Yun Ce hid the best things there, not letting her see or use.
4 After walking a full day, even someone as strong as Yun Ce wanted to sleep, but E Ji was full of spirit; she insisted she was the bride tonight, so something should happen. As for how, she didn’t quite understand, hoping Yun Ce would guide her. But soon after Yun Ce slept, he snored like thunder.
4 Bored E Ji could only stretch her bare arm out of the sleeping bag, grabbing the horse’s beard and whispering: “It shouldn’t be like this.”
4 Before the words finished, a clap of thunder rang in the sky; the thunder scared the horse, its muscles trembling a few times. Seeing it couldn’t stand, it resignedly relaxed its body.
4 Yun Ce in his sleep suddenly opened his eyes; hearing the thunder turn from clap to rolling thunder far away, he slightly relaxed, rolling thunder was distant, sleeping in a tree should avoid lightning. Then he sighed to himself: “Heavy rain is coming; this is not a good day for battle.”
4 Raindrops pelted the tent like drums; the horse first moved its head into the tent, and when the heavy rain poured, its whole body wriggled in, body tightly against E Ji, so Yun Ce, leaning back against E Ji, had his face pressed against the tent.
4 He had to get up and rearrange the sleeping arrangement, trying to save every inch of space; only thus could the two people, one horse, and pile of things avoid the rain.
4 A burst of rapid sheep hooves came, quickly arriving under the big tree where Yun Ce lived; an armored knight swiftly climbed the tree.
5 Yun Ce shook his head; he wasn’t sure if it was that dead head that saw the firelight and told others, or if this guy himself discovered the firelight and chased over.
5 No matter; when a fierce face emerged from below the platform, Yun Ce released the taut bowstring, letting the prepared arrow pierce his forehead.
5 The warrior’s body hit the ground with a dull thud, plus a splash of falling into water; looked like this place would soon become a marshland.
5 He listened for a moment more, heard no other sounds, put away the long-handled bow, and lay back in the sleeping space he had just arranged for himself.
5 Outside the tent, heavy rain poured.
