AUBTN -Chapter 394 The Pursuit We Expected

“Hey, hey, hey! Lord Lu, handsome Lord Lu, I was wrong, okay?” Yu Qing changed her expression in an instant and grabbed Lu Yan’s uninjured arm.

Her big, watery eyes blinked innocently.

“Look at me, a delicate and helpless young woman. If I can’t even have a bowl of hot chicken soup, what if I faint from hunger on the run? Wouldn’t I become a burden to Lord Lu? Please, have some mercy!”

Lu Yan could only laugh helplessly. “Let go first.”

He turned his face away, his voice rising unnaturally.

“Have you no sense of propriety?”

“No! Not unless you promise me roast chicken!” Yu Qing shamelessly refused to let go.

Tang Lingyue looked at the two of them flirting with an expression of utter disgust and rubbed her arms.

“Fine, fine, fine! I’ll go perform the ritual and send this chicken to the afterlife, all right? You two can stay here and show off your affection!”

“We’re on the run, and you’re already acting like this. At this rate, you won’t even need the pursuers to kill you—you’ll starve to death on the road first!”

As she spoke, Tang Lingyue grabbed the chicken and headed toward the stream.

Yu Qing and Lu Yan suddenly exchanged a smile.

“Plan successful!” Yu Qing clapped her hands with a delighted grin.

“All along the way, Miss Tang has been bragging about how delicious her roast chicken is. We finally get a chance to taste it!”

Not far away, Su Hewan, who was applying medicine to Shen Jue’s wounds, heard the commotion. She couldn’t help turning her head to look, then shook her head with an amused smile.

“Qingqing can really put on a performance anytime, anywhere.”

Su Hewan smiled as she tied off the final loop of bandage, then turned to Shen Jue.

“But watching them does make this journey of fleeing for our lives feel a little less miserable.”

Shen Jue was enjoying his wife’s gentle ministrations, lazily reclining against her. Hearing this, he gave a disdainful snort.

“That Lu Yan fellow acts like the King of Hell at the Northern Garrison Command every day. Who would’ve thought he’d be completely wrapped around the finger of some actress? What a disgrace.”

“Who are you calling an actress?” Yu Qing’s ears were sharp, and she immediately turned around and butted into the conversation.

“Shen Fox, I’m one of your lifesavers! Without my superb acting skills to cover for you, you’d still be sitting in the Ministry of Justice prison gnawing on steamed buns! Show me some respect!”

“All right. Then, thank you, Miss Yu.”

For a while, a cheerful and warm atmosphere filled the camp.

This kind of freedom—without hierarchy, without schemes and intrigues—was something none of them had ever experienced in the oppressive capital.

After everyone had finished eating, Tang Lingyue suddenly spoke in a solemn voice.

“Now that everyone has eaten and drunk their fill, let me tell you what’s happened over the past two days!”

“The news from the capital arrived this morning. Wanted notices have already been sent to all the prefectures and provinces. I estimate that your portraits have already been plastered all over the city walls.”

Everyone’s expression immediately turned grim.

“Just as expected.”

Shen Jue’s expression remained indifferent, as though the person being hunted wasn’t him at all.

Tang Lingyue glanced at him, then added with a complicated expression, “It’s not just the authorities. I also found out that, besides the Imperial Guards and the various government offices, there’s another force secretly biting at our heels…”

“The Heavenly Secrets Pavilion.”

Shen Jue stated it with absolute certainty.

“Exactly!” Tang Lingyue paused.

“But how did you people get on the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion’s bad side? I heard that the Pavilion Master of the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion is incredibly mysterious. No one has ever seen him!”

At those words, Lu Yan and Su Hewan’s expressions simultaneously darkened.

“The Heavenly Secrets Pavilion really doesn’t know when to quit. They’re like a ghost that just won’t go away.”

Lu Yan’s brows knitted tightly, his fingers gripping the hilt of his blade until his knuckles turned white.

“They had a hand in the previous assassination attempt against His Majesty. Now that we’ve all become wanted criminals, why are they still refusing to let us go?”

Yu Qing blinked, then suddenly slapped her thigh and leaned toward Shen Jue, waggling her eyebrows with an unmistakably gossipy expression.

“Hey, Fox Shen, come clean. Is the master of Tianji Pavilion some romantic debt you left behind? Otherwise, why would she give up a perfectly good life in the martial world just to relentlessly pursue someone like you, a man of the imperial court? She practically looks ready to follow you to the ends of the earth, whether you live or die! Tsk, tsk. Love turning into hatred, love and hate intertwined—this is absolutely a classic ‘lovers who kill each other’ plot!”

Shen Jue’s handsome face instantly darkened so much it looked like water might drip from it.

“Yu Qing!” Shen Jue ground out through clenched teeth, his long, narrow phoenix eyes gleaming dangerously.

“If you don’t want your tongue anymore, I won’t mind helping you pull it out.”

Yu Qing wasn’t afraid of him anymore. She tilted her head and provoked him, “Look at you, getting all worked up! I hit a sore spot, didn’t I? You’re angry because you’re embarrassed!”

Shen Jue let out a cold laugh.

“Why don’t you ask your Lord Lu? The Embroidered Uniform Guard controls intelligence throughout the realm. Maybe Lu Yan seduced some female assassin from Tianji Pavilion with his looks and sent her to gather information!”

Yu Qing froze and abruptly turned to look at Lu Yan.

“Hm?” Yu Qing’s gaze was dangerous and accusatory.

Lu Yan, suddenly dragged into the conversation, didn’t react in time. He stared blankly for a moment before frantically shaking his head, both hands waving wildly in the air.

“I didn’t! It wasn’t me! Don’t make things up! I don’t even know which way the main entrance of Tianji Pavilion faces!”

His adorable, utterly bewildered expression was such a stark contrast to his usual demeanor that Su He Wan finally couldn’t hold back. She covered her mouth and burst out laughing.

“All right, Qingqing was only joking with you. And you actually believed her.” Su He Wan pulled Yu Qing toward her and shook her head helplessly. Then she turned to Tang Lingyue, her expression becoming serious once more.

“Miss Tang, exactly what kind of methods does Tianji Pavilion have?”

Tang Lingyue found a clean spot and sat down, her expression solemn.

“Tianji Pavilion keeps a group of tracking hounds and employs strange experts skilled in tracking. They don’t follow ordinary methods. Clues the authorities can’t find, they can. They’re a hundred times more troublesome than those orderly, by-the-book soldiers.”

Su He Wan stared at the campfire, its flames dancing endlessly, then glanced at everyone around her.

She suddenly let out a soft sigh and said something completely unrelated.

“Shen Jue, have you noticed? We really seem to be wandering the martial world now.”

Shen Jue looked at the faint light shimmering in her eyes. He gently took her hand and smiled silently.

Then Su He Wan turned her head toward Tang Lingyue, who was sitting nearby wiping down her flexible sword, and said seriously, “Miss Tang, thank you for saving us last night. But… once we cross the Grand Canal tomorrow and enter a safe area, you should take your people and leave first.”

Tang Lingyue paused and raised an eyebrow at her.

“What? Do you think I’m getting in the way?”

“No.” Su He Wan shook her head.

“You’re Aunt Lin’s people, and you represent the surviving descendants of the former dynasty. We’ve already committed the grave crime of breaking someone out of prison, a crime serious enough to bring execution upon nine generations of our families. If the imperial court discovers that we’re also colluding with the remnants of the former dynasty… then that charge will truly be proven beyond doubt. When that happens, not only will we die, but the forces that Aunt Lin and all of you worked so hard to build will also be uprooted. We can’t afford those consequences.”

Tang Lingyue gave a scoff and casually returned the flexible sword to her waist.

“We’ve already come this far. Are you really still afraid of taking on one more charge—colluding with the former dynasty to rebel? Half of Great Wei’s realm was originally won by our ancestors through blood and battle.”

“I’m not afraid, but your lives are more important.” Su He Wan’s tone was resolute. “Besides, Shen Jue and I won’t spend our entire lives carrying the stigma of that crime. One day, we’ll uncover the truth and return to the capital with our names cleared. If we spend our whole lives bearing the disgrace of rebellion, then how are we any different from fugitives merely clinging to life?”

“Uh…”

Hearing this, Yu Qing couldn’t help muttering under her breath, “Aren’t we… fugitives right now?”

The instant those words fell, the entire camp went silent.

Shen Jue, Lu Yan, Su He Wan, and even Tang Lingyue all turned their heads in unison and stared expressionlessly at Yu Qing.

Their gazes seemed to say:

You can see through it, but you don’t have to say it out loud. Why did you have to blurt out the obvious truth?

Yu Qing felt her entire body go numb under the four piercing gazes. Her survival instincts kicked in. She mimed zipping her lips shut with her fingers, then silently shrank behind Lu Yan and kept her mouth shut.

Su He Wan rubbed her forehead helplessly.

“All right, enough fooling around.” Shen Jue broke the awkward silence and pointed to the simple map on the ground, his expression stern.

“Tomorrow morning, we’ll take the waterways. Since Tianji Pavilion has set up an ambush along the land route, we’ll take the Grand Canal and head downstream straight for Jiangnan. Lu Yan, what do you think?”

Lu Yan nodded, a trace of determination flashing through his dark eyes.

“I’m with you. Everyone, make the most of tonight and get some rest. We leave first thing tomorrow morning!”

The night deepened, and the dying embers of the campfire flickered in the wind.