Volume 1 Chapter 101: Jade Burial Mound Fragrance (2)

  Chapter 101: Jade Burial Mound Fragrance (Part 2)

  Tattered and worn-out people, with sorrowful faces, from octogenarians to wailing infants, from emaciated men to women unable to stand upright, packed the two banks of the river in Luzhen Town.

  However, among this group of people who have lost their homes, what is most commonly seen is not luggage or bundles, but flowers.

  Not bad, flowers, all kinds of flowers.

  White tea, red begonia, peach blossoms in March, pear blossoms in April, bright yellow sunflowers, and purple azaleas - all the flowers of spring are blooming profusely in their hands.

  However, when Mozi looked carefully, he found that more than half of the flowers had withered, with yellow petals and wilted sepals. If you look down at the ground, there are layers of flower petals, almost trampled into black mud, only the top ones still have some pink and white color. The people on both banks were not the first to arrive, nor were they likely to be the last to leave.

  "Heavens! Where did these people come from?" The Great Zhou Dynasty had been at peace for a long time, and even Bai He had never seen so many painful faces when she traveled with Qiu San Niang.

  "It should be Yuling refugees." Upon hearing of Ailian's death, Mozi could pretend to be indifferent, but when she said these four words, sorrow came from her heart.

  "Refugees?" Bai He stared blankly at those people, "Has Yuling really fallen?"

  Those who have never experienced war will never understand how cruel it is.

  Mei Zi gritted her teeth, her eyes reddened. She was a soldier in peacetime, but had participated in rescue missions for multiple submarine accidents, watching helplessly as comrades died. Thinking she had a strong enough will, yet when she saw the refugees at Yu Ling, the impact was so great that it overwhelmed everything in her mind, leaving her unable to think or speak.

  Is the national destruction and family extinction that I couldn't feel in Luoyang, far from Yuling, suddenly emerging now?

  She doesn't know.

  She only knew that her heart ached, as if her body was being torn into pieces.

  "The big ship is coming!" The children's voices, still naive and unable to fully understand reality, have not yet given up hope for the future.

  "Three young ladies, buy flowers." A voice ran along with the boat.

  "Miss, buy my white tea." The second voice got moving.

  Buy my peach branches... buy my spring apricots... so many voices are in a hurry.

  The sound turned into a dozen or so big kids' faces, they followed the boat and ran, their small hands stretched high, as if that would make Mu Zi and the others see clearly.

  "Sister, I just picked these potted roses when I crossed the river, they can still bloom for a long time. Buy them, five cents is enough. My little brother is sick and wants to eat meat buns..." The shortest one among the children, a little girl about seven or eight years old, with a dirty face and thin arms like the peach branches next to her.

  She ran very fast, but being too thin and small, wearing adult clothes, she was hindered and soon fell behind the bigger kids, let out a loud cry, then disappeared from Mozi's sight.

  Survival of the fittest, the strong prey on the weak. It sounds simple, but when Mu Zi faced those children who begged her to buy a flower from them, she couldn't apply this rule because it was too cruel.

  "Pitiful." Boatman Da walked over, shaking his head and sighing, "Most likely they escaped from Yuling Hundred Flowers Isle. More than half of the people there are flower farmers. During this season, thousands of boats carrying flowers would normally arrive at various docks in Huazhou, to be resold nationwide. I heard that the people of Hundred Flowers Isle treat their flowers as their lives, relying on the flower season to make a living for the whole year. The flowers in these people's hands are now their only assets."

  The flower boat now carries people who have come to see the flowers. No wonder the two banks are so desolate, yet they emit such a strong fragrance of flowers.

  Unfortunately, the person who planted the flower has no strength to protect it, and the person who sees the flower has no heart to appreciate it.

  Buy flowers... please... the flowers are about to wither... once they wither, we can't exchange them for money... I'm so hungry... really starving... these wilting flowers are their last chance at a small feast.

  "Stop the boat." Meizhi heard someone say.

  It's not Bai He. She has already cried a handkerchief wet, her eyes are blurry with tears, and she can't say a word.

  She is also not Xiaoyi. She is a quiet and reserved girl who likes to express herself through actions rather than words.

  The one who stopped the boat was Mozi herself. When reason returned to her mind, she hadn't even had time to force a bitter smile when she heard...

  "Cannot dock"

  Mozi looked up and saw Xiao Erlang frowning deeply, looking down from the second floor of the cabin, gazing at both banks.

  "Stop the boat, what are you going to do?" He withdrew his gaze and looked at Mozi coldly.

  Mozi knew that stopping the boat was absurd. So many refugees, and she had only eight taels of silver to save them - it was simply a fantasy. But she heard her own voice again.

  "Stop the boat, I can buy buns for that little girl's brother." Yes, she was very good at saving people with buns.

  Xiao Wei glanced over, but couldn't see any little girl. However, he wasn't foolish and understood Mozi's implication. "You helped a little girl, what about those other children? Can you help every single one of them? Even if you could help them for one meal, three meals, a month, a year, or a lifetime?"

  Shi Ke came forward with a frown on his coarse eyebrows, "A good heart is useless for women, long hair but short-sighted."

  She was able to help a little. She took out all her silver and managed to buy two baskets of steamed buns. Her seriously ill brother, after eating his fill, might gain some resistance and survive. And those children on the verge of collapse from hunger, after being fed, could hold on for another two days, and their chances of survival would increase by 20%. But if nothing was done, under such difficult conditions, it would be the children who would suffer first.

  Mozi opened her mouth, the words in her heart were on the tip of her tongue, but she remained silent. On the Yongfu ship, she could make Xiao Erlang roll his eyes, but on this ship, she was just a second-rate servant girl. And even if the boat could stop and buy ten or twenty baskets of buns, it would only make the people of Yuling grab their eyes red, once triggered riots, the consequences were unbearable to think about.

  "General Xiao is right, Mozi thought too simply." Qiuquan's eyes compromised and lowered, Mozi held one hand to Baihe and the other to Xiaoyi, walking towards the front cabin of the boat. "There are many refugees, and the boat may also encounter waves. I'm afraid the ladies will be frightened, please speed up the boat and enter the town as soon as possible." Out of sight, out of mind.

  "What's wrong with this girl? One moment she wants to stop the boat without thinking, and the next moment she wants to rush forward as if she's suddenly enlightened. She gets to say whatever she wants." Shi Lei tugged at his mustache and glanced back quickly, then looked back at the refugees on the shore. "I don't even know what the situation is like in Yuling now. We've been cut off from headquarters for over two months, all because of that guy... we can't even contact the Ministry of War..."

  He grumbled and complained to the first greedy official, but found that Xiao Wei didn't give him any reaction. He patted his shoulder with force, "Bai Yu old brother, what are you thinking about being so distracted?"

  "That lass called me General Xiao." A very strange feeling.

  "Huh?" Shi Kei said coarsely, "I suppose you think General is mighty. But to me, even the young masters are too soft."

  "It seems that the reconciliation envoy sent by His Majesty is of no use. Da Qiu has always been ambitious, and he won't spit out the meat that's already in his mouth." Xiao Wei inferred from the number of refugees and the time, "Yulin is probably a lost country now."

  "Will he strike back?" The wolf's heart is wild and there's a great possibility of pursuing victory with an attack.

  "It depends on the current military strength of Dagu. If attacking Yuling is too costly, they will definitely retreat and rest. Moreover, it's not easy to turn the people of Yuling into subjects of Dagu overnight." Xiao Wei estimated that Dagu would probably not launch an immediate attack on Great Zhou.

  "The land of Yuling is rich and fertile, with many wealthy merchants and tycoons. Each one of them has wealth that rivals a country's. Now they have all become subjects under Daqiu's rule, it's truly detestable." Daqiu swallowed countless gold and jewels, Shi Lei felt extremely indignant, "If I had known this earlier, our Great Zhou should have sent troops first. A hundred years ago, Yuling was originally part of the territory of our Great Zhou."

  "For a long time, the four countries have been at peace with each other, who would have thought that they would get it." Xiao Wei could only say so. In fact, he should have thought of it. Three years ago, in Nan De, Da Qiu and Yu Ling's three envoys gathered in Da Zhou's capital, and the crown prince of Da Qiu personally led the team to come. That nineteen-year-old man, who was as humble as a gentleman, had inadvertently seen his heart-wrenching gaze.

  "Luzhen also deployed heavy troops to defend. Shi Ke saw the warships lined up on the river, with bows and crossbows drawn, while temporary checkpoints were set up on the shore, with hundreds of sword-wielding soldiers stationed on both sides, not allowing refugees to enter the town."

  "It's not a big deal to stop outside either." Xiao Wei didn't agree with Mo Zi stopping the boat, but he wasn't really heartless.

  "It's not a big deal to let them in. So many people rushing in at once, it's not like I'm the emperor of Zhou, who will feed them? If they go hungry and crazy, what can't they do? Lu Town is not a heavily guarded city, one or two thousand troops are far from enough to suppress tens of thousands of refugees." Shi Lei was annoyed to death, "How did Huazhou Water Fortress let all these people in?"

  Hua State and Yu Ling are separated by three waters and five peaks, with each country sharing one water and half of the two peaks. The border is set up with a water fortress and defense town on the canyon shore, with at least tens of thousands of water soldiers and 500 warships throughout the year. After the war between Da Zhou and Yu Ling, the strongest naval force of Da Zhou was deployed, with 50,000 warships and 1,000 ships, guarding these water fortresses and defense towns as solidly as gold soup.

  "It's probably just like you thought." Xiao Wei wasn't surprised.

  "What was it again?" Having said so much, I don't even remember which sentence.

  "The Yuling was originally part of our Great Zhou territory, so the ancestors of these refugees were also citizens of our Great Zhou. Not letting them in would be leaving them to be trampled by the great enemy, wouldn't it? Letting them in is a must, but how to solve the problem of their food and clothing is a very thorny issue. After all, Yuling has been an independent country for many years, and many people from Great Zhou won't consider them as citizens of Great Zhou."

  At this time, Ah Dat shouted loudly, "Two gentlemen, there are government soldiers coming aboard to inspect the ship."

  Xiao Wei looked up to see a patrol boat cutting across their bow, with twenty sailors on board holding long guns and wearing quivers of arrows on their backs, looking at them with an air of arrogance.

  "Let them come up then." Xiao Weishi couldn't reveal his identity, of course he couldn't show off his official authority, so he could only put down the gangway and welcome the little soldiers on board.

  Chapter 101: Jade Burial Mound Fragrance (Part 2)

  Chapter 101: Jade Burial Mound Fragrance (Two)