Mountains and rivers are waiting for you to return

Chapter 298: The Girl in the Abyss
Nine years after the Battle of the Summit.

When Pei Nai opened her eyes, the pain all over her body rushed into her mind. She calmed herself down and remembered what she had experienced before she fell into a coma.

Recently, several residents of her fiefdom have disappeared one after another in the southernmost part of her jurisdiction, and their families reported them missing.

This place is close to the western part of Qilu, close to the border with the former Ruijiang Kingdom, and is an uninhabited area.

Not long ago, a material similar to the sap of the ancient tree Mara appeared in a small country in the West, which could be used to make rare women's saddles.

Gu Jinheng always felt regretful about Pei Nai's lost saddle, so he personally led his men and horses to rush over there.

Therefore, Gu Jinheng was not in Huayun City recently, and Han Ruize was also at the Pei family army’s base. Pei Nai took his personal guards and went to the place where the residents disappeared to check the situation.

As she went deeper into the valley, she began to feel that something was wrong.

Then they saw a huge underground rift, which was filled with clouds and mist and had heavy miasma. There were countless branches at the far end of the rift, and the terrain was very complex.

Moreover, there are few birds and animals around the rift valley, and there is a deathly silence.

Just as she was about to take her men away and wait for Gu Jinheng to come back for a second investigation, they touched the mechanism and encountered a landslide.

Many huge rocks fell from great heights, causing the cliff to collapse.

She fell into a ravine and was separated from the guard team. While falling, she grabbed a tree trunk halfway up the slope and steadied herself briefly, but then more rocks fell and broke the tree trunk.

She used the Palm of Compassion to create a palm wind, supported herself, and slowed down her falling speed.

Finally she fell on the rocks on the slope, rolled down, and lost consciousness in the severe pain.

She didn't know how much time had passed when she woke up from her coma and looked around. She found that she was no longer at the bottom of the foggy rift, but in a cave.

The wounds on her body were treated with medicine, but she felt that there was a poison spreading through her body.

I feel weak all over and have a low fever.

"Are you awake?" It was a soft and gentle voice of a little girl, but she was speaking in Qilu dialect.

The little girl should be about the same age as Gu Yuli, about five or six years old. Because she was too thin and underdeveloped, her limbs were very thin.

The linen clothes she was wearing were already tattered, and her little face was covered with dust and stains. At this moment, she was squatting in front of the fire, huddled together, and seemed to be decocting medicine.

When the girl saw Pei Nai wake up, she turned her head to look at her. Her eyes were big and pure, as clear as autumn water, and extremely beautiful.

Her face was also very pretty, but it was covered by the dust, obscuring her radiance.

One can tell at a glance that she is a pure Qilu person.

"How long have I been unconscious?" Pei Nai still couldn't speak Qilu language after all these years. She really had no talent for languages, so she asked casually in Tianyao language.

She didn't expect the girl to understand, but the girl was stunned for a moment, hesitated and tried to say in Tianyao language: "Two or two days."

"You can speak Tianyao language?" Pei Nai asked in surprise.

The girl nodded. "Sister Xu, who was sent to our village by the imperial court, fled here with us. Everyone else died, leaving only her and me. We were trapped here, waiting for rescue, with nothing to do, so she taught me the language. A year ago, she also passed away, leaving me alone."

The little girl spoke in Tianyao dialect which was not very fluent but very comfortable.

Xiangxu was an official translator in the imperial court.

There are many villages and ethnic groups in the mountainous areas of Qi and Lu, and the language network is complex, so it is necessary to have people from the imperial court stationed there for the purpose of communication and supervision.

Since Da Xian ascended the throne, the court of Qilu also began to recruit female officials. He used various decrees to change the status of women in Qilu and people's prejudices, with remarkable results.

It sounds like the person who teaches the girl foreign languages is a woman.

"Why did all your people die?" Pei Nai asked.

The girl pointed to the fog outside and said, "There is poisonous gas in the canyon. They were poisoned and died within two years."

"Two years?" Pei Nai felt a little strange. "What tribe are you from? What's the name of your village?"

The girl didn't know how to pronounce Tianyaoyu and was confused.

She was actually a little dull, which might be due to the fact that she had no contact with humans for a long time and lacked communication.

Pei Nai said, "You can speak Qilu language, I can understand it."

The girl felt relieved, breathed a sigh of relief, and replied, "Heluo tribe, Yun'a Village."

Pei Nai was startled.

She had heard Daxian talk to her about this village.

Yun'azhai is located at the southeast end of this uninhabited area. The villagers are Heluo people who have lived in the mountains for generations and are famous for their expertise in pharmacology.

Four years ago, a villager went crazy and set fire to the surrounding mountains at night while everyone in the village was asleep.

Due to the special terrain of Yun'a Village, the entire village was engulfed in fire and no one was spared.

The Heluo tribe was brutally exterminated.

Da Xian felt that something was fishy and sent someone to investigate, but the traces were consistent with the feedback from the county, and there was no other abnormality. Pei Nai had already noticed the problem, but he still gradually guided the questioning, "Did you escape here because of the fire?"

The girl shook her head and spoke slowly in Qilu dialect: "There were many people, an army. They broke into our village at night, killing people and setting fire. We had no place to hide, so we fled here. There was poisonous miasma here, and they couldn't find us, so they left."

"The army?" Pei Nai was shocked.

"The elders said that it was the country that wanted the dirty stone resources, so they wanted to silence everyone, but Sister Xu said that was not the case, and asked everyone to believe in her and the country." The girl added.

Pei Nai nodded, "Your sister Xiang Xu is right. Your Majesty Qi Lu feels sorry and sad for your accident. He always thinks that your medicine is no less than that of the Jiang Yue Lei family. He even sent his own people and troops to check the situation and search the mountains and forests to see if there are any survivors."

The girl understood what she meant, tears welled up in her eyes, and she lowered her head, "What a pity, no one can hear this."

She was very cute when she spoke, but now she was in deep sadness, which made Pei Nai want to go over and hug her.

Pei Nai stood up and walked over, squatting beside her and stroking her back.

The girl shuddered at first, then looked at her again.

"What's your name?" Pei Nai asked.

"How can I be pitiful?" The girl stretched out her finger again, "Like Sister Xu taught me, how to write my name in Tianyao language."

Pei Nai stretched out her hand cooperatively and watched Yu Min carefully write the words on her hand stroke by stroke.

"Ju Qi Yu Min, Min Min, what a nice name." Pei Nai praised, "By the way, how old are you this year?"

Yu Min answered her: "I will be six soon."

"Then you are younger than my son." Pei Nai couldn't help but touched her head.

Pei Nai just withdrew his hand and suddenly felt difficulty breathing.

She covered her throat, gradually lost her strength, and fell to the ground in pain.

Yu Min hurried forward and pinched several of her acupoints.

Seeing that Pei Nai's condition had not yet subsided, Yu Min used the knife next to him to cut a bloody wound on his slender arm and fed it to Pei Nai.

Pei Nai drank her blood, and the symptoms of the poison were immediately relieved. He gasped for breath and was finally able to move his body.

She responded, and while enduring the discomfort that kept reverberating through her body, she asked, "So, Minmin, all your people died of poisoning, but you are still alive. Is it because you are naturally resistant to poison?"

Yu Min nodded. "My blood can only last for a while. I'm preparing an antidote for you. I know how to prepare it. I found it out through trial and error."

As she spoke, her eyes lit up.

Pei Nai was shocked. Yu Min's physique and ability to perceive pharmacology were comparable to Gu Jinheng's.

But she saw the light in Yu Min's eyes go out again.

Yu Min seemed to be blaming himself, "It's a pity that Sister Xu was too deeply poisoned, and my antidote couldn't save her."

Pei Nai supported himself with his hands and sat up again, comforting her: "Mianmin is already very good, don't be sad about what has already happened."

There was a gleam of light in Yu Min's eyes.

She tried hard to suppress her sadness and went back to the fire, stirring the medicine in the stone pot with a long spoon made of stone.

"But I'm still missing one ingredient of the antidote. I need to go through the dirty rock area. I have to wait for the miners to go up before I can pick it." Yu Min said slowly.

Pei Nai repeated, "The Dirty Stone Area? I just heard you say that the villagers thought the country wanted this resource. What is that?"

"A stone that emits poisonous gas. I don't know what it is used for." Yu Min's little eyes were full of doubt and confusion.

Pei Nai hadn't eaten for two days and his stomach felt very empty, so he rubbed his belly.

Yu Min also noticed that she seemed hungry, so he walked over to her side and flipped through the basket he had woven with branches with his little hands, saying in embarrassment: "I have wild potatoes, do you want to eat them? But the plants here are poisonous. It's okay for me to eat them, but I'm worried that your poison will become more serious."

"No need, let's eat jerky." Pei Nai said.

Because she was patrolling the cave, she saw the bag that had fallen with her nearby.

Yu Min was very well behaved and did not open her things while she was unconscious.

Pei Nai took out the special dried meat pressed with oil paper and handed two packages to Yu Min. He took out the leather bottle, drank a few sips of water, and then opened a package of dried meat.

Yu Min was not on guard against her, perhaps because she hardly met any strangers here and she didn't know that bad people would kidnap children.

Pei Nai gave her food, and she excitedly opened the seal, broke off a piece of dried meat and fed it into her mouth.

Although Pei Nai's accompanying food has been improved and tastes much better than the common dried meat, it is not considered a delicacy.

But Yu Min was chewing his food with his eyes wide open, filled with a faint light like the warm sun.

She showed her love all over her face.

(End of this chapter)