Traveling through ancient times to survive

After traveling all the way, after passing Qingzhou is Xuzhou. It is no different from Qingzhou. It is not safe to walk on the official road. You may even encounter more than three waves of bandits in a day.

In addition to the robbers, there were also waves of refugees fleeing southwards, ragged and dusty. The two did not stop and kept on traveling all day. Zhao Qing secretly fed them some spiritual fruits, fearing that the two horses could not bear it.

Five days later, the two arrived at the border of Yingzhou. The situation here was a little different. There were almost no refugees on the official road.

The two men frowned at the same time, having discovered something unusual. They led their horses and prepared to find a village to rest for a while.

Smoke rose from cooking fires. The two men followed the direction of the smoke and came into view about two miles away from the official road, when they saw a small village.

The children playing at the entrance of the village did not show any surprise or fear when they saw strangers. One of the chubby children ran away, but the other children were used to it.

A child shouted, "Wait a minute, Brother Xiaohu is going to call the village chief."

The two stopped walking, and Li Heng softened his voice and asked, "Children, do people often come to your village? I don't think you are strange at all."

The children looked surprised. One of them said, "What's so strange about this? Our village is close to the official road, so of course people often come to stay overnight. Recently, there are even more people."

"I see," Li Heng rummaged in his pocket, took out a dozen copper coins, and shook them at the children, "Brother wants to ask you for some information. If brother is satisfied, these copper coins will be yours."

How could the children resist such temptation? Their eyes lit up as they stared at the copper coins in Li Heng's hand.

"Brother, really? What do you want to know? I'm very well-informed."

"You're bragging. My mother is the best in the area. How can you know more than me? I should be the one answering."

"Humph! My uncle is the village chief. Who knows more than the village chief? It should be me who should answer."

The friendship was broken at any time. The children quarreled over who could answer the question. In the end, no one was convinced and they all looked at Li Heng in unison.

"Brother, who do you want to answer?"

Li Heng came up with an idea: "How about this? I'll ask a question, you raise your hands, and I'll choose someone to answer it."

The children thought about it and nodded in agreement.

Li Heng began to ask questions, starting with the simplest village name.

“What’s the name of your village?”

When the children heard that they were not giving money away for free, they all raised their arms. Some children were smart enough to stand on tiptoe and stretch their arms up as hard as they could. Their faces flushed and it was obvious that they were trying very hard.

Of course Li Heng noticed this child and naturally called on him.

The child answered excitedly: "Our village is called Xiaoan Village!"

Li Heng nodded and handed the child a copper coin. The child took the copper coin, looked at it carefully, and found it was not fake, so he was even happier. The other children looked at him with envy and silently made up their minds to work harder to be chosen by their brother.

"Okay, next question, has your village always been here or is it newly built?"

The children fought more vigorously, looking at Li Heng with big expectant eyes. Li Heng pointed at one child at random, and the chosen child jumped up with joy.

"Yes, my parents both grew up in the village."

After sending out another copper coin, Li Heng continued to ask: "I heard that a great disaster occurred in the south. Was it not affected here?"

The lucky person who was chosen shouted: "Of course it has an impact. Many people in the village have frozen to death."

"How did you escape the disaster?"

No one raised their hand. They didn’t understand. Everyone was just staying at home like in previous years.

Looking at the children's expressions, Li Heng understood that this village was lucky and survived the snowstorm. The subsequent floods might not have affected this place at all. He looked at the surrounding terrain and found that the small village happened to be located at a high point on the plain.

Li Heng asked again tentatively: "No one burned your village?"

The children looked confused: “Why burn the village?”

Li Heng understood that there seemed to be no epidemic here.

The groundwork has been laid, and Li Heng begins to get to the point.

"Have people come to your village often in the past few months?"

The chosen child couldn't wait to shout: "Yes! I heard that he escaped from the north."

"I see there are almost no refugees on the official roads. Where did they come from?"

This time, only a few children raised their hands. Li Heng selected a child who had not been selected before. He answered excitedly: "They did not take the official road, but took a detour through the small road."

"Why not take the official road?"

This time only one child raised his hand. Li Heng didn't even need to point his finger at him. He excitedly announced, "I know! I heard that there is a mountain near the official road ahead. There is a man-eating monster in the mountain! It ate many people, so they don't dare to go that way anymore."

Li Heng and Zhao Qing looked at each other. It seemed that there was a big monster in Yingzhou.

Just then, the village chief came over and the children scattered.

"I wonder what you two are doing here?"

"Hello, village chief. My sister and I came from the southernmost part of the country and are going to Kyoto to stay with our relatives. We passed by here and would like to stay for one night. Here are our household registration and the accommodation fee."

The village chief took the household registration and looked at it, then felt relieved. Then he took the silver and welcomed the two people into the village with a smile on his face.

"So you two are planning to go to Kyoto. You two should take a good rest at my house tonight. I will prepare dinner right away."

At the dinner table, the village chief said embarrassedly: "Dear guests, I am really sorry, I really can't get good food recently, I will refund you part of the money."

"No need, village chief. My brother and I came here from Youzhou. We know that you have experienced a great disaster. It is a great feat for you to get food here. We have been sleeping in the open air all the way, and we are satisfied with a hot meal."

The village chief smiled happily: "Then eat it while it's hot, don't be polite."

After the meal, both the host and the guests were happy. The village chief said frankly: "Brother Wang Hai, you two brothers and sisters are going to Kyoto, right? I have a small suggestion. You should not take the official road in Yingzhou."

"You also say that, is it because of the so-called monster?" Li Heng showed a puzzled expression, "Are there really monsters in this world?"

"You must have heard what those kids said!" The village chief had a look on his face. "It's not certain what those kids said was right. We can't be sure if it was a demon or not. After all, no one saw the demon eating people. But many disaster victims who passed by Yingzhou disappeared. No one saw them alive or dead."

Li Heng discovered the loophole in the village chief's words: "Since no one saw it, how did they find out that someone was missing? We are all strangers who have never met each other before."