Chapter 147: Prison Break

Yun Shang once believed that the Daoist priest responsible for protecting her had something wrong with his head.

Ever since their conversation with the bandit leader inside the carriage, the Daoist had been acting as if possessed. Every day, he crouched in his room, staring unblinkingly at a bowl of water on the table. He looked nothing like an immortal master of transcendent grace, resembling instead a crazed peasant. Four or five days had passed this way, and the water in the bowl was practically turning foul. When a soldier in charge of provisions among the bandits tried to help him change the water, the priest snapped at him furiously.

As for the bandit leader, he seemed even more insane. He had actually managed to camp his forces quite openly right beside a vital stronghold in the territory of Cai, while recruiting men and horses with great fanfare. Not only had he plundered a convoy transporting military pay for the state of Cai, but he had also repeatedly harassed the imperial army. It was utterly lawless.

Sooner or later, this lawless rebel would be exterminated by the Duke of Cai and her own father. Yun Shang firmly believed this.

Yet as time slowly passed, there was not the slightest sign of the Duke of Cai’s army arriving. Instead, she had actually been sent by that bandit leader to work in the women's workshop.

This women's workshop had been established by the bandit leader himself. Its main function was to help his little bandits clean and maintain their armor and weapons, with pay calculated per piece. Furthermore, the bandit leader had rallied the village with the slogan: "It is a glory for men to be soldiers, and a glory for women to work." Many rural women had been persuaded to enter the small workshop. On the very first day she was brought back, still shaken from her shock, Yun Shang had been dragged straight to the workshop and told she was going to work.

Surrounded by unfamiliar village women speaking a dialect she could not understand, with an overseer bearing a fierce expression, Yun Shang had wept tears like pear blossoms bathed in rain. Turning back to look for the Venerable Ruoshui, she found him staring indifferently at his teacup.

After the shift ended, Yun Shang—a maiden who had never as much as lifted a finger in her life—found that a layer of skin had been rubbed raw from her palms. Fortunately, the bandit leader still possessed a shred of conscience, arranging a detached, single-family room for her. When she collapsed onto the bed, her limbs were so limp and exhausted that she lacked even the energy to think, let alone run away.

In the darkness, she resolved that tomorrow she would adamantly refuse to go to work. Under no circumstances would she labor for these bandits.

Yet when she woke up the next day, no one urged her to go to work.

She had originally prepared herself to fight to the death, but she felt as though she had thrown a punch at a ball of cotton. No one came to force her to work; how was she supposed to resist?

Since there was no need to work, she would just run away.

Yun Shang made up her mind to escape. Taking advantage of the moment when the gate guard went to eat, she scaled the wall and fled. Her venture got off to a poor start, however, as she sprained her ankle while coming down from the top of the wall.

Yet she did not let this minor setback stop her. She bravely picked herself up and walked forward step by step.

Only after walking for an hour did she realize that she had no idea in which direction she was heading.

Looking around, she saw only rolling hills and yellow earth. She only knew her hometown was in the south, but the further she walked, the more woods she encountered, and now she had no clue where the south was anymore.

Furthermore, she had left without bringing any food or water. Hungry and thirsty the entire way, her physical strength finally gave out, and she collapsed on the path. After about half an hour, she saw the bandit leader and several other minor chieftains walking toward her, chatting and laughing. Upon spotting her, they cried out in astonishment, "Why is she here?"

Then, the bandits whispered among themselves for a while. Finally, the bandit leader picked her up as if she were a small chicken, heaved her onto his back, and while carrying her with one hand, he pointed about with the other, saying, "This place is not bad—it has mountains, water, and woods. The day our main force is discovered, we can run over here, regroup our banners and drums, and strike back." Everyone praised the idea.

After that, the group of bandits looked at a few more locations and then went home, acting as if they did not care at all about her attempt to escape. At last, Yun Shang could hold it in no longer. "Let me go! I want to go home!"

The bandit leader scratched his head and said, "You must be Marquis Yun’s daughter, right? To tell you the truth, dragging you back was a mistake; we never wanted to capture you in the first place."

"Then hurry up and let me go!"

"But if I let you go, who is going to escort you back?" Xu Wenshan said. "Look at you—if I let you walk by yourself, you don't even know the way. My men are too precious; there's no way I can spare anyone to send you back."

With tears welling in her eyes, Yun Shang said, "Can't that Daoist escort me back? He promised to protect me."

Xu Wenshan seemed to find this quite comical. He let out a loud laugh and said, "Remember, mortals can never demand that immortals do anything. They honestly don't understand why you want to go home, because in their view, apart from their own Daoist sect, everywhere else is the same. So don't expect them to speak human language."

Yun Shang thought for a moment and said, "Then let me eat!"

Xu Wenshan scratched his head and said, "That presents a bit of a problem."

Yun Shang did not understand why letting her eat could possibly be troublesome.

"Our rule here is that you have to pay money to eat. You aren't actually my prisoner, so you have to pay as well."

Yun Shang stared in wide-eyed astonishment. She had never seen anyone so avaricious; even the beggars she occasionally glimpsed outside her own family's gates surely weren't this stingy.

"Therefore, you have to go work in the women's workshop," Xu Wenshan concluded.

Yun Shang understood. She finally understood why the bandit leader hadn't come to urge her to go to work.

As it turned out, he wasn't forcing her to toil; rather, he was introducing her to a job. How she worked, how well she did, or whether she worked at all was entirely her own affair.

The next day, Yun Shang arrived punctually at the women's workshop, determined to use her own hands to bring down this bandit gang.

Whenever she maintained a weapon, she deliberately left the moisture uncleansed; whenever she washed the inner linings of armor, she purposely left them stained. She believed that the other female laborers would pick up on her laziness. As long as everyone slacked off together, the bandits' combat effectiveness would grow increasingly poor.

However, the bandit leader seemed to have anticipated this move. When wages were settled, not a single piece of equipment she had maintained passed inspection. Consequently, the wages she received were pitifully meager—barely enough for pickled vegetables, let alone enough to fill her stomach with white rice.

During dinner, Yun Shang cried. It was the most miserable she had ever wept in her entire life.

In the past, she had never known what it felt like to have an empty stomach, to the point where she used to wonder why people had to eat at all and whether they could simply skip meals. Once, during dinner, she intentionally hid away and refused to eat. When her mother later discovered this, she received a gentle pat on her bottom and was then taken to the back kitchen to eat a plate of stir-fried meat slices. That was the most delicious meal she had ever tasted.

Therefore, she had always assumed that eating after going hungry would make food taste even more wondrous, and she had actually often reminisced about the sensation of hunger. She never expected that wish to be fulfilled today in such a miserable fashion.

The female laborers ate together. The middle-aged woman sitting next to her saw her crying, completely misunderstanding what was in her heart, and tapped her bowl as she said, "Stop turning your nose up at white rice. Let me tell you, common folk like us never get to eat white rice normally; it's only here with Hero Zhu that we get to eat it."

Weeping, Yun Shang said, "Didn't you all grow this white rice yourselves?"

"We grew it, sure, but it all ends up eaten by you rich folks!"

Yun Shang cried even harder. Not a single person here could understand her feelings.

Still, the bandit leader was this "Hero Zhu." She had memorized the name.