Sure enough, as the convoy moved on, the outline of a hamlet soon appeared ahead.
Night had completely descended, and the wind and snow seemed to have grown fiercer. Winter days were like that—darkness came the moment it was said to come.
Dense snowflakes were swept up by the wind, stinging painfully as they struck the carriage canopies and people's faces.
Looking at the village in the twilight, Fang Yuan inexplicably felt that it resembled a graveyard. An indescribable sense of dread welled up in his heart.
The convoy struggled through the darkness into a village even more dilapidated and smaller in scale than Fang Family Village.
The village was deathly silent, with only a few households showing faint lights through their windows,
like ghostly flames in the darkness.
Clearly startled by the sudden arrival of the convoy, some bolder villagers wrapped in tattered cotton-padded coats poked their heads out to look.
Only after recognizing a few familiar faces among the convoy did they relax slightly and begin whispering among themselves.
An old man with a face full of wrinkles said:
"It's Master Chen's convoy..."
Not a trace of white breath came from his mouth as he spoke, despite the bitter cold.
The woman beside him hurriedly tugged at his sleeve:
"You scared me half to death. I thought it was those damned lot again..."
Yet their lips had not moved at all!
The Chen Family residence stood at the end of the village, one of the few orderly courtyards there.
The convoy filed inside, and the servants immediately became busy,
shouting as they led the horse carriages and donkey carts one by one into the fairly spacious yard, packing them together as tightly as possible to shelter from the wind and snow.
Chen Zhiyuan personally led Fang Yuan's family