A house out, outside sky color like ink, wind and rain like dusk.
Large raindrops like beans, wildly slapping on face, shoulders, neck, smashing straw rainhats to a heavy lean.
Su Ziji raised his eyes to look, before his eyes were entirely hazy water mist.
"Lord, hurry and go!"
Wen Xunpeng stepped through the mud, rushing along the mountain path, his tone anxious.
His face was covered in water, impossible to tell if it was sweat or rain.
"Are you afraid?"
Su Ziji looked ahead.
Mere one or two hundred paces away, a crowd was shoving armored soldiers.
"Charge in! Beat the corrupt officials to death!"
The shouts gradually grew orderly from chaotic, even pushing against the armored soldiers.
"Charge in!"
"Kill the corrupt officials!"
"Demand justice!"
One cry after another, under the intentional or unintentional instigation within the crowd, the slogans grew more and more uniform.
"Lord!" Wen Xunpeng's tone was heavy. "This subject's death is not a pity, to say nothing of these unruly commoners; even with blades, axes, and armored troops, what is there to fear?"
"Yet this subject has once heard that a son of a thousand pieces of gold does not sit under a tottering hall, let alone that Your Grace is the ruler of ten thousand chariots, whose body is tied to the Fortune of all-under-heaven!"
He solemnly cupped his fists. "Lord, I ask that you quickly leave! We can tarry no longer! Delay and changes may arise!"
"The ruler of ten thousand chariots, is it..."
Su Ziji silently chanted this term, a smile appearing on his face, resembling insight yet also like mockery.
"Actually, Zhang Dai is still considered to have exhausted his heart and strength for these common folk... Among these people, there are surely those who have benefited from him."
"Admittedly,