"What happened to Luoyang? How did it end up like this?"
Walking along a muddy country path, Li Dejiang looked grim. He paid no heed to the mud covering him and strode ahead. Crops along the way had either been reduced to scorched earth or flattened, and his expression kept changing at the sight.
Half a month had passed.
That day on the Grand Canal, Chen Cuo had met up with Yang Ling'er and her companions and accepted the Flat Peach he had entrusted them to bring. He then spent three days in seclusion aboard the boat before setting out again. Everyone in the party had cultivation techniques, but without Chen Cuo's permission, none dared use them much. So they traveled like ordinary folk, riding in carriages or on horseback, and only occasionally going on foot.
Unlike ordinary folk, though, they could run and walk far faster than any carriage or horse.
Even so, it took them a full seven days to reach the outskirts of Luoyang.
Along the way, they passed through Qi-Lu, Yu, and Yan. Unlike the route they had taken east from Guanzhong, Chen Cuo led them along narrow trails and mountain paths rather than official roads and straight highways. Yang Ling'er and the others saw misery everywhere: refugees at every turn, bodies of the starved strewn across the land. The sight shook them more and more.
They had thought Qi-Lu and the surrounding regions suffered because they bordered the war and lay where armies converged from every direction. The Central Plains, which they had crossed on their earlier journey, surely could not be so wretched. Yet when they arrived, they found that the land around Luoyang was perhaps in even worse shape than the Yellow River-Luo Region!
No sooner had Li Dejiang spoken than Li Chunfeng