"What's going on?" Jiang Yanchuan lifted a corner of the curtain and looked at Liaochen, who was guarding the carriage.
Jiang Yingcheng poked the very top of her little head through the gap in the curtain too, copying her beautiful Imperial Father's tone. "What's going on?!"
The gap was narrow. As the little girl struggled to squeeze through, Liaochen first caught sight of the slightly disheveled bun atop her head, then the adorably ugly sprig of sage tucked into it.
Liaochen rubbed his fingers together, sorely tempted to reach out and give it a pat.
Then he caught Emperor Mingze's icy gaze beneath the Human-Skin Mask out of the corner of his eye and wisely suppressed the urge.
Liaochen answered briefly, "It seems more than a dozen children have gone missing in the city ahead recently, so the guards at every gate are especially strict when checking adults traveling with children."
A man had tried to take a boy out of the city. When the soldiers questioned them, the child claimed not to know the man, while the man loudly protested his innocence, insisting the boy was his own flesh and blood.
The man had some connections in the city, and the soldiers dared not offend him lightly. Yet families of missing children were keeping watch at every gate, hoping to find even the faintest trace of the human traffickers. At the sight of this, they had all crowded around in agitation.
The four sides were locked in a stalemate, and the sudden incident had blocked the entire gate. Everyone coming and going had turned into melon-field badgers on the spot, gathering around to relish the spectacle.
A dense mass of people filled the gateway. At a glance, it was impossible even to estimate how many townspeople had gathered there.