"Hyah-"
Clip-clop, clip-clop...
Beneath the gloomy sky, a mounted party galloped across the wasteland, kicking up billowing dust.
Ye Jingtang rode at the front in a black cloak, occasionally taking out the Telescope to examine a tiny speck circling in the sky several miles away.
Behind him rode the Dongming tribespeople led by Qinghe, with a carriage in their midst carrying Hua Qingzhi and her maid.
Hua Qingzhi had inexplicably been abducted to the Southern Dynasty. During this time, she had either been hiding in the Carriage House in Jingjie City or moving with the army, and had hardly gone out at all.
She had thought her return home lay in the distant future, that she would spend the next few years here, and might even never see her parents again, marrying and having children in the Southern Dynasty. She had felt utterly downcast.
Yet now, all of a sudden, she was back on the road to reunion with her parents. At the mounted party's pace, she might be back at her father's side in just a few days, but instead, she could no longer feel happy.
After all, her first journey to Yun'an with the delegation had left her with many beautiful memories-their first meeting at the Wang Family Medical Clinic, their chance reunion in the Lotus Garden, their clash of poetry at the Dragon Roar Tower. Every one of those events was enough to look back on for half a lifetime.
But this time...
In the carriage, Hua Qingzhi lifted the curtain and gazed back toward Blackstone Pass, which had long since vanished from sight. She tried hard to recall her experiences on this trip, only to find that her mind held nothing but the bewilderment and anxiety of her abduction, and her mortifying embarrassment when that female