"Hyah-"
Clippety-clop, clippety-clop...
Moonlight spilled over the Gobi Desert as the Charcoal-Red Steed galloped at full speed, trailing a thin plume of dust.
Ye Jingtang held the reins and surveyed the great river valley nestled among the distant mountains, feeling as though a lifetime had passed.
He remembered last passing through Wangheya in early spring last year, returning from Shazhou after delivering an escort shipment, with a few Shazhou goods and Liuzi and the other escorts beside him. The journey had been utterly uneventful, without a single unexpected turn. He had grown accustomed to his modest life as an escort captain, and had even begun imagining that one day he might encounter a chivalrous woman in distress along the road, carry her home and rescue her as in Tears of the Chivalrous Woman, then marry her and all that.
But what he had never expected was to hear, upon bringing his party back to Red River Town, that his adoptive father had drunk himself to death at the table. When he hurried back to the escort agency, all he saw was the old sabre on the spirit altar and the old codger already lying in a coffin.
His life had changed completely in that moment, turning him from a wild Liangzhou boy with a parent to keep him in line into a wanderer in a border town without a soul to call family.
When he left Red River Town in accordance with the will, he had thought he would never return. He had no idea how long he could survive in the man-eat-man jianghu, and had even imagined what would happen to Niao Niao if he died far from home someday.
But he had never dreamed that the jianghu outside would be so weak. Compared to the Liangzhou Heroes, its