Chapter 8 (1/2)

Chapter 8: Meeting an Old Friend in the Desert

When Lotus came to, she discovered that all was dark around her, except for a trace of faint light towards the front She carefully tried to discern her surroundings before, finally realizing that she was in a horse carriage with her hands and feet tied up There was a bit of cloth shoved into herIt was oily and stank The cabin lurched slightly as the carriage proceeded forith great speed She could hear the clopping sounds of the hooves of the horses and the creaks froe wheels as they turned Lotus tilted her head, but didn’t hear anything else

Lotus struggled and ee didn’t stop, but a whip cae roof as ain Mongolian

During the Yuan dynasty, the Goryeo Kingdom was a vassal state to the Yuan dynasty After the establish dynasty, subsequent hostilities between northern and southern Yuan erupted and the Goryeo Kingdom was split in two ca The civil and military officials all had their own loyalties It wasn’t until Li Chenggui founded the Joseon dynasty and wholeheartedly threw his loyalties behind a single dynasty that Korea became the Yuan dynasty’s vassal Therefore, all officials knew both the Mongol and Han languages When Lotus heard the Mongol language, her heart gave a leap of fright

The carriage continued to lurch forward She couldn’t identify where she was going nor could she hear anything else The carriage swung side to side and she was tied up tightly Her hands, feet, and brain all felt a bit numb Lotus simply decided to shut her eyes and recite scripture in her heart The Diah her mind

The interior of the carriage slowly becah the crack slowly faded away until it was completely dark

After who kne long, the carriage seemed to slon The occasional ups and downs and various noises all disappeared as they finally came to a stop Someone in the back yelled, “Make camp!” before the herd of horses thundered over There were sounds of people dis up a fire, and pouring water A delicious fragrance wafted into the carriage after a while — it was the smell of baked bread and beef Lotus was curled up in the carriage, horror and fright spas her heart

It suddenly grew bright in front of her as the thick carriage curtains were yanked away A burly e Lotus’ head was facing down and she could only see the sands on the ground The fire danced and sparkled, reflecting light onto the sands every now and then

The burlyher restraints Since Lotus had been tied for a long ti properly even after she had been released She lay there, curled up on the ground At that point, theof stars She could tell that they were in a desert The sand dunes rose and fell, extending without end into the distance until they vanished into the darkness There was no end to the swathes of sand Lotus had only seen deserts in paintings and couldn’t help but sigh with erander and expansive than the paintings portrayed! The Tang dynasty poems that she’d read before had lines of, “vast and bare expanses of infinity” and “ten thousand li’s of desert with not a single sign of huine the boundless form of the desert before her Now that she rule word in the poems was true

There was a bonfire burning in the distance behind a s around it, eating and drinking What was a rare sight was that although these people were eating and drinking, they didn’t say a single word or htest noise

As Lotus slowly felt feeling returnto her hands and feet, she slowly sat up, taking out the rag in her round The stink still eo and al her throw up

A tall, skinny man with his back to her beside the fire raised his head in indication, and a burly ht over a piece of bread and a skin of water, throwing them at Lotus’ feet Lotus first picked up the skin of water and rinsed her round The burlyout her rowl viciously, “This is the desert! Water is old! You have only this skin of water!” He also spoke in Mongol

Lotus started and didn’t say anything She picked up the bread on the ground and slowly tore it apart, eating slowly She etarian? Or is it siive me beef?”

That night, this group of people rested where they had made camp, and no one came back to tie up Lotus’ hands and feet There were two people who slept behind her, subtly surrounding her Someone had thrown a thick blanket to Lotus which she used to wrapped around herself before lying on the sandy ground The sky seeolian hut as it covered the four directions, a dark abyss A sliver of the waningits cold rays over the earth The numerous stars seemed to be jewels that dotted the sky

Where was this place? Lotus silently recited scripture as she slowly fell asleep as well

Nights in the desert were incredibly cold, and she see to the fire deeper into the night Lotus held tightly onto the blanket as she curled into herself, trying to hold onto warht and curl back into a safe world So her, but she couldn’t seeet it, sleep, just sleep, Lotus said to herself

The sky was already bright when she opened her eyes A burly round, “Go into the carriage and change into this! You’re riding a horse by yourself today”

Lotus took a look and saw that it was a set of light blue clothes and shoes of the Han people Although it was made from ordinary cloth, but it was new and clean Lotus walked to the carriage and changed hastily The sizes were a perfect fit Suspicion started to surface in her heart as she bundled up her original Korean clothes and carefully hid the Glass Tower on her body When she e a deep pit and buried all traces of the bonfire The carriage had also been pushed in and everything had been buried without a trace

One of theave it to Lotus, snarling, “Don’t you dare think of running away!”

And so, alloped forward, five in front of Lotus and seven behind her They both escorted and surrounded her The skinny, tall ht up the rear and occasionally directed the way He wore a , thin alleaned fro could be gleaned from his accent either

And so, the group of people ran in the vast desert Sand and yet reeted the eye There was only sand Lotus’ initial shock and delight at seeing the desert for the first tialloped fro where the end was