90 The Wanted Fugitives (1/2)

After spending a few days at Gan Tian Chi's shed, Xue'er decided that it was time to head back to the border town. So she bid him farewell and made her way back.

She had stayed with Gan Tian Chi the first five days of the lunar new year. Since it was the new year, she had been given some time off, thus she spent it freely roaming around the city.

For the most part, everything had become uneventful to her, as the peak of celebration had passed, and it would not be as lively as it was five days ago until the near end of the holiday, which was ten days away. Xue'er looked forward to when that celebration would start, but in the meantime, she had to figure out where to spend her time.

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She wandered around for a bit until she smelled the scent of the house that burnt down a few days ago. Xue'er looked to the house that had been charred and boarded up with wooden planks. The black smut had completely covered the red vermillion so much that the color had become a deep red shade of its own. It was quite pleasant to her eyes as bright red vermillion was the only color she had seen the past few days.

There was a pale yellow notice pasted just outside the wall, that wrote the details of what happened. There was a total of four people that died within the house, the head of the household was listed as Sun Cheng. The cause of the accident was stated to be an accident resulting from a candle tipping over, and the smoke causing the people inside to become unconscious and thus couldn't escape, a terrible accident.

A lie should have at least three parts truth to it, Xue'er mused as she looked on to the empty street the house resided on. The people must have thought it to be inauspicious to walk by such a home that burnt to the ground right before the new year and decided to avoid it. Oh well, there were fewer people to walk through, which was a plus.

Xue'er pondered for a while, thinking of what she could possibly do with all this time when she saw an old lady passing by with a basket of fruit in her hand. Within the basket, there were only small apples and apricots that grew in this cold climate, so it wasn't so costly to buy.

Her head tilted as she looked at the old lady walking away.

Right, she had to prepare a small abode for herself when she would no longer be living at the inn. It was not as though she was planning to stay there for long either, considering that she only returned to sleep, and there was no need to stay there either.

She quickly made her way out of the town and out away from the high walls that supposedly kept the town safe from invaders, going to the wildlands that were outside, inhabited by small villages that had taken root many generations ago.

After scouring around for a while from above the treetops, she finally found an isolated place that was far away enough and inhabited by wild animals that no average person would wander around.

There were old and malnourished pine trees with its thistles, a dry brown color and falling on the ground, coating the dirt ground with a blanket of thin wilted needles and fallen leaves. As far as one could tell, this place once breathed life, that disappeared altogether. The empty and dilapidated cottages had been built in a neat row, how long ago, no one could truly be certain. One could tell that this was once a small village, that perhaps had no more than ten families together, there was a small well that was on the edge of town, it sparked Xue'er's interest.

Though the cottages appeared to be livable on the outside, it was quite bare on the inside, with nothing more than a pile of straw as a bed, and a kitchen deprived of firewood. There was even one house that had a hole through the roof, with pieces of the roof inside the house.

She spent a great deal of time trying to make the place liveable, from a fireplace in the middle of the dirt floor room to the small broken jars for collecting water when it rained or cooking. She had found bits and pieces here and there from the surrounding abandoned structures.