Qiu
Che was in a daze all night, and she didn't know what day it was.
When she opened her eyes again, it was already daybreak.
She was covered with two dry coats - although they were a little torn because she fell off the cliff and then into the water.
Li Qingwu sat next to her with his knees bent and his head lowered. It seemed that he had been guarding her in this position all night.
Qiu Che licked her dry lips, looked at the sky outside, and stood up with a little difficulty.
She reached out to pat Li Qingwu's shoulder, her movements were very gentle. She was obviously trying to wake him up, but she seemed to be afraid of disturbing something: "Qingwu... wake up."
Li Qingwu raised his eyelids blankly, as if he was still in a dream and hadn't come back to his senses.
Qiu Che whispered: "It's daybreak."
She made it.
Li Qingwu's eyes, which could not hide his joy, slowly sank back when they saw Qiu Che's pale face.
She sniffed, stood up and stretched her stiff hands and feet, and reached out to help Qiu Che up from the haystack.
She was not strong enough, and she had a pair of three-inch golden lotus feet. She was lucky to find this temporary shelter with Qiu Che on her back step by step yesterday.
She had not eaten yet, and she had only slept for two or three hours. Qiu Che's weight was on her, causing her body to sway.
The two thin and slender figures leaned against each other, and they were in the same embarrassed posture.
Qiu Che noticed that her face was not good either. Seeing that she was still squatting down to carry him, he quietly withdrew some of his strength and said in a hoarse voice: "No need to carry me, I..."
Before he finished speaking, Li Qingwu pursed his lips and interrupted him lightly and firmly: "Come up."
"We need someone to keep up the strength," Li Qingwu said confidently, "You haven't recovered from the fever yet, I still have some strength, I'll carry you first."
Qiu Che was silent and had to admit that she was right.
Now the only comfort is that they are both women, Qiu Che is tall and can't be said to be heavy.
Without saying anything more, Li Qingwu carried Qiu Che on his back and quickly left the cave.
"Do you know where this is?" Looking around, it was a barren land, with only green leaves and jungles everywhere, and no end in sight.
Li Qingwu shook her head: "... I was just anxious to find a shelter yesterday, and I walked through many forks in the road. I can't remember which direction this is."
She couldn't remember, and Qiu Che, who fainted halfway, didn't know even more.
The two looked at each other for a moment, and Li Qingwu said: "At this point, we can only keep going forward."
Going back would be the road they came from, and there would be no way out.
Qiu Che sighed: "This is the only way."
In order to save energy, Li Qingwu didn't say much on the rest of the way.
I don't know how long they walked, until the sun was almost at its zenith, until Qiu Che fainted on her back and was awakened by her anxious shouting. Qiu
Che listened to her panting getting heavier and her steps becoming more and more difficult and staggering, and asked in a trance: "Where are we?"
For a long distance, they walked around the foot of the mountain.
But they never saw a single figure.
Li Qingwu didn't speak. Qiu
Che realized that something was wrong and called out in a hoarse voice: "Qingwu?"
Li Qingwu seemed to have just come back to his senses and spoke a little late, his voice was already hoarse: "...I don't know."
Qiu Che listened to the movements around her - she was a martial artist and her hearing was much better than Li Qingwu's: "I heard the water source again."
She patted Li Qingwu's shoulder: "Put me down, drink some water first, and rest for a while."
Li Qingwu still responded slowly and put him down slowly. As soon as
Qiu Che landed, Li Qingwu's figure shook, and Qiu Che quickly grabbed his arm subconsciously.
She frowned and found something wrong: "...What's wrong with you?"
Li Qingwu's lips were chapped, and he looked a little paler than Qiu Che, but he just closed his eyes and stood up again.
"I'm fine."
How can this look like nothing happened?
Qiu Che was worried and stared at Li Qingwu, trying to see if she was injured somewhere that she didn't notice.
This stare actually revealed something.
Qiu Che endured the dizziness in his head, quickly stepped forward a few steps, grabbed Li Qingwu, and said anxiously: "Blood."
Seeing the other party's blank eyes, Qiu Che looked at her embroidered shoes that were about to be worn out, gritted his teeth: "Your feet are bleeding, can't you feel it?"
Li Qingwu looked down slowly, and quickly stepped back a few steps, avoiding Qiu Che's hand that was about to grab her.
She moved her lips: "It's okay."
Qiu Che was almost driven to death by her: "How can it be okay! Come here, take off your shoes and let me show you--"
Just after taking a step forward, Li Qingwu retreated three feet away again as if avoiding a tiger.
The atmosphere suddenly froze.
Qiu Che's hand paused in mid-air for a long time, and then realized something.
"You... don't want me to see?"
Li Qingwu dodged and nodded gently.
"Why?"
Li Qingwu lowered his eyes, and his body showed a posture of resistance, which seemed familiar for some reason.
She squeezed out a word from between her lips and teeth: "Ugly."
Qiu Che didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "Not ugly." At this time, of course, the injury is the most important.
Li Qingwu still shook his head and said, "No, it's ugly."
Qiu Che patiently explained: "It's not ugly, and I won't dislike you. Just take off your shoes and take a look..."
But no matter what she said, Li Qingwu's mouth only said that sentence from beginning to end: "No. Ugly."
The third time, Qiu Che heard the faint trembling and crying in her tone.
She stopped persuading and cast a glance in silence.
Li Qingwu had already turned his head, trying not to show his hypocritical and fragile attitude at this time. A few thin stems protruded from his white neck because of sobbing.
She blinked her eyes to stop the tears from falling, and said in a low voice: "Don't look - please."
Perhaps because she felt that her insistence at this time might seem a little inexplicable, Li Qingwu obviously didn't want to waste time on this matter, and Qiu Che forced her eyes to red.
This is not a good time to have an argument.
Qiu Che did not insist, but turned around silently and said softly: "Okay, then I won't look - check it yourself, if you have any wounds, go to the water to wash..."
After a long time, she finally heard a low voice behind her: "Yeah."
Li Qingwu's wound was not serious, but the bleeding obviously slowed down her pace.
Soon, it was Qiu Che who supported the limping Li Qingwu.
After replenishing water, the two of them walked with some strength and walked in silence for a long time.
When they walked out of another bamboo forest, Qiu Che looked up and saw that there was still a large forest in front of him, and there was even some mist floating. He couldn't help but fall into deep thought. Li Qingwu
opened his mouth slightly, like a dehydrated fish.
She was wearing a coat, and looked particularly miserable and shabby, but her facial features were cold and eye-catching, and at this moment, her pale complexion made her look indescribably beautiful.
She noticed Qiu Che's hesitation, raised her head and asked dully, "What's wrong?"
Qiu Che was stunned for a moment, lowered his head to steady her, and said, "Nothing."
"It's just that our pace is not slow. If we were still in Jinzhou City, there should be people at the foot of the mountain, and we should be rescued soon... Now we have walked for so long, but there is no one in sight."
Li Qingwu swallowed unconsciously: "Well... So, are we no longer under Jinzhou City?"
"It's just a suspicion," Qiu Che said, "The water was flowing fast under the cliff at that time, and it was thanks to you that you woke up quickly after falling into the water that we were able to get ashore... That river leads to the moat of the capital. Although we have walked many forks in the road, we have almost always walked along the shore, but we have not seen the shadow of the moat so far."
Li Qingwu was also silent: "Did we go in the wrong direction?"
Qiu Che nodded, then shook his head.
"What do you mean?"
"Not only that, we probably landed on the wrong shore."
If they walked from the other side, along the shore in the other direction, they should be rescued soon.
The damned thing is that none of them knew which side was the right way. They had already walked a long way on this shore, and the river had forks.
They had obviously followed the river's constantly forked intersection and arrived at an unknown place.
Qiu Che had a guess in his mind, but he didn't dare to say it out loud.
- Jinzhou and Nanyi are at the border, and to enter the territory of Nanyi, you must pass through a dense forest with poisonous swamps.
Qiu Che has never been to this dense forest, but she knows that there is no boundary between the dense forest of Nanyi and the ordinary dense forest, and they are almost mixed together.
When she joined the army, she was lucky enough to enter the non-toxic forest and come out safely.
Now...
Qiu Che turned back silently and looked at the way they came.
The deep forest was full of small paths that they stepped out with one foot deep and one foot shallow. There seemed to be fog floating in it, but it was very light and almost invisible if you didn't look carefully.
She said that they had just replenished their water supply not long ago, so how could their condition deteriorate so quickly?
If they really entered the dense forest of Nanyi by mistake...
Qiu Che's scalp tingled, and she didn't dare to think too much.
She supported Li Qingwu and whispered, "You can't go forward. I'll take you back."
Li Qingwu was silent for a moment, and realized something, and looked at her.
Then he said, "I don't have the strength."
She asked a sharp question: "Do you remember when the fog started on the way we came?"
Qiu Che didn't speak.
Of course she didn't remember, because even the fog she found now was a reaction after she realized it.
She understood what Li Qingwu meant.
If you walk along the way you came again exhausted, you will still inhale poisonous gas, and you may be more poisoned.
It's better to rest on the spot and see if you can adjust your condition. After
all, according to rumors, there are people who have entered the dense forest of Nanyi and survived-although they are all Nanyi people.
It must be said that this dense forest has isolated too many covetous eyes from the Southern Barbarians. If they want to attack it, they must take a detour from a farther place.
But in this way, the Southern Barbarians will also have heard about their military deployment and have been prepared. Therefore, for so many years, the Southern Barbarians have been a hard bone that Daxia has been unable to chew.
When Li Qingwu said this, neither of them noticed each other's thoughtful eyes.
Qiu Che stopped by default and did not mention going back.
The two stopped by the stream, leaning against a big rock. Qiu Che whispered to her how he planned to go back - to swim from the water to the other side of the shore, maybe there is still a chance of survival.
But this method is also very uncertain, because this river is much wider and more turbulent than the river when they fell.
Li Qingwu never spoke.
As Qiu Che chatted, he suddenly smelled a gust of wind and began to have a tendency to fight his eyelids.
Soon, her eyelids drooped, and her hands were still holding some herbs she had found on the roadside in the jungle when she came here. Her hands that were crushing the medicine juice just stopped there.
In a daze, Qiu Che heard a movement beside her, as if Li Qingwu had stood up.
She forced herself to be sleepy, opened her eyelids, and saw Li Qingwu squatting in front of her with a calm face, his thin figure.
She reached out and touched Qiu Che's cheek with the back of her fingers.
The other party unconsciously chased her fingers and rubbed them unconsciously, like a child looking for the breath he was attached to.
Li Qingwu smiled, retracted his hand, and said lightly: "Go to sleep."
As soon as the voice fell, Qiu Che seemed to have received some kind of amnesty, and quickly closed his eyes, and his breath became even and long.
Li Qingwu took off his coat and half covered Qiu Che's head - this was also to prevent the poisonous fog from quickly corroding Qiu Che's body during sleep.
With clothes covering it, the speed of poisoning will be much slower.
Li Qingwu took one last look at Qiu Che, and then, as if he had made up his mind, he limped towards the depths of the dense forest.
If Qiu Che was awake at this time, she would probably find that Li Qingwu's condition was much better than hers.
She was not affected by the fog.
Qiu Che only felt that she had a dream, and the content of the dream was a bit long.
The strange thing is that the protagonist in the dream was not her - but Li Qingwu.
She saw the trajectory of her and Li Qingwu's previous life.
- Seeing that in the hall, when the emperor was smashing things crazily and angrily said that he would put Qiu Che in prison and behead him, it was Li Qingwu who knelt three times and kowtowed nine times, and begged the emperor to spare her life with a plan that her innocence had been destroyed but she could marry to quell the rumors.
A small official of the seventh rank with no characteristics is not important.
The reason why she was able to survive safely after defiled the princess was because Li Qingwu was protecting her.
It just so happened that the emperor was too proud to make a big deal out of this matter. It just
so happened that Li Qingwu tried his best to marry her and escape from the cage of the deep palace. It just so happened that... so many coincidences made up the marriage that Qiu Che had always regarded as an ill-fated fate.
When seeing this from the perspective of an observer, Qiu Che suddenly felt a little dazed and suddenly realized.
It turned out that a long time ago - when she didn't know it, Li Qingwu had saved her.
And more than once.