Chapter 156
Chapter 156
“You’re saying those people were from the Central Plains?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Fine. Fetch an artist. Have him draw their faces and issue wanted notices!”
Losing a hundred-odd men was not what angered him most. What truly infuriated him was the loss of face.
He had wagered with his sworn enemy over who could capture the better prey. Yet his men had barely left before suffering terrible losses, and they had returned with nothing.
He was certain to be mocked now.
He would never spare the culprits. They had provoked King Huxie, and he would make them learn what that meant!
The portraits were finally ready before nightfall.
King Huxie was drinking when his subordinate held up the drawings. He promptly sprayed a mouthful of wine.
“What the hell is this? I told you to draw people! What did you draw?!”
Of all the portraits, only a few had anything resembling a head and face.
Several others showed people with their faces covered, making their features impossible to see.
One was nothing but a huge bundled mass, wrapped so thoroughly that only a pair of eyes remained visible.
“That’s a person? I thought it was a bear!”
“And what the hell is this? I told you to draw a face. That’s a bare ass! You even drew the red underwear underneath. Are you perverts?!”
The more he looked, the angrier King Huxie became. He rewarded the returning men with another round of blows to the head.
“But Your Majesty, that really is what they looked like.”
The others hurriedly nodded.
“Forget it. Send all these portraits out. Give extra copies to every tribe. If anyone sees people dressed like this, bring them straight to me!”
“Yes!”
Ji Yan’an had no idea their portraits would soon be plastered across every major tribe on the grasslands.
As for the captured Jiang Yunsui, everyone had forgotten her completely.
There were simply too many felt tents. She searched all over and still could not find where they cooked.
Just as hunger left her dizzy and weak, she spotted several men carrying chests.
They babbled to one another in a language she did not understand. Jiang Yunsui rubbed her belly and followed them.
She would trust her luck.
Her terrible luck!
They led her to a felt tent under extremely tight guard.
Even a bird flying overhead would have been chased away.
Jiang Yunsui crept on tiptoe, growing more cautious with every step.
You can’t see me, you can’t see me…
No one noticed Little Mushroom in Stealth Mode. Curious, she followed the chest bearers inside.
The contents nearly dazzled her blind.
This was a treasure vault!
Piles of gold and silver jewelry, gemstones, and other valuables lay everywhere.
The chests the men carried held glassware, also known in this era as colored glaze.
Only nobles could own such objects. They were enormously expensive and usually collected by royalty and aristocrats.
Jiang Yunsui had no interest in any of it. She wanted food.
The men carefully unpacked the glassware, arranged it, and left.
Jiang Yunsui crouched in a corner, perfectly embodying the motionlessness of a mushroom.
After they had been gone for a while, she pricked up her ears and listened for movement outside.
Then she stretched out one small hand and grabbed a “radish” from a box on the shelf.
More precisely, it was a snow ginseng that looked like a radish.
It looked dry and shriveled, but it was probably edible.
Should she put it in her mouth and try?
She took a bite. It tasted medicinal.
Yuck…
She was about to spit it out when she suddenly sensed a current of plant essence inside it.
Huh?
Maybe she should try another bite?
Crunch, crunch…
It really did taste awful, but it truly contained plant essence!
Plant essence held a powerful attraction for plant-aligned spirits.
For Jiang Yunsui as she was now, it could expand how much Imperial Flowing Essence she was able to store.
She did not yet know what else it might do, but it was definitely good for her body.
Jiang Yunsui scrunched her face into a bitter little grimace and bared her teeth as she forced down the awful snow ginseng.
Then her large eyes fixed on the other medicinal herbs.
Anything stored here was generally a rare and precious treasure. This was King Huxie’s vault, after all.
Among the things Jiang Yunsui recognized were several unusually large cordyceps.
She stared at them for a few seconds, then turned away.
Forget it, forget it. They looked too much like bugs for her to put them in her mouth. She would save them for Ji Yan’an.
Time to inspect the rest.
“Is this ginseng?”
She carefully dragged over a chest to stand on and took down a ginseng root.
Jiang Yunsui knew ginseng because one of the spirits she knew, an elder of hers, was a plant that had gained sentience. She could easily tell that this ginseng was five hundred years old.
She had never eaten medicinal herbs before. At most, she had eaten fruit and leaves.
With one bite, even purer plant essence poured into her body.
Her eyes flew wide.
It was bitter, and it tasted awful…
But she was truly hungry.
She would just close her eyes and eat.
Jiang Yunsui gathered every edible medicinal herb she could find into a pile.
“Is this an antler?”
Could antlers be eaten, too?
Puzzled, she gnawed on it.
Salty and gamey. Blech…
Worse, it contained no plant essence.
Dry-heaving, Jiang Yunsui shoved the velvet antler far away.
Completely inedible!
Next was a lingzhi mushroom. Eat.
Her first bite nearly broke a tooth.
Jiang Yunsui fell silent.
But this contained plenty of plant essence, too. The lingzhi was quite old.
She could keep it as a teething toy.
There were two more ginseng roots, one three hundred years old and the other seven hundred.
After gnawing on all three, the difference was obvious. The older an herb was, the more plant essence it contained.
They also left Jiang Yunsui’s little face so pinched with bitterness that she looked like a tiny bitter melon.
There were Snow Lotuses as well. Both were quite old.
She smacked her lips, wondering whether the fresh Snow Lotus she had picked contained this much plant essence.
She rubbed her belly. She was not that hungry anymore, but she wanted to eat something normal.
So she packed the remaining herbs into her now-empty crossbody pouch and snuck out.
Night had fallen. Excellent. That made moving around much easier.
It was probably time for the Barbarians’ evening meal, because the smell of cooking drifted through the camp.
That made things simple. Jiang Yunsui followed her nose and found their cooking area.
The Barbarians ate mostly meat, along with sheep’s milk and cow’s milk.
They barely processed the milk, drinking it fresh and raw.
Little Mushroom hid behind a felt tent with only her small head peeking out, watching in bafflement.
Did none of them think it smelled gamey?
Jiang Yunsui slipped into the kitchen.
She searched everywhere but found no stuffed buns or steamed buns.
There was something resembling flour paste, along with sweet potatoes, meat, and dairy products.
She had to settle for whatever she could eat.
The roasted lamb was good. When the cook was not looking, she tore off some meat and stuffed it into her mouth.
Try the flour paste.
What was this? It smelled milky. She would take that, too…
And a few sweet potatoes.
She ate as she crammed her pouch full, then gathered a few more things in her arms and slipped away without being seen.
Only now did she realize just how useful her ability was. To everyone else, it was practically the same as being invisible!